Translating a Guidebook : - How to Deal with Idioms and Metaphors, Temporal Deictic Expressions and References to Culture-specific Phenomena

• Main Author: Petersson, Eva
• Format: Others
• Language: English
• Published: Linnéuniversitetet, Institutionen för språk och litteratur, SOL 2011
• Subjects: Specific Languages; Studier av enskilda språk
• Online Access: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:lnu:diva-12601

The purpose of the present study was to examine what methods might be employed in translation from English to Swedish of a guidebook on a foreign culture. Vinay and Darbelnet's model for translation strategies, as presented in Comparative Stylistics of French and English. A Methodology for Translation (1995), makes up the primary theoretical basis of the study. It comprises direct translation methods - borrowing, calque and literal translation - and indirect methods - transposition, modulation, equivalence and adaptation. Newmark's solutions for translating metaphors (Newmark 2001) also proved useful - among them paraphrasing, replacing images with their corresponding target language images and omitting the metaphor. To obtain data I translated some passages from Borneo (2008). Different procedures employed were identified along with translation problems. The study deals with the translation of metaphors, deictic time references and various culture-specific phenomena. Most of the above-mentioned strategies were applied, without a recognizable systematic pattern, though. This study, however, merely scratches the surface of this rich and interesting source. To future translation students, guidebooks - due to their great variety of topics, often outlined by different writers, each with an individual style - are likely to offer many interesting translation issues, whether to do with terminology, grammar or stylistics.