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Now that you had this overview of the history of translation, let’s move on. The Tower of Babel is part of a story told in the book of Genesis in the Bible as a place where there was one people and one single language. God would have dismantled the place and scattered the languages all around the world to prevent them to get organised as a nation, and that was when the varied languages were created.
 
Thus, as you could see, the need of translation has been present in the history of mankind since the very beginning of times, and the first attempt to decode messages across language was that of translating the message from God to the language of man. There have been many translations of the Bible and the 16th century witnessed many of these attempts, all of which were consequences of the attempt to understand the religious controversy of the time.
Moving ahead in time, we can see the translation of Latin and Greek texts into many European languages. Humanism inspired the translation of many ancient texts and the job of translating a text from a foreign language into one's vernacular was seen by many as a noble challenge and a contribution to national literature. Others, however, considered it a job of minor importance, which would be performed by diplomats in the beginning of their careers or by writers who did not have fruitful careers.
The Renaissance was known as “the great age of translations” and many ancient documents were translated into European languages as a way of enriching those peoples with the so-valued knowledge that the great thinkers could provide. In the early 16th Century, the French had translated the works of Xenophon, Suetonius, Sallust, Thucydides, and Caesar but English translations would only come much later. Nicholas Grimshaw, in the preface to his 1558 English translation of Cicero focused on this phenomenon, and criticized the English for not having done for their country what Italians, Frenchmen, Spaniards, Dutchmen and other foreigners have done for theirs.
Sir Thomas Hoby, an English Diplomat and translator, declared that it was his duty to his fellow countrymen to make available in English a useful guide about Renaissance court life, and translated Castiglione's The Book of Courtier into English in 1561. This book is considered to be one of the most important and widespread books of that time. English translations gradually increased; indeed, a study of Elizabethan translations is a study of the means by which the Renaissance came to England. However, the more translations were made, the more evident it became for the translators that in certain areas such as theology or medicine they would not find exact equivalents in English. There was a time they would say that English was not fit for the library but for the street (Crystal, 1995). At this time many foreign borrowings occurred. Some examples are:
From Latin and Greek: anonymous, appropriate, autograph, chaos, climax, contradictory, disability, disrespect, emphasis, encyclopaedia, excursion, exist, impersonal, lexicon, relevant, scheme, system, temperature, thermometer, virus, among others.
From or via French: anatomy, chocolate, detail, entrance, grotesque, invite, moustache, muscle, passport, ticket, tomato, volunteer, among others.
From or via Italian: balcony, ballot, carnival, design, giraffe, lottery, opera, rocket, volcano, among others.
From or via Spanish and Portuguese: alligator, banana, canoe, cockroach, guitar, hammock, hurricane, mosquito, potato, tobacco, among others.
Theoretical Issues
In 1476, William Caxton set up his press in Westminster. This event is considered by many as the key factor that might have determined the shift from Middle to Modern English. Caxton was neither a linguist nor a literary scholar; he was a merchant who wanted the books he printed to be sold. In order to be successful, he was conscious that the language he used had to be understood throughout the country. 
At that time he already posed some questions dealt with by many translators in the years ahead:
- Should he use foreign words in his translation or replace them by native English words?
- Which variety of English should he follow, given the existence of major regional differences?
- How should language be spelled or punctuated, given the scribal variations of the previous centuries?
- In publishing native writers, should he change their language to make it more widely understood?
(Crystal, 1995, p57)
These are just a few of the issues translators have to face when choosing their way through translations. Other issues have arisen as time went by and translations started to bloom. Theories about the nature of translation started to emerge. The distinction between metaphase and paraphrase (the former referring to the literal translation (word-by-word) of the texts and the former to a reformulation of the original text) which had already been brought up by the Greeks was only one of them. In general, it has been agreed that translators would seek equivalents in the TL to match the meaning in the SL but would borrow terms from the TL if that was the only way to keep faithful to the message originally being conveyed.
Other issues are listed below:
- The grammatical structure: some languages have fixed word order (English, French, Portuguese) whereas others have free word order (Latin, Greek).  The declinations in Latin and Greek will determine their grammar, whereas in English, for instance, the position the words have in the sentence will do so.
