Into English:

Seven survival tools for translating Brazilian

Portuguese into English
Danilo Nogueira

Some people handle gobbledygook in translation by the hallowed

GIGO (gobbledygook in, gobbledygook out) method. I don't. I like
my translations to be crystal-clear. The guys who read the stuff I
translate are businesspeople and they do not have the time or the
inclination to pore and ponder over a text, looking up words in an
unabridged dictionary; they want to understand what they have to
read the first time they skim through it. If they don't, the say
"damn the translator," not "damn the author".

All this business of "crystal-clear translation

The guys who read
for gobbledygook original" may be a little
the stuff I translate
bit contrary to good translation theory, but
are businesspeople
I am not talking about good translation
and they do not have
theory here, I am talking about earning a
the time or the
living. Readers of business translations
inclination to pore
expect to understand what they read
and ponder over a
without difficulty, and I have a family to
text, looking up words
feed. Therefore I keep it simple. Perfect
in an unabridged
reasoning.
dictionary.
So although my recipe for translation theory
may vary from time to time, it always includes a good shot of
Strunk & White's for the kick. (There is a bibliography of sorts at
the end of this article.) How much S&W's I use depends on many
factors. Some clients like it more than others but at least one guy
complained that I write funny (he was Brazilian, however).

Following my basic recipe, I have developed a set of survival tools,

some of which are shown below. I conducted a couple of seminars
where participants were shown how to use some of them. I even
intend to cram all of them into a small book. But today I must be
contented to squeeze a few of them into this article.

1. My favorite dictionaries

Businesspeople do not like words they don't know. They find

reading a text that requires frequent trips to the dictionary an
irritating task. Some translators seem to ignore that and use words
that are seldom found in the target language. Take homologar¸ for

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instance. The Portuguese-English dictionary will tell you it is
homologate, and a large dictionary will dictionary will tell you
homologate really corresponds to homologar. However, homologar
is a common word in Brazil whereas homologate is not nearly as
frequent in English. For instance, the average Brazilian peão freely
discusses a homologação da rescisão- whereas an American
hardhat probably would flinch at homologation of the termination.

That is why I prefer smaller monolingual dictionaries to homologate,

er, confirm my translation choices. Black's Law Dictionary has all
the legal terms you can think of, including many a majority of
American lawyers and most executives do not know. Gifis' is a lot
shorter and, therefore a lot better if you are working into English.
Translators who dare use a word that is in Black's but not in Gifi's
run the risk of not being understood.

The same goes for non-technical dictionaries. Don't go about using

a word just because you found it in the Oxford English Dictionary.
The OED is an excellent dictionary that contains all the words
nobody knows. If you translate into English, get a few of those
splendid dictionaries they make for foreigners, such as the Longman
Dictionary of English Language and Culture and try to limit your
vocabulary to its selection. Of course, for the source language, the
more and bigger dictionaries you have, the better.

2. The nervous tic

I translate meaning, not nervous tics. One of my clients begins

every second paragraph with por oportuno, informamos também
que... I refuse to begin every second paragraph with because it is
opportune we also inform that. I asked the client why he wrote that
way. He said vício, an addiction. Then I suggested he should go
over his writings, after they were ready, and amputate those
useless proboscises. He thought the idea great, but never got
around to implementing it. So I do it on the translation. By the way,
my charges are based on the word count of original text.

3. The elevated synonym, the unctuous adjective, the local

reference and the geography of places unknown

Many Brazilian writers think calling a rose a rose is beneath their

station. So they call it anything but a rose. Well, not roses, really,
but take the Constitution, for instance. I have a book where it is
variously called a lei maior, a lei magna, nossa lei fundamental and
even a lex legum. Now the Constitução, by any other name, should
be the Constituition and nothing else. I also refuse to translate o
pretório excelso as anything other than the Brazilian Supreme

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Court.

The love of elevated language also forces other authors to add an

unctuous adjective to almost every noun. A lawyer will refer to the
guy who works for the other guys as meu erudito colega or o ilustre
jurista. My erudite colleague or the illustrious jurist inside a
business letter sounds too unctuous or ironical in English (three
spoonfuls of Eugene Nida) and I usually resolve that into my
colleague, counsel for X, or something of that sort. The Dickensian
close sem mais para o momento, apresentamos os protestos de
nossa elevada estima becomes yours sincerely.

One of my favorites among constructions of that type is o legislador

pátrio, which I do not dare translate literally, and is usually best
translated as the Brazilian Congress. Certain writers seem to be
ashamed of the word brasileiro and replace it with pátrio whenever
they can.

This leads us to the third type in this group: the local reference. O
Tesouro Nacional may be better translated by the Brazilian
Treasury, a moeda nacional by Brazilian currency. A língua patria by
the Portuguese language. O vernáculo is also the Portuguese
language—another case of the elevated synonym.

