What it is
Linguistic compression condenses the wording of the target while the information it carries stays the same. The target is shorter than a full rendering would be, and nothing has been dropped: what the source said is still there, packed into fewer items. The motive is usually external, a limit on time or on space that the translator did not set.
Molina and Hurtado Albir list it as the counterpart of linguistic amplification, and their illustration is the English "Yes, so what?" rendered in Spanish as "¿Y?". They associate it with simultaneous interpreting, where the interpreter is running behind a live speaker and cannot afford the full form, and with subtitling, where a reading-speed allowance and a character count per line decide how much the translator may write.
The test against reduction is a single question about what the reader or listener ends up with. If the information is retained in fewer words, the technique is compression. If information has gone, the technique is reduction, and it needs to be justified on Baker's terms rather than on grounds of economy. The distinction survives the fact that both operations shorten the text, because they shorten different things: compression shortens the expression, reduction shortens the content. Chesterman describes the same expression-side operation from another angle as distribution change, compression variety, where the semantic components of the source are redistributed over fewer target items.
When it applies
- Subtitling, where characters per line and reading speed set a hard ceiling that no argument about fidelity can lift.
- Simultaneous interpreting, where the target must keep pace with a speaker who is not waiting.
- The target language packs the same content morphologically or syntactically, so the shorter form is the natural one rather than a sacrifice.
- Redundant surface material in the source: fillers, restarts and hesitation phenomena in transcribed speech that carry no propositional load.
Examples
EN>ES
- Source: Yes, so what?
- Target: ¿Y?
- Comment: Molina and Hurtado Albir's own illustration. The Spanish keeps the challenge, the dismissiveness and the interrogative force in one character. It is the clearest available demonstration that shortness is a property of the wording rather than of the message.
EN>NL
- Source: I don't think that's a very good idea.
- Target: Geen goed idee.
- Comment: A subtitle. The hedged first-person frame is not lost so much as carried by the delivery on screen, which the viewer has in front of them. A reviser working from the script alone will read this as reduction; a reviser watching the film will not, and that is the right way to settle it.
EN>TR
- Source: He said that he would not be able to come.
- Target: Gelemeyeceğini söyledi.
- Comment: Nine items answered by two. Turkish morphology carries negation, ability, future reference, person and the subordination of the reported clause inside the verb form. Nothing is left out, and no choice was involved, which makes this a system-driven compression rather than an interpreting decision.
Watch out for
Compression is the technique under the most external pressure, and pressure is what turns it into reduction. A subtitler who is over the character limit will shorten something, and the discipline lies in choosing surface rather than substance.
- Test each compression by back-translation. If the fuller source content cannot be reconstructed from the target plus the situation, information has gone and the technique was reduction.
- Protect modality and hedging first. Auxiliaries, qualifiers and politeness markers are the cheapest words to cut and the most expensive to lose, because their removal makes the speaker more certain and blunter than they were.
- The technique does not transfer to written documentary work. In certified, contractual and statutory translation there is no time limit and no character count, so a compressed rendering has no external justification and a reviser will treat any shortfall as omission.
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.