Common Challenges of Translation

Abstract

Translation is one of the language skills, which is essential to be learned by translators and the students who are in the relevant field to be professional translators in the future. In the process of translating, the translator has to overcome various challenges. The main objective of this study is to encourage the translators to produce a successful translation. This study was conducted using the methodology of some Linguistic analysis and books regarding translation studies. The used study sources are some texts that were given by the lecturers to translate, and “A handbook of Translation Studies” book by Bijay Kumar Das. The analyzed documents assisted to find that, various translation issues are faced by both translators and clients. The structure of most languages is different from each other. In some languages, there is a difference between both the written and spoken varieties. Accordingly, translators frequently add, remove and rearrange necessary parts in a target text for effective communication. Therefore, problems of translation differ according to the domain and a given text. Furthermore, this study reveals that lexical and semantic problems, grammatical problems, rhetorical problems, pragmatic problems, and cultural issues are common challenges of translation. Additionally, it is important to discuss the solutions for those particular problems. In brief, the problems can be solved by reading the text carefully and understanding the sense of particular words, referring to dictionaries, glossaries and consulting experts in those fields. These common challenges lead the translators to re-correct their translations. Finally, this study will contribute for translators to produce perfect translations.