Module: Translation
Department of English
Bound Free Translation:
Like literal translation, free translation had been a well- established method of
translation since antiquity. Usually it is associated with translating the spirit, or the message
not the letter or the form of the text (Newmark, 1988:45). It is used to earn wide reputation as
the better method at the expense of literal translation, the worse method of translation. It is the
method that is not committed to translate every single word in a text. It means to translate
freely without constraints. The translator is not strictly constrained by the type of the
text or context or the direct and available meaning of the words and phrases. He goes
outside texts and out of contexts behind and beyond the words and phrases, looking perhaps
for the spirit or the message. He can translate something the way he understand it. His way of
understanding is confined by text and context variably to some or great extend. It is
perhaps the only restriction on him. He cannot translate the way he likes but the way he
understands. (All other terms pointed out above or used nowadays to substitute for “free”
such as “communicative” or “dynamic”, “pragmatic”, “ creative” and “ idiomatic” coincide
with these implications.
This type of free translation is derived from the context in a direct way; through it may
go out of it in some way or another, in the form of exaggeration, expressivity, and effective
or rhetorical or formal language. It is the type we usually understand by the term “free
translation “. Here are examples:
1- He got nothing at the end
2- She was sad deep down
3- You look quite cool
4- Swearing is a bad habit
East or west home is best
5- Love me, love my dog
6- Come down to earth
my friend got to the top very soon
7- she had a new baby
8- Are you lying to me?
Common among these translations is their expressive, effective, rhetorical, and
very formal Arabic, by means of using:
a) Expressions from the Holy Quran (10)
b) Prophetic Tradition (i.e Sunnah) (4)
c) Popular religious expressions (9)
d) Proverbs (1)
e) Collocations ( 2.3.8)
f) Poetry (5.6)
g) Pompous exaggerated expressions( 7)
All these free translations are derived in one way or another from the original.
Although they have gone far from the CONTEXT, they have not gone too far from it or
outside it this means that this type of free translation is not loose or without limitation
but it is bound to context in some way. For these reasons, this method of free translation
can be acceptable, especially when justified by the type of text, or language which allows
for exaggeration or expressivity of some kind. It is very close to CREATIVE translation.
However, when the translation is quite strange to, and far away from the context and
type of text, it is not advisable. Accurate, straightforward, literal translation of
MEANNG is probably a more preferable version for these statements, especially in
simple, general texts.
( H. Ghazala.2008).
