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Four Levels of Translation Process

The document summarizes the four levels of the translation process according to Newmark: 1. The source text level focuses on the source text and its initial impression on the translator. 2. The referential level deals with the content and meaning of the text through decoding, disambiguating, and encoding the message into the target language. 3. The cohesive level links the textual and referential levels by examining the structure, format, and tone of the text to achieve equivalence when transferring it to the target text. 4. The level of naturalness is oriented toward constructing a target text that sounds natural in the target language through identifying and addressing unnatural parts.

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231 views2 pages

Four Levels of Translation Process

The document summarizes the four levels of the translation process according to Newmark: 1. The source text level focuses on the source text and its initial impression on the translator. 2. The referential level deals with the content and meaning of the text through decoding, disambiguating, and encoding the message into the target language. 3. The cohesive level links the textual and referential levels by examining the structure, format, and tone of the text to achieve equivalence when transferring it to the target text. 4. The level of naturalness is oriented toward constructing a target text that sounds natural in the target language through identifying and addressing unnatural parts.

Uploaded by

19PAD029 MD ANICHUR RAHAMAN
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Levels of the Process of Translation

In fact, Newmark asserts that the process of translation operates in four levels:

 source text level: the source text itself and its immediate impression on the translator.
 referential level: the level of content of the text (technically the level of the conceptual
representation) .
 cohesive level: the level where you aim at making a cohesive target text (and analyze the cohesion
of the source text).
 level of naturalness: the level of constructing a natural target text in an appropriate language.

1. The textual level:

At this level, you translate, or transpose, the syntactic structures of the source text into corresponding
structures in the target text. Often you will find that, for a variety of reasons, you will have to change these
structures into something quite different further down the line to achieve target language naturalness.

2 . The referential level:

As mentioned above, this is the level of content, so here you operate primarily with the message (or
information) or semantics of the text. This is where you decode the meaning of the source text and build the
conceptual representation. This is where you disambiguate polysemous words and phrases and where you
decode idioms and figurative expressions. This is where you figure out whether what the locution(s) and
illocution(s) of the source text are and what the perlocution might be.
Once you have decoded the word or expression in question, you encode it into an appropriate target
language expression. Note that there will be cases, like idioms and metaphors, in which you will have to
use literal expressions in the target language, because it does not have any corresponding idioms or
metaphors.
The referential level and the textual level are, of course, closely intertwined, as the nature and texture of the
source text convey the message, and, of course, you also encode the message, using language, into the
target text.

3. The cohesive level:

The cohesive level links the textual and the referential levels in that it deals with the structure/format of the
text and information as well as with what Newmark calls the mood of the text.
At the structural sublevel, you investigate how various connectors, such as conjunctions, enumerations,
repetitions or reiterations, definite articles and determiners, general category labels, synonyms, punctuation
marks, simple or complex conjuncts, link sentences and structure the text and what Newmark calls its train
of thought – which is basically its underlying information structure.
You establish its tone by finding so-called value-laden and value-free passages, such as subjective and
objective bits, euphemisms, and other framing devices, framing being the strategy of linguistically
presenting something in the perspective of one's own values and worldview, in a way promoting these. All
of this will have to be somehow transferred into the target text so you achieve maximal equivalence at this
level .
4. The level of naturalness:

This level is target text oriented, focusing exclusively on the construction of the target text. Random,
unpredictable things that just seem unnatural in the target language makes things more complicated as
naturalness often depends on the situation, such that something might seem natural in one context but
unnatural in another. Perhaps, the only way, to ensure naturalness is to read through your translation and
spot unnaturally sounding parts and change them into something that sounds more natural. This is
something that most people skip when they do translations

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