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The Evolution of Translation
Studies: From Linguistic to
Cultural Perspectives
INTRODUCING TRANSLATION STUDIES
THE CONCEPT OF TRANSLATION
Studies about translation were common in classical antiquity, and the first commentary appeared in the West. The word "translation" refers to the written one, while the oral translation is called interpreting or interpretation. The practice of translating is long established, but the discipline of translation studies is new. Translation was born in ancient Rome, and much of translation theory derives from the study of classical Greek, Latin, and the study of the Bible. However, there are also the studies of Maria Tymoczko, which are based on other cultures and not on sacred texts.
In Latin, several verbs were used to refer to translational activities, as it was much practiced: vertere, convertere, transvertere, transferre. Cicero said that a translator should "convertere" texts as an "orator" not as an "interpres". So Cicero translated not word for word, but sense for sense, because he wanted to keep the same ideas and the forms, he focused on the sense of the text, and he preserved the general style and force of the language.
Today, "translation" has several meanings (CONTEXT OF PRODUCTION, CONTEXT OF RECEPTION, SYNCRONY AND DIACRONY, CULTURAL REFERENCES, AUDIENCE) and it refers to the phenomenon of translating, the translated text, and the process, so translating. The process involves the SOURCE TEXT (ST) in the source language, and the TARGET TEXT (TT) in the target language.
JAKOBSON (who belongs to the communicative stage of the translation studies – a period that starts from 1950-) was a Russo-American structuralist, who discussed linguistic meaning and equivalence. He distinguished 3 different types of translation. In the same period, there's a debate about the difference between translation, adaption, version, etc., and Sandra Halverson claims that translation is a prototype and it has basic core features. Maria Tymoczko discusses the concept of translation. She has a conceptual orientation because she thinks that we can't always use a lexical fidelity to the original text. So the target text will show a big change of form compared to the source.
EARLY HISTORY OF THE DISCIPLINE
The practice of translation was fundamental for the early dissemination of cultural and religious texts. The first who discussed about translation were CICERO AND HORACE during the first century BCE, and ST.JEROME during the 4th century CE. St Jerome translated the Greek Septuagint Bible into Latin and so he affected the later translations of the Scriptures. Later, in Europe, the translation of the Bible was the cause of ideological conflicts for years, especially during the Reformation in the 16th century.
There are 4 different phases of the translation studies:
The linguistic stage: before the 1950. The translation was studied as a Language-learning methodology, and the grammar translation was very common. Most important authors of this period were Cicero, Horace, St. Jerome, Martin Luther, Dryden, Tytler, Schleiermacher.
The communicative stage: from 1950. Thanks to translation workshops, the comparative literature and the contrastive linguistics spread. The comparative literature consists in studying and comparing literature transnationally and transculturally. The contrastive linguistics consists in studying two languages in contrast in order to find the differences between them. Most important authors in this period were Jakobson, Vinay, Darbelnet, Nida, Catford.
Functionist stage: from 1970 thanks to the approach elaborated by Newmark.
Ethical/aesthetic stage: from 2000. The subject of translation is characterized by interdisciplinarity, and this has become more evident in the last years and helped the development of the translation studies.
THE HOLMES/TOURY MAP
James S. Holmes developed this discipline in his work "The name and nature of translation", that is considered the founding statement of the discipline. Holmes thought that the discipline of translation had limitations because it was still linked to other older disciplines, like languages or linguistics, and it was not viewed as a distinct discipline. So he developed a framework where he shows what the translation studies.
Pure areas of research are: the description of the phenomena of translation and the translation theory. The theoretical branch is divided into general and partial. The descriptive branch is also called descriptive translation studies (DTS). It may examine:
The Product: Product-oriented DTS. It examines existing translations, so it analyzes ST and TT. The function: Function-oriented DTS. It describes the function of translation in the sociocultural context. For example subtitling contemporary cartoons in Arabic.
letter addressed to his friend. Here he freely announced that in translating from the Greek he rendered not word for word but sense for sense. He defined the word for word translation "literal translation", and the sense for sense "Free translation". He rejected the word for word translation because it produced an absurd translation and didn't allow maintaining the sense of the source text, also because of the syntax, that is considered part of the mystery of the Bible.
