Lingua e Traduzione Inglese 2

The linguist must start by making a series of analytical hypotheses in order to finally produce a

translation manual that corresponds to a whole anthropological handbook.

According to Hjelmslev, a natural language consists of a plane of expression and a plane of content

which represents the univers of the concepts that can be expressed by that language. Each of these

planes consist of form and substance and both are the result of the organization of a pre-linguistic

continuum. For Hjelmslev, the continuum of content is the totality of all that can be thought and

said; each language organises the univers of what may be said and thought into a form.

The challenge for a translator, when two languages seem to have a different segmentation of the

content continuum, it to make a reasonable conjecture about the content space covered by a homonym

term in a given context. Form, substance, and continuum were all elements of the structure of a

language, and they are mutually related.

The substance of an expression is produced only when a communication process begins; translation

is a process that takes place between two text produced at a given historical moments in a

given cultural milieu. Thus in a text, which is a produced substance, we have a Linear Text

Manifestation (the words you are reading on this text) and the Sense ( the sense that a word acquire in

a given context) of that given text.

We can try to reconstruct the story from the plot, as our reading goes on, we will transform large textual

chunks into micro-proposition; then we can try to detect the psychological features of the characters

and their position.

Any interpretative bet on the different level of sense, and on their importance for the global

interpretation of the text, is obviously fundamental for any reader, but is essencial for a translator.

Another crucial point it that a plurality of levels can also be found in the Linear Manifestation (LM).

There are many substance in the LM; this is evident for many non-verbal system. In a verbal text the

linguistic substance is the most evident one, but it is not always the most relevant. The expression

Would you like to close the door? can express courtesy, love, rage, sadism etc. All these are

phenomena that linguistics considers as suprasegmental or tonemic, do not have directly to do with the

laws of a linguistic system.

To conclude, a text is the manifestation of a substance, an translation is not only concerned with such

matters as 'equivalence' in meaning, it is also concerned with the more or less indispensable

'equivalence' in the substance of expression.

There is no extact way to translate the word mus into English because mus covers the same semantic

space covered my mouse and rat. There is a negotiation about which portion of the expressed content

is strictly pertinent in that given context. Since languages are differently structured, translation is

impossible, and people in this world do translate and understand each other, it seems that the idea of

translation as a process of negotiation is the only one that matches.

The are cases in which translator are oblidge to work at a loss. For example, is the novel Baudolino:

Umberto Eco invented a pseudo-medieval North Italian language; these pages created many problems

for translators, some of them choose an Anglo-Saxon ares; in France there was langue d'oc and d'oil

etc, in all these cases it is impossible for the foreign reader to smell any original Northern Italian

fragrance.

Another phenomenon that the translator has to deal with, is the case of profanities and vulgar

expression; this is another case in which the translator must accept a definite loss.

There are cases in which the loss is so unavoidable that the translator (and the author too) resign

themselves to accepting a cut.

Sometimes a translator, in order not to miss an important detail, has slightly to enrich the original text,

this is the case of compensation. The only solution is to figure out what kind of world the original

sentences pictures, and then to see what kind of sentence in the destination language can contribute to

create the same world-picture in the mind of the reader.

In happens occasionally that, in order to avoid a possible loss, one says more than the original, and

perhaps to say more means to say less, the case of adding and improving, because the translator

fails to keep an important an meaningful reticence or ambiguity.

All the above examples tell us that the aim of a translation is to create the same effect in the mind of

the reader as the original text wanted to create. Instead of speaking of equivalence of meaning, we

can speak of functional equivalence: a good translation must generate the same effect aimed at by

the original.

There are also case in which the translator, in order to produce the same effect as intended by the

original text, partially rewrites it.

M. BAKER, "Equivalence above word level" (In Other Words)

When we consider what happens when words start combining with other words to form stretches of

language, we have to consider (also) that words are not strung together at random in any language;

there are always restrictions on the way they can be combined to convey meaning. One of the rules of

English, for example, is that a determiner cannot come after a noun.

Lexical patterning will be dealt with under-two main heading: collocation and idioms and fixed

expression.