The last type in this group is the local geographical reference that
needs some expliciting (a pound of Peter Newmark). When a
newspaper in São Paulo refers to a baixada, it means a baixada
santista, which is better translated as the coastal area around the
city of Santos. O cerrado may by the scrublands of Central Brazil,
where the capital, Brasilia, is located, but also a derogatory
reference to the Federal Government, the irony of which may have
to be compensated somewhere else.

4. The sesquipedal sentence

Portuguese apparently can handle long sentences better than

English can, for a number of alleged reasons I will spare you. Yes, I
know William Faulkner wrote sentences longer than the average
roundworm and some American lawyers suffer from periodophobia
(British lawyers can be stoppophobic). But being neither Faulkner
nor lawyer, I prefer not to burden my reader with those kilometer-
long Brazilian sentences (Brazilians don't write mile-long sentences;
we have gone metric ages ago). So, I start looking for a good
splicing place whenever the sentence runs to more than 25 words.

Natural splicing places are conjunctions and relative pronouns, of

course. My favorite is sendo que. Have you noticed how we can

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write an extraordinarily long sentence, tack a sendo que on at the
end for a breather and then go on for another hundred words or so
without stop? I have been told sendo que is being that, but old Mr.
Nida says it is not. So I translate sendo que as a period.

5. The absolute clause

Even colloquial Portuguese will be sprinkled with initial absolute

constructions, which are possible in English, but not nearly as
common. Thus it is often better to develop them into clauses with
finite verbs. For instance an initial informado por um acessor de
que... may be after an advisor informed him that...Or indagado se
pretendia continuar may very well be when asked whether he
intended to go on.

6. The case of the missing noun

Many Brazilian gobbledygookers are in the habit of dropping the

noun out of noun-adjective phrases. For instance, petição inicial
becomes a inicial. If you don't know that, your are lost, because
you are bound to translate it as the initial¸ whereas it should be the
complaint.

7. Abstractions, positive and negative

The latest fashion in Brazilian gobbledygook is the negative

abstraction. Abstractions have always plagued gobbledygook, both
in English and Portuguese, it is true, but somehow I feel English
texts use fewer abstracts than their Brazilian counterparts. Probably
the effect of Strunk & White and their followers north of the Rio
Grande. Quantity is of no importance however. What matters is that
sometimes a Portuguese abstraction does not translate well into
English.

Have a look at this: Excesso de pluviosidade está causando um

retardo na construção de estradas, which I found in a newspaper.
Two abstractions: pluviosidade and retardo. Excess pluviosity is
causing a delay in road construction in English is preposterous, but
even Brazilian radio reporters have taken to talking like that and
the average traffic report in São Paulo radio stations sounds like a
translation from a German treatise on higher metaphysics.

Using Vinay & Darbelnet's transposition tool, you can change the
first abstract into a concrete noun and the second into a verb:
excess [or "too much"] rainfall is delaying road construction. Funny
that this translates literally into perfectly good Portuguese: excesso
de chuva (or "chuva demais") está retardando a construção de
estradas.

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A existência de extintores em restaurantes é uma obigatoriedade. I
did find this in my morning paper. I had an extra cup of coffee to
help gulp it down. How can I say obrigatoriedade in English?
Obligation? So, existence of fire extinguishers in restaurants is an
obligation? Or all restaurants are required to keep fire
extinguishers?

The following beauty is cribbed from Equivalences, an excellent

book if you know French: a audiência tem três características:
oralidade, publicidade e contraditório. Try translating the three
abstractions. Better translate it as the hearing has three
characteristics: it must be oral, it must be public and both sides
must be heard.

However, the negative abstraction is even worse: a falta de uma lei

específica resulta na inexigibilidade do imposto. What is
inexigibilidade in English? Non-claimability? Is this a "virtual word",
one of those words that is not necessarily in any dictionary but can
be coined by anyone with sufficient chutzpah? Should we render it
as the lack of a specific law results in the non-claimability of the
tax? May be, but how about the tax may not be claimed unless a
specific law is enacted? This, of course, requires quite a few
spoonfuls of Vinay & Darbelnet transposition and modulation, but
reads a lot better.

Envoi and Bibliography of Sorts

Envoi (not envoy, which is something else) is not in dictionaries for

foreigners and is a word I would hardly use in translation, but this is
an original text and translators are supposed to have a large
vocabulary anyway.

I could go on and on developing this article, but I had to stop

somewhere and I decided to stop where I did. I will probably return
to the subject in future articles, if this raises as much interest as I
think the issue deserves.

