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In translation, Realia (plural noun) are words and expressions for culture-specific material elements. The word realia comes from medieval Latin, in which it originally meant "the real things", i.e. material things, as opposed to abstract ones. The Bulgarian translators Vlahov and Florin, who were the first to carry out an in-depth study of realia, coined the modern sense of the word. They indicate that since realia carry a very local overtone, they often pose a challenge for translation. [1] Realia must not be confused with terminology: the latter is primarily used in the scientific literature to designate things that pertain to the scientific sphere, and usually only appears in other kinds of texts to serve a very specific stylistic purpose. Realia, on the other hand, are born in popular culture, and are increasingly found in very diverse kinds of texts. Fiction, in particular, is fond of realia for the exotic touch they bring.
Vlahov and Florin classify them into various categories:
To translate realia, various strategies exist : they range from phonetic transcription to translation of the overall meaning. Israeli scholar Gideon Toury offers one way of defining such solutions. According to his characterization, each of these can be placed between two extremes: adequacy (closeness to the original) and acceptability (making the word entirely consistent with the target culture). Here are the various possibilities at hand for translating realia:
How suitable each of these solutions is depends on various factors. One of them is the type of text that is being translated. Adequate translations (in Toury's sense) of realia add some exoticism, a quality that is often desirable in fiction. For non-fiction, nowadays adequacy is usually preferred to acceptability, so as to avoid the ambiguity that can arise from the use of more culturally neutral translations – though the opposite preference has prevailed in the past. One must also consider how the element of realia relates to the source culture in terms of importance and familiarity. If, for instance, it is rather common in the source culture, then providing an adequate translation creates an exotic note that was not there in the first place (though this can be justified by the fact that, after all, one is not dealing with an original, but a translation). If, on the contrary, the source culture perceives the element of realia as unusual, unless the translator renders such an element more culturally neutral, readers of the translation will most likely also perceive it as unusual. Another thing to keep in mind when establishing a translation strategy is that not all languages are equally open to "foreignisms", and how familiar speakers of that language may be with the realia one introduces. Some languages, such as Italian, welcome such words and frequently integrate them into their vocabulary. Other languages, on the contrary, have the opposite tendency: they are wary of foreign words and are very impermeable to them. French is a good example of such protectionism. Lastly, the expected readership (which may or may not be similar to that of the original) influences the choice of a suitable translation strategy. For example, the name of a chemical compound will be translated differently depending on whether one expects the text to be read by chemists or schoolchildren. [5]
A diphthong, also known as a gliding vowel, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue moves during the pronunciation of the vowel. In most varieties of English, the phrase "no highway cowboy" has five distinct diphthongs, one in every syllable.
In linguistics, a neologism is any relatively recent and isolated term, word, or phrase that nevertheless has achieved popular or institutional recognition, and is becoming accepted into mainstream language. Most definitively, a word can be considered a neologism once it is published in a dictionary.
Wikisource is an online digital library of free-content textual sources on a wiki, operated by the Wikimedia Foundation. Wikisource is the name of the project as a whole and the name for each instance of that project ; multiple Wikisources make up the overall project of Wikisource. The project's aim is to host all forms of free text, in many languages, and translations. Originally conceived as an archive to store useful or important historical texts, it has expanded to become a general-content library. The project officially began on November 24, 2003, under the name Project Sourceberg, a play on the famous Project Gutenberg. The name Wikisource was adopted later that year and it received its own domain name.
According to most adherents of the Latter Day Saint movement, the Book of Mormon is a 19th-century translation of a record of ancient inhabitants of the American continent, which was written in a script which the book refers to as "reformed Egyptian". This claim, as well as all claims to historical authenticity of the Book of Mormon, are rejected by non-Latter Day Saint historians and scientists. Linguistically based assertions are frequently cited and discussed in the context of the subject of the Book of Mormon, both in favor of and against the book's claimed origins.
Legal translation is the translation of language used in legal settings and for legal purposes. Legal translation may also imply that it is a specific type of translation only used in law, which is not always the case. As law is a culture-dependent subject field, legal translation is not necessarily linguistically transparent. Intransparency in translation can be avoided somewhat by use of Latin legal terminology, where possible, but in non-western languages debates are centered on the origins and precedents of specific terms, such as in the use of particular Chinese characters in Japanese legal discussions.
