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8 TYPES OF TRANSLATION

A Textbook of Translation
by: Peter Newmark (1988)

1. WORD-FOR-WORD TRANSLATION
 Source language word order is preserved.
 Words are translated by their most common meanings.
 Non-grammatical
 It is used in pre-translation process of difficult text in order to gain sense of meaning.

2. LITERAL TRANSLATION
 The source language grammatical constructions are converted to their nearest target language
equivalents but the lexical items are again translated out of context.
 It is also used for pre-translation process to identify problems.

3. FAITHFUL TRANSLATION
 It attempts to reproduce the precise contextual meaning of the original within the constraints of the
target language grammatical structures.
 It transfers cultural words and preserves the degree of grammatical and lexical deviation from source
language norms.
 It attempts to be completely faithful to the intentions and the text-realization of the source language
writer.

4. SEMANTIC TRANSLATION
 It is more flexible than faithful translation.
 It naturalizes in order to achieve aesthetic effect (may translate cultural words with neutral or functional
terms)
 Great focus on aesthetic features
 Close rendering of metaphors, collocations, technical terms, slang, colloquialisms, unusual syntactic
structures and collocations, peculiarly used words, neologism.
 Used for expressive texts: e.g., literature

5. COMMUNICATIVE TRANSLATION
 It attempts to render the exact contextual meaning of the original in such a way that both language and
content are readily acceptable and has comprehensible readership.

6. ADAPTIVE TRANSLATION
 Freest form of translation mainly used for plays and poetry.
 Themes/ characters/plots are preserved.
 Source language culture is converted to target language culture.
 Text is rewritten.

7. FREE TRANSLATION
 It reproduces the matter without the manner, or the content without the form of the original.
 Usually it is a paraphrase much longer than the original.

8. IDIOMATIC TRANSLATION
 It reproduces the message of the original.
 Tends to distort nuances of meaning by preferring colloquialisms and idioms

©Christine Mae G. Cruz


MAE-ELE

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