Differences between Communicative and Semantic Translation A reading report on Approaches to Translation
As early as in the pre-linguistics period of writing on translation, opinions swung between literal and free, faithful and beautiful, exact and natural translation, depending on whether the bias was to be in favor of the author or the reader, the source or the target language of the text. The conflict of loyalties, the gap between emphasis on source and target language will always remain as the overriding problem in translation theory and practice. Communicative translation attempts to produce on its readers an effect as close as possible to that obtained on the readers of the original. Semantics translation attempts to render, as closely as the semantic and syntactic structures of the second language allow, the exact contextual meaning of the original. In theory, wide differences exist between the two methods. Communicative translation addresses itself solely to the second reader, who does not anticipate difficulties of obscurities, and would expect a generous transfer of foreign elements into his own culture as well as his language where necessary.