There is a lot of talk about whether we should translate from our

native language into a foreign language. There is even a very
interesting and realistic article on that subject, called Direction of
Translation by Allison B. Lonsdale in the Routledge Encyclopedia of
Translation. But I don't translate into English because of what
professor Lonsdale says. I translate into English because when I
began nobody told me I should not—and when they did it was too
late to stop. In fact, I think it is excellent training: one learns to

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translate into Portuguese by translating into English and vice versa.
Thank God I am not a university professor.

I seldom wax theoretical and thus am not adept at preparing

bibliographies, but the data below will certainly help you find the
books, if your really wanto to.

S&W's obviously refers to the classic Elemens of Style (Macmillan)

by William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White. There are several other books
on good English writing and one of my favorites is Style, by J.
Williams (Scott, Foresman and Company). These two should be
required reading wherever advanced English is taught. They are
not.

I own J. P. Vinay and J. Darbelnet's classic, Stylistique comparée du

français et de l'anglais, in the first French edition, by Didier, but I
saw an English translation recently. I have not had a chance to
examine it, though. Worth reading even if you do not translate
French. Equivalences, a fascinating book by Eric Astington,
(Cambridge) amplifies and extends V&D's work in many ways.
Unfortunately, it only compares French and English. A nice, short,
introduction to translation techniques is Procedimentos Técnicos de
Tradução, by Heloisa Gonçalves Barbosa (Pontes). If you have not
been introduced to translation theory before, this may be the book
to begin with—if you can find it.

Peter Newmark's Approaches to Translation (Pergamon) is one of

my favorites, one of those marvelous books by someone who knows
not all translation studies should by restricted to literary translation.

Black's Law Dictionary (West) is, as far as I know, the largest

English law dictionary. Barron's publishes a shorter dictionary by
Steven Gifis, my favorite for into-English work.

Longman, Cambridge and Collins Cobuild publish superb dictionaries

for foreigners. Even if you are a native speaker of English, you
should have a look at them. The basic idea behind them is not all
the words there are, but all the words people use. Wonderful to help
you avoid those texts that are perfectly correct but do not read well
because the vocabulary is so highfalutin'. The best words are those
found in at least two of them.

I have never been able to lay my hands on any original work by

Eugene Nida. However his theories are well known and references
are often found in other people's work, for instance, in Peter
Newmark.

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 Algumas técnicas para resolver problemas

de tradução do inglês para o português

Vera e Danilo Nogueira

Tradução literal

Fala-se tanto mal de tradução literal, que muitos acreditam que

traduzir literalmente seja errado. Não é verdade. Muitos erros de
tradução se devem a excesso de literalidade, outros tantos à
tomada de liberdades desnecessárias com o texto dos outros. É
preciso aprender a traduzir tão literalmente quanto possível, tão
livremente quanto necessário, quer dizer, é preciso aprender
quando é necessário tomar liberdades. Por exemplo, uma frase
como:

The boy ate a piece of cake.

O menino comeu um pedaço de bolo.

pode e deve ser traduzida literalmente na maioria dos casos. Que

quer dizer na maioria? Talvez não caiba no espaço disponível, por
exemplo. Mas salvo uma restrição dessas, não vemos nada de
errado com a tradução. Não ceda à tentação de traduzir:

The boy ate a piece of cake.

! O menino comeu uma fatia de bolo.

Você pode até achar que fica melhor, mas não é a mesma coisa.
Bolos podem ser cortados de mil maneiras, não só em fatias e essa
tradução é desnecessariamente mais específica que o original. Não
faz diferença? Pode ser. Mas talvez, dez páginas adiante, você
venha a descobrir que a mãe do menino sempre cortava o bolo em
cubos, não em fatias, e vai ter de voltar para corrigir o que parecia
um melhoramento, mas era na verdade um erro. Isso, se você se
lembrar de que cometeu o erro.

Pronomes do caso oblíquo

O tratamento dos pronomes oblíquos envolve dois problemas, pelo

menos. O primeiro é que o inglês por natureza usa mais pronomes
que o português e, se você traduzir todos eles, vai cair em
anglicismo de freqüência, que é o uso de uma construção
perfeitamente correta, porém mais freqüente em inglês do que em
português. O segundo problema é que o português brasileiro

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coloquial pede construções que a gramática rejeita e a forma que a
gramática prescreve, por sua vez, é vista como muito formal e,
quando usada muitas vezes no mesmo texto, dá ao texto um tom
empolado. Um bom caso é:

This document contains important information, read it

carefully before signing.

! Este documento contém informações importantes, leia ele

cuidadosamente antes de assinar. ! Este documento contém
informações importantes, leia-o cuidadosamente antes de
assinar.

