2012 International Conference on Education Technology and Management Engineering Lecture Notes in Information Technology, Vols.

16-17

An Analysis of Over-translation and Under-translation in Perspective of Cultural Connotation Mian Wang

Henan Polytechnic Institue, Henan Nanyang 473000 Keywords: over-translation, under-translation, cultural connotation

Abstract. The present thesis analyzes the over-translation and under-translation in perspective of cultural connotation. Over-translation refers to the information that the target language contains is more than that of the source language, and under-translation refers to the information that the target language contains is less than that of the source language. Due to the cultural differences in Chinese and English, it is hard to avoid these phenomena. However, after a deep research, we can take shunning methods to minimize these phenomena. Thus the target language readers can better understand the meaning of the source language. Introduction In translation, we often come across such phenomena that the translated text carries either more or less information than the original text. As a result, it has caused some problems for readers to reach the real meaning. Actually this kind of phenomena is called over-translation and under-translation. The phenomena of over-translation and under-translation are not new in the translation field. Over-translation and under-translation were first put forward in 1976 by Peter Newmark in his book Approaches to Translation. However, he gave neither the definition nor reasons for the phenomena. In the late 1980s, Chinese translation scholars began to introduce them and use them to analyze translation errors. They mainly aimed at finding out the causes of over-translation and undertranslation and then proposing some shunning strategies for over-translation and under-translation in the angle of the differences between language and culture. Analysis of Cultural Connotation Over-translation and under-translation were first put forward in 1976 by a translation theorist called Peter Newmark in his book Approaches to Translation. However, he didnt give the reasons for the phenomena at that time. The author of this thesis holds that the main reasons for these phenomena are different cultural connotations. In this chapter, the author will give an analysis of the cultural connotations in certain aspects. Definition and categorization of culture. Culture is an extremely complex and enormous subject. In the field of translation studies, due to the cultural turn, the culture heat is escalating; therefore culture appears more frequently in the literatures of translation theories. Some translation theorists even claim that translation equals culture, that is, translation is transference of culture. And quite a lot translation theorists have given their own definitions on culture. For example, Eugene A. Nida (1993:79) defined culture as the totality of beliefs and practices of a society, while Peter Newmark (2001) defines culture as the way of life and its manifestations that are peculiar to a community that uses a particular language as its means of expression. According to British anthropologist Tylor (1871), culture is complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, arts, morals, customs and any other capacities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.
978-1-61275-016-3/10/$25.00 2012 IERI
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Bates and Plog (1990) proposes that culture is a system of shared belief, values, customs, behaviors and artifacts that the members of a society use to cope with their world and with one another, and that are transmitted from generation to generation through learning. These definitions of culture cover all aspects of human life and correspondent behaviors, such as belief, knowledge and social habits, etc. In a broad sense, culture can be understood as the total way of life of particular groups of people, their approach to life and their ways of behavior. It is transmitted from generation to generation through learning and becomes the model for common adaptive acts and styles of expressive behavior of people in a society. Scholars define culture for different research purposes and from various angles and aspects. But they make an agreement that culture is not innate, but learned. It comes from an accumulation throughout the history of a given community and it manifests itself in forms of activity and behavior of mankind. And it is socially acquired instead of biologically transferred. Generally speakingit is an overriding term encompassing everything from the social systemthe behavioral custom to the ideology of a particular group of people. Anthropologists propose that the culture can be divided into four categories: material, social, ideological, and artistic. Material culture includes products of human manufacture such as technology. Social culture pertains to peoples forms of social organization and how people interact and organize themselves in groups. Ideological culture relates to what people think, value, believe, and hold as ideals. The artistic culture includes such activities and areas of interest as music, sculpture, painting, pottery, theater, cooking, writing, and fashion. Anthropologists often study how these categories of culture differ across different types of societies that vary in scale (size and complexity). Factors influencing differences of cultural connotation. Language is a part of culture. Translating from one language into another cannot be done satisfactorily without adequate knowledge of the whole culture involved. Every nation has its special background which has close relationship with the words which are related to history, social background, social value, cultural background. In this chapter, these factors causing differences of cultural connotations will be discussed. With the development of social culture and changes of politics and economy, there are more and more new English words that are related to the cultural background. It is well known that there is an English word water-gate which came from the political scandal about the former US president Richard Nixon in 1972. And then this word had its root in English and became a verb. Due to the invention of this word, after the exposal of the scandal between the Britain prince Charles and Cammilla Parketr Bowles, another new word Cammilla-gate came into being. And later on there are more and more new words with gate as the morpheme, such as Ianny-gate, cookie-gate. Every new word has a story, and without knowing the story we could hardly translate it. Connection between translation and culture. It is known that culture plays a very important role in the translation process. As is pointed out by Guo Jianzhong(2000)now translation is more or less regarded as an intercultural communication behavior. In the research of translation, Nida(1993) has become aware of the great importance of cultural factors in translating. He believes that the cultural factors in translating are more significant than the purely linguistic differences. He is sure that the most serious mistakes in translating are usually made not because of verbal inadequacy but of wrong cultural assumptions. The translators or interpreters cannot understand the source language text correctly without careful consideration of its cultural background. Therefore, for truly successful translatingbiculturalism is even more important than bilingualismsince words only have meanings in terms of the cultures in which they function. (Nida, 1993) Cultural differences have brought many difficulties to translationand only by cultural adjustments and modificationscan we successfully reach the goal of functional equivalence.

