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Essays on Translation

The importance of writing an essay on translation.

Writing an essay on translation is important for several reasons. Firstly, it allows the writer to explore and analyze the complex process of translating text from one language to another. This can help to deepen the writer's understanding of the challenges and nuances of translation, as well as the cultural and linguistic differences that must be navigated. Additionally, writing an essay on translation can contribute to the academic study of translation, helping to advance knowledge and understanding in this field.

Furthermore, writing an essay on translation can also be personally beneficial. It can improve the writer's critical thinking and analytical skills, as well as their ability to communicate complex ideas clearly and effectively. It can also help the writer to develop a deeper appreciation for the art and skill of translation, and the important role it plays in facilitating communication and understanding across languages and cultures.

Writing Tips for an Essay on Translation

When writing an essay on translation, it is important to approach the topic with a thoughtful and critical mindset. Here are some tips to help you write an effective essay on translation:

  • Choose a specific aspect of translation to focus on, such as the challenges of translating idiomatic expressions or the impact of cultural differences on translation.
  • Do thorough research to gather relevant information and examples to support your arguments.
  • Consider the perspectives of both the original author and the translator, as well as the cultural and historical context in which the translation is taking place.
  • Use clear and precise language to explain your ideas and arguments, and provide concrete examples to illustrate your points.
  • Consider the ethical and moral implications of translation, such as the potential for bias or misinterpretation.
  • Conclude your essay with a thoughtful reflection on the significance of the topic and the implications for the broader field of translation.

By following these tips, you can write an engaging and insightful essay on translation that contributes to the understanding and appreciation of this important field.

  • The role of translation in cross-cultural communication
  • The impact of technology on translation
  • The challenges of literary translation
  • The ethics of translation
  • The influence of translation on global business
  • The importance of accurate translation in legal documents
  • The evolution of translation theory
  • The role of translation in diplomacy and international relations
  • The impact of machine translation on the profession
  • The cultural implications of translation
  • The role of translators in preserving endangered languages
  • The impact of translation on the spread of ideas and knowledge
  • The psychology of translation: how do translators make decisions?
  • The role of translation in the spread of religion
  • The challenges of translating humor and wordplay
  • The role of translation in the media and entertainment industry
  • The impact of translation on tourism and travel
  • The role of translation in the field of medicine and healthcare
  • The challenges of translating poetry
  • The influence of translation on education and learning
  • The role of translation in the digital age
  • The impact of translation on international development
  • The role of translation in preserving cultural heritage
  • The challenges of translating idioms and cultural references
  • The impact of translation on the field of law and justice
  • The role of translation in the field of science and technology
  • The influence of translation on the field of marketing and advertising
  • The importance of translation in the field of international business
  • The role of translation in the field of immigration and refugee resettlement
  • The challenges of translating dialects and regional languages
  • The impact of translation on the field of human rights and social justice
  • The role of translation in the field of international aid and development
  • The influence of translation on the field of environmental conservation
  • The importance of translation in the field of disaster response and relief efforts
  • The role of translation in the field of sports and athletics
  • The impact of translation on the field of cultural diplomacy
  • The challenges of translating historical documents and artifacts
  • The influence of translation on the field of travel and tourism
  • The importance of translation in the field of international law and diplomacy
  • The role of translation in the field of international trade and commerce

Translation is a crucial aspect of global communication, enabling people from different linguistic and cultural backgrounds to understand and connect with one another. In today's interconnected world, the demand for skilled translators has never been higher, with the need for accurate and culturally sensitive translations spanning a wide range of industries and fields.

One of the key topics in the field of translation is the role of translators in preserving endangered languages. As the world becomes increasingly globalized, many languages are at risk of disappearing as their speakers adopt more dominant languages for everyday communication. Translators play a crucial role in documenting and preserving these endangered languages, ensuring that their unique cultural and linguistic nuances are not lost to future generations.

Another important topic is the impact of technology on translation. With the advent of machine translation tools and artificial intelligence, the translation industry is undergoing a significant transformation. While these technological advancements have the potential to streamline the translation process and improve efficiency, they also raise important questions about the role of human translators and the quality of machine-generated translations.

The challenges of translating humor and wordplay also present an interesting area of study. Humor and wordplay are often deeply rooted in cultural references and linguistic nuances, making them particularly challenging to translate accurately. Understanding how translators navigate these challenges and maintain the comedic and linguistic essence of the original text is a fascinating topic for exploration.

In addition, the influence of translation on the field of marketing and advertising is a topic of growing importance. As businesses seek to expand their reach into global markets, the need for effective and culturally sensitive translations in marketing materials has become increasingly critical. Understanding the impact of translation on consumer perceptions and purchasing decisions is essential for businesses looking to succeed in diverse international markets.

Furthermore, the role of translation in the field of international aid and development is another important area of study. Translators play a vital role in ensuring that critical information and resources are accessible to communities in need, particularly in the aftermath of natural disasters, conflicts, and humanitarian crises. Exploring the challenges and opportunities of translation in these contexts can provide valuable insights into improving the effectiveness of international aid efforts.

Overall, the field of translation offers a rich and diverse array of topics for exploration, spanning cultural, linguistic, technological, and ethical dimensions. As the demand for skilled translators continues to grow, understanding the complexities and impact of translation across different fields and industries is essential for fostering effective global communication and collaboration.

Beowulf: a Tale of Heroism and Legacy

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Anne Carson’s Translations of Sappho as a Dialogue with The Past

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Writing For Translation: 15 Tips to Streamline Your Content

ink illustration of hand holding pen with text saying "how to write translation-friendly source content" agains turquoise background

The French say a translation cannot be belle et fidèle – beautiful and faithful. Although they have nailed it in many respects (can you imagine a world without mayonnaise ?) on this, we can't agree. A translation can be as beautiful AND accurate as the source text – if done properly. 

