نقاش ويكيبيديا:برنامج ويكيبيديا للتعليم/مناهج دراسية/ترجمة، خالد الشهاري/مسودة ترجمة الفريق الثاني

Introduction

This is an article from Wikipedia about a township called Long Prairie, which is located in Todd County, Minnesota, United States. It is a township where many ethnicities, such as Whites, African Americans, Asians and Native Americans, live together. The article provides information about the geography and demographics of the township.

Target Readership

The target readers are Saudis who have scholarship to study abroad and want information about Long Prairie, such as location, racial makeup and cost of living.

Strategic Decisions

Text Genre and Function

Before rendering the source text (ST), the translator has to understand and analyze it to decide its type, which in this case is mainly informative text. For example, the sentence “Long Prairie Township is a township in Todd County, Minnesota, United States” is giving information about the township. The function of informative text is to represent objects and facts (Reiss, 1976). Moreover, Reiss (1976) suggests that if translators want to translate informative text they should use the language dimension to transmit the information because it is the main focus of communication. Therefore, in accordance with the genre of the ST and target readership, the translator focus mainly on rendering the information and refrain from creative composition as it is not an expressive text.

The strategy of Using Translation Shifts

Catford (1974) said that the strategy most often used by translators is shifting in grammatical structure. Syntactically, the structure of Arabic sentences can be nominal or verbal. However, the translator, in general, uses verbal sentences to follow the norms similar to texts published in Wikipedia. For example, the sentence “According to the United States Census Bureau, the township has a total area of 33.5 square miles (86.8 km²)” was translated as “تبلغ المساحة الإجمالية للبلدة حسب إحصائيات مكتب تعداد الولايات المتحدة 33.5 ميلاً مربعاً (86.8 كم²)” in order to convince the readers that they are reading a text which was originally written in their own language not one which has been translated.

Another strategy adapted in rendering the ST into the TT is shifting the tense. The procedure of modulation of Vinay and Darbelnet (2004) explains that even though literal translation is grammatically correct, it is considered unsuitable. For example, the sentence “there were 823 people” was translated as “فيبلغ عدد السكان 823 نسمة”.In this case the translator rendered the tense of the ST, which is past simple into the TT as present simple in order for it to flow as similar texts.

Decisions of Detail

1- The word “ولاية” is not in the ST; however, the translator added this word to clarify the TT. Translation by addition.

2- The word “water” was translated as “مسطحات مائية” instead of the literal translation, which is “ماء” in order to avoid clumsy meaning and because the text indicates this.

3- According to the United Nation Statistic Division website, the meaning of the words “household” and “family” are different and non-interchangeable (http://unstats.un.org/unsd/demographic/sconcerns/fam/fammethods.htm#A3). Thus, this is a technical word and has a technical meaning and the outcome should reflect that. However, due to the fact that the target readers are not specialized people, the word was rendered as “مسكن” in order to make the TT easy to read for the target readers.

4- The translator thinks there is a typing error in the sentence “75.5% were married couples living together” which he think the correct sentence should be “75.5% were married or couples living together”. Therefore, the sentence was translated as “و75.5% نسبة الأزواج الذين يعيشون مع بعض” in order to maintain the ‘right’ equivalence of the sentence and not change the meaning, as the word “الأزواج” means “married” and “couples”. 5- The symbol “$” in ST was rendered as “دولارا” due to the norm in TT being to use words rather than symbols when referring to currency.

Reviser's Comments

Dear Noah

Comments for your consideration:

1- First paragraph: ويبلغ عدد سكانها حسب إحصائية عام 2000 م 823 نسمة The past tense could be more appropriate in this context because it refers to a 14-year-old fact. For example, you could either say: وكان عدد سكانها يبلغ 823 نسمة حسب إحصائية عام 2000 or وحسب إحصائيات عام 2000 كان عدد سكانها يبلغ 823 نسمة.

2- Second paragraph (Geography): The figure 85.8 km² was rendered as 85.5 km². In the phrase: أي ما نسبته 1.13% من النسبة الكلية لمساحة البلدة the repetition of نسبة sounds unidiomatic. You could easily say: أي 1.13% من المساحة الكلية للبلدة.

3- Third paragraph (Demographics): حسب إحصائيات عام 2000 م، فيبلغ It could be يبلغ or بلغ but not فيبلغ.

مسكن This does not fit with the verb "reside". You actually used the phrase "وحدات سكنية" afterwards. It will also cause confusion at the beginning of the fourth paragraph. It also appears as "female householder".

4- Fourth paragraph:

الإناث اللاتي يعيشن في المساكن يعِشن

بدون تواجد ازواجهم Maybe they are not married at all. So, we might say: بدون أزواج

الذين يبلغ أعمارهم تبلغ

5- Last paragraph: متوسط دخل الإناث It would be enough if you say: للإناث

متضمناً 4.9% منهم أشخاص أعمارهم تحت سن 18 سنة و9.5% أشخاص تبلغ أعمارهم 65 سنه أو أكثر We can also say: 4.9% منهم تقل أعمارهم عن 18 سنة، و9.5% يبلغون من العمر 65 عاماً أو أكثر.

Translator's Response

I took a careful consideration about the reviser's comments and I took into account some of the suggestion.

Teacher's comments

The text is fairly introduced, with more specific target readership is defined. However, Wikipedian articles should aim at all speakers of Arabic, which I find the text in hand does. Strategic decisions are well argued, with relevant reference to Catford's theory of shifts. The translation is very good. However, the translator likely missed to take into account the reviser's comments (as claimed) which all are valid (especially the factual error in the 2nd paragraph). Also, the map section is missing.