What it is
A note or a gloss supplies information the target reader needs and the source reader did not, because the source reader already had it. What varies is not the content but its placement, and placement is the whole of the technique: the same explanation woven into the sentence, dropped to the foot of the page or moved to a glossary produces three quite different reading experiences.
Newmark sets an order of preference and it is worth following. His first choice is inside the text, because the reader meets the explanation at the moment of need. Failing that, a footnote at the bottom of the page; failing that, endnotes at the end of the chapter or book; last, a glossary. His judgement of notes at the back is unsentimental: they are the least usable form, since the reader who must turn to them usually does not. Nida treats footnotes as a residual instrument with two functions, correcting the linguistic and cultural discrepancies that the running text cannot absorb, and adding background about the setting that the original audience took for granted.
Franco Aixelá supplies the distinction that matters most in practice. Within his scale of strategies for culture-specific items, both glosses are conservation strategies, in that the source item survives; they differ in intrusiveness. An extratextual gloss keeps the explanation outside the text proper, in a footnote, endnote, glossary or bracketed aside marked as the translator's. An intratextual gloss weaves the explanation into the text so that it does not disturb the reader's attention, at the price of making the addition invisible as an addition. The trade is between traceability and fluency.
When it applies
- A culture-specific item has no target counterpart and the text goes on to rely on it, so a generalization would break the later reference.
- An institutional or legal term names a body or instrument with no equivalent in the target legal order.
- The source contains wordplay or an allusion the target cannot reproduce, and the reader needs to know that something is there.
- A source error, an illegible passage or an internal inconsistency has to be reported rather than silently repaired.
Examples
DE>EN
- Source: Er hat sein Abitur 1998 bestanden.
- Target: He passed the Abitur, the school-leaving examination qualifying for university entry, in 1998.
- Comment: An intratextual gloss in Aixelá's sense and Newmark's first preference. The term is conserved, so any certificate or later reference still matches; the explanation costs one clause and no page turn.
TR>EN
- Source: Nüfus Müdürlüğü
- Target: Nüfus Müdürlüğü (civil registry office)
- Comment: The office is named as it appears on the seal and the parenthesis tells the reader what it does. In certified work this is the standard shape, because the reader must be able to match target against source. A functional equivalent alone would be more readable and would destroy that correspondence.
NL>EN
- Source: de vennootschap onder firma
- Target: the vennootschap onder firma (a general partnership under Dutch law)
- Comment: The gloss carries the qualification that matters, which is the legal order the form belongs to. Rendering the term simply as "general partnership" would invite the reader to apply their own jurisdiction's rules to a Dutch entity.
Watch out for
Notes are where a translator becomes visible, and visibility is governed by convention rather than by preference. In certified and sworn translation the conventions are explicit: a translator's note must be identifiable as the translator's, marked as such and set off from the body, and it may explain but must not correct, interpret or complete the source. An unmarked intratextual gloss in a document meant to stand as a rendering of an original is not a gloss but an undeclared addition.
- Gloss at first occurrence and then let the term stand. Repeated glossing patronizes the reader and inflates the text.
- Keep the note descriptive. A note that argues, evaluates or advises has left the translator's role.
- Check what the commissioner permits. Some target formats have nowhere to put a note, and that is a question to raise before delivery rather than after.
References
- Nida, E. A. (1964). Toward a Science of Translating. Leiden: E. J. Brill, Ch. 9, "Techniques of Adjustment".
- Newmark, P. (1988). A Textbook of Translation. London: Prentice Hall, pp. 91–93.
- Franco Aixelá, J. (1996). "Culture-specific Items in Translation." In R. Álvarez & M. C.-Á. Vidal (eds), Translation, Power, Subversion. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, pp. 52–78, at 61–64.