Does it all depend on the linguist's ability? 

Well, not entirely.

A Fine Translation Starts With a Fine Source Text

When it comes to translating , it takes two to tango. It's a team effort where translators are your best friends, carrying your brilliant ideas and products to faraway places where people speak and think differently . Places you wouldn't be able to reach otherwise. All they ask of you is not to forget they exist and try to make their work easier. Why would you do that? Because you are a nice person. But most importantly, because easier for them means better and faster for you .

Federico Fellini said: "a different language is a different vision of life." Because whatever text you need to translate (a marketing document , product descriptions for an eCommerce website , or a legal contract ), the process does not involve merely replacing words in language A with words in language B. 

The importance of non-verbal, context-related clues may be more evident in spoken communication (facial expressions, body language, gestures, tone of voice). Yet written communication can be just as tricky, only more subtly so. For example, cultural references and nuances may be hidden in the word order, the choice of metaphors, and the deliberate use of long, complex sentences. Because in some cases, clarity is not even the ultimate goal of communication: cue in the notorious legalese , for instance.

This, from a translation point of view, is unhealthy. It makes the process lengthier and riskier: the translator may either be very scrupulous and ask for continuous clarifications (meaning you, the client, have to spend more time on the assignment) or decide that, after all, time is money and make one-handed decisions without consulting on doubtful passages beforehand. He may get it right, or he may not.

This is why you want your translator to understand exactly what you mean to say. The result will be a faster, clearer, more accurate translation. And, of course, a happier linguist (but that's a bonus). 

How can your writing team achieve this? 

By keeping in mind these few easy tips when writing for translation.

#1 Keep it Short and Sweet

two exotic goldfish swimming with black background

Avoid long, complex sentences. Shorter sentences (and fewer words) will boost readability and make your texts easier to understand and translate, with less risk of blunders.  According to Time magazine , the average person loses concentration after about 8 seconds, while the average attention span of a goldfish is 9 seconds. So if you want to keep the goldfish engaged (and prevent your translator from becoming entangled in syntax), your sentence length should be around 20-25 words.

#2 Respect the Word Order of the English You Must

image of a Yoda figurine

English is an SVO (Subject-Verb-Object) language. We say:

"Jane loves mayonnaise."

Other languages, such as Korean , Turkish, Punjabi, and Tamil for example, follow a different word order, that is to say, SOV (Subject-Object-Verb). Therefore, in SOV languages, a sentence such as this is perfectly correct:

"Jane mayonnaise loves."

There are also VSO languages with Verb-Subject-Object sentences. Arabic, Filipino, Hawaiian, Irish, Scottish Gaelic, and Tongan are all SVO languages, and we would have:

"Loves Jane mayonnaise."

And then, of course, there's Yoda , OSV ("Mayonnaise, Jane loves" ), but you need not worry about that. Google Translate has excelled in it.

As you can see, the word order has its standard rules, which, if not respected, may cause the meaning to become unclear.

So, if you are writing in English, stick to SVO .

#3 Preferably Avoidable Translator Confusing Long Noun Strings

Variety of yarns entangled together.jpg

English is brilliant. You can convey complex meanings just by juxtaposing nouns.

Convenient.

Except when the noun string becomes too long, and the translator risks getting fuddled.

Here is an excellent example taken from plainlanguage.gov :

National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's automobile seat belt interlock rule

Now, compare it with this one.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's interlock rule that applies to automotive seat belts

When writing for translation, use articles, prepositions, and other wee words that will help avoid noun strings and explain the relationship between various sentence elements, thus making the meaning clearer and the translation process smoother.

#4 Lazy is Good. Avoid Synonyms.

lazy black dog lying on a bar stool

When you wrote essays in school, chances are you were told that repetitions denoted laziness. Synonyms are all the hype with English teachers. Bless them. 

However, when you are writing for translation, you can relax. Repetitive content equals content quality. It is exactly what your translation company wants you to use.

Because consistency is key. It improves clarity and helps reduce costs as translation memories leverage words . Recycling (in this case, re-using existing content) is always a good idea. And CAT (Computer-Aided-Translation) tools do just that: they divide the content into text segments and re-use what has already been translated. 

You pay less , turnaround is faster , and consistency is assured.

#5 Seriously, Forget About Jokes

black and white headshot of man wearing clown glasses, nose and moustache and a cigar in his hand

We all like a good laugh, but nothing is more culture-bound than humor. Think of puns or wordplay. Unfortunately, most humorous intent gets lost in translation, and linguists have no choice but to neutralize it or rack their brains looking for an equivalent in the target language.

Translating jokes and one-liners is time-consuming, not to mention risky. What you find funny may even be considered a cultural taboo overseas. 

Ask yourself: "do I really need jokes to get my message across?" If you don't, avoid humor. Your source content will be easier to translate, and you will not risk rubbing anybody the wrong way. If, however, you believe humor is a crucial part of what you are writing and you don't want to give it up, transcreation may be what you need (more info in this little guide ).

#6 DD-MM-YYYY Vs. MM-DD-YYY. The Problem With International Dates.

Japanese calendar

The United States is one of the very few countries that use "mm-dd-yyyy" as their date format. In some Asian countries, the year is written first, followed by the month and day (yyyy-mm-dd). But in most countries, the day is written first and the year last (dd-mm-yyyy). 

In business communication, this difference is frequently a cause for misunderstanding.

in the States, 06/07/2022 would be June 7th, 2022

But in France, it would be July 6th, 2022.

You can avoid this by writing dates out in full (October 18, 2022), thus making them clear even for international readers who are not familiar with the American date format.

#7 How Long is Long? Imperial Vs. Metric System.

