Channels, Fall 2020

Channels • 20 20 • Volume 5 • Number 1 Page 31 author was a native of English cited several instances of confusing wording, such as “himself those of the USA” and the use of USA and US as opposed to simply saying America. One of the students also successfully identified the text as a translation from a European news agency, even though this possibility was not expressly given. The student’s evaluation is made all the more remarkable by the fact that this individual is not a native English speaker. Although not as successful as the first translation, the second was well received overall. The most curious results arise from the third group of students. Of the seven who responded, only two believed the writer was a native of English, four did not, and one was not sure, stating that if the writer was a native speaker of English, his or her native dialect was not American. Those who did not think the writer was native consistently cited choppy sentence flow, unusual sentence structure, and word choice which indicated overreliance on a thesaurus, as well as an informal style. As with the second translation, this one was also identified by one student as a translation, going so far as to specify the country of origin. Needless to say, this translation was received the most poorly of the three. Discussion Results The differences observed between the modifications made in translating BT versus LT show that Reiss’ three -fold delineation of genres is insufficient for precisely achieving an equivalent effect, though it does serve as a good metric to establish the purpose of the translation. While such an observation would seem to make Jumpelt’s (1961) or Burukina’s (2009) more detailed approaches to genre more appropriate to achieving equivalence, the fact that some texts required different types of modifications than others even within BT and LT shows that genre classification is not a suitable basis for setting a standard of achieving equivalence. If someone were to try to create a genre classification for every type of literature based on the categories most needed to achieve equivalence, he or she could theoretically create an endless list of types. Therefore, it stands to reason that Hervey et al. (2006) and Beekman and Callow (1979) make an invaluable recommendation in stating that familiarity with the TL literature and culture is critical in producing a quality translation. One issue which, looking retrospectively, I see with my translations, is that I tended more towards a faithful translation. While this did ensure a high degree of accuracy in conveying the information of both BT and LT, it also resulted in the texts sometimes sounding awkward and unnatural, a factor which Dr. Shaver and the students identified in their reviews. Baker (1992), Bakthin (1986), and Suchanova (2013) would likely view these errors as resulting from a lack of sufficient editing on the clause and sentence levels, as I focused more on the level of individual words and short phrases to avoid adding or subtracting meaning. I should have first established my hierarchy of criteria to determine what elements were most essential in achieving equivalence (Hervey et al, 2006; Lörscher, 2005; Reiss, 1983). While there were few instances of special lexical difficulties, the presence of MMw in the translation rubric demonstrates that even between two related languages such as German