TRANSLATION STUDIES

INTRODUCTION

1 CENTRAL ISSUES

Language and culture

The first step towards an examination of the process of translation must be to accept that although translation has a central core of linguistic activity, it belongs most properly to semiotics, the science that studies sign systems or structures, sign processes and sign functions (Hawkes, Structuralism and Semiotics, London, 1977). Beyond the notion stressed by the narrowly linguistic approach, that translation involves the transfer of `meaning' contained in one set of language signs through competent use of the dictionary and grammar, the process involves a whole set of extra-linguistic criteria also.

Edward Sapir claims that `language is a guide to social reality' and that human beings are at the mercy of the language that has become the medium of expression for their society. Experience, he asserts, is largely determined by the language habits of the community, and each separate structure represents a separate reality:

“No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as representing the same social reality. The worlds in which different societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attached.”

Sapir's thesis, endorsed later by Whorf, is related to the more recent view advanced by the Soviet semiotician, Lotman, that language is a modelling system. Lotman describes literature and art in general as a secondary modelling systems, as an indication of the fact that they are derived from the primary modelling system of language, and declares as firmly as Sapir or Whorf that `No language can exist unless it is stepped in the context of culture; and no culture can exist which does not have at its center, the structure of natural language.' Language, then, is the heart within the bodies of culture, and it is the interaction between the two that results in the continuation of life-energy. In the same way that the surgeon, operating on the heart, cannot neglect the body that surrounds it, so the translator treats the text in isolation from the culture at his peril.

Types of translation

In his article `On Linguistic Aspects of Translation', Jackobson distinguished three types of translation:

Having established these three types, of which (2) translation proper describes the process of transfer from SL to TL, Jackobson goes on immediately to point to the central problem in all types: that while messages may serve as adequate interpretations of code units messages, there is ordinarily no full equivalence through translation. Even apparent synonymy does not yield equivalence, and Jackobson shows how Intralingual translation often has to resort to a combination of code units in order to fully interpret the meaning of single unit. Hence a dictionary of so-called synonyms may give perfect as a synonym for ideal or vehicle as a synonym for conveyance but in neither case can there be said to be complete equivalence, since each unit contains within itself a set of non-transferable associations and connotations.

Because complete equivalence (in the sense of synonym or sameness) cannot take place in any of his categories, Jackobson declares that all poetic art is therefore technically untranslatable:

`Only creative transposition is possible: either intralingual transposition - from one poetic shape into another, or interlingual transposition - from one language into another, or finally intersemiotic transposition - from one system of signs into another, e.g., from verbal art into music, dance, cinema or painting.'

What Jackobson is saying here is taken up again by Mounin, the French theorist, who perceives translation as a series of operations of which the starting point and the end product are significations and function within a given culture. So, for example, the English word pastry, if translated into Italian without regard for its signification, will not be able to perform its function of meaning within a sentence, even though there may be a dictionary `equivalent'; for pasta has a completely different associative field. In this case the translator has to resort to a combination of units in order to find an approximate equivalent. Jackobson gives the example of the Russian word syr (a food made of fermented pressed curds) which translates roughly into English as cottage cheese. In this case, Jackobson claims, the translation is only an adequate interpretation of an alien code unit and equivalence is impossible.

Decoding and recoding

The translator, therefore, operates criteria that transcend the purely linguistic, and a process of decoding and recoding takes place. Eugene Nida's model of the translation process illustrates the stages involved:

SOURCE LANGUAGE RECEPTOR LANGUAGE

TEXT TRANSLATION

ANALYSIS RESTRUCTURING

TRANSFER

As examples of some of the complexities involved in the interlingual translation of what might seem to be uncontroversial items, consider the question of translating yes and hello into French, German and Italian. This task would seem, at first glance, to be straightforward, since all are Indo-European languages, closely related lexically and syntactically, and terms of greeting and assent are common to all three. For yes standard dictionaries give:

French: oui, si

German: ja

Italian: si

It is immediately obvious that the existence of two terms in French involves a usage that does not exist in the other languages. Further investigation shows that whilst oui is the generally used specifically in cases of contradiction, contention and dissent. The English translator, therefore, must be mindful of his rule when translating the English word that remains the same in all contexts.

