Translation
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| '''Translation''' is the [[interpretation]] of the [[Meaning (linguistic)|meaning]] of a text in one [[language]] (the "source text") and the production, in another [[language]], of an [[Dynamic and formal equivalence|equivalent]] text (the "target text," or "translation") that communicates the same [[message]]. | '''Translation''' is the [[interpretation]] of the [[Meaning (linguistic)|meaning]] of a text in one [[language]] (the "source text") and the production, in another [[language]], of an [[Dynamic and formal equivalence|equivalent]] text (the "target text," or "translation") that communicates the same [[message]]. | ||
| - | ===Back-translation=== | ||
| - | A "[[back-translation]]" is a translation of a translated text back into the language of the original text, made without reference to the original text. Back-translation is analogous to reversing (or [[inverse function|inverting]]) a [[mathematical]] operation; but even in mathematics such a reversal frequently does not produce a value that is precisely identical with the original. In the context of [[machine translation]], a back-translation is also called a "[[round-trip translation]]." | ||
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| - | Comparison of a back-translation to the original text is sometimes used as a [[quality control|quality check]] on the original translation. But while useful as an approximate check, it is far from infallible. Humorously telling evidence for this was provided by [[Mark Twain]] when he issued his own back-translation of a [[French language|French]] version of his famous [[short story]], "[[The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County]]"; he published his back-translation in a single 1903 volume together with his English-language original, the French translation, and a "Private History of the 'Jumping Frog' Story," the latter including a synopsized adaptation that Twain tells us had appeared, without attribution to him, in a Professor Sidgwick's ''Greek Prose Composition'' (p. 116) under the title, "The Athenian and the Frog," and which for a time, Twain tells us, was taken for an independent [[Ancient Greece|ancient Greek]] precursor of Twain's "Jumping Frog" story. | ||
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| - | In cases when a historic document survives only in translation, the original having been lost, researchers sometimes undertake back-translation in an effort to reconstruct the original text. An example involves the novel ''[[The Manuscript Found in Saragossa|The Saragossa Manuscript]]'' by the [[Poland|Polish]] aristocrat [[Jan Potocki]] (1761–1815). The [[polymath]] [[polyglot]] composed the book entirely in [[French language|French]] and published fragments anonymously in 1804 and 1813–14. Portions of the original French-language manuscripts were subsequently lost; the missing fragments survived, however, in a Polish translation that was made by [[Edmund Chojecki]] in 1847 from a complete French copy, now lost. French-language versions of the complete ''[[The Manuscript Found in Saragossa|Saragossa Manuscript]]'' have since been produced, based on extant French-language fragments and on French-language versions that have been back-translated from Chojecki's Polish version. | ||
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| - | Similarly, when historians suspect that a document is actually a translation from another language, back-translation into that hypothetical original language can provide supporting evidence by showing that such characteristics as [[idiom]]s, [[pun]]s, peculiar [[grammatical]] structures, etc., are in fact derived from the original language. | ||
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| - | For example, the known text of the ''[[Till Eulenspiegel]]'' [[folk tale]]s is in [[High German]] but contains many puns which only work if back-translated into [[Low German]]. This seems clear evidence that these tales (or at least large portions of them) were originally composed in Low German and rendered into High German by an over-metaphrastic translator. | ||
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| - | Similarly, supporters of [[Aramaic primacy]]—i.e., of the view that the [[Christian]] [[New Testament]] or its sources were originally written in the [[Aramaic language]]—seek to prove their case by showing that difficult passages in the existing [[Ancient Greek|Greek]] text of the New Testament make much better sense if back-translated into [[Aramaic]]—that, for example, some incomprehensible references are in fact Aramaic [[pun]]s which do not work in Greek. | ||
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| == See also == | == See also == | ||
| *[[Untranslatable]] | *[[Untranslatable]] | ||
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Translation is the interpretation of the meaning of a text in one language (the "source text") and the production, in another language, of an equivalent text (the "target text," or "translation") that communicates the same message.
See also
Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Translation" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.
