Dr. Margherita Dore - Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia

Dr. Margherita Dore
margherita.dore@uniroma1.it

   Translatability and equivalence in meaning
   Different types of meaning
   Formal and dynamic equivalence
   Equivalent effect (focus on the receptor)
   Semantic and communicative translation
   Koller’s double linkage
   Tertium comparationis

  Saussure’s starting assumption:
 langue -> e.g. English, Italian, Swahili
 Parole -> “I read a book”, “ho fame”

   Saussure’s Theory of Langue
       Sign = arbitrary signifier + signified
        (e.g. CHEESE is an acoustic signifier that denotes a
        “food made of pressed curds”, that is the signified)

 We    can understand what is signified by a
    word even if we haven’t ever experienced it
    (e.g. nectar, ambrosia)

‘There is ordinarily no full equivalence between
code-units’
                           (Jakobson 1959/2004: 139)
(e.g. CHEESE is not identical to the Russian syr – or the
Spanish queso or the Italian formaggio – because it does not
Include the concept of cottage cheese)

 The   question of translatability
   linguistic relativity/determinism, differences in
    languages shape different conceptualizations of the world
   linguistic universalism, although languages differ in the
    way they realise meaning, there is a shared way of
    thinking and experiencing the world.

‘Languages differ essentially in what they must
  convey and not in what they may convey’
                              (Jakobson 1959/2004: 141)

Differences in terms of equivalence:
   Gender level: house is feminine in English and
    neuter in English
   Aspect level: morphology of verbs
   Semantic field level: fratelli in Italian means
    ‘brothers and sisters’

 Nida (1914-2011) was an American Baptist
  minister, linguist and translator
 He had enormous experience organizing
  the translation of the Bible into indigenous
  languages.
 He applied analytical concepts from Noam
  Chomsky’s generative-transformational
  grammar to his ‘scientific’ approach
  towards translation theory and lexical
  meaning

Nida (1964) and Nida and Taber (1969) –
‘scientific’ approach to the analysis and
transfer of meaning is based on the
following assumptions:

Lexical meaning can be categorised as:
  Linguistic meaning, relation between different words
   (his return may mean when he returned)
  Referential meaning, the dictionary meaning of a word
   (cf. cheese above)
  Emotive, or connotative, meaning, the associations a
   word may have (don’t worry about it, son)

Linguists can use a a series of
techniques to establish the referential
and emotive meaning of words:
    Hierarchical structuring: superordinate (animal) and
     hyponims (dog, cat, cow)
    Compositional analysis: family relationships
     (mother, grandmother, father, etc.), gender (male,
     female)
    Semantic structure analysis: different meanings
     within different context (e.g. spirit or Holy Spirit)

Formal equivalence (later ‘formal
correspondence’) – ‘message should match as
closely as possible the different elements in
the source language’
                                 (Nida 1964: 159)

In other words, formal equivalence is focused
on the message of the ST, which produces a TT
which follows the content and the linguistic
structures as closely as possible.

Dynamic equivalence (later ‘functional
equivalence’) – ‘the closest natural equivalent
to the source-language message’

               (Nida 1964: 166, Nida and Taber 1969: 12)

In other words, in dynamic equivalence, the
message of the ST is transferred in such a way
that the effect on the receptor is as similar as
possible to the effect on the ST reader. This
requires the translator to adjust the text to the
target culture.

 ‘The   relationship between receptor and message
    should be substantially the same as that which
    existed between the original receptors and the
    message’ (Nida 1964: 159)

    Q1: But how is this to be achieved when the TT
    audience is far removed from the ST context?

    Q2: How does the translator determine who the
    audience is and what the ST author’s intention
    was?

Friends , Episode 1, Rachel has just run away from her
wedding and describes her ex-fiancée Barry by saying:

“And then, I got really        E allora mi sono davvero
freaked out, and that’s        spaventata e mi sono
when it hit me: how            anche accorta di come
Much Barry looks like          Barry assomiglia a E.T.
Mr Potato Head.                Cioè capite, mi era
Y’know, I mean, I always       sempre sembrato un viso
knew he looked familiar,       familiare ma...
but...”

Peter Newmark (1916-2011) was a UK-based
translation theorist. His approach departs from
Nida’s receptor-oriented focus and rejects the
idea that full equivalent effect can ever be
fully achieved in translation (e.g., in the case
of very old texts).