When the use of the affirmative in conversational speech is considered, another question arises. Yes cannot always be translated into the single words oui, ja or si, for French, German and Italian all frequently double or `string' affirmatives in a way that is outside standard English procedures (e.g. si, si, si; ja, ja, etc.). Hence the Italian or German translation of yes by a single word can, at times, appear excessively brusque, hyperbolic that it often creates a comic effect.

With the translation of the word hello, the standard English form of friendly greeting when meeting, the problems are multiplied. The dictionaries give:

French: ca va?; hallo

German: wie geht's ; hallo

Italian: olà ; pronto; ciao

Whilst English does not distinguish between the word used when greeting someone face to face and that used when answering the telephone, French, German and Italian all do telephonic greeting, like the German hallo. Moreover, French and German use as forms of greeting brief rhetorical questions, whereas the same question in English How are you? Is only used in more formal situations. The Italian ciao, by far the most common form of greeting in all sections of Italian society, is used equally on arrival and departure, being a word of greeting linked to a moment of contact between individuals either coming or going and not to the specific context of arrival or initial encounter. So, for example, the translator faced with the task of translating hello into French must first extract from the term a core of meaning and the stages of the processes, following Nida's diagram, might look like this:

SOURCE LANGUAGE RECEPTOR LANGUAGE

HELLO CA VA?

FRIENDLY GREETING ON ARRIVAL

DECISION TO DISTINGUISH BETWEEN

FORMS OF GREETING AVAILABLE

TRANSFER

In this case of yes the invariant information is affirmation, whilst in the case of hello the variant is the notion of greeting. But at the same time the translator has had to consider other criteria, e.g. the existence of the oui/si rule in French, the stylistic function of stringing affirmatives, the social context of greeting - whether telephonic or face to face, the class position and status of the speakers and the resultant weight of a colloquial greeting in different societies. All such factors are involved in the translation even of the most apparently straightforward word.

The question of semiotic transformation is further extended when considering the translation of a simple noun. Following Saussure, the structural relationship between the signifier (significant) or the sound-image made by the word butter constitutes the linguistic sign butter. But Saussure also distinguished between the syntagmatic (or horizontal) relations that a word has with the words that surround it in a sentence and the associative (or vertical) relations it has with the language structure as a whole. Moreover, within the secondary modelling system there is one type of associative relation and the translator, like the specialist in advertising techniques , must consider both the primary and the secondary associative lines. For butter in British English carries with it a set of associations of wholesomeness, purity and high status (in comparison to margarine, once perceived only as secondary butter though now marketed also as practical because it does not set hard under refrigeration).

The translator has to take the question of interpretation into account in addition to the problem of selecting a TL phrase which will have a roughly similar meaning. Exact translation is impossible: Good appetite in English used outside a structured sentence is meaningless. Nor is there any English phrase in general use that fulfils the same function as the French. There are, however, a series of phrases that might be applicable in certain situations - the colloquial Dig in or Tuck in, the more formal Do start, or even the ritualistically apologetic I hope you like it, or I hope it's alright. In determining what to use in English, the translator must:

Levý, the great Czech translation scholar, insisted that any contracting or omitting of difficult expressions in translating was immoral. The translator had the responsibility of finding a solution to the most daunting of problems, and he declared that the functional view must be adopted with regard not only to meaning but also to style and form.

Problems of equivalence

The translation of idioms takes us a stage further in considering the question of meaning and translation, for idioms, like puns, are culture bound. Both English and Italian have corresponding idiomatic expressions that render the idea of prevarication, and so in the process of interlingual translation one idiom is substituted for another. This substitution is made not in the basis of the linguistic elements in the phrase, but on the function of the idiom. The SL phrase is replaced by a TL phrase that serves the same on the purpose in the TL culture, and the process here involves the substitution of SL sign for TL sign. Dagut's remarks about the problems of translating metaphor are interesting when applied also to the problem of tackling idioms:

“Since a metaphor in the SL is, by definition, a new piece of performance, a semantic novelty, it can clearly have no existing `equivalence' in the TL: what is unique can have no counterpart. Here the translator's bilingual competence is of help to him only in the negative sense of telling him that any `equivalence' in this case cannot be `found' but will have to be created. The crucial question that arises is thus whether a metaphor can, strictly speaking, be translated as such, or whether it can only be `reproduced' in some way.”

But Dagut's distinction between `translation' and `reproduction', like Catford's distinction between `literal' and `free' translation does not take into account the view that sees translation as semiotic transformation. In his definition of translation equivalence, Popovic distinguish four types:

Albrecht Neubert, whose work on translation is unfortunately not available to English readers, distinguishes between the study of translation as a process and as a product. He states bluntly that: `the“missing link” between both components of a complete theory of translations appears to be the theory of equivalence relations that can be conceived for both the dynamic and the static model'.

