5 DERECHOS Y OBLIGACIONES DE TODOS LOS PARTICIPANTES
5.17 Normas para la migración de órdenes de domiciliación tradicionales
According to Catford, total translation requires the “replacement of SL grammar and lexis by equivalent TL grammar and lexis with consequential replacement of SL phonology/graphology by (non-equivalent) TL phonology/graphology” (ibid.: 22). It has been argued by Catford himself, however, that this category of translation tends to be misleading because this process entails the total replacement of SL grammar and lexis, but not the replacement by TL equivalents. In total translation, Catford ignored the use of contextual translation for the reason that there is no similar contextual translation in spite of the fact that translation on the phonological and
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graphological levels is a possibility here. To put it differently, it is unusual to replace the contextual units of the SL by their equivalents in the TL without at the same time replacing the SL grammatical and lexical units by providing the TL grammatical and lexical units (Sharma 2005). For instance:
@ /] ي %ا % %ا ا ھ This is the boy I met him
Here, no attention was paid to any grammatical or lexical unit when translating the sentence, but the translation lacks the contextual translation of where the meeting has taken place.
Restricted translation, on the other hand, is the:
replacement of SL textual material by equivalent TL textual material, at only one level, that is translation performed only at the phonological or at the graphological level, or at only one of the two levels of grammar and lexis” (ibid.: 22).
That is to say, a translator should replace one of the two things, either phonology and graphology or grammar and lexis. In restricted translation, it is impossible to replace all of the SL contextual units by TL contextual units. To make this point clearer, let us consider the notion of phonological translation. This is the substitution of the SL phonology by equivalent TL phonology with no replacements with the exception of any lexical or grammatical changes that resulted from phonological translation. For example, the English plural noun cats can come out as the singular
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cat in phonological translation in a TL that has no final consonant clusters (Catford 1965). With regard to phonological translation, Oller and Cobo-Lewis (2002:255) postulate that this ability: “makes it possible for speakers to hear a word in one language and to render that word, not its meaning, but its phonological form in the other language”.
Graphological translation is the substitution of the SL language graphology by equivalent TL language graphology with no replacements except for accidental ones. Catford (1965) argues that phonological and graphological translation must also be included in the translation theory because it sheds light on the conditions of the translation process. Nevertheless, some people may confuse graphology with transliteration, due to the similarity between these two processes. However, in transliteration a translator replaces every SL letter by an equivalent TL letter on the basis of an established set of rules. The first rule of transliteration is that the SL letters do not need to be the same as the TL letters since these are replaced by the SL phonological units. Secondly, SL phonological units are rendered into the TL phonological units. The last rule of transliteration is that the TL phonological units are transformed in the TL letters or other graphological units (Kumar 2008).
Last but not least, restricted translation includes not only phonological and graphological translation, but also translation at grammatical and lexical levels which can be more difficult to cope with. Many translators can become confused at this level which entails the replacement of SL grammatical units by equivalent TL grammatical units only, but no replacement at the lexical level. Replacement at the lexical level, on the other hand, means the replacing the SL lexical units by
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equivalent TL lexical units, without replacement of grammatical units. In other words, in the process of translating of a proverb, a translator either replaces grammar or lexis. To apply Catford’s argument about restricted translation in terms of grammar or lexis to the MSAPs would look strange and unsatisfactory due to the fact that one cannot render grammar without lexis while translating a proverb or any other text. Consider the following Arabic proverb in relation to this argument:
L G? . ع أ
Grammatical translation: /ier/ /ع2J / /K5 / /L52@ 7C6M /. Lexical translation: /hungry/ /أ/ /than Hawmal’s dog/.
At the grammatical translation level, when the Arabic proverb is rendered in terms of grammar, only the comparative adjectival ending /ier/ is translated because there are no other grammatical units in this proverb. At the lexical translation level, only the words are rendered and the comparative Arabic syllable /أ/ remains untranslated. Translation of this kind does not convey the intended meaning of any text, whether cultural or scientific since it has made the proverb look odd i.e, incomprehensible and does not satisfy the needs of the TL recipients.
To summarize this discussion, restricted translation deals with four main levels of a text: phonological, graphological, lexical, and grammatical. At the phonological level, the SL phonological units are replaced by TL equivalents on the basis of their relationship in terms of phonic qualities. At the graphological level, the SL graphology is replaced by equivalent TL graphology on the basis of the graphic qualities. As the example of the Arabic proverb translated above shows, at the
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lexical level, the SL lexical items are replaced by TL lexical items on the basis of being related to the same situation, but without replacing grammatical features. Finally, the grammatical level deals with the replacement of SL grammar items by equivalent TL grammatical items but with no replacement of the lexical ones, on the basis of their relationship to the same basic situation (Megrab 2002).