Onde temos uma tradução que viola a norma culta e outra que
desloca o texto para um registro mais formal do que o desejado ou
que, se aparecer com mais freqüência, vai tornar o texto cansativo
e pouco idiomático. Temos várias soluções para o problema, por
exemplo:

Elidir o pronome

This document contains important information, read it

carefully before signing.

Este documento contém informações importantes,(por isso)

leia cuidadosamente antes de assinar.

Este é o procedimento mais simples. A elisão do pronome é

considerada marca de bom estilo em português e, aqui, o sentido
fica igualmente claro com ou sem pronome. Aproveitamos para
inserir um conetivo, como lembrete de que o inglês muitas vezes
usa construções assindéticas onde o português prefere usar uma
conjunção. Mas esse é um assunto de que não trataremos aqui.

Apassivar o verbo

This document contains important information, read it

carefully before signing.

Este documento contém informações importantes, (!ele) deve

ser lido cuidadosamente antes de assinar.

Quando se troca a voz do verbo de ativa para passiva, o objeto se

torna sujeito e então passamos a lidar com omissão do pronome do
caso reto, que também é comum em português. Note que o auxiliar
deve serve para transmitir a idéia de imperativo que está no inglês.
A construção sindética poderia ser:

This document contains important information, read it

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 carefully before signing.

Este documento deve ser lido cuidadosamente antes de

assinar, porque contém informações importantes.

Transformar o verbo em abstrato

Traduzir um verbo pelo abstrato correspondente é um dos

procedimentos mais comuns e úteis na tradução do inglês para o
português ou outras línguas românicas. Nem sempre funciona.
Neste caso, por exemplo, o ganho de qualidade é praticamente
nulo:

Este documento contém informações importantes,

recomenda-se [recomendamos, é recomendável] [fazer] uma
leitura cuidadosa antes de assinar.

Entretanto, sirva de sugestão para outros casos, que não

vamos discutir aqui. Um dos truques de tradução mais úteis
que existem é transformar verbos ingleses em substantivos
portugueses.

Advérbios em –mente

A terminação –mente tem duas sílabas, ao passo que o inglês –ly

tem uma só. Isso torna os advérbios em –mente mais pesados que
seus análogos ingleses. Além disso, criam uma série de ecos, rimas
internas indesejáveis. Por isso, devem ser usados
parcimoniosamente.

Na tradução, entretanto, o problema pode ser mais grave, porque,

mesmo respeitando a regra do “nunca mais que três em seguida”, a
sucessão de advérbios em –mente em frases consecutivas também
prejudica a qualidade do texto. Não significa que seja errado usar
advérbios em mente, mas significa que é útil usar algumas das
técnicas abaixo para reduzir a sua freqüência.

Truncar todos os advérbios de uma série, menos o último

Este é o procedimento clássico, que todos nós aprendemos na

escola:

exactly, correctly and precisely

exata, correta e precisamente

Substituir por de forma, de maneira ou de modo, seguidos de

adjetivos no feminino

Outro procedimento, também conhecidíssimo desde os tempos de

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escola:

exactly, correctly and precisely

de forma exata, correta e precisa

Tem a limitação de que nosso texto acaba ficando com muitos de

forma isto, de maneira aquilo e encomprida muito o texto, o que
pode ser um grande problema quando há limitação de espaço.

Desdobrar o advérbio em com + abstrato

Mais uma vez, a importância dos substantivos abstratos nas línguas

românicas:

carefully

com cuidado

Um advérbio pode ser modificado por outro, mas um substantivo

tem de ser modificado por um adjetivo. Portanto,

very beautifully

com grande beleza

He worked very fast and efficiently.

Ele trabalhava com grande rapidez e eficiência.

He looked at us scornfully.

Olhou para nós com desprezo.

as naturally as possible

com o máximo de naturalidade possível

The accused laughingly described some of the crimes.

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 O acusado descreveu alguns dos crimes com um sorriso (nos
lábios).

Desdobrar o advérbio em sem + abstrato

Da mesma maneira que um advérbio que indique presença de uma

característica pode ser desdobrado em com + abstrato, um
advérbio que indique carência pode ser traduzido por sem +
abstrato:

He walked aimlessly for more than an hour.

Caminhou sem destino mais de uma hora.

Aqui, o -less- indica a carência de destino.

Desdobrar o advérbio em com + abstrato + adjetivo

Esta é uma excelente solução, que torna a tradução mais fluida e

idiomática. O advérbio propriamente dito é transformado em
adjetivo, mas, como com + adjetivo é impossível, precisamos de
algo para preencher e esse algo normalmente é um abstrato. O
problema é que nem sempre é fácil achar um abstrato que combine
com nosso adjetivo:

“No, Sir!”, she said sadly.