‘Communicative translation attempts to
produce on its readers an effect as close as
possible to that obtained on the readers of
the original. Semantic translation attempts
to render, as closely as the semantic and
syntactic structures of the second
language allow, the exact contextual
meaning of the original’
                        (Newmark 1981: 39)

Werner Koller was German translation theorist
based in Norway. He proposes a hierarchy of five
types of equivalence according to the
communicative situation:

  Denotative equivalence (extralinguistic context)
  Connotative equivalence (lexical choices)
  Text-normative equivalence (text types)
  Pragmatic equivalence (receiver-oriented)
  Formal equivalence (style and aesthetics)

 Correspondence     is a concept from contrastive
  linguistics that describes the resemblance and
  difference between words and structures in their
  linguistic forms.

 In Koller’s model, correspondence falls within the
  field of contrastive linguistics, which compares
  two language systems, and describes differences
  and similarities contrastively. For instance, the
  identification of false friends and signs of
  interference.

An invariant against which two text segments
can be measured to gauge variation from a
core meaning

      ST                                   TT
‘A bit with fire:’             Desperate situations
The medicine for a mad horse   require desperate
                               measures

               Tertium comparationis
   ‘Strong action is needed to control a difficult
                       person’?

 Why   do you think that there has been such
  heated debate over equivalence? How can the
  concepts discussed above be used in translator
  training today?
 Newmark (1981: 39, see Further Reading) states:
  ‘In communicative as in semantic translation,
  provided that equivalent effect is secured, the
  literal word-for-word translation is not only the
  best, it is the only valid method of translation.’
  Do you agree or disagree? Why?

What we studied so far:
 Munday, Jeremy (2012, Introducing Translation
  Studies. Theories and Applications, 3rd
  edition, Routledge, London/New York –
  CHAPTERS 1, 2, 3

Dr. Margherita Dore
margherita.dore@uniroma1.it

 Translationstrategies and procedures
 Vinay and Darbelnet’s model
 Catford and ‘translation shifts’
 Option, markedness and stylistic shifts
 The cognitive process of translation
 Ways of investigating cognitive processing

Jean Paul Vinay (1910-1999) and Jean
Darbelnet (1904-1990) – In their Stylistique
comparée du français et de l’anglais (1958,
Comparative Stylistics of French and English,
1995) carried out a comparative stylistic
analysis between English and French and noted
differences between the languages and
translation shifts and identified different
translation strategies and procedures.

Strategy – is an overall orientation of the
  translator (e.g. towards ‘free’ or ‘literal’
  translation, towards the TT or ST)

Procedure – a specific technique or method
 used by the translator at a certain point in a
 text (e.g. the borrowing of a word from the
 SL, the addition of an explanation or a
 footnote in the TT)

Strategies:
    Direct translation occurs when two languages
     show close correspondence in terms of lexis and
     structure; it uses borrowing, calque and literal
     translation.

    Oblique translation applies when restructuring is
     involved; it uses transposition, modulation,
     equivalence and adaptation.

These categories operate at different levels of
language: the lexicon, the syntactic structures
and the message.

Strategy    Explaination      Examples
Borrowing   the SL is         perestroika, datcha,
            transferred       sushi, kimono,
            directly into     kebab, computer,
            the TL            mouse
Calque      the SL expression Scence-fiction; flea
            or structure is   market
:
            literally         Finestra a bovindo;
            translated

Literal     Word-for-word     The pen is on the table
Translation rendering         La penna è sul tavolo

Procedure       Explaination             Examples
Transposition   Change of one part of We try harder= Ci facciamo
                a speech for another in quattro per voi!
                                      For patrons only= Riservato
                                      ai clienti.
Modulation      Change the semantics It is not difficult= è facile
                or point of view of  No smoking = Vietato
                the SL               fumare

 :
Equivalence     Same situation           Like a bull in a china shop=
                by different stylistic   Come un elefante in un
                or structural means      negozio d cristalli

Adaptation      Changing the cultural    Mr Potato Head= ET*
                reference that does
                not exist in the TC      *although it should normally be a
                                         target culture reference.

Procedure       Explaination           Examples

Amplification   TL uses more words     The charge against him= la
                                       condanna a suo carico.

False Friend    Similar term in SL and This is a library=
                TL but different       Questa è una biblioteca
                meaning                (non una libreria)
Compensation If a ST nuance can’t      Tu/lei= Mr/Sir; Mrs/Madam
             be save in the TL,
             one can be insert in
:            another place
Explicitation   Implicit information   The doctor=
                in the ST are made     dottore/dottoressa?
                explicit in the TT
Generalizatio   A more general word    Cottage cheese= formaggio
n               is used in the TT      fresco

Servitude refers to the obligatory
transpositions and modulations due to a
difference between the two language systems
(e.g. cold water -> acqua fredda)
Option refers to non-obligatory changes that
may be due to the translator’s own style and
preferences, or to a change in emphasis. It is
‘option’, according to Vinay and Darbelnet,
that should be the translator’s main concern.
(e.g. my mother calls at 6.00pm -> alle 6 mi
chiama mia madre)

John C. Catford (1917-2009) – In his book A
Linguistic Theory of Translation (1965), Catford
applies advances in linguistics to translation by
following the linguistic model of Firth and
Halliday.

