Close translations vs. conversational translations

Question

In regard to the translation challenges, I was wondering how much liberty we should take with the translations as far as turning them into conversational English (or Spanish as the case may be). In some cases it might stray from the original quite a bit but be better understood, while still conveying the same meaning. Or should we just do what we want and leave it to the people that vote on the answers?

Nice question! Since this isn't a 'Game or Challenge' itself I changed the category. :-) - chaparrito, Jan 29, 2010

Answer 1

I wondered the same thing.

I'm thinking that instead of me trying to translate 'verbatim', I should be more focused on conveying the over-all feel or idea ... am I on the right track about that?

Here's the response I received from chaparrito (on one of his Beginners Translation Exercise threads): link text

Absolutely. Word-for-word rarely works to convey an idea from one language into another in a way easily understood by a native speaker. (Simple example: 'make a decision' is not 'hacer una decisión'.) While there will always be some differences in translating from one language to another, it is generally most import to convey the same idea.

Sounds good to me!

Hope this helps!

Answer 2

Could you give an example of a sentence that you would translate in two different ways? If you "stray quite a bit from the original" does that not then become less of a translation?

poder: to be able to. "I am able to write." Most people would say "I can write." That's not a very extreme example, though. - 008f2974, Jan 29, 2010

But that is a good example! We say 'can' much more than 'able to' in English when Spanish speaking people use 'poder'. However, there will be times when the context will suggest using 'able to'. :-) - chaparrito, Jan 29, 2010