Matthew B. McDonald

People sometimes throw around translation theories like baseballs: you cannot catch them (or grasp their meaning) because they are tricky, slippery on occasion, and challenging to handle. In this post, I intend to discuss the significance of translation theories.

You may have experience with translation theory, or perhaps you do not. The main point here is that translation theories can help inform your translation practice or your experience as an end-client.

First of all, no translation theory is perfect. When I entered my M.A. program in Translation Studies, I expected an ideal approach to translating. Then I would never have to worry about the ins and outs of translation again (that’s a bit exaggerated, but you catch my drift). But it’s simply not true that there is a unified theory about translation.

The reality that I later discovered through the study is that translation is a budding field with many theories about how and why it works. There are practical translation theories, and then there are the more theoretical translation theories. Both types are very informative.

Second of all, a translation theorist named James Holmes discovered and delineated the “arms” or translation studies branches. There were other translation scholars, enthusiasts, and translators before his discovery; however, his work represents a significant contribution to the field.

Now, as a translator or end-client, you are probably wondering: “Why is any of this important?”

I will begin with why it’s vital to translators; then, I will transition to why it can help clients know a bit about translation’s inner workings.

For translators, knowing some theory is helpful because it informs what to do with specific language problems. For example, in the languages I translate to and from Spanish and English, some pesky issues exist between them. I refer to the rhetorical style of each language.

Theorists and laymen alike refer to Spanish as a “flowery” language. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that, but I would say that its rhetorical style is more formal, and hence, there are more words used to express something that speakers would utter more simply in English.

As such, it’s good to know these things as translators, as we are comparative linguists by definition.

A client might think: “Why did she translate this in this way instead of another way?”

As an example, let’s use salutations in Spanish and English and compare their level of formality.

In Spanish, it’s prevalent to say things such as “a su disposición” in a formal business email, for example, as a sign-off.

In English, if we translated that literally, it would mean “at your service,” or even worse: “at your disposition.” Now, if you are familiar with English salutations, you can see how that would not be necessary to sign off in even the most formal of contexts.

Thus, there is an element of pragmatics that is important here that underlies translation.

This pragmatics element (which means how people use language) informs my translations to a high degree.

Of course, there are more complex examples that I won’t dive into in this brief blog post. But, pragmatics is an element of translation studies that is very important in determining how to write a translation.

Are there translations you have encountered that don’t sound right in your native language because of the level of formality used or for any other reason?