Translation - an advanced resource book PDF

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unit of translation, translation shifts, analysis of semantics, dynamic vs formal equivalence, textual equivalence...

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CHAPTER 1: WHAT IS TRANSLATION? 1. Translation as process carried out by the translator, who turns the source text (ST) into a texts in another language (TT – target text) 2. Translation as a product produced by the translator Sub-types in translation: written products, audiovisual translation, which can be - Sign language - Intralingual subtitles - Lip synchronization - Interlingual subtitles HARRY POTTER: USA vs UK Intralingual translation  The American edition makes a few alteration of grammar and syntax (gotten > got, on weekends > at weekends). In this case there’s no translation between two languages but between two versions or dialect of the same language (replacement of lexical items with more suitable ones to the target audience). Jakobson makes a distinction between three types of written translation: 1. Intralingual translation  within the same language: it involves rewording and paraphrase 2. Interlingual translation  from one language to another 3. Intersemiotic translation  translation of the verbal sign by a non-verbal sign (music or image) AMBIT OF TRANSLATION  Process of transferring a written text from SL to TL in a specific socio-cultural context  Written product, or TT, which results from that process and functions in the sociocultural context of the TL  Cognitive, linguistic, visual, cultural and ideological phenomena which exist in part 1 and 2 TRANSLATION STUDIES Jakobson’s discussion on translation focuses on certain key questions of linguistics, including equivalence and translatability (1960/70s): this field is called Translation Studies thanks to James Holmes, who mapped out this new field like a science, dividing it into two parts: 1. ‘pure’ translation studies (descriptive studies of existing translations and general translation theories – more priority) 2. ‘applied’ translation studies (translator training, aids and criticism) Holmes uses translating for the process and translation for the product Gideon Toury proposed two tentative general ‘laws’: 1. the law of growing standardization – TTs generally display less linguistic variation than STs 2. the law of interference - common ST lexical and syntactic patterns tend to be copied and unusual patterns are created in the TT in both instances, Toury says that translated language generally displays specific characteristics: universals of translation  characteristics which are typical of translated language as distinct from non-translated language. A TT is normally longer than a ST.

CHAPTER 2: TRANSLATION STRATEGIES Jakobson says that only poetry is untranslatable because in verse the form of words contributes to the construction of the meaning of the text. The sense may be translated, while the form often cannot. The point where form begins to contribute to sense is where we approach untranslatability. HARRY POTTER BOOKS: the spoken or written form of names in the books often contributes to their meaning.

In HP and the camber of secrets there’s a evil character called ‘Tom Marvolo Riddle’, yet this name is itself a riddle  it is an anagram of ‘I am Lord Voldemort’ and reveals the character’s true identity. In the French version, the name is ‘Tom Elvis Jedusor’, which gives ‘Je suis Voldemort’: the French translator has preserved the content by altering the form. LITERAL AND FREE Some of the main issues of translation are linked to the strategies of literal and free translation. In classical times, it was normal to provide a literal, word-for-word translation. Four centuries later, with St Jerome’s translation of the Bible, it was adopted another strategy: not word-forword but sense for sense’. EXAMPLE FROM A TOURIST BROCHURE FOR A VINTAGE TRAIN LINE IN MALLORCA

Literal translation may be the norm between two closely related language (Catalan  Spanish). The lexical and syntactic structures are almost identical. Such a literal translation in less common when the languages are more distant. The term literal is used when the TT has been influenced a lot by the ST or SL  translationese, which is a pejorative general term for the language of translation. It’s used when there are calques in the TL from the ST related to lexical or syntactic patterning. A legal text (law, treaty or the International Declaration of Human Rights) might require a much more literal translation that a piece of poetry. COMPREHENSIBILITY AND TRANSLATABILITY Translatability  relative notion which is related to the adequate expression of meaning across languages in spite of obvious differences in linguistic structure. But, in order for it 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 communicative purpose, target audience and purpose of translation. To achieve this, and important criterion to keep in mind is TT comprehensibility.

