The Process Of Translation

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The Process of Translation Being a translator is rather challenging and demanding. Just chewing and matching words from different languages is inadequate to launch an excellent version of translation. Thus, we need to follow several steps when translating. With those steps, translation abilities and the quality of translation would be greatly improved. During the translation process, a translator seeks to establish equivalences between two languages. Then essentially, translation is no other than understanding the source text first and expressing its meaning in target language later. Therefore, the process of translation consists of two phases: comprehension and expression. Comprehension Facing a context, you should read the original text thoroughly and try to grasp its meaning as precisely as you can. However, the original text should not be read randomly, otherwise the translation would turn out to be awkward and disappointing. Overall, during the phase of comprehension, you should perform syntax analysis and semantic analysis correspondingly. First, you have to understand the words, grammar, structure, tense, idioms and any other linguistic factors minutely exact. Even a slight fault could ruin your work. For example: The ambassador is a skillful English-speaking diplomat. Version A: 这位大使是个英语熟练的外交官。Version B: 这位大使能讲英文,而且外交经验丰富。Literally, version A seems possible but it's completely wrong. It neglects that "skillful" and "English-speaking" modify the noun "diplomat" respectively. That is, the ambassador is a skillful diplomat and he can speak English. After syntax analysis, you should analyze the original text semantically. Although you could understand those "words" in the text, you may not appreciate the embodied meaning beyond words (especially when involving two different cultures). Then you have to read the "stories" behind words.
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