Thinking Spanish Translation: A Course in Translation Method: Spanish to English (Thinking Translation)

241 Pages·1995·1.21 MB·English

by  Sándor Hervey

THINKING SPANISH
TRANSLATION
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THINKING
SPANISH
TRANSLATION

A Course in Translation Method:
Spanish to English

Sándor Hervey
Reader in Linguistics, University of St Andrews
Ian Higgins
Senior Lecturer in French, University of St Andrews
Louise M.Haywood
Lecturer in Spanish, University of St Andrews

London and New York
First published in 1995
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2002.
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
© 1995 Sándor Hervey, Ian Higgins and Louise M.Haywood
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book has been requested
ISBN 0-203-42952-4 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-73776-8 (Adobe eReader Format)
ISBN 0-415-11658-9 (hbk)
ISBN 0-415-11659-7 (pbk)
Contents
Acknowledgements viii
Introduction 1
1 Preliminaries to translation as a process 5
Practical 1 10
1.1 Intralingual translation 10
1.2 Gist translation 11
2 Preliminaries to translation as a product 12
Practical 2 17
2.1 Strategic decisions and decisions of detail; translation loss 17
2.2 Speed translation 19
3 Cultural issues in translation; compromise and compensation 20
Practical 3 32
3.1 Cultural transposition; compensation 32
3.2 Compensation 35
3.3 Cultural transposition; compensation 40
4 The formal properties of texts: phonic/graphic and prosodic
problems in translating 42
Practical 4 56
4.1 The formal properties of texts; phonic and prosodic 56
4.2 The formal properties of texts; graphic 57
4.3 The formal properties of texts; phonic/graphic and prosodic 60
5 The formal properties of texts: grammatical and lexical issues in
translation 61
Practical 5 69
5.1 The formal properties of texts; syntax 69
5.2 The formal properties of texts 70
6 The formal properties of texts: sentential, inter-sentential and intertextual
issues in translating 72
Practical 6 80
6.1 The formal properties of texts; the levels of sentence and discourse 80
vi Thinking Spanish translation
6.2 Speed translation 82
7 Literal meaning and translation problems 83
Practical 7 94
7.1 Particularizing, generalizing and partially overlapping translation 94
7.2 Speed translation 97
8 Connotative meaning and translation problems 98
Practical 8 105
8.1 Connotative meaning 105
8.2 Connotative meaning 108
9 Language variety in texts: dialect, sociolect, code-switching 110
Practical 9 117
9.1 Language variety: dialect and sociolect 117
9.2 Language variety: sociolect and code-switching 117
10 Language variety in texts: social register and tonal register 118
Practical 10 124
10.1 Language variety: social register and tonal register 124
10.2 Language variety: dialect, social register and tonal register 126
11 Textual genre as a factor in translation: oral and written genres 127
Practical 11 137
11.1 Genre 137
11.2 Genre 139
12 Genre marking and the crossover between oral and written genres 141
Practical 12 152
12.1 Subtitling 152
12.2 Speed translation 153
13 Technical translation 154
Practical 13 161
13.1 Technical translation 161
13.2 Technical translation 161
13.3 Technical translation 162
14 Translation of consumer-oriented texts 163
Practical 14 171
14.1 Consumer-oriented texts 171
14.2 Consumer-oriented texts 171
14.3 Consumer-oriented texts 173
14.4 Consumer-oriented texts 174
15 Stylistic editing 176
Practical 15 183
15.1 Stylistic editing 183
Contents vii
15.2 Stylistic editing 183
Contrastive topics and practicals: introduction 185
16 Contrastive topic and practical: subjunctive expressing purpose/aim
versus indicative expressing result/effect 187
Practical 16 191
16.1 Conjunctional phrases 191
17 Contrastive topic and practical: orders and requests 192
18 Contrastive topic and practical: pronominalization 198
Practical 18 205
18.1 Uses of ‘se’ 205
19 Contrastive topic and practical: passive and impersonal
constructions 207
20 Summary and conclusion 214
Glossary 219
References 226
Index 229
Acknowledgements
We owe a debt of gratitude to a number of friends and colleagues who helped us in
the elaboration of Thinking Spanish Translation: José Barroso Castro, Bernard
Bentley, Maggie Bolton, Mercedes Clarasó, Cathy Davies, Marta Gómez Mata,
Esther Gómez Sierra, Adrian Gratwick, John Minchinton, Alan Paterson, Raquel
de Pedro and Ralph Penny. We are particularly grateful to Gustavo San Román,
who read the entire typescript and made many helpful suggestions for its
improvement. We also owe a considerable debt to the many students whose critical
and creative participation in the successive versions of the course have helped to
give it its present shape. Finally, we would like to thank our editor, Jane Dennis,
for her alertness, forbearance and good-humoured help.
Introduction

This book is a revised version of a course in translation methodology taught mainly
to third- and fourth-year undergraduates of Spanish at the University of St Andrews.
A course of this type was first designed for students of French; the French-English
version was published by Routledge in 1992 under the title of Thinking Translation.
However, long before this publication, parallel courses were also developed for
German-English and Spanish-English. These courses are also currently taught at
St Andrews.
The present volume is a fully developed Spanish-English version of the course.
(A German-English version is being published concurrently.) While it will be found,
in many respects, to correspond to the 1992 version of Thinking Translation, it is a
self-contained, ‘parallel’ coursebook for English-speaking students of Spanish,
with both major and minor departures from the 1992 version. Some of these
departures spring from specific differences between Spanish and French (for
instance the ‘contrastive topics’ in Chapters 16 to 19). Others result from the
inevitable process by which ideas are refined through continued application and
practice (for instance the section on ‘oral genres’ in Chapter 11). The most evident
area of revision is to the course structure. This consists in the inversion of the order
in which ‘textual levels’ are presented. In the 1992 version we opted for what
Mona Baker (1992, p. 6) calls a ‘top-to-bottom’ arrangement: that is to say, textual
levels were discussed starting with the broadest and most general level and ending
with the level of the smallest, most particular units of language. However, the St
Andrews Spanish-English course has always been taught using a ‘bottom-to-top’
approach (the approach which, incidentally, Mona Baker favours). Our experience
has confirmed that students prefer to work from the particular to the general.
Therefore, in the present volume we follow a ‘bottom-to-top’ approach.
Let us now briefly outline a few basic assumptions underlying our approach.
First, this course is not a disguised version of the traditional ‘grammar-and-
translation’ method of language teaching. Our focus is on how to translate from
Spanish, not how to communicate in Spanish. We assume that students already
have the considerable linguistic resources in Spanish needed to benefit from the
course and that they already possess basic dictionary and research skills. Naturally,
in using these resources and skills to produce good translations, they inevitably extend
and improve their competence in Spanish. This is an important fringe benefit; but, as