CHAPTER 3: THE UNIT OF TRANSLATION SYSTEMATIC APPROACHES TO THE TRANSLATION UNIT - literal: very much centered on adherence to the individual word - free: it captures the sense of a longer stretch of language The unit of translation may be an individual word, a group, clause, sentence or even a whole text. It is the linguistic unit which the translator uses when translating. In discussing the word as a possible unit of translation, Saussure’s key concepts of the linguistic sign are used. Saussure invented the linguistic term sign, which unifies signifier (sound-image or word) and signified (concept). Saussure believed that the sign is by nature arbitrary and can only derive meaning from contrast with other signs in the same language: the signifier tree recalls the real-word signified plant with a trunk; it can be contrasted with signifiers as bush (a different kind of plants). But the selection of tree for this designation is arbitrary and only works in English, while in French the signifier arbre is used for this plant. THE LEXICOLOGICAL UNIT The lexicological units contain ‘lexical elements grouped together to form a single element of thought’. EXAMPLE: adapted entry for the Spanish word brote in the Oxford Spanish bilingual dictionary

Discriminators  bracketed descriptions which summarize the main use, field or collocation for each translation equivalent. - Sense ‘a’ is the ‘botanical’ sense, with the translation shoot, of a plant. The example here echar brotes is a strong collocation in Spanish: this two-word unit may be translated in English by a single verb (to sprout) or by a phrasal verb plus object (put out shoots), which show how the translation unit is not fixed to an individual word across languages. - Sense ‘c’ is the ‘illness’ sense with the corresponding translation outbreak. THE UNIT OF THOUGHT

EXAMPLE: leaflet upon arrival - Brote and fiebre aftosa have established equivalents in this scientific context (brote  outbreak) (fiebre aftosa  foot-and-mouth disease – it’s a separate translation unit) - rogamos  it’s impossible to translate the word individually. A translator needs to consider the whole structure and its politeness function in context before translating. In such instances, restructuring is most likely to occur. The English politeness formula prefers a passive (are requested) and the addition of the adverb kindly in order to reduce any rudeness that might be caused by a literal translation from the Spanish.

EXAMPLE

Break the text down into the title and the instructions:

The slashes indicate small word groups with a distinct semantic meaning, while the brackets enclose larger units that can be translated as a whole. FRENCH VERSION:

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title translated as a question, but with the grammatical subject filled out (you at the beginning of the question) the second sentence has been restructured to produce an instruction that functions in French. The different ST-TT elements can be translated by omission/zero translation.

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the French has translated the larger self-service machines as a single unit (les distributeurs de billets with the solid-sounding distributeurs incorporating the concepts of self-service and the comparator larger from the ST - easy to follow has been rendered by two adjectives linked by an additive conjunction (claires et simples) - there are two additions in the TT: en français to reassure the reader that the instructions will be easy to follow for them in their own language; vous forniront (to you will provide), which has the function if the English existential verb form there are. This text indicates how the translation unit tends not to be individual words, but rather small chunks of language building up into the sentence and this is what Nida calls ‘meaningful mouthfuls of language’. TRANSLATION AT DIFFERENT LEVELS Halliday’s systemic analysis of English grammar is based on a hierarchical rank scale, starting with the smallest unit: - morpheme - word - group - clause - sentence the clause represents the meaning in a communicative context and the sentence is seen by Newmark as the ‘natural’ unit of translation. Newmark says that all lengths of language can be used as units of translation. He also says that transpositions and rearrangements may often occur, but a sentence would not normally be

divided unless there was a good reason. He insists that any rearrangements must respect Functional Sentence Perspective (FSP). FSP is a form of analysis of sentence and information structure created by the Prague School of Linguists. Syntactic structure, knows as linear modification, is an important structuring device:  the part of the sentence which contains new information is rheme  the part of the sentences which contains old or given information is called theme EXAMPLE IN DIFFERENT VERSIONS (the original is dual, English and French).