Map of World showing which countries use imperial and which metric system for measurements in 2019

Ounces, inches, and Fahrenheit, not to mention gallons and tablespoons. These measurement units are an unfamiliar or distant memory to most people worldwide. Only the US, Liberia and Myanmar use the imperial system, in which distance, height, weight, or area measurements can be traced back to body parts or everyday items.

When you are writing for translation and you are from a country where measurements are expressed in imperial units, you should add the metric equivalent in parenthesis: 120mph (192,12kph). This addition will ease the translation process and ensure your data are as accurate as you need them.

#8 Cut Down on Phrasal Verbs

Yellow banana cut in half sinking in yellow background

Phrasal verbs are the convenience store of the English language. You take a verb, add a preposition or two, and voilà – you have a wholly new verb, often more direct and idiomatic than its single-word equivalent.

Take a phrasal verb such as "to get."

You "get away" (have a vacation), then "get back" (return from the said vacation). It's time to "get down" (begin) to work. You soon "get wound up" (angry) because you don't "get on" (have a good relationship) with your colleagues, who "get at" you (criticize you all the time). If only you could "get rid of them" (eliminate them). But you can't. So you "get it over with" (finish what you are doing) and "get over it" (stop being bothered by it).

Now put yourself in your translator's sorry shoes and cut down on (avoid!) phrasal verbs. Instead, use the standard verb form to make your text clearer and improve your source content quality.

#9 Use the Active Voice. The Passive Is To Be Avoided (By You).

When a sentence is in passive voice, the object is the one performing the action. Sometimes, the agent who is responsible for the action is even omitted. We may want to do that because we don't know who they are, or they are implied or unimportant, or we'd rather not say.

The passive voice is highly popular with academics ("A research was conducted…") and politicians ("Mistakes were made"). When you were in school, your English teacher (the one obsessed with synonyms) probably told you to avoid passive structure. Except, it turns out that sometimes the passive voice is exactly what you need. Your teacher should have told you: "use active voice as a general rule, and switch to passive only when you have a good reason to."

Why is this even more important if you are writing for translation?

  • Not all languages have a passive voice (for more information, check out this list at The World Atlas of Language Structures)
  • Even though most languages have an alternation of passive and active voices, the use of passive may not be as frequent in other languages as in English. Take French, for example, where the impersonal pronoun "on" is used to make even agent-less sentences active.

So, just this once, your English teacher may have had a point.

#10 Ominous Homonyms & Co.

eggs in tray with painted faces on white surface

More often than not, we can understand the meaning of a word based on the context. However, sometimes the context may not be there to help us. Imagine an Excel spreadsheet, with isolated cells where terms are not preceded or followed by any additional information. In this case, you may be unlucky enough to come across some of the trickiest words in your native language, namely:

HOMONYMS – words with the same sound or spelling but multiple meanings.

e.g.: TIRE (car wheel) and TIRE (fatigue), SHIP (vessel) and SHIP (to dispatch)

HETERONYMS – words that have the same spelling but different meanings and pronunciation

e.g., CONVICT (a prisoner) and CONVICT (to find guilty)

and even CONTRONYMS , a.k.a. Janus words (Janus was an ancient Roman god with two faces that looked in opposite directions), that is to say, terms that, depending on the context, can have opposite or contradictory meanings.

e.g., to LEASE: (to offer property for rent or to hold such property) SANCTION: (to approve or to punish)

Avoiding these very particular types of words will help clarify your text's meaning and make translation easier.

#11 AAAAAAC (Avoid Acronyms And Abbreviations At All Costs)

white letters stacked on wooden table

If you are a scientific or financial writer, you are no doubt familiar with acronyms and abbreviations of technical terms, which make your everyday communication easier and faster. However, suppose you are writing global content. In that case, you should probably steer clear of them (or at least provide a glossary or explanation of the acronyms and abbreviations you decide to use).

An acronym – i.e., a word formed from the initial letters of several words – rarely translates well into another language (apart from universally understood acronyms such as CEO – Chief Executive Officer). Relying on acronyms and abbreviations when writing for translation can be risky, sometimes leading to dangerous misunderstandings. 

Take AD, for example. 

Authorized Dealer, right? Or is it Art Director? Air Defense? Architectural Design, perhaps? Not to mention the possible meanings the same acronym may have in other languages.

Again, the context may help, or it may not. When writing for translation, the rule of thumb is to write the word in full. The translator will thank you for this, and the target language (TL!) version will be accurate.

#12 Figures of Speech Can Make The Translation Process Go... Pear Shaped

essay for translation

Without figures of speech, language would be dull. Figures of speech give everyday language some poetry, sometimes making even the most mundane topic worth listening to or reading. 

With metaphors , we transfer properties typical of an object or action to another object or action with which they are normally not associated. 

Politicians love them.

At the start of the Space Race, John F. Kennedy announced:

"America has tossed its cap over the wall of space!"

Had he said:

"The US is going to be the first to send its spaceship to the moon,"

his speech would have probably been long forgotten.

But he didn't. And we still remember his exact words.

If your goal is not to make history but to ensure your content is as clear and easily translatable as possible , forget figures of speech. Metaphors are not always obvious and can even pass unnoticed. In that case, they might be translated literally. And this is usually a terrible idea.

When it comes to translating anything but literature, what is important is the meaning of the source text. 

Until, of course, you decide to run for Presidency. In which case you can use all the metaphors you like, and we will be honored to translate your speeches for the world to read.

#13 Keep An Iron Fence Between Your Text and Your Graphics

iron fence locked with chain

Your documents may contain charts, screenshots, or other graphic elements. If those elements contain text, translating them may be very complicated. It may even require some DTP (desktop publishing), inevitably leading to additional costs and a longer turnaround time.

When writing for translation, you can avoid this by creating separate text boxes or callouts in the source text. As a result, the translation will be faster, and you will save money.

