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Interpersonal and Inter-textual Design in Translating

Interpersonal and Inter-textual Design in Translating. Ian Mason Heriot Watt University. Minimal mediation in translation. Ayatollah Khomeini (Iran), translated in The Guardian (U.K.) Internal policy speech about Islam and Iran’s war against Iraq (1989). Genre. The political speech

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Interpersonal and Inter-textual Design in Translating

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  1. Interpersonal and Inter-textual Design in Translating Ian Mason Heriot Watt University

  2. Minimal mediation in translation • Ayatollah Khomeini (Iran), translated in The Guardian (U.K.) • Internal policy speech about Islam and Iran’s war against Iraq (1989)

  3. Genre • The political speech • The religious sermon • Legal deontology

  4. Discourse • Cohesion • repetition • metaphor • Over-lexicalisation • Style-shifting

  5. Text type • Conventions of argumentation • The counter-argument: • ‘Of course… But…’ • ‘Of course this does not mean that we should defend all clergymen’.

  6. Minimal mediation • Being literal? • Trying to give the TL reader access to the ST voice (‘foreignisation’)? • Trying to show Khomeini as violent and fundamentalist?

  7. Functionalist theories • Human activity generally goal-directed. • Translating is a human, social activity. • Overriding consideration is the purpose (skopos) of the task. • ST as an “offer of information”. • ‘Intra-textual coherence’ (TT) comes before ‘inter-textual coherence’ (ST/TT). (Vermeer, Nord, etc.)

  8. ST/TT relationship • Nord: “loyalty” • Toury: moral principle inappropriate in a descriptive model • the Co-operative Principle (Grice)

  9. The Co-operative Principle • “Make your contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged” Grice (1975)

  10. Skopos • action in relation to end-user • action in relation to end-use • action in relation to all other participants • action in relation to socio-textual practices (genre, discourse, text type) • all governed by co-operative principle

  11. Problem • ‘intra-textual coherence’ (making sense) does NOT seem to be the main priority in the case of the Khomeini translation.

  12. Audience Design (Bell 1984) • Addressees (whose presence is known, who are ratified participants in the event and are directly addressed) • Auditors (known, ratified but not directly addressed) • Overhearers (known but not ratified participants and not addressed) • Eavesdroppers (presence not known)

  13. Initiative and Responsive Design Referee groups (in-group/out-group)

  14. “This is an extract from a message addressed by the Ayatollah Khomeini to the instructors and students of religious seminaries. It has been abbreviated and edited from a text broadcast on Tehran Radio and transcribed and translated by the BBC Monitoring Service”.

  15. Khomeini’s Design • Addressees = Instructors in seminary • Auditors = Students • Overhearers = Listeners to Tehran Radio • Eavesdroppers = BBC Monitoring Service

  16. Addressee = Employer (BBC Monitoring Service) Auditors = In-house users, government, etc. Eavesdroppers = Guardian readers Translator’s Design

  17. Maximal mediation in translation • English translation of Montaillou by E. Le Roy Ladurie • Social history of French medieval village • The deleted discourse

  18. Competing discourses in ST • Academic/intellectual discourse • ‘Quid’ (Latin); ‘catholicity’; ‘catharo-metempsychotic’; ‘slay’… • Informal tenor, colloquialisms • ‘grass’; ‘squeal’ • Jokes • ‘His Holiness the Wholesaler’; ‘feathered friend’…

  19. Deleted discourse in translation • Detached, matter-of-fact style • ‘Unfortunately, no Catholic records were kept at that time’; • ‘the names of those who had informed against him’; • Etc.

  20. ST audience design • Addressees: • French intellectual readers in general. • Auditors: • Other French readers; critics; reviewers. • Referee in-group: • Historians in the Annales school of historical writing

  21. TT audience design • Addressees: • General English readers, interested in French social history (paperback edition). • Auditors + referee out-group: • Specialist readers: English-language historians, critics, reviewers.

  22. Khomeini text: different audiences; different purposes. Interpersonal and intertextual design. Multiple sets of end-users. Intertextual impact on end-users. Inter-cultural factor. Audience Design in Translating

  23. The translator’s priorities • To be revisited in Session 4. • cf. the Co-operative Principle (Session3). • cf. the full range of participants in a translating/interpreting event (Session 1). • All these points are relevant to translator training (Sessions 5-7).

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