Like-Blog
Presenting you the most interesting translation solutions
Why Like-Blog? Now, first of all, this blog is a blog that you should like (and read regularly) – at least, if you are interested in translation. Then, the topic discussed here is one in which the meaningful likeness between a text and its translation in the language pair English-German plays a key role. On this page, I will take a close look at some interesting translation solutions that I have come across in the course of my work as a translator and translation scholar.
A translation solution is only as good as the arguments that support it. This means that any translation criticism, whether positive or negative, needs to be justified. The quality of a translation solution shows only when we compare it to other possible translation solutions in a given translation situation. Therefore, a translation critic should not only say why a translation solution is bad, but also demonstrate what a better solution might look like. I will try to stick to these principles of translation criticism. So if you have any questions regarding my line of argument or if you disagree, please, let me know your opinion by phone at +49 4171 6086525 or by e-mail to bittner@businessenglish-hamburg.de. So much for the introduction. I hope you’ll enjoy reading this blog!
A long-sentence problem (November 2022)
To write a text that is easy to comprehend, a writer should stick to the KISS rule: Keep It Short and Simple. Long sentences should be avoided, if possible, because they are more difficult to understand than short sentences. When translating a long sentence, a translator has two options: He or she may (1) use an equally long sentence in the target language or (2) employ several sentences to capture the meaning of the original. The first option is preferable if the sentence length in the source text is stylistically significant; the second option is appropriate if the sentence in the source text is so long because the writer has not made the effort to communicate what he or she wants to communicate as efficiently as possible. If the first of the two options is used, great attention and care is needed to ensure that the target sentence works in the same way as the source sentence.
To illustrate how the translation of a long sentence can cause a problem, I quote again from “Sonia Sotomayor: A Justice Like No Other” (TIME, 28 May 2009) by Richard Lacayo: “Like that of most lower-court judges, much of her history on the bench has involved minute applications of the law, not the kind of cases in which life experience, even when it is as inspiring as hers, would have offered much guidance.”
The translation also consists of one sentence: “Vieles ihrer Geschichte auf der Richterbank hat, wie bei zahlreichen anderen Richtern am Bezirksgericht, eine sorgfältige Anwendung des Rechts erfordert, jedoch nicht die Art von Fällen, in denen Lebenserfahrung, selbst wenn sie so inspirierend wie die ihre ist, viel Hilfestellung geboten hätte.” Can you find the problem?
The problem is this: while, in English, both “minute application of the law” and “not the kind of cases” refer to the verb form “has involved”, such double reference doesn’t work with the verb “erfordern” in the German version.
To solve the problem, it makes sense to rewrite the target text using a different verb, for example: Wie viele andere Richter an unteren Instanzen auch, hat sie in ihrer richterlichen Vergangenheit viel mit einer sorgfältigen Anwendung des Rechts zu tun gehabt, nicht jedoch mit der Art von Fällen, in denen [...].
Like the idiomaticity trap presented last month, the problem of a syntactic double reference that does’t work is not translation-specific. It can occur, whenever a writer loses track of the syntactic implications of the text he or she is writing.