Top 5 challenges in translation

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‘Challenges in translation often arise from the multiple ways people use specific words to express concepts and ideas. They often use words that go beyond the primary meaning of each term. But as the language service industry has boomed in recent years, more people understand that translation is more than rewriting the source content into a target language. Translators and language specialists need to go beyond word-to-word translation to transfer the exact meaning from one language to the other.

Here are the top five challenges in translation for most language specialists.

Translating Idioms - Idioms are linguistic expressions, specific to each language or culture. While they’re essential elements of the language, they’re also difficult to explain when you’re not aware of the cultural differences between the source and target languages.  Think about “it’s raining cats and dogs” or “wrapping your brain around something”. If translators went for a literal translation of these expressions, a foreign audience wouldn’t understand what the text was about.

Humor is the Biggest Challenge in Translation - Explaining humor is the most challenging task for translators because the sense of humor depends on the cultural background of a person. Think about the famous ‘British humor’ and how even other English-speaking populations rarely have a taste for it. Now, imagine how hard it is to overcome language barriers and still be funny.

Translating Phrasal Verbs - Phrasal verbs are tough challenges in translation, especially when translating from English into languages that don’t use similar constructions. Phrasal verbs are composed of a verb and a preposition, or an adverb, or both. This makes it difficult for translators to recognize it at first glance.  Most translators are native speakers of the target language, so English is their second language.

The difficulty comes from the fact that the phrasal verb gets an entirely different meaning after you add the preposition or adverb.

Prefixes and Suffixes Are Challenges in Translation - Prefixes and suffixes create variety in English. They also turn nouns into adjectives or verbs into nouns, which can quickly become a translator’s nightmare, especially when the target language isn’t that flexible when it comes to creating new words.  Slang, for example, uses many compound words, as well as suffixes to give new meanings to existing words, making it hard for translators to translate the right message in a different language. 

Words with No Correspondent in the Target Language - Every language has words that are impossible to translate into some other languages, such as “serendipity” or “procrastination”. When one language has a specific word to describe a situation, finding an alternative expression in another language becomes a challenge in translation.’ (Source)

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