Compensation

In Chapter 3, we said that when the TT context rules out an obvious communicative translation, the usual solution is to use compensation: that is, where any conventional translation (whether literal or otherwise) would entail an unacceptable translation loss, this loss is reduced by the freely chosen introduction of a less unacceptable one, such that important ST effects are rendered approximately in the TT by means other than those used in the ST. Here is an example, from a text in which an architect sarcastically criticizes the slabs projecting over the front doors and steps in housing designed by a rival architect: ‘Da sie weder Entwässerung noch Gefälle haben, bleibt der Schnee auf ihnen vermutlich bis zum Wegtauen und Abtropfen – gerade auf die „geschützten“ Treppen – liegen, die so aus dem Regen in die Traufe kommen dürften’ (Adler 1927: 387). While ‘vom Regen in die Traufe (kommen)’ can usually be translated without significant loss by its communicative equivalent, ‘(to jump) out of the frying pan into the fire’, chance has intervened here, forcing the translator to think again. If the TT is to convey the writer’s barb with similar polemic force – that is, without significant translation loss – it must do it with compensation. Here is one possibility: ‘[. . .] the meltwater runs off – straight onto the “sheltered” steps, upon which one may thus truly say it never rains but it pours’. The ST uses a popular quasi-proverbial saying to tease the architect. As the conventional communicative translation is not used, there is significant translation loss. The TT compensates for this loss by using a popular proverb to do the teasing. The image is different, but it is a similar kind of rhetorical ploy to the ST’s, and has a similar effect. It also retains suitably damp imagery. It does incur translation loss, of course. The TL proverb is convenient, but it has lost its own figurative meaning: its function is not actually to say that ‘misfortunes never come singly’, but to preserve a style and tone. This loss is mitigated in turn by the slightly facetious formulation ‘upon which one may thus truly say’. The substitution of one figurative image for another is thus a loss that is willingly incurred as being a lesser evil than the loss of the ST’s

tone. In the end, the TT’s suitability depends on what readership is intended. In this case, our example is from a TT addressed to students of the history of urban planning, so we wanted to preserve the punning hint at human rivalries underlying even such things as housing design.