We can see the importance of the translation of sacred texts also in China and the Arab world. An example is the Chinese translation of Buddhist sutras from Sanskrit. This phenomenon was analyzed by Hung and Pollard. They have been inspired by Cicero and St. Jerome and they rejected too the word for word translation, because the texts were mostly oral, so there was different source texts and the translations were all different and often incomprehensible. Another important oriental author was Dao An who directed an extensive translation of Buddhist sutras.
Before the arrival of the Printing press in Europe, so in the 15th century, texts were copied by hand and this led to errors. Jerome's version of the Bible was unstable because of attempts to correct his translation, and in addition, the Latin was controlled by the Church in Rome. The European Humanist movement wanted the liberation of the Language from the power of the Church to recover the classical Latin and Greek. In the 15th century, the Protestant reformation lead to a schism within Christianity and the Bible had been translated also in vernacular languages. But the translation could diverge from the Church's interpretation and so the translators could run the risk of being judged heretical and of being banned. This happened to those translators who wanted to make texts available to a wider public, such as Tyndale and Dolet.
The Humanist advances in the study and knowledge of Greek and Hebrew lead to the revolution of Bible translation. An example is the Erasmus's edition of the Greek New Testament in 1516. The most famous example of non-literal translation of the Bible is Martin Luther's translation into East Central German of the New Testament and later Old Testament. His use of a regional Language lead to a revolution of translation and to the reinforce of that form of German Language as standard. Luther had been criticized for the addition of the word "allein" because there was no equivalent Greek word in the ST. So Luther, like St Jerome, rejected a word for word translation because it was unable to convey a corrected meaning of the ST.
EARLY ATTEMPTS AT SYSTEMATIC TRANSLATION
THEORY
The first translators who created a systematic approach to translation theory are:
DRYDEN (between 1500 and 1600) He was an English poet and translator of the 17th century. He gave a brief description of the translation process in
the preface of his translation of Ovid's Epistles. He reduced translation to 3 categories so he created a triadic model:
Metaphrase: it's the literal word for word translation. Paraphrase: it's the faithful sense for sense translation. Imitation: it's the free translation and it is not sense for sense or word for word, it is called also adaptation.
Dryden criticized the metaphrase, because it's a word for word translation, and rejected the imitation because in the imitation the translator is too visible and writes what he supposes that the author would have said. So he prefers Paraphrase.
DOLET (in 1500) Was important for the development of the French Language.
Principles of Translation
Etienne Dolet's Principles (1540)
In his 1540 manuscript "La manière de bien traduire d'une langue en autre", Etienne Dolet set out 5 principles of translation in order of importance:
The translator must perfectly understand the sense and material of the original author. The translator should have a perfect knowledge of the source language (SL) and target language (TL). The translator should avoid word-for-word translation. The translator should avoid Latinate and unusual forms. The translator should correctly assemble words to avoid clumsiness.
Alexander Tytler's Principles (1790)
In his "Essay on the Principles of Translation" published around 1790, Alexander Tytler made the first comprehensive and systematic study of translation. He focused on the target language and the reader, and defined 3 general laws:
The translation should communicate the same ideas as the original work. The style and manner of writing of the target text (TT) should be the same as the source text (ST). The TT should have the same ease of the ST.
The first law is similar to Dolet's first two principles, as both emphasize the translator's need to have a perfect knowledge of the original text and provide a faithful transfer of the sense and meaning. The second law is similar to Dolet's fifth principle, as it deals with the style.
Intersemiotic translation or transmutation: a translation between different codes and sign systems, such as from verbal signs to non- verbal signs.
Jakobson dealt with the problem of equivalence in meaning between words in different languages. He stated that there is ordinarily no full equivalence between code-units, and discussed the theories of linguistic universalism and linguistic relativity.
Jakobson considered poetry as 'untranslatable' and requiring 'creative transposition'. He saw the question of meaning, equivalence, and translatability as a constant in translation studies.
Eugene Nida (1940s-1970s)
Nida, an important translation theorist, took a more systematic approach. He tried to translate the Bible using a more scientific method, incorporating recent linguistic works.
