Faithful translation of biblical literature will seek to avoid the pitfalls of translationese. Typical examples of translationese - often referred to as “translation universals”: normalization, simplification, and explicitation. Unfaithful translation on the contrary accomplishes those very things. More often than one might imagine, with malice aforethought.
Ilan Bloch provides a handy overview of translation universals. The triad, normalization, simplification, and explicitation, is his. Bloch focuses on the phenomenon of sentence-splitting. The phenomenon is of extreme interest to students of the Tanakh; one might note for example how the received division of Psalm 27 into verses (pesuqim) attempts to avoid the splitting up of sentences. For Bloch's essay, go here.
The thrust of a splendid volume by Susanna Basso (Sul tradurre: esperienze e divagazioni militanti [Milano: Mondadori, 2010]), from which I take a longer list of translation universals, from Antoine Berman (La traduzione e la lettera o L’albergo nella lontananza [Quodlibet: Macerata, 2003], is that a translator of literature - that is what Basso does for a living - must do her best to avoid translation universals. I could not agree more.
1) la razionalizzazione = rationalization
2) la chiarificazione = clarification
3) l’allungamento = dilatation
4) la nobilitazione o la volgarizzazione = gussying up or casualization
5) l’impoverimento qualitativo = qualitative impoverishment
6) i’impoverimento quantitativo = quantitative impoverishment
7) l’omogeneizzazione = homogeneization
8) la distruzione dei ritmi = destruction of rhythms
9) la distruzione dei reticoli significanti sooggiacenti = destruction of underlying signifying networks
10) la distruzione dei sistematismi testuali = destruction of systems encoded in the text
11) la distruzione (o esoticizzazione) dei reticoli linguistici o vernacolari = destruction (or foreignizing) of linguistic networks or vernacular speech networks
12) la cancellazione delle sovrapposizioni di lingue = cancellation of the superimposition of two or more languages
CD-Host opines that the only way to translate a text into “natural English” is to paraphrase. If one’s top priority is to translate into “natural English,” that may well be true.
But if one’s top priority is to translate a text, that is, to carry over into a target language as faithfully as possible macro- and micro- detail of a source text, then a “Puritan” as opposed to a “Cavalier” style of translation will be adopted. On this distinction, go here.
A “Puritan” translation lies on the formal side of the translation technique spectrum; a “Cavalier” style, on the paraphrase side of the spectrum.
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