Maybe ''translation'' looks like a ''hot-ice'' word.How to move on here-there? How to ''drink'' words and texts like a fish?
Peter Flynn, from Lessius University College Antwerp, in Belgium is available and able to answer...
If you had to give a synonym for “translation”, what would it be?
P.F.: I don't have a synonym really. In fact I try to avoid using them as there are already so many out there: transformation, adaptation, localisation, to name but three. Most synonyms seem to fall short or highlight only one or a few aspects of the complexity suggested by the word translation or else try to get around or ignore the fact that there are languages involved.
P.F.: I don't have a synonym really. In fact I try to avoid using them as there are already so many out there: transformation, adaptation, localisation, to name but three. Most synonyms seem to fall short or highlight only one or a few aspects of the complexity suggested by the word translation or else try to get around or ignore the fact that there are languages involved.
The word itself is so hard to pin down (as are most words anyway, but especially this one) and teachers usually resort to some form of etymological explanation which can take you to strange far away places without any promise of ever returning. The basic metaphor is one of "carrying across". What exactly we have to carry across, and from which point to where, has formed the point of heated discussions since the time of St. Jerome and even earlier. The debate continues to this very day while our libraries fill with books on the subject.
In the meantime, I'm sticking to the old hackneyed word for the simple reason that I'm still trying to understand what it means, implies, suggests, etc.
In the course of their etymological journeys, teachers invariably pass unnoticed into the world of action, example and illustration and vanish into the local where they tackle all sorts of problems thrown at them by the day-to-day business of translating.
In the course of their etymological journeys, teachers invariably pass unnoticed into the world of action, example and illustration and vanish into the local where they tackle all sorts of problems thrown at them by the day-to-day business of translating.
Then you hear them saying, "well, I would do it this way" and the student wonders why or perhaps doesn't wonder why! Michael Cronin says somewhere that to understand translation we should also look at the aids translators use and have been using through the centuries. Hidden in this idea we can detect the thinking of anthropologists and sociologists like Geertz and Bourdieu on the link between thinking and acting in cultural practices.
So when we try to say what translation is ... we often accompany our "is" with a "does". This is only fair as this "does" is already nascent in the word "translation". Translation is a "roll-up-your-sleeves" thing, despite all attempts make it mysterious and mystical, something locked away somewhere in the brains of geniuses. This is not to say that there is no skill involved - quite the contrary. Some argue that it's one of the most complex things to do involving language, along with writing poetry.
(lego bricks-answers) to be continued...
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