Unit-II.

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Traducción e Interpretación

2º Grado en Estudios Ingleses

Facultad de Filología
Universidad Complutense de Madrid

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 Andrea García
Curso 2021 - 2022
Traducción y lingüística contrastiva

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Unit II – Types of translation
The word “type” refers to modalities or activities in which translation is involved. Voice-over, written
translation, interpretation, dubbing, etc. are examples of different modalities related to translation.
There are various types of translation but we are going to focus in two in concrete:

• General translation: processes of adaptation of a text from the source language to a target
language, sometimes to more languages. People who practice this activity are said to be
general translators.
• Specialised translation: translation which require deeper and more special knowledge. It is

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only practised by professional specialised in fields such as sales, advertising, legal…
By analysing the practice of translators, we can observe that there is a continuum which does not
make it easy to establish a differentiating line between both types of translation.
We can asses on the correctness of translation. There may be pitfalls but the most important thing is
that there is not only one correct way of translating a text. There are several reasons for variation, for
example, the purpose of the translation, the receptor language or even the translators themselves.
People talk about literal, idiomatic or free translations. These are folk views and generalised beliefs
on language and linguistic activities.

• Literal translations: follow very closely the grammatical and lexical forms of the source text
language.
• Idiomatic translations: are concerned with communicating the meaning of the source test by
using the natural grammatical and lexical items of the receptor language.
• Free translations: they are not unduly free as they add to the source text certain information.
We also have to make a difference between literal translation, semantic translation and
communicative translation. Literal translation is direct. It renders language from one langue too
another “word-to-word”. Semantic translation, on the other hand, is focused on the source text and
not on the recipient one, this is, the target text; and communicative translation is focused on the
audience as it is functional, recreational and deals with reformulation.
According to Newmask, there are some differences between semantic and communicative translation
as we can see in this table:

Semantic translation Communicative translation

Author-centred Reader-centred
Pursues author’s thought process. Related to
Pursues author’s intention. Related to speed
thought
Adapts and makes the thought and cultural and
Concerned with author as individual
original content more accessible to the reader

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 Andrea García
Curso 2021 - 2022
Semantic and syntactic oriented; length of
Effect oriented. Formal features or original
sentences, position, and integrity of clauses,
scarified more readily
word position preserved whenever possible
Faithful, more literal Faithful, freer
Informative Effective
Easy reading, more natural, smoother, simpler,
clearer, more direct, more conventional,
Usually more detailed
conforming to particular register of language

No se permite la explotación económica ni la transformación de esta obra. Queda permitida la impresión en su totalidad.
(but it may be longer)

However, Wang offers another set of differences. According to him, there is not a fixed or absolute
boundary between semantic and communicative translation.

Semantic translation Communicative translation

- It is a translating process of text from one
- Requires the translator to replicate the
culture to another.
original form from the SL to the TL as
- The translators should try to make the TL
much as possible. It regards the original
readers understand the SL author’s
words and phrases as sacred.

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thoughts, and make both readers share
- Semantic translation generally applies to
common ideas about the text.
literature, scientific and technical
- Genres that usually use the communicative
literature, and other genres that treat the
translation method are news report,
original language and contents as
textbooks, public announcements and
important as the translated ones.
many other non-literary works.

Translationese.
There are common tendencies for a different translated texts, tendencies that respond to cognitive and
contextual reasons affecting translators throughout the world. Translationese is a set of linguistic
features of translated texts which are different from both SL and TL.
One hypothesis is that translationese exists and is observable across the language. Its aim is to captive
the linguistic properties of translationese in observable and refutable facts, to detect and to classify
translated and non-translated texts based on their syntactic and lexical properties.
The idea is that there are “feature which typically occur in translated texts rather than original
utterances and which are not the result of interference from specific linguistic systems” (Baker, 1993).

Translation universals.
• Explication or explicitness: translations tend to be more explicit than the source text. That is
why it is used the repetition of redundant grammatical items like prepositions and it is optional
that connective is more frequent used in reported speech than in translated English.
• Simplification: the language of translations is assumed to be lexically and syntactically
simpler than non-translated target language texts. There is narrower range of vocabulary, this

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La vida son experiencias, Cuenta Smart

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 Andrea García
Curso 2021 - 2022
is, lower type-token ratio (different categories of what you are looking for and times that types
are repeated). Also, there are lower levels of information load: lower lexical density.
• Normalization: exaggeration of typical features of the TL. Translations tend to be more
unmarked and conventional, less creative and more conservative. There is a
conventionalization of metaphors and idioms, the dialectal and colloquial expressions are less
frequent and there is a lexical choice of standard translation.
• Interference from the source text and language: it can occur in the morphological, lexical
or syntactic level.

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• Unique items hypothesis: translated texts manifest lower frequencies of linguistic elements
that lack linguistic counterparts in the source languages such that these could also be used as
translation equivalents.
The, as yet relatively, small amount of research into potential translation universals has produced
contradictory results, which seems to digest that a search for real unrestricted universals in the field
of translation might turn out to be unsuccessful.

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si lees esto me debes un besito

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