Microsoft Word Revised Syllabus Ver doc

Taking translationese for granted
Under the impact of the wholesale translation of textbooks and other semi literary 
materials, a kind of translationese has arisen in many parts of the world. This form of 
language is often accepted, especially by educated nationals, as the only possible medium for 
communicating materials which have first been expressed in a foreign language. Since 
scholars have often had to read a good deal of such material, they come to accept it more and 
more as a kind of literary standard, not realizing that this banal and artificial form of language 
fails utterly to do justice to the rich resources of the receptor language.
Insecurity about one's own Language
Without realizing it, some persons have a deep sense of insecurity about their own 
language. This may express itself in two, almost opposite, tendencies. In the first place, some 
national writers feel obliged to imitate the forms of other languages which then regard as 
having more prestige. Hence they borrows wholesale, not only words, idioms, and stylistic 
devices, but even grammatical forms, for they conclude that these prestigious languages must 
be right.
In the second place, insecurity about his own language can express itself in an 
exaggerated confidence, which says: If English can say it that way, so can we, for our 
language is not inferior to any. Basically, this is only a superiority reaction to basic 
insecurity, and the results are as disastrous as those which arise from an inferiority attitude.

---

56 
Ignorance of the nature of translation
Another personal problem is simple ignorance of what translation is all about. 
Because the average person natively thinks that language is words, the common tacit 
assumption results that translation involves replacing a word in language with a word in 
language B and the more conscientious this sort of translator is the more acute the problem. 
The traditional focus of attention in translation was on the word, but later shifted onto the 
sentence. But again, much later expert translators and linguists have been able to demonstrate 
that the individual focus should be on the paragraph and to some extent on the total discourse. 
Otherwise, one tends to overlook the transitional phenomena, the connections between 
sentences, and the ways and the same time bear in mind all the components of a paragraph, 
but every part of the paragraph should be translated with the structure of the whole being 
carefully considered, since all must fit together to form a unit.