Malone’s translation strategies

Translation strategies Malone provides a list of nine strategies the translator can apply in
translating at a structural lexical level:

EQUATION/SUBSTITUTION

Equation The most obvious form of Equation is that of the loan word, where equality would seem
absolute: Italians play football and the English eat lasagna. English supermarkets now sell rucola,
even though a bilingual dictionary would provide the translation rocket. Italians enjoy un po’ di
relax as often as un riposo. The absolute equivalence of these terms must be questioned, given that
they are used outside their home ontext. Although lasagna is now a familiar part of the British diet,
the term will not conjure up the same associations as it does in an Italian context. A second form of
equation is provided by the calque, where the target language adapts the source language term to its
own morpho-phonological framework. The Italian football terms dribblare and crossare , derived
from the English verbs to dribble and to cross, are now well-entrenched in Italian. Another example
is the shout of approval Bravo! in English, particularly in musical contexts, which is dressed to one
or more people of either sex, given the lack of English gender and plural markers for adjectives.

Substitution The antithesis of Equation, to return to Malone’s terminology, is Substitution, adopted

when there is no direct equivalence. For example, at a purely grammatical level, the Italian
prepositional phrase replaces substitutes) the English Saxon genitive: Gulliver’s Travels = I Viaggi
di Gulliver The Italian subjunctive can be replaced by an English infinitive: Farò in modo che si
interessi … I’ll try to get her to ……

At a more semantic level, the proverb The straw that broke the camel’s back is replaced by La
goccia che fa traboccare il vaso . At the beginning of the Walt Disney Pictures version of ‘Alice in
Wonderland’ (1951), Alice is given a song to sing, all about ‘Cats and Rabbits’. Diligent translators
will provide compensatory mechanisms in their substitutions. The third verse of the song goes:
There’d be new birds Gli uccellini lots of nice and friendly howdy do birds sempre allegri, affabili e
carini everyone would own a dozen blue birds canterebber l’aria di Puccini within that world of my
own in quel mio mondo ideal.

Much liberty is taken in translation: the third line has been clearly ‘substituted’. The reasons for the
change are not merely linguistic (there are questions of rhyme, of scanning and of cultural
relocation) but it can be seen that from the very beginning linguistic fidelity had to be rejected in the
interest of a greater good: the entertainment of children.

DIVERGENCE/CONVERGENCE

Divergence: it represents a relationship of one-to-many The strategy of divergence is that of

choosing a suitable term from a potential range of alternatives. There may be a limited number of
alternatives, e.g. cream = panna or crema or a bewildering selection, e.g. girare = to turn, to switch
on, to pass on, to twist, to go round, to avoid, to tour, to travel, to endorse, to invest, to shoot, to
spin, to circle, to wind, etc. There is divergence in the meaning and function of the Italian frequency
adverb sempre :

• Viene sempre di venerdì He always comes on Fridays

• Il Napoli preme ma la Juventus è sempre prima in classifica Napoli are putting on the
pressure but Juventus are still top of the table
 • Non ho niente da dire I have nothing to say
• Niente male! Not bad!
• Furthermore, the translator is always called upon to select from grammatical paradigms,
where more than one construction may be acceptable: Se dovesse succedere
• If it should happen Should it happen Were it to happen If it were to happen
• Making the right choice (or a right choice) in all circumstances is the translator’s aim.
• Convergence: it represents a relationship of many-to-one
• Convergence is the opposite of Divergence. Malone, in one of his rare example of Italian,
cites the personal pronouns tu/Lei/voi/Loro all converging into you , depending on the
context of use. The three Italian terms commercialista , ragioniere , and contabile would
converge in a commercial context to provide the single translation equivalent accountant in
most circumstances when translating into English, without causing any embarrassment.
•

AMPLIFICATION/REDUCTION

Amplification requires the translator to add some element to the source text for reason of
greater comprehensibility. The most obvious form of Amplification is the translator’s note, be it
in endnote, a footnote or a bracketed addition following the item in question. Sometimes, a
single lexical item in one language needs a collocational partner in the other: e.g.