Nida was inspired by Chomsky's generative-transformational model, which includes a deep structure (phrase-structure rules) and a surface structure (phonological and morphemic rules). Nida incorporated this into his three- stage translation process: analysis, transfer, and restructuring.
Nida distinguished two types of equivalence:
Formal equivalence: focuses on the message in its form and content, maintaining the source culture. Dynamic equivalence: aims to reproduce a dynamic translation, where the relationship between the receptor and the message is the same as between the original receptors and the message.
Nida's work on the principle of equivalent effect and the concept of equivalence have been heavily criticized, but his systematic linguistic approach to translation has had a considerable influence on many translation scholars.
Translating Across Languages and Cultures
Levels of Translation
Between the two poles of translating, there are a number of intervening grades representing various standards of literary translating. Translation can involve languages and cultures that are sometimes connected but have different languages, which is connected to the problem of "false friends" - borrowed or cognate words that seem equivalent but are not always so. When cultures are related but languages are different, the translation is called upon to make a good many formal shifts, and in this case, there are also parallelisms of content.
Translation involves following four basic principles:
Making sense Conveying the spirit of the original text Having a natural and easy form of expression Reproducing a similar response
If a translator tries to produce only content without reference to form, the result is a mediocre translation. Conversely, if a translator tries to reproduce just form, the result is an impression, but fails to communicate the message. Correspondence in meaning must have priority over correspondence in style.
Formal Equivalence (F-E) Translation
There are different principles that govern the translation which attempts to reproduce a formal equivalence (F-E) that is source-oriented and wants to convey the form and content of the original message. In doing this, F-E reproduces several formal elements, including:
Grammatical units (nouns, verbs, keeping all phrases intact, preserving formal indicators, punctuation, paragraph breaks) Consistency in word usage Meanings in terms of the source context
An F-E translation always uses parentheses for words added to make sense in the translation but missing in the original document. To reproduce meanings in terms of the source context, F-E translation reproduces expressions more or less literally, allowing the reader to perceive how the original text employed local cultural elements to convey meanings. Sometimes, an F-E translation contains marginal notes to explain some of the formal features that are not adequately represented.
Dynamic Equivalence (D-E) Translation
In contrast with F-E translation, there is D-E translation that is concerned with a bilingual and bicultural person. This kind of translation aims to reflect the meaning and intent of the source. It is the closest natural equivalent to the source-language message. This type of definition contains three essential terms:
Equivalent, which points toward the source-language message Natural, which points toward the receptor language (natural is a concept applicable to the area of the communication process, where a natural rendering must fit the receptor language and culture as a whole, the context of a particular message, and the receptor language audience) Closest, which connects the two orientations together on the basis of approximation
A natural translation involves two principal areas of adaptation: grammar and lexicon. Grammatical modifications can often be made more readily,
Newmark preferred a literal translation because it sticks very closely to ST lexis and syntax. However, if there's a conflict between the two forms of translation (communicative or semantic), for Newmark, the most acceptable is the communicative one.
Vinay and Darbelnet's Translation Strategies and
Procedures
Vinay and Darbelnet carried out a comparative stylistic analysis of French and English texts, spotting the differences between the two languages and identifying different translation strategies and procedures. They identified two general translation strategies: direct (as a synonym of literal) and oblique translation, comprising seven procedures:
Direct Translation Procedures: 1. Borrowing : A SL word is directly transferred into the TL to fill a semantic gap or add local color. 2. Calque : An SL expression in a literal translation, sometimes with some semantic change. 3. Literal Translation : Word-for-word translation, common in languages of the same family and culture, sacrificed only for structural and metalinguistic requirements when the meaning is fully preserved.
Oblique Translation Procedures: 4. Transposition : Changing a part of speech without changing the sense (e.g., noun to verb), which can be obligatory or optional. 5. Modulation : Changes the semantic and point of view of the SL, which can be obligatory or optional. 6. Equivalence : Refers to cases when languages describe the same situation by different stylistic or structural means. 7. Adaptation : Changing a cultural reference when the source culture does not exist in the target culture.
