Reflection upon "La traducción y el lenguaje como discurso"
By Mateo Alejandro Castillo, Manuela Ocampo, Maria Camila Revelo
In the text "La traducción y el lenguaje como discurso" written by Norma Diaz, professor of the university of Quindío, it was defined translation as the written production and interpretation as the oral production between the switch of two languages. Also, the text was centred on the legal field of translation and sworn interpretation. It was explained that in the legal field, it is needed to acquire "the legal sense", which means that the translator or sworn interpreter has to avoid double sense and personal opinion. In the same way, the need to keep the formal aspects of the language as well as the content itself. We as future translators and interpreters, consider that in some areas, literal translation is necessary in order to "keep loyalty to the text" as Christiane Nord said, to preserve the author's intentionality, in this case, to be loyal to the legal field. Also we notice that it is a big responsability to translate and interpret in the legal field because it does not admit any mistake due to the seriousness of the issue. In order to work in the legal field we need to be documented careful and responsible with the message conveyed.
Reflection upon Professor Norma Diaz' Point of View about "The Relation between Translation and Knowledge
By Juan Carlos Vela and Daniela Molina
Starting up, there has been a constant doubt about the relation between translation and knowledge, but there has not been an exact answer about it. Why is this happening? We firmly believe that this has been occurring because of the belief that translation is an easy task that does not require to use different knowledge, the use of a big amount of effort, time and investigation. Also, in different fields of Education that are not concerned about bilingualism, there is a big under-estimation of the mental processes by which a bilingual translator goes through in order to understand and produce knowledge. On the whole, translator's job demands lots of adequate knowledge, professionalism, effort and acknowledgement.
Adequate vs. Inadequate Translation
By Tania Velasquez and Santiago Perez
Based on the text “La Traducción y el Lenguage Como Discurso” by Norma Diaz (Published on http://traductologyvstranslation.blogspot.com.co), we encounter with the issue in translation in fields like legal, in which we have very specific terms and really specific cultures in which these legal aspects apply. The text mentions that in these fields the author cannot change terms as he/she wants putting in risk the exact meaning of the source. We are in agreement with this statement and moreover we actually consider that this should be applied to translation in any field. We consider that if a word has a direct translation in the target language, that equivalent should be the one to use. Also, we deem that translations should not reflect the translator’s opinions or beliefs because the text was written by an author and the translator’s job is to communicate exactly what he/she meant and not adding or changing things because the translator is not the owner of such text and therefore he must not have freedom to alter it. This leaves us to a dead end when we face a term which does not have a counter part in the target language. Schleiermacher (1804) said that to face this problem there are two possible ways: paraphrasing and notes. We already know that in the legal field paraphrasing is not an option, therefore, we consider that keeping the term in the original language and adding commentaries is the most accurate way.