Translation I

Meeting 3
Nursyah Handayani, S.Pd, M.Hum
INTERNAL KNOWLEDGE
• Internal Knowledge: The Translator’s
View.
•Who Are Translators?
•Professional Pride
•Reliability
•Involvement in the Profession
•Ethics
Internal Knowledge: The Translator’s View.

These are three requirements you need to

have as a professional translator:
•Professional pride (including also involvement
in the profession and ethics)
•The timeliness users
•Requiring speed
• Insisting on the importance of actually
enjoying the work.
Who are translators?
Translators are actors

Translators and interpreters are voracious and

omnivorous readers

Translation is often called a profession of second

choice

For the translator, reliability and speed are

important
1. Professional Pride

From the user's point of view, it is essential to be able to rely

on translation — not only on the text, but on the translator as
well, and generally on the entire translation process.
For the translator or interpreter a higher consideration than
money or continued employability is professional pride,
professional integrity, professional self-esteem.
The areas in and through which translators typically take
professional pride are reliability, involvement in the profession,
and ethics.
a. Reliability
Reliability in translation is largely a matter of meeting the
user's needs: translating the texts the user needs translated,
in the way the user wants them translated, by the user's
deadline
b. Involvement in the profession
The "involvements" which help translators translate better,
and for the pride they take in reliability are :
•What translator associations or unions They belong to
•What translator conferences they go to
•What courses they take in the field
•How they network with other translators in their region and
language pair
c. Ethics
• It is unethical for the translator to distort the meaning of
the source text
• The translator translates whatever texts s/he is asked to
translate, and does so in a way that satisfies the translation
user's needs. The translator has no personal point of view
that has any relevance at all to the act of translation.
• Make ethical decisions based on personal commitments or
belief structures if it is clash with personal ethics (one's
own political and moral beliefs). If a serious clash between
their personal ethics and an externally defined professional
ethics makes it difficult or impossible to feel that pride,
they will eventually be forced to make dramatic decisions
about where and under what conditions they want to work
 Discussion

1. Give the differences between External knowledge and Internal knowledge?

2. It is important to learn internal requirements in order to know how to be a good
translators. What are they?
3. Explain the following statements. You can support them by giving reasons or
illustrations:
a. Translators are actors
b. Translators are varacious and omnivorous readers
c. Translation is often called a profession of second choice
4. What are the differences between the reliability for the user ( external) and translator (
internal)
5. “The ethics of translation are more complicated still”. Explain about the statement by
giving the example.
6. Is “Google Translate” reliability in translation? Support your answer with the reasons.
7. Is it ethical that the translators use “Google Translate”? Give your point of view by
giving the reasons.
8. How does a translation user know that the translator is professional or not?