III. The Myth of Literal Translation

literal (adj) – a) an adjective formed from the noun ‘ littere’

figurative ( adj) - using words not in their normal literal

but in a way that makes a description more

interesting or expressive

Read the following parts of the text and find an answer to the question or questions put before each paragraph.

A.

a) Why isn’t a word- for- word translation a good job?

b) Is an idea of literal translation new?

c) How many experts come out in favour of a literal translation?

d) Do Western translators accept the idea of a literal translation?

In practice it’s the words on the page that hang like a dark veil over what a piece of written language means. Words taken one by one obscure the force and meaning of a text, which is why a word-for word translation is almost never a good job. This isn’t a new insight: arguments against literal translation go back almost as far as written translation itself.

Few commentators on translation have ever come out in favour of a literal or word-for- word style. Literal translation is precisely what translators in the broad Western tradition don’t do. But if literal translation is not a widespread practice, why do so many translators feel a need to shoot it down – often with overwhelming force? Octavio Paz, the Mexican poet and man of letters, stated the standard view in more recenttimes: “I’m not saying a literal translation is impossible, only that

it’s not a translation.”

B.

a) How do we usually read?

b) Do translators have the right to skip?

When reading, we use the context to prompt a meaning that fits. Where the context isn’t good enough to allow this, we just skip it. We skip-read all the time.

Nobody knows the meaning of all the French or Russian words. However, translators are not granted the right to skip. That’s a serious constraint.

It hardly arises in most kinds of language use; it’s one of the few things that sets a problem for translation that is almost unique to it.

C.

a) Which way of translating could be considered as the primary, original

meaning of the term literal translation?

b) How do we call this type of translation nowadays?

c) What does transliteration mean?

The way of dealing with an untranslatable by not translating it while making it pronounceable (sound translation, homophonic translation) could be considered to be the primary, original meaning of the term literal translation. It represents a foreign word by putting in place of the letters of which it is made the corresponding letters of the script of the target language. But we do not call that literal translation nowadays – we call it transliteration.

D.

a) What is a literal translation? (your answer in Russian is preferable)

b) What meanings does the term ‘literal’ have?

c) What is the distinction between the literal and figurative meanings

of words?

d) What is the origin of the word ‘literal?

e) What does the expression ‘literal meaning’ taken literally means? ”

What is a literal translation? Not a substitution of letters, since we call that transliteration. A one-to-one substitution of the separated written words? Maybe.

It seems clear that the whole purpose of translation of any kind is to make the source available to those readers of the target who do not know the source language. A translation that makes no sense without recourse to the original is not a translation.

The term ”literal” also hides other mysteries. It is used to refer not only

to a translation style, but to say something about the way an expression is supposed to be understood.

The distinction between the literal and figurative meanings of words has been at the heart of Western education for more than two millennia. The literal meaning of an expression is supposed to be its meaning prior to any of interpretation, its natural, given, standard, neutral, plain meaning.

‘Literal’ is an adjective formed from the noun ‘littera’, meaning ‘letter’ in Latin. A letter in this sense is a written sign that belongs to a set of signs some subsets of which can be used to communicate meanings. Combining together they can be used to communicate meanings. Speech communicates meaning, writing communicates meaning, but letters on their own do not have any meaning.

That’s what a letter is – a sign that is meaningless except when used as part of a string. The expression ‘literal meaning’ taken literally is a contradiction in terms and a nonsense. Even in the modern world we do not always know quite what we mean when we claim that something is literally true, and even less when we call a translation a literal one.

E.

a).What is the main idea of this paragraph?

b).What is the main topic of this paragraph?

c) What example is given to illustrate the difference between the

two languages – Russian and English?

d) What does ‘wording’ mean? Why do we use it?

e) Do the written translation of the paragraph marked

Translation-based language teaching is no longer in fashion, but its ghost still inhabits a number of misconceptions about what translation is or should be.

Teaching a foreign language when an actual linguistic environment is not available and in the absence of technologies that allow a linguistic environment to be simulated (radio, television, film, sound recording and the web) was obliged to rely on writing -on slates or on chalkboards, in exercise books or in print. With only those tools available it’s not obvious how to explain that the expression

У меня большой дом.

is to be understood as ‘I have a big house’. unless you also explain that it can be broken down into

‘At-me-big house?

Can the second version be called a translation? And if so, what kind of translation is it? The fact is that the Russian language doesn’t have a definite or indefinite article, that adjectives agree in number, gender and case with the nouns they qualify, that there is no place for the verb ‘to be’ in a Russian sentence of this kind, and that possession may be expressed by a preposition before a personal pronoun, which has to be put into the appropriate grammatical case. Indeed, the grammatical explanation I’ve just given is almost meaningless until you have seen it in action in a written expression and been told what each written item stands for.

Some people call it ‘a literal translation, but it would be better

to adopt a distinct term for the parallel, item-by-item explication of an expression in a foreign language for the purpose of teaching how the foreign language works. ‘Wording’ is invaluable, and I don’t think even the most direct of direct methods can do without it at some point. In fact, language learners taught by other methods always re-invent wording for themselves when grappling with a sentence just beyond the level of competence they have reached. Wording gives you a first approach to the shape and order of the language you are learning. It helps not so much to translate as produce acceptable expressions in the foreign tongue. To translation into the foreign language, you learn first of all to put the source into foreign dress’.

***Wording is neither a language nor a translation, just a helpful intermediate stage in learning how to read and write in a foreign language.

Wording translation and facing-page translation are not ‘bad’ ways to translate. They are language operations with specific finalities, serving communicative and educational purposes proper to them and nothing else. Translation

is not just one thing; how best to do it depends on what you are doing it for.

However, wording is not what people mean when they call something a literal translation. The so-called literal translation ‘У меня большой дом’ is not ‘at me big house’, but ‘I have a big house’. That’s to say, all that is actually meant by calling something a literal translation is a version that preserves meaning in grammatical forms appropriate to the language of the translation.

Octavio Paz was right to say that there is no such thing as a literal translation. It’s just a translation – a plain, ordinary, actual translation of the source.

The left-side player in the long and frustrating game of squash between

‘literal’ and ‘free’ doesn’t really exist. It’s just the shadow of another, more ancient world. But shadows can be quite frightening even when you know they don’t exist. ***

(from “ Is That a Fish in Your Ear” by David Bellos)