The visit of Kim Jong Il, who is the North Korean President, to China in order to discuss the financial state of his economically worsened nation can be defined as rarity bearing in mind that he has avoided publicity for the last twenty years. One of the last remaining dictators of the communist era of the 1970s and 1980s, arrived in the style that becomes him best – covered in secrecy and on an armored train because of his phobia of flying. When they arrived in the border city of Dandong at around 5:30 in the morning he and his prot

Restituting the meaning of a text is not the only thing translation is concerned with. In the first place, it does not aim at creating a text that is more fluid or elegant than the original. In other words, the grammar and syntax must not be neglected for the sake of meaning. It is true that restituting the meaning is central to the translation of a text. All in all, in order to transfer a particular idea, the translator must try to stay as close as possibly to the original text. It is true to say that the original text must not differ much from the target text, or at least from the idea it conveys. When receiving the foreign the translator must be very careful and work extremely hard in order not to naturalize, denature or assimilate it. The target language can become strongly perverted due to bad work by the translator according to French Translation ideologist Berman. Berman – an acclaimed historian and theorist of translation – also states that the translator can transform the language in order to suit it to his or her own invented world. This world can be an event, place, setting, or merely a situation whose objective reality comprises to a large extent the deliberate denunciation of disbelief of illusory universes and the resulting discontinuous realities.

Having in mind that translating is a kind of interpreting, and every translator is challenged to firstly read, perceive and make sense of the text. The first stage of this process includes the reader translating the written text into his/her mental thought. Often when the reader has to deal with a text in his own native tongue he/she applies this technique. Thus thought becomes an internal code that produces an internal dialogue which is assimilated inside the mind, argues Russian Translation researcher and scholar Wygotsky in his study of young children. Another scholar, Pierce, claims that in the process of reading a text a series of interpretants is created. All signs refer to particular objects that can arise from the outside or inside. Being a psychical sign, the interpretant is dependent on and linked to what every person experiences via the discourse and in this respect the concepts this discourse determines.

Moreover, Bruno Osimo, an Italian Translation Services ideologist argues that the language in which we think is not a natural code, but a very particular language that can be defined as a multi-code language. As a result, the images created inside the mind of the reader following the entire reading process may differ drastically from those shaping up inside the mind of the writer. As the translator faces the difficult task to find the graphic sign of the other language, the process of translating from one language into another becomes even more complex. For instance, if a novel by an Australian writer talks about a tea tree along the gravel bed of a river, the images in the minds of the Australian reader and the British reader will be totally different – the former will think about a Melaleuca of a paperbark tree, while the latter will imagine the shrub or low tree whose dried leaves form the tea of commerce. Were the translator not familiar with this difference when he or she moves on to the second stage of the translation process, which involves the translator’s encoding his or her mental language into the code of the translated text, then most probably the translation would turn out to be incorrect because something will be lost.

When the interlinguistic translation loses some of its precision this is most often a consequence of the double translation process that occurs in the translator’s mind but of which he/she is hardly aware. It is the unconscious, a term coined by Sigmund Freud, where the translator loses part of the message. Psychology places great importance in the existence of an internal language, according to the translations of the works of Freud by the German to English Translation, but are mostly unaware of it. Being actively occupied with interpreting the text, as it is with any other reading process, the translator’s mind does this but without the knowledge that it is on an unconscious level. Therefore during the interpretation process, the translator will inevitably draw from his or her own personal experience consisting of impressions, sentiments, memories, passions, pains, and downfalls. The resulting manipulation of the text by the translator will be unconsciously carried out.

It is particularly fascinating to observe the work of such theorists of translation whose job is to study the area in-between the translation and the original. According to English to Italian Translation theorist Paolo Bartoloni this is the zone in which two languages and/or cultures clash and blend in a sort of cross-fertilization where their distinct traits are distorted and confused by the process of superimposition. It is what in other words is called the interstitial are, a place that consists of both the enigma of arrival and the memory of origin, but is actually neither arrival nor origin. As a matter of fact, a demonic place like this is not easy to live in, because it is under constant change and therefore insecure.

Yet another critical challenge which the translator faces after translating the text is to thoroughly revise his rendition. In the interstices where the translator must return in the revision stage only to find there a first draft that is no longer the source text but is not yet the translated text. Anyone who has done translation work knows how it feels to be in a state of uncertainty. It is very important what editorial policy the publishers will be in favor of after the revision work has been carried out. Many is the time when editors have tried to influence the translator’s methodology. One such instance is a Portuguese Translation Services editor who has spoilt the whole process. Often, editors carry out incorrect analysis of the model reader and the dominant of the text and erratically rewrite the works they intend to publish, being deceived by the rules of mass consumption literature.

Usually, translators should stay open to interventions made by other on their text, as they can be very wholesome contributions to the final product. This attitude should be adopted in the first place with the reviser, if one is lucky enough to find knowledgeable revisers and editors. Being driven by his/her personal attitude towards the translated work, the translator often considers him/herself the only judge, but someone to act as a referee is always welcome with advice. To translate means to accept the culture of the other and assume that others are invited to contribute to its development as well, according to French Translation theorist Antoine Berman. This is also valid for theater, music and cinema which are performing arts. When authors who come from the marginalized world are to be translated, the translator is forced to balance on tightrope which unfortunately thins out leaving him overwhelmed with the feeling of unsteadiness simply because the culture of the translator is a border culture.