or
the Illusion of Verbatim Translations
Translation always is an approximation. Even between languages with a very similar cultural and linguistic background some concepts remain simply untranslatable.
Therefore, the traditional idea to mirror a text word by word in a target language – i.e. what most people have been forced to do at school – does not work in the real world, especially in business reality.
If there is no exact match for a certain concept expressed in one language in the other language, what does a translator do? Well, s/he must find a way to make the situation clear to the reader in the translation. This can be done through comments, with added descriptive explanations, or by finding a similar concept in the target language.
What really matters is to evoke the same emotional and/or intellectual response to the text in the reader.
Simple word-by-word match-writing is not suitable for a professional text.
make every word matter
Karoline