#14 Does The Target Language Fi t ?

a very long name of a town on a road sign against green bushes in background

If you are writing a contract or a technical report, the translation turning out longer than the source text is probably irrelevant. If, however, you are preparing a multilingual brochure or catalog, you need to ensure the layout has sufficient space to accommodate the text in target languages.

Some languages tend to have greater individual word length – German being one of these. Want an example? 

Rinderkennzeichnungsfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz is currently the longest word in the Duden dictionary. Try fitting that one into a narrow column. 

On the other hand, other languages may have shorter words but a more complex syntax and, therefore, higher word count (Italian, for example). 

But the result is the same: the translation may take more space (up to thirty percent!) compared to your English text. 

So, if you want to ensure you don't have problems with text expansion, ask our team of experts at LingPerfect. Depending on the language, we can tell you how much your text will likely bump up once translated.

#15 Who, What, When, Where, and Why. Details Matter.

Silhouette of Sherlock Holmes

The five old W's. They apply to journalism, research, police investigation, and writing for translation. Whoever translates for you needs to know exactly what you want to say, to whom you are saying it, and why.

Plus, any relevant background information (reference materials). For example, in what context is the translation going to be used? How formal does it need to be? This sort of information is crucial, especially in hierarchical cultures where a high level of formality is expected in some circles.

Need Further Help With Getting Your Source Text Translation-Ready?

essay for translation

If you follow these 15 tips when writing for translation, you can rest assured that the process will be accurate, fast, and cost-effective. Of course, you will also become your translator's favorite client, which is a bonus.

If your content is already available and you don't have the time for linguistic subtleties, remember at LingPerfect translation company, we can deal with the consultation and editing of source texts to ensure their seamless translation.

Our experts are at your disposal.

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Resonate with readers of all linguistic backgrounds with a professional essay translation

Essays are considered a major literary work that is utilized towards the purpose of educational attainment and personal fulfillment. An essay is described as a literary piece of written work that presents an author’s ideas and arguments using specific evidence or explanations to support the claims being made in the paper. There are two distinct classification of essays recognized in literature. An academic or formal essay is a major part of a formal education that serves to provide a structured sequence of arguments that support the writer’s major thesis. Whereas, an informal essay can be characterized as a personal manifesto or fictional short story written by an author. Essays are typically written as a part of an individual’s academic studies, and are often requested by universities as part of their admissions process when selecting future applicants. Linguation Online Translation Agency is experienced in translating the contents of an essay in any number of language combinations. Skilled experts with the knowledge of the relevant subject matter will work to produce an accurate translation that resonate with audiences around the world.

Collaborate with top translators with a background in the academic discipline

It is evident that essays are utilized towards a diverse range of objectives. At Linguation Online Translation Agency, we are committed to offering services dedicated to the professional translation of essays for all endeavours. We will delegate an expert in the field of academia to perform the translation service. They will collaborate with the client to produce a translation that accurately represents their ideas in a logical and clear manner. Our experts understand the importance of intellectual property and will work to preserve the author’s original words and message in the language of the target audience. They will find an equivalent translation for all specific terms used in the source document and adapt unclear statements in a way that can be understood by the recipient of the text. Our experts will be responsible for incorporating the appropriate industry standards and proper requirements that will ensure the successful outcome of the essay translation.

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The maintenance of a client’s personal information and delivering the quality output of their translation is the number one priority at Linguation Online Translation Agency. All of our experts from every industrial background are aware of the personal and sensitive content often presented in a document. For these reasons, they will abide by Linguation’s strict confidentiality agreement when performing a translation service. Furthermore, our experts will apply our two-step quality management process to guarantee the successful outcome of the translated document. The aim of the process is to certify that the translation is free of all errors, any ambiguous statements have been revised according to the context of the document, do a final evaluation that will verify that the translation adheres to the correct requirements of its intended industry, and that it is an accurate representation of the source document. Only upon the successful completion of this process will our experts be satisfied in delivering the finish product to the client.

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essay for translation

Reading in Translation

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Essays on Translation

  • Reading Domenico Starnone
  • READING NATALIA GINZBURG
  • Translators on Books that Should be Translated
  • Write for US

In this section we publish short essays on the art and craft of literary translation, on translation theory, on reading literature in translation, or reports from events on literary translation. Our goal is to introduce new ideas or reflect on old ones, to create a dialogue around issues in literary translation, and to keep you informed about happenings in the world of literary translation.

Bibikhin’s Task of the Translator: Introducing “On the Problems of Determining the Essence of Translation “

By Margarita Marinova and Anna Alsufieva

essay for translation

Vladimir Veniaminovich Bibikhin (1938-2004) was a Russian philosopher, translator, and philologist. Although the order of these descriptors can vary, what they all have in common is the careful attention to the “word as an event” (after Bakhtin) in their attempt to uncover the ontological foundations of language. This complex issue was the focus of Bibikhin’s thought in general.

During the 1970s and 1980s, he established himself as a prominent translator of the most complex philosophical, theological, and literary texts, and as a widely respected humanitarian scholar of a rare and extensive erudition. Bibikhin’s article we have chosen to present for the first time in English here, “On the Problem of Determining the Essence of Translation,” was written in 1973, but to understand its significance one must go further back in time, to the 1920s and ‘30s.

On the Problem of Determining the Essence of Translation

By Vladimir Bibikhin . Translated from Russian by Margarita Marinova

essay for translation

To the extent to which translation is a new re-play, a re-shaping of the given material according to the universal language rules, it is, in principle, just as independent as the original. It is simply that same original, only re-cast in a new form, and continuing to live in that new form. The original appears to be original only outwardly, in a temporal sense. In essence, that is, in its relation to the possibilities of human speech, it is not more original than the translation.

