| | Category | Definition |
| | Cultural (C) | A word or formulation in the original is culturally loaded in the target context due to societal or religious customs (e.g., eating habits in Asian countries). The usage of certain words or phrases based on the culture of a given society may be improper in the target language.
For instance, “starchy foods (e.g., potato and bread)” becomes “starchy foods (e.g., rice, pasta, and chapatti).” |
| | Semantic (S) | Semantics concerns meanings, which are both denotative, i.e., the literal word (lexis), and connotative, namely, the set of cultural and/or subjective associations implied by a word in addition to its literal explicit meaning. This category includes lexical differences. For instance, English has a slightly larger lexicon than French. Therefore, some French words have no direct equivalent in English and would need the use of paraphrases.
For instance, meet your responsibilities becomes meet your duties or meet your obligations. |
| | Idiomatic/pragmatics (I) | The practicalities of how a language is used in its everyday context may be different between the source and target language. For example, one language may have more social registers than another (there are a number of different forms of addressing a person in Japanese, whereas English may only have one) and the idiosyncrasies of one language (repetitions, focus on particular words, use of particular idiomatic expressions, etc.) may not be found in another
For instance, “I feel downhearted and blue” can be translated by an equivalent of “I feel downhearted and sad” or “I feel downhearted and depressed.” |
| | Syntactic/grammar (Sy) | Syntactic difficulties correspond to specific aspects related to sentence structure, grammar, and punctuation. The structure and grammar of the source and target languages may diverge and may impact the identification of conceptually equivalent alternatives in a target language.
For instance, the use of a verbal passive form in the original may not possible in some target languages, where active form is more current.
For instance, the placement of the recall period might differ in some target languages. In English, it often goes at the beginning or end of the item, but in other languages, it might be grammatically necessary to place it in the middle of the item. |
|
|
