RECENT VIEWS ON TRANSLATION

1. RECENT VIEWS ON TRANSLATION

2. RECENT VIEWS ON TRANSLATION • 1900s - 1930s: W. Benjamin, E. Pound, Jorge Luis Borges, Ortega y Gasset • 1940s - 1950s: Vladimir Nabokov, Jean-Paul Vinay and Jean Darbelnet, Willard van Orman Quine, R. Jakobson • 1960s - 1970s: E. Nida, J.C. Catford, Jiři Levy, K. Reiss, James Holmes, G. Steiner, Itamar Even-Zohar, Gideon Toury, Hans Vermeer, Andre Lefevere, William Frawley, Philip Lewis, Antoine Berman, Soshana Blum-Kulka, Lory Chamberlain • 1990s:Ernst-August Gutt, Basil Hatim and Jan Mason, Keith Harvey, Lawrence Venuti

3. TRANSLATION THEORY a ‘complete’ theory of translation has three components: • specification of function and goal • description and analysis of operations • critical comment on relationships between goal and operations (Kelly 1979:1)

4. TRANSLATION THEORY  “presumes a systematic theory of language with which it overlaps completely or from which it derives as a special case according to demonstrable rules of deduction and application”. (Steiner 1975: 280, emphasis in the original)

5. TRANSLATION THEORY • always “rests on particular assumptions about language use, even if they are no more than fragmentary hypotheses that remain implicit or unacknowledged. • assumptions seem to have fallen into two large categories: instrumental and hermeneutic” (Kelly 1979, in Venuti 2000: 5)

6. TRANSLATION THEORIES • product-oriented  concerned with a "text-focused" empirical description of translations, and with larger corpuses of translations in a specific period, language or discourse type. • function-oriented  introduced a cultural component which affected the reception of the TT. • process-oriented  concerned with the problem of the "black box", i.e. what was going on in the translator's mind. (Holmes 1972, 1975:12-14)

7. TRANSLATION THEORIES • product-oriented emphasis laid on the functional aspects of the TL text in relation to the SL text • process-oriented emphasis on the analysis of what actually takes place during the translating process.

8. TRANSLATION THEORIES: AREAS OF INTEREST • The History of Translation investigates the theories of translation and translation criticism at different times, the methodological development of translation, and the analysis of the work of individual translators. • Translation in the TL Culture investigates single texts or authors, the influence of a text, or author on the absorption of the norms of the translated text into the TL system and on the principles of selection which operate within that system. • Translation and Linguistics  concerned with the comparative arrangement of linguistic elements of the SL and TL texts regarding the phonemic, morphemic, lexical, syntagmatic and syntactic levels it includes the problems of linguistic equivalence, linguistic untranslability, and the translation problems of non-literary texts. • Translation and Poetics  the literary translation theory and practice. (Bassnett-McGuire 1991:7-8)

9. THE ‘MISERY’ AND ‘SPLENDOUR’ OF TRANSLATION • “great translation must carry with it the most precise sense possible of the resistant, of the barriers intact at the heart of understanding” (Steiner 1975: 378). • translation  renders in the target language what the source language “tends to silence” (Venuti 2000: 54, Popa 2008: 35) • the ‘misery’ of translation  its impossibility, because of the linguistic and cultural differences between languages • the ‘splendour’ of translation  the translator’s ability to manipulate these differences and force the reader to go into the tradition and universe of the foreign language text

10. THE ‘MUSTS’ OF A GOOD TRANSLATION • Tytler' s rules  normative prescriptions deriving from the subjective and evaluative description of a "good translation“ :  the translation should give a complete transcript of the ideas 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. • a "good translation"  the translation “in which the merit of the original is so completely transfused into another language, as to be as distinctly apprehended, and as strongly felt by a native of the country to which that language belongs, as it is by those who speak the language of the original work” (Tytler 1791:79, quoted by R. Bell 1991:11).

