PROBLEM-SOLVING PHASES IN TRANSLATION
Dr. Ahmed Sulatn Al-Hameedawi
Out of their classroom observations and research, Davies and Scott-Tennent in their 2005 book offer a five-phase approach to solving a translation problem. Their approach comprises the following stages:
Phase One, General Approach:
In this stage, the translator has to make his choice of specific macro- or micro-decisions regarding norms (whether to abide by or break the TL norms, for example he may opt for domestically (A) or foreignizingly (B) in translating words (such as ‘CPU’ and ‘control’) in the following sentence:
CPU is used to denote three units: the control unit, the arithmetic unit and the central memory.
(A)يستعمل مصطلح وحدة المعالجة المركزية للإشارة إلى ثلاث وحدات: وحدة السيطرة، وحدة الحساب، ووحدة الذاكرة المركزية.
(B) يستعمل مصطلح السي بي يو للإشارة إلى ثلاث وحدات: وحدة الكنترول، وحدة الحساب، ووحدة الذاكرة المركزية.
The translator’s subjectivity and ideology may reveal themselves in this phase if he chooses to do so (whether consciously or unconsciously); a female translator may decide to take a feminist stand rendering whatever ‘he’ into ‘she’, or ignore ‘he’ altogether. Consider the following example:
The translator has to consider the TT readers.
ينبغي على المترجمة أن تأخذ بعين الاعتبار قراء النص الهدف.
This sentence may be confusing in Arabic-speaking, Islamic countries where man is ideologically privileged over woman and the norm is to use masculine gender represented by ‘he’ to cover both males and females. Moreover, the stage may range to accommodate issues such as the translation assignment, time, sources, equipment, fees, and the translator’s expertise and personal or emotional situation.
Phase Two: Problem-spotting:
This phase brings in the translator’s awareness that he is facing a translation problem. The principal criterion in this respect is that he is in front of a case of (a) a solution he cannot locate or (b) more than one solution where he has to decide on one. Such awareness is a function of different factors including, basically, the translator’s translation-notions knowledge (declarative knowledge defined simply as knowing what) and the cognitive ability he exercises to identify that problem (operative knowledge minimally described as knowing how, strategies). In the example below, the translator should be sensitive to the problem he encounters and translationally knowledgeable about its identity and impact. The source of the problem should be identified as two terms, the heart muscle and myocardium for one concept the heart in the TL where the SL deploys only two structural variants عضلة القلب/العضلة القلبية which cannot function synonymously as their SL counterparts.
The heart muscle, or myocardium, receives its oxygenated blood from the main artery.
Phase Three: Brainstorming & Choosing Steps:
As the word (brainstorming) reveals, the translator accesses mental or emotional actions to solve the translation problems. On detecting a translation or interpretation problem, the mind activates certain steps within the framework of a global strategy to solve it and explores available internal or external information to that effect. These steps may take the form of mental and emotional associations, logical thinking, classifying, selecting, drawing mind maps, playing with words, paraphrasing, accessing semantic fields, consulting dictionaries, reference books, peers, internet, teachers, subject-matter experts, published translations etc.
If the example above is reconsidered in the light of what has been elaborated on in this phase, the translator, reading the ST context of situation, particularly in terms of field and tenor, and consulting the relevant reference books or dictionaries, will, first, make a comparison of the list of terms used in TT to match that of the ST two terms, then, to discover that the two languages are incompatible with regard to the range of lexis language users put to function in the respective social context. This will help him arrive at the appropriate solution of this problem by help of some kind of logical reasoning of the problem.
Phase Four: Brainstorming and Choosing a Strategy:
Involving a range of fit-to-norms acceptable translation strategies which take also into account the target readership’s expectations and language specifics in the light of the translation brief; these strategies may embrace, footnotes, calques, loans, derivation, compounding Arabic words, definition (explicitation), domestication and foreignization, adaptation, reformulations (paraphrasing), substitutions, omissions, additions. To continue with the previoes example, the translator has to generate alternatives, i.e. solutions. Possible solutions in this case may encompass loan translation with omission and loan translation with transliteration; they will respectively look like the following:
(A) تستلم عضلة القلب حصتها من الدم المشبع بالأوكسجين عبر الشريان التاجي.
Or,(B) تستلم عضلة القلب، المايكرو دم، حصتها من الدم المشبع بالأوكسجين عبر الشريان التاجي.
Phase Five: Choosing a Final Solution:
In this phase, the translation solution is justified or evaluated in keeping with the translation context and risk-taking. The translator eventually has to decide on his best candidate solution of the above problem. To reach such a decision, he has to weigh his alternatives against one another in terms of different interactive factors potentially having an impact on the way his TT received and perceived by the TL readership and on the way it is to function therein. In the context of Arabic readership, the second solution will be ruled out in favor of the first for reasons of being tautological and potentially causing terminological confusion, violating Arabic morphology norms (no morphological pattern fitting the word ‘المايكرو دم’), and because TL respective community is well familiar with the term ‘القلب rather than with ‘المايكرو دم‘. As it has been vividly clear, the translator has to justify his choices before deciding to make them his final solutions.
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