SEMANTIC TRANSLATION

OVER-TRANSLATION

ABSTRACT:-

Semantic translation makes TL the exact contextual meaning of the

original. Since its accurate, the communication is not done properly. It’s
personal and individual , so the translator tends to OVERTRANSLATE.

LIMITS OF TRANSLATION:-

The translated carries either more information than the original text.
So there are problems for the readers to reach the real meaning. This
phenomena is called over-translation. This was first found from 1976 by
Peter Newmark in his book ‘Approaches to translation’. He gave neither
definition nor reasons for this phenomena. The main reason for this is
different cultural connotations. Culture appears often in literature of
translation theories. Translation is the transference of culture.
Example for these are: Eugene A. Nida defined culture as “ the
totality of beliefs and practices of a society”. Whereas Peter Newmark
defines culture as “the way of life and its manifestations that are peculiar
to a community that uses a particular language as its means of
expression”.
Over-translation conveys the target language readers more
information than the source language and the target language. It is a
deviation from the ideal translation. It produces non equivalence in
translated work.
A good criterion to demarcate over-translation by using Nida’s
receptor’s response. By using Nida’s receptor’s response to analyze the
correctness of translation we can have many types of translation
considered correct to the source language.
Nida combines these three parts into a integrated one. And that
integration is called “receptor’s response”.He suggests that the
correctness of a translation text must be determined by the extent to
which the average readers will be likely to understand it correctly. He
suggests that we should not concern merely with the possibility of his
understanding correctly, but also with the overwhelming likelihood of it.
We are not content merely to translate so that the average receptor is
likely to understand the message; rather we aim to make certain that such
a person is very unlikely to misunderstand it.He also points out that
posing the question of correctness in this manner naturally implies that
there will be different translations that can be called “correct.” In fact, for
the scholar who himself is well acquainted with the original, even the
most labored, literal translation will be correct, for he will not
misunderstand it. On the other hand, in most large linguistic
communities, especially when they employ so-called international
languages spoken by millions of people, there are a number of social-
educational levels of speech and comprehension. That means that several
different levels of translation, in terms of vocabulary and grammatical
structures, are required, if all people are to have essentially equal
opportunities to understand the message.
It is suggested that more shunning strategies or methods could be
found out to deal with this phenomena. Over-translation and under-
translation are closely related to culture, especially cross-cultural
communication, and as cross-cultural communication deepens, those
phenomena may disappear, and maybe they could become universally
accepted words or expressions. So we should try to get ourselves familiar
with other cultures and learn more of them.

REFERENCES:-

1. https://www.academia.edu/11193685/
Overtranslation_and_undertranslation
2. https://www.proz.com/forum/translation_theory_and_practice/160439-
%22overtranslation%22_vs_%22undertranslation%22.html
3. https://www.slideshare.net/SofaRojas12/communicative-and-semantic-
translation-112282436

Done by,

P. Anu Shruthi
21PGE001