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Beeby, Ensinger e Presas (2000) - Investigating Translation - Selected Papers From The 4th International Congress On Translation, Barcelona, 1998
Beeby, Ensinger e Presas (2000) - Investigating Translation - Selected Papers From The 4th International Congress On Translation, Barcelona, 1998
The Benjamins Translation Library aims to stimulate academic research and training
in translation studies, lexicography and terminology. The Library provides a forum
for a variety of approaches (which may sometimes be conflicting) in a historical,
theoretical, applied and pedagogical context. The Library includes scholarly works,
reference books, post-graduate text books and readers in the English language.
ADVISORY BOARD
Jens Allwood (Linguistics, University of Gothenburg)
Morton Benson (Department of Slavic, University of Pennsylvania)
Marilyn Gaddis Rose (CRIT, Binghamton University)
Yves Gambier (Centre for Translation and Interpreting, Turku University)
Daniel Gile (Universit Lumire Lyon 2 and ISIT, Paris)
Ulrich Heid (Computational Linguistics, University of Stuttgart)
Eva Hung (Chinese University of Hong Kong)
W. John Hutchins (Library, University of East Anglia)
Werner Koller (Department of Germanic, Bergen University)
Jos Lambert (Catholic University of Louvain)
Willy Martin (Lexicography, Free University of Amsterdam)
Alan Melby (Linguistics, Brigham Young University)
Makoto Nagao (Electrical Engineering, Kyoto University)
Roda Roberts (School of Translation and Interpreting, University of Ottawa)
Juan C. Sager (Linguistics, Terminology, UMIST, Manchester)
Mara Julia Sainz (Law School, Universidad de la Repblica, Montevideo)
Klaus Schubert (Technical Translation, Fachhochschule Flensburg)
Mary Snell-Hornby (School of Translation & Interpreting, University of Vienna)
Sonja Tirkkonen-Condit (Savonlinna School of Translation Studies, Univ. of Joensuu)
Gideon Toury (M. Bernstein Chair of Translation Theory, Tel Aviv University)
Wolfram Wilss (University of Saarbrcken)
Judith Woodsworth (Mt. Saint Vincent University, Halifax)
Sue Ellen Wright (Applied Linguistics, Kent State University)
Volume 32
Investigating Translation
Selected papers from the 4th International Congress on Translation,
Barcelona, 1998
INVESTIGATING
TRANSLATION
SELECTED PAPERS FROM THE 4TH INTERNATIONAL
CONGRESS ON TRANSLATION, BARCELONA, 1998
Edited by
ALLISON BEEBY
DORIS ENSINGER
MARISA PRESAS
Universitat Autnoma de Barcelona
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Table of Contents
Introduction ix
S I
Investigating Translation Paradigms
1. A Fresh Look at Translating 3
Eugene A. Nida
2. Theory and Practice of Translation Studies Revisited: 25 Years
of Translator Training in Europe 13
Albrecht Neubert
3. The Scope of a Communicative Theory of Translation: An
Attempt at Systematisation 27
Zinaida Lvvskaya
4. Living on the Border: Feminine Subjectivity in Translation 37
Pilar Godayol Nogu
5. Translation Theory in Chinese Translations of Buddhist Texts 43
Chu Chi Yu
6. Self-Translation as an Extreme Case of the
Author-Translator-Dialectic 55
Helena Tanqueiro
7. The Degree of Grammatical Complexity in Literary Texts as a
Translation Problem 65
Isabel Garca Izquierdo and Josep Marco Borillo
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S II
Investigating the Translation Process
8. Opportunities in Conference Interpreting Research 77
Daniel Gile
9. The Computer in Empirical Studies for the Didactics of
Translation 91
Wilhelm Neunzig
10. Acquiring Translation Competence: Hypotheses and
Methodological Problems of a Research Project 99
PACTE
11. Translation Strategies and Translation Solutions: Design of a
Teaching Prototype and Empirical Study of its Results 107
Christopher Scott-Tennent, Mara Gonzlez Davies and Fernanda
Rodrguez Torras
12. From Techniques to Types of Solutions 117
Patrick Zabalbeascoa
13. Translation Strategies: Somewhere over the Rainbow 129
Ricardo Muoz Martn
S III
Investigating Translation and Ideology
14. Language Models and Catalan Translation 141
Joaquim Mallafr
15. Dubbing for Catalan Television: The Acceptable Translation 153
Natlia Izard
16. La traduccin del titulo cinematogrco como objeto de
autocensura: El factor religioso 161
Vctor M. Gonzlez Ruiz
17. The Translation of Mass Fiction 171
John Milton
18. La Traduction des contes de fes: Lenfant entre la tradition et
lavenir 181
Ana Maria Clark Peres
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S IV
Investigating Translation Receivers
19. What Do We Know About the Target-Text Receiver? 195
Christiane Nord
20. POSI-tive Thinking About Quality in Translator Training in
Finland 213
Rosemary Mackenzie
21. Towards a More Systematic Approach to the Translation of
Advertising Texts 223
Beverly Adab
22. The Translator as Mediator in Advertising Spanish Products in
English-Speaking Markets 235
Adrin Fuentes Luque and Dorothy Kelly
23. Translation as a Component of Software Localization Projects 243
Joan Parra
24. Traduccin de los nombres vernculos ingleses de animales en
los textos de divulgacin cientca 251
Carlos Garrido
25. A Pragmatic Approach to the Description of Phraseology in
Biomedical Texts 261
Maribel Tercedor-Snchez
References 271
Name Index 289
Subject Index 291
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Introduction
The growth of translation in the last 25 years has lead to signicant changes in
theory and practice. There seems to be a common goal amongst translation
scholars to achieve recognition for Translation Studies as an independent
discipline in its own right. Eorts are being made to nd more objective and
scientic research methods. However, as translation is such a complex phenome-
non, dierent studies choose to focus on very diverse aspects, for very dierent
reasons and using a wide variety of paradigms. Despite these dierences, there
is much common ground and in this volume, Investigating Translation, we hope
to illustrate the unity in the variety.
