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6.3 False Cognates

When a word from in the source language looks like a word from the target language but has a different meaning, the translator may easily fall into the trap of translating the word into it’s false cognate (look alike) and change the message of the source text. In order to avoid this mistake, here we’ll take a look at the different kinds of cognates and begin to study some examples of common false cognates between Spanish and English.

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6.2 Problems of non-equivalence between languages and solutions

There are many possible problems of non-equivalence between two languages, here we will address a few that we think might be relevant to the type of translations you’ll be doing at DCS.

a) Culture-specific concepts

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6.1 Literal meaning and translation issues

The meaning of a word that you can find in a dictionary can be referred to as the literal meaning of that word. Unlike the connotative meaning, which is meaning that is derived by association with other words or phrases, literal meaning is that which is held by the word in itself, for example that the word “door” refers to a movable structure that is used to close off an entrance to a building or room.

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5.3 Conclusion

After studying how to translate the past tenses from Spanish to English, we’re able to understand on a deeper level that our task in translating is to transfer the message, and not the form, of the source text into the target language. We can see that there are occasions when a verb may be used in one tense in the source language, yet require another in the target language.

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5.2 Translating Prepositions

To conclude this lesson, we’ll explore the translation of prepositions from Spanish to English. Prepositions are those little words that help show a relation between various parts of a sentence, and can be used with nouns or verbs.

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5.1 Translating the Past Tenses from Spanish to English

Considering Spanish has two past tenses (the preterite hablé, comí and the imperfect hablaba, comía) for English’s one past tense (I talked, I ate), it can be much more complicated to translate from English to Spanish using the past tenses than from Spanish to English.

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4.4 Conclusion

In this lesson we’ve focused on the translation of the present tenses in Spanish and English to explore the possibility of needing to use different verb tenses in a target text than those used in the source text. It is of utmost importance that verb tenses be translated according to the form and grammar rules of the target language. As we discussed in Lesson One, the message of the source text has priority over form. Part of the form of the source text is the verb tense employed.

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4.3 Translating time expressions with the present tense in Spanish to English

As we referred to in section 4.1 of this chapter, Spanish employs ‘time expressions with hacer’, as well as the verbs llevar and sometimes tener with the present simple tense to describe events which began in the past and continue in the present. These events require the use of the present perfect, or present perfect continuous in English and should be translated to one of those tenses. Examples of time expressions:

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