Source-Text Adherent Translation in Translations of Official Documents
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Abstract
Most studies of translation strategies in the Thai translation context strive to provide solutions to solve problems arising from linguistic and cultural differences. However, the ways in which translations are examined to be close to the source texts could be seen underexplored. This research thus aims to find out whether the translations from Thai into English of the notifications and announcements made by Mae Fah Luang University remain close to the source-text language or not. To achieve this aim, the research adopts the concept of formal and dynamic equivalence (Nida, 1964) and links them with the concept of target-text and source-text oriented translation. The concept is centrally applied in the analysis with the help of the word equivalence concept and its translation strategies proposed by Mona Baker (1992). As for material, as the notifications and announcements are official documents, the translations of words or phrases need to be accurate according to the intended aims of the source texts. Thus, words or phrases in the notifications and announcements at Mae Fah Luang University are used for the analysis. Lastly, the analysis reveals that the translations are close to the source texts due to the high frequencies of the source-text adherent translation strategies. Five translation strategies which are identified in the translations include addition, omission, target-text explicitation, generalization and literal translation. The identified translation strategies can also benefit the teaching of translation of official document text genre.
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References
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