Scarica An Advanced Resource Book e più Sintesi del corso in PDF di Linguistica Inglese solo su Docsity!
Unit A
What is translation?
DEFINITIONS OF TRANSLATION
Translation is a phenomenon that has a huge effect on everyday life. This can range from the translation of a key international treaty to the following multilingual poster that welcomes customers to a small restaurant near to the home of one of the authors:
Example A1.
How can we then go about defining the phenomenon of ‘translation’ and what the study of it entails? If we look at a general dictionary, we find the following definition of the term translation :
Example A1.
translation n. 1 the act or an instance of translating. 2 a written or spoken expression of the meaning of a word, speech, book, etc. in another language. (The Concise Oxford English Dictionary)
The first of these two senses relates to translation as a process , the second to the product. This immediately means that the term translation encompasses very distinct perspectives. The first sense focuses on the role of the translator in taking the original or source text (ST) and turning it into a text in another language (the target text , TT). The second sense centres on the concrete translation product produced by the translator. This distinction is drawn out by the definition in the specialist Dictionary of Translation Studies (Shuttleworth and Cowie 1997:181):
Example A1.
Translation An incredibly broad notion which can be understood in many different ways. For example, one may talk of translation as a process or a product, and identify
A
Benvenuti! Welcome! Hi!
such sub-types as literary translation, technical translation, subtitling and machine translation; moreover, while more typically it just refers to the transfer of written texts, the term sometimes also includes interpreting.
This definition introduces further variables, first the ‘sub-types’, which include not only typically written products such as literary and technical translations, but also translation forms that have been created in recent decades, such as audiovisual translation , a written product which is read in conjunction with an image on screen (cinema, television, DVD or computer game). Moreover, the reference to machine translation reveals that translation is now no longer the preserve of human trans- lators but, in a professional context, increasingly a process and product that marries computing power and the computerized analysis of language to the human’s ability to analyse sense and determine appropriate forms in the other language.
INTERLINGUAL, INTRALINGUAL AND INTERSEMIOTIC
TRANSLATION
The final line of Shuttleworth and Cowie’s definition also illustrates the potential confusion of translation with interpreting , which is strictly speaking ‘oral translation of a spoken message or text’ (1997:83). Yet this confusion is seen repeatedly in everyday non-technical language use, as in the trial in the Netherlands of two Libyans accused of bombing an American Panam passenger jet over Lockerbie, Scotland, where defence lawyers protested at the poor ‘translation’ which, they said, was impeding the defendants’ comprehension of the proceedings (reported in the Guardian 10 June 2000).
Even if interpreting is excluded, the potential field and issues covered by translation are vast and complex. Benvenuti! may be what many people expect as a translation of Welcome! , but how do we explain Hi!? Translation also exists between different varieties of the same language and into what might be considered less conventional languages, such as braille, sign language and morse code. What about the flag symbol being understood as a country, nationality or language – is that ‘translation’ too? Such visual phenomena are seen on a daily basis:no-smoking or exit signs in public places or icons and symbols on the computer screen, such as the hour-glass signifying ‘task is under way, please wait’ or, as it sometimes seems, ‘be patient and don’t touch another key!’
Example A1.
J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter children’s books have been translated into over 40 languages and have sold millions of copies worldwide. It is interesting that a separate edition is published in the USA with some alterations. The first book in the series, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Bloomsbury 1997), appeared as Harry Potter and
I n t r o d u c t i o n
A
Translation between written languages remains today the core of translation research, but the focus has broadened far beyond the mere replacement of SL linguistic items with their TL equivalents. In the intervening years research has been undertaken into all types of linguistic, cultural and ideological phenomena around translation: in theatre translation (an example of translation that is written, but ultimately to be read aloud), for example, adaptation , of geographical or historical location and of dialect, is very common (see Upton ed. 2000). Where do we draw the line between ‘translation’ and ‘ adaptation ’? What about Olivier Todd’s massive biography of the Algerian French writer Albert Camus (Todd 1996); the English edition omits fully one third of the French original. Yet omission , decided upon by the publisher, does not negate translation. And then there is the political context of translation and language, visible on a basic level whenever we see a bilingual sign in the street or whenever a linguistic group asserts its identity by graffiti-ing over the language of the political majority. More extremely, in recent years the differences within the Serbo–Croat language have been deliberately reinforced for political reasons to cause a separation of Croatian, and indeed Bosnian, from Serbian, meaning that translation now takes place between these three languages (Sucic 1996).
