What it is
Compensation accepts a loss at one point of the text and makes it good at another. Something in the source has an effect the target language cannot reproduce in the same place, whether a pun, a dialect marking or a pronoun of distance, and rather than dropping the effect the translator introduces a comparable one elsewhere. The unit of account is the text, not the segment.
Vinay and Darbelnet treat it as a stylistic device whose purpose is to keep the overall tone of the text intact, which places it among the whole-text considerations rather than among the sentence-level procedures. Newmark takes much the same view and notes that compensation is what allows a translator to absorb losses of meaning, sound effect, metaphor or pragmatic effect without the text as a whole degrading. Baker's contribution is a warning about method: the technique is too bound to the individual text to be exemplified systematically, so an inventory can name it but cannot supply a list of cases. Chesterman gives it a different status again, treating compensation as one of the two general motivations governing the use of strategies at all, alongside the significance threshold, the principle that a translator changes only where the difference is worth the change.
Later teaching handbooks subdivide the operation. Hervey and Higgins distinguish compensation in kind, where the effect is reproduced by different means; compensation in place, where it reappears at a different point; and compensation by merging or by splitting, where the source material is redistributed over fewer or more target units.
When it applies
- A feature of the source is untranslatable at its own position: wordplay, homophony, an alliterative sequence, a name with a meaning.
- The source draws on a grammatical distinction the target lacks, such as T and V pronouns, honorific systems, or aspectual contrasts.
- Dialect, sociolect or idiolect marks a speaker in the source, and the obvious target dialect would relocate the speaker geographically.
- Modal particles or discourse markers carry attitude in the source and have no lexical counterpart in the target at the same slot.
Examples
FR>EN
- Source: On peut se tutoyer ?
- Target: Shall we drop the formalities?
- Comment: English has no pronominal distinction to move between, so the proposal itself has to be relexicalized. This is compensation in kind at the same position; where a narrative merely switches from vous to tu, the translator has no anchor at all and must place the shift elsewhere, typically in address forms or in the level of contraction.
DE>EN
- Source: Das ist ja wohl nicht dein Ernst.
- Target: You cannot possibly be serious.
- Comment: The particles ja and wohl carry incredulity and appeal to shared knowledge, and English has no particle slot at that point in the clause. The attitude is restored in the modal and the adverb. Nothing propositional has moved, which is what distinguishes compensation from an information change.
TR>EN
- Source: Buyurun efendim.
- Target: Do come in.
- Comment: The deference in efendim has no English lexical host in an invitation of this length. The emphatic do carries part of it, and the remainder is normally placed later in the exchange, in the choice of address and in fuller sentence forms. A reviser sees the restoration only if it is recorded.
Watch out for
Compensation is the argument a translator makes for a departure, which is exactly why it attracts scrutiny. Undocumented, it is indistinguishable from a free addition at one point and an unexplained loss at another, and a reviser comparing segments in isolation will report both.
- State the loss and the restoration together. A compensation that is not recorded cannot be reviewed, and Baker's point about systematic exemplification means no reviser can infer it.
- Keep the restoration proportionate and local. Effects moved a long way from their origin distort the passage they land in.
- The technique is not available in certified, contractual or statutory work, where every provision must be answerable at its own position. There the loss is recorded in a note and left as a loss.
References
- Vinay, J.-P. & Darbelnet, J. (1958). Stylistique comparée du français et de l'anglais: méthode de traduction. Paris: Didier. English translation by J. C. Sager & M.-J. Hamel (1995), Comparative Stylistics of French and English: A Methodology for Translation, Benjamins Translation Library 11. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
- Newmark, P. (1988). A Textbook of Translation. London: Prentice Hall, pp. 90–91.
- Hervey, S. & Higgins, I. (1992). Thinking Translation: A Course in Translation Method, French to English. London: Routledge, Ch. 3.
- Baker, M. (1992). In Other Words: A Coursebook on Translation. London: Routledge.
- Chesterman, A. (2016). Memes of Translation: The Spread of Ideas in Translation Theory, revised edition. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, Ch. 4. First edition 1997.