overtranslation

overtranslation

English

Etymology

over- +‎ translation

Noun

overtranslation (plural overtranslations)

1. the act of overtranslating.
   • 1995, Jean-Paul Vinay, Jean Darbelnet, Comparative Stylistics of French and English: A Methodology for Translation, John Benjamins Publishing (→ISBN), page 16:

     Mistaking a servitude for an option can lead to overtranslation.

   • 2000, Hans Georg Gadamer, Lawrence Kennedy Schmidt, Language and Linguisticality in Gadamer's Hermeneutics, Lexington Books (→ISBN), page 73:

     One result of overtranslation is to render this development incoherent, trivial, or even imperceptible, since the development is already tacitly built into the translation from the beginning.

   • 2001, Sin-wai Chan, David E. Pollard, An Encyclopaedia of Translation: Chinese-English, English-Chinese, Chinese University Press (→ISBN), page 716:

     The aim of this article is to illustrate the commonest forms of overtranslation through representative examples drawn from a variety of sources and source languages.