Rearrangements would be possible: - the Russian translation moved the details of the date and location of the meeting to first position but respected the link between the two sentences - comparison of paragraph 2 in the French and English versions shows that clause and sentence correspond over languages

In the case of legal documents, sentence length plays an important stylistic or functional role. - Above the level of sentence, Newmark considers paragraph and text as higher units of translation. At functional level, this means that the TT must perform the purpose associated with it: advertisements and poetry must be translated at the level of the text and not the word if their message is to function in the target culture. Ofc, texts are not isolated but function within their own socio-cultural and ideological environment. - At the intertextual level, texts are influenced reworking of earlier texts (intertextuality).

CHAPTER 4: TRANSLATION SHIFTS EXAMPLE: there’s a multilingual warning notice displayed next to the windows on some international trains

- English  it’s the only language which mentions the window (negative imperative) - French and German  they use a negative infinitive construction ( not to lean outside) - Italian  it’s a statement These small linguistic changes between ST and TT are known as translation shifts. There’s a distinction between formal correspondence and textual equivalence which relates to Saussure’s distinction between langue and parole. Language has two facets:  Langue  has to do with the linguistic system (stable)  Parole  has to do with all that a speaker might say or understand while using language (variable) FORMAL CORRESPONDENCE It’s defined as ‘any TL category which can be said to occupy the same place in the ‘’economy’’ of the TL as the given SL category occupies in the SL’. A noun such as fenetre might be said generally to occupy a similar place in the French language system as the noun window does in English. Formal correspondence involves a comparison and description of the language systems (langue). It has to do with the general relationship between elements in two languages. TEXTUAL EQUIVALENCE Any TL text or portion of text which is observed to be the equivalent of a give SL text or portion of text. It focuses on the relations that exist between elements in a specific ST-TT pair (parole). TRANSLATION SHIFT it’s said to occur if, in a given TT, a translation equivalent occurs for a specific SL element. Changes take place in moving from ST to TT. A change/shift is generally any translation that moves away from formal correspondence.

There are many formal correspondences at lexical and grammatical levels: please – bitte note – beachten that – dass smoke detectors – Rauchendetektoren will be – werden systemic differences include word-order changes and the construction of the German imperative with the addition of the pronoun Sie. However, there’s a clear departure from formal correspondence in the translation of the ST on-board and the restructuring of the second clause.

The only possible textual equivalent for on-board is die Züge, which is added with a change of grammatical subject (ST smoke detectors  TT die Züge). About translation shifts, the first step involves identification and numbering of the ST units and the units of translation.

There are two translation methods covering seven procedures: 1. direct translation  borrowing, calque and literal translation 2. oblique translation  transposition, modulation, equivalence and adaptation These procedures are applied on three levels of language:  lexicon  grammatical structures  message (at this level, some strategies such as compensation, loss and gain, are very important) COMPENSATION, LOSS AND GAIN The translator offers an inevitable loss at one point in the text by adding a suitable element at another point, achieving a compensatory translation gain. ex. an informal text in French using the secondo personal pronoun tu might be rendered in English by informal lexis or use of the first name or nickname ( compensation). TERTIUM COMPARATIONIS

It’s a non-linguistic, intermediate form of the meaning of a ST and TT: an invariant meaning exists and it can be used to gauge or assist transfer of meaning between ST and TT. However, this is very difficult to achieve and many theorists have moved away from this technique.

CHAPTER 5: THE ANALYSIS OF MEANING One of the key problems for the analysts was in determining whether the ST meaning had been transferred into the TT. The field of semantics is the ‘study of meaning’. The analysis phase involves examination of sentence structure and two kinds of linguistic meaning:  referential  aka denotation, deal with the words as signs or symbols. ex. the word chair is polysemous (has several meanings): as a noun, it can be an item of furniture, a university position as professor or the chairperson at a meeting; as a verb it can mean ‘to preside over a meeting’. ex. the word spirit has a wide range of senses, including liquor, determination, ghosts and ‘holy spirit’. The correct sense for the translator is determined by the semotactic environment or co-text (the other words around it). Some meaning are figurative and need to be distinguished from the literal meaning. As a reader, the translator first needs to disambiguate the various possible sense of the ST term in order to identify the appropriate TL equivalent and this is done by contrastive semantic structure analysis.

