Translation is ultimately a human activity which enables human beings to exchange ideas and thoughts regardless of the different tongues used. Al Wassety (2001) views the phenomenon of translation as a legitimate offspring of the phenomenon of language, since originally, when humans spread over the earth, their languages differed and they needed a means through which people speaking a certain language (tongue) would interact with others who spoke a different language.
Translation is, in Enani's (1997) view, a modern science at the interface of philosophy, linguistics, psychology, and sociology. Literary translation in particular is relevant to all these sciences, audio-visual arts, as well as cultural and intellectual studTranslation is, in Chabban's words (1984:5), "a finicky job," as it has not yet been reduced to strict scientific rules, and it allows for the differences that are known to exist between different personalities. Translation is a heavily subjective art, especially when it deals with matters outside the realm of science where precisely defined concepts are more often expressed by certain generally accepted terms.
In the final analysis, translation is a science, an art, and a skill. It is a science in the sense that it necessitates complete knowledge of the structure and make-up of the two languages concerned. It is an art since it requires artistic talent to reconstruct the original text in the form of a product that is presentable to the reader who is not supposed to be familiar with the original. It is also a skill because it entails the ability to smooth over any difficulty in the translation, and the ability to provide the translation of something that has no equal in the target language.
In translation, the richness of vocabulary, depth of culture, and vision of the translator could certainly have very conspicuous effects on his/her work. Another translator might produce a reasonably acceptable version of the same text, which, however, may very well reflect a completely different background, culture, sensitivity, and temperament. Such differences cannot, in Chabban's view (1984), detract from the merit of either translator. This is simply because translation is decidedly a more difficult job than creation.
The question of the possibility of translation is widely regarded as crucial to any understanding of what language is. If translation is not possible, then what is it that language does? Translation is possible in the sense that we humans have been doing it (or claiming to have done it) for many thousands of years, but we have been doing so without any assurance that the message sent was indeed the message that was received. If I ask you to open the window and you then do just that, it may not be too presumptuous to think that the message has successfully been translated, but in the case of a great many possible linguistic instances -- probably the vast majority -- that sort of unambiguous confirmation is not possible.
Even in the present case, your "compliance" with my request may be the result of sheer coincidence, of my misunderstanding of what you've done, or of some entirely extraneous factor.
Translation between languages is not the whole of translation, but it is an especially illuminating limit case of a much broader phenomenon. The need to translate the spoken word (either within or between languages) presents serious practical difficulties for a great many people on a day-to-day basis. However, it is written texts that most profoundly present the theoretical problem of translation; a "literal" translation would be inconceivable in an entirely oral culture. Indeed, the notion of "fidelity" to an "original" must be quite different in an oral culture than it is in a print-dominated culture.
In addition, written texts raise the question of the "translation" between speech and writing. The creation of alphabets and the writing down of oral traditions authorize or at least permit the separation of the linguistic medium from its significant content -- after all, a "translation" has already occurred, in the writing down of the spoken word. Either content or medium may change, independently of the other. This is why Socrates attacked writing, in the Phaedrus: writing is both powerful and dangerous -- it is magical -- and the possibility that translation will transform the words beyond recognition threatens the search for truth.
Only two centuries after Socrates distinguished between the living, seminal word that arises from the dialectic of minds, and the poisonous written word that kills the memory, Jewish scribes translated the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek. This was at a time when what Walter Ong calls chirographic culture was growing rapidly in importance, a time in which alphabetic writing was becoming more and more influential upon the
Mediterranean world, although oral culture still dominated. It was to this cultural transformation, and the attendant threat of the loss of meaning, that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam-- religions on which the written word has had tremendous influence -- responded in their different views of the translatability of scripture.
The question of translation has profound theological dimensions. The question of scripture" -- its nature, meaning, and authority -- is inseparable from that of translation.
Even in our modern world, readers tend to regard the original work -- whether "holy scripture" or secular literature -- as superior to as as and more authoritative than any of its translated versions. In Islam this tendency reaches an extreme. Muslims believe that Allah dictated his revelation through Mohammed in Arabic, and the only true or proper Quran is the Quran in Arabic. Arabic is the one divine language. The material body of the text and its meaning are held to be inseparable, and the problem of translation is eliminated, because the possibility of valid translation is denied. Or rather, the problem is disguised and absorbed into the larger hermeneutical problem-- the more general question of the text's meaning.
In contrast, the Jewish and Christian traditions permit from a very early date -- with the Septuagint (ca. 200 BCE) and the New Testament (first century CE) – the translation both of the language and of the concepts of the Hebrew Scriptures. Hebrew is thought of as the holy language in at least some Jewish communities, and Jews remain ambivalent toward the status of the Torah in translation. In one legend concerning the writing of the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, God favors this act of translation through the miraculous unanimity of the seventy translators' work.
However, in another account, God's disapproval of the translating is manifested through unnatural darkness over the earth.