Developments have seen a certain blurring of research between the different types of translation too. Thus, research into audiovisual translation now encompasses sign language , intralingual subtitles , lip synchronization for dubbing as well as interlingual subtitles ; the image–word relationship is crucial in both film and advertising, and there has been closer investigation of the links between translation, music and dance. In view of this complex situation and for reasons of space, in the present book we shall restrict ourselves mostly to forms of conventional written translation, including some subtitling and advertising, but excluding interpreting. We shall, however, examine a very wide range of types of written translation. These will include translation into the second language (see Campbell 1998), which does often take place in the context of both language learning and the translation profession, despite the general wisdom that the translator should always translate into his or her mother tongue or ‘language of habitual use’.
Our threefold definition of the ambit of translation will thus be:
I n t r o d u c t i o n
A
- The process of transferring a written text from SL to TL, conducted by a translator, or translators, in a specific socio-cultural context.
- The written product , or TT, which results from that process and which functions in the socio-cultural context of the TL.
- The cognitive , linguistic, visual, cultural and ideological phenomena which are an integral part of 1 and 2.
Concept box The ambit of translation
WHAT IS TRANSLATION STUDIES?
Jakobson’s discussion on translation centres around certain key questions of lin- guistics, including equivalence between items in SL and TL and the notion of translatability. These are issues which became central to research in translation in the 1960s and 1970s. This burgeoning field received the name ‘Translation Studies’ thanks to the Netherlands-based scholar James S. Holmes in his paper ‘The Name and Nature of Translation Studies’, originally presented in 1972 but widely published only much later (Holmes 1988/2000, see Text B1.2 in Section B). Holmes mapped out the new field like a science, dividing it into ‘pure’ Translation Studies (encompassing descriptive studies of existing translations and general and partial translation theories) and ‘applied’ studies (covering translator training, translator aids and translation criticism , amongst others). More priority is afforded to the ‘pure’ side, the objectives of which Holmes considers to be twofold (1988:71):
- to describe the phenomena of translating and translation(s) as they manifest themselves in the world of our experience, and
- to establish general principles by means of which these phenomena can be explained and predicted.
Here Holmes uses ‘ translating ’ for the process and ‘ translation ’ for the product. The descriptions and generalized principles envisaged were much reinforced by Gideon Toury in his Descriptive Translation Studies and Beyond (1995) where two tentative general ‘ laws ’ of translation are proposed:
- the law of growing standardization – TTs generally display less linguistic variation than STs, and
- the law of interference – common ST lexical and syntactic patterns tend to be copied, creating unusual patterns in the TT.
In both instances, the contention is that translated language in general displays specific characteristics, known as universals of translation.
W h a t i s t r a n s l a t i o n?
A
Specific characteristics that, it is hypothesized, are typical of translated language as distinct from non-translated language. This would be the same whatever the language pair involved and might include greater cohesion and explicitation (with reduced ambiguity) and the fact that a TT is normally longer than a ST. See Blum-Kulka and Levenson (1983), Baker (1993) and Mauranen and Kujamäki (2004) for more on universals.
Concept box Universals of translation
The richness of the field is also illustrated by areas for research suggested by Williams and Chesterman (2002:6–27), which include:
- Text analysis and translation
- Translation quality assessment
- Translation of literary and other genres
- Multi-media translation (audiovisual translation)
- Translation and technology
- Translation history
- Translation ethics
- Terminology and glossaries
- The translation process
- Translator training
- The characteristics of the translation profession
Task A1.
➤ In view of the diversity of contexts in which translation research is conducted, Figure A1.1 can never be fully comprehensive. Look at the different areas mentioned, look up definitions of any with which you are not familiar, and reflect on whether there are any areas which could be added.
Task A1.
