LANE-462-FA-HA-

Term 2- 2011

Levels of Translating By:

Dr. Shadia Y. Banjar

http://SBANJAR .kau.edu.sa/

http://wwwdrshadiabanjar.blogspot.com

Dr. Shadia Yousef Banjar 1

Newmark states that translating a source

text into a target text operates in four

levels :

1. Textual Level,

2. Referential Level,

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2. Referential Level,

3. Cohesive Level, and

4. Naturalness Level.

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THE FOUR LEVELS OF TRANSLATING

It involves the source text.

At this level, you decode or render the

syntactic structures of the source text into

their correspondent structures in the target

text.

THE TEXTUAL LEVEL

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text.

Sometimes you have to change these

structures into something quite different in

order to achieve the target language

naturalness.

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The referential level operates on the content of the ST. It

deals with the message or the meaning of the text.

On this level you decode the meaning of the source text

and build the conceptual representation.

This is where you simplify polysemous words and

phrases.

On it you decode idioms and figurative expressions.

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On it you decode idioms and figurative expressions.

This is where you figure out the pragmatic function of the

source text.

Once you have decoded the ST, you encode it into an

appropriate target language expressions.

The referential level and the textual

level are closely related because the

language of the source text conveys

the message, and you use

language to encode the message

into the target text.

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into the target text.

The cohesive level links the textual and the referential

levels .

It deals with the form and the meaning of the text .

Newmark identifies it as the mood of the text while others

call it the tone of the text. In fact, tone is the author's

attitude towards the text and the mood is the reader's

The cohesive level

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attitude towards the text and the mood is the reader's

attitude toward the text.

tone words can be negative, neutral, and positive.

TONE is simply the author’s attitude toward

the subject.

You can recognize the tone/attitude by the

language/word choices the author uses. His

language will reveal his perspective/opinion

(that is, whether it is positive/negative) about

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the subject.

Tone must be inferred through the use of

descriptive words.

MOODMOODMOODMOODMOOD is the overall feelings or emotions that

are created IN THE READER.

Authors “move” their readers’ moods through

their choice of words and level of detail.

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Cohesive devices are typically single words

or phrases that basically make the text hang

together. By analogy, they are much like the

seams in our clothing which keep items like

jackets and trousers together. Three

elementary examples of cohesive devices are

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elementary examples of cohesive devices are

word repetition, synonyms and pronouns.

Cohesion is the network of lexical, grammatical,

and other relations which link various parts of a

text. These relations or ties organize and, to

some extent, create a text, for instance, by

requiring the reader to interpret words and

expressions by reference to other words and

expressions in the surrounding sentences and

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expressions in the surrounding sentences and

paragraphs. Cohesion is a surface relation and

it connects together the actual words and

expressions that we can see or hear.

Halliday and Hasan identify five main cohesive

devices in English: reference, substitution,

ellipsis, conjunction, and lexical cohesion.

At the structural sublevel, you investigate how various

connectors, such as conjunctions, enumerations,

repetitions or reiterations, definite articles and

determiners, general category labels, synonyms,

punctuation marks, simple or complex conjuncts, link

sentences and structure the text and what Newmark

calls its train of thought – which is basically its underlying

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calls its train of thought – which is basically its underlying

information structure.

You establish the tone by finding the so-called value-laden

and value-free passages, such as subjective and objective

bits, euphemisms, and other framing devices,

framing being the strategy of linguistically presenting

something in the perspective of one's own values and worldview,

in a way promoting these.

An author will frequently use emotional language that is value-

ladened to affect our opinions. These words reflect the bias of

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ladened to affect our opinions. These words reflect the bias of

the author and can express positive or negative opinions or

biases toward the subject. Sometimes these words are referred

to as loaded words.

All of this will have to be somehow transferred into the target

text so you achieve maximal equivalence at this level to.

LINGUISTIC EQUIVALENCE

MAXIMAL EQUIVALENCE

EQUIVALENCE

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CULTURAL EQUIVALENCE

EQUIVALENCE

Catford’s Taxonomy

This level is target text oriented, focusing

exclusively on the construction of the target text.

It is important that:

1. the target text makes sense.

2. the target text reads naturally like any other text

composed in the target language.

The level of naturalness

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composed in the target language.

This is apparently more difficult than one might

expect, because one tends to reproduce a lot of

grammatical structures, phrases and wordings which

are natural in the source language but, while

possible in the target language, which do not feel

natural as such in the target language.

What makes things more complicated is that

naturalness often depends on the situation, such

that something might seem natural in one context

but unnatural in another.

The best, perhaps only way, to ensure naturalness

is to read through your translation and spot

unnaturally sounding parts and change them into

something that sounds more natural. This is

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something that sounds more natural. This is

something that most people skip when they do

translations.

Reference:A textbook of translation. Newmark, Peter,1988, Prentice-Hall International (New York).

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