Translating answers: A case of ‘transparency’

Abstract This article focuses on the fact that, in their reading of texts, it is often easy for translators and teachers of foreign languages to identify translated texts. It is argued that such identification is particularly easy and frequent in passages containing the units of ‘question’ and ‘answer’. In her discussion, the author uses examples from the Danish‐French opposition. She argues that the ‘transparency’ of the target text revealing its source‐text origin, might be minimised or done away with if translators paid more attention to this important unit in everyday communication, ft would demand a heightened awareness of the problems which could be brought about by several means, e. g. (a) if the introduction of answers as a grammatical category in its own right (which is not the case at present), (b) if fidelity towards the source language linguistic expression were replaced with an emphasis on usage and frequency in the target‐language system, and (c) if more attention were paid to macrostructure...