Ambiguity, Ideology, and Doctrine Propagation in Qur'an Translation

2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-49 ◽  
Author(s):  
Burçin K. Mustafa
Keyword(s):  
English Language ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Source Text ◽  
Translation Process ◽  
Lost In Translation

The inability of translators to convey all aspects of the source text is often cited as an inherent flaw of the translation process. For example, with regard to Qur'an translation, the inability of the translator to transfer the linguistic ambiguity inherent in some specific verses, or to find equivalent target-language words for Qur'anic terms, is often seen as a drawback of translation. This is routinely referred to as ‘translation loss’ and is framed in a negative light, on the basis that facets of the source text are lost in translation. However, this article will argue that this limitation of translation can actually provide an advantage for those propagating a particular doctrine. In this sense, ambiguous terms can be exploited to impose on the reader of the target text a singular interpretation derived from a specific doctrine. To demonstrate this notion a number of examples from various English-language Qur'an translations will be presented, such as a variety of translations of khātama'l-nabiyyīn (Q. 33:40) and istawā (Q. 2:29 and Q. 20:5). The discussion will then explore translations of two Qur'anic phrases which have significance to contemporary discourses on Islam, lā taghlū fī dīnikum in Q. 4:171, and wa'ḍribūhunna in Q. 4:34.

scholarly journals Lost in Translation: Culture-bound Lexical Items in English Subtitles of the Rap Songs by Indian Rapper ‘Badshah’ in Bollywood Movies from 2016-2021

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ritika Sinha ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Context ◽  
English Language ◽  
Translation Studies ◽  
Lexical Item ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Source Text ◽  
Daunting Task ◽  
Original Message ◽  
Lost In Translation

Subtitling, a subfield of translation studies has witnessed a recent upsurge in India. The rise of subtitling services can be attributed to the fact that the number of viewers from outside the country is increasing phenomenally, thanks to the global streaming platforms. Subtitling is an art; it involves translation of the language of the video to another language with an objective to retain the temper of the original message for the target audience. The subtitler is faced with the daunting task of preserving the idiom of the source text (ST) and the target text (TT). Since, the meaning in both source and target language is profoundly affected by the cultural context, it is important to undertake the practice of translation while respecting and reflecting cultural ethos of each language. This research aims to investigate the English subtitles of selected famous rap sequences by Indian rapper ‘Badshah’ in Bollywood songs released from 2016 to 2021. With an aim to assess the quality of translation of the selected song sequences, an analysis is made of the sematic peculiarities that are lost in translation from Hindi/Punjabi to English. The loss can be mainly attributed to Hindi and Punjabi cultural references or culture-bound terms which do not have a suitable equivalent lexical item in English language.

scholarly journals Translation Process Strategies: Psycholinguistic Aspects

2020 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 164-183
Author(s):  
Leonid Chernovaty ◽  
Natalia Kovalchuk
Keyword(s):  
English Language ◽  
Text Structure ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Source Text ◽  
Translation Process ◽  
Translation Strategy ◽  
Number Of Factors ◽  
Text Information ◽  
The One ◽  
The Impact

The aim of the paper deals with the preliminary verification of the hypothesis concerning the impact of the source text structure on the choice of translation strategy (form-oriented or sense-oriented) in the process of rendering a text in a native (Ukrainian) into a foreign (English) language by university students majoring in Translation. The methods of the research included a comparative analysis of the target texts (English) translated (within a predetermined time limit) from the source text (Ukrainian) related to the domain of economics. The structure of the source text, while remaining grammatically acceptable in the Ukrainian language, had been deliberately made structurally non-congruent with that of the direct word order, which is most frequently used in English. The subjects, the fourth-year BA students majoring in Translation, whose command of English ranged between B2 and C1 levels within the CEFR classification, had been properly motivated to achieve the maximum possible result. The analysis of the target texts was based on a number of parameters, which included the preservation of the source text information and its structure in them. Results. It was established that in translating from a native into a foreign language, the subjects have a tendency to replicate the structure of the source text at the levels of clauses and sentences. However, it does not always result in the distortion of the source text sense or/and the violation of the target language norms as the subjects often managed to render the said sense and to keep to the said norms by means of changing the functions of the words in the sentence. The probability of the subjects’ abandoning the source text structure increases when the latter is evidently unsuitable for replication, in which case they switch over to the sense-oriented strategy. The correlation of the two strategies in translating sentence segments is generally identical to the one related to clauses and sentences, while the form-oriented strategy generally prevails in rendering phrases. Conclusions. The source text structure has a certain impact on the choice of translation strategy increasing the share of the form-oriented approach. However, this impact is not unequivocal and may depend on a number of factors, which require additional study. The paper outlines the prospects of further research.