Vinay and Darbelnet also identified supplementary translation procedures, such as amplification, false friends, loss/gain/compensation, explicitation, and generalization. These procedures operate on three levels: lexicon, syntactic structures, and the message.
Catford's Translation Shifts
Catford made an important distinction between formal correspondence and textual equivalence. A formal correspondent is any TL category that occupies the same place in the economy of the TL as the given SL category occupies in the SL. A textual equivalent is any TL text or portion of text that is observed on a particular occasion to be the equivalent of a given SL text or portion of text.
When the two concepts diverge, a translation shift occurs, which can be a level shift (something expressed by grammar in one language and lexis in another) or a category shift. A category shift can be a structural shift (a shift in a grammatical structure), class shift (from one part of speech to another), a unit or rank shift (the translation equivalent in the TL is a different rank to the SL), or an intra-system shift (a shift that takes place when the SL and the TL possess approximately corresponding systems, but the translation involves the selection of a non-corresponding term in the TL system).
Translation equivalence does not formally match formal correspondence but depends on communicative features such as function, relevance, situation, and culture rather than just on formal linguistic criteria. Deciding what is functionally relevant is a matter of opinion, and Catford's theory has been criticized for using idealized and decontextualized examples.
Option, Markedness, and Stylistic Shifts in Translation
The discussion of translation also involves the concepts of option, markedness, and stylistic shifts. Option refers to non-obligatory changes that may be due to the translator's own style and preferences or to a change in emphasis. Markedness is the degree of deviation from an expected or neutral form, and stylistic shifts involve changes in the level of formality, register, or style between the source and target texts.
Markedness and the Cognitive Process of
Translation
Markedness
Markedness refers to a choice or pattern of choices that stands out as unusual and may draw the reader's attention. The reason behind markedness is to draw the reader's attention, but it is not always possible to transfer this from the source text (ST) to the target text (TT).
The Cognitive Process of Translation
The translation itself can provide only limited insight into the cognitive process behind it. Danica Seleskovitch and Marianne Lederer explain that translation involves the following processes:
Reading and understanding Deverbalization Re-expression
Jean Delisle later added a fourth stage of verification, where the translators revisit and evaluate the TT.
Ways of Investigating Cognitive Processing
In the 1990s, think-aloud protocols were used to investigate how the translator's mind works during the translation process. More recently, this has been combined with technological innovations.
The preferred translation methods may not be reversible, as the translation of a text into English may require attention to lexical and conceptual metaphors common to that genre. Text types and genres can be differentiated based on primary function, but a source text could have several functions.
Mary Snell-Hornby's Integrated Approach
Mary Snell-Hornby's "Translation Studies: An Integrated Approach" attempts to integrate various linguistic and literary concepts into a single approach to translation based on text types. She borrows the notion of prototypes to categorize text types and presents a diagram with different levels, covering areas such as literary, general language, and specialized language translation, as well as the translation process and relevant linguistic aspects.
Justa Holz-Manttari's Translation Action Model
Justa Holz-Manttari's translation action model takes concepts from communicative theory and action theory to provide a model and guidelines for a wide range of professional translation situations. It construes the process of translating as a message transmitter compound involving intercultural transfer, with various roles and players, such as the initiator, commissioner, ST producer, TT producer, TT user, and TT receiver.
The model focuses on producing a TT that is functionally communicative for the receiver, with the translator as the expert in translation action, responsible for ensuring the intercultural transfer through the analysis of the ST's content and form.
Skopos Theory
Skopos theory, developed by Hans Vermeer, is a functionalist approach that considers the purpose (skopos) of a translation as the primary factor in determining the translation method. The theory proposes several rules, including:
The skopos rule: The translatum (TT) is determined by its skopos or purpose. The TT as an offer of information: The TT is an offer of information in the target culture and language about an offer of information in the source culture and language. The coherence rule: The TT must be coherent and make sense for the TT receivers. The fidelity rule: There must be coherence between the translatum and the ST or the translator's interpretation of the ST.
The theory emphasizes the importance of the TT's functional adequacy over the reproduction of the ST's features.