➤ Make a note of the terminology of translation used in this unit and keep the glossary updated as you cover more areas of Translation Studies. At various points throughout the book we will refer to this glossary.
This first unit has discussed what we mean by ‘translation’ and ‘Translation Studies’. It has built on Jakobson’s term ‘interlingual translation’ and Holmes’s mapping of the field of Translation Studies. In truth we are talking of an interdiscipline, interfacing with a vast breadth of knowledge which means that research into translation is possible from many different angles, from scientific to literary, cultural and political. A threefold scope of translation has been presented, with a goal of describing the translation process and identifying trends, if not laws or universals, of translation.
W h a t i s t r a n s l a t i o n?
A
Summary
Unit A
Translation strategies
If we were to sample what people generally take ‘translation’ to be, the consensus would most probably be for a view of translating that describes the process in terms of such features as the literal rendering of meaning, adherence to form , and emphasis on general accuracy. These observations would certainly be true of what translators do most of the time and of the bulk of what gets translated. As we shall see as this book progresses, these statements require much refinement and betray a strongly prescriptive attitude to translation. But they are also the product of some of the central issues of translation theory all the way from Roman times to the mid- twentieth century.
FORM AND CONTENT
Roman Jakobson makes the crucial claim that ‘all cognitive experience and its classification is conveyable in any existing language’ (Jakobson 1959:238, see Text B1.1). So, to give an example, while modern British English concepts such as the National Health Service, public–private partnership and congestion charging , or, in the USA, Ivy League universities, Homeland Security and speed dating , might not exist in a different culture, that should not stop them being expressed in some way in the target language (TL). Jakobson goes on to claim that only poetry ‘by definition is untranslatable’ since in verse the form of words contributes to the con- struction of the meaning of the text. Such statements express a classical dichotomy in translation between sense/ content on the one hand and form / style on the other.
sense/ form/
content style
The sense may be translated, while the form often cannot. And the point where form begins to contribute to sense is where we approach un translatability. This clearly is most likely to be in poetry, song, advertising, punning and so on, where sound and rhyme and double meaning are unlikely to be recreated in the TL.
A
Catalan and TT Spanish. It is easy to see that the lexical and syntactic structures are almost identical:
Example A2.
ST Des de 1912, el Ferrocarril de Sóller uneix les xiutats de Palma i Sóller TT Desde 1912, el Ferrocarril de Sóller une las ciudades de Palma y Sóller [Since 1912, the Railway of Soller joins the towns of Palma and Soller conservant encara el seu caràcter original. conservando su carácter original. preserving still the its character original.]
Such a literal translation is not so common when the languages in question are more distant. Or, to put it another way, the term ‘ literal ’ has tended to be used with a different focus, sometimes to denote a TT which is overly close or influenced by the ST or SL. The result is what is sometimes known as ‘ translationese ’.
To illustrate this, let us consider some typical examples of translated material (the English TTs of Arabic STs) which seem to defy comprehension. As you read through these TTs, try to identify features of the texts that strike you as odd, and reflect on whether problems of this kind are common in languages you are familiar with. For example, what are we to make of the request for donations in this welfare organization’s publicity leaflet?
I n t r o d u c t i o n
A
A pejorative general term for the language of translation. It is often used to indicate a stilted form of the TL from calquing ST lexical or syntactic patterning (see Duff 1981). Translationese is related to translation universals (see Section A Unit 1) since the characteristics mentioned above may be due to common translation phenomena such as interference , explicitation and domestication. In Unit 13, we shall see how an alternative name, translatese , is employed by Spivak to refer to a lifeless form of the TL that homogenizes the different ST authors. Newmark (2003:96) uses another term, ‘trans- latorese’, to mean the automatic choice of the most common ‘dictionary’ translation of a word where, in context, a less frequent alternative would be more appropriate.
Concept Box Translationese
Example A2.
Honorable Benefactor
After Greetings, [.. .] The organization hopefully appeals to you, whether nationals or expatriates in this generous country, to extend a helping hand.... We have the honour to offer you the chance to contribute to our programs and projects from your monies and alms so that God may bless you. [.. .]
