Lesson Material 4

2.1 Guidelines for Translating Letters

The bulk of the documents that you would be asked to translate at DCS are letters from Spanish-speaking clients. Here, we’ll take a practical look at important basic standards as well as some of the questions or challenges that may come up when translating letters in order to help you achieve the best results possible.

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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.

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1.3 Idiomatic Translation

Since all languages have different ways of structuring words and grammar in order to express the same ideas, translations often reflect the structure of either the source language or the target language. As we mentioned earlier in this lesson, source language bias results from following the form of the source language too closely and therefore reflecting source language forms and grammar tendencies in the target text.

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1.2 Message and Form

Before we begin to translate we must clearly define the purpose of translating. For this course we will define concepts and goals in terms of the specific translation needs of DCS, as this is not a course meant to introduce you to translation as a whole but to help you to translate on the job. For our purposes, we’ll distinguish between the ‘form’ and the ‘message’ of the source text (ST).

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1.1 The Source and The Target

Translation is a task that can be performed in several different contexts: translation can exist within one language, between two languages, or even in the verbalization of signs. For the purposes of this course we will be studying interlingual translation, or translation between two languages. In order to distinguish between the two languages, it is useful to refer to them differently.

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2.1 Guidelines for Translating Letters

1.4 Conclusion

1.3 Idiomatic Translation

1.2 Message and Form

1.1 The Source and The Target

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