For a long time translation research was based on the translated text, on the
product, and of course, many scholars still take the translation as the object of
their research. Translations are studied as a social artefact and studied synchroni-
cally or diachronically. The purpose of this research may be to apply dierent
paradigms to nd the most fruitful tools for analysing translation. This may lead
to a critical revision of existing paradigms and the development of new ones.
Alternately, the purpose may be to describe norms prospectively, or, in the case
of minority languages, a prescriptive approach may be taken to nd rules for
linguistic normalisation. The paradigms used may include more traditional
approaches, such as literary criticism, contrastive linguistics, discourse analysis
and descriptive translation studies, as well as sociological paradigms, amongst
which one may nd postcolonial criticism and gender studies.
Translation process studies are a relatively new phenomenon. They take the
mental processes of the translator as the object of their study, concentrating on
the skills, knowledge and strategies needed to carry out this process, or they may
focus on the process in which these skills, knowledge and strategies are acquired.
A key question in this approach is the methodology used in the research, so an
immediate aim may be to nd appropriate tools for empirical research. The
ultimate goal is to throw light on the translators black box, so as to dene
models for translation competence and acquiring translation competence. The
main paradigms used in this research are cognitive psychology, psycholinguistics
x INTRODUCTION
teaching method and provide a basis for future experiments. Patrick Zabalbeascoa
reviews and studies the development of apparently established concepts, such as,
process, technique, method and strategy, defending a more coherent use of
terminology. He suggests how these concepts may be useful to describe certain
phenomena, how they may be used as categories and tools for description and to
make the learning process more ecient. Ricardo Muoz Martn focuses on
complex problem-solving strategies. He has designed a binary decision tree to
help students to focus on certain textual and contextual constraints and develop
potentially optimal solutions.
In Section III, Investigating Translation and Ideology, the authors are
interested in the inuence of ideology on translation. Joaquim Mallafr, one of
the most prestigious Catalan translators, describes the process by which each
translator develops his own language model within a social context. He analyses
two collections of Catalan translations of canonical texts of world literature,
published in the eighties, and relates the translation norms observed to the
ocial language model in force. Natalia Izard describes the use of acceptable
translations when dubbing programmes for Catalan television (TVC). Cultural
and linguistic adaptations are recommended by TVCs style-book so that TV
programmes should seem to have been conceived in Catalan. This domestication
is a defensive reaction from a minority language and is one aspect of the Catalan
governments linguistic policy.
Victor Gonzlez Ruiz studies the translation of lm titles in Francos Spain
(193975) and shows how censorship can be explicit and implicit under a
dictatorship. The lm industry used self-imposed censorship in line with the
ocial Catholic morality to please the State Censorship Boards. John Milton
describes the characteristics of the translation of mass ction for the Clube do
Livro in Brazil. Commercial interests were responsible for many of these
characteristics, but others may be due to the dominant ideology of the military
dictatorship (196489), when the Clube do Livro thrived. Sexual, scatological,
religious and socialist references were neutralised in the translations. Ana
Mara Clarks study of Brazilian translations of fairy tales for children shows a
tendency by the translators to idealise the childs universe. Over-simplication
and a moralising tone indicate the adults image of the child reader, very
dierent from todays children.
