Some ways to Approach your Text:
Every time you are given a text you know nothing or little about to translate, it is useful to ask yourself the following questions:
1. Possible source? (If not stated).
2. SL readership?
3. Text Type? (Expressive, informative, vocative, etc.)
4. Style/Tone? (Literary, business, etc.)
5. Register?
6. Author's intention?
7. Translator's intention?
8. TL readership?
Ideally, the answers should help you decide on the register, style, tone, etc., you are going to use in your translation.
- Always read the text first, at least once, in order to:
a) Get the gist (never attempt to translate anything unless you understand clearly what it is about).
b) Be able to answer the above questions.
c) Pinpoint areas of particular difficulty (lexical, structural, contextual and stylistic problems).
A few guidelines to bear in mind:
a) try to get into the mind of the writer.
b) Do not try to find difficult equivalent words in the hope that this will add to the perfection of your translation.
c) SL and TL punctuation differ in many ways; take care to punctuate correctly.
d) Check your translation two or three times at the end. Put the original passage "aside" and listen to your translation with your ear "tuned in", as if it were a passage originally written in the TL.
Having followed all these instruction, I believe every one of us will be able to produce a text which is accepted at all levels, since there is “No Perfect Translation”
Every time you are given a text you know nothing or little about to translate, it is useful to ask yourself the following questions:
1. Possible source? (If not stated).
2. SL readership?
3. Text Type? (Expressive, informative, vocative, etc.)
4. Style/Tone? (Literary, business, etc.)
5. Register?
6. Author's intention?
7. Translator's intention?
8. TL readership?
Ideally, the answers should help you decide on the register, style, tone, etc., you are going to use in your translation.
- Always read the text first, at least once, in order to:
a) Get the gist (never attempt to translate anything unless you understand clearly what it is about).
b) Be able to answer the above questions.
c) Pinpoint areas of particular difficulty (lexical, structural, contextual and stylistic problems).
A few guidelines to bear in mind:
a) try to get into the mind of the writer.
b) Do not try to find difficult equivalent words in the hope that this will add to the perfection of your translation.
c) SL and TL punctuation differ in many ways; take care to punctuate correctly.
d) Check your translation two or three times at the end. Put the original passage "aside" and listen to your translation with your ear "tuned in", as if it were a passage originally written in the TL.
Having followed all these instruction, I believe every one of us will be able to produce a text which is accepted at all levels, since there is “No Perfect Translation”
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