Jocelyne Vincent’s NOTES ON TRANSLATION EQUIVALENCE and ‘TYPES OF MEANING’ in texts

Jocelyne Vincent’s NOTES ONTRANSLATION EQUIVALENCE and ‘TYPES OF MEANING’ in texts • What is translation? • (ideally) the reproduction in a TL of a text in a SL with the same meaning/effect/functions etc But…

No twolanguages are organized in exactly the same way on the variouslevelsofdescription: • Phonological, morphological, syntactic, semantic, lexical, pragmatic level • Textual-rhetorical aspects • Conversational and sociocultural rules Furthermore….

If • Society and culture are reflected in language and • Societies and cultures differ from each other Then • Social and cultural associations of utterances from different languages are different That is…

There is no one-to-one correspondence between elements from any two language systems => PERFECT translation is NOT possible But…

since • Translation concerns actual texts (i.e. instances of language in use [single words, sentences or longer sentences] for specific communicative purposesat a given time) then • Translation may often be extremely SUCCESSFUL

Toexamine the questionofCommunicativepurposeweneed • To look in more detail at the different kinds of things that ‘texts’ can communicate • To consider making choices among the various bits of information carried by the SL text which must (in order to give priority to the original communicative purpose) be reproduced in the TL text But …

It is not possible because we must not only reproduce the bits of info in the SL but also respect the TL conventions • i.e. if we want to also reproduce the effects of the SL text in a way which is natural in the TL (not errors or ‘translationese’)

In order to makeourdecisions or choiceswhiletranslating, wehave to consider: • The text-type or genre • The connectedquestionof the functionof the textasintendedby the writer/speaker • The functionof the translationitself So…

What are the elementsamongwhichwemust decide? (focus here on the ‘meaning’ of the text) We can discern the following broad ‘bands’ of information or ‘types of meaning’: SENSE (denotation/referential meaning/conceptual meaning) Vs SIGNIFICANCE (connotation/associative meaning)

Sense covers so-called ‘cognitive’ or ‘logical’ meaning • The proposition (e.g. ‘kill’ = ‘cause become not alive’) • The logical presuppositions of sentences and words (e.g. X accuses Y of ‘z’ presupposes that X considers Y bad)

Significancecovers the followingtypesofmeaning: • Pragmaticillocutionary force, speaker goals (interactional, transactionaletc). • Contextualstylistic, situational, ethnographic • Allusive connotative, reflected, connotational, phonoaestetic • Emotiveaffective, attitudinal/evaluativemeanings

Any text (as an act of communication in a particular context) carries information, apart from its logical meaning, on various aspects of • The SPEAKER/writer (age, sex, social class, regional origin; role, emotional state, attitude to subject, goals); • The HEARER (i.e. the speaker’s perception of him/her on these parameters) • And their perceived RELATIONSHIP

It also carries information on • Its PURPOSE • Its DOMAIN and • APPROPRIATE CONTEXT OF USE in its textual structuring and other linguistic and stylistic characteristics .

Some examples • “The water’s boiling” • Proposition: acqua in ebollizione • Presupposition: • Logical: non bolliva prima • Pragmatic: penso che non lo sapessi • Illocutionaryforce: voglio che ne prendi atto e fai qualcosa • Contextual/ethnographicvalue: situation of a familiarrelationship • Whatdoesitconjure up foryou? • What do youthink “bolle l’acqua” / “l’acqua bolle”, and “the water’s boiling” conjure up in Italian and English respectively?

More examples • Allusive, connotative meanings of: • ‘kettle’, ‘?’; tazza di caffè, ‘cup of ?’ • Reflected • ‘cock’ to avoid which has shifted to ‘cockerel’ • Collocational • ‘brown bread’ ‘pane nero’ • Phonoaestetic • Slurp, slush, slosh, slime; bump, thump, plump, stump etc. • Emotive towards hearer (affective) • Riccardino, Ciruzzo etc. • Evaluation/attitude towards referent • ‘black, nigger, coloured’; ‘vecchio, anziano, di una certa età’, ‘pig-headed, obstinate, decisive, independent-minded’, etc. • Technical uses specific to domains • Editor, editing, director, paper, talk etc. • (think of the different meanings they have in different domains…)

Decisions, priorities, function and typeoftranslation • Facedwithany text the translatormustbeawareofallthesedimensions and makehis/herdecisionsasto the prioritiesaccordingto the PURPOSE tobeservedby the translated text too • A broaddistinctionoftypesoftranslationrelationshipbetween a SL and a TL text can bemadebetweenformal and dynamicequivalence. (=literal/free translation), a traditional way oftalkingaboutchoice in the translationprocess • The distinctionistoobroad and needstoberefined in termsofourtypesofmeaning, text-type and communicativepurpose.

Briefly, a scientific text intended for publication in a technical journal for experts will need to reflect logical, propositional and presuppositional information closely, as well as the appropriate formality of academic style (which might be more or less than in the SL), not to mention rhetorical aspects of thematic structuring and textual cohesion (which might be differently expected in the two languages);

a poem for study by students may be more profitably ‘glossed’ interlinearly; • the same poem to be published for literary appreciation for the general public must be translated so as to reproduce similarity of effect (i.e. as a poem). • If the original poem emphasizes phonaesthetic or collocational meaning, and exploits homophones as puns, etc. some attempt must be made to play on these levels; • if it focuses on content, then surface form can be ignored to some degree, if necessary.

If the text is an advertisement, then persuasive force and ‘catchiness’ is what counts, and the TL text may resemble the SL one only to some extent;

if it is a song…?, • Sub-titles for a film? • A text for dubbing a film sound-track?.

t should be clear that ‘comprehension’ and ‘translation’ of a L2 text into L1 are separate activities. • The first involves interpreting/understanding an SL text, • the second takes the first for granted, but goes one step further: it remodels, as far as possible what has been understood to produce a ‘real’, viable text in the TL, which will make sense and have significance in the TL (and will even mediate between the two cultures); the end product must not only be an accurate rendering of the various elements (and make the right decisions as to priorities among them), the function of the text and of the translation, but it must also be a good TL text too.

What does this imply as to the need for high levels of competence in the two languages? • Which is it best to translate into? The translator’s L1 or L2? • Should translator’s be necessarily alone in this? What about teams? • What about Aids/resources?

TASK 1 Read the following dialogue and imagine a situation in which it could take place. Then translate it by adapting your approach to the communicative situation you chose.

‘Well!’ the young man said. ‘Well!’ she said. ‘Well, here we are,’ he said. ‘Here we are,’ she said, ‘aren’t we?’ ‘I should say we were,’ he said, ‘eeyop! Here we are.’ ‘Well!’ she said. ‘Well!’ he said, ‘well.’ Dorothy Parker, quoted in Dodds 1985: 187

TASK 2Imagine a communication situation for the following text and then translate it into your first language. Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.Did Peter Piper pick a peck of pickled peppers?If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,where's the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked? http://www.geocities.com/Athens/8136/tonguetwisters.html

Jocelyne Vincent’s NOTES ON TRANSLATION EQUIVALENCE and ‘TYPES OF MEANING’ in texts