Riassunto esame Lingua Inglese, prof.ssa Gatto, libro consigliato "Translating Texts" di Ulrych

PHATIC

METALINGUAL

The emotive function expresses the inner states and emotions of the addresser.

The conative function seeks to affect the inner states and emotions of the addressee.

The referential function carries the extralinguistic information content, that is information for its own sake. It is also

called the informative function.

The poetic function is the particular form chosen for the message and is also called aesthetic function.

The phatic function establishes contact between addresser and addressee.

The metalingual function focuses attention on the code itself to clarify or re -negotiate it. It refers to the ability of

language to talk about itself.

2.3. LANGUAGE FUNCTIONS AND TEXT TYPES/DISCOURSE GENRES

The concept of language functions is closely bound to the classification of text-types, or discourse genres. The first

three language functions are the ones which occur most extensively over long stretches of discourse. Jacobson refers

to these as the emotive, referential and conative functions. Nida distinguished between the expressive, informative

and imperative functions of text. While Newmark prefers expressive, informative and vocative.

The emotive or expressive function is author-centred. It focuses on the author’s feelings and is therefore characteristic

of such text-types as creative literary texts, autobiographies, speeches, author’s prefaces and personal

correspondence. The author’s personal style of writing is part of the actual te xt and need to be translated intact.

The referential or informative function is content-centred since it focuses on the information carried. It is typical of

textbooks, technical reports and scientific articles. It is the actual content itself that should be translated accurately

and appropriately.

The conative or vocative function is reader-centred since the aim is to affect the reader’s behaviour in some way. Texts

in which the vocative function predominates are advertising, propaganda, polemical and pers uasive writing of any

king.

An important component in translating this function is decoding which form of address select. The translation of you

entails decisions on degrees of formality and number: the second person singular pronoun “you” in Italian is either

“tu” (informal) or “Lei” (formal) or even “Voi”) archaic or regional dialect or religious register). 3

2.4. TRANSLATION STRATEGIES

Differences in text types entail three different approaches to the text and three different types of translating. An

expressive text is SL oriented, an informative text is text-oriented and a vocative one is TL oriented. So translation

strategies to be adopted depend on text-type.

 An expressive text is author/SL centred: the personal components should be maintained in the TL version.

 An informative text is text/TL centred: the translator’s task is to convey the message accurately and in a way

that may be accessible to the intended TT reader.

 A vocative text is reader/TL centred: as such it has to be fully and immediately comprehensible to the reader

and above all it should fulfil its communicative function (persuading, warning, etc.) .

2.5. RHETORICAL FUNCTIONS

The last group of functions that plays an important role in the way texts are written and read, and therefore translated,

is that of rhetorical functions. After establishing ST’s discourse genres and its predominant language function, the

translator’s next task will be to determine what rhetorical strategies the author of the SL has used to achieve the

desired effect. Persuasion may be the main aim of a vocative text but the author still has a variety of rhetorical means

available to achieve it (narrating, describing and so on).

A text is generally made up of a sequence of rhetorical functions. But only one predominant rhetorical function is

realised at any one time, any other rhetorical functions that may be present are subsidiary to the main one:

argumentation, for instance, may also include narration or description or both. The predominant function of a text has

been called its dominant contextual focus. The utility of this concept to translation is that each text-type is

characterised by well-defined language markers. Identification of the dominant contextual focus of the SL will facilitate

and speed up the translator’s task of selecting equivalent linguistic features in the TL.

For examples, the expository text can be either descriptive or narrative and oriented towards events, people or

entities. The focus of descriptive texts is on objects and relations in space.

The focus of narrative texts is on events and relations in time. They are characterised by temporal sequences.

The focus of argumentative texts is on relations between concepts. Argumentation may be overt or covert.

Recognising the dominant contextual focus of the ST is crucial to understanding how a text’s surface function is being

manipulated by the author through the use of language. An appropriate translation will not convey the finer uses of

language but also any shifts in contextual focus. The translator is faced with the task of interpreting the intentions that

the SL writer wishes to communicate and of matching them up with the linguistic features of the TL that will achieve

the same functional effect in the TT. To be able to do this the translator need to be aware not only of the characteristics

of the various discourse genres in the two languages but also of how language forms and communicative functions

interact within and between languages. 4

TRANSLATING TEXT – CHAPTER 3

Competence in translating presupposes the ability on the part of the translator to interpret the function

of the SL text and rendering appropriately into TL. Another aspect to consider is concerning the context.

