Literary Text Translation

 

Literary Text: Literary texts include all forms of literature whether written in prose or verse. They are the short story, the novel, the drama, the essay and the critical text. Although all these kinds of literary texts apparently differ in form and content, yet they all have shared universal characteristics which distinguish them from other manners of writing.

Translating Literary Text: Translating a literary text involves the reshaping of words from one language to another. The text translation has always witnessed a substantial significance in the history of translation. According to the readers, the translation of Holy books like Bible, Quran and others, into local languages have been identified as big milestones in the course of time. Thus, it is recognized as an impactful conduct in terms of all the cultural, social, religious, and political approach.

Translator and the Literary Text: The translator is known as efficient personnel, who has the ability to produce text with the same impression as the original text. It has been, therefore, considered necessary for the literary translators to contemplate the aesthetic aspects of the translated text in order to maintain the style and laxity of the original content. Therefore, the translators are expected to have acquired extensive artistic skills along with efficient language abilities. The competence of a translator in the performance of translating a text from source to target language must be highly proficient. It is considered that the target text, which is finally shared with the target audience, is basically the perception and final resolutions of the translator towards the material. Thus, the translation is realized and regarded more as a product rather than the process.

Translation Problem: The transformation of a text from one language to another has been a challenging task, particularly when dealing with sensitive materials that may have strong impacts on society. The problems related to literary translation have been considered as factors involving a multilingual environment responsible for attracting maximum attention. The issues related to translation have been expanded to encompass various regional, national, individual identities and power concerns.

Recognizing the characteristics such as special language, expressive function, suggestive power, form, and timelessness and placelessness in a literary text will enable the translator to be at least partly qualified to fulfill his task with much more accuracy. Moreover, the remaining rate of accuracy can only be achieved if the translator himself has had the fundamental literary qualifications. If so, he can transform to the target text nearly most of the syntactic, stylistic and aesthetic elements originally found in the source text, in a way which creates that desirable artistic correspondence, or rather the most acceptable equivalents. So it appears that the process of literary translation can never be just an automatic one narrowly restricted to merely finding words and sentences in the target language that correspond to those in the source language. The fact is that a literary text is more likely to bear an extra message usually concealed behind the apparent and surface linguistic structures. Quite often such a message takes shape by the interaction of certain words and syntactic structure with each other in part or in whole, rather than by these apart. Also it is worth remembering that translation is always concerned with the matter of co-existing cultures. Truly there are always distinctive differences between them in respect of folklore, mythology and symbolism of which the cleverest or the most qualified translator should be well-informed. Once again, being only aware of them is insufficient. He has indeed to recognize some historical or social facts about such culture distinction in order to be on a safer side when interpreting the text as properly as possible. Consequently, he had rather, whenever possible, acquaint himself with almost every piece of information related to the etymology or semantic development over decades and centuries; especially when translating older literary text.