COLLOCATION. We can define collocation as 'semantically arbitrary restriction which do not follow

logically from the propositional meaning of a word'; another way of looking at collocation would be to

think of it in terms of the tendency of certain words to co-occur regularly in a given language. Words

which we might think of as synonyms will often have quite different sets of collocates.

When two words collocate, the relationship can hold between all or several of their various form,

combined in any grammatically acceptable order; on the other hand, it is often the case that words will

collocate with other words in some of their form but not in others.

Difference in collocational patterning among languages are not just a question of using a different verb

with the given noun; they can involve totally different ways of portraying an event. Some collocation are

in fact a direct reflection of the material, social, or moral environment in which they occur.

Every word in a language have a range of items with which it is compatible. Range refers to the set of

collocates which are typically associated with the word in question. Two main factors can influence the

collocational range of an item . The first is its level of specificity: the more general a word is, the

broader its collocational range, and vice versa. The second is the number of sense it has; this mean

that here is no such thing as an impossible collocation, collocational ranges are not fixed, words attract

new collocates all the time.

For example the difference between compulsive gambler and heavy gambler is that the first is a

common collocation in English, the second represents an attempt to extend tge range of heavy to

include, by analogy heavy smoker, heavy drinker etc. This kind of natural extension of a range is far

less striking than marked collocations, a marked collocation is an unusual combination of word.

Collocational pattern are not always typical/untypical in relation to the language system as a whole. A

reader who is not familiar with a register may wrongly assume that some collocation are marked

(collocation and register).

What a word means ofet depends on its association with certain collocated (collocational meaning).

Differences is the collocational patterning of the source and target languages create potential pitfalls

and can pose various problems in translation. As long as a collocation can be found in the target

language which conveys the same or similar meaning to that od the source collocation, the translator

will not be confused ; translators sometimes get quite engrossed in the source text and may prodice the

oddest collocations in the target language for no justificable reason (The engrossing effect).

A translator can easily misinterpret a collocation in the source text due to interference from his native

language. This happens where a source-language collocation appears to be familiar because it

correspond in form to a common collocation in the target language (Misinterpreting collocation).

In rendering unmarked source-language collocation into his target language , a translator ideally aims

at producing a collocation which is typical in the target, at the same time, preserving the meaning

associated with the source collocation; translation often involves a tension, a difficult choice between

what is typical and what is accurate. Accuracy is no doubt an important aim in traslations, but it is also

important to bear in mind that the use of common target-language patterns which are familiar to the

target reader plays an important role too.

Some collocation reflect the cultural setting in which they occur. If the cultural setting of the source and

target language are significantly different, there will be instances when the source text will contain

collocations which convey what to the target reader would be unfamiliar associations of ideas (Culture-

specific collocations)

Unusual combinations of words are sometimes used in the source text in order to create new images.

Ideally, the translation of a marked collocation will be similarly marked in the target language (Marked

collocation in the target text).

IDIOM AND FIXED EXPRESSION. They are at the extreme end of the scale from collocations in one or

both of these areas: flexibility of patterning and transparency of meaning. They are frozen patterns of

language which allow little or no variation in form and, in the casa of idioms, often carry meanings

which cannot be deduced from their individual component.

Fixed expressions such as as a matter of fact allow little or no variant in form; unlike idioms fixed

expression and proverbs often have fairly transparent meaning. But in spite of its transparency, the

meaning of a fixed expression is somewhat more than the sum meaning of its words.

The main problems that idiomatic and fixed expressions pose in translation relate to two main areas:

the ability to recognize interpret and idiom correctly; and the difficulties involved in rendering the

various aspects of meaning that an idiom or a fixed expression conveys into the target language.

For idioms the first difficulty is being able to recognize them; there are various type of idioms, some are

easy, and include expressions which violate truth conditions ( raining cats and dogs) some are harder.

There are two cases in which an idiom can be misinterpreted: a) Some idioms can seem transparent

but they are not; b) Some may have very close counterpart in the target language but has totally

different meaning.

Idiomatic and fixed expression have individual collocational patterns. They form collocations with other

items in the text as single units and enter into lexical sets which are different from those of their

individual words.