Basic translation devices

This Lecture: ntroduces basic translators' devices:

partitioning;

integration;

transposition;

replacement,

addition;

omission and

antonymous translation; shows where and how these devices are applied as tools to ensure adequate translation.

You might have already guessed from previous discussion that translation was a rather individual matter brinking on art and almost in any case requiring unique and unprecedented decisions. And yet even in translation of poetry, which undoubtedly demands the most individual approach, a translator is bound to use a more or less standard set of de­vices which helps to convey the ideas of the source text in the best possi­ble way and, generally speaking, makes it possible to translate.

Although the choice of particular devices depends on the text type, genre and style as well as on the translation variety (oral, written, con­secutive, simultaneous) and translation direction (into or from a foreign language), the basic set of translation devices (a kind of'translator's tool kit') usually comprises partitioning and. integration of sentences, transpo­sition of sentence parts, replacement, addition and omission of words and word combinations as well as a special type of transformations called antonymous translation.