Commentary Translation

In the commentary you will reflect critically on the translation of your texts, considering the issues that you
have faced and how you have attempted to resolve them, assessing lexical, syntactic and grammatical
characteristics, comparing the text types, and taking into account published translations where applicable.
What does a commentary do and what is it for? In general, the commentary is designed to allow you an
opportunity to reflect critically on your practice. In a useful summary of the process of writing a translation
commentary, Margaret Anne Clarke (2009) has suggested that it should, in general terms, ‘show insight in
relation to the source language text (ST), its nature and content, and…. demonstrate how the translation
problems which have been identified in the ST have been solved in the target language text (TT). The latter
is commonly referred to as the translation strategy or strategies.’ There is no set way of writing a
commentary. But in order to make clear your own translation strategy/ies, you will need to: explain your
decisions regarding selection of a text. Here you will need to show your understanding of the context of
translation, and engage with such issues as genre, style and register, readership, historical context of
production and reception; show your understanding of the specific practical problems and questions raised
by your translation. This can include, but may not be exhausted by, lexical, syntactical and grammatical
issues including the use of terminology, metaphor or idiom, the length and complexity of sentences, the use
of nominal as opposed to verbal structures etc.; it can also include questions of cultural transposition, accent,
humour etc. consider the question of textual address. Your source text will have a specific implied
readership. You need to consider who this is, giving evidence from the text and its context to determine this.
You also need to think about how your own decisions are affected by the question of textual address: do you
have an implied readership? Does it differ from that of the original, and if so, how has that affected your
translation? Structure and Presentation As always, one of the most important things about coursework is
making sure it is interesting. Some suggestions: make sure you have a clear introduction (which may set out
the focus of the work) and conclusion. make sure the commentary is focused and interesting. You may want
to discuss lots of disparate things, but be selective and go into detail so that the commentary is analytical and
not simply descriptive. sub-headings are fine, but not imperative. provide the source text in an appendix and
insert line numbers to this. Refer to the source text using line numbers in brackets within the commentary.
Informing your Commentary We are not expecting you to use lots of translation theory in your commentary.
However, this year you should actively build on any initial reading you may have done in first year using the
reading list to familiarise yourself with key terminology, debates and issues in translation. These provide
useful ways in to referring to some of the issues which you face as a translator and will help you situate the
individual challenges you encounter in your translation in relation to broader questions of translation
practice. In addition to material on the reading list, consider the other sources specific to your chosen texts
which you can use to inform your commentary: if working on a text from a particular time period:
historically contextualising secondary literature. if working on a journalistic text: secondary literature on the
newspaper/on journalistic language. if dealing with a particular challenge (e.g. accent, ‘untranslatables’,
humour, archaic language, etc) or genre search within and around the reading list for secondary literature
which covers this challenge from a translation studies perspective. PS: Source text (ST) The text to be
translated. Target text (TT) The text that is a translation of the ST. Source language (SL) The language in
which the ST is spoken or written. Target language = GERMAN (TL) The language into which the ST is to
be translated. = ENGLISH