Inverse translation: the more challenging direction

Abstract

Despite being common practice in most of the world, translating from the translator’s mother tongue (inverse translation) remains a relatively uncharted territory. In an attempt to contribute to an increased awareness of inverse translation, the present paper aims to discuss the difficulties involved in this activity. Drawing on questionnaires administered to translator trainees and professional translators, the paper first explores the respondents’ views on the difficulty of this direction. Since inverse translation was considered the more difficult of the two directions by most of the respondents, an analysis was conducted of their English translations of a promotional text written in Czech. The analysis covers five segments reported as difficult to translate by most of the respondents; their solutions are commented on and contrasted with those proposed by the two native speakers of English who assessed the translations, seeking to identify the most frequent challenges specific to inverse translation from Czech into English.