Amplification is also required when the source language ‘takes for granted’ certain components,
which may be cultural, semantic or linguistic or a mixture thereof. Giuseppina Cortese provides
the example of translating “after Courtrai” in a text not designed for history specialists with
“dopo la battaglia di Courtrai”. The Amplification device is also found in technical writing, to
aid comprehension.

Reduction , as the term suggests, consists of omitting elements in a target text because they are
redundant or even misleading. The Italian “carta geografica” is merely a “map” in English, and
the English “three-toed sloth” translates “bradipo” in Italian. Author-translator Tim Parks
(1994) offers the example of a car-park instruction as to what to do with one’s ticket that read in
Italian “Esporre in modo visibile”, translatable as simply “Display”.

DIFFUSION/CONDENSATION

Diffusion A source text item is expanded without adding any extra layer of meaning, that is it
provides more or less elaboration in the target language: e.g.: Magari! requires diffusing into a
locution of the type: If only I could Would that it were! I wish that were the case! Italian
subjunctive and conditional usage can express a wide range of meanings, often requiring Diffusion
in English translation. The perfect conditional in sentences like La banda avrebbe rapinato altre tre
banche requires the use of a conventional passive voice expression of the type

The gang is alleged to have robbed three other banks The gang is said to have robbed three other
banks The gang is reported to have robbed three other banks

Similarly, the common use of the imperfect form of the Italian verb ‘dovere’ in clauses such as
Doveva arrivare alle tre needs diffusing to He was supposed to arrive at three o’clock
Condensation

In the case of condensation, a source text is contracted without omitting any layer of meaning. The
target text expression is linguistically more economic. English is reputed to be more succinct than
Italian. Certain common adjectives and verbal expressions, however, can be condensed: a buon
prezzo, a buon mercato = cheap far vedere = to show In the other direction, prepositional verbs
and phrasal verbs are typical of this phenomenon: to look at = guardare

to make up = inventare to make up for = compensare

REORDERING

Coming to the strategy of Reordering, we enter into the field of comparative syntax: at its simplest,
it requires the translator to operate basic inversion procedures with, for example, adjective-noun
sequences: white horse / cavallo bianco, and verb-object positioning: (io) ti amo / I love you. It is,
however, equally important for the translator to know when not to activate these mechanisms,
whether for linguistic or rhetoric reasons. Pressione alta is the correct translation for medical high
(blood) pressure , but not in the meteorological sense where banks of high pressure have to be
rendered by alta pressione . The desperate lover, in trying to wrest (estorcere, strappare) the vital
words Ti amo from his loved one, may lay emphasis to his own feelings withma io amo te! Set
collocations of two or more items exist in both languages:

• 1. vita e morte / life and death 2. sano e salvo / fit and well 3. bianco e nero / black and
white 4. il diavolo e l’acqua santa / (between) the devil and the deep blue sea
• which respectively indicate how such pairings can: 1. match perfectly 2. match partly but
belong very definitely in the same semantic field 3. match perfectly but in inverted form 4.
maintain half the pairing
• The third type provides another obvious example of the need to activate Reordering strategy.
Italian will typically front a verb phrase, for example, when an intransitive verb is used to
introduce a new phenomenon into the discussion, e.g. è successa una disgrazia . The English
version of such clauses is usually the typical subject-verb structure : something terrible has
happened. Falinski provides other examples: Non è ancora giunto il tempo The time has not
yet come / It is not yet time
• Passavano i plotoni The platoons passed by / Past came the platoons
• Spuntò una donna alla svolta A woman appeared from round the bend / There appeared a
woman from round the bend
• The very frequent use of the passive voice in English creates another need for Reordering in
translation. Italian responds with: - its own identical passive forms: è amato da tutti / He is
loved by everyone - an impersonal si construction: i risultati si possonno vedere / results can
be seen - an active form using verbs with impersonal agents whose nominal or pronominal
identity never appears: mi hanno detto che / I have been told that The more infrequent use of
the passive in Italian is also due to the fact that it is impossible to use continuous verb forms
in the passive voice: he is being interrogated = lo si interroga lo stanno interrogando viene
interrogato With all these observations in mind, it would seem clear that a thorough
knowledge of the lexicogrammar of the two languages is indispensable for a translator.