Tuesday 31 March 2015

Translation difficulties from Arabic to English



Translation difficulties from Arabic to English

Translators need an in-depth knowledge of two languages, and need, ideally, to be familiar with the subjects of the texts they are translating. This is especially true for translation in such fields as technology, science, law and medicine. In fact, many translators specialise in a particular field or fields in which they have expertise.
When translating literature, poetry, songs and similar material translators need to be familiar not only with the two languages involved, but also with the cultures of the people who speak them. One problem literary translators face is what to do with culture-specific references – they could translate them literally and provide footnotes or other explanations for readers not familiar with the source culture, or try to find equivalents specific to the target culture. Translating poems and songs is particularly challenging as not only do you need to translate the words, but you often need to find ones that rhyme as well.
Each language describes the world in a different way. For example, the colour spectrum is a continuum with no clear boundaries between the colours, and is divided up differently for different languages. Greek has separate words for light blue and dark blue, while other languages, such as Welsh and Japanese, have words that can mean blue or green, or something in between.
In English there are many verbs of motion that describe the manner of motion – he bounched out of the house and galloped up the street, for example. In other languages such as French and Spanish, you could add a phrase to a simple motion verb, like to go or to run, to describe the motion, but this would feel clumsy and unnatural, so translators would normally omit such descriptions.
Names of people and places are another translation challenge, especially if you’re translating between too very different languages such as Chinese and English. Do you provide English versions of the Chinese names, which are likely to be unfamiliar and difficult to remember for your readers, or do you just transliterate them? If you do the latter, do you put the surname first, as is the custom in Chinese, or last, as in English?
Ideally a translation will read as if it was originally written in the target language. This is hard to achieve, but certainly possible

You might be seeing that the job of text translation from one language to another languge is not difficult but it is actually very complex. The pair of language integrated in the translation process may not be having equivalent words bearing the similar meaning. The results is the translators have to deeply in describing the context evidently which usually leads to lengthy texts.

Languages are employed for expressing the thoughts and ideas among people. This is the main factor that makes translation very important. You should always make sure that the translator is not executing word to word translation as it may cause many problems while comparing the meanings of the contents in both the original and target documents after completing the work. One word can be utilized in various contexts and if you do word translations, it may trigger many problems through word translation that does not match the original contexts of the text. This implies to almost the entire translations including Thai translation.

The process is very time consuming especially if you are given with the task of translating a very large document with several pages. In that case to adjust the time, translators seek aid from translation software in order to fulfill the task with quality service. This is possible now days as much translation software is available especially for doing Russian translation jobs.

There are lots of defects related to translation software as at times it may not work well for the text to be worked out. Every word to word translation does not perform excellently for translation software and due to that, it relates to the context dissimilar to the original context. Also problems occur when the software is not in a place to recognize the source texts by any means.

The cultural difference and other traditional custom always remain as the main barrier in translating a document from one language to another. Due to this a word in one language might not be able to find its equivalent in the other language. When the translator has failed in the task, an alternative has to be found. If you are offering the work without manual proofreading, you can land in trouble as the variations can be clearly seen while comparing with the original text.

Search engines are very helpful in translation tasks in order to change one language to another language. Most of the search engines work by the translation software and they will be able to find the best possible results in the lengthy time possible on internet. This can help the translator in completing the job very accurately and in a fast manner without causing any problem. This involves to many language translations involving the Vietnamese translation.

The outcomes acquired through this process are far more suitable and at times it will be written not directly and usually makes use of complicated words wherein the reader must think widely to comprehend the meaning of the text.

You have to give preference for choosing a skilled translator in spite of all the obtainable technologies. This can aid you in getting the appropriate and correct text. This also points out the sharpness of human mind in opposition to the machines and technologies in completing the task easily.


















Problems That Can Occur in Translation:

Translating a foreign language from a culture that existed thousands of years ago can be a difficult task. Can you imagine someone from biblical times attempting to translate a relatively simple phrase?

Phrase: I was so engrossed in my work, I ate a Mcdonald’s burger while continuing to rough out this draft on my computer.
Biblical Translation: 1. Not being froward in his ways, but working with diligence and wisdom unto the Lord, so that they may rejoice at the time of harvest

1. Cultural differences:
Actual phrase: In preparation for battle, the men braided the hair of his partner, also exchanging a pink handkerchief for luck.
Mistranslated as: In preparation for battle, the men pulled out braids of hair from a rugged companion, also exchanging the bloodied handkerchief for luck.

2. Misunderstanding a metaphor:
Actual phrase: When we meet at dawn, I will crush them like an egg.
Mistranslated as: When they sat down for breakfast, they had their eggs scrambled.

3. Literalizing a metaphor:
Actual phrase: The carpenter had a roll in the hay, finding the screw to jump-start his day.
Mistranslated as: The carpenter found the screw that had fallen in the hay and was able to get to work at the start of the day.

4. Incompetence:
Actual phrase: Yea, I say unto you, with love in your hearts, and resolution in your minds, embrace your neighbor and make peace upon the Earth.
Mistranslated as: Listen up! With resolution, I say, go out and perform open-heart surgery on your neighbor, lest ye die, and the Earth become as a cesspool.

5. Words with multiple meanings:
This is difficult to demonstrate with English to English examples. So let’s pretend that my example phrase is in Inuit. Many of us know that the indigenous people of Alaska have about 67 words for snow, some of which are not translatable.
Actual Phrase in Inuit: There is a clentos (made up word in Inuit for snow) on the way.
Mistranslated as: There is snow on the way.
Better mistranslation: There is a relatively mild snowstorm on the way, expected within the next 6 to 12 hours. Expect temperatures in the -10 to – 20 F range, with dry light flakes of snow that are blown in from the Northeast, heralding even colder weather to come within several days. Expect winds of 5 to 15 mph, not a lot of drifting, and expected accumulation of 4 to 6 inches.

7. Words that can’t be translated:
These are words for which a language has no corresponding word. For example, the Inuit have no corresponding word for the IRS (Internal Revenue Service).
English Phrase: He has an appointment with the IRS this afternoon.
Inuit mistranslation: There is a clentos on the way.

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