scholarly journals Exploring Pharmacy Students’ Techniques in Translating Pharmaceutical Texts from English into Bahasa Indonesia

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-22
Author(s):  
Ahmad Kailani ◽  
Dina Rafidiyah
Keyword(s):  
Native Speakers ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Source Text ◽  
Translation Process ◽  
Specific Knowledge ◽  
Considerable Research ◽  
Daunting Task ◽  
Translation Methodology ◽  
Bahasa Indonesia

Translating an L1 (source text) into a target language would be a daunting task and time-consuming work for students who are non-native speakers. It might be more challenging when the L1 text is a discipline specific text. Many words and specific terms are difficult to translate, and often unintended meanings emerge during this translation process. Although there has been considerable research on the translation studies, there has been still little study on how translators cope with the challenges. To fill this void, this case study is aimed to describe techniques employed by students majoring pharmacy in translating direction for use texts from English into Bahasa Indonesia. Adopting Vinay’s and Darbelnet’s (1996) translation methodology, this research is aimed to describe the translation process that students already undertook in order to produce texts that appropriately work in a particular social context. There are four drug brochures taken as samples of analysis. These texts are students’ assignment for the topic of translation.  This is a group work and part of the whole assessment. The study provides detailed and specific examples of how students tackle the challenges of translating discipline specific texts into equivalent languages that are socio-culturally and linguistically acceptable. HIGHLIGHTS: Translating a text is not simply to transfer the meaning of source text into the target text, but it requires the translator to have sufficient discipline specific knowledge. The challenges and problems faced by translators would be different from one another since each discipline specific text requires different strategies.

scholarly journals Perbedaan Pola Pikir Orang Indonesia dan Orang Prancis melalui Karya Terjemahan

1970 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 14-25
Author(s):  
Sajarwa Sajarwa
Keyword(s):  
French Literature ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Source Text ◽  
Translation Process ◽  
Source Language ◽  
Passive Construction ◽  
Study Results ◽  
French People ◽  
The Difference

Transfer of message in the translation process is always characterized by the difference of culture in the source language and the target language. Language, as a part of culture, affects the speaker mind including translator. Text of French literature (as source text, ST) and text of Indonesian literature (as target text, TT) could be an example of difference in mindset of French people as writer of French literature and Indonesian people as translator. The study results showed the differences in the mindset throught analyzes of (i) Active-Passive Construction of French pronoun on and passive di-, (ii) dominantly pronoun as means of topics continuity in French and repetition in Indonesian, and (iii) the difference ofinformational arrangement looked in impersonal construction of French with pattern of IL+IB and IB+IL in Indonesian.

scholarly journals The Application of Translation Strategies to Cope With Equivalence Problems in Translating Texts

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Dhini Aulia
Keyword(s):  
Equivalence Problem ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Source Text ◽  
Translation Process ◽  
Translation Strategies ◽  
Source Language ◽  
Specific Concept ◽  
Equivalence Problems

Translation is a process to render the meaning from the source text into the target text. A translator, however, will find some problems during translation process. Equivalence is the case which often appears (i.e. culture specific concept, the source-language concept is not lexicalized in the target language, source-language word is semantically complex, etc). To cope with equivalnce problems in translation process, some experts suggest some strategies which can be applied in doing translation. Some strategies are transference, naturalization, cultural equivalent, etc. The strategies which often appears in the example texts in this paper are transference, naturalization, descriptive equivalent, couplet and  through-translation. It is recomended that translator apply the strategies if only there is no equivalence problem in target language. 

scholarly journals Translation as Deconstruction: Infidelity in the Translation Process

2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 19
Author(s):  
Dominador L. Pagliawan
Keyword(s):  
Actual Practice ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Source Text ◽  
Translation Process ◽  
Translation Practice

Over the years, translation practice has constantly faced numerous challenges and demands. Among these is the necessity for the translator to stay faithful to the source text in transporting meanings to the target language. In actual practice, though, fidelity in translation proves rather remote, even close to impossible. Try as they do, translators fail to achieve precision in their translation tasks. Yet the translation practice remains needful and relevant. Viewing this seeming failure from the deconstructive critical lens in an attempt to salvage translation, this paper theorized and found out that the latter is rightly a form of deconstruction rather than a product of infidelity. This shows in various translation procedures which, when subjected to closer scrutiny, eventually manifest their deconstructive nature. This study, then, contributes insights into the increasing corpus of theories that govern the translation process. 

