FAITHFUL AND FALSE FRIENDS

However, my main point is that we must not be afraid of literal translation, or, in particular, of using a TL word which looks the same or nearly the same as the SL word. At school and university I was told I must never do this, but 'theatre' is theatre is Theater is teatro is teatr; only in Czech is it divadlo (the same applies to

'music', where the Czech is hudba). The translation of objects and movements is usually more literal than that of qualities and ways of moving. Many common adjectives of feeling cut up meaning in their own way, so that we cannot trust a transparent translation of 'sincere', 'loyal', 'trivial', 'important', 'truculent','brutal'; only one or two like 'excellent' and 'marvellous' are usually transparent.

And again, the more general and abstract words ('phenomenon', 'element', 'affair') may or may not be translated transparently; there is often a shift at that abstract level (qualite as 'property') but the translation is still usually one-to-one. In general, there are more faithful friends than faux amis, and we must not hesitate to use them, since any other translation is usually wrong. This presupposes that, in context, the readership of O and T have similar interest and language levels. Otherwise the translation may well be different.

Many theorists believe that translation is more a process of explanation, interpretation and reformulation of ideas than a transformation of words; that the role of language is secondary, it is merely a vector or carrier of thoughts. Consequently, everything is translatable, and linguistic difficulties do not exist. This attitude, which slightly caricatures the Seleskovitch School (ESIT, Paris), is the opposite of the one stating that translation is impossible because all or most words have different meanings in different languages, i.e. all words are culture- specific and, to boot, each language has its peculiar grammar. My position is that everything is translatable up to a point, but that there are often enormous difficulties.