Translation & Rainfall
By Alireza Yazdunpanuh,
Allameh Tabataba-ee University, Iran
yazdunpanuh_alireza@yahoo.com
http://www.accurapid.com/journal/33metaphor.htm
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Consider an ocean, deep and blue. The sun shines bright.
The water in the ocean evaporates up into the sky.
Gradually, clouds are formed and winds take them away,
far into another territory. Once the vapor is cold
and dense, it falls down in the form of rain. Some
of the droplets fall over the salty rocks. Some go
deep into the earth. Some fall directly into the sea.
Among those that flow on the ground, some-raindrops
unite to form streams; streams unite to form rivers,
and rivers finally join another ocean with different
characteristics, but the same essence.
The first ocean is analogous to the whole knowledge
of the source-text nation (or linguistic territory/language).
The limited amount of water evaporated is the source
text; the process of evaporation is the process of
comprehension of the ST by the translator, the clouds
are what the source text creates in the translator's
mind; the geographical movement of the clouds is the
shift from one linguistic territory into another (again,
within the translator's mind); the rainfall is the
process of putting abstract meaning into words of
the target language.
Conclusions:
- There is no "bad translation" if it
is genuine. There can be, however, poor ones.
- There can never be machine-translators in the
sense that there are, for example, machine chess
players.
- There can be no definition of good translation
unless the user and the total circumstance under
which he/she is using the translated text are specified.
- Instead of arguing over priority of form over
content, etc. translator training courses should
focus on developing comprehension skills in the
source language and writing/speaking skills in the
target one. These courses should be much more flexible
and include flexibility as an intrinsic part of
the course material. I dare say, a single method
cannot be specified as the "best" not
only for a single literary genre, but even for a
single literary work or even a single page of that
work! Didn't you see that every snowflake has its
own unique shape, all of them beautiful?
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