The original is lost, imprisoned in its private form. Translatability rescues it from those constraints. It reveals the fundamental, even if only potential opportunity of the original to exist in any form.  Translatability shows that while the original may have been written in Japanese or Abkhazian, it was also first written in the universal human language. But, having liberated the original from its individual form, the translator now must breathe into it a new life in his native speech, recognizing and affirming in the process the universality of his own native tongue.

Against Camouflage: Jozefina Komporaly on Translating from Hungarian Melinda Mátyus’ “MyLifeandMyLife”

By Jozefina Komporaly

essay for translation

Melinda Mátyus’ novel in verse MyLifeandMyLife  is one of the most original pieces of experimental fiction published in Hungarian in recent years. The book’s protagonist is desperately in love with a mysterious male figure, and this emotional dependency not only leads her to give up her agency but also gradually paves the way to her suffocation and ultimate demise. Melinda Mátyus writes in bold and deeply touching ways about contemporary women and her protagonists examine womanhood in a variety of manifestations and configurations.

This is the first translation of Mátyus’ work in a foreign language and it comes in a bilingual edition, with the original Hungarian following Jozefina Komporaly’s English translation. We are grateful to Ugly Duckling Presse for allowing us to publish here Komporaly’s translator’s note in which she discusses Mátyus’ unique sense of grammar and syntax, and her own approach to translating it.

The Afterlives of Natalia Ginzburg’s “The Road to the City”

By Stiliana Milkova Rousseva

essay for translation

Natalia Ginzburg wrote The Road to the City (La strada che va in città) in the fall of 1941, during a time of persecution, hardship, and deprivation. The previous year her husband Leone Ginzburg, a prominent intellectual and anti-fascist activist, had been confined to internal exile in the remote village of Pizzoli in the Abruzzo region. Natalia and their children had left their home in Turin and joined him in October 1940, forging a family and professional life in exile, despite the difficult conditions of their everyday reality.

The Road to the City  came out in 1942, under the pseudonym “Alessandra Tornimparte,” which Ginzburg used to evade Mussolini’s antiracial law restricting Jews from publishing. This novella was her first longer work, and it already contained the salient features of her poetics: stylistic economy and understatement, simplicity of diction, psychology constructed through details and actions, and a topographic imagination with the road and the city as its organizing figures.

Toward a Speculative Poetics of Translation: Janine Beichman’s Translation from Japanese of Ishigaki Rin’s “This Overflowing Light”

By James Garza

essay for translation

Over a career spanning decades, Ishigaki Rin (1920-2004) forged a poetry of keen moral discernment and wry self-discovery. On the one hand, her work was democratic in its language and outlook, premised on the possibility of liberation from the strictures of poverty and repressive social institutions. But it was also grounded in the absurdities of the everyday and the domestic, with a propensity for sharp turns into darkness. While this picture is not wrong, Janine Beichman argues in This Overflowing Light: Selected Poems (Isobar Press, 2022), it needs an update to recover several vital aspects of her poetics. In the volume’s artful and engaging introduction, Beichman calls our attention to several correspondences with contemporary poetics: first, there is the speculative orientation of Ishigaki’s work, capable of uncanny leaps in spatial and temporal perspective. Then there is its under-explored connection to eco-critical thought. And finally there is its playful but intense awareness of the agentive role of fantasy and imagination in constructing ‘real life.’  

Always Against: On Translating the Punk Rock Lyrics of Egor Letov

By Katie Frevert

essay for translation

During the second half of the 1980s, the liberalizing reforms of perestroika ushered in a renaissance period for the Soviet Union’s nascent rock scene. Bands that had gotten their start in underground apartment concerts could court mainstream success at rock clubs in the western Russian centers of Leningrad, Moscow, and Sverdlovsk under the watchful eye of state security. If the music of the degenerate West could not be eradicated, they reasoned, the KGB could curtail its harmful influence by supervising concerts, ensuring that politically dubious or stylistically unorthodox groups remained in the margins.

Yet in the western Siberian cities of Omsk, Novosibirsk, and Tiumen’, where no such officially sanctioned venues existed, young rockers captivated by Western punk bypassed the censors by remaining underground and creating music openly critical of the Soviet system. The most well-known figure in this emerging punk counterculture was Igor Fёdorovich (“Egor”) Letov (1964-2008), who in 1984 founded the band Grazhdanskaia oborona (Civil Defense)

Julia Kornberg’s “Atomizado Berlín”: Creating a New Reader Across Translation

By Nora Méndez

essay for translation

In this essay, I investigate how Julia Kornberg writes a novel that challenges and subverts this ‘lazy’ reader with stylistic, formal, and thematic innovations, and think about how a translation of her text, though difficult or precisely because of that, has the ability to support and communicate across another language her careful mediation of the demands of the global literary market. In what follows I pay specific attention to how Kornberg utilizes the novel’s topic-choice, ambiguity of context, and inclusion of words in English, French, and other languages, to challenge the reader that the global literary market caters to reclaim their agency and individuality as able and active readers.

Stumbling Through the “Foreign”: A Look at Poupeh Missaghi’s Poetics of Translation

By Anna Learn

essay for translation

Poupeh Missaghi wants you , the reader, to stumble. 

In her genre-twisting 2020 novel trans(re)lating house one , the writer and translator declares, “I want you to be disrupted when you arrive here, feel some discomfort, feel out of place” (35). Although trans(re)lating house one is presented to us in English, Missaghi insists that Persian is the true language of its characters and city. The book was ‘translated’ from Persian to English, then, before it was ever written. For this reason, throughout her novel, Missaghi seeks to “acknowledge the Otherness of both the territory and the language to you, make them visible, and celebrate them” (35).

