To my bi- or poly-lingual friends:
Have you ever wanted to reach through the TV screen, or through time, and steal a translator’s keyboard before they mangled a beautiful scene or mis-translated a crucial word?
I have. But after beginning to do translation work myself, I came to realize just how complicated, delicate, and difficult translating can be, for many reasons.
First of all, just as no two people think exactly alike, neither do languages. For instance, English people rarely use chopsticks, unlike Chinese people, so the verb “夹” is unnecessary to the English lexicon. Likewise, Southern Californians rarely see snow, so unlike the Inuits, they don’t need dozens of different words describing the fluffy white stuff.
Secondly, languages are not static. They are ever-changing, like saplings, or small children, or my waistline during the holiday season. Commonly used words become uncommon. Definitions change, sometimes drastically. Words that once possessed negative connotations become positive. If this is true within one language system, imagine how much more complex things get when you try to translate thoughts into another language!
All of this means that there is no such thing as a “perfect translation.” Instead, compromises and sacrifices must be made each time something is translated. Translators have to ask themselves: What did the author intend to communicate to the reader? What does the reader need to know? Is it more important to capture the literal meaning, overall thought, or artistic essence of the original piece?
Because of this, translators have come up with different ways to approach the tricky task of translation. The methods are many, and have different names, and often overlap. So I’ve attempted to simplify things by grouping things into three basic methods.
To illustrate how this works, I’ve borrowed a sample sentence from Love Is Not Blind by Bao JingJing. See this page for more information.
Original sentence: 我努力想要回忆起我们曾经的好情意，但是，它们的真实程度，在此刻遭到了毁灭性的质疑。
Formal correspondence / Formal equivalence / “word-for-word” translation
Translation designed to reveal as much of the original language’s form and content as much as possible, even if it doesn’t sound good or make a lot of sense in the target language.
Ex: I effortfully wanted to remember our once-upon-a-time’s good affections, but, their authenticity level, at this moment, brought in destructive questions.
Functional equivalence / Dynamic equivalence / meaning-based / “thought-for-thought” translation
A method of translation that attempts to retains the meaning or thought of the original language, but not necessarily the exact words or forms from the original language.
Ex: I tried to recall happy memories of our past together, but that only served to raise destructive questions regarding their level of reality.
Paraphrase
Restatement of a text in your own words/ using other words.
Ex: I tried to remember happy moments from our past, but couldn’t stop painfully questioning the reality of those memories.
All three methods have their benefits and drawbacks. Word-for-word translation is helpful for language learners who want to better understand how thoughts are expressed in the original language. Thought-for-thought translation focuses more on the author’s intended meaning than on the way the language is used to express that meaning. Paraphrase also focuses on meaning, but also allows the paraphraser to inject a little of his/her own personality and interpretation into the text.
Just like no two pianists play the same Beethoven concerto exactly the same way, no two translators will likely translate the same document the same way.
In the end, I suspect that most translators choose to use a mix of the translation styles, depending on who they’re working for, what they’re translating, and maybe even how many secret puns and jokes they think they can get away with slipping into the text.
At least, that’s what I do.
Resources:
http://translatorthoughts.com/2015/06/translation-techniques-paraphrasing/
http://www.participatorystudyseries.com/versioncomp.php
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_and_formal_equivalence
Sarah Edits ESL 
[…] write anything in your native language and then translate it into English. For one, translation is harder than you think. And you are bound to translate something—a word, a turn of phrase—that has no good […]
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