Global translation strategies / translation methods
You have to make the choice between imitative translation and functional translation – the first
striving to retain as much of the purely formal aspects of the source text, and the latter aims at
getting the message of the source text across, even if it takes drastic changes in the formal aspects
of the text.
Newmark lists the following translation methods, which essentially fall along a cline of
focus, one extreme being total focus on the source text/language and the other extreme being total
focus on the target text/language:
• ST/SL focus (imitative translation)
◦ word-for-word translation: preservation of word order and as literal translation as
possible of individual words, including cultural words