– Não senhor, disse ela com um jeito triste.

He looked at us scornfully.

Olhou para nós com um ar de desprezo.

Desdobrar o advérbio em adjetivo com suporte Aqui dispensamos o

com, porém temos de arranjar um suporte adequado para o
adjetivo, o que pode ser difícil.

Economically, capitalism has transformed many societies.

De um ponto de vista econômico, o capitalismo transformou

muitas sociedades.

Transformar o advérbio que modifica um verbo em um adjetivo que

modifique um substantivo

Este procedimento exige um pouco mais de cuidado, porque o

advérbio vai modificar uma palavra diferente da que modificava em
inglês. Por exemplo:

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 An elderly man walked pensively.

Um senhor idoso caminhava pensativo.

No original, o advérbio modifica o verbo, na tradução, modifica o

substantivo, que desempenha o papel de sujeito.

distinção entre hífen e travessão

Hífen se usa para juntar palavras e travessão se usa para separar

palavras. No teclado do computador, o hífen fica ao lado do “0”,
mas para o travessão não há tecla separada. Para obter um
travessão, é necessário apertar Ctrl e sinal de menos do teclado
numérico ao mesmo tempo. Também se pode apertar Alt e, no
teclado numérico, digitar 0150, algo que só funciona se o led do
Num Lock estiver aceso.

O uso de hífen e travessão é explicado em qualquer gramática e no

Guia Ortográfico de Celso Pedro Luft, que todo tradutor para o
português deve ter à mão. Aqui, somente damos alguns exemplos.

com hífen

alto-falante

com travessão

A estrada Rio – Santos O triênio 2002 – 04 presenciou um aumento

de 30%. A Baixa Eslobóvia – mais uma vez – tentou estabilizar a
moeda, mas sem grandes resultados

A praxe em português é usar espaços antes e depois do travessão.

O travessão muitas vezes é usado para destacar uma intercalação,
caso em que alguns seguem a praxe espanhola, em que o travessão
fica colado à intercalação, da mesma forma que ficariam
parênteses:

A Baixa Eslobóvia – mais uma vez – tentou estabilizar a moeda,

mas sem grandes resultados. (praxe tradicional brasileira) ! A Baixa
Eslobóvia –mais uma vez– tentou estabilizar a moeda, mas sem
grandes resultados. (praxe espanhola

Grafia de números

O separador de milhares, em português, é o ponto. O separador

decimal é a vírgula. Não importa se estamos falando de reais,
euros, dólares, número de habitantes de uma cidade ou camelos de
uma caravana. Resolução CONMETRO 12/98.

Entre o cifrão e o primeiro algarismo de um valor monetário, deixe

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um espaço inseparável, que você consegue com ctrl + shift + barra
de espaço.

Bibliografia

A descrição clássica dos procedimentos de tradução está em:

VINAY, Jean-Paul e DARBELNET, Jean – Stylistique comparée du
français e de l’anglais: Méthode de traduction. Paris. Didier, 1977.
Existem edições posteriores e uma tradução para o inglês, à qual
não tivemos acesso. Existe uma apresentação, breve e excelente,
em português: BARBOSA, Heloisa Gonçalves – Procedimentos
técnicos da tradução: uma nova proposta. Campinas, SP. Pontes,
1990, reeditada recentemente.

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Translation Strategies: A Review and Comparison of Theories
by Zohre Owji, M.A.

TEXTO ADAPTADO*

Abstract

Extensive research has been done in the field of translation

strategies. However, the definition offered by each author or
theorist represets his/her own point of view and their views differ
from each other. Most theorists agree that strategies are used by
translators when they encounter a problem and literal translation
does not work. Therefore, different researchers have investigated
and described various translation strategies from their own
perspectives. Some best-known theories of this field are described
and compared to each other in this paper. The purpose of this study
was to show the different theories in the field of translation
strategies and to offer a general literature review to facilitate the
study of translation strategies in future studies. Baker (1992)
offered the clearest taxonomy of translation strategies that she
believed professional translators use when they encounter a
translation problem while performing a translation task.

Key Words: Translation, translation strategies, Baker's taxonomy,

theoretical research, translational problems

1.1. General

Nowadays, in a world characterized by global communication,

translation plays a key role in exchanging information between
languages. To move along the natural and professional continuum
of conveying the meaning from one particular language into
another, a translator needs to learn some skills, which are referred
to as translation strategies.

Bergen (n. d.) quotes Chesterman's (1997) list of some general

characteristics of translation strategies:

a) Translation strategies apply to a process;

b) They involve text-manipulation;
c) They are goal-oriented;
d) They are problem-centered;
e) They are applied consciously;
f) They are inter-subjective.