Eugene Nida distinguishes two types of equivalence, formal and dynamic, where formal equivalence `focuses attention on the message itself, in both form and content. Nida calls this kind of translation a `gloss translation', which aims to allow the reader to understand as much of the SL context as possible. Dynamic equivalence is based on the principle of equivalent effect, i.e. that the relationship between receiver and message should aim at being the same as that between the original receivers and the SL message.

In trying to solve the problem of translation equivalence, Neubert postulates that from the point of view of a theory of texts, translation equivalence must be considered a semiotic category, comprising a syntactic, semantic and pragmatic component, following Pierce's categories. These components are arranged in a hierarchical relationship, where semantic equivalence takes priority over syntactic equivalence, and pragmatic equivalence conditions and modifies both the other elements. Equivalence overall results from the relation between signs and themselves, the relationship between signs and what they stand for, and the relationship between signs, what they stand for and those who use them .

Mukarovský's view that the literary text has both an autonomous and a communicative character has been taken up by Lotman, who argues that a text is explicit (it is expressed in definite signs), limited (it begins and ends at a given point), and it has structure as a result of internal organization. The signs of the text are in a relation of opposition to the signs and structures outside the text. A translator must therefore bear in mind both its autonomous and its communicative aspects and any theory of equivalence should take both elements into account.

Equivalence in translation, then, should not be approached as a search for sameness, since sameness cannot even exist between two TL versions of the same text, let alone between the SL and the TL versions. Popovic's four types offer a useful starting point and Neubert's three semiotic categories point the way towards an approach that perceives equivalence as a dialectic between the signs and the structures within and surrounding the SL and TL texts.

Loss and gain

Once the principle is accepted that sameness cannot exist between two languages, it becomes possible to approach the question of loss and gain in the translation processes. It is again an indication of the low status of translation that so much time should have been spent on discussing what is lost in the transfer of a text from SL to TL whilst ignoring what can also be gained, for the translator can at times enrich or clarify the SL text as a direct result of the translation process. Moreover, what is often seen as `lost' from the SL context may be replaced in the TL context.

Eugene Nida is a rich source of information about the problems of loss in translation, in particular about the difficulties encountered by the translator when faced with terms or concepts in the SL that do not exist in the TL.

Untranslatability

Catford distinguishes two types of untranslatability, which he terms linguistic and cultural. On the linguistic level, untranslatability occurs when there is no lexical or syntactical substitute in the TL for an SL item, for example the German Um wieviel Uhr darf man Sie morgen wecken? is linguistically untranslatable, `cause involves an structure that do not exist into English. Yet it can be adequately translated into English once the rules of English structure are applied. A translator would unhesitatingly render the sentence as What time would you like to be woken tomorrow?, restructuring the German word order to conform to English norms.

Catford category of linguistic untranslatability, which is also proposed by Popovic, is straightforward, but his second category is more problematic. Linguistic untranslatability is due to differences in the SL and the TL, whereas cultural untranslatability is due to the absence in the TL culture of a relevant situational feature for the SL text. Now on one level Catford is right. The English phrases can be translated into most European languages. But he fails to take into account two significant factors, and he seems to typify the problem of an overly narrow approach to the question of untranslatability. If I'm going home is translated as Je vais chez moi, the content meaning of the SL sentence (i.e. self assertive statement of intention to proceed to place of residence and/or origin) is only loosely reproduced. And if, for example, the phrase is spoken by an American resident temporarily in London, it could either imply a return to the immediate `home' or a return across the Atlantic, depending on the context in which is used, a distinction that would have to be spelled out in French. Moreover, the English term home, like the French foyer, has a range of associative meanings that are not translated by the more restricted phrase chez moi.

The problem here is that the reader will have a concept of the term based on his or her cultural context, and will apply that particularized view accordingly. Catford starts from different premises, and because he goes not go far enough in considering the dynamic nature of language and culture, he invalidates his own category of cultural untranslatability. In so far as language is the primary modelling system within a culture, cultural untranslatability must be de facto implied in any process of translation. Once again it is Popovic who has attempted to define untranslatability without making a separation between the linguistic and the cultural. Popovic also distinguishes two types:

The first type may be seen as parallel to Catford's category of linguistic untranslatability, while this second type come phrases such as Bon appetit or the interesting series of everyday phrases in Danish for expressing thanks.

