Fidelity and Transparency in Translation

By | July 4, 2011

Due to the wide spread of translation in all the major fields, it is very important to check the quality of the translated work. The ultimate goal of the translator is to change the source language in to target language with out disturbing the original meaning. There should be some standards to check the quality of writing. Even though there are certain organizations who do certification for the trained translators, there are some key factors which determine the quality of work in the field of translation. Below are the things which determine the accuracy of translation.

The two main things which are treated to be ideal for checking the quality of translation are Fidelity and Transparency.

Fidelity: Fidelity in simple words can also be called as Faithfullness. It is nothing but being loyal to the given work. The whole concentration of the translator is to translate the source text with out adding or subtracting any kind of information to the text. In order to decrease the work or work pressure he is not supposed to delete any thing from the source text whether it is important or not. At the same time the meaning should be the same without either intensifying or decreasing the main idea. Any such translation which meets the above criteria is termed as faithful translation. It wholly depends upon the translator and how committed he is towards his work.

Transparency: Transparency is much about how the translated text looks to the end customer. The moment any body reads the content, they should not feel like it has been translated from other language. It should be of its own kind like a newly created thing and should not get influenced by the native speaker of the source text. It should be something like text which has been written in that language it self. This purely depends upon the knowledge of the translator on the targeted language. It is better for a translator to write in a language that he knows than to write in a language that he had learned.

These two factors definitely determines the quality of the translation and should be followed properly to get better results.