11. RECENT VIEWS ON TRANSLATION: 1920s - 1930s • translation  recreating the values accruing to the foreign text over time and his utopian vision of linguistic ‘harmony’ (Benjamin 1923) • the translator’s ‘happy and creative’ infidelity (Borges 1935) • translation  a distinctive linguistic practice, as a ‘literary genre apart’. (Ortega. Y. Gasset 1937) the cause of the “enormous difficulty of translation”  “all peoples silence some things in order to be able to say others” (Ortega. Y. Gasset 1937)

12. RECENT VIEWS ON TRANSLATION: 1950s • translation theories  focused on the concept of translatability • Willard van Orman Quine’s (1950) later pragmatic view of translation  centered on meaning as conventional, socially circumscribed, the translated (foreign) text being rewritten in accordance with the values, beliefs and expressive means of the foreign language culture • the process of ‘dissemination’ of meaning, time, people, cultural boundaries becomes the necessity of demonstrating that any language could always be ‘shadowed’ or ‘possessed’ by another (Nabokov 1974 qtd by Bontilă 2006, in Gonzales and Tolron 2006: 144).

13. RECENT VIEWS ON TRANSLATION: 1960s -1970’s • translating  “a process of communicating the foreign text by establishing a relationship of identity or analogy with it” (Venuti 2000: 121). • based on the concept of equivalence  provided standards to evaluate translations: ‘faithful’ vs. ‘bad’ translations ‘beautiful’ vs. ‘ugly’ translations • G. Mounin (1963)  the concept of equivalence is based on universals of language and culture. • equivalence submitted to lexical, grammatical and stylistic analysis. • text typologyandtext function essential in establishing the degree of equivalence between the ST and TT

14. RECENT VIEWS ON TRANSLATION: 1960s -1970’s • Kőller (1979: 186-191, 1989: 99-104)  main concern was equivalence typology • TYPES OF EQUIVALENCE denotative: depending on an ‘invariance of content’ connotative: depending on similarities of register, dialect and style text-normative:based on ‘usage norms’ specific to the text type pragmatic: related to the degree of comprehensibility in the TC   PRAGMATIC EQUIVALENCE  made the TT easily comprehensible in the TC  FORMAL EQUIVALENCE  caused linguistic and cultural approximations

15. RECENT VIEWS ON TRANSLATION: 1960s -1970s • J. C. Catford (1965)  gave a thorough description of the grammatical and lexical shifts in translation, which were ‘departures from formal correspondence’. • J. Levy (1965) considers that pragmatic translation involves a ‘gradual semantic shifting’ due to the fact that translators have to choose from many possible solutions. In his opinion, “shifts work to generalize and clarify meaning, changing the style of a literary work into a dry and uninspiring description of things and actions (Levy 1965: 78-80, qtd. in Venuti 2000: 122). • A. Popovič (1970)  shifts in translation “do not occur because the translator wishes to ‘change’ a work, but because he strives to reproduce it as faithfully as possible”, the kind of faithfulness he has in mind being functional, with the translator using suitable equivalents in the milieu of his time and society (Popovič 1970: 80,82, qtd. in Venuti 2000: 122).

16. RECENT VIEWS ON TRANSLATION: 1970’s -1980s • K. Reiss (1971)  the “functionally equivalent translation needs to be based on a ‘detailed semantic, syntactic and pragmatic analysis’ of the foreign text” (Venuti 2000: 122). Venuti argues, “the pragmatic translator doesn’t simply analyse the linguistic and cultural features of the foreign text, but reverbalizes them according to the values of a different language and culture, often applying what House calls a ‘filter’ to aid the receptor’s comprehension of the difference” (Venuti 2000: 122). • I. Even-Zohar and G. Toury considered literature as a ‘polysystem’ of interrelated forms and cannons that represented ‘norms’ constraining the translator’s choices and the translation strategies. • Even Zohar argued that translation may adhere to norms rejected by the source language.

17. RECENT VIEWS ON TRANSLATION: 1980s • translation is not a sealed, "nomological" science but a "cognitive/hermeneutic/associative" one (Wills 1982: 16). • A translation theory is based upon: a) the concept of a universal language; b) a belief that deep-structure transfer is possible by a hermeneutic process; c) a qualitative ranking of texts, from a high level incorporating art and science texts to a low level including business and pragmatic texts. • translation research must develop a frame of reference to view a text as a communication-oriented configuration with a thematic, functional and text-pragmatic dimension.

