On the Correct Way to Translate Leonardo Bruni States That ‘’ the Words Are One Thing, the Sense Is Another’’. Discuss.
Back in 1424 Leonardo Bruni stated that ‘’…the words mean one thing, the sense is another ’’ (Robinson, 2002 : 58) but he has not been the first one who argued that the literal translation rarely worked. In fact, the dichotomy between word-for-word and sense-for-sense translation has existed for milleniums. Cicero and Horace were the first theorists who made a difference between the two approaches back in the first century BC and nowadays the widest spread one is the sense-for-sense translation because it is the best way to preserve the meaning of the original which is what translation is all about. Alas, the sense-for-sense translation is not an easy task.
If language were simply a nomenclature for a set of universal concepts, it would be easy to translate from one language to another. One would simply replace the French name with the English one. If language were like this the task of learning a new language would be much easier than it is. But anyone who has attempted either of these tasks has acquired, alas, a vast amount of direct proof that languages are not nomenclatures, that the concepts...of one language may differ radically from those of another.
(qtd. in Baker, 1992 :10)
But what exactly does a translation mean? The authors of The Oxford Dictionary of English (Second Edition) have defined it rather simply: ‘’a written or spoken rendering of the meaning of a word or text in another language’’. I do not agree with this definition simply because I believe that a good translation is a complex process, consisting of rendering ‘’…one sentence rather than one word at a time’’(Baker, 2000 : 88). Being the smallest units of speech, words usually have several meanings which often depend on the other words within the sentence or even the text. Therefore, it is essential the translator to think of the sentence as one unit and not to translate literally.
The whole conception of translation revolves around two main points – meaning
If language were simply a nomenclature for a set of universal concepts, it would be easy to translate from one language to another. One would simply replace the French name with the English one. If language were like this the task of learning a new language would be much easier than it is. But anyone who has attempted either of these tasks has acquired, alas, a vast amount of direct proof that languages are not nomenclatures, that the concepts...of one language may differ radically from those of another.
(qtd. in Baker, 1992 :10)
But what exactly does a translation mean? The authors of The Oxford Dictionary of English (Second Edition) have defined it rather simply: ‘’a written or spoken rendering of the meaning of a word or text in another language’’. I do not agree with this definition simply because I believe that a good translation is a complex process, consisting of rendering ‘’…one sentence rather than one word at a time’’(Baker, 2000 : 88). Being the smallest units of speech, words usually have several meanings which often depend on the other words within the sentence or even the text. Therefore, it is essential the translator to think of the sentence as one unit and not to translate literally.
The whole conception of translation revolves around two main points – meaning