THE PROCESS OF TRANSLATING

Introduction
Translating procedure is operational. It begins with choosing a method of approach.
Then translating with four levels more or less consciously in mind such as: SL text level,
referential level, cohesive level, and the level of naturalness.

The Relation of Translating to Translating Theory

The purpose of theory of translating is to be serviced to the translator. It is designed to
be a continuous link between translation theory and practice. It derives from translation
theory framework which purposes that when the main purpose of the text is to convey
information and convince the reader, a method of translation must be natural.
The level of naturalness binds translating theory, and translating theory to practice.
The theory of translating is based, via the level of naturalness, on a theory of translation.

The Approach
There are two approaches to translating. First, start translating sentence by sentence,
for say the first of paragraph or chapter, to get the feel and the feeling tone of the text, and
then deliberately sit back, review the position, and read the rest of the SL text. Second,
reading whole text two or three times, and find the intention, register, tone, mark difficult
word and passage and start translating only when we have taken our bearings.
Choosing of the method based on our temperament. We may think the first method
more suitable for a literary and the second for a technical or an institutional text. The danger
of the first method is that it may leave you with too much revision to do on the early part, and
is therefore time-wasting. The second method can be mechanical. A translational text analysis
is useful as a point of reference, but it should not inhibit the free play of our intuition.
Alternatively, we may prefer first approach for relatively easy text, the second for a harder
one.

Textual Level
The base level when you translate is the text. This is the level of the literal translation
of the source language into the target language, the level of the translationese we have to
eliminate, but it also acts as a corrective or paraphrase and the parer-down of synonyms. So a
part of our mind may be on the text level whilst another is elsewhere. Translation is pre-
eminently the occupation in which we have to be thinking of several things at the same time.
The Referential Level
The referential goes hand in hand with the textual level. All language have
polysemous words and structures which can be finally solved only on the referential level,
beginning with a few multi-purpose, overloaded prepositions and conjunctions, through
dangling participles to general words.

The Cohesive Level

Cohesive level follows both the structure and the moods of the text. The structure
through the connective words linking the sentence, usually proceeding from known
information to new information. Thus the structure follows the train of thought.
Mood can be shown as a dialectical factor moving between positive and negative,
emotive and neutral. It means tracing the thread of a text through its value-laden and value-
free passages which may be expressed by objects or nouns, as well as adjectives or qualities.
This attempt to follow the thought through the connectives and feeling tone, and the
emotion through value-laden or value-free expression, is only tentative, but it may determine
the difference between a humdrum or misleading translation and a good one.

The Level of Naturalness

We have to bear in mind that the level of naturalness of natural usage grammatical as
well as lexical, and through appropriate sentence connectives, may extend to the entire text.
When we are translating an informative text, naturalness is essential. That is why we cannot
translate properly if the TL is not on your language of habitual usage. That is why we so
often have to detach our self mentally from the SL text.
Natural translation can be contrasted with casual language, where word order,
syntactic structures, collocations, and words are predictable. We have to pay special attention
to word order, common structures, cognate words, the appropriateness of gerund, infinitives,
verb-noun, lexical, and other obvious areas of interference.

Combining the Four Levels

We have to keep in parallel the four levels because they are distinct from but
frequently impinge on and may be in conflict with each other. As regards the level of
naturalness, we translate informative and vocative text on this level irrespective of the
naturalness in colloquial texts. For expressive and authoritative text, however, we keep to a
natural level only if the original is written ordinary language. If the original is linguistically
or stylistically innovative, we should aim at a corresponding degree of innovation,
representing the degree of deviation from naturalness, in our translation – ironically, even
when translating these innovative texts, their natural level remains as a point of reference.

The Unit of Translating