Cristina Nord's Functionalist Approach
Cristina Nord's functionalist approach stresses that while functionality is the most important criterion for a translation, this does not allow the translator absolute license. There needs to be a relationship between the ST and TT, and the nature of this relationship is determined by the purpose or skopos (the "functionality plus loyalty" principle).
Nord presents a more detailed functional model that incorporates elements of text analysis and examines text organization. She distinguishes between two basic types of translation products:
Documentary translation: Serves as a document of a source culture communication, allowing the TT receiver access to the ideas of the ST. Instrumental translation: Serves as an independent message transmitting instrument in a new communicative action in the target culture, with the TT receivers reading it as if it were an ST written in their language.
Functionalist Approaches to Translation
The Importance of the Translation Commission
Before conducting a close textual analysis, the translator needs to compare the source text (ST) and target text (TT) profiles defined in the translation commission. The translation commission should provide important information such as the intended text functions, the addressees, the time and place of text reception, the medium, and the motive. This information helps the translator determine where the two texts may diverge and decide on the most relevant ST items to consider in order to achieve a functional translation.
The Role of Source Text Analysis
After comparing the ST-TT profiles, the ST can be analyzed to decide on the feasibility of translation and the most relevant ST items that need to be taken into account to achieve a functional translation and the appropriate translation strategy. Intertextual factors that can be analyzed include subject matter, content, presuppositions, text composition, non-verbal elements, lexis, sentence structure, and suprasegmental features.
Functional Hierarchy of Translation Problems
The functional hierarchy of translation problems is determined by comparing the intended functions of the ST and the proposed TT. This hierarchy helps decide the functional type of translation to be produced, the translation style, and the approach to addressing the text's problems.
Hatim and Mason's Approaches
Hatim and Mason are influenced by House's register analysis and Baker's pragmatic analysis, but they go beyond them. They consider language and texts as realizations of sociocultural messages and power relations. They distinguish between text (a unit of structure deployed for a rhetorical purpose) and discourse (a systemically organized set of statements and values of an institution). Ideology is the set of beliefs and values that inform an individual's or institution's worldview and interpretation of events.
Systems Theories
Itamar Even-Zohar's Polysystem Theory
Even-Zohar, inspired by formalists and structuralists, considers the literary work as part of a social, cultural, literary, and historical framework, where each element influences the others. The polysystem is a multiple system of various interrelated systems that function as a unique structure where the elements are interdependent. Translated literature may occupy a primary or secondary position in the polysystem: Primary position: When a young or peripheral literature refers to more established literatures, or when there is a vacuum in the literature. Secondary position: When translated literature represents a peripheral system within the polysystem, and the system focuses on conservative elements. The position of translated literature influences the translation strategies used, with primary position leading to less adherence to target literature models and secondary position leading to the use of target-culture models.
Scaricato da BEATRICE SCACCINI (b.scaccini@studenti.unistrasi.it) lOMoARcPSD|
Translation Norms and Polysystem Theory
The Stratified Nature of Translation Systems
Translation systems are stratified, with all relations within observed from the perspective of the central stratum. When there is intense interference, the portion of translated literature derived from a major source literature is likely to assume a central position. The major and most innovative translational norms were produced by translations from the Russian, and other translated literature adhered to these models and norms. Translated literature tends to occupy a peripheral position, which is compatible with theoretical speculations.
Systems can maintain a state of weakness, "tuning point," or crisis for a long time, and not all polysystems are structured the same way (e.g., the French cultural system is rigid, so French translated literature has a more peripheral position).
The Distinction between Translated and Original Works
The distinction between translated and original works in terms of literary behavior is a function of the position assumed by the translated literature at a given time. When translated literature takes a central position, the borderlines become diffuse, and the category of translated works must be extended to include semi-translations and quasi-translations. Translation activity participates in the process of creating new primary models, so a translator should "violate" home conventions to achieve adequacy with the original. When translation has a secondary position, the translator must find the best ready-made models, sometimes resulting in a non-adequate translation with a significant discrepancy between the achieved and postulated equivalence.
