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

Translating texts – chapter 11.1

Issues in the past

The word vs sense controversy raged for hundreds of years with various famous writers and thinkers taking one side or another. The basic issue was what length should the unit of text to be translated at any one time be: should it be each individual word, a phrase, a sentence or entire text?

At one end of the matter there was word-for-word translation: the unit of translation was the word or the individual phrase. This type of approach focused very much on the source text and was source language oriented. At the other end, there was imitation; the focus was obviously on the target text and the approach was target language oriented.

Cicero in the 1^st century BC was the first to speak in favor of translating ad sensum rather than ad verbum. Horace some twenty years later advised the translator to be faithful to the meaning of the sentence, not the word order. In the middle age, it was word for word translation that was most widely practiced, however, especially with regard to sacred texts. The reasoning behind this approach was that the order of words was divinely ordained and therefore had to be respected in the translated version as closely as possible.

The aim of two famous Bible translators, St. Jerome and Martin Luther, was to produce a vernacular version that was both readable and aesthetically satisfying to their target language readers. This meant changing the word order of the original to one that was suited to the target language. The translator decided what the sense of a phrase or sentence was and then rendered it appropriately in the target language. Martin Luther used the term to “Germanize” as an equivalent for the way he translated the Bible. He insists that it is the sense of the source language that should be translated and that his rendering in German was based on the way the people speak in the market place. He felt as the Bible was destined for ordinary people it was to be translated into a language they could understand. His translation of the Bible was audience oriented, the language was vulgarized in order to make it comprehensible to its destined readers. The concept of interpretation is an important one since it is closely bound up with the role of translator and the techniques of translation to be used.

A French scholar, Etienne Dolet, formulated one of the first theories of translation in 1540. He established five basic guidelines for the translator:

• Understand fully the sense and content of the original text
• Have a perfect knowledge of both SL and TL
• Avoid translating word for word: that is, be faithful to the meaning of the sentences and not to the word order
• Use a form of plain everyday speech and avoid borrowing foreign words from the SL or coining neologism
• Use a harmonious and natural style which is pleasing to the TL reader’s ear and intellect

Dolet encouraged the translator to clarify any obscure expressions in the original and to render the author’s intention rather than the words themselves.

It was John Dryden who, in the 17^th century, first categorized the translation process in England. He divided translations into three basic types: metaphrase, literal, word for word, line-by-line translation; imitation, where the translator uses the source text as a kind of pattern, but departs from it at will, confined, that is, neither by word nor sense. In between there is paraphrase, which means rendering the true sense of the original in an acceptable English form. Dryden himself preferred a midway approach between metaphrase and paraphrase.

A century later, Alexander Fraser Tyler criticized the trend towards producing translations that he felt were too free. He formulated three principles for making a translation and reiterates the need for the translator to have a perfect knowledge of the original, as well as a competent acquaintance with the subject matter.

• The translation should give a complete transcript of the idea of the original work
• The style and manner of writing should be of the same character with that of the original
• The translation should have all the ease of the original composition

The advent of Romanticism brought with it the assertion of individualism, of national languages and cultures, and of the freedom of the creative force. The translator was seen as a creative genius in his own right. He was in touch with the spirit of the original text and at the same time was in a position to enrich the literature and the language into which he was translating by reference to the source language. Goethe identified three types of literary translation. The first acquaints us with foreign countries from our own vantage point. The second Goethe calls “parodistic”: the translator supposedly wants to enter the spirit of the foreign land, but in fact only tries to appropriate this spirit and reconstruct it in his national one. The third and highest form of translation attempts to make the translation identical with the original so that the one is not accepted instead of, but actually takes the place of, the other.

The free/faithful debate continued into the 20^th century. The recurring issues throughout the ages seem to revolve around the two classical polarities: should the translator favor the SL content and form, or should he favor the TL reader by adapting the ST form to TL conventions? This dichotomy places the translator in quite a dilemma. As George Steiner has stated: “the craft of the translator is deeply ambivalent, it is exercised in a radical tension between impulses to facsimile and impulses to appropriate recreation.”

