Applied Linguistics: Critical Review of Journal Essay

Introduction Everybody can not be a translator although she or he knows a foreign language. Because of just having a good knowledge of foreign languages does not give any 100% assurance that a translation will be rendered reasonably well. A translator must be aware of the essence of the subject besides having a fine awareness of the language, including language rules, and spelling rules. This journal talking about research of Mohammad Reza Hojat Shamami’s study of the main issue at the core of theorizing translation practice and the feature of a good translator or how to be a good translator and of course what are the skills to become a Freelance Translator with its translation process. This knowledge which is generally written in the English language needs to be transmitted in various languages so that people who do not know how to speak and write the original language can get the knowledge necessary for industrial development and technological innovation to keep up with the rest of the world. To transmit this knowledge effectively, there is a need for competent translators in various languages. Summary In practice, there is always considerable variation in the types of translations produced by various translators of a particular text. This is because translation is essentially an Art and not Science. So many factors including proficiency in language, cultural background, writing flair, etc. Translation turns a communication in one language into a correct and understandable version of that communication in another language. Sometimes a translator has to take certain liberties with the original text in order to re-create the mood and style of the original. A translator does need certain tools to help him out in moments of difficulty. These tools can be in the form of good monolingual and bilingual dictionaries, encyclopedias, e-dictionaries, glossaries of technical and standard works, etc. pertaining to the SL text. He must have patience and should not be in a hurry to rush through while translating any text. To translate from one language into another has never been an easy endeavor . It is an exercise both painstaking and cumbersome and only those who have engaged themselves with translation work can realize the complex character of this Art. For the statement of the problem focusing on this fact, (Chomsky, 1965) how can someone turn into a good translator? And for the objective and the purpose of this research, it is important that translators are familiar with the product they are translating and also with the tools they are using. The translation process is not the replacement of one word with another, but the formation of concepts in another language. Knowledge of the product being translated provides more understandable products to the end user. Time and resources for educating translators should be planned well in advance. The methodologies of this research provide the translators with tools that increase productivity and that prevent translation of non-textual application data. When purchasing or developing a translation tool, the following features should be included. The literature review of this research, The Asian languages, particularly Persia, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese, represent a significant part of the translation industry in the United States, especially on the West Coast (Antal, 1963). Some agencies specialize in only Asian languages or even just one or two of them. Still others make the brunt of their money from these languages. For the result, we should know that it takes much more to be a good and skilled translator. For every talented text (Benjamin, 1992) converter, switching simultaneously between two universes is one of the most demanding tasks lot of training, learning, and experiences are needed to turn someone into a good translator. When engaging translators for your work, be sure to give them a detailed briefing on the work to be done (Brower, 1956). As professional translators we are supposed to improve our quality all the time. The first noteworthy conclusion we can draw from this paper is that translation is teachable because, on the one hand, it is a craft and consequently teachable as are other crafts; on the other hand, it is closely related to teaching language itself, although it is vital to make a distinction between the two. Another important point is that those engaged in teaching translation to students who are learning the target language along with translation should be aware that they are teaching two different things at the same time and that they should use a congruent eclectic method applicable to both. Critique The strength of this research includes its bravery by using the main issues at the core of theorizing translation practice and the feature of a good translator or how to be a good translator and of course what are the skills to become a Freelance Translator and Translation process which determining new standards to be good translators, comprehensive set of research method and qualitative and quantitative approaches used, and its results particularly in the broad area of the study of language and communication or linguistics especially translations field. On the contrary, the weaknesses of this research is mainly associated on the relevant issues that affect the used method and many quotations which are unnecessarily repeated just because it brings out similar messages. The use of references that were being published way back in the 1950’s (1953) while the research conducted in 2012 is also considered as the weakness because the applicability of the findings of these earlier re search studies could be questionable and irrelevant during those years. The concept is considered brave since it is implicitly attempted to redefining standards for being good translator. It has been a trend in language and communication studies that communication vehicles are subject of empirical and theoretical activities including science and technology and translation field becomes the bridge to connect two separated worlds and deliver messages from the result of the advance development in those fields. Furthermore, the comprehensive set of research method and qualitative and quantitative approaches used all throughout the research process can be considered as general solution to the drawbacks of each method or approach used in research. The wide-ranging and multiple tools used in quantitative approach of analysis addresses the issue of validity and reliability while the qualitative approach of analysis supported the limited ability of numbers to provide a complete description in response to a research question or problem. Lastly, the conclusion drawn from the research activity contributes in bridging the identified gaps in the existing body of translations field between real translators and the people who just translate languages. It is also assumed that this research article is another research in translation fields which is more like opinions and expose the important of translations that provides deep understanding in the related field. However, it must be considered that the findings found in this research article should be supported by other factors that are not included in its totality yet believed to have some degree of importance or effect (e.g. political and social or societal beliefs of the participants). Conclusion From this research of Mohammad Reza Hojat Shamami, we can find out the way of being a competent and good translator which is not only based on the knowledge of any foreign language, but it also requires some skills and rules. Chomsky’s 7 explicit criteria have represented what tools (skills) we need, like to sharpen our translation skills by reading different translation of different types of texts; to be more aware of different styles of writing and editing; to understand various expressions, idioms, and specific vocabulary; have the act of translating like to accept the significance of the source text within the framework of the source-language discourse; to improve the quality of our translations by being well-aware of styles of speaking, social stratification related to the foreign language; have to become ourselves attentive of different knowledge-providing sources like bilingual dictionaries, encyclopedias to know the meaning of words in specific situation; and the last is to know the sentence structure of indirect speech and different figures of speech in like hyperbole, irony. But however this research also has weaknesses besides its strength which already gives us sort of advice and translation knowledge, however the weakness can be questionable, from the reference which was taken from long time ago until the absence of supporting related issues in other fields like politics, societal beliefs that are actually worth to know as evidence.