AUSIT Webinar | 20230823 Meaning-based Translating PT4 (Grammatical level)

Making correct and valid linguistic choices when translating and interpreting, especially in the ‘pressure-cooker’ environment of interpreting, requires practitioners to have a good understanding of the principles which underlie the transfer of meaning between languages. This understanding is also invaluable on the occasions – which are bound to occur sooner or later – when clients or other professionals challenge us on the linguistic choices we’ve made.

This training event is intended to complement some of the issues covered in three previous webinars on Meaning-based Translating and Interpreting conducted on 07 May 2018 (general overview), 28 May 2019 (equivalence at the word level), and 28 February 2023 (equivalence at the phrase level). All of these are available – the first two now free of charge for AUSIT members – on the AUSIT website, if you didn’t have an opportunity to participate at the time. This training event is designed to be a stand-alone session, but as background to it you may find it useful to view any of those previous sessions (especially the first).

This training event will focus on the transfer of meaning, and the various ways of achieving a suitable degree of equivalence, at the level of morphological and syntactical structures. The content will include the following:

– by way of background, a quick review of the concept of translating and interpreting being ‘meaning-based’, and the concept of ‘equivalence’ of meaning;
– why grammatical structures (encompassing the two areas mentioned above) present problems for translators and interpreters;
– what morphological patterns are (including word formation, tense and aspect, voice, person, number, and gender), and the specific ‘translation challenges’ they pose;
– similarly, the specific translation challenges posed by differing syntactical structures; and
– acceptable strategies for dealing with all these translation challenges.