1.4 Conclusion

In this lesson we’ve reviewed some of the most important concepts in translation. By identifying the source language & source text and the target language & target text, we’ve recognized our task in translation to understand the source text and to formulate a satisfactory target text. We’ve analyzed the message and form of the source text and affirmed that in translation, message has priority over form. In doing so, we were able to define our purpose in translation as transferring the message of the source text into the target language. We’ve examined the spectrum from source language bias to target language bias and set the goal of achieving idiomatic translation, which we defined as one which reflects the exact message of the source text in a way that is naturally expressed in the target language. All of these concepts will be of utmost importance in every translation that we perform, and we will come back again many times to the necessity of prioritizing of message over form and the pursuit of an idiomatic translation.