No matter whether you are a freshman into the translation career or an experienced translator with solid experience behind his back, there are various techniques to help you translate a text the best way possible so that you keep the context, the feeling and the intention of the text. Here are the seven fundamental techniques used in translation.

Borrowing

Borrowing literally means taking words straight from one language into another. Such words are related to technology (software), music (punk, pop) and other fields of our everyday life. In addition, it is very common to use borrowing when talking about names of places, for example.

Calque

Calque is a literal translation of a phrase or word. It does not always work but when it does it is used in specific fields like medicine, law, biology, etc.

Literal Translation

Literal translation is obviously to literally translate something word by word. However, this works for languages which have similar sentence structure. For example, it would be easy to translate from English to Spanish and vice versa but it will be difficult to make the same translation in German, for example, as German has a completely different sentence structure.

Transposition

This is a process of translation when you have to take into account the different specifications of a language. For example, English and Spanish both tend to put the verb in the end as in “She likes walking” translates into “Le gusta caminar”. However, this does not work that well for German or Dutch which both tend to put verbs in the middle of a sentence.

Modulation

This is a technique which is using a phrase that is different in both the translated language and the targeted one but generally the phrase aims to convey the same idea and meaning.

Reformulation

Here you have to transmit the meaning in a completely different way simply because there is not responding equivalent. Reformulation is used to translate idioms, advertising slogans, or movie titles.

Compensation

This one is used where something cannot be translated and the meaning that is lost in the immediate translation is later compensated by other translated words in the sentence which give a hint of the context.

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