- Etymological knowledge: eg. the use of cognates (for example: pretend/intend in English and pretender/intencionar in Portuguese).
- Fidelity or Transparency: if a TL text is faithful to the ST it means that it kept its full meaning, without distortion; if a TL text is transparent, it means that it appears to a native speaker of the TL to have originally been written in that language, and conforms to its grammar, syntax and idiom.
- Back translation: if a text in the TL is translated back to its SL will it keep the same meaning as in the original text?
Now that you already know a bit about the history of translation and the qualities of a good translator, let’s have a quick look at the alternatives available nowadays. Who knows you may find the job of a translator an attractive one and may want to venture into it?
aula01_t16.pdf
Types of Translations
Miguel de Cervantes in his Don Quixote, once wrote that:
“Translating from one language to another, unless it is from Greek and Latin, the queens of all languages, is like looking at Flemish tapestries from the wrong side, for although the figures are visible, they are covered by threads that obscure them, and cannot be seen with the smoothness and color of the right side.”
 
This enlightening quotation can illustrate how challenging the work of a translator can be and how important it is in giving meaning to a message sent in a SL to a TL. The idea that the meaning proposed by an author can be obscured in TL if not translated carefully is strengthened when we come across badly translated texts in which the message is totally different from the original one.
In our previous lesson, we had an overview of the story of translation through times and started studying the role of the translator. In this second lesson, we will go through the different types of translation and continue analysing the work of a translator, this time comparing the jobs of the translator and the interpreter.
Types of TranslationsTranslations can be classified into many different categories, depending on the form (oral, written), type (literal, non-literal), method (simultaneous, consecutive), the medium (human, computer-assisted, mechanic). 
 
Observe the following chart. Click on each of the boxes to know more about each of them:
Types of Translation According to the Level os Analysis and Synthesis
Another way of classifying the types of translation is related to the level of analysis/ synthesis of the text. They can be:Now, click on each of the types of translation below to compare to your version.
If you want to know more about the work of an interpreter, watch this short documentary about the routine of a translator/interpreter:
Video
Translation Workflow
Once the translator has accepted a translation task, there are certain basic stages that should be followed. The process of translation may vary from one translator to another but basically the stages include:
Evaluation: The project is evaluated using the following criteria: Target Language/Audience and Subject Matter
Glossary Development: A glossary is created to ensure consistency of terminology, so that translations complement one another and are consistent.
Initial Translation: The source document is translated.
Quality Assurance: After the completion of the initial translation, the translation undergoes a review by a senior translator or an editor. The translation is edited and proofread for grammatical and syntactic accuracy and appropriateness of style and for possible omissions. The editor then works with the original translator to decide which changes to be implemented.
Client Approval: The first draft of the document is sent to the client for approval.
Translator Proofreading: The original translator now proofs the formatted text for any discrepancies caused by formatting, such as improper hyphenation, omissions, etc.
Final Delivery to Client: The translated and formatted document is now handed in to the client.
Below you will find the song SMILE by Charles Chaplin in two different versions: The first one is the original one, in English, and the second a version in Portuguese, SORRI, by Djavan
In the video you just saw some interesting translation related issues were raised. 
Among them we can include:
Most of the times there will be lexical correspondences between different languages (parts of the body, family relations)
Some languages don’t have words to describe everything (in the video, chrome handlebars in English, for example)
Some languages don’t have words to describe items which would be considered essential to other cultures (left, right) as they have different kinds of spatial orientation (cardinal orientation).
These few issues are enough to give us just a glimpse of the great amount of differences one can find between languages, and provide us with an overview of the importance that the study of Linguistics has acquired in helping translators cope with such differences.
We have already studied that translations have been present in the history of man since its early years, however translation was not considered a field of studies before the 1980’s.
Since then, the interest in translation literacy has been evidenced by the proliferation of translation training programmes worldwide and nowadays most universities have a department of translation studies interested in investigating the differences among languages and how to deal with such diversity when having to translate texts from a SL to a TL.
The more translators investigated into their field the more interdisciplinary the study of translation became and contribution from various fields of study such as linguistics, psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, philosophy and anthropology, among others, was welcome into the investigation.