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NON-CORRESPONDENCE OF SEMANTIC FIELD The correct English translation will depend on the context and the force of the Spanish. Expect is far too empathic for the intention of the message Russian has one word, ruka, for what in English is covered by the concepts of arm and hand, and also a single word, noga, for leg and foot.

Translation from English to Russian requires disambiguation using co-text and context

Incorrect selection of TL term is also commonly seen where the translator has failed to disambiguate who terms in the SL that have the same form but different senses (homonyms). ex. during the WWII the Monte Cassino monastery in Italy was destroyed. The advancing Allies misinterpreted an intercepted German radio exchange in which they said that ‘Der Abt ist im Kloster’, confusing Abt (abbot) for an abbreviation of Abteilung (batallion) and rendered the sentence as ‘the batallion is in the monastery’ and the Allies destroyed the building. HIERARCHICAL STRUCTURING AND COMPONENTIAL ANALYSIS Problem: locating an equivalent on the same level in the TL. This occurs when one language has a wider range of specific terms for a given semantic field operating at various levels

The generic term is called superordinate The lower lever term is called hyponyms. COMPONENTIAL ANALYSIS  it’s a technique of semantic analysis that examines the basic meaning components of a word and allows contrast with other terms in the same semantic field. One of the basic elements of componential analysis is the notion of binary opposites: one sense of bachelor is +human, +male, -married.  connotative  aka connotation, is the emotional reaction evoked in the hearer/reader. ex. on various occasions in st. John’s gospel, the Greek word gunai was translated as woman in the old King James Version, but as mother in the New English Bible. The justification for this change is the positive connotation of the Greek which, the translator felt, merited a similarly positive translation equivalent. There’s a technique called ‘semantic space’, which is a scaled used to measure clines of evaluation (good to bad), potency (strong to week) and activity (active to passive). Also the scale of formality was added.

CHAPTER 6: DYNAMIC EQUIVALENCE AND THE RECEPTOR OF THE MESSAGE FORMAL EQUIVALENCE The attitude to translatability and comprehensibility has given rise to dynamic equivalence, which is a translation method whose counterpart is formal equivalence. Formal equivalence is a relationship that involves the purely ‘formal’ replacement of one word or phrase in the SL by another in the TL (not the same as literal translation). Literal translation tends to preserve formal features by default (with little or no regard for context), while a ‘formal’ translation is almost always contextually motivated.

The general ambiguity contextually motivated (obituary) must be preserved in translation and one way of doing this is through opting for formal equivalence. DYNAMIC EQUIVALENCE EXAMPLE

To explicate That’s the American way would mean giving up the sarcasm intended. A more dynamic approach may still be used only after we exhaust formal possibilities for conveying the intended effect. Formal equivalence is a procedure selected in order to preserve certain linguistic/rhetorical effects. We can sometimes preserve these effects by simply doing nothing. The aim of formal equivalence is to bring the target reader nearer to the linguistic or cultural preferences of the ST. Yet, there’s often a need for some ST explication and adjustment but, if in the translator’s judgement there’s opaqueness and it’s a threat to comprehensibility, the translator should use a more ‘dynamic’ form of equivalence. Dynamic equivalence  it represents a rich variety of contextual values and effects which utterances carry within texts and which a literal translation would compromise. A translation of dynamic equivalence aims at complete naturalness od expression and tries to relate the receptor to modes of behavior relevant within the context of his own culture. There are varying degrees and between the 2 poles of translating there is a number of intervening grades. Opting for this or that form of equivalence is not an either/or choice. ADJUSTMENT It’s an important translation technique which involves the gradual move away from form-byform renderings towards a more dynamic equivalence. We may opt for redundancy, explicating. repeating information or re-ordering an entire sequence of sentences if the ST order of events doesn’t match normal chronology. Alternatively, we may opt for gisting, which is a very useful technique when dealing with languages with a high degree od repetition of meaning. The more form-bound a meaning is, (ex. word play), the more formal the equivalence relation will have to be. The more context-bound...