Most theorists agree that strategies are used by translators when

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they encounter a problem and literal translation is not useful.
Different researchers have investigated and described various
translation strategies from their different perspectives. This paper
concentrates on the differences between these theories. It intends
to show what translation strategies exist and when and why they
are used by professional translators.
…

2.2. Translation strategies

…
Generally speaking, a translator uses a strategy when s/he
encounters a problem while translating a text; this means, when a
translator translates a text literally, translation strategies may not
be needed. Bergen (n. d.) mentions that strategies are not obvious
and trivial. Although, when they translate word for word and use a
dictionary, beginners in the area of translation think they have
made a good translation; they do not understand that a problem
still exists and changes must be made at some levels of the
translation. Therefore, problem-solving is the most important
function of the strategies. However, the question that arises here is:
what is a translation problem?

2.2.2. Translation problems

According to Dr. Miremadi (1991), translation problems are divided

into two main categories: lexical problems and syntactic problems.

1. Lexical problems

In the interpretation of lexical problems, Miremadi states that,

although words are entities that refer to objects or concepts, a word
in one language may not be substituted with a word in another
language when referring to the same concepts or objects.

He divides lexical problems into five subcategories:

Straight/ denotative meaning

This kind of meaning refers to those words of the source text that
can be matched with those of the target text "without missing
images" (e.g. mother, father, etc).

Lexical meaning
Lexical meaning refers to words or phrases which seem to be
equivalent, although in that situation this may not be the case; the
translator must be aware of the intention beyond the words in order
not to misrepresent the author's message.

Metaphorical expression

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This subcategory refers to the problematic issues of translating
idioms and similar expressions.

Broeik (1981) quoted by Dr. Miremadi (1991) offers the following

suggestions for translating idiomatic expressions:

a) Distinguishing between ordinary expressions and

metaphors

b) Having access to the resources of translating a single

metaphor

c) Being aware of different contexts and their constraints on

using metaphors

d) Correctly realizing the constraints on the translation, and

rendering the message.

Semantic voids
This subcategory includes those words and/or expressions that
represent concepts that cannot be found in other special
communities. The close equivalents may be found, although the
exact equivalent cannot.

According to Dr. Miremadi (1991), this may happen in two cases,

subjects to extra-linguistic factors such as those words that have
referents in a certain speech community but not in others, and
subject to intra-linguistic factors such as those concepts that may
exist in two language communities but the structure of their use
may be completely different, Dagut (1931) believes, as Dr.
Miremadi (1991) mentioned, that this case occurs when the
systems of lexicalization of shared expressions are different from
each other.

Proper names
The last but not the least sub-category in this group is the problem
of proper names. Although proper names refer to individuals and
can be transcribed from one language into another, sometimes the
specific meaning that they carry, which do not exist in the target
speech community, may be lost (e.g. Asghar Rize in Persian).

2. Syntactic problems

Syntactic problems are the other main category of translation

problems; as Dr. Miremadi (1991) quoted Nida (1975), one can find
no two languages that have the exact identical systems of structural
organizations (i.e. language structure varies from one language to

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another).

These differences include:

a) Word classes: Languages differ from each other in the

internal word formation of language classification.
b) Grammatical relations: This difference exists among the
languages in the way that a constituent of a sentence
functions within that sentence.
c) Word order
d) Style
e) Pragmatic aspects

Considering all these problems, a translator is expected to convey

the message of the source text to target readers; however, there is
no completely exact translation between any two languages and as
Dr. Miremadi (1991) quoted Werner (1961), the degree of
approximation between two language systems determines the
effectiveness of the translation.
…

Chesterman (1997) believes, as quoted by Bergen (n. d.), that the

taxonomy of translation strategies can be presented simply. It
includes a basic strategy which is: change something. In his
statement, Chesterman (1997) does not refer to the replacement of
elements in the source text words by their equivalent in the target
text; it means that this replacement cannot be the only task of a
translator and it is not sufficient. The normal types of changes made
by the translators can be classified as:

a) The words which are used in the source text

b) The structure of these words
c) The natural context of the source text

Thus, as Bergen (n. d.) mentioned, according to Chesterman

(1997), local translation strategies can be categorized into
semantic, syntactic, and pragmatic changes;

• Syntactic strategies

These local strategies change the grammatical structure of the

target text in relation to the source text. Although most of the
strategies are applied because a literal translation is not
appropriate, Chesterman (1997) presents his first syntactic
strategy, literal translation. He believes that, according to many
translation theorists, this is a "default" strategy.