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As people are accustomed to their own ways of expressions shaped by their own histories and cultures, many words have different pragmatic implications in different countries. Different peoples may also have differences in their national psychology, which refers to the character, emotion, value and religious belief of a nation, formed in its long process of evolution and development. Although these differences cant be seen from the appearancethey can bring obstacles to crosscultural communication and translation. In a word, translation is a cross-cultural activity. Superficiallytranslation happens between two languages. But as language is the carrier of culturetranslation activity is essentially meant to graft information from the source language culture to the target language culture. As culture constitutes the context for language communicationmore attention are turned to the cultural aspect of the language. Translation is actually a cross-cultural activity. An ideal translation shall be able to integrate both the linguistic meaning and the culture meaning of the source language seamlessly into the target languageso that the source language reader and the target language reader can experience the same mind impact. Definition and Demarcation of Over-translation and Under-translation In translation, we often come across such phenomena that the translated text carries either more or less information than the original text. As a result, it has caused some problems for readers to reach the real meaning. Actually, such phenomena are called over-translation and under-translation. In the last chapter, the author analyses the cultural connotation. And in this chapter, the author will present a detailed definition and demarcation of over-translation and under-translation. Definition of over-translation and under-translation. Both over-translation and undertranslation consist in reproducing in the target language (TL) the non-equivalence of the source language (SL) message, in terms of meaning or style. Over-translation refers to the information that the target language contains is more than that of the source language. Under-translation refers to the information that the target language contains is less than that of the source language. In other words, over-translation conveys the target language readers more information than the source language readers should receive, which could lead to a misunderstanding between the source language and the target language. On the contrary, under-translation overestimates the knowledge reserve of the target language readers and neglects the comprehensibility of the translated works, which could lead to a lack of necessary information that the source language attempts to convey. However, both overtranslation and under-translation are deviation from the ideal, faithful and expressive translation. And there is one common thing between over-translation and under-translation that both of the two translations produce non-equivalence in translated works. Demarcation of over-translation and under-translation from Nidas Theory of Receptors Response. It is known that the older focus in translating was the form of the message, and translators tended to reproduce the stylistic specialties, for example, some unusual grammatical structures. As English translator D.Hawkes points out that the faithfulness to the translation can be divided into three parts: the author, the translator, and the article itself. However, Nida(1982) combines these three parts into a integrated one. And that integration is called receptors response. According to Nidas theory on receptors response, the new focus has shifted from the form of the message to the response of the receptor. Nida(1964) holds that the response of the receptor plays an important role in the translated message and this response should be compared with the way in which the original receptor would react to the source message. He suggests that the correctness of a translation text must be determined by the extent to which the average readers will be likely to understand it correctly. Moreover, he suggests that we should not concern merely with the possibility of his understanding correctly, but also with the overwhelming likelihood of it. In other words, we are not content merely to translate so that the average receptor is likely to understand the message; rather we aim to make certain that such a person is very unlikely to misunderstand it.
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He also points out that posing the question of correctness in this manner naturally implies that there will be different translations that can be called correct. In fact, for the scholar who himself is well acquainted with the original, even the most labored, literal translation will be correct, for he will not misunderstand it. On the other hand, in most large linguistic communities, especially when they employ so-called international languages spoken by millions of people, there are a number of socio-educational levels of speech and comprehension. That means that several different levels of translation, in terms of vocabulary and grammatical structures, are required, if all people are to have essentially equal opportunities to understand the message. At present, there seem no standards that are good enough to judge the correctness of the translated text. So it is probably a good criterion for us to demarcate over-translation and undertranslation by using Nidas receptors response. By using Nidas receptors response to analyze the correctness of translation we can have many types of translation considered correct to the source language. Conclusion This thesis attempts to study over-translation and under-translation from the perspective of cultural connotation, between English and Chinese, and how we can possibly minimize or avoid such phenomena. The author uses the Nidas Theory on Receptors Response as the criteria in defining and demarcating the term of over-translation and under-translation. Over-translation conveys the target language readers more information than the source language readers should receive, which could lead to a misunderstanding between the source language and the target language. On the contrary, under-translation overestimates the knowledge reserve of the target language readers and neglects the comprehensibility of the translated works, which could lead to a lack of necessary information. Without such necessary information, the target language readers cannot fully comprehend the information that the source language attempts to convey. However, both of the two translations are deviation from the ideal, faithful and expressive translation, and both produce non-equivalence translated works. After conducting the research on over-translation and under-translation from the perspective of cultural connotation, the author does believe there are some limitations that should be pointed out for further study. First, it is suggested that more causes should be taken into consideration and fully discussed in the future study on this subject. Second, it is suggested that more shunning strategies or methods could be found out to deal with this phenomena. Over-translation and under-translation are closely related to culture, especially cross-cultural communication, and as cross-cultural communication deepens, those phenomena may disappear, and maybe they could become universally accepted words or expressions. So we should try to get ourselves familiar with other cultures and learn more of them. References [1] Bates, D.G. & F. Plog. Cultural Anthropology [M]. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1990. [2] Newmark, Peter. Approaches to Translation[M]. Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1982. [3] Newmark, Peter. A Text Book of Translation[M]. Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign Language Eduation Press, 2001. [4] Nida, E.A. Toward A Science Of Translation[M]. Leiden : E.J. Brill, 1964. [5] Nida, E. A. & C.R, Taber. The Theory and Practice of Translation[M]. Leiden : E.J. Brill, 1982. [6] Nida, E.A. Language, Culture and Translation[M]. Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign Language
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Education Press, 1993. [7] Pinchuck, Isdore. Scientific and Technical Translation[M]. London: Andre Deutsch, 1977. [8] Samovar, L. A. and R. E, Porter and L. A, Stefani. Communication Between Cultures[M]. Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, 2000. [9] Taylor, Edward Burnett. Primitive Culture[M]. London: John Murray, 1871.

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