scholarly journals Bridging Pragmatic Gap in Translation Process through Developing Pragmatic Awareness

2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 98
Author(s):  
Vahid Rafieyan
Keyword(s):  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
The Other ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Source Text ◽  
Translation Process ◽  
Source Language ◽  
Translation Quality ◽  
Pragmatic Awareness ◽  
Positive Effect

<p>In order for the translator to be able to translate the source text into the target language in a relevant way, the strata of the translated text through which relevance can be obtained (pragmatic, pragmatic-semantic, and semantic strata) should be equalized to that of the source text (Li &amp; Luo, 2004). The translator can achieve this by raising his/her awareness of the source and target language pragmatic perspectives. To investigate the actual effect of developing knowledge of pragmatic perspectives of the source language and the target language on the quality of translation of culture-bound texts, the current study was conducted on 64 Iranian undergraduate students of English translation. The study consisted of three phases: 1) administering a culture-bound text to be translated by all participants, 2) dividing participants into two groups: one merely receiving translation exercises while the other receiving metapragmatic discussions of the pragmatic perspectives of the source language along with translation exercises, and 3) assessing the translation quality of both groups immediately and two months following the treatment. The study revealed the significant positive effect of pragmatic instruction on improving the quality of translation of culture-bound texts and maintaining the obtained knowledge. The pedagogical implications of the findings suggested incorporating the pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic perspectives of the source language and their distinctions with the pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic perspectives of the target language into translation classes as an integral part of translation classes.</p>

scholarly journals Creativity In The Use of Translation Microstrategies By Translation Students At The University of Bahrain

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (10) ◽  
pp. 7-17
Author(s):  
Nuri Ageli
Keyword(s):  
English Language ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Source Text ◽  
News Agency ◽  
Language Students ◽  
A Minor ◽  
University Of Bahrain ◽  
The University ◽  
Professional Translator

This study aims to examine University of Bahrain graduating translation students’ use of creative microstrategies in rendering into English a news text and compare it with the translation of a Bahrain News Agency professional translator. The study seeks to identify the students’ creative microstrategies based on the classification proposed by Anne Schjoldager’s‘ (2008) model of macrostrategies.  The participants were 15 English language students with a minor in translation who were expected to graduate in the semester during which the study was conducted. They were required to translate a news text from Arabic to English in order to reveal the creative microstrategies used  and then their performance was compared with that done by a professional translator employed by Bahrain News Agency (BNA)and published on its official website . The findings of the study have shown that translation students are inclined to focus more on the syntactic microstrategies rather than on the semantic and pragmatic ones when processing and rendering the source text into the target language. Unlike the professional translator, students' lack of negotiation with and deeper analysis of the text has deprived their performance to a certain extent from the  creativity required in translation and rendered it into a mechanical exercise.  

scholarly journals THE IMPORTANCE OF MEANING IN ARABIC TEXTBOOK TRANSLATION

Jurnal CMES ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 176
Author(s):  
Hanifah Hikmawati
Keyword(s):  
Target Language ◽  
Foreign Languages ◽  
Source Text ◽  
Translation Process ◽  
Source Language ◽  
Printed Books ◽  
Literature Reviews ◽  
Qualitative Descriptive ◽  
Descriptive Method ◽  
Correct Translation

<pre><a name="_Hlk89781071"></a><span class="y2iqfc"><span lang="EN-US">The translation process includes transferring the source language into the target language with the intention of knowing the meaning. When meaning is expressed  to the reader, then all information, insight, and knowledge can also be understood. As in textbooks, knowledge conveyed through texts in it of course have references from foreign languages, including Arabic. Therefore, in this article there are several objectives; (1) becoming one of the references for writers and translators in understanding the importance of the translation process to find out the meaning of writing textbooks, (2) helping students and students learn to understand science through printed books. In particular, the discussion in this article is focused on understanding, strategies and the urgency of meaning in Arabic translation which is applied to writing lesson texts. This article uses a qualitative descriptive method. The data obtained are sourced from observations, findings, and literature reviews from various sources. The results of the analysis of this article are in the form of emphasizing the importance of the translation process as language transfer and messages from the source text which includes the source language into the target text which includes the target language. The translation process must refer to the understanding of both languages, and involve the sensitivity and feelings of the translator. This translation strengthens the position of language and cultural differences that are no longer a barrier in the development of science. Thus, by using a good and correct translation process, the meaning of textbooks can be fully grasped</span></span></pre>

scholarly journals NATIONAL PRECEDENTIAL PHENOMENA OF RUSSIAN CULTURE AND WAYS OF THEIR TRANSLATION ON THE MATERIAL OF PUBLIC SPEECHES OF THE RUSSIAN PRESIDENT VLADIMIR PUTIN

