Friday, 18 September 2009
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About Me
- Namek Daghstani M.A
- London, Greater London, United Kingdom
- An interpreter, translator with over twenty-five years of experience in English Arabic translation. An interpreter, translator with over twenty-five years of experience in English Arabic translation. Accomplishes tasks accurately and methodically, worked for Tyndallwoods Legal firms where I carried out all the legal documents translation and the related court hearing and prison interpretation and translation in major litigation cases in the UK. Also, I worked in Kuwait for a legal translation firm where I carried out the translation of all lawsuits and I carried out the interpretation and translation tasks inside the court. Legal Translation is part of the Master of Arts in Bi-Lingual Translation studies, which emphases on the legal terminologies related to contracts, official documents, international organizations such as the UN, the International Court of Justice “The Hague.” QUALIFICATIONS &EXPERINCE Tyndallwoods Solicitors 2001- 2007 I have been employed as a freelance interpreter and translator from 2001 - 2007 where I carried out Court and prison translation and interpretation in a prominent litigation case in the UK.
Translation Theory
ReplyDeleteTranslation theory was once strictly confined within the scope of linguistics for translation was merely referred to as a conversion of languages, from the source language into the target language. Nevertheless, when research is carried further and deeper, meaning is found not only associated with the language or the text but also with the author and the reader, which form the tripartite in understanding of the appropriate meaning of any text. This paper starts with the discussion of the relationship of hermeneutics and literary translation and then goes on to propose that a perfect theory of translation should be an overall concern of all the three aforementioned factors.
Key words: hermeneutics; translation; meaning; semiotics; reception theory.
Why is hermeneutics relevant to translation? Because there is no translation without understanding and interpreting texts, which is the initial step in any kinds of translation including literary translation of course. Inappropriate interpretation inevitably results in inadequate translations, if not wrong translations. Nevertheless, how do we understand?
Hermeneutics
Hermeneutics, briefly, can be defined as the science and methodology of interpreting texts. The philosophical background on which hermeneutics is based is demonstrated by the forerunners in this area such as Gadamer. According to Gadamer, words, that is, talk, conversation, dialogue, question, and answer, produce worlds. In contrast to a traditional, Aristotelian view of language where spoken words represent mental images and written words are symbols for spoken words, Gadamerian perspective on linguistics emphasizes a fundamental unity between language and human existence. Interpretation can never be divorced from language or objectified. Because language comes to humans with meaning, interpretations and understandings of the world can never be prejudice-free. As human beings, one cannot step outside of language and look at language or the world from some objective standpoint. Language is not a tool, which human beings manipulate to represent a meaning-full world; rather, language forms human reality. (Quoted from Bullock, 1997)
Another important figure in this sphere is Schleiermacher whose concept of understanding includes empathy as well as intuitive linguistic analysis. He believed that understanding is not merely the decoding of encoded information, interpretation is built upon understanding, and it has a grammatical, as well as a psychological moment. The grammatical thrust places the text within a particular literature (or language) and reciprocally uses the text to redefine the character of that literature. The psychological thrust is more naive and linear. In it, the interpreter reconstructs and