4👑☸ Cattāri Ariya-saccaṃ 四聖諦
TITWOW syndrome
1.1 – Synopsis
T.I.T.W.O.W. = Translators irritatingly translate with one word
This is a general problem with translating in general, and is especially important when the text to be translated has precise, technical, nuanced details that need to be conveyed.
2 – Why do they do this?
* It makes the target translation more fluent, concise, elegant
* It becomes a compulsive, neurotic and unhealthy addiction to find a single word to translate, even if a single word in the target language with equivalent meaning doesn’t exist.
* peer pressure: Translators are afraid they’ll look weak or incompetent among the community of translators who also share this compulsive addiction to single word translations.
* in short, they prioritize style over substance. They worry about how literate and fluent and elegant their translation appears, rather than prioritizing the transmission of precise and nuanced meaning.
3 – How to fix this syndrome, and side effects caused by it?
* prioritize substance over style. Your prime directive should be transmitting the precise and nuanced meaning of the source text, even if the target translation ends up being bulkier, less elegant, less fluent, less aesthetically pleasing as a literary work.
* peer pressure: don’t be swayed by peers who value style over substance
* understand you have an unhealthy compulsive tendency to find one word translations, and stop caring about that.
3.5 – if source vague, translate vague
* If the source text is somewhat vague and unclear, your translation should also match the tone and express the uncertainty. If you make the translation precise where the source was more ambigious, then you mislead the audience giving them a false sense of precision or worse, just being completely wrong.
3.6 – if source specific, translate specific
* if the source text is precise, your target translation should also be precise.
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