1. Translatability and
untranslatability
THE CONTROVERSY OVER THE PROBLEM OF TRANSLATABILITY OR
UNTRANSLATABILITY STEMMED FROM THE VAGUENESS OF THE
NOTION OF MEANING AND A LACK OF CONSENSUS OVER THE
UNDERSTANDING OF THE NATURE OF LANGUAGE AND
TRANSLATION.

2.  For example, Many people in ancient
religious worlds were incredulous of the
validity of translating as they believed that
language was sacred and mystic, in which
was hidden the will and order of God.

3.  Based on that understanding of the nature of
language, they tended to regard translation
or any kind of contrived conversion of a
divine message from one language into
another as no less than profanity and vice
(Steiner, 1957).

4.  ‘The perennial question whether translation
is, in fact, possible is rooted in ancient
religious and psychological doubts on
whether there ought to be any passage from
one tongue to another.’

5.  ‘After the end of the fifteenth century, the
postulate of untranslatability has a pure
secular basis. It is founded on the conviction,
formal and pragmatic, that there can be no
true symmetry, no adequate mirroring,
between two different semantic
systems.’ Translatability and
comprehensibility

6.  ‘Translatability is a relative notion and has to
do with the extent to which, despite obvious
differences in linguistic structure (grammar,
vocabulary, etc.), meaning can still be
adequately expressed across languages.
 ‘TT comprehensibility’

7.  translatability/ untranslatability provides an
opportunity for translation scholars to
express their views on the relationship
between language and reality

8.  Opposition:
 View 1 = reality is the same for all of us; only
the L expressions referring to the different
segments of reality are different
 View 2 = L also affects reality (Whorf 1956,
Sapir 1956) (e.g., the way we perceive the
external characteristics of objects is
influenced by the kind of words available in
our L1 to describe these characteristics)

9.  if languages segment reality differently
different “world view”
 certain phenomena of reality appear in
excessive detail in one L, while there is only a
collective name for them in another one

10. e.g.,
 - Eskimo: many names for the different types of
snow;
 - Argentinean gauchos: the multitude of colour
names for horses;
 - Arabic: the postures of camels;
 - Russian: the types of fish;
 - Italian: the types of pasta;
 - English: the objects and concepts related to
navigation

11.  ''The degree of difficulty of translation
depends on their nature, as well as on the
translator's abilities.”

12.  In a larger sense, the problem of
translatability is one of degrees: the higher
the linguistic levels the source language signs
carry meaning(s) at, the higher the degree of
translatability these signs may display; the
lower the levels they carry meaning(s) at, the
lower the degree of translatability they may
register.

13.  Throughout the history of translation the
question “Is translation possible or
impossible?” has been repeatedly asked and
debated among philosophers, linguists as
well as translators and translation
theorists. Some scholars and artists believe
that virtually everything is translatable.

14.  Newmark, for example, argues that the
“untranslatables” can be translated indirectly
by transferring the source item and
explaining it if no parallel item can be found
in the target language and no compensatory
effect may be produced within the same
paragraph.

15.  every variety of meaning in a source language
text can be translated either directly or
indirectly into a target language, and
therefore everything is
translatable. (Newmark, 1989:17)

16.  Others (von
Humboldt, Quine, Virginia Woolf, Derrida, to
name a few) insist that translation is
ultimately impossible.

17.  Von Humboldt, e.g. maintains that all
translations are apparently attempts at
finding a solution to some insoluble problem.
(Ke, 1991:10)

18.  Untranslatability is the property of a text or
any utterance, in SL, for which no equivalent
text or utterance is found in TL. A text or
utterance that is considered to be
untranlatable is actually a lacuna or lexical
gap.

19. Types of untranslatability
 Catford distinguishes two types which he
terms linguistic and cultural

20. Linguistic untranslatibility
 Linguistic untranslatibility
 When there is no lexical or syntactical
substitute in the TL for an SL item.
Linguistically untranslatables sentences are
such as involves structures not found in
english.By restructuring and adjusting the
position to conform to english norms a
translator would unhesitatingly render two
sentences.

21. Cultural untranslatability
 The absence in TL culture of a relevant
situational feature for the SL text. Different
concepts of bathroom in english,finnish and
japanese context where the object and the
use made of that object are not at all alike.

22. Examples of
untranslatability
 Register
 Although thai language has words that can
be used as equivalent for english words i you
he she it. But they are relatively formal terms.
In most cases thai people use words which
express the relations between the speaker
and the listener according to their respective
role. For a mother to say her child 'ill tell you a
story' she would say 'mother will tell child a
story'.