Er asing the Dividing Line: On Christian Bancroft’s “Queering Modernist Translation”

By Conor Bracken

essay for translation

“Translation is having a queer moment,” Christian Bancroft writes in the introduction to his monograph, Queering Modernist Translation (Routledge, 2020). The moment has been a long time coming: both fields, translation and queer studies, were thriving by the turn of the 21 st century, but only over the past ten years have special issues and edited essay collections begun to emerge with some frequency to consider their intersection, and the resulting “expansive ways of imagining the relationships among languages as they relate to the identities, cultures, and societies that produce them” (1). The uninitiated may wonder, what can queer theory offer translation, as a study and practice, aside from ways of uncovering or confronting the gender biases and heteronormativity in and between languages? Much more than that, I can enthusiastically report.

Reading Elena Ferrante in Bulgaria(n)

By Stiliana Milkova

essay for translation

Last year I read Elena Ferrante’s new novel The Lying Life of Adults ( La vita bugiarda degli adulti ) in Bulgarian, in Ivo Yonkov’s translation. It was September 2020, it had just been released by Ferrante’s Bulgarian publisher, Colibri , and I was in Bulgaria myself. I went to Helikon, the largest bookshop in my home town Burgas, and asked for Ferrante’s new novel. The saleswoman quickly showed it to me on the shelf and recommended, since I was interested in Ferrante, that I also buy Nora Roberts’s (or was it Danielle Steel’s?) latest novel. I didn’t argue with her – I just picked up The Lying Life of Adults , paid for it and left. I refrained from telling her that Ferrante’s book was not a romance novel and the bookstore should reconsider its classification. I didn’t tell her that I was a Ferrante expert, that my book Elena Ferrante as World Literature was coming out in a few months, that it was the first scholarly monograph on Ferrante written in English, and by a Bulgarian at that.

Always to Seek: On Reading Russian Literature in Translation

By Brandy Harrison

essay for translation

It all began with youthful audacity. When someone asked me one day, “What are you reading? , ” the answer was War and Peace. There was a pause, a faint flicker of confusion in the face hovering above my own, and then a slower, more tentative second question: “Why . . . are you reading that? ”

I, at seventeen, sitting propped up against my locker in the hallway, didn’t really have an answer. The plain grey hardcover teetering against my knees looked as thick and heavy as a brick (he said), and why would anyone want to read some novel about the . . . Russians . . . during the – what was it, again? The Napoleonic Wars? What was the point?

I shrugged with adolescent nonchalance. “I don’t know. It’s interesting.”

Neither Here and There: The Misery and Splendor of (Reverse) Translation*

by  Ekaterina Petrova

essay for translation

Translation is a gnarly business. Even more so when you’re doing it the wrong way around.

In Bulgarian, which I translate from, translating into a language that’s not your native tongue is colloquially known as  obraten prevod , which literally means “reverse translation.” As an adjective,  obraten  carries the negative connotation of something abnormal or backward, something that goes against the grain, or something that simply isn’t right. 

A Materialist Approach to Translation

By Sophie Drukman-Feldstein

essay for translation

The translator’s sin is that of breaching the mythology which surrounds the individual authorial voice. The literary world erases the translator in order to preserve the liberal ideal of individual genius. And yet this erasure is not a distinctive problem of translation, but rather an expression of the worker’s alienation from the product of their labor. It is in fact the narrative of authorship which is unusual, in that literature is one of the few commodities which, rather than being conceptually distanced from the workers who produce it, is viewed as an extension of that worker’s self. By arguing that translation is art, translation theory abandons the possibility of fighting alienation writ large, and instead pursues for translators the unusual forms of acknowledgement which writers receive.

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British Council

What makes a good literary translator, by daniel hahn and fahmida riaz, 15 october 2014 - 09:36.

'There’s not a single word in any of the languages I translate that can map perfectly onto a word in English.' Photo (c) Erik Tjallinks, licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 and adapted from the original.

Erik Tjallinks, licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 and adapted from the original .

‘Poetry is what gets lost in translation’, the American poet Robert Frost is quoted as saying. So how do you translate literature effectively? The British Council’s Ted Hodgkinson spoke to Daniel Hahn, director of the British Centre for Literary Translation, and Urdu language translator Fahmida Riaz, during a literary translation workshop taking place in Karachi on 13-17 October.

Daniel Hahn, should a good translation faithfully capture the original text, or make something with a distinctive life of its own?

Unfortunately, both. Assuming the faithfulness you’re aiming for is fidelity to something more than just literal meaning, then any attempt at being faithful to the original piece of writing should entail making something that lives. It should have just the same pulse as the original did. Taking something living and fresh and transforming it into something dull and dead in another language doesn’t seem like genuine faithfulness to me.

Can a translation add something to the original?

Sure, in translation, everything changes. Every word or phrase; every syllable, for that matter, will be different from the original text. This means there will be additions, of course, but it will also draw attention to certain things in the original.

Every translation is an interpretative act, as well as a creative one. Translators read the original piece and try to work out what it’s doing, what’s important that’s going on. They are constantly making choices about which elements of a text to preserve and foreground, and which to sacrifice.

People talk about ‘loss’ in translation, which seems to me to be missing the point mostly, though one thing that does seem to me to be a particular, frequent loss is ambiguity. We have to take an original word with two or three possible simultaneous meanings and plump for an English word which only covers one or two of those — but there’s a gain that comes with that sharp focus, too.

García Márquez has been misquoted often as saying the translation of ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’ was better than the original — I think he actually said it was more accurate than the original. That distinction, I believe, is very telling.

What linguistic qualities are the hardest to translate?

Oh, all of it. Translation is impossible! And I don’t just mean it’s really, really difficult, but really, it’s not actually possible. There’s not a single word in any of the languages I translate that can map perfectly onto a word in English. So it’s always interpretative, approximate, creative. Anything that is, itself, a ‘linguistic’ quality will by definition be anchored in a particular language — whether it’s idiom, ambiguity, or assonance. All languages are different. There are congruences between languages that are more closely related, of course, but those relationships are very much in the minority.

What are the particular virtues of teaching translation in a workshop with the author present?

