overtranslation

From over- +‎ translation.

overtranslation (countable and uncountable, 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.

   • 2022, Jeremy Munday, Sara Ramos Pinto, Jacob Blakesley, Inroducing Translation Studies: Theories and Applications, Routledge, →ISBN, page 58:

     The [given] example [that "the closest natural equivalent may stand in a contradictory relation with dynamic equivalents"] is of the English words animal, vegetable, mineral and monster. The closest Chinese equivalents are dòng wù [動物／动物], zhí wù [植物], kuàng wù [礦物／矿物] and guài wù [怪物]. These all happen to contain the character wù [物], meaning ‘object’ (thus, dòng wù means ‘moving object’, hence animal). If these Chinese equivalents are chosen, such an unintended cohesive link would lead to what Qian Hu terms ‘overtranslation’.