Direct transfer

Recognized translation

Use the official rendering of an institutional term, whether or not you like it. Also called Official equivalent or accepted rendering.

Reference/All techniques

Obligatory Word Phrase Newmark (1988)

What it is

A recognized translation is the rendering an institutional term already has, adopted by the institution itself or settled by general usage. The translator's task is to find it and use it. Where such a rendering exists, no other choice is professionally available, and the quality of the received version is not the translator's concern.

Newmark states the procedure in a single move: use the official or generally accepted translation of any institutional term, even where it is inadequate. His point is not that received renderings are good, but that they are load-bearing. Institutional names function as identifiers, and a reader who encounters an improved version cannot tell whether the source designates the same body. Newmark does allow the translator to disagree, on one condition: the objection is made openly, in a note or a bracketed comment, while the recognized form remains in the running text. The improved rendering is a remark about the term, not a substitute for it.

The neighbouring categories are close and worth separating. An established equivalent is fixed by the language, in dictionaries and in usage, and covers idioms and formulae; a recognized translation is fixed by an institution or an authority, and covers designations. Where no recognized form yet exists, the honest instrument is a translation label, offered as provisional and marked as such.

When it applies

  • The source names a court, ministry, agency, statute, treaty, programme or official document type.
  • The body publishes its own name in the target language, on its site, in its correspondence or in its founding instrument.
  • A supranational or interinstitutional terminology resource has fixed the rendering for the domain, and the receiving reader works from that inventory.
  • The target text will be read against another document, such as a register extract or a prior filing, in which the term already appears.

Examples

DE>EN

  • Source: Bundesverfassungsgericht
  • Target: Federal Constitutional Court
  • Comment: The court's own English designation. Alternatives such as "Federal Court of Constitutional Jurisdiction" are descriptively accurate and professionally wrong, because they break the match between the translation and every English-language document that cites the court.

TR>EN

  • Source: Yargıtay; Danıştay
  • Target: Court of Cassation; Council of State
  • Comment: Both renderings are institutionally established and both are contestable: the first invites comparison with civil-law cassation systems, the second with an unrelated advisory body in other jurisdictions. Neither objection licenses a new rendering. A translator who considers the received form misleading adds a note and keeps the term.

NL>EN

  • Source: Hoge Raad der Nederlanden
  • Target: Supreme Court of the Netherlands
  • Comment: The body's official English name, and the one that must appear in a certified translation of a judgment. Rendering it literally as "High Council" would be defensible from the wording alone and would leave the reader unable to identify the deciding court.

Watch out for

The procedure looks mechanical and is not, because the recognized form has to be found rather than assumed. Two failures recur: adopting a plausible rendering from a secondary source that the institution does not use, and carrying forward a form that has since changed following a reorganization or a renaming.

  • Cite the authority. Where a recognized rendering has been applied, its source should be identifiable in the terminology record, so that the next translator inherits the decision rather than re-taking it.
  • Do not update silently. Where a body has been renamed, historical documents keep the name in force at the time, normally with the current designation added in a note. The document reports on a past state of affairs.
  • Watch homonymous institutions across jurisdictions. Several countries have a body whose recognized English name is identical, and where confusion is possible the country qualifier belongs in the target text rather than in the translator's head.

References

  • Newmark, P. (1988). A Textbook of Translation. London: Prentice Hall, p. 89.

Structural triggers

This technique is not always a choice. The parameters below are the structural differences between languages that call for it, the first group compulsorily and the second as a strong tendency.

Invited by

Writing systems and orthography

Terminological situations that call for this

The entries below describe states of a concept or of its designation in which this technique is the operation that answers them. They are reasons of evidence and of conceptual fit rather than of grammar.

Equal authenticity and autonomous conceptsProper names and institutional designationsSources of term evidenceTerminological phraseology

Fixed units this technique places

The entries below are units whose target wording was settled before the translation began. Where this technique applies to one of them, the work is retrieval rather than composition: the fixed form is found and placed, and a fresh rendering would be an error rather than a variant.

Attestation and certification formulaeJudicial and procedural formulaeHeadings, rubrics and form labelsModel texts and precedentPerformative and enacting formulaeStandard clauses and boilerplate

Related entries

Established equivalent Translation label Transliteration

Translation that can be checked

Every Translyta delivery comes with a quality report and a terminology report, so the decisions described here are visible to your reviser instead of buried in the text.

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