Traducción de Idiomas (Language Translation): Scoping the Challenges of Translating Idioms
In our day-to-day life, we use hundreds of idioms and catchphrases and do hardly think about the origins of these words and phrases. However, when it comes to traducción de idiomas (language translation) of idiomatic expressions and everyday words, our familiar idiomatic expressions pose a real challenge before us. There are professionals for the job and they can find idiomatic expressions bearing the same connotations in other languages. They can translate business documents, literary pieces and academic papers in other languages without impeding the flair and without distorting the tone in the original text. Translation is both an art and a science. It is science because the translators need to follow some set and widely accepted grammar and spelling rules. But at the same time, they need to apply their common sense and translate idiomatic expressions in other languages just in a manner that gives an impression to readers that the translated text is actually the original text. Traducción jurada (sworn translation) professionals master the art and science of translating complex texts, similes, idioms and other key aspects and help businesses and individuals in a variety of ways.
What are idioms or parlances?
An idiom or parlance is a form or manner of speaking which native speakers of a language are quite familiar with. Social, cultural and historical eccentricities give birth to these expressions. In many cases, origins of idioms are lost in oblivion but the coinages continue to live on. In many other cases, the original connotations of the phrases are changed through colloquial usage. Therefore, a translator’s job is to trace the original meanings of the words and phrases and finding the right equivalents for the same in other languages.
Why it is too difficult to translate idiomatic expressions?
Idioms are figurative expressions hence the translation job should be done in regards to the attached contexts. The meaning of the text cannot be inferred by just reading the words. It requires deep knowledge of both languages, and in some cases the cultural contexts behind. Traducción de idiomas(language translation) professionals make full use of their knowledge and logic to interpret the meanings of idioms in ,different languages and they cannot just do word-to-word translation, which will prove worthless in all possibilities. For example, a popular English idiom ‘beating a dead horse’ (meaning a pointless exercise) cannot be directly translated in French except the translator know the exact French equivalent ‘se dépenser en pure perte’, which is a purely idiomatic expression in French. The job of translating idioms gets even more complex when the translator tries to translate from one language of a specific group to another language belonging to a completely different groups (for example, Italian is a Romance language hence it is too complex to translate Italian texts into Hindi which has its roots in Sanskrit)
Idioms exist in other languages. Many of these expressions are culture or location-specific and the translators need to judge these contexts before translating idioms. If you are not sure who might be the right person for managing the literary translation work you have to outsource, search online for ISO certified traducción jurada (sworn translation) service providers.
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