In this unit we shall focus our attention on some of the contributions linguistics has offered to the study of translation and the important insights it has brought to this field of study.
Jakobson and the Linguistic Aspects of Translation
Roman Jakobson (1959) was one of the first linguists to consider the contributions of linguistics to the study of translation. In his text On Linguistic Aspect of Translation he deals with issues that are crucial in understanding the translation process such as interlingual, intralingual and semiotic differences.
Let’s take for example the word snow.
Except for the inhabitants of a few cities in the south of Brazil, the concept of snow to the average Brazilian is limited to the idea of falling snowflakes taken from movies.
Thus, when having to translate a text about snow, for example, to a Brazilian, the translator will have to make use of more explicit language to try and convey the meaning of certain items to a reader/ listener who does not have the same linguistic reference as the one who has produced the text.
Jakobson makes a distinction among three possible types of translation:
“She was brought up by her grandparents”
Intralingual translation
Or rewording refers to the interpretation of verbal signs by means of other signs in the same language. For example, the intralingual translation of bring up in the sentence She was brought up by her grandparents would be “take care for someone until s/he is an adult, often giving this person particular beliefs”.
Interlingual translation
Or translation itself refers to the interpretation of verbal signs by means of another language. For example, the interlingual translation of the sentence She was brought up by her grandparents into Portuguese would be something similar to Ela foi criada e educada por seus avós.
Intersemiotic translation
Or transmutation refers to the interpretation of verbal signs by means of signs of nonverbal signs systems (music or image). For example, when Edward Munch painted The Scream, he tried to translate into an image his concept of a scream:
The Scream, by E. Munch (1893)
Mutual translability
One of the main concerns in linguistics is the mutual translability between languages: is it possible to find exact equivalence in meaning when translating a message from a SL to a TL?
Nothing can be interpreted without a translation of its signs into other signs in the same language or into signs of another language. The picture illustrates the process of translation from a SL into a TL.
Equivalence in difference is one of the main concerns of linguistics. 
When translating a text from a SL into a TL, the linguist examines the mutual translability between the two languages to try and to find a correspondent in the TL that provides the exact meaning to the text (oral or written) in the SL. 
This search for an equivalent will take into account many different aspects of both languages so the receiver of the message in the TL can understand the message correctly.
When it comes to grammar, the translator has to be even more careful.
Eventually one can come across items which have no corresponding grammatical equivalent in the TL.
In this case the meaning would have to be translated in lexical terms.
Take for example the sentence Joan had her hair cut.
The causative have has no equivalent form in Brazilian Portuguese and in order to explain the meaning implied by the sentence, the translator would have to make use of other verbal resources to explain the fact that Joan did not actually cut her hair herself (in which case the sentence would have to be Joan cut her hair).
Another interesting example would be the lack of gender marker in English.
The translation of words with dual gender (friend, teacher, baby, doctor, student) requires a gender marker in Brazilian Portuguese.
For instance, when translating a sentence such as The student decided to study hard for his final tests, the translator would have to look for textual clues to help him choose between “o aluno” or “a aluna”. 
Similarly, when translating the sentence Meus irmãos vivem perto da minha casa into English, the translator would have to look for elements to define if “irmãos” corresponds to brothers (if the speaker has male siblings only) or if there is a sister among them, in which case the translation to English would have to make reference to both brothers and sisters.
Register is another aspect to be considered. For example, the word sibling used in the previous paragraph could be used as an equivalent to “irmãos” if the text being translated was of a more formal nature, but would not be suitable in a more colloquial exchange.
Pragmatics is another issue worth investigatingfor the study of translation. It can be defined the study of the purposes for which sentences are used. 
For instance, let’s imagine the following two scenes:
Two people in an enclosed room, the weather is cold and the window is opened. One of them says: “It’s cold”. The purpose of the sentence is not to say it’s cold, but to suggest that the window be closed. Thus, in this case It’s cold = Close the window.
A mother and a son; the son is leaving home wearing a T-shirt. The mother looks at him and at his clothes. She says: “It’s cold”. The purpose of the sentence is not to say it’s cold, but to suggest that son get a coat. Thus, in this case It’s cold = Get a coat.