Catford distinguishes between formal
correspondence and textual equivalence in
Translation. He also makes a detailed description
of the translation shifts that take place in the
translation process.

   Formal correspondent is defined as ‘any TL
    category (unit, class, element of structure, etc.)
    which can be said to occupy, as nearly as possible,
    the "same" place in the "economy" of the TL as the
    given SL category occupies in the SL’
    (e.g. belongings= effetti personali)

textual equivalent refers to ‘any TL text or portion
 of text which is observed… to be the equivalent of a
 given SL text or portion of text’
(e.g. he searched through my belongings= controllò la
 mia borsa)
                                            (Catford 1965: 27)

   In Catford’s own words (1965: 73; 2000: 141),
    translation shifts are ‘departures from formal
    correspondence in the process of going from the SL
    to the TL’
     level shifts (when something is expressed by
      grammar in one language and by lexis in another,
      (e.g. due turisti sarebbero stati uccisi= two tourists
      have been reported killed)
     Category shifts:
     structural shifts (grammar structure)
     class shifts (parts of speech, e.g. adj. vs adv.)
     unit (or rank) shifts (sentence vs clause)
     intra-system shifts (advice= consigli)

    Taxonomies are classifications of such shifts in an
    attempt to uncover the translation procedures and
    strategies

Jiří Levý (1926-1967) Literary and translation
theoretician. In his book, The Art of Translation
he introduces the literary aspect of the
‘expressive function’ or style of a text and the
goal of a translation is achieving and equivalent
aesthetic effect.

 Markedness    – a choice or patterns of choices
  that stand out as unusual or prominent
 Stylistic shifts – linguistic fingerprint of the
  translator

Bob Creeley “Translation” (from Echoes, 1982)
You haven’t all the time been   Invisibile sei sempre stata
here if not seen, not thought   Non pensata come presente
of as present, for when I       Perché quando ti cercavo
looked I saw nothing, when      Vedevo niente
I looked again, you had         E quanto guardavo ancora
returned. This echo, sweet      Eri tornata.
spring, makes a human sound     Eco, dolce sorgente
you have no need of, facts      Che crea suono umano
so precede, but you hear; you   Di cui non c’è bisogno
hear it, must feel the intent   I fatti lo precedono
wetness, mushy. I melt again    Ma senti, soltanto
into you ample presence.        Devi sentire l’intento
                                Molle umore
                                Mi sciolgo ancora
                                Alla tua immane presenza

 Observation  of the translation process and
  what skills and competences are required
  (Bell)
 Seleskovitch and Lederer’s Interpretive
  model, initially applied to conference
  interpreting, explains translation as an
  overlapping three-stage process of:
  understanding, to grasp the sense of the ST
  deverbalization, rephrase the sense of the
  ST
  re-expression, create the TT on the basis of
  the deverbalized sense.

 Relevance theory: Gutt describes translation
 as an example of a communication based
 around a cause-and-effect model of
 inferencing and interpretation. Translators
 need to decide if it is possible to
 communicate the informative intention,
 whether to translate descriptively or
 interpretively, what the degree of
 resemblance to the ST should be, and so on.
 These decisions are based on the translator’s
 evaluation of the cognitive environment of
 the receiver.

   Think-aloud protocols is a method of investigating
    the translation process, coming from the field of
    psychology and developed by Ericsson and Simon
    (1984). The translator is asked to verbalize his/her
    thought processes while translating or immediately
    afterwards (the latter known as ‘retrospective
    protocol’), often with no prompting on content.

   Triangulated with technological innovations:
     Video-recordings
     Interviews/questionnaires
     Key-stroke logging (recording of keyboard activity)
     Eye-tracking

 Translationstyle, can the translator’s ‘linguistic
 fingerprint’ be found if the TT is compared to
 that of the ST and its author’s?
 Examine more closely Seleskovitch and
 Lederer’s Interpretive model of translation. In
 what ways does the model differ from Nida’s
 three-phase model studied in Chapter 3? Which
 do you feel has more potential for explaining the
 translation process?

What we studied so far:
 Munday, Jeremy (2012, Introducing Translation
  Studies. Theories and Applications, 3rd
  edition, Routledge, London/New York –
  CHAPTERS 1, 2, 3, 4