RE-CREATIVE TRANSLATION
Literal translation is the first step in translation, and a good translator abandons a literal version only when it is plainly inexact or, in the case of a vocative or informative text, badly written. A bad translator will always do his best to avoid translating word for word. Re-creative translation - 'contextual re-creation' as Delisle (1981) calls it - which means, roughly, translating the thoughts behind the words, sometimes between the words, or translating the sub-text, is a procedure which some authorities and translation teachers regard as the heart or the central issue of translation ('get a. far away as possible from the words'). The truth is the opposite: 'interpret the sense, not the words' is, to my mind, the translator's last resource; an essential resource, certainly, and a touchstone of his linguistic sensi- tivity and creativity, not to mention his alertness and perspicacity, when words mislead. Further, contextual re-creation is likely to be more common in interpreta- tion, if delegates are speaking off the cuff, than in written language translation, where words are more carefully measured and perhaps closer to thought. But most translation is not creative in this sense. You have to like struggling with words before you reach the longer passages. In recent years, London has, in its notices and advertisements, become a trilingual often a quadrilingual (you add Dutch) city. Coming so late to reality, the British Transport Board has profited from others' mistakes and has done well. One of the most striking things about the adverts (of all things) has been how close to each other they are, how near to literal translation: Que ce soil votre premiere ou votre cinquantieme visile en Grande-Bretagne, parions que, avant la fin de la joumee, vous n'aurez pas manque de remarquer milk curiosites nouvelles, typiques du pays et de ses habitants. Ob Du Groftbritannien sum ersten oder zum funfzigsten Mai besuchst, wetten wir, daft Du jeden Tag immer noch neue Besonderheiten bei Land und Leuten entdeckst.
|