I guess there are two things — the first is, simply, the insight the author can bring to the translators’ reading of the text, to their understanding of it and consequently to the translation decisions this understanding will inform. Then of course the very fact of having that conversation forces the translators themselves to articulate their own thinking, to formulate questions and suggestions. This is itself useful — just having to articulate an interpretative and creative process that normally happens (a) not necessarily consciously, and (b) between languages, not set clearly within an articulated language, is a valuable prompt to learning, even if the learning itself happens kind of without anyone noticing.

You’re renowned for moving slowly through a text and weighing up each individual word choice. What’s your record for focusing on a single word? And what are the advantages of working this way?

Yes, I’m quite proud of my ability to fail to make any progress at all. I’m not sure what the slowest has ever been, but I feel I’ve been set a challenge now so I’ll keep an eye on the clock from now on!

The advantages? Well, translation is two things: it’s very close and careful and thoughtful reading. Then, it’s precise and careful and thoughtful writing. Focusing on the detail makes you aware of this better than anything. If the writer has used word x, we need to know why that was the word he chose of all the options (what exactly does it mean, but also what’s it doing in the sentence, in the rhythm of the sentence and to the sound and register), and then we need to find a way of replicating that in English, again with the greatest precision possible.

The next sentence is an example of how a translator thinks when they work. Talking the questions through (or talking through the questions), and expressing/articulating the thought processes that go into them / make them up / determine them can be a significant asset (or just a big help? – note this register shift) in getting people to be sensitive and alert (do we need both of these? – shades of meaning overlapping?) to what the process entails, and thereby sharpen the way they then work on their own. (Maybe without that last comma? Or with? Or without?)

Is it a good time to be a literary translator?

I think it’s a really good time to be a literary translator into English, specially working in the UK or at least with UK publishers, but it varies. Some markets are more responsive to translation, some publishing worlds treat translators better than others, there are some places where there’s an excitement and a dynamism to the profession and to the whole sector that makes a huge difference (that’s the UK today, I think) — but yes, overall, it’s really good. More and more literature is travelling, which is great news for us, and of course for readers, too.

Fahmida Riaz, what are the particular joys and challenges of translating Urdu?

I have translated works of poetry and fiction from Persian, Sindhi , and English. Every piece you translate comes from the pen of an individual, so you have to give it an individual treatment. I try to retain the ambience of the original culture, rather than the language, as it is reflected in the text.

While translating the Nobel Prize-winning Egyptian author Nagib Mahfouz‘s ‘Afrah Ul Qubba’ into Urdu from an English translation of the text, I also kept the original Arabic novel before me. In Pakistan, we have an interesting and paradoxical relationship with Arabic. As children, we are all taught the Quran and can therefore more or less read Arabic . But we do not understand the language. Despite this, referring to the original Arabic text of Mahfouz’s book helped me learn how the characters addressed one another, and sometimes there was a word that could be used in Urdu and had the same meaning. I did not want these Egyptians to sound as if they are Karachites.

How is Urdu different from other languages spoken in Pakistan?

Urdu is certainly different from other Pakistani languages. It developed in the cities and towns and is an urban language that lends itself well to formal expressions, as it was born and bred in and around Delhi, which was the seat of power and culture in the subcontinent for hundreds of years. I guess that the difference could be compared to the ‘Queen’s English’ and other languages in the UK, such as Irish, Welsh and Scottish Gaelic.

How do you translate Urdu words which don’t have a direct translation into English, or perhaps concepts which are particularly deeply rooted in Pakistani culture?

Sometimes, one comes across almost untranslatable words, because of cultural differences. One such word in Urdu is ‘sharmana’. A example of this word in a sentence would be a situation in which a boy approaches a girl and the girl is ‘sharma gaiee’. This cannot be simply translated into English as ‘blushed’ or ‘felt shy’ or ‘was embarrassed’. Although some girls in the West may not react in this way, in our culture, a girl’s sharmana gives a positive signal to the boy. What could be considered coquettish in the West is practised as a very subtle and dignified female expression of interest in South Asia. It is important that this is a natural response, and not contrived. In such cases, the best bet for the translator would be to tell the reader what the female character is feeling and what is actually happening at that point.

Does the Urdu alphabet present any translation challenges?

Our vowels in Urdu are different from English vowels, and this can present problems when translating names or other original Urdu words, such as royal or military titles. The ‘a’ in English, for instance, is not the same as our ‘a’, which sometimes sounds like ‘aa’. Urdu has some phonemes, like the soft ‘d’, or ‘gh’, which is pronounced a bit like the ‘r’ that one hears in French, as in ‘Paris’, and others that are common only in Arabic and Turkish, such as the guttural ‘q’ sound which we try to render with an added ‘u’, as in the name ‘Quraishi’. Perhaps a somewhat modified French keyboard could be useful for situations where proper nouns or other original Urdu words have to be retained in the English translation.

Is translating poetry different from prose?

Translating poetry is a much bigger challenge. You are faced with the task of communicating the meaning as well as the beauty of expressions that Urdu readers understand effortlessly, because of the age-old connotations of the words. For instance, Urdu similes and metaphors may have Eastern philosophical or cultural concepts behind them. The literal translation of a verse of the poet Ghalib could be: ‘Yes, O new moon, let us hear the name of that person. That you are greeting so humbly.’ But the reader in English has to be familiar with the difference between a salaam offered with a deep bow and an ordinary everyday greeting. He or she might also not know that our festivals revolve round the sighting of moon, according to the Islamic lunar calendar. And the reader might also be unfamiliar with the idea that a salaam is a salutation to something excellent, or a peerless person.

But it is still worth trying to convey these associations. What I would do in such a case is to study older poets of the English language and familiarise myself with their style and diction. This often helps. I have translated a lot of Sufi poetry lately and found that carefully studying the diction of John Donne and William Blake was inspiring for me. It allows you to get an idea of how a similar concept or feeling was expressed in the other language, even if it was a hundred years ago.