A modern approach to translation

In recent times, there has come the greater realization that these approaches to translation are not mutually exclusive. Much therefore depends on the type of text that is to be translated and its underlying purpose. Nowadays the bulk of translation is of technical manuals, scientific papers, documents and advertisement. An acceptable translation theory will need to take account of a wide variety of text-types. Nida himself proposed two basic orientations. One aims at formal equivalence, that is, the closest possible match of form and content between SL and TL. The other aims at dynamic equivalence: the TT should reproduce the same effect on the TL reader as the ST had on the original readers. Nida envisaged the process of translating as “reproducing in the receptor language the closest natural equivalent of the source-language message, first in terms of meaning and secondly in terms of style. An approach that is similar to Nida’s in many respects has been proposed more recently by Newmark, who distinguished between semantic translation and communicative translation. “Semantic translation attempts to render the exact contextual meaning of the original”. The communicative translation resembles Nida’s translation. The term chosen by Newmark for his second type of translation, communicative translation, however, may lead to misunderstanding since all translations are in a sense communication.

Future trends

Recent research on text-types and function has also led to development in the field of machine translations (MT). They are of course very different from human ones. The greatest obstacle about this type of translations regards ambiguity, as machine translation can be true to grammatical and lexical rules, but not to interpretation bound to cultural, emotional features. Therefore, machine translations will never be perfect and human intervention will be ever an important component.

Translating texts – chapter 2

Language functions and translation

The translator interprets the meaning of the ST in its linguistic and extra-linguistic contexts and relays it across language boundaries into the TT. The translator needs to have a working knowledge of how sentences are organized into larger units in the SL and TL and of the purposes or functions for which language is used. In other words, the translator should be aware of how the formal and functional levels of language interact both within the same language and between languages. An example is the question “Dove vuole che vada?”. I’m not asking on your opinion on where I should go, but my intention is to discourage your attention. So, a good English translation can be “Where do you think I’m going?” rather than “Where should I go?”

As we can see, people use words for a purpose: they do things with their words in a particular context and a specific culture. Successful communication takes place when the purpose of the message is encoded effectively and decoded appropriately. Cross-linguistic communication (such as a translation) is successful when the translator identifies the function of the ST and conveys it appropriately to the TT readers in their language and culture.

Language functions

The function of language are the ways people use language to achieve different aims and purposes. If communication is to be effective the participants must be sure that not only the surface structure of what is being said but also the underlying force of the utterance is transmitted and interpreted correctly and appropriately by the receiver. Even the most straightforward-looking utterances can convey a variety and involve a process of interpretation on the part of the receiver of the message. We can carry out different activities through language: we can agree, disagree, assert, blame, deny, promise, question, warn, and so on.

The ability of sentences to perform actions was first investigated by J. Austin. In his book “How to do things with words” (1962) he noted how all utterances have some communicative force in addition to conveying meaning. Austin distinguished three kinds of acts that can be performed by an utterance:

• The locution: the formal, literal meaning of a well-formed, meaningful utterance;
• The illocution: the communicative force which accompanies the utterance and is the act which is performed by it;
• The perlocution: the overall effect of the utterance on the actions, thoughts or beliefs of the addressee (hearer or reader).

The three acts together make up a speech act and a text is made of a concatenation of speech acts, one influencing the other. The illocutionary act gives an utterance its communicative force. Speech acts can be classified into categories which are generally accepted:

• Representatives: acts which seek to represent a state of affairs (stating, telling, etc.)
• Expressives: acts which give expression to the speaker’s mental and emotional attitude towards a state of affairs (deploring, admiring, etc.)
• Verdictives: acts which evaluate and relay judgement (assessing, estimating, etc.)
• Directives: acts which seek to influence text receivers’ behaviour (warning, prohibiting, daring, etc.)
• Commissives: acts which commit the speaker to a course of action (promising, vowing, etc.)
• Declarations: acts whose utterance performs the action involved (blessing, dismissing, etc.)

It is therefore necessary in communication to look behind the formal literal level of what is being said to understand the true intention of the speaker.