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Article name: Film Translations

This article was written by Isin Bengi. We were not able to do this in class but I read this article and liked it most. This is because we face with wrong film translations in our real life much more than other translations.

She first mentions that TV it is the most important public communication device and is really important. She also mentions that translated TV programs are mostly watched in Turkey. In some programs they use subtitles; in some programs they use dubbing and in some programs they use on speaking. However while translators are speaking on the voice it gives the foreign language speaker the chance to compare and contrast the translating and also gives the chance to evaluate the translator. Holmes helps to have such a investigation on this study.

In her article she also mentions briefly what a film is, she says that a film is a communication device which has lots of programs in it. Having so many programs in it helps the audience to both visually and audibly benefit from it. So, making up a film is not just its language use, its just one of its features. She points out that a film is both lingual and non-linguistic all together.

She also mentions that determining the reason of the translation is an important factor of deciding for the theory of translation. For example: making a translation for dubbing is equivalence is an important constraint, however choosing the right place at the screen for the subtitle is important, too. Making constraints, because it is a film translation is really important and necessary. She also emphasizes on some problems while making film translations, like, trying to translate word by word and not sense to sense. However in my opinion this is valid for all kind of translations and is really important, because we should also give the reader the background knowledge if he or she does not have it in their culture. She also mentions that some wrong translations are made because of cognates, and we should consider the true and false cognates in languages. There are serious problems in the usage of idioms, she says that the translator translate these idioms word to word and this does not make any sense for the audience, they are not able to understand what they really mean. She also gives an example of the film Charles in Charge, in this film the, they are mentioning about the children’s excitement and they say it like “ tatilin ruzgari” the right is “ to get the wind of holiday”, and to be translated right it should be “ tatilin kokusunu almak”.

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Article name : The Invisible in Translation: The Role of Text Structure

By Abdolmehdi Riazi, Ph.D.

Link for the article :

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In this article of Abdolmehdi Riazi, he believes that familiarity with the source and target languages, as well as the subject matter on the part of the translator is enough for a good translation. However, due to the findings in the field of text analysis, the role of text structure in translation now seems crucial. In his article he sets out with an introduction on different types of translation followed by some historical reviews on text analysis, and will then describe different approaches to text analysis.

In the first lines he states that translators should meet three requirements to do their jobs successfully, namely:

1) Familiarity with the source language,

2) Familiarity with the target language,

3) Familiarity with the subject matter.

So the translator finds out the meanings in the source language and tries to produce the same meaning in the target language, which is a right way to translate. The translator should also know the forms and idioms well in the target language to produce a well translation. In my opinion, if a translator knows his or her source language well but do not know the target language like his or her source language than there can occur a problem while translating it. So it is right!

He also gives a definition of translation, which is like, “the selection of the nearest equivalent for a language unit in the SL in a target language”. In my opinion sometime there can be words or idioms that do not have the exact meaning in the target language so it is important to be able to chose the nearest equivalent.

While translation experts have recognized three approaches to translation, which we also mentioned in our class presentations:

- translation at the level of word (word for word translation)

- translation at the level of sentence,

- conceptual translation

When we look at the first approach the “word for word translation”. For each word in the source language an equivalent word is selected in the target language, this type of translation can be effective, especially in translating phrases or just words or names. However, it can be problematic while we are translating it inside the language because the word order and the syntax are different in languages.

He also mentions about “Newmark”, for example, he has suggested communicative and semantic approaches to translation. Newmark also brought three basic translation processes:

1. The interpretation and analysis of the SL text;

2. The translation procedure which is the choosing of equivalents for words and sentences in the target language,

3. The reformulation of the text according to the writer's intention, the reader's expectation, the appropriate norms of the target language…

In his next paragraphs he mentions that the text analysis is becoming a promising tool in performing more reliable translations. There are numerous studies done on text analysis, which can have interesting messages for translators. For example, the kind of structure frequently reported for argumentative genres include "introduction, explanation of the case under discussion, outline of the argument, proof, refutation and conclusion"

Finally he says that, they may say that in translation we should first try to reconstruct the macro-structure and rhetorical structure of the source text in the target language and then look for the appropriate words and structures; this is a procedure that skillful translators perform in the process of translation consciously or unconsciously.

In my opinion this article is summarizing some important parts of translation. It is important to know what a target language and source language is and know them both very well in terms of written and verbal.