Section IV, Investigating Translation Receivers, is dedicated to the
growing eld of research into translation readers. Christiane Nord, one of the
leading gures in functional translation studies, opens this section by making a
distinction between the receiver and the addressee, the abstract notion the
translator has of the receiver. The results of the studies she presents suggest that
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INTRODUCTION xiii
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Eugene A. Nida
The poor rating of translating, in comparison with such other skills as music,
graphic art, and dance, has always puzzled me. If, as I. A. Richards declared
translation is perhaps the most complex event in the history of the cosmos,
(1953) why should translating not have greater prestige and certainly be better
rewarded nancially. But people seem to take for granted that any bilingual
person can interpret or translate, and accordingly, interlingual communication
must not be such a dicult task. Unfortunately, many persons do not realize that
most translations are not only poor but at times even misleading. In fact some
translations into English by professional translators have as many as fteen
expressions per page that are not normal English, either because the translator had
not fully understood the source text or was the victim of a translationese virus.
Translating and interpreting are innate skills because almost any multilingual
can hear or read a statement in one language and respond in another language
with an expression that is at least somewhat equivalent in meaning. Even pre-
school children often serve as eective interpreters for recently arrived immi-
grant parents, and they seem to accomplish the task of interpreting or translating
without any particular frustrations. It all seems so natural, until such children go
to school and begin learning about nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc., at which time
their natural skills seem to be side-tracked by dependency on various grammati-
cal classes of words.
Some translatologists would like to regard translating as a science, but an
important distinction must be made between the specic act of translating and
the study of translating as an important interlingual and intercultural phenome-
non, best referred to as Translations Studies. There is no widely accepted
theory of translation because we simply do not know, and perhaps never will
know, what goes on in the black box of our brains. In a sense we are like
alchemists before the discovery of dierent atomic weights and valences of
diverse chemicals made possible the science of chemistry or like physicists
4 EUGENE A. NIDA
inspiration of the Greek text, the translator simply could not bring himself to
translate meaningfully. At last, he declared, If I only understood exactly how
the words t together, I could translate! And that proved to be precisely the
problem; he knew the meanings of the individual words but not how they
combined to make sense. He had not paid enough attention to the context of this
letter nor to the manner in which the author normally constructed meaningful
utterances, nor what other authors had written about similar matters. Translators
must go beyond dictionaries and grammars to investigate the contexts of related
discourses and of the corresponding cultures.
Because of the numerous examples of translation problems encountered by
translators of the Hebrew Old Testament or the Greek New Testament, some
people have assumed that my ideas about translating developed as a result of
extensive contacts with Bible translators in more than 200 languages. But my
principles of translating were formed long before I began to help Bible transla-
tors. When I did write books and articles to help the more than 5,000 people
world wide engaged in Bible translating, I quite naturally used illustrations drawn
from such experience. But these were not the basis of my understanding of how
and why translations should represent the closest natural equivalence.
My basic ideas about principles of translating developed during my studies
at the University of California at Los Angeles, where as a Greek major I was
fascinated by the literary character of the Greek Classics, especially the timeless
relevance of Euripides, the magnicent style of Thucydides, the shifts from
hilarious humor to exquisite dialogue of Aristophanes, and the incredible
sensitivity in Sapphos poems. Our teachers would never permit a literal
translation of a text because such a rendering would indirectly but inevitably
depreciate the quality of the Greek text and at the same time would encourage a
poor use of ones own language. A detailed comparative study of dierent
translations of the Classics soon revealed that in many respects these translations
were superior to many translations of the Bible which are too often inuenced by
theological presuppositions.
As the result of a course in historical and descriptive linguistics in my
senior year and the reading of Bloomelds Language and Malinowskis Coral
Gardens, I could see how closely language is bound to culture. Sapirs analyses
of Southern Paiute also make language a universal phenomenon, which was
further enlarged by studies in cultural anthropology at the University of Michi-
gan. I began to see how language is layered, not only in structures of words,
grammar, and discourse, but in levels of relevant contexts that provide the
framework for understanding texts. Language became as much a part of culture,
as spirit is a part of body. This means that ultimately people understand a text
6 EUGENE A. NIDA
only on the basis of the relevant contexts, a fact integrally related to all types of
verbal communication.
In one language of East Africa in which certain tonal distinctions had been
missed by a translator in speaking and writing the language, what was supposed
to mean this cup of blessing do we bless actually meant this cup of poison,
do we bless. Under other circumstances most people would have immediately
recognized that this was merely a mistake in pronunciation and orthography, but
the local people never recognized such a mistake, because they had a practice of
drinking a poison cup as an ordeal to prove their innocence. Accordingly, the
people assumed that the Christians each Sunday drank a bit of miraculously
transformed poison in order to show that they