Chapter One

TRANSLATION AS A PROCESS
 What is to be translated and into what?
• ST, SL, TT, TL.
• “Stop”—one-word text. (How easy!!).
• Tabari’s Annals---over-volumes text. (How tough!!).
• Coherence is, above all, the keyword here.
 Strategic Decisions
• Answering a number of WHATS on ST is the answer.
• Its message content; salient (prominent) linguistic features; its principal
(chief) effects; genre & audience targeted; functions; implications;
priorities.
• Decisions of detail, i.e. how details dictate decisions on translating a text
(its grammar, lexis, context, etc.)
 Two Types of Simultaneous Activities
Inspected
• Understanding an ST.
• Formulating a TT.
• Revision of ST (rather interpretation) and TT formulation (more inseparably).
• “Experiential baggage” is one that is attendant on different occasions of
comprehension and interpretation of whatever is linguistically informative. This
baggage has, inter alia, knowledge, suppositions, beliefs, inferences, and
expectations
• Translation is not an exception.
 Forms of Translation
• Intersemiotic (e.g. traffic lights).
• Intralingual (in-book policeman’s conversation to some car-riders).
• A. A linguistic component B. A non-linguistic one C. An experiential one
• The total sum is an exegetic translation. (It’s unavoidable to think of
deno/connotative implications of a word). Cf. exegetic and gist translations

•
 Forms of Translation (T.B.C.)
• Interlingual: literal; idiomatic
• ‫ سورة اإلخالص‬is set an example.
• One original text and a multiplicity of renderings: (see pp 6-7)
 Tools for Translation
• A number of dictionaries, Arabic and English ones, discussed.
• A number of practices are made available.
• Collocations, denotations, among other things, are to be attended to.