The Importance of Comprehension and Documentation in the Process of Translation: An Analysis of the Mistakes Committed in LEA (Langues Étrangères Appliquées) Courses Concerning a Text on Synchronised Swimming

Abstract

The translational process has a series of phases. The comprehension phase is the first of this process and if it is not carried out efficiently, the rest of the phases cannot be carried out properly either, which will lead to serious errors of translation such as false sense. In addition, the comprehension phase and the documentation are closely related, since in order to understand, an appropriate documentation will sometimes be necessary to solve those deficiencies that prevent the proper follow-up of the translational process. We believe that students who begin their translation training neglect these decisive stages of the translational process and that they consider that what is essential is a purely linguistic activity of transposition from one language to another. For this reason, to corroborate this idea, we have carried out an analysis with the most frequent translation errors that have been committed, due to a lack of understanding and documentation, by the first-year students of Langues Étrangères Appliquées (LEA), from the Université de Lorraine  (Nancy), in the subject of Initation à la traduction, in the translation of a text into French whose theme is artistic swimming. In the analysis you can see the original fragment to be translated, a selection of student translation proposals, the graph with the most recurring error percentages, a section with comments about the origin or origins of the errors and the steps that it should be taken to solve them and, finally, our final translation proposal.