Toury's Descriptive Translation Studies (DTS)
Toury developed the methodology of Descriptive Translation Studies (DTS), which focuses on the position of the translation within the target culture system. Toury's three-phase methodology for DTS includes: Situating the text within the target culture system. Undertaking a textual analysis of the source text (ST) and target text (TT) to identify relationships between corresponding segments (coupled pairs) and translation shifts. Attempting to reconstruct the norms that have been in operation in the translation.
Toury's Concept of Norms
Toury considers translation to be an activity governed by norms, which determine the equivalence in the translation. Norms can be reconstructed from two sources: the examination of the texts (correspondences between ST and TT segments) and explicit statements by the authors. Toury identifies three types of norms: Initial norms: the choice of the translator to realize the translation towards the ST (adequacy) or towards the TT (acceptability). Preliminary norms: translation policy (selection of texts) and directness of translation (use of intermediate languages). Operational norms: choices in the text, including matricial norms (completeness of the text) and textual-linguistic norms (lexical and syntactic choices).
Norms change quickly, and the process of their rise and decline can lead to shifts in their validity and force, often in connection with changes in social status.
The Role of Translators and Translation
Norms
Translators and the Shaping of the Translation Process
Many translators, through their activity, help in shaping the translation process. This is influenced by translation criticism, translation ideology, and various activities of institutes where translators are trained. There are different types of translators, some of whom dominate the center of the system and direct the translational behavior of the so-called mainstream, alongside the remnants of previous sets of norms and the rudiments of new ones. This is why it is possible to speak of translation as being "trendy, old, fascinating, or progressive."
The Concept of Norms in Translation
A norm can be marked as "dated" if it was active in a previous period and had a different, non-dated position at that time. Norm-governed behavior can prove to have been "avant-garde" only in view of subsequent attitudes towards it, and an idiosyncrasy that evolved into something more general can only be described as a norm by extension. Multiplicity and variation in translation do not imply the absence of active norms; they simply mean that real-life situations tend to be complex, and this complexity should be noted rather than ignored.
Sources for Reconstructing Translation Norms
There are two major sources for reconstructing translation norms: textual (the translated texts themselves for all kinds of norms, as well as analytical inventories of translation for various preliminary norms) and extratextual (semi-theoretical or critical formulations such as prescriptive theories of translation, statements made by translators, editors, publishers, and other persons involved in or connected with the activity of individual translations and the activity of translators or schools of translators). There may be gaps or contradictions between explicit arguments and demands and actual behavior and its results due to subjectivity, naivete, or lack of sufficient knowledge on the part of those who produced the formulations.
Modeling Norms: The Return Potential Curve
The American sociologist Jay Jackon suggested a "Return Potential Curve" as a model for representing norms. This model allows for a gradual distinction between norms in terms of intensity, the total range of tolerated behavior,
and the ratio of one of these properties of the norm to the others. The model is tripartite, consisting of:
Basic primary norms, which are more or less mandatory for all instances of a certain behavior and occupy the apex of the curve, with maximum intensity and minimum latitude of behavior. Secondary norms or tendencies, which determine favorable behavior and may be predominant in certain parts of the group, occupying the part near the apex but less intensive than the basic norms and covering a greater range of behavior. Tolerated behavior, which occupies the rest of the positive part of the curve and has minimal intensity.
Chesterman's Norms
Chesterman developed two types of norms:
Product or Expectancy Norms: Refers to what the reader expects from the target text. Professional Norms: Accountability Norm: The ethical norm where the translator accepts responsibility for the work. Communication Norm: The social norm where the translator is an expert who works for communication. Relation Norm: Refers to the linguistic choices of the translator.
The Manipulation School
The Manipulation School, influenced by Toury and Even-Zohar, views translation as a complex and dynamic system, as an interrelation between practical case studies and theoretical models, and is interested in the norms that govern the production of translation. They have a strong link to the polysystem theory and the Descriptive Translation Studies (DTS).
Lambert and Van Gorp's Scheme for Comparing Source and
Target Texts
Lambert and Van Gorp developed a scheme for comparing source and target texts, divided into four parts:
Preliminary data: Information on the text. Macro level: Narrative structure. Micro level: Lexical, grammatical patterns, narrative point of view. Systemic context: Intertextual relations.