How would a translator deal with each of the situations? 
If both situations were part of written texts, and the texts were being translated from English to Brazilian Portuguese, the purpose of the sentence “It’s cold” would be easily understood in both languages.
If, however, the situations were part of a verbal account, the translator would probably have to make use of other clues to make the meaning of the utterance clear for the receiver (describing the setting or the weather, for example). 
In other situations, the understanding of the function of certain utterances in communication might constitute of an issue for the translator (children understanding the use of irony, for instance).
Cultural Equivalents in Translation
The receiver’s cultural background also plays an important role in translation/ interpretation, as part of the role of the translator has to do with his ability in making the message clear. 
The translator has to be able to speak the receiver’s language so as to make him clearly understand the message being sent. 
Newmark (1981) suggests a series of strategies to cater for cultural gaps in translation:
Corpus linguistics is a study of language and a method of linguistic analysis which uses a collection of natural or “real word” texts known as corpus. Corpus linguistics is used to analyze and research a number of linguistic questions and offers insights into the dynamism of languages.
http://www.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/
allowing access to naturalistic linguistic information (corporal consist of “real word” texts which are mostly a product of real life situations, which makes corporal a valuable research source for dialectology, sociolinguistics and stylistics);
facilitating linguistic research, thus reducing the time needed to find particular words or phrases (a research that would take days or even years to complete manually can be done in a matter of seconds with the highest degree of accuracy);
enabling the study of wider patterns and collocation of words;
allowing analysis of multiple parameters at the same time (researchers can analyze a larger number of parameters simultaneously);
facilitating the use of the second language (study of the second language with the use of natural language allows the students/ translators to get a better “feeling” for the language and learn the language like it is used in real rather than “invented” situations);
Have a look at this ad, which was launched roughly at the same time as the one about the videocassette recorder you saw in the introductory activity. 
If you had to translate this ad to a 21st century teenager, it would definitely be easier than translating the other one.
a04_t03
The two ads you have seen in this lesson prove to be very useful to start us thinking in the importance of Psycholinguistics and Sociolinguistics in the work of a translator. 
How would it be possible to translate the concept of a videocassette recorder or of a video tape for a generation who is used to powerful notebooks and who did not have to use any of the equipment advertised?
Although we may be referring to intralingual translation, the same can be applied to the interlingual environment. 
Psycholinguistics will help us evaluate, among other issues, if it is possible to translate everything and the importance of a common experience to fully understand a given message. 
On the other hand, sociolinguistics will help us deal with different social realities which may involve speakers from different cultures and how ready they would be to understand a certain text if they did not share the same experience.
Think for example, in an african society who has not been exposed to the technological advances of the last decades. Would there be any sort of equivalent in their language to all the technical terms a translator would need? What about a common human experience?
Translation and Psycholinguistics
The idea that “all figures are visible [but] covered by threads that obscures them…” is a very powerful metaphor of translation and ever present in psycholinguistic theories of translation.
Let’s consider the following sentence:
If we consider that the use of inversions in English has the purpose of adding emphasis to the meaning provided, may be the best option would be sentence (2) due to the strength the word jamais has in the sentence. 
But as we are talking about a totally decontextualised sentence, the translator might have to make use of other language resources to make the intended meaning clear.
Another aspect of Quine’s theory has to do with the indeterminacy of reference which accounts for the fact that if one has to look for a referential item from a SL to a TL he will find many possible answers which are equally correct.
Even though Quine’s theory is still cited today it has been prone to inevitable criticism. To our study today we can cite the work of Hejwowski (2004) which states that although not any text can be translated, translation IS possible if:
there is a common human experience which will allow the TL reader relate to the experience being described (this is the case of the Apple ad – even though the reader may not have experienced the launching of the Apple computer, the fact that this brand of computer sis still on sale, helps the understanding);
there is similarity of mental and linguistic structures which will cater for the understanding of the message (as is the case of the translation of one if the types of snow into Brazilian Portuguese, the possible choice would be simply neve due to the lack of specific vocabulary);
there is empathy (i.e. the message would be interesting enough so as to gain the TL reader’s interest). However, texts which would not attract anyone’s attention or which would be translated out of context, would not be likely to be translated.
