Terry and Riggs

Riggs in his commentary outlines two approaches to translation, one in which the translator translates the text word by word as they go along, and one where they read to the end and then start translating, after they have done the research on the text. To me, the question of which approach I use has long been solved, and I doubt there would be anything that would ever change my mind that it is in the translators best interest to read and digest the text beforehand. It is my observation that translators tend to be strongly attached to their first drafts, and translating text where proper background knowledge and research is needed to fully understand the intricacies of the text, it is a disservice to the translator to create a draft that they might unknowingly become attached to, while it may obviously lack the details necessary to be the basis for a good translation.

More interestingly though Riggs discussion on titles and how they inevitably go through change is one I think many people would be prone to disagree with. In many of the texts we go through in class however, there is significantly less leeway for innovation, but retooling a title is something that in many other forms of media is incredibly necessary. The magazine article this week, for example, is better served with a more liberal translation for a title. Along with a litany of modern content, from Youtube video titles to product names, a literal translation is oftentimes not only difficult to parse in English, but detrimental to the purpose for what the media is attempting to do. 

In the same vein, Terry offers many insightful views on exactly how he thinks a text should be translated. His thoughts on the matters, to some, will likely be a point of contention, but they are I believe, not without value. On the contrary, I can only agree with the majority of them, and many of the points he makes are very eye-opening. Particularly the many phrases he considers to translate to nothing, and that it would be better to leave them out entirely. In terms of delivering the author's will to the audience, whether this act goes against such a concept is likely at the individual's discretion, but personally I find it exceedingly hard to disagree. 

 

Steven