PROBLEM-SOLVING: THEORY AND PRACTICE – RITVA LEPPIHALME

 When faced with an allusion in a passage of the ST and after analysing its function in the
micro and macrotext, the translator must decide how to deal with it.
 The focus is on the prolem-solving aspect of the translational behaviour

POTENTIAL STRATEGIES FOR ALLUSIONS

 Proper-name allusions remain unchanged.

 Some strategies for them are:
o To keep the name unaltered
o To change it
o To omit it
 These basic strategies have the following variations
o Retention of the name with three subcategories:
 Use the name as such
 Use the name, adding some guidance
 Use the name, adding a detailed explanation, for example a footnote.
o Replacement of a name by another, with two subcategories:
 Replace the name by other SL name
 Replace the name by a TL name
o Omission of the name, with two subcategories:
 Omit the name but transfer the sense by other means, for example a
common noun
 Omit the name and the allusion altogether.
 The translation of allusions involves not only names as such, but the problem of
transferring connotations evoked by a name in one language culture into another,
where these connotations are much weaker or non-existent.
 Translators need to assume that English-specific names in STs may well be unfamiliar to
TT readers. This has obvious implications for the choice of translation strategies.
 Key-phrase allusions can mostly be translated in a variety of ways due to synonyms,
variations of word order, etc.
 The list of strategies for KP allusions cannot be identical with the PN strategies.
 The potential strategies for KP allusions, then, are as follows:
o Use of standard translation  it concerns transcultural allusions and
recognition can be expected from a competent reader.
o Minimum change  literal translation, without regard to connotative or
contextual meaning.
o Extra allusive guidance added in the text  the translator adds info needed by
the TT readers, which the ST author did not think necessary by means of
typography or signs.
o Use of footnotes, endnotes, translator’s prefaces and other explicit
explanations not slipped into the text but overtly given as additional
information.
o Simulated familiarity or internal marking  addition of intra-allusive features
(marked words or syntax) that depart from the style of the context.
o Replacement by a preformed TL item.
 o Reduction of the allusion to sense by rephrasal  making its meaning overt and
dispensing with the allusive KP itself.
o Re-creation, using a fusion of techniques.
o Omission of the allusion.

STRATEGIES USED FOR PROPER-NAMES ALLUSIONS