Microsoft Word Revised Syllabus Ver doc

LESSON - V 
TRANSLATION ISSUES REGARDING LANGUAGE USE IN 
MASS MEDIA 
After the exit of British from India after independence the main communication tools 
were in English. English is still the main medium of communication as far as mass media in 
India is concerned. Most of the messages collected from various sources are mainly in 
English. National and International news items thus collected need quick translation. The 
press does the job of translation in a fast and satisfying manner without losing its sense.
Media Translation
Any message translated from the source text into target text needs careful analysis of 
semantic versus communicative translation. Semantic translations focus primarily upon the 
semantic, content of the source text and communicative translations focuses essentially upon 
the comprehension and response of receptors. This distinction becomes especially relevant 
for the wide diversity of news items the dailies concerned consider.
This approach of translations flatly rejects the proposition that translations is a 
science, but it does insist on treating the propositions of translations in terms of a theory of 
communication, on which is not restricted to a single literary genre or text type which has 
applicability to wide range of discovers and related problems.
Newspaper translation attempts to supply certain significant aspects of translation and 
to give some indication of its importance in transmitting culture, in revitalizing language, in 
interpreting texts, in diffusing knowledge, in suggesting the relationship between thought and 
language, and in contributing towards understanding between nations.
Translation theory in mainly an aspects of semantics; all questions of semantics relate 
to translations theory. This is true with news items translated. Since semantics is often 
presented as a cognitive subject without connotations, rather than as an exercise in 
communication, semiotics - the science of signs - is an essential factor in translation theory. 
In the press media and TV the translation takes place in a quick pace. A translator must 
respect and writing scrupulously, whether the piece to scientific or poetic, Philosophic or 
fictional.
Translation is a craft consisting in the attempt to replace a written message and 100 
statement in one language by the same message and/or statement in another language. Each 
exercise involves some kinds of loss of meaning, due to a number of factors. It provokes a 
continuous tension, a dialectic argument based on claims of each language. The basic loss is 
on a continuous between over translation and under translation.
One can easily envisage that translation theory is moving in three directions; (i) the 
denotative (information translations) (ii) the semantic precise equivalences (iii) 
transformational (transposition if relevant structures), Here the newspapers are involved in 
the denotative type, because their main aim is to have information translation. The theory of 
equivalence distinguishes five levels; (i) Lexical units, (ii) collocations (iii) information
(iv) the students and (v) the communication aim.

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There is wide agreement among press media that the main aim of the translator is to 
produce as nearly as possible the same effect on his readers as mass produced on the readers 
of the original. The principle is variously refused to as the principle of similar or equivalent 
response or effect, or of functional or dynamic equivalence. The principle of press media 
demands a considerable imagination or intuitive effect from the translator, since he must not 
identify himself with the reader of the original, but must empathize with him, recognizing 
that he may have reactions and sympathies alien to his own. The translator should produce a 
different type of translation of the same text for a different type of audience. One would want 
to know how each reader reacts - how he thinks, feels, and behaves. Accordingly to press 
media nuances the translation should be as literal and free as possible and as free as is 
necessary and most of translation should be as small as possible, at the very same time 
effective.
The language of news items goes beyond technical terms. It includes any commonly 
used metaphor, idiom, proverb, public notice, social phrase, expletive, the usual ways of 
stating the date or time of days giving dimensions expressed in accepted formulae. Thus one 
would expect only one valid translation for 'keep Chennai tidy', 'One man's meat is another's 
poison'. There should be little choice in translating the restricted pattern in the specialized 
using of language like weather reports, recipes, the language of games, as well as company 
reports and accounts, the format of agendas and minutes, medical reports.
The news paper media demand translator's originality in translating on item in the 
newspaper. Sometimes non-standardized language is creatively used, which it how language 
is daily used by everyone. Here, translation becomes a craft and an art or simply art - where 
there is limited choice. The translator's craft lies first in his command of an exceptionally 
large vocabulary as well as synthetic resources suitable to the news paper medium, his ability 
to use them elegantly, flexibility succinctly. All translation problems finally resolve 
themselves into problems if how to write well in the target language. The shorter the 
translation, the better is likely to be.
Since the newspaper medium gets news items in various languages, the translator as a 
craftsman has known the foreign language so well that he can determine to what extent the 
text deviates from one language norms usually used in that topic on that occasion. He has to 
determine with an intuition backed by empirical knowledge that extent of the text's 
grammatical and semantic address which he must account for in a well written, expressive 
text, and may decided to normalize in a badly written information or vocative text morever, 
he requires a degree of creative tension lectures fantasy and common sure. He has the fantasy 
for making hypotheses about apparently unintelligible passages and the common sense for 
dismissing any unrealistic hypothesis more practically he needs common sense for 
eliminating interference and spitting strange acronym.
The news item translator has to acquire the technique of transferring smoothly 
between the two basic translation processes: Comprehension, which mass involve 
interpretation, and formulation, which may involve recreation. He has to have a sharp eye for 
oppositions, contrasts, emphases in the source text, news items are non-literacy text. He has 
to know how to accentuate these in his own version is a quick and satisfying manner.

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