Die hervertaling van 'n tegniese teks in gewone taal : 'n gevallestudie

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: In South Africa English is readily used as a preferred or bridging language in various public domains, including the banking sector. This trend presents problems, especially in light of statistics relating to language distribution in South Africa.The South African Government has instituted various laws, including the Consumer Protection Act and the National Credit Act. According to these laws, it is clearly stipulated that any written communication, particularly in the banking sphere, must be made available in plain language, and that banking documentation should be accessible to every client. It also determines that documentation should be available in the language the client understands. In the South African context it is not enough to translate these documents into the various languages, without making additional adjustments to accommodate the different literacy levels of the diverse clientele. This legislation was instituted to ensure that public participation and access to information should be promoted and encouraged. If clients do not understand the documents they receive, they are not in a position to make informed decisions, or to participate actively in society.The purpose of this research is to complete a re-translation of an existing banking text by applying the principles of plain language and community translation, thus producing a translation that is accessible and comprehensible to both the informed and the uninformed reader. The re-translation is annotated to highlight the differences between the original Afrikaans translation and the re-translation, and to emphasise the role played by plain language and community translation in making easy-to-understand documents available in the public domain, thereby promoting public participation and fair access to information.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University