Indirect translation

Indirect translation is a translation of a translation. It may be based on a translated version, or multiple translated versions, of the original or ultimate source text. For instance, if a text in Arabic is translated into Portuguese via English the result is an indirect translation. Indirect translation is a translation of a translation. It may be based on a translated version, or multiple translated versions, of the original or ultimate source text. For instance, if a text in Arabic is translated into Portuguese via English the result is an indirect translation. Indirect translation is a long-standing reality of intercultural exchanges, especially associated with those exchanges involving geographically, culturally and linguistically distant communities (e.g. Chinese-Portuguese translation) or the so-called small languages (e.g. Catalan, Czech, Danish). It remains a common translation practice in various areas of today’s society, e.g. audio-visual, computer-assisted and literary translation, localization, or community and conference interpreting. Currently, its use is often linked to globalization or the practice of international organizations, where a high number of working languages often entails editing documents via the linguae francae or other mediating languages. In Translation Studies indirect translation - sometimes referred to by the abbreviations 'IT' or 'ITr' - is also known as 'double, intermediate, mediated, mixed, pivot, relay(ed), or second (third, etc.)-hand translation'. Indirect translations are sometimes called retranslations, but this term is more frequently used to describe multiple translations of the same source text into one target language. Indirect translation is opposed to direct translation, which is a translation made directly from the ultimate source text, without a mediating text. Until the 1990s Russian classics had only been translated into European Portuguese via French rather than directly from Russian (e.g. José Saramago’s translation (1959) of Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina via French). Another telling example is the first Russian translation of the Arabic One Thousand and One Nights, by Alexey Filatov in 1763–1771. It was based on a French translation produced by Antoine Galland in 1717. Later Russian translations were also based on European editions. For instance, the translation by Yulia Doppelmayr (1889–1890) was based on Galland’s text and the translation by Lyudmila Shelgunova (1894) was based on an English translation by Edward William Lane (1838 to 1840). In the TV show Breaking Bad (2010, S3E3), the Tortuga character speaks Spanish. The Polish subtitles (fansubs) are made from the English mediating subtitles. A direct translation of the Qur'an into Latin was made in 1142-1143; many indirect translations into European vernaculars were based on that Latin version. The English Bible (c. 1385) overseen by John Wycliffe used the Latin Vulgate as mediating text. The Vulgate derived from St. Jerome's Bible (c. 400), itself a Latin translation of mediating Greek sources. When a conference delegate is speaking Danish and is to be interpreted into English and Czech where no Danish-Czech interpreter is available, the Czech output may be mediated via the English 'pivot'. Relay interpreting was also common in former Eastern Bloc countries, with Russian as the pivot (mediating) language.