Nicole Muscat
In Experiences in Translation, Umberto Eco, an Italian author and translator, addresses the complexity of the process of translating a text from one language to another, as it is a process that involves much more work than simply translating the text word for word. When one translates a text, majority of the time they are given a great deal of options as to how they want to go about the translation— they can change around a sentence to follow the grammar rules of the translated language, take a word and completely change that word, or eliminate or add sentences and other. When translating a text t is important to keep a balance between foreignizing and domesticating the text without losing the culture of the source text, and to also be able to modernize archaic texts without changing the time period.
Translators are given the challenge of translating in a way so that the audience of the target text has an excellent understanding of the text, but at the same time making sure that the culture of the source text is not lost in translation. In this novel, Eco says, “The difference between modernizing the text and keeping it archaic is not the same as the one between foreignizing or domesticating it.” (p.22). When a text is too foreignized, it will sound odd in the target translation because a word choice or sentence structure that may be correct in one language may be wrong in another. Eco then uses the example of translating the sentence, ‘Jane, I find you very attractive’, into Italian which would be ‘Jane, vi trovo molto attraente’, as a sentence that would not be considered a good translation due to the fact that the word ‘attractive’ is, what many would consider, a cheap word in the Italian language. A better decision would be change the word attractive to bella or carina. When a text is domesticated, it is changed to fir the culture of the target text. Sometimes it is changed too much, thus creating a poor translation.
Modernizing an archaic translation is often necessary for the translation for the target audience to understand the text. Because language changes over time, it can be quite difficult to read old texts. When modernizing an archaic text, it is necessary to keep the text sounding archaic, and only modernizing the language. Ultimately, translating is a very complex process with a wide variety of methods.