3.1 The term translation typically implies an existing ST, mainly in descriptive translation studies. This is in sharp contrast to the atypical fictitious translation or pseudotranslation, a literary hoax by which an original text claims to be a translation, e.g. The Lord of the Rings, allegedly prepared from the ancient languages of Middle-earth. Another atypical mode without an ST is cultural back-translation, “translation into a target language from which most or all of the culture-specific elements of the source text were drawn” (Klaudy & Heltai 2020: 43). This is not restricted to fiction. Nowadays, most new technologies, industries, scientific theories, academic disciplines, branches of sport, leisure activities, etc. gain global currency with an English terminology. When translating an ST on such topics from any language into English, specialist translators adopt chunks of parallel texts (cf. 3.8), instead of engaging in more or less literal back-translation, in an effort to produce a natural sounding text.

 

3.2 The terms translation and interpreting typically imply a verbal ST, as was the norm for centuries by lack of cinema. Audiovisual/multimedia translation is atypical because it processes any material that combines visual, audio, and/or interactive elements. Audiovisual translation has become widespread in the last decades, but the prototype of translation and interpreting still relies on a set of verbal signs. The other atypical mode is sign language interpreting as it draws on visual information, a system of manual and postural signs.

 

3.3 A closely related notion is that translation typically transforms a written ST. In an atypical case, the ST is a recorded speech, e.g. a television interview which is transcribed and translated. Even more atypical is the revision of an interpreted speech, done whenever the need arises for a written record of a conference where simultaneous interpreting was offered. In such cases, the transcript of the audio recording of the interpretation is adapted to the rules of (formal) writing by replacing some key features of spoken, and mostly improvised, language (colloquialisms, disfluencies, ellipsis, grammar mistakes, word choice errors, etc.). Subtitling is atypical as a hybrid speech-to-text mode, based on an existing script, unless it is real-time subtitling or captioning. Consecutive interpreter’s notes are a sketchy and rough translation that often retains a number of SL segments, combined with a set of symbols. These are also atypical in that they are not meant for the client but only for the interpreter.

 

3.4 Translation and interpreting are typically thought to operate on discourse level. Trainers repeatedly remind students to go beyond sentences and look at the whole text, the entire communicative situation and indeed the source culture. This caution seems to overshadow at least two atypical modes. One is the translation/interpreting of individual sentences or sub-sentence units (words, phrases, headlines, quotes, titles, headings, captions, signs, list items, etc.). At times, translators/interpreters need to work on such material without knowing the broader context, as when receiving a list extracted from a company’s catalogue, full of polysemous terms but no images or explanations. The other atypical form is loan translation/calque, a word formation device that borrows a lexical unit of at least two morphemes via root-by-root translation, e.g. turning the German Regenwald into the English rainforest. Presumably, calques are more typical in sight translation and interpreting than in translation as the need to supply a TL equivalent instantly may prevent the retrieval of an accepted TL term.

 

3.5 At the level of generalisation found in translation training and research, the term translation typically implies a general ST that requires no specialist knowledge, e.g. leaflets, correspondence, advertisements, and news. In this respect, technical/specialised/specialist translation of business, financial, legal, marketing, medical, philosophical, religious, scientific, telecom, etc. content is atypical. This may sound striking as technical translation has been the norm since approximately the 1950s, especially as opposed to the previously predominant literary and religious translation. While terminology and the frequency of certain collocations and syntactic structures give technical translation a special character, the techniques, shifts, etc. performed for the translation of even the most abstract and sophisticated special text are no different from those used to manipulate a general ST.

 

3.6 The term translation typically implies an original ST, written in the SL and with SL readers in mind. The atypical back translation means reversing a translation into the SL, often as a way to check its accuracy, or supplying the literal equivalent of a foreign language word or expression in an otherwise monolingual text. The result of the latter, called both gloss and interlinear translation, was frequent in Latin codices containing vernacular terms in medieval Europe, and so is it in linguistics papers, e.g. “The question Qu’est-ce que c’est que ça ? ‘What is it?’ (literally What is this that this is that this?) is rare in written French”.

 

3.7 Translation is typically the transformation of a monolingual ST but the SL message can also be expressed in multiple languages. For instance, signs, vital records, forms, invoices, etc. are written in French and Dutch in Brussels. The information purports to be identical in all versions, but a closer look may reveal some minor differences. A multilingual ST is in fact a monolingual ST with multiple implicit translations, so the translator may either stick to one particular version as “the” ST or rely on as many as necessary for full comprehension. Another atypical mode is double version, applied in internationally coproduced films, where each actor speaks their own language with their lines translated or subtitled to a single TL. For instance, Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds has an English script with long dialogues in French, German, and Italian. In monolingual communities, translators seldom work on STs that involve code switching but when they do, they face the dilemma of reproducing content only from one SL or translating all ST portions as in a double version, but losing their special effect. Code switching also results in atypical interpreting, making it either incomplete or supplementary. Incompletion means the inevitable omission of any utterance produced in a language that is unknown to the interpreter. Supplementary interpreting (cf. 4.5) sporadically conveys words and expressions, only those unknown by the communicators. A case in point was a Hungarian talent show where the illusionist Uri Geller made comments on each contestant’s routine, swapping between Hungarian and English. The simultaneous interpreter had the atypical job of working from but never into English and only supplying the Hungarian equivalents of a few words that Geller uttered in English.

 

3.8 Translation typically draws on a single ST but there are exceptions to this common conception, too. One is compilation, the merger of multiple STs. The Vulgate is perhaps the best example of atypicality, as St. Jerome mostly reused and often revised, rather than actually translated, a corpus of Latin STs that were already translations (cf. 4.2 below) and combined those with direct translation from Hebrew and Greek. Translation, especially of technical texts, can be atypical even in the case of a single source. Specialised translations tend to incorporate ready-made elements as diverse as parallel (non-translated TL) texts, dictionary equivalents, term base entries, client-specific terms, and previous translations (quotes, titles, translation memory segments). This challenges the general belief that all translation does is reproduce an ST in the TL from scratch. Computer assisted interpreting also offers a plethora of pre-existing content that service providers may choose to build in their delivery.

 

3.9 The terms translation and interpreting typically imply a context-dependent ST. In partial repetition of point 3.4, translation and interpreting sometimes need to be performed on a context-free ST with little or no background information. For example, the present author was once instructed by text to immediately provide an English translation of the Hungarian expression Mélységi Ellenőrzési és Közterületi Támogató Alosztály. The only clue was that the request came from a client who regularly hired me to interpret at police training events. With no time to ask questions or do a Google search, I ad-libbed Subdivision of Depth Inspection and Public Area Support, which is probably just as vague to an English speaker as the ST is to any Hungarian who is unfamiliar with law enforcement jargon.

 

3.10 STs typically convey some kind of meaning but atypical STs intentionally do not. Yet, this does not always preclude translation. Lewis Carroll’s nonsense poem Jabberwocky has appeared in over 60 languages, including Georgian, Hebrew, Icelandic, Welsh, etc., and has even yielded multiple versions in some of those TLs.