In this example of what in English would be a fund-raising text, confusion sets in when ‘making a donation’ is seen as an honour bestowed both on the donor and on those making the appeal. There is a certain opaqueness and far too much power for a text of this kind to function properly in English.
In a way, this is not different from the advert for a French wine purchasing company which, instead of simply saying ‘Now you too can take advantage of this wonderful opportunity’ (Fawcett 1997:62), actually had:
Example A2.
Today, we offer you to share this position
In all these examples, the influence of poor literal translation is all too obvious. In this respect, perhaps no field has been more challenging to translators than advertising. Consider this advert promoting cash dispensing services:
Example A2.
The Telebanking System
X Bank presents the banking services by phone. The Telebanking System welcomes you by the Islamic greeting ‘assalamu ’alaykum’, completes your inquiries/transactions within few seconds and sees you off saying ‘fi aman allah’.
Not surprisingly, this publicity material was withdrawn since the advertising gimmick obviously did not work on a population consisting mostly of expatriates with little or no Arabic to appreciate the nuance. The advert has more recently re-appeared simply stating:
Example A2.
X Islamic Bank, the first Islamic Bank in the world, is pleased to offer you a sophisticated service through Automated Teller Machine Cash Card.
T r a n s l a t i o n s t r a t e g i e s
A
On the other hand, Example A2.6, from the packaging describing the components of a food processor, is an example of a much freer translation:
Example A2.6a ST French
Couvercle et cuves en polycarbonate. Matériau haute résistance utilisé pour les hublots d’avion. Résiste à de hautes températures et aux chocs. Tableau de commandes simple et fonctionnel. 3 commandes suffisent à maîtriser Compact 3100.
[Lid and bowls in polycarbonate. High resistance material used for aircraft windows. Resists high temperatures and shocks. Simple and functional control panel. 3 controls suffice to master Compact 3100.]
Example A2.6b TT English
Workbowls and lid are made from polycarbonate, the same substance as the windows of Concorde. It’s shatterproof, and won’t melt with boiling liquids or crack under pressure.
Technically advanced, simple to use : just on, off or pulse.
Task A2.
➤ Look at the translation A2.6b and reflect on the strategies employed by the translator to increase comprehensibility.
The problem with many published TTs of the kind cited earlier is essentially one of impaired ‘ comprehensibility ’, an issue closely related to ‘ translatability ’. Translatability is a relative notion and has to do with the extent to which, despite obvious differences in linguistic structure (grammar, vocabulary, etc.), meaning can still be adequately expressed across languages. But, for this to be possible, meaning has to be understood not only in terms of what the ST contains, but also and equally significantly, in terms of such factors as communicative purpose, target audience and purpose of translation. This must go hand in hand with the recognition that, while there will always be entire chunks of experience and some unique ST values that will simply defeat our best efforts to convey them across cultural and linguistic boundaries, translation is always possible and cultural gaps are in one way or another bridgeable. To achieve this, an important criterion to heed must be TT comprehensibility.
Is everything translatable? The answer, to paraphrase Jakobson (1959/2000, see Text B1.1), is ‘yes, to a certain extent’. In the more idiomatic renderings provided above, the target reader may well have been deprived of quite a hefty chunk of ST meaning. But what choice does the translator have? Such insights as ‘it is an
T r a n s l a t i o n s t r a t e g i e s
A
honour both to appeal for and to give to charity, both to issue and to accept an invitation, both to offer and to accept a glass of wine, both to live and to die, etc.’ are no doubt valuable. But what is the point in trying to preserve them in texts like fund-raising leaflets, adverts or political speeches if they are not going to be appreciated for what they are, i.e. if they do not prove to be equally significant to a target reader?
It is indeed a pity that the target reader of the modern Bible has to settle for ‘to make somebody ashamed of his behaviour’ when the Hebrew ST actually has ‘to heap coal of fire on his head’ (Nida and Taber 1969:2), with the ultimate aim, we suggest, not so much of burning his head as blackening his face which in both Hebrew and Arab–Islamic cultures symbolizes unspeakable shame. But how obscure is one allowed to be in order to live up to the unrealistic ideal of full translatibility and how feasible is an approach such as Dryden’s, who claimed to have endeavoured to make the ST author (Virgil in his case) ‘speak such English as he would himself have spoken, if he had been born in England, and in this present age’ (Dryden 1697/1992)?