2021 ◽  
pp. 110-118
Author(s):  
Анастасия Александровна Лукиных ◽  
Ирина Вячеславовна Баранова
Keyword(s):  
Political Discourse ◽  
Cognitive Linguistics ◽  
English Language ◽  
Translation Process ◽  
Russian Culture ◽  
Short Life Span ◽  
Russian President ◽  
Vladimir Putin ◽  
Lost In Translation ◽  
Selection Of

Введение. Прецедентность представляет собой весьма значимое явление для современной лингвистической науки. Прецедентность и прецедентные феномены изучаются лингвистами в различных аспектах и сферах. Исследуется прецедентность в политическом дискурсе. Целью является сопоставительное исследование национально-прецедентных феноменов, функционирующих в русскоязычном политическом дискурсе, а также в переводе на английский язык. Задачи исследования состоят в определении методологии, осуществлении отбора материала и определении наиболее адекватных способов перевода прецедентных феноменов русскоязычной культуры на английский язык. Материал и методы. Методология исследования основывается на теории когнитивной лингвистики с применением методов когнитивного моделирования, дискурсивного анализа, сопоставительного анализа. Для отбора материала исследования использовался метод сплошной выборки. При обобщении, систематизации и анализе материала применялся также описательный метод. Материалом исследования послужили тексты выступлений В. В. Путина, опубликованные на официальном сетевом ресурсе Президента РФ. Результаты и обсуждение. В результате проведенного исследования было обнаружено, что политический дискурс является весьма продуктивным для создания национально-прецедентных феноменов в силу своей специфики. Прецедентные феномены в политическом дискурсе обладают своей спецификой, как правило, источником прецедентности служит сфера политики либо исторические события конкретной национально-культурной общности. Прецедентные феномены в политической лингвистике сравнительно недолговечны. Наиболее часто они представлены прецедентными текстами, именами и высказываниями. При переводе национально-прецедентных феноменов для создания эквивалентного перевода применяются конкретизация, поиск фразеологических эквивалентов и аналогов. В некоторых случаях прецедентность при переводе полностью утрачивается, но в любом случае для интерпретации национально-прецедентных феноменов необходимы знания о национально-специфичных культурных источниках прецедентности. Заключение. Таким образом, национально-прецедентные феномены представляют собой значимую характеристику политического дискурса, служат связующим звеном между адресатом и адресантом, придают живость и образность речи в политическом дискурсе. С другой стороны, их национальная специфика служит дополнительной сложностью при переводе и часто требует наличия некоторых экстралингвистических знаний для их дешифровки и адекватного восприятия. Introduction. The study of precedential phenomena is extremely important for modern linguistics. They can be explored in different spheres and aspects, which depends on the aims of research. This article deals with precedential phenomena in political discourse. Aim and objectives. The aim is a comparative research of national precedential phenomena which function in Russian political discourse and of their translation into the English language. The objectives of this paper are to define methodology of the research, to select the necessary language material and to find the ways of translation of precedential phenomena taken from Russian culture into English. Material and methods. The methodology of the research is based on the cognitive linguistics theory. The methods are cognitive modelling, discourse analysis, comparative analysis. The selection of the material was carried out with the solid sampling method. To analyze and systematize the material a method of description was used. The material for the study were sampled out from the official website of the Russian president Vladimir Putin. Results and discussion. The results of the research showed that political discourse is a very productive sphere for the creation of national precedential phenomena. As a rule, precedential phenomena in political discourse are very specific. Their source can be found either in the sphere of politics or historic events of the nation. Precedential phenomena in political discourse usually have a short life span. There types are precedential texts, names and expressions. While translating national precedential phenomena, interpreters prefer to use concrete definition, equivalents or analogues of phraseological units. Sometimes precedential phenomena are lost in translation. Conclusion. So national precedential phenomena represent an important characteristic of political discourse. They serve as a link between the author and the recipient, make the speech more vivid and emotional and influence the audience in a specific way. But their national peculiarities often impede the translation process. Anyway some knowledge of cultural sources is necessary for correct interpretation and understanding of precedential phenomena.

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