By MSM YAQOOB
Two French scholars Jean-Paul Vinay and Jean Darbelnet studied the linguistic aspects of translation in the 1950s. Since the field of Translation Studies didn't exist at the time, most of Vinay and Darbelnet's work was classified as comparative literature. When considering Vinay and Darbelnet's work, the word contrastive linguistics seems to be a better fit, as what they did was examine the differences between the two languages to better understand each of them. While other researchers focused on comparing two languages to better understand their relationship, Vinay and Darbelnet focused on the translation process.
Their efforts resulted in Stylistique comparée du français et de l’anglais: méthodede traduction, which was later translated into an English edition, Comparative stylistics of French and English: a technique for translation, which is considered their seminal work in the linguistic turn of translation studies. Its importance was shown by the fact that it was still worth translating into English nearly half a century later. The two general strategies are direct translation and oblique translation.
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In
their book, Vinay and Darbelnet proposed that during any translation, there are
seven key processes or procedures at work, of which direct translation covers
three.
Let's
take a close look at these processes one by one.
1. Borrowing
The
concept of borrowing is to take a word from the source language (SL) and keep
it in the target language (TL). It is the easiest of the procedures, and it is
usually used in one of two situations: when addressing a new technological
method for which there is no term in the TL, or when keeping a word from the SL
for stylistic effect, in which the translator uses the foreign word.
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2. Calque
When
a word from the source text (ST) is translated into the target text (TT), it is
called a calque. Calques either adopt the TL syntax when translating each word
literally, or they disregard the TL syntax and stick to the SL syntax,
resulting in an uncomfortable syntactical structure in the TT.
3. Literal Translation
According
to Vinay and Darbelnet, the third translation approach can only be used in
specific situations. The two scholars believe that interpreting word for word
in a way that does not change the context is an appropriate use of literal
translation. Simply, literal translation broadens the meaning of a calque
more appropriately.
4. Transposition
Transposition,
according to Vinay and Darbelnet, is described as a change in word-class without
a change in meaning. This applies when translators alter the word form, such as
from nouns to verbs, without thinking about it. Transposition was either
mandatory or optional for Vinay and Darbelnet, who referred to the ST as the
base expression and the TT as the transposed expression.
5. Modulation
6. Equivalence
In
Translation Studies, the concept of equivalence can be both simple and complex.
Vinay and Darbelnet use the example of someone expressing pain to describe
equivalence as something that is almost inherently cultural. The word
"ouch!" is used in English, while a literal translation of the sound
would be useless to the reader in French. Instead, "ae!" is the
French version of "ouch!" Both terms will immediately convey to
readers that there is a degree of pain involved.
7. Adaptation
In the same way that the translator attempts to make the SL into the TL while ensuring that it is as important and meaningful as the original, adaptation is equivalent to equivalence. Imagine if the ST said anything so unmistakably English that translating it into French would be meaningless, or vice versa. Adaptation is needed at this point by the translator. The phrase banlieue is a great example of this, but it can be a bit of a double-edged sword when translated into English.
