What it is
Linguistic amplification adds linguistic material to the target without adding anything to what the target says. The proposition is unchanged; only its surface realization is longer. A short source formula is answered by a fuller target formula because the target language has no equally short one at that register, or because the delivery conditions of the text require the slot to be filled.
Molina and Hurtado Albir introduced the label in their inventory of eighteen techniques, and their illustration is the English "No way" answered in Spanish by "De ninguna de las maneras". They pair it explicitly with linguistic compression and note where each is at home: linguistic amplification is characteristic of consecutive interpreting, where the interpreter reconstructs from notes and the target utterance naturally runs longer, and of dubbing, where a line must occupy the time and the mouth movements of the original.
The test that separates it from amplification is propositional, and it is the only test that matters. Amplification introduces information that is not formulated in the source, whether by explicitation, by explicative paraphrase or by a note; the reader ends up knowing something the source did not supply. In linguistic amplification the reader ends up knowing exactly what the source supplied, in more words. If a reviser can point to a fact or a qualification in the target that was not recoverable from the source, the technique was amplification, whatever the translator intended. The neighbouring boundary is with Chesterman's distribution change, which describes the same expansion in distributional terms: the semantic components are spread over more target items.
When it applies
- The source is a short conventional formula, and the target language's counterpart at the same register is periphrastic.
- Timing governs the target: dubbing and voice-over, where the line has to last as long as the original.
- The target has no single lexical item and expresses the notion by a light-verb or support construction.
- Consecutive interpreting, where the target rendering is reconstructed rather than mirrored and tends to be fuller than the source utterance.
Examples
EN>ES
- Source: No way.
- Target: De ninguna de las maneras.
- Comment: Molina and Hurtado Albir's own illustration. Spanish has shorter refusals, but none of them occupies the same emphatic conversational slot at the same register. Five words answer two, and the speaker has refused exactly what he refused in English: no new content, only a longer surface.
EN>NL
- Source: Okay.
- Target: Ja, dat is goed.
- Comment: A dubbing case. The Dutch is not a fuller assent than the English, merely a longer one; the line has to fill the same span of screen time. The test applies cleanly, because nothing in the Dutch tells the viewer anything the English did not.
EN>TR
- Source: Please sign here.
- Target: Lütfen buraya imzanızı atınız.
- Comment: Turkish expresses the act with a support construction rather than a single verb, so the same content necessarily occupies more items. Molina and Hurtado Albir would file this as linguistic amplification; Chesterman would describe it as distribution change, expansion variety. The description differs, the operation does not.
Watch out for
The label is easy to reach for and easy to misapply, because a longer target is consistent with several quite different things having happened. Establish first that nothing was added, then that nothing was shifted.
- Check for smuggled explicitation. Filling a slot often tempts the translator to fill it with a clarification, at which point the technique has become amplification and the addition needs to be defensible on its own terms.
- Check the register. A periphrastic target formula is frequently more formal than the compact source formula it replaces, which is an interpersonal change and not a neutral lengthening.
- In binding and certified text there is no timing constraint and no delivery constraint, so the usual motive for the technique disappears. Length the target system does not require reads as padding.
References
- Molina, L. & Hurtado Albir, A. (2002). "Translation Techniques Revisited: A Dynamic and Functionalist Approach." Meta 47(4), 498–512.
- Chesterman, A. (2016). Memes of Translation: The Spread of Ideas in Translation Theory, revised edition. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, Ch. 4. First edition 1997.