Translation Techniques: Loan Words, Verbalization, Nominalization

Translation Techniques: Why They Help You And Make A Good Translation

Professionals who base their work on communication usually prefer to use their intuition and don’t rely too much on techniques. That’s why translators are not obsessed with translation techniques or, at least, they don’t define their job as the ‘application of techniques’.

As translators, we have to use our intuition instead of just following a set of rules, as there are instances when no rule can give you the right answer. That’s why we are more familiar with concepts like sensitivity, creativity, receptiveness.

Techniques however, are fundamental to any translator; especially at the beginning of a career. A refined piece of work results from the proper application of a learned technique. The more strategies you know, the more options you have to choose from to solve a problem.

Three important translation techniques are as follows:

• – Loan words
• – Verbalization
• – Nominalization

> Loan word: is a word which is not translated. In languages, you can find many instances of them which derive mainly from English. For example, It’s preferable not to translate a word like computer as it is a widely socially accepted word which the vast majority of individuals understand. Every language accepts loan words more or less enthusiastically: in Italian, for instance, it would be quite rare for someone to use the ‘computer’ translation calcolatore, whilst the Spanish ordenador and the French ordinateur are generally accepted.
> Verbalization: this consists in transforming a noun into a verb. Sometimes it’s difficult to keep the same phrase structure from one language to another, and changing a noun into a verb could help to make the text more fluent.
> Nominalization: consists in transforming a verb or an adjective into a noun. For example:

In my next post I will analyse the chunking method, a way to deal with non-equivalences.