Compensation, loss and gain

A translation technique used to compensate for translation loss. The translator
offsets an inevitable loss at one point in the text by adding a suitable
element at another point, achieving a compensatory translation gain.
For example, an informal text in French using the second personal pronoun
tu might be rendered in English by informal lexis or use of the first name
or nickname. Compensation in an interpretive sense, restoring life to the TT,
is the fourth ‘movement’ of Steiner’s hermeneutic process (Steiner 1998:39,
see Part A, Unit 13).

These translation procedures have influenced later taxonomies by, amongst others,
van Leuven-Zwart (1989, 1990), who attempts a very complex analysis of extracts
from translations of Latin American fiction. However, despite a systematic means
of analysis based on the denotative meaning of each word, the decision as to whether
a shift has occurred is inevitably subjective since an evaluation of the equivalence
of the ST and TT units is required. Some kind of evaluator, known in translation
as a tertium comparationis, is necessary.