23. Grammar
 The english verb to be has no direct
equivalent in chinese. In an english sentence
where to be leads to an adjective 'it is blue'.
There are no adjectives in chinese instead
there are stative words that donot need an
extra verb.

24. vocabulary
 German as well as Dutch has a wealth of
particles that are particulary difficult to
translate as they convey sense and tone more
rather than strictly grammatical information.
Doch dutch toch which roughly means 'donot
you realize that or it is so, though someone is
denying it'. What makes translating these
words difficult is their different meaning
depending on their intonation or context.

25. Family siblings
 In Arabic brother is often translated into akh.
However, while this word may describe a
brother who shares either one or both
parents,there is a separate word shaqeeq to
describe a brother with whom one shares
both parents.

26. Family grandparents
 Swedish, Norwegian and Danish have
different words for paternal grandparents
and maternal grandparents. Famor and farfar
and mormor and morfar. The English terms
great grandfather and great grandmother
also have different terms in Swedish
depending on lineage. This difference in
paternal and maternal is also used in Begali,
Thai and Chinese.

27. Family aunts and uncles
 Arabic contains separate words for mother's
brother khal and father's brother 'am. The
closest translation in english is uncle which
gives no indication as to lineage whether
paternal or maternal. Similary there are
specific words for father's sister and mother's
sister.

28. Family nephews nieces and
cousins
 Whereas english has different words for child of
one's sibling based on gender nephew for the
son of one's sibling and niece for the daughter,
cousin applies for both genders belonging to
one's uncle and aunt. Many languages approach
these concepts very differently. Spanish
distinguishes both cases differently the son of a
sibling is sobrino whereas a duughter is sobrina
equally a male cousin is primo while a female
cousin is prima. Though Italian distinguishes
between male cugino and female cugina cousin
where English does not, it uses nipote for both
nephew/ niece genders.

29. Family (Relations by
marriage)
 In American English the term "my brother-in-
law" covers "my spouse's brother", "my
sister's husband", and "my spouse's sister's
husband". In British English, the last of these
is not considered strictly correct.

30. Puns and Wordplay
 Similarly, consider the Italian adage
"traduttore, traditore": a literal translation is
"translator, traitor". The pun is lost, though
the meaning persists. (A similar solution can
be given, however, in Hungarian, by saying a
“fordítás: ferdítés”, which roughly translates
as "translation is distortion".)

31. Procedures to compensate for
this problem
 The translation procedures that are available
in cases of lacunae, or lexical gaps, include
the following: Adaptation
 An adaptation, also known as a free
translation, is a translation procedure
whereby the translator replaces a social, or
cultural, reality in the source text with a
corresponding reality in the target text; this
new reality would be more usual to the
audience of the target text.

32.  In the Belgian comic book “The Adventures of
Tintin”, Tintin's trusty canine sidekick “Milou”
is translated as “Snowy” in English, “Bobbie”
in Dutch, and “Struppi” in German; likewise
the detectives “Dupont and Dupond” become
“Thomson and Thompson” in English, “Jansen
and Janssen” in Dutch, “Schultze and
Schulze” in German, “Hernández and
Fernández” in Spanish

33. Borrowing
 Borrowing is a translation procedure whereby
the translator uses a word or expression from
the source text in the target text unmodified.
 In English text, borrowings not sufficiently
anglicized are normally in italics.

34. Calque
 Calque entails taking an expression, breaking
it down to individual elements and translating
each element into the target language word
for word.
 the German word:
"Alleinvertretungsanspruch" can be calqued
to "single-representation-claim", but a proper
translation would result in: "Exclusive
Mandate”

35. Compensation
 Compensation is a translation procedure
whereby the translator solves the problem of
aspects of the source text that cannot take
the same form in the target language by
replacing these aspects with other elements
or forms in the source text.

36.  Many languages have two forms of the second
person pronoun, namely an informal form and a
formal form. This is known as T-V distinction,
found in French (tu vs. vous), Spanish (tú/vos vs.
usted), and German (du vs. Sie), for example, but
not contemporary English.
 the translator may have to compensate by using
a first name or nickname, or by using syntactic
phrasing that are viewed as informal in English
(I'm, you're, gonna, etc.), or by using English
words of the formal and informal registers, to
preserve the level of formality.

37. Paraphrase
 Paraphrase, sometimes called periphrasis, is
a translation procedure whereby the
translator replaces a word in the source text
by a group of words or an expression in the
target text.
 The Portuguese word “saudade” is often
translated into English as "the feeling of
missing a person who is gone".

38. Translator's note
 A translator's note is a note added by the
translator to the target text to provide
additional information pertaining to the
limits of the translation, the cultural
background, or any other explanations;
 Some translation exams allow or demand
such notes. Some translators regard resorting
to notes as a failure.
