UNTRANSLATABILITY
BY PAKFAIZAL.WEB.ID
Untranslatability, the translator's greatest
“nightmare” and the scholar's chief interest, is
usually seen as existing in two forms.
 Linguistic - when the target language has no
corresponding words, tenses, phonetic or
grammatical entities that occur in the source
language;
 Cultural - when the target language and its
culture lack a relevant situational feature for
the source language text.
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LINGUISTIC PROBLEM
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Linguistic untranslatability, according to
Catford, occurs when there is no lexical or
syntactical substitute in the target language for
a source language item. For example, the
Danish ”Jeg fandt brevet” is linguistically
untranslatable, because it involves structures
that does not exist in English. The German Um
wieviel uhr darf man sie morgan wecken? Is
belong to untranslatable sentence.
CULTURAL PROBLEM
translating the names of objects characteristic of a
L community (meals, clothes, habits, customs
.etc.) into another L in which these objects do not
exist
 For example the javanese: minyak kayu putih
(kajuput oil), krambil (old coconut meat),
serundeng (sauteed grated coconut) selametan
(traditional fiest?),siraman (showering?), diruwat
(cleansed?), kembang setaman (flower water?), ki
dalang (the puppeteer), kunduran truk (???)
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JUST KIDDING- JUST FOR FUN
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> Enemy at the Gates — Musuhe Wis Tekan Gapuro
> Die Hard — Matine Angel
> Die Hard II — Matine Angel Tenan
> Die Hard III With A Vengeance — Kowe Kok Ra Mati2
To?
> Bad Boys — Bocah-bocah Elek
> Lost in Space — Ilang Neng Awang-awang
>> Paycheck — Kasbon
> Independence Day — Pitulasan
> The Day After Tomorrow — Sesuke
> Die Another Day — Matine Ojo Saiki
 > There is Something About Marry — Meri Ono
Apa-apane
 > Silence of the Lamb — Wedhuse Mutung
 > All The Pretty Horses — Jarane Ayu-ayu
 > Planet of the Apes — Planete Wong Apes
 > Gone in Sixty Second — Minggat Sakcepete
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Original Sin — Dosa Tenanan
 > The Abyss — Entek-entekan
 > Sea biscuit — Klethikan Neng Laut
 > Terminator — Terminal Montor
 > Lord Of The Ring — Pedagang Akik…
 > Deep Impact — Ngantem Njero
 > Million Dollar Baby — Babi Regone Sayuto
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LITERARY WORKS’ TITLE
A doll’s house – menjual rumah-adol omah
 King Lear – dari utara –King ler
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if languages segment reality differently 
different “world view”
certain phenomena of reality appear in
excessive detail in one L, while there is only a
collective name for them in another one: e.g.,
- Eskimo: many names for the different types of snow;
- Argentinean gauchos: the multitude of colour names
for horses;
- Arabic: the postures of camels;
- Russian: the types of fish;
- Italian: the types of pasta;
-Indonesian : the types of rice: nasi,beras, gabah. In
English these different types will be translated into just
one word “rice”. Saya makan nasi/beras/gabah??? 
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However, some scholars deny the existence of
untranslatability, e.g. pointing to the years of
translation practice. Others, mostly the
deconstructionists, deny the possibility of
translating anything - and no wonder, since they
also deny the possibility of understanding in
communication in one language.
HOW TO SOLVE UNTRANSLATABILITY
Translators deal with untranslatability by
employing a number of procedures. These include:
 Adaptation  Borrowing  Calque  Compensation  Paraphrase  Translator's note 
ADAPTATION
Adaptation - when social or cultural reality of the
source text with reality taken from the culture of
the target language;
 An adaptation, also known as a free translation, is
a procedure whereby the translator replaces a
term with cultural connotations, where those
connotations are restricted to readers of the
original language text, with a term with
corresponding cultural connotations that would be
familiar to readers of the translated text.
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For example, in the Belgian comic book The Adventures of
Tintin, Tintin's trusty canine sidekick Milou is translated
as Snowy in English, Bobbie in Dutch, Kuttus in Bengali,
and Struppi in German; likewise the
detectives Dupont and Dupond become Thomson and Thom
pson in English, Jansen and Janssen in
Dutch, Jonson and Ronson in Bengali, Schultze and Schulze i
n German, Hernández and Fernández inSpanish, 杜
本 and 杜朋 (Dùběn and Dùpéng)
in Chinese, Fomichoff and Fomichoff in Russian and Skafti a
nd Skapti in Icelandic.
Adaptation is often used when translating poetry, works
of theatre, and advertising.
BORROWING 
Borrowing - when the translator uses the word
or phrase of the original, usually in italics;
Borrowing is a translation procedure whereby
the translator uses a word or expression from
the source text in the target text unmodified.
 In English text, borrowings not sufficiently
anglicised are normally in italics.
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CALQUE 
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Calque - when the translation of an expression is
rendered word-for-word;
Calque entails taking an expression, breaking it down to
individual elements and translating each element into
the target language word for word. For example, the
German word "Alleinvertretungsanspruch" can be
calqued to "single-representation-claim", but a proper
translation would result in "Exclusive Mandate". Word-byword translations usually have comic value, but can be a
means to save as much of the original style as possible,
especially when the source text is ambiguous or
undecipherable to the translator.
COMPENSATION
Compensation - when the translator adds
elements to the target texts to make up for
their absence in the target language;
 Compensation is a translation procedure
whereby the translator solves the problem of
aspects of the source text that cannot take the
same form in the target language by replacing
these aspects with other elements or forms in
the source text.
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COMPENSATION
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For example, many languages have two forms of the
second person pronoun, namely a informal\singular
form and a formal\plural form. This is known as T-V
distinction, found in French (tu vs. vous), Spanish (tú /
vos vs. usted), Bengali (aapni vs.tumi vs. tui), German
(du / Ihr vs. Sie) and Italian (tu vs. voi/lei), for example,
but not contemporary English. Hence, to translate a text
from one of these languages to English, the translator
may have to compensate by using a first
name or nickname, or by using syntactic phrasing that
are viewed as informal in English (I'm, you're, gonna,
dontcha, etc.), or by using English words of the formal
and informal registers, to preserve the level of formality.
TRANSLATOR'S NOTE
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Translator's note - when the translator breaks
the flow of the text by an annotation that
compensates the untranslatability.
A translator's note is a note (usually a footnote or
an endnote) added by the translator to the target
text to provide additional information pertaining to
the limits of the translation, the cultural
background, or any other explanations.
 Some translation exams allow or demand such
notes. Some translators regard resorting to notes
as a failure, although this view is not shared by
most professionals.
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