It’s not easy, but one has to keep trying. You need to bring yourself in complete agreement with the poet, to keep muttering their words in the other language. At the end of the day, translation is creative work and no one can be sure if it could not have been improved or done differently.

Could you give an example of literature in translation?

Here is my translation of the Nai Nama, ‘The Song Of the Reed’, the famous opening lines of Rumi’s Masnavi , his epic masterpiece. Most translators begin it with ‘Listen to the wailing …’. This, to me, sounds like a command, and wailing seems an absurd act. I think, maybe that this translation gets at what Mawlana Rumi meant:

The Song Of The Reed

Longingly sings the reed

Aching and pining

Listening to its call

Warm tears roll down your cheeks.

This is the song of helplessly desiring

What has been torn away from you

In every recital where the reed sings

We listen to it, holding our breath

Its notes exploring the depths of the heart

A long forgotten wound comes alive, disclosing

Your mystery, your secret that no friend ever fathomed

It was always within your easy access

Alas, your senses are not trained to find it.

Unveil your essence to your life-form, O man!

Alas this is not conventional in our world.

The song of the reed is not wind, it is fire

Giving you the warmth of existence

The reed holds your forlorn hand

When it gropes for the hand torn away from its grasp

Its notes tear apart your conceit,

Revealing you naked to your eyes.

Music wounds and heals, miraculously

Sharing every secret, it is the secret itself

It tells you the story of a blood-stained path

Disclosing the passion of Majnun to you

You are the reed, O man, having two mouths

One end is between the lips of God

So the second mouth sings to the world

And the planet resonates with His song

Yet only the knower knows the truth

It is briefly told here, goodbye!

The literary translation workshop in Karachi is a partnership between the British Council’s literature department , the British Centre for Literary Translation and Oxford University Press Pakistan .

You might also be interested in:

  • How to understand Korean poetry
  • How Dylan Thomas got playful with English grammar
  • When is British humour lost in translation?

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Foreign Words and Phrases in an English Texts

In your research, you might find that certain key concepts important to your work do not have a direct English equivalent. In this case, keep the term in the foreign language and italicize it:

After introducing the key term, you can explain to your audience the meaning of the term and how it might compare and contrast with similar terms they know. Using the word without explanation (e.g. anguish instead of toska ) can be seen as misrepresenting the key term, because it does not invoke the other layers of meaning.

Popular Foreign Words

There are a number of commonly used foreign words, abbreviations and phrases that are part of American English: ad hoc, cliché, concerto, genre, sic, versus. Such popular words can be found in a dictionary and are considered a part of the English language. There is no need to translate them, unless they are used by the author in an innovative and unusual ways. In such case, you can provide more context for them.

Quotations Entirely in a Non-English Language

If you are quoting a whole sentence, you do not have to italicize the non-English words.

Keeping the whole sentence untranslated is a strategy that you could use when you are expecting your readers to know the language to some degree, or if you decide that the readers would benefit from reading and appreciating the original text. This is also the case, when the sentence might not be recognizable as an English translation, but is very well known in the original version.

Some texts that you are using might already contain specific formatting in a non-English language. In the example below, part of the quotation was written in italics. Preserve that original formatting in your quotation.

In this quotation, Anzaldúa provides a direct translation of the saying she heard as a child. Note that the saying she heard in Spanish is kept in original (just as she heard it and as she wrote it – in italics ). She also provided a translation of the saying to make it understandable for the readers who might not understand it otherwise.

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Translation Essay Examples

Exploring audiovisual translation and its main parameters.

Audiovisual translation has been considered as an important field of translation that focuses on two kinds of texts which are multimodal and multimedial. These two texts are transferred through audiovisual into another culture. Multimodal is concerned with semiotic modes which include language, color, music, image...

The Development and Types of Machine Translation

Human societies need to interact with each other, and this interaction can be instrumental in enhancing human culture and knowledge. Communication between societies encompasses a wide range of topics, including economic, political, cultural, scientific, and so on, all of which are interdependent and the role...

Translation Norms of Andrew Chesterman

Andrew Chesterman is a scholar of English origin, based in Finland. He is known for his work in Translation Studies. Professor in Multilingual Communication at university of Helsinki and CETRA Professor, his main research are in translation theory, translation norms, contrastive analysis, research methodology. Andrew...

The Transfer of Taboo Language in Audiovisual Translation

Audiovisual translation or AVT is a vast research field which has developed rapidly. Most of the work carried out in audiovisual translation studies focuses on interlingual subtitling, translation strategies, technical requirements and constraints. The present paper on the transfer of taboo language in audiovisual translation...

The Main Reasons that LED Hamlet to the Tragedy and Its Expression in the Translation

The study focuses on the expression and translation of feelings of love and hate in the text of the Hamlet tragedy. Hamlet's reverence and love for his ancestors, his love and hate for his mother, and his beautiful Aphilia, and those feelings that eventually led...

A Case Study of the Films the Intouchables and Amélie and Their Translation in American English

The popularity of the movie industry has increased during the last century. According to IMDb, since the early 1920s, there has been an average of 2500 films produced each year around the world. This number has doubled in the past 10 years. Indeed, there was...

The Potential Benefits and Challenges of Machine Translation

Comparison of both machine translation (MT) and human translation is a familiar topic to discuss some roles of AI technologies in the future. Back in the 1950s, computer scientists started solving the problems of a language translator. Since that time, the quality and availability of...

Machine Translation Using Example-based Machine Translation

Machine translation is one of the research areas under computational linguistics. Various methods have been proposed to automate the translation process. The thesis proposes a Machine Translation system for transaction from English to Malayalam language. The translation system is based on Example Based Machine Translation...

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