Serious Problems of Communicativity in Basque Texts
Translation: Kristin Addis
Abstract
The language in which the translator produces his texts serves as his primary tool, and the use to which he puts it is one of the factors that determines the quality of the translated texts.
Observing the prescriptions of translation should not lead us to forget that the purpose of translation is to produce a text whose aim is to achieve and optimize communication. Thus, communicativity, that is, the ability to reliably communicate a message, is a true sine qua non for any translation of quality.
The article states that the communicativity of a text stems from two fundamental elements: first, syntactic comprehensibility, which requires an effort that goes beyond producing a merely intelligible message, and facilitates (but does not simplify) the syntax of the text; and second, lexical precision, to which the author refers metaphorically as the resolution of the language, borrowing a term from digital image technology.