In the oldest stratum of the Hebrew Scriptures, the story of the Tower of Babel
(Gen.11:1-9) implicitly denies that any human language is the language of God and explicitly asserts that "the language of all the earth" has been "confused" by God. The multiplicity of languages is a punishment (or gift?) from God: translation is both necessary and impossible. It is the goal of the Kabbalah, the mystical rabbinic reading of the scriptures, to find reflected in our post-Babelian human languages, and especially the languages of the Torah, echoes of the true language of God.
Because the Hebrew alphabet (in pre-Masoretic form) has no vowels, the writings cannot be spoken without an interpretative addition on the part of the reader. The gulf between the written and the oral is far greater than for an English or Greek text. By itself the Hebrew text is nonsense and dependent upon vocalization for signification, and yet as canon it is always prior to speech, to any authoritative interpretation. Here the distinction between the material, written text and its meaning is quite evident. Meaningful language arises out of meaningless difference.
Criteria for a good translation
A good translation is one that carries all the ideas of the original as well as its structural and cultural features. Massoud (1988) sets criteria for a good translation as follows:
- A good translation is easily understood.
- A good translation is fluent and smooth.
- A good translation is idiomatic.
- A good translation conveys, to some extent, the literary subtleties of the original.
- A good translation distinguishes between the metaphorical and the literal.
- A good translation reconstructs the cultural/historical context of the original.
- A good translation makes explicit what is implicit in abbreviations, and in allusions to sayings, songs, and nursery rhymes.
- A good translation will convey, as much as possible, the meaning of the original text (pp. 19-24).
El Shafey (1985: 93) suggests other criteria for a good translation; these include three main principles:
- The knowledge of the grammar of the source language plus the knowledge of vocabulary, as well as good understanding of the text to be translated.
- The ability of the translator to reconstitute the given text (source-language text) into the target language.
- The translation should capture the style or atmosphere of the original text; it should have all the ease of an original composition.
From a different perspective, El Touny (2001) focused on differentiating between different types of translation. He indicated that there are eight types of translation: word-for-word translation, literal translation, faithful translation, semantic translation, adaptive translation, free translation, idiomatic translation, and communicative translation. He advocated the last type as the one which transmits the meaning from the context, respecting the form and structure of the original and which is easily comprehensible by the readers of the target language.
El Zeini (1994) didn't seem satisfied with such criteria for assessing the quality of translation. Hence she suggested a pragmatic and stylistic model for evaluating quality in translation. She explains that the model "places equal emphasis on the pragmatic component as well on the stylistic component in translation. This model covers a set of criteria, which are divided into two main categories: content-related criteria and form-related criteria" and expected that by following these criteria, "translators will be able to minimize the chance of producing errors or losses, as well as eliminate problems of unacceptability" (p. xvii).
Translation problems
Translation problems can be divided into linguistic problems and cultural problems: the linguistic problems include grammatical differences, lexical ambiguity and meaning ambiguity; the cultural problems refer to different situational features. This classification coincides with that of El Zeini when she identified six main problems in translating from Arabic to English and vice versa; these are lexicon, morphology, syntax, textual differences, rhetorical differences, and pragmatic factors.
Another level of difficulty in translation work is what As-sayyd (1995) found when she conducted a study to compare and assess some problems in translating the fair names of Allah in the Qu'ran. She pointed out that some of the major problems of translation are over-translation, under-translation, and untranslatability.
Culture constitutes another major problem that faces translators. A bad model of translated pieces of literature may give misconceptions about the original. That is why Fionty (2001) thought that poorly translated texts distort the original in its tone and cultural references, while Zidan (1994) wondered about the possible role of the target culture content as a motivating variable in enhancing or hindering the attainment of linguistic, communicative and, more importantly, cultural objectives of EFL (English as a Foreign Language) education. Hassan (1997) emphasized this notion when he pointed out the importance of paying attention to the translation of irony in the source language context. He clarified that this will not only transfer the features of the language translated but also its cultural characteristics.
The translator's work
These problems, and others, direct our attention to the work and the character of translators, how they attack a text so as to translate, and the processes they follow to arrive at the final product of a well-translated text in the target language.
Enani (1994:5) defines the translator as "a writer who formulates ideas in words addressed to readers. The only difference between him and the original writer is that these ideas are the latter's". Another difference is that the work of the translator is even more difficult than that of the artist. The artist is supposed to produce directly his/her ideas and emotions in his/her own language however intricate and complicated his/her thoughts are. The translator's responsibility is much greater, for s/he has to relive the experiences of a different person. Chabban (1984) believes that, however accurately the translator may delve into the inner depths of the writer's mind, some formidable linguistic and other difficulties may still prevent the two texts from being fully equivalent. Therefore we do not only perceive the differences between a certain text and its translation, but also between different translations of the same text
On the procedural level, El Shafey (1985:95) states: "A translator first analyzes the message, breaking it down into its simplest and structurally clearest elements, transfers it at this level into the target language in the form which is most appropriate for the intended audience. A translator instinctively concludes that it is best to transfer the "kernel level" in one language to the corresponding "kernel level" in the "receptor language."
Translation skills for novice translators
The present study suggests four main macro-skills for any translator who begins his/her work in the field of translation. These are: reading comprehension, researching, analytical, and composing skills. These macro-skills include many sub- or micro-skills that need to b
