Translation procedures, strategies, and methods

Translation procedures

The translating procedures, as depicted by Nida (1964) are as follow:

I. Technical procedures:

A. analysis of the source and target languages

B. A thorough study of the source language text before making attempts translate it

C. Making judgments of the semantic and syntactic approximations. (pp. 241-45)

  a. In point A :the translator should analyze the source and target language first before translating the source language text because both source language and target language sometimes have different grammatical structure that is should be identified before starting translation project. For example :

·         In English the structure of the sentence is: S-P-O

·         In Turkey the structure of the sentence is: S-O-V

  b. In point B :Having a study through the context of the text before doing translating activity is important that there must be specific criteria that should be brought from the source language to another. For example, culture. The culture itself brings various perceptions that one should know about. It can’t be translated directly by using word-by-word or literal translation, for example to get its own meaning so that the readers from different language or target language are able to understand what is the purpose of the text. In this case the translator could use Modulation technique.

    

        c. In point C :The final step of technical procedure or translation is making judgments of the semantic and syntactic approximation. We know that semantic and syntactic are two elements that have a correlation in constructing the sentence and its meaning. Syntactic has function to change the grammatical structure of the target text in relation to the source text, while Semantics is a branch of linguistics which studies about meaning.  However, there is no completely exact translation between any two languages and as Dr. Miremadi (1991) quoted Werner (1961), the degree of approximation between two language systems determines the effectiveness of the translation.

II Organizational procedure

The organizational procedures involve the general organization of such work, whether in terms of a single translator or, as is true in many instances, of a committee. The technical procedures apply to any and all types of translating, but there are different types of procedural problems (ibid, p.245).

constant reevaluation of the attempt made; contrasting it with the existing available translations of the same text done by other translators, and checking the text's communicative effectiveness by asking the target language readers to evaluate its accuracy and effectiveness and studying their reactions (pp. 246-47).

source : http://translationjournal.net/journal/41culture.htm