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Difference between linguistic and non-linguistic aspects of translation

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By Nandini Agarwal
 
Language is a mixture of words, and translation is a mediator or a tool of transferring words between two languages, and the compile of these words produces the targeted meaning. Also, Anna Bernacka adds that the translator should be an intermediary among various language systems an intercultural mediator alike. Furthermore, translators have to understand the meaning correctly before starting the translation process; to deliver accurate, competent, and error-free product.
There are some crucial aspects that translators have to maintain translation management, and if translators do not take care of, their translation product will be affected negatively. As a result, this would take out of their reputation as translation. These aspects are divided into two main categories, as follows:
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of language and involves an analysis of language form, language meaning, and style in context. The earliest activities in the documentation and description of expression have been attributed to the 4th century BCE who wrote a formal description of the Sanskrit
Linguists traditionally analyze human language by observing an interplay between sound and meaning. Phonetics is the study of speech and non-speech sounds and delves into their acoustic and articulatory properties. The study of language meaning, on the other hand, deals with how languages encode relations between entities, features, and other aspects of the world to convey, process, and assign meaning, as well as manage and resolve the ambiguity. While the study of semantics typically concerns itself with truth conditions, pragmatics deals with how situational context influences the production of meaning.
The Role of Linguistic Factor in Translation
The linguistic oriented approach to translation finds the very essence of translation is in the basics of the linguistic concept of translation, which is the fact that the process of translation is a language act in which a text from one language is substituted with an equivalent text from another, by making that substitution in accordance with the regulations of both language systems. This paper will deal with translation related issues through contrastive analyses between Macedonian and English, as well as the advantages and disadvantages of this approach. In the process of finding translation equivalence, there are instances of finding absolute equality, partial and no equivalence. This paper analyses such examples. In translating lexemes with no equivalent, which are culture-specific, translators find themselves in an awkward position
The linguistic aspects:
The linguistic elements – as per SAE J2450 Translation Quality Metric Task Force –  which translators should be aware of are:
1. Wrong terms
Translators should avoid using wrong terms, as far as possible, to produce a good, accurate product. Using wrong terms would change the intended meaning and lead to misunderstanding in the target language. As a result, this may result in mistranslations, which may cause problems. The following example explains that: The word “assister” in French doesn’t mean “to assist,” which means “to attend.”
2. Syntactic errors 
A syntax error is a violation of the syntax or grammatical rules. The following sentence contains an error of English syntax: “I am going to visit my uncle.” Translators and linguists should not make such mistakes in writing as they indicate that they are not professionals.
3. Omission 
The omission could be useful in some few cases, but in most cases, it may lead to severe problems as in this example: For a reason or another, the “c” in President Barack Obama’s first name was omitted. The mistake was spotted just a few days before the election, incurring approximately $75,000 in reprinting costs, as (Katherine, 2016) stated.
4. Misspelling 
Translators should check and proof-read their translation before submitting it to the client to ensure that there free of misspelling because this will definitely affect the quality of translation negatively.  According to a July 2011 BBC News article, spelling mistakes cause readers to lose faith in the quality of a website’s content, resulting in “millions … in lost revenue,” (Katherine, 2016).   
5. Punctuation mistakes 
Although many translators do not take care of using punctuation marks or use it incorrectly, it is really important to use in writing in order to clarify the meaning. The following example is really good to show the importance of punctuation and how the misuse of punctuation can cause problems: “ Une Femme sans son Homme est rien.” -- When you read this sentence without using punctuation marks, you will notice that it has three versions or it could be understood in three different ways as shown below:
A woman without her man is nothing.
A woman, without her, man is nothing.
A woman, without her man, is nothing.
Non-linguistic 
A non-linguistic is an actual or possible derivation from a sentence, which is not associated with signs that have any original or primary intent of the communication. It is a general term of art used to capture a number of different senses of the word "meaning", independently from its linguistic uses.
We need to understand “What is a Context” by delineating “non-linguistic visual context” from a language-processing perspective. Psycholinguistic research has shown that visual context can influence language processing through referential and lexico-semantic links. We review these findings and discuss incremental visual context effects on language comprehension that emerged even without these links and even when the visual context was irrelevant for the comprehension task. The reviewed evidence suggests our notion of non-linguistic visual context must be relatively broad and encompass language-world relationships that go beyond reference or lexico-semantic associations. 
Non-Linguistic aspects:     
The non-linguistic aspects are also no less important than the linguistic aspects. Some of the non-linguistic aspects are:
1. Segment-level checks
Sometimes translators, unknowingly, overlook translating sentences or paragraphs which result in translation errors. Translators should always check for forgotten or incomplete translations to procure perfect translation.   
 2. Inconsistency
The translation must be consistent and meaningful. Inconsistency could occur in the source or target languages, so translators have to make sure that the translation is consistent.   
3. Numbering
Translators should always check the numbering values or formatting, measurement unit conversion, or digit to text conversion to avoid making errors that are related to the points mentioned above.
Translators should learn from the aforementioned points and always check and proof-read their translations to produce an accurate, perfect product.  “The importance of good translation is most obvious when things go wrong,” (OKRENT,2016). Translators also should learn from their mistakes and try not to make such mistakes in future assignments.
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