Language is influenced from factors in its socio - cultural context. So, to establish the overall meaning of

an utterance it isn’t sufficient take into account the addressee’s intentions and underlying communicative

motivations, but we also need to consider such as persons participating in the speech act, the topic and

Ciao

the setting. To give an example, the Italian is used as an informal greeting equally on arrival and

departure. For translating it into English, we need the first analyse the SL text to establish if the context

saying hello saying goodbye

is one of coming or one of going, so we can deduce if the function is or .

Context, Co-Text and Context of situation

Context is an important source of meaning, that gives the hearer or reader a frame of reference within

which to interpret what has been uttered or written. To give an example of an ambiguous phrase:

He delivered the punch

we can’t interpret it properly if we don’t know the circumstances (both verbal and non-verbal) in which

it was uttered. In other words, the interpretation of DELIVERED and PUNCH depends very much on the

context of the utterance. We can refer to a man who has brought a type of drink called Punch to someone’s

ha consegnato il punch

house and in this case, our interpretation requires the Italian form “ ”; if instead,

ha sferrato un pugno

we refer to a boxing match, we should prefer the Italian form “ ”. go with

Initially, the term context was used exclusively to refer to the words and sentences that a text,

which is, however, a complex entity consisting of more than a sum of its parts, since it is made up of a

web of interdependent relationships which confer meaning on each other and can only be interpreted in

relation to each other. Beyond the physical realisation of language, there is a total environment which

contains contextual features: we can therefore distinguish between the co-text, the linguistic context, and

the context of situation, the extra-linguistic one. In other words:

is the linguistic environment in which a word is used within a text;

CO-TEXT:

- the immediate physical, spatial, temporal, social environment in which

CONTEST OF SITUATION:

- verbal exchanges take place.

The first distinction between co-text and context of the situation was made by the anthropologist

Malinosky in his theory of context. He was faced with the problem of how to illustrate his ideas on the

remote culture of a group of South Pacific islanders to an English-speaking public. He found that the

translation with an extended commentary was the best solution to render the ST in English (TL) in a way

that it was intelligible. The translation with commentary, in fact, was able to provide information not only

1

about the immediate situation in which they were uttered but also about the total cultural background

which lay behind them and which determined their significance. Malinosky named the former context of

situation, and the latter context of culture, considering both crucial to the interpretation of the text. These

two notions are an integral part of the translation process and are valid for every culture and every

situation. Context of culture

Culture has generally been taken to refer to the personal development of a cultivated mind or a

knowledge of a country’s history and institutions as contributions to human civilisation. However, culture

is used in the sociolinguistic and anthropological sense to mean all socially conditions aspects of human

life, that is the way of life of a society. The Encyclopedic dictionary of semiotics defines more specifically:

culture is the totality of the signifying systems by means of which mankind maintains it cohesiviness

(its values and identity and its interaction with the world). These signifying systems comprise not only

all the arts (literature, cinema, theatre, painting, music, etc.), the various social activities and behaviour

patterns prevalent in the given community (including gesture, dress, manners, ritual), but also the

established methods by which the community preserves its memory and its sense of identity (myths,

history, legal systems, religious beliefs, et cetera).

Culture conditions people’s behaviour and is reflected in the language they speak; therefore, language is

an integral part of culture. An extreme view, formulated by Sapir and Whorf, claimed that the language

people speak determines their perception of reality as thought is conditioned by language. Furthermore,

as languages are structured differently, the language communities perceive the same reality in different

ways. However according to this theory, translation is impossible. Not cross-cultural communication can

take place because the speakers of the TL culture will not be able to conceptualise reality in the same way

as SL speakers do. An egg yolk is seen as being yellow by English native speakers but an Italian will speak

il rosso dell’uovo

of “ ”.

The other extreme is represented by Chomsky’s principle of language universals, that says that any

meaning can be conveyed from one language to another, and that any kind of translation is possible.

A more moderate view that enjoys wider acceptance is that “the lexical distinctions drawn by each

language with tend to reflect the c