What do we know on Translation Behavior?
Although studies have mainly focused on linguistic behavior in the past years, researchers have started to wonder whether we can find some universals in the translation process as well.
This can really be a tough task, since to investigate translation behavior linguists have to analyze not only the Target Text, but they also have to compare it to its Source Text, to different Target Texts in the same language, or to Target Texts in several languages of the same Source Text.
The aim is to discover what translators usually tend to do while translating.
Scholars mostly agree on the following facts:
- Translators tend to simplify the Target Text, which results in a TT that, most of the time, fits the standard patterns of the Target Language;
- The translating process is usually also a process of explicitation, which means that translators tend to add, unconsciously, additional details to the TT, in order to make it easier to read to the readers of the TL;
- Levelling out. This happens mostly with literary texts. If the author has a particular style, i.e. a particular use of metaphors, a particular syntax, or hapax legomena, the translator might have to replace it with a periphrasis, especially when the Target Language and the Source Language share different patterns.
Although we might all agree on the fact that these seem truthful translation universals, we must take into account other factors that shape the Target Texts, which are:
- All translated texts present in a corpus undergo an editing process, which means that what we read might not genuinely correspond to the translator’s choices;
- A translator’s choices might be lead by marketing or political choices. Think about who the target reader might be, and you’ll understand why some translators tend to highlight some aspects of the ST rather than others, or to translate some passages of the ST in a particular way. Some passages might also be omitted, and others added.
- Wolfram, Wills (1996). Knowledge and Skills in Translation Behavior. Amsterdam, John Benjamins.
- Johansson, Stig (2007). Seeing Through Multilingual Corpora: On the Use of Corpora in Contrastive Studies. Amsterdam, John Benjamins.
- Baker, Mona (1996). Corpus-Based Translation Studies: the Challenges that Lie Ahead. Harold Somers (ed) Terminology, LSP, and Translation, pp. 175-86. Amsterdam, John Benjamins.
