Translexation

A translator had a range of levels available, from idiomatic in the target language, to literal from the source language. They can try to bring over the literary character of the original (usually a good idea), or get more creative in the target language on their own account (usually a bad idea).

In transliteration, a source text is transformed character by character from one script to another. For example, greek beta transliterates to roman “b”. Or an umlauted u ftom German (ü) transliterates to “ue” in plain latin script. So “Führer” transliterates to “Fuehrer”.

What about a word-by-word transformation? Preserving word order from the original. One could describe this as a very literal translation, but how about “translexation”.

 It wouldn't be possible for every word, especially declined ones without an equivalent in the target language. There would still be an art to translexation.

Translexation would be handy in parallel texts, when learning to read the source language. Or to study a text in its original as closely as possible, without being able to read the source language. Scholars must already have resources like this.

There would still be the temptation to over-interpret by the translexator. Would “Funkwanduhr” translexate as “radio-wall-hour”, or “radio-wall-clock”? The former.

I’m taking this on authority from Robert Alter, but it sounds like English translations of the Hebrew Bible are full of thematic repeated words (the Hebrew for “seed” for example) getting translated into different English words, depending on context and the translator’s whim. While we’re here, what’s the term for the transformation of putting vowels in to a text without vowels? But it’s probably not possible to translate the vowelless one into another language meaningfully.

What would make a nice small translexation project? How about Einstein’s 1905 papers, German to English.