Translation studies is an academic interdiscipline dealing with the systematic study of the theory, description and application of translation, interpreting, and localization. As an interdiscipline, translation studies borrows much from the various fields of study that support translation. These include comparative literature, computer science, history, linguistics, philology, philosophy, semiotics, and terminology.
Yevanic, also known as Judaeo-Greek, Romaniyot, Romaniote, and Yevanitika, is a Greek dialect formerly used by the Romaniotes and by the Constantinopolitan Karaites. The Romaniotes are a group of Greek Jews whose presence in the Levant is documented since the Byzantine period. Its linguistic lineage stems from the Jewish Koine spoken primarily by Hellenistic Jews throughout the region, and includes Hebrew and Aramaic elements. It was mutually intelligible with the Greek dialects of the Christian population. The Romaniotes used the Hebrew alphabet to write Greek and Yevanic texts. Judaeo-Greek has had in its history different spoken variants depending on different eras, geographical and sociocultural backgrounds. The oldest Modern Greek text was found in the Cairo Geniza and is actually a Jewish translation of the Book of Ecclesiastes (Kohelet).
In the field of translation, a translation unit is a segment of a text which the translator treats as a single cognitive unit for the purposes of establishing an equivalence. It may be a single word, a phrase, one or more sentences, or even a larger unit.
The Hebrew language uses the Hebrew alphabet with optional vowel diacritics. The romanization of Hebrew is the use of the Latin alphabet to transliterate Hebrew words.
In linguistics and pedagogy, an interlinear gloss is a gloss placed between lines, such as between a line of original text and its translation into another language. When glossed, each line of the original text acquires one or more corresponding lines of transcription known as an interlinear text or interlinear glossed text (IGT)—interlinear for short. Such glosses help the reader follow the relationship between the source text and its translation, and the structure of the original language. In its simplest form, an interlinear gloss is simply a literal, word-for-word translation of the source text.
Language localisation is the process of adapting a product's translation to a specific country or region. It is the second phase of a larger process of product translation and cultural adaptation to account for differences in distinct markets, a process known as internationalisation and localisation.
Various methods for the evaluation for machine translation have been employed. This article focuses on the evaluation of the output of machine translation, rather than on performance or usability evaluation.
Anton Popovič was a fundamental Slovak translation scientist and text theoretician. He is recognized for his important contributions to the modern development of translation studies.
Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. The English language draws a terminological distinction between translating and interpreting ; under this distinction, translation can begin only after the appearance of writing within a language community.
Technical translation is a type of specialized translation involving the translation of documents produced by technical writers, or more specifically, texts which relate to technological subject areas or texts which deal with the practical application of scientific and technological information. While the presence of specialized terminology is a feature of technical texts, specialized terminology alone is not sufficient for classifying a text as "technical" since numerous disciplines and subjects which are not "technical" possess what can be regarded as specialized terminology. Technical translation covers the translation of many kinds of specialized texts and requires a high level of subject knowledge and mastery of the relevant terminology and writing conventions.
André Alphons Lefevere was a translation theorist. He had studied at the University of Ghent (1964–1968) and then obtained his PhD at the University of Essex in 1972. When he died of acute leukemia, he was Professor of Germanic Studies at the University of Texas at Austin.
Bruno Osimo is an Italian fiction writer, translator, and translation studies scholar.
Skopos theory, a theory in the field of translation studies, employs the prime principle of a purposeful action that determines a translation strategy. The intentionality of a translational action stated in a translation brief, the directives, and the rules guide a translator to attain the expected target text translatum.
In literature, a pseudotranslation is a text written as if it had been translated from a foreign language, even though no foreign language original exists.
Simon Greblo was a Croatian priest, intellectual, Glagolitic writer and scribe. He was one of the most noted connoisseurs of the Glagolitic alphabet at the end of the 15th century. Greblo is generally considered the brightest Croatian copyist of his day. His calligraphy has been especially praised. While not an original author, his knowledge of cultural and literary interests of the day, taste and acumen in making literary choices have been noted.