The Impact of Literal and Free Translation on the Re-creation of Meaning.

Abstract

Technical translation significantly differs from literary translation in terms of various lexical and morphological categories. This particularly refers to the technical terminology that is characteristic for a particular professional field and its standardized meaning. One of the main tasks in the translation process is to discover the meaning of words in context – whether they have acquired a new meaning or whether they have been used with a metaphorical or specialized meaning, etc. Based on the theoretical framework provided by Newmark, Vinay and Darbelnet, the research in this paper focuses on the use of various literal and free translation procedures and how they affect or change the meaning when it is re-created in the target text, i.e. in the translation. For that purpose, the analysis is performed on a contemporary corpus, with specific examples demonstrating which translation procedures provide semantic equivalence with the original.