1. Literal translation: It means the translator follows the

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 source text form as closely as possible without following
the source language structure.
2. Loan translation: This is the second syntactic strategy in
his classification which refers to the borrowing of single
terms and following the structure of the source text
which is foreign to the target reader.
3. Transposition: Another term that Chesterman (1997)
has borrowed from Vinay and Darbelnet (1958) is
transposition that refers to any change in word class,
for example adjective to noun.
4. Unit shift: This is a term that has been borrowed from
Catford (1965) in the levels of morpheme, word,
phrase, clause, sentence and paragraph.
5. Paraphrase structure change: This strategy refers to
changes which take place in the internal structure of the
noun phrase or verb phrase, although the source
language phrase itself maybe translated by a
corresponding phrase in the target language.
6. Clause structure change: This is a term which refers to
a strategy in which the changes affect the organization
of the constituent phrases or clauses. For example,
changes from active to passive, finite to infinite, or
rearrangement of the clause constituents.
7. Sentence structure change: It is a term that refers to
changes in the structure of the sentence unit. It
basically means a change in the relationship between
main clauses and subordinate ones.
8. Cohesion change: The way in which the parts of a
sentence join together to make a fluent, comprehensible
sentence is called textual cohesion. Cohesion change is
a term referring to a strategy which affects intra-textual
cohesion, this kind of strategy mainly takes place in the
form of reference by pronouns, ellipsis, substitution or
repetition.
9. Level shift: By the term level, Chesterman (1997)
means the phonological, morphological, syntactical and
lexical levels. These levels are expressed variously in
different languages.
10. Scheme change: This strategy is another term in
Chesterman's (1997) classification. It refers to
rhetorical schemata such as parallelism, alliteration and
rhythm and rhyming in poetry. Parallelism refers to
similar arrangement of collocations, phrases or
sentences.

• Semantic strategies

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The second group in Chesterman's (1997) classification is semantic
strategy which has its own subcategories.

1. Synonymy: It is the first subcategory in this group. In

this strategy the translator selects the closest synonym,
which is not the first literal translation of the source text
word or phrase.
2. Antonymy: In this strategy, the translator uses a word
with the opposite meaning. This word mostly combines
with a negation.
3. Hyponymy: It means using a member of larger category
(e.g. rose is a hyponym in relation to flower), and also
hypernym is a related superordinate term, which
describes the entire category with a broader term (e.g.
flower is a hypernym in relation to rose).
4. Converses: This strategy refers to pairs of opposites
expressing similar semantic relationships from the
opposite perspectives (e.g. send-receive take-give).
5. Trope change: The formal name that is used for a figure
of speech or metaphor is called trope which means
using a term or phrase to compare two things that are
unrelated with the purpose of revealing their similarity.
This relates to a type of strategy called trope change
strategy.
6. Abstraction change: The other kind of strategy in the
list is abstraction change. This strategy concerns
shifting either from more abstract terms to more
concrete ones or vice versa.
7. Distribution change: This is a kind of strategy in which
the same semantic component is distributed over more
items (expansion) or fewer ones (compression).
8. Emphasis change: This strategy increases, decreases or
changes the emphasis of thematic focus of the
translated text in comparison to the original.
9. Paraphrase strategy: This is the last strategy in the list.
According to the overall meaning of the source text, it
creates a liberal approximate translation, some lexical
items may be ignored in this sort of strategy.

• Pragmatic strategies

1. Cultural filtering: According to Chesterman (1997 as

cited in Bergen n. d.), the first sort of strategy in this
group is cultural filtering. It may be described as the

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 concrete realization, at the level of language, of the
universal strategy of domestication or target culture-
oriented translation. This strategy is generally used
while translating culture-bound items.
2. Explicitness change: In explicitness change strategy
some information of the source text maybe added; or
deleted to make the text more or less explicit.
3. Information change: The next type of strategy is
information change which is similar to the previous
strategy; however, here the changed information is NOT
implicit in the source language text.
4. Interpersonal change: This strategy is used to affect the
whole style of the text to make it more or less informed,
technical etc.
5. Speech act: There is another strategy the changes the
nature of the source text speech act, either obligatory
or non-obligatory (e.g. from reporting to a command, or
from direct to indirect speech).
6. Visibility change: This is a strategy that increases the
"presence" of either the author of the source text or its
translator (e.g. footnotes that are added by the
translator).
7. Coherence change: Another strategy is coherence
change which is similar to cohesion change which was
mentioned in the previous section ( syntactic
strategies). The only difference is that, cohesion change
concerns micro-structure level (e.g. a sentence or a
paragraph), but coherence change concerns a higher
textual level (i.e. combining different paragraphs to
each other in a way different from the source text).
8. Partial translation: This is a strategy that refers to
translating a part of a text, not the entire text (e.g.
song lyrics or poetry).
9. Trans-editing: As Bergen also stated, according to
Stetting (1989), another strategy which can be
mentioned in this section is trans-editing that refers to
extensive editing of the original text when necessary
(i.e. changing the organization of the source text
information, wording or etc).
The above-mentioned strategies present the classification of
Chesterman (1997) cited by Bergen (n. d.). It is clear that all
strategies can specific cases of "changing something," which is, as
Chesterman (1997) believes, the basic strategy of translation. The
levels on which these translation strategies work differ from each

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other; and as Bergen (n. d.) stated, this may lead to terminological
confusion among researchers who are concerned with translation
studies. As Venuti (2001) states, from Vinay and Darbelnet's (1958)
point of view, translators can select two main methods of
translating which are called: direct/literal translation and oblique
translation.