Popovic second type, like Catford's secondary category, illustrates the difficulties of describing and defining the limits of translatability, but whilst Catford starts from within linguistics, Popovic starts from a position that involves a theory of literary communication. Lewandowski, in an article in which he attempts to sum up the state of translation studies and semiotics, feels that Catford is `divorced from reality', while Mounin feels that too much attention has been given to the problem of untranslatability at the expense of solving some of the actual problems that the translator has to deal with.

Mounin feels that it is thanks to developments in contemporary linguistics that we can accept that:

(1) Personal experience in its uniqueness is untranslatable.

In other words, Mounin believes that linguistics demonstrates that translation is a dialect process that can be accomplished with relative success - communication through translation can never be completely finished, which also demonstrates that it is never wholly impossible either.

As has already been suggested, it is clearly the task of the translator to find a solution to even the most daunting of problems. Such solutions may vary enormously; the translator's decision as to what constitutes invariant information with the respect to a given system reference is in itself a creative act. Levý stresses the intuitive element in translating:

“As in all semiotic processes, translation has its Pragmatic dimension as well. Translation theory tends to be normative, to instruct translators on the OPTIMAL solution; actual translator work, is pragmatic; the translator resolves for that one of the possible solutions which promises a maximum of effect with a minimum of effort. That is to say, he intuitively resolves for the so-called MINIMAX STRATEGY.”

Science or `secondary activity'

The purpose of translation theory, then, is to reach an understanding of the processes undertaken in the act of translation and, not, as is so commonly misunderstood, to provide a set of norms for effecting the perfect translation. The pragmatic dimension in translation cannot be categorized, any more than the `inspiration' of a text can be defined and prescribed. Once this point is accepted, two issues that continue to bedevil Translation Studies can be satisfactorily resolved; the problem of whether there can be a `science of translation' and whether translating is a `secondary activity'.

The myth of translation as a secondary activity with all associations of lower status implied in that assessment, can be dispelled once the extent of the pragmatic element of translation is accepted, and once the relationship between author/translator/reader is outlined. The process of translation shows that the translator is both receiver and sender, the end and the beginning of two separate but linked chains of communication:

Author -- Text -- Receiver = Translator -- Text -- Receiver

Every text is unique and, at the same time, it is the translation of another text. No text is entirely original `cause the language itself, in its essence, is already a translation: firstly, of the non-verbal world and secondly, since every sign and every phrase is the translation of another sign and another phrase. However, this argument can be turned around without losing any of its validity: all text are original `cause every translation is distinctive. Every translation, up to a certain point, is an invention and as such it constitutes a unique text.

2 SPECIFIC PROBLEMS OF LITERARY TRANSLATION

In the introduction to this book it is assured the need for a close relationship between the theory and the practise of translation. In this section it is proposed to approach the question of the translation of literary works through close analysis of examples not so much to evaluate the products but rather to show how specific problems of translation can emerge from the individual translators' selection of criteria.

Structures

The failure of many translators to understand that literary text is made up of a complex set of systems existing in a dialectical relationship with other sets outside its boundaries has often led them to focus on particular aspects of a text at the expense of others. Lotman determines four essential positions of the addressee:

Clearly, for the purposes of translation, position (1) would be completely inadequate (although many translators of novels in particular have focused on content at the expense of the formal structuring of the text), position (2) would seem an ideal starting point, whilst positions (3) and (4) might be tenable circumstances. The translator is, first a reader and then a writer and in the process of reading he or she must take a position.

The fourth position, in which the reader discovers elements in the text that have evolved since its genesis, is almost unavoidable when the text belongs to a cultural system distanced in time and space.

Much time and ink has been wasted attempting to differentiate between translations, versions, adaptations and the establishment of hierarchy of `correctness' between these categories. Yet the differentiation between them derives from a concept of the reader as the passive receiver of the text in which its Truth is enshrined. In other words, if the text is perceived as an object that should only produce a single invariant reading, any `deviation' on the part of the reader/translator will be judged as a transgression. One of the greatest advances of the twenty-century literary study has been the re-evaluation of the reader. So Barthes sees the place of the literary work as that of making the reader not so much a consumer as a producer of the text, while Julia Kristeva sees the reader as realising the expansion of the work's process of semiosis.

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