Babel - Volume 47, Issue 2, 2001

Raymond Chandler published his first novel, The Big Sleep, in 1939. There are two Spanish translations of the novel, both titled El sueño eterno, one published in 1958 by Aguilar (Madrid) and the other in 1972 by Barral (Barcelona). This study analyzes irony in the two Spanish translations and concludes that both translations fail to reflect the degree of irony present in Chandler’s original, especially with respect to the translation of two key words, cute and giggle, and the dramatic effect of the novel’s climax is dampened as a consequence. Also, it is demonstrated that the 1972 version is, if not an outright plagiarism of the earlier 1958 version, at the very least a version which does not meet the criteria for originality.

In the present research project funded by the Spanish Ministry of Education and Culture we are working on the elaboration of a contrastive functional-communicative grammar (Spanish-German) for translators and/or interpreters on CD Rom which is considered a valuable working tool for this group.It is well-known that one does not translate words and structures but tekst or discourse. In order to do so, the translator/interpreter must understand the communicative intention of the original tekst or discourse and reproduce it in the target tekst. That means, not only does he/she need a solid idiomatic knowledge (knowledge of grammar, vocabulary, phonology, suprasegmental and extralinguistic elements)in both languages but also a good knowledge of the expressive aspect of all these linguistic resources (i.e. which resources are used to express which function in what kind of situation or tekst and with what effect).However, the existing grammar books do not help him/her in an effective way because none of them offer him/her easily accessible information about the resources (lexical, grammatical, phonological, orthographic, suprasegmental, extralinguistic) that exist in each language for the expression of specific functions (e.g. “make a request”), determined by the type of tekst or discourse and adding information about the frequency of use and the pragmatic connotations of each linguistic form.

In many scientific, technological or political fields terminology and the production of up-to-date reference works is lagging behind, which causes problems to translators and results in inconsistent translations. Parallel corpora of texts already translated can be used as a resource for automatic extraction of terms and terminological collocations. Especially for smaller languages where existing resources are scarce, collecting and exploiting parallel corpora may be the chief method of obtaining terminological data. The paper describes how a methodology for multi-word term extraction and bilingual conceptual mapping was developed for Slovene-English terms. We used word-to-word alignment to extract a bilingual glossary of single-word terms, and for multi-word terms two methods were tested and compared. The statistical method is broadly applicable but gives results of very limited use, while the method of syntactic patterns extracts highly useful terminological phrases, however only from a tagged corpus. A vision of further development is given and how these methods might be incorporated into existing translation tools.

In Towards a Science of Translating, (1969) Nida asserts that “There will always be a variety of valid answers to the question, ‘Is this a good translation?’” In the professional translation environment, the whole question of how to evaluate a translated text is one which poses a challenge to the client, to the translator and to those responsible for training the translator. Much has been written about the difficulty of identifying (objectively) verifiable and perhaps more widely generalisable criteria for this form of evaluation, which needs to relate to the functional adequacy (Nord 1997, Toury 1995) of the translated text for its intended purpose. Such criteria would be equally welcome as guidelines for the actual translation process, to assist the translator in selecting from possible translation alternatives. Think aloud protocols have tried to identify what goes on the ‘lack box’ and the cognitive processes involved in the process of text production (Kussmaul 1991, 1995). However, TAPS are a means to an end, the end being the aim of achieving a better understanding of the process in order to minimise the occurrence of potential errors and rationalise and optimise the process. This article attempts to show how Descriptive Analysis (see Toury 1995) of text pairs can highlight potentially successful strategy types, in relation to aspects of a functionalist approach to text production. Having determined which text production criteria can be of use in evaluating the potential success of a translation choice within a text, it should be possible to formulate a set of guidelines against which translators could test choices.at micro-and macro-textual levels. Such guidelines, if also used to evaluate the target text, would ensure that evaluator and translator were ‘alking the same language’ and might not only improve the evaluation process but also optimise translation output. Translation theory can suggest potential criteria: corpus analysis, using the DTS methodology, can identify authentic examples of criteria in action. Bringing the two together into a usable format is the aim of this paper. To demonstrate our approach we have used samples of advertising text pairs.This text type is notoriously difficult to evaluate, relying as it does on persuasive effect through impact on the reader. Since (potential or real) impact is recognised as being difficult to quantify. It is particularly important, for this text type. to have some relatively objective means of evaluating the functional adequacy of the target text.

This paper attempts to probe into some aspects of semantic studies which may be of help to the understanding, explaining, and solution of some of the problems in translation. In the first part ense and reference, he author states the relationship between sense and reference, and points out that failure to understand this and to make a distinction between them can lead to paradoxes and mistakes in translation. In the second part “Hyponymy,” the author, through examples and diagrams, explains the implication of hyponymy, and proves that a better knowledge of hyponomy is not only important in language acquisition but also quite helpful to the translator. Examples are given to show how the knowledge of hyponymy can be applied to translation. In the third part hanges of meaning, he author discusses how Bloomfield, and Baugh and Cable classified types of changes of meaning, and points out if insufficient attention is paid to the change of meaning, a translator can hardly avoid falling into error in translating. In the fourth part ontext, he author discusses how different scholars treated context in different ways and makes it clear that context is very important in correctly understanding the original text. Without contextual knowledge and information, a translator is sure to make mistakes. Examples are given to show how anomalous or deviant sentences can be understood and translated with the help of context. After discussion of the four aspects, the author comes to the conclusion that for a satisfying translation, it is particularly necessary and helpful for a translator to have some idea of the relationship between semantics and translation and to have some general knowledge of semantics.