When literal translation is not possible because of lexical and

syntactical differences between the two languages, oblique
translation is used.

Oblique translation includes seven subcategories, which are as

follows:

• Borrowing: that is used to tackle a meta-linguistic difference. It is

the simplest strategy of translation that means using source
language terms in the target text.
• Calque: This is a special type of borrowing in which the borrowed
expression is literally translated into the target language.
• Literal translation: that means rendering a source language text
into the appropriate idiomatic or grammatical equivalent in
the target language.
• Transposition: that is substituting one word class with another
without changing the meaning of the message.
• Modulation: this means changing in point of view (e.g. changing
part of speech).
• Equivalence: this refers to rendering two situations by different
stylistic and structural methods; these two texts include the
source text and its equivalent text which is the target text.
• Adaptation: that refers to those situations when cultural
differences occur between the source language and the target
language. Thus, translation can be considered as a special
kind of equivalence which is situational equivalence

The above-mentioned strategies fit the classification of Vinay and

Darbelnet (1958), which shows some similarities with Chesterman's
classification; however, as we can see above Chesterman's (1997)
classification is clearly more detailed. All the above-mentioned
strategies are theories which are named differently by different
theorists. However; if one wants to examine the applicability of
these strategies, there would be no clear borderline between them.
Moreover, they are just some of the strategies that can be used by
a translator, and it seems that there are different options that a
translator may have while doing the translation. However, there is
no hierarchical order of more or less often-used strategies. Baker
(1992) offers taxonomy of eight translation strategies, which are
used by professional translators.

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Baker's taxonomy: Mona Baker (1992: 26-42) lists eight
strategies, which have been used by professional translators, to
cope with the problematic issues while doing a translation task:

• Translation by a more general word

• This is one of the most common strategies to deal with many
types of nonequivalence. As Baker believes, it works
appropriately in most, if not all, languages, because in the
semantic field, meaning is not language dependent.
• Translation by a more neutral/ less expressive word
• This is another strategy in the semantic field of structure.
• Translation by cultural substitution
• This strategy involves replacing a culture-specific item or
expression with a target language item considering its impact
on the target reader. This strategy makes the translated text
more natural, more understandable and more familiar to the
target reader.
• The translator's decision to use this strategy will depend on:
The degree to which the translator is given license by those
who commission the translation
The purpose of the translation
• Translation using a loan word or loan word plus explanation
• This strategy is usually used in dealing with culture-specific items,
modern concepts, and buzz words. Using the loan word with
an explanation is very useful when a word is repeated several
times in the text. At the first time the word is mentioned by
the explanation and in the next times the word can be used
by its own.
• Translation by paraphrase using a related word
• This strategy is used when the source item in lexicalized in the
target language but in a different form, and when the
frequency with which a certain form is used in the source text
is obviously higher than it would be natural in the target
language.
• Translation by paraphrase using unrelated words
• The paraphrase strategy can be used when the concept in the
source item is not lexicalized in the target language.
• When the meaning of the source item is complex in the target
language, the paraphrase strategy may be used instead of
using related words; it may be based on modifying a super-
ordinate or simply on making clear the meaning of the source
item.
• Translation by omission
• This may be a drastic kind of strategy, but in fact it may be even
useful to omit translating a word or expression in some
contexts. If the meaning conveyed by a particular item or

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 expression is not necessary to mention in the understanding
of the translation, translators use this strategy to avoid
lengthy explanations.
• Translation by illustration
• This strategy can be useful when the target equivalent item does
not cover some aspects of the source item and the equivalent
item refers to a physical entity which can be illustrated,
particularly in order to avoid over-explanation and to be
concise and to the point.

As it is obvious, each theorist offers his/her own strategies

according to his/ her perspective; however, Baker’s (1992)
taxonomy of translation strategies include the most applicable set of
strategies, because it shows the strategies which are used by
professional translators. So, this definition indicates the applicability
of these strategies, i. e. not only is it a set of strategies but it can
also be tested by professional translators to see to what degree
they work if at all.

http://translationjournal.net/journal/63theory.htm

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