Chapter 4
Compensation in translation
and the role of translator
In the example, ‫' يوم لك ويوم عليك‬a day for you, a day against you', we added 'you
know the saying' to make it clear that this is a proverb and not an original formulation.
Here, this exegetic element 'you know the saying' is a kind of compensation which is
absolutely crucial to successful translation.
This chapter looks more closely at what compensation is and is not, and at a few of
the forms of compensation.
Other examples of compensation include the translation of ‫ زغردت‬as 'let out a
ululation'. However, this translation could, in another context, sound misleading to the
reader, being a betrayal of the ST effects. This loss could be reduced by adding an
exegetic element along the lines"' let out a ululation as women do at times of great
joy". Although this addition has great translation loss in terms of economy, denotative
meaning and cultural presupposition, it is still accepted because it significantly
reduces an even greater loss in terms of message content.
Translators make this sort of compromise all the time, balancing loss against
loss in order to do justice to what, in a given ST, they think is most important.
Student translators are encouraged to make these compromises as a result of
deliberate decisions taken in the light of such factors as the nature and purpose of the
ST, the purpose of the TT, the nature and needs of the target public, and so on. In
taking these decisions, translators should be reminded that compensation is not a
matter of inserting any elegant-sounding phrase into a TT to counter any weakness,
but to counter a specific, serious loss with a specific less serious one.
Compensation and constraint
In translating Arabic ‫ ذكر‬the translator has no choice, but to paraphrase as the word
does not exist in the TT. So when there is no choice for translators to provide an
equivalent, there is constraint, not compensation. If for example, ‫ ذكر‬is translated as
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'Ceaseless invocations of the name of God', and once this rendering has entered the
bilingual dictionary as a conventional lexical equivalent using it is not a case of
compensation, but of constraint. In other words, there would be little option left for
translators but to adopt this conventional rendering.
The boundary between compensation and constraint is more clearly seen in the
translation of ‫' ' زاد الطين بلة‬it made matters worse'. Compared with the literal
translation 'it increased the clay moistness', this is a good example of compensation.
And because this is a communicative translation, the translator is not exercising true
choice, but simply identifying the conventionally correct translation.
The translator may decide that in, a given context, adopting the conventional
dictionary translation would incur unacceptable translation loss. If conventional
dictionary translation is modified in order to reduce the loss, this may well be a case
of compensation.
Categories of compensation
In discussing TTs, it is sometimes helpful to distinguish between different categories
of compensation. The most important thing here is what loss it compensates for and
how it does. In addition, compensation can never be considered in isolation from
other crucial factors: context, style, genre, the purpose of the ST and the TT.
1. Compensation in kind
This type involves a difference in kind between the ST textual effect and the TT
textual effect. This takes several forms including:
-
making explicit what is implicit in the ST and vice versa
-
denotative meaning may replace connotative meaning and vice versa
-
Substituting concrete for abstract or abstract for concrete
-
In some texts compensation may involve replacing a piece of classical Arabic
poetry by an analogous piece of English poetry.
-
It involves different parts of speech and syntactic structures from those
indicated by literal translation.
These substitutions can go beyond the level of single words to include whole
phrases, sentences or even paragraphs.
See examples of compensation in kind page: 45
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2. Compensation in place
The textual effect of the TT occurs at a different place from the corresponding
textual effect in the ST.
See examples of compensation in kind page: 45-6
3. Compensation in by splitting
Here compensation involves a change in economy, i.e. ST features are spread over
a long length of TT.
See examples of compensation in kind page: 47
To sum up, the most important lesson to be learned from this chapter is that
compensation is a matter of choice and decision. It is the reduction of an
unacceptable translation loss through the calculated introduction of a less
unacceptable one.
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