Volume 9, No. 3 
July 2005

 
 
Alireza Yazdunpanuh






 
 

Front Page

 
 
 
Select one of the previous 32 issues.

 

 
Index 1997-2005

 
TJ Interactive: Translation Journal Blog

 
  Translator Profiles
From Tulip Grower to Translator: An Unlikely Profile
by Robert Croese

 
  The Profession
The Bottom Line
by Fire Ant & Worker Bee

 
  TJ Cartoon
Great Moments in Languages: One Man's Dove Is Another Man's Pigeon
by Ted Crump

 
  Translators Around the World
Intellectual Property and Copyright: The case of translators
by Lenita M. R. Esteves, Ph.D.

 
  Translation and Politics
On Censorship: A Conversation with Ilan Stavans
by Verónica Albin
 
Translation and Censorship in European Environments
by Antonia Keratsa

 
  Book Review
Legal Translation and the Dictionary by Marta Chromá
Reviewed by Michael Trittipo
 
Guaraní Dictionary
Reviewed by Robert Croese
 
  Interpretation
Revelations of a Case Style in a Vehicular Accident Lawsuit
by Josef F. Buenker and Diane E. Teichman
 
Emotional and Psychological Effects on Interpreters in Public Services—A Critical Factor to Bear in Mind
by Carmen Valero-Garcés
 
La interpretación de congresos de medicina: formación y profesión
Lucía Ruiz Rosendo

 
  Literary Translation
Translation & Rainfall
by Alireza Yazdunpanuh
 
Übersetzen als Neuschreiben: die Macht des Übersetzers
Dr. Charlotte Frei

 
  Legal Translation
Traduzione giuridica e «Legal English»
Lorenzo Fiorito

 
  Translator Education
Parallelism between Language Learning and Translation
by Dr. Kulwindr Kaur a/p Gurdial Singh
 
On Teaching Forms of Address in Translation
by Agnieszka Szarkowska

 
  Translators' Tools
Translators’ Emporium
 
Using a Specialized Corpus to Improve Translation Quality
by Michael Wilkinson
 
Design and Development of Translator's Workbench for English to Indian Languages
by Akshi Kumar

 
  Caught in the Web
Web Surfing for Fun and Profit
by Cathy Flick, Ph.D.
 
Translators’ On-Line Resources
by Gabe Bokor
 
Translators’ Best Websites
by Gabe Bokor

 
Translators’ Events

 
Call for Papers and Editorial Policies
  Translation Journal


Literary Translation

 
 

Translation & Rainfall

by Alireza Yazdunpanuh


onsider an ocean, deep and blue. The sun shines bright. The water in the ocean evaporates up into the sky. Gradually, clouds are formed and winds take them away, far into another territory. Once the vapor is cold and dense, it falls down in the form of rain. Some of the droplets fall over the salty rocks. Some go deep into the earth. Some fall directly into the sea. Among those that flow on the ground, some-raindrops unite to form streams; streams unite to form rivers, and rivers finally join another ocean with different characteristics, but the same essence.

The first ocean is analogous to the whole knowledge of the source-text nation (or linguistic territory/language). The limited amount of water evaporated is the source text; the process of evaporation is the process of comprehension of the ST by the translator, the clouds are what the source text creates in the translator's mind; the geographical movement of the clouds is the shift from one linguistic territory into another (again, within the translator's mind); the rainfall is the process of putting abstract meaning into words of the target language.


Conclusions:

  1. There is no "bad translation" if it is genuine. There can be, however, poor ones.
  2. There can never be machine-translators in the sense that there are, for example, machine chess players.
  3. There can be no definition of good translation unless the user and the total circumstance under which he/she is using the translated text are specified.
  4. Instead of arguing over priority of form over content, etc. translator training courses should focus on developing comprehension skills in the source language and writing/speaking skills in the target one. These courses should be much more flexible and include flexibility as an intrinsic part of the course material. I dare say, a single method cannot be specified as the "best" not only for a single literary genre, but even for a single literary work or even a single page of that work! Didn't you see that every snowflake has its own unique shape, all of them beautiful?