Both Quine and Sapir-Whorf showed their uneasiness for the difficulties one can go through when translating between languages. 
The fact is that languages are really different and it really takes a skilled translator to transfer information from one code to another keeping the message as similar as possible to the original one. The more invisible the translator, the better the translation.
Apparently, seeing from a very broad overview, sociolinguistics, just like translation studies, is an interdisciplinary area in which the stress is laid either on the linguistic or on the social, and its purpose is to examine the relations between both of them.
Let’s focus on three aspects studied by sociolinguistics which can be applied to translation:
Variation
Languages vary according to location, age, style, ethnic group and social class. 
Besides, they should also be connected to social relations and, more precisely, who the other is and how we interact with him.
For example:
If we adopt a formal style, for example, we establish a particular type of relationship with the reader/ receiver.
If we  resort to a more casual tone, the relationship is completely different.
Because of that, the level of formality of a text will depend on the social relationship involving all those involved in the communication, author/ translator and reader.
Write the words formal, informal, high class, lower class under each of the ads and say how the translation of both texts would be affected by language variation:The interference between languages has to be carefully examined during translations. 
In some text-types and functions, this interference must be kept to a minimum, but must reflect the contact between the languages to be faithful to the SL text.
Take for example the translation of Harry Potter into French in which the French text keeps the British school organisation: houses, prefects, 7 years in the same school (in the French educational system there are colleges and lycées.
Language as action
Sociolinguists have observed how language works in and across communities and realized that language use does not simply represent but also contributes to the definition of oneself, the other and those to whom they relate.
Interaction is the means by which society is able to produce, and it occurs solely by the use of language. 
By speaking English or Brazilian Portuguese or any (variety of a) language, by mixing or switching codes, by borrowing or refusing new terms and constructions, we, speakers of our own languages, contribute to what we are and, often in a small way, what society is.
1.
Answer the three questions below using the following ad as reference:
(Fonte: http://www.therecordofwilkes.com/newsa.asp?edition_number=680&pg=F )
When translating the above ad to Brazilian Portuguese, the translator
Articles
The uses of the definite article in English and BrP are very similar: in both languages, as a rule, it refers to a specific situation, as opposed to the indefinite article, which is used to refer to more general situations.
In more practical terms, however, one has to be very careful with the use of articles when translating texts into BrP for, unlike English, nouns cannot head sentences.
Generic nouns also need special attention and the use of countable and uncountable nouns will influence the translation into BrP. For example:
The differentiation between a/an does not affect the translation of the sentence in BrP but special attention must be paid to the use of uncountable nouns, which are considered singular in English and must be preceded by a determiner, usually some, as it represents an indefinite quantity. This, however, does not affect the translation into BrP:
So far we have studied the translation from English to BrP. 
Now, think of sentences in BrP in which the articles are used and translate them into English. How would the translation from one language into the other change?
The formation and basic use of the passive voice in English and BrP are basically the same, being its use preferred when the speaker wants to emphasize the person who suffers the action rather than the one who performs it. 
As a rule of thumb, the use of the passive voice should be kept in the translation if it is to keep the author’s original message.
In BrP there is a distinction between two types of passive voice: the “analítica” and the “sintética”, which does not occur in English.
Analyse the following sentence and the way in which the passive voice was employed:
So far we have studied the translation from English to BrP.
Now, think of sentences in BrP in which the passive voice is used and translate them into English. 
How would the translation from one language into the other change?
The infinitive is the form of the verb preceded by to (to visit, to study, etc). 
If the verb is not followed by to it is called the bare infinitive (or, as some prefer, the infinitive without to).
The gerund is the verb form in which the verb is followed by the ­ing (visiting, studying). 
In English some verbs may be followed by the gerund and some others by the infinitive.
Pass the mouse on the following arrows in order to see that like a substantive, the gerund may
 
Like a substantive, the gerund may:
Pass the mouse on the following arrows in order to see that like a verb, the gerund may
Like a verb, the gerund may:
So far we have studied the translation from English to BrP. 
Now, think of sentences in BrP in which either the gerund or the infinitive is used and translate them into English. 
How would the translation from one language into the other change?