Some of the main issues of translation are linked to the strategies of literal and free translation, form and content. This division, that has marked translation for centuries, can help identify the problems of certain overly literal translations that impair comprehensibility. However, the real underlying problems of such translations lead us into areas such as text type and audience that will become central from Unit 6 onwards.
I n t r o d u c t i o n
A
Summary
Vinay and Darbelnet reject the word as a unit of translation since translators focus on the semantic field rather than on the formal properties of the individual signifier. For them, the unit is ‘the smallest segment of the utterance whose signs are linked in such a way that they should not be translated individually’ (1958/1995:21). This is what they call the lexicological unit and the unit of thought.
THE LEXICOLOGICAL UNIT
The lexicological units described by Vinay and Darbelnet contain ‘lexical elements grouped together to form a single element of thought’. Illustrative examples they provide, to show the non-correspondence at word level between French and English, are: simple soldat = private (in the army) and tout de suite = immediately. Of course, the traditional structure of dictionaries, which divides a language into headwords, means that individual words do tend to be treated in isolation, being divided into different senses. Below is an adapted entry for the Spanish word brote in the Oxford Spanish bilingual dictionary (third edition, 2003):
Example A3.
brote m a (botanical) shoot; echar brotes to sprout, put out shoots b (of rebellion, violence) outbreak c (of an illness) outbreak
The bracketed descriptors, known as discriminators, summarize the main use, field or collocation for each translation equivalent. Thus, sense ‘c’ is the ‘illness’ sense, with the corresponding translation outbreak. On the other hand, sense ‘a’ is the botanical sense, with the translation shoot , of a plant. The example in sense ‘a’, echar brotes , is an example of a strong collocation in Spanish. This two-word unit may be translated in English by a single verb, sprout , or by a phrasal verb plus object, put out shoots , which demonstrates how the translation unit is not fixed to an individual word across languages. This is brought out even more strongly in the entry for outbreak on the English side of the dictionary:
Example A3.
outbreak n (of war) estallido m; (of hostilities) comienzo m; (of cholera, influenza) brote m; at the outbreak of the strike... al declararse or al estallar la huelga.. .; there were outbreaks of violence/protest hubo brotes de violencia/protesta
I n t r o d u c t i o n
A
Task A3.
➤ Reflect on what the unit of translation is in these translation equivalents and illustrative examples.
THE UNIT OF THOUGHT
Passengers flying from the United Kingdom to Madrid Barajas airport in March 2001 were presented with the following leaflet upon arrival:
Example A3.3a Spanish ST
Según OM n° 4295 de 2 de marzo de 2001
DEBIDO AL BROTE DE FIEBRE AFTOSA, ROGAMOS A LOS SEÑORES PASAJEROS DE LOS VUELOS CON ORIGEN EN EL REINO UNIDO O FRANCIA, DESINFECTEN SU CALZADO EN LAS ALFOMBRAS.
[Due to the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease, we ask ladies-and-gentlemen passengers of flights with origin in the United Kingdom or France, that they disinfect their footwear on the carpets.]
Example A3.3b English TT
DUE TO THE OUTBREAK OF FOOT-AND-MOUTH DISEASE, ALL PASSENGERS ARRIVING FROM THE UNITED KINGDOM OR FRANCE ARE KINDLY REQUESTED TO DISINFECT THEIR FOOTWEAR ON THE SPECIAL CARPETS PROVIDED.
Example A3.3c French TT
À CAUSE DES PREMIERS SIGNES DE LA FIÈVRE APHTEUSE, NOUS PRIONS MESSIEURS LES PASSAGERS PROVENANT DU ROYAUME UNI OU DE LA FRANCE DE PASSER SUR LE TAPIS POUR DÉSINFECTER LEURS CHAUSSURES.
Task A3.
➤ Look at the Spanish ST, using the back-translation as necessary. Think about what units of translation a translator might use when translating this.
If we focus on the first line of the ST, our particular interest is in the expressions brote, fiebre aftosa and rogamos. The first two have established equivalents in this
T h e u n i t o f t r a n s l a t i o n
A
A translator approaching this short text will most probably break it down into the title ( Travelling from Heathrow? ) and the instructions in the second sentence. While that sentence will be taken as a whole, it might also in turn be sub-divided more or less as follows:
There are/ [easy to follow/instructions]/ [on the/larger/self-service/touch screen/ticket machines]
Here, the slashes (/) indicate small word groups with a distinct semantic meaning that might be considered separately, while the brackets ([.. .]) enclose larger units that a practised translator is likely to translate as a whole.
The actual French TT on the poster indicates how this operates in real life:
Example A3.4b
Vous partez de Heathrow? Les distributeurs de billets à écran tactile vous fourniront des instructions claires et simples en français.
[You leave from Heathrow? The distributors of tickets with screen touchable to-you provide-will some instructions clear and simple in French.]
The title is translated as a question, but with the grammatical subject filled out (‘ You leave from Heathrow?’). The second sentence has been restructured to produce an instruction that functions in French. The different ST–TT elements line up as follows, with Ø standing for an omission or ‘ zero translation ’:
There are / [easy to follow / instructions] / on / [the / larger / [vous fourniront] / [claires et simples / des instructions] / Ø / [les / Ø / self-service / touch screen / ticket machines ] / Ø / à écran tactile / distributeurs de billets] / en français
It is clear that the French has translated the larger self-service ticket machines as a single unit ( les distributeurs de billets ), with the solid-sounding distributeurs incorporating by implication not only the concept of self-service but also perhaps the comparator larger from the ST. Note also how the definite article the has necessarily been considered as part of the same translation unit as ticket machines , giving the plural form les in les distributeurs de billets in the French. Easy to follow has been rendered by two adjectives linked by an additive conjunction, claires et simples (‘clear and simple’). There are two additions in the TT: en français (‘in French’), to reassure the reader that the instructions will be easy to follow for them in their own language, and vous fourniront (‘to you will provide’), which has taken over the function of the English existential verb form there are.
T h e u n i t o f t r a n s l a t i o n
A
This simple text indicates how, in practice, the translation unit will typically tend to be not individual words but small chunks of language building up into the sentence, what the famous translation theorist Eugene Nida (1964:268) calls ‘meaningful mouthfuls of language’.
TRANSLATION AT DIFFERENT LEVELS
In his Textbook of Translation (1988), Peter Newmark discusses translation using in part a scale that has become well established in linguistics with the work of Michael Halliday (e.g. Halliday 1985/1994). It should be noted that Hallidayan linguistics also informs much of Mona Baker’s influential In Other Words (1992), which, too, examines translation at different levels, although in Baker’s case it is levels of equivalence (at the level of the word , collocation and idiom, grammar, thematic and information structure , cohesion and pragmatics ).
Halliday’s systemic analysis of English grammar is based on the following hierarchical rank scale, starting with the smallest unit (examples are ours and are drawn from Example A3.3b):
morpheme – arriv-ing word – arriving group – foot-and-mouth disease clause – the whole of Example A3.3b sentence – the whole of Example A3.3b
Word and group are the ranks that we have discussed most so far in this unit. But Halliday’s focus is on the clause as a representation of meaning in a communicative context and Newmark’s is on the sentence as the ‘natural’ unit of translation. Newmark (1988:165) states that transpositions and rearrangements may often occur, but that a sentence would not normally be divided unless there was good reason. He is careful to insist that any ‘rearrangements’ or ‘recastings’ must respect Functional Sentence Perspective.
I n t r o d u c t i o n
A
A form of analysis of sentence and information structure created by the Prague School of Linguists (see Firbas 1992). Syntactic structure , known as linear modification, is an important structuring device. However, com- munication is driven forward primarily by ‘communicative dynamism’, that is, by elements that are context-independent and contribute most new information. These are most often, but not always, focused towards the end of a sentence. The part of the sentence containing the new information is
Concept box Functional Sentence Perspective (FSP)
