HOWLERS IN TRANSLATION
HOWLERS IN TRANSLATION

Summary/Abstract: The present paper is meant as a continuation of several previous papers that illustrated and analyzed the career of (recent) anglicisms in Romanian, and the place held by calque and clichés, etc., specifically in as far as they occur in translation (i.e. texts that, avowedly or not, were the result of translation). Far from advocating prescriptivism or linguistic purism, the author of this paper observes that correctness is a matter of efficiency and opportuneness in the act of communication, and one of its many manifestations is of course translation. Although nowadays the contrast between the prescriptive and the descriptive approach tends to be over-emphasized, and the public at large as well as most experts in linguistics typically resent severe prescriptivism, the long linguistic tradition of language cultivation (or linguistic ecology) still claims its rightful place. The following general remarks about linguistic standardization, linguistic norms, prescriptivism (vs. descriptivism and relativistic laxity) highlight the opposition between objectivity and subjectivity in standardization; yet the functional structure of a system, such as language, manifests itself objectively – which is naturally and essentially opposed to relativization. The main topic of the paper, the howlers in translation (from English to Romanian), gave us the opportunity for remarks about, and illustrations of, the opposition between technical terms and denotative anglicisms, on one hand, and connotative terms and inacceptable usage or downright solecisms, on the other hand – implying false friends, calque, clichés, etc. – with some (literary) translators providing simplistic, poor-quality renderings, in which instances of incredible howlers are in plenty.

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