The Electronic Journal of the Department of English
at the University of Helsinki
Volume1, 2001
Translation Studies
© 2001 Alice Martin
A TRANSLATOR'S VIEW OF TRANSLATION NORMS
The three roles of the translator
The translator's work process has variously segmented stages. One way of expressing
this could be to see the translator as having three alternating and co-existing roles:
reader, professional and artist.
It is the reader-translator's job to establish relations with the work, first as an ordinary
human being: finding the emotional footing on which the source text (ST) and
consequently the translation process stands, something that needs a little time to mature
and that may get overwhelmed by practical problems if not given time. It is often
necessary to get information on the author and establish relations with him or her, too,
keeping in mind that the vision being formed is not necessarily the whole truth but a
private view with a certain purpose. The virtue of such a vision is that it supports the
unity of the final translation, gives some idea of the voice telling the story, and helps to
eliminate choices. Knowledge of the book's background, including its place in history,
deepens the understanding of the work and helps to avoid mistakes. Publishers may be
able to provide useful material, such as foreign reviews and interviews, and in the case
of many living writers, translators can – and could more often than they do – get in
touch with them and ask directly about details they have been unable to find out
otherwise. I cannot say I myself have always gathered the optimal amount of
background information, but I have found out that it varies depending on the book
concerned.
In the reader's role one can envisage the different responses the work may elicit. This is
important when thinking of the readership of the eventual target text. It is the translatorreader that creates the imaginary reader. As Levy writes, translators intuitively make
guesses concerning the possibilities of the different evaluations by readers. The
translator has, then, his or her idea of the TL community's competence and way of
responding, as well as his or her idiosyncratic understanding of the target text (TT) to
work with.
The word "commission" is used to refer to the assignment of a job, but becoming
committed to one's work is more than a promise to hand over a finished product on a
given date. Commitment is an important element: without it the translator works halfheartedly, or whole-heartedly for the sake of money, but often without pleasure in the
text.
The translator-professional is to follow certain “norms”. The first norm has to do with
understanding. Reading the text as an ordinary reader would is not enough for the
translator. It is necessary to develop a professional way of reading in order to analyse
the text in as much detail and depth as possible. While it is not part of a translator's job
to explain the work to outsiders, let alone be as vocal about it as a literary critic might,
understanding or at least not misunderstanding the ST is vital.
Understanding also covers matters of style. Metaphors and symbols need to be
recognized: metaphors taken literally usually reveal themselves in translation. A
particular form of the norm of understanding is that a translator should strive to grasp
whatever function an element has in the ST: having found it out, s/he is on surer ground
in seeking the corresponding element for the TT.
The translator-professional also pays attention to the norms of accuracy, reliability,
loyalty and quality. While it is useful for a translator to question the concepts of
faithfulness and loyalty (to what, to whom), to deny their importance altogether means
going entirely free-range. A state of impulsiveness and ad hoc decisions hardly seem
professional, though one can imagine them leading to the occasional brilliant TL
rendering. Usually, however, there is a fact of life to take into account: it is accuracy in
representing the ST that publishers demand and the public expects – and believes it is
getting – when reading published translations. Indeed, more often than not, the contract
between publisher and translator that is signed for every commission explicitly refers to
this: "The translation must be made with care and without additions or omissions
contrary to good translation practice." This is the only reference the contract makes to
the quality of the translation, so even with the undefined expression good translation
practice it is seen that accuracy and reliability are considered of supreme importance.
As a practicing translator, then, this is a principle I adhere to, as regards both the
semantic content of the text and its form and style. This involves such issues as looking
for expressions of the same register and frequency, and avoiding anachronisms and
idiosyncrasies. I do not wish to credit the high status of this norm to employers alone.
For me, and as far as I understand, to the translator community at large, it is entirely
natural to aim at exactness in the way described above. That a translation never reaches
entire correspondence with the original is a fact that does not invalidate this aim.
What can be seen as the many limitations a translator has to work with are another facet
of the various loyalties involved: loyalty to the ST author, to the source culture, to the
ST itself, to the receiving community and the target culture, to the quality of the TL, to
the translator's self. All of these are important, and I would not say that being more
loyal to readers means there is a need to be less so to the author. There is no less: there
is only more. Keeping all the strands together to produce a satisfying piece of work is
the translator's right and duty. The quality norm refers to loyalty to the TL, in this case,
Finnish. I see it as the need for a translator simply to be as good a writer as possible,
being able to use the language's resources and avoid poor Finnish, which among other
things involves keeping SL interference to a minimum and steering clear of
translationese. Obviously, a translation must use natural and correct TL grammar, not
SL structures disguised in TL words.
Finally, the norm of rhythm is a factor some translators consider the most important of
all. It is pervasive, appearing at every rank of language, from within the word to the
scope of the paragraph and even further. What is not so clear is whether the important
thing is to preserve the ST rhythms or produce effective TT ones. For good or ill, I have
so far as a translator almost exclusively kept to the sentence length of the original. Since
varying sentence length is a major stylistic feature, the advisable thing to do would be to
preserve a significant part of the original rhythm while trying not to burden the reader.
Of the translator's three roles mentioned above, that of the translator-artist remains to
be analysed. As we are speaking of literature, a form of art, it should be borne in mind
that not everything can be accounted for by norms. Otherwise valid principles are
occasionally overruled by what might be named pursuit of the reader's happiness –
something that could itself be called a translation norm, since a translation overlooking
it is often a failure. The imagined reader looms large at this stage, and it is in his/her
interest that I finish my work. I rework passages that seem lacking in life, sometimes
making decisions that distance my version quite far from the original wording, but keep
to its spirit. While I do my best to improve my translation, it is not out of the question to
improve on the original, too. However, adding colour and vivacity is easily overdone,
and I keep away from it unless it seems to bring about a very definite improvement.
Leaving matters of artistic effect last may sound as if art were seen as something that
could be added as a final decoration. It is hard to say which translation ideas in
individual passages belong to the category of art in the first place, and looking at a
completed piece of work, there is of course no way of knowing – unless one has kept a
careful record, thus doubling the work – exactly which touches have been present from
the start and which are last-minute changes. Yet there is a real point here: if accuracy is
considered a legitimate goal, then producing an accurate translation before giving
oneself a free rein seems a practical order in which to proceed. It is possible to work
from a precise but artistically unsatisfactory text towards a freer version without giving
up the factual content already there; it is more difficult and certainly tedious to try to
add precision afterwards to something written with the chief aim of artistic effect.
Thus my favoured order of operating –accuracy, then artistry –makes, I hope, for a
translation that is both aesthetically satisfying and reliable. In the final stages of
translation I do venture to think of the process as artistic, when the manuscript,
complete and as far as possible correctly translated, is passed on by the translatorprofessional to the translator-artist. This phase may involve reading aloud to ensure that
the rhythm fits the content, it may require spending a long time hunting for the
previously uncaptured essence of a situation described, or working out an evasive logic,
it can mean endless rewriting of an unsatisfactory passage and trying it out on every
passer-by.