Some 20 years ago I listened to a lecture by Prof. Valentín García Yebra, Ph.D. in Classical Philology and Member of the Real Academia Española de la Lengua (Royal Spanish Language Academy), speaking about literary translation. His ideas remain fully valid to this day, and I intend to reproduce some of his concepts.
It has been acknowledged for a long time that there exist two large species of translations: documental and scientific translation and literary translation.
There often are discussions about which one of these two types offers greater difficulties. Some people sustain that the scientific-technical translation is more difficult because of the experience and knowledge it requires in different disciplines and, therefore, a stronger specialization. Others are of the opinion that literary translation is more difficult because of the language quality required here for the original as well as the translated texts.
García Yebra thinks that one should speak, not so much of the greater or lesser difficulty of translation itself, but of the greater or lesser difficulty übersetzung spanisch deutsch for the particular translator. For somebody who masters a specific science or technique and its highly specialized terminology it is much easier to translate texts of that discipline than to deal with literary texts. For the translator inclined to read and enjoy poetry and literature in general, if he masters a foreign language, for him it shall be much easier to translate such texts from that particular language under the condition that he also perfectly knows and masters his mother tongue.
Considered by itself
There can be no doubt that literary translation offers a greater challenge to the translator. The scientific or technical language tends to be concrete and unequivocal, to eliminate any kind of ambiguity so that words in the target language mean exactly the same as in the source language. In addition, the scientist tries to exclude anything personal from his manner to express ideas and, thus, avoids characteristic connotations of the literary language that make translation so difficult in this field.
By definition, science and technology seek general, not individual ideas and statements, which leads to a growing approximation among all languages used as their vehicles. The scientific language becomes more and more international, and there are no great differences between one and the other language in this field of translation. Therefore, machine translation is a very useful tool when dealing with scientific and technical material.
When approaching a literary text, be it a novel or poetry, the first problem encountered is the possibility or impossibility of literary translation as such. Much depends on the proximity or distance between source and target languages, which means that it certainly is more difficult to translate from German into Spanish as it is from French or Italian into Spanish or from German into English. In addition, a thorough comprehension of the original text including all its idiomatic connotations is a fundamental condition to be able to translate it. Therefore, the translator must first read the entire book of a novelist or the complete poem he wants to translate. Once he has attained a profound knowledge and understanding of the author’s original text he may start translating. But this task requires much time, dedication and revision. After the translated text has been finished, it must be read several or even many times, and each reading will mean new revision, new editing of the whole work to polish the language and to get the expression closer to the author’s thoughts. This makes machine translation virtually impossible to be applied to literary translations. These must be made by an experienced übersetzung spanisch deutsch with feeling and penetration into the work he has approached.
For instance
Edith Grossman, a very distinguished American translator who works mainly from Spanish into English, spoke at a literary lunch in the San Francisco Bay Area of a “school of servitude”, and by this she means “constant revision and editing, reading out loud, checking for accuracy – and then more revision. And, if at all possible, a cooling-off period for the manuscript to settle, before more revision.” (Cited from Translorial, Journal of the Northern California Translators Association, vol. 30 No. 2, May 2008.).