18. TYPES OF TRANSLATION

19. TYPES OF TRANSLATION • intralingual translation/rewording an interpretation of verbal signs by means of other signs in the same language; • interlingual translation/translation proper  an interpretation of verbal signs by means of some other language, which describes the process of transfer from SL to TL; • intersemiotic translation/transmutation an interpretation of verbal signs by means of signs of nonverbal sign systems. (Jakobson 1959:232-9)

20. TYPES OF TRANSLATION • rank-bound translations the selection of TL equivalents is deliberately confined to one rank, used in machine translation, usually at word or morpheme rank; Rank-bound translations set up word-to-word or morpheme-to-morpheme equivalences, but not equivalences between high-rank units such as the group, clause, or sentence; such translations are often "bad" in that they involve using TL equivalents which are not appropriate to their location in the TL text, and which are not justified by the interchangeability of SL and TL texts in one and the same situation (Catford 1965:25) • unbounded translations, i.e. normal, total translations in which equivalences shift freely up and down the rank scale. (Catford 1965:24-5)

21. TYPES OF TRANSLATION • full vs. partial translations, referring to the extent in a syntagmatic sense; • full vs. restricted translations related to the levels of language involved in the translation process. TOTAL TRANSLATION  the replacement of SL grammar and lexis by equivalent TL grammar and lexis with consequential replacement of SL phonology / graphology by (non-equivalent) TL phonology / graphology. RESTRICTED TRANSLATION  the replacement of SL textual material by equivalent TL textual material at only one level (either phonological or graphic), or only at oneof the two levels of grammar and lexis. (Catford 1965)

22. TYPES OF TRANSLATION • free translation  is always unbounded, as equivalences shunt up and down the rank scale, but tend to be at the higher ranks, sometimes between larger units than the sentence.  characterised by lexical adaptation to TL collocational or "idiomatic" requirements • word-for-word translation is rank - bound at word – rank • literal translation  may start from a word-for-word translation but may make changes in keeping with the TL grammar (e.g. inserting additional words, changing structures at any rank, etc) may also be a group-group, or a clause-clause translation.  tends to remain lexically word-for-word, i.e. to use the highest probability lexical equivalent for each lexical item. (Catford 1965)

23. TYPES OF TRANSLATION • dynamic /functional (Nida and Taber 1969) vs. formal equivalence (Nida 1964) DYNAMIC EQUIVALENCE equated with the reader’s shadowy presence in the mind of the translator FORMAL EQUIVALENCE  equivalence of both form and content between the two texts. • the equivalent effect the desirable result rather than the aim of the translation (Newmark 1981) • achieving the equivalent effect is unlikely if:  the purpose of the SL text is to affect and the purpose of the TL text is to inform;  there is a clear cultural gap between SL text and TL text (in fact, translation merely fills a gap between two cultures if, felicitously, there is no insuperable cultural clash).

24. TYPES OF TRANSLATION • covert vs.overt translations (House 1977)  House insisted on “how much the foreign text depends on its own culture for intelligibility.  if the significance of a foreign text is peculiarly indigenous, it requires a translation that is overt or noticeable through its reliance on supplementary information, whether in the form of expansions, insertions or annotations” (House 1977: 24).

25. TYPES OF TRANSLATION • communicative translation  reader-oriented  pragmatic-oriented  functionally-oriented • semantic translation  the translator “may translate less important words by culturally neutral third of functional terms but not by cultural equivalents” (Newmark 1988:46)  the translator is faithful to the ST ignoring the real world of the target culture (Newmark 1977/1981/1988)

26. TYPES OF TRANSLATION • ‘paraphrastic’ offering a free version of the original, with omissions and additions prompted by the exigencies of form, the conventions attributed to the consumer, and the translator’s ignorance; • lexical rendering the basic meaning of words and their order; • literal rendering, as closely as the associative and syntactical capacities of another language allow, the exact contextual meaning of the original. (Nabokov 1974,1,vii-viii,qtd. in Bontilă 2006: 145)

27. TYPES OF TRANSLATION • general translation the translation or interpretation of non-specific language that does not require any specialized vocabulary or knowledge. • specialized translationspecific to different domains of activity: • financial translation • literary translation • medical translation • scientific translation • technical translation • legal translation

28. TYPES OF TRANSLATION • literary translation translation of literary texts (poetry, drama, novels, memoires, etc.) • non-literary translation translation of non-literary, or pragmatic texts (Ionescu 2000:37) The difference between literary and non-literary translation is that “the latter translates what is in the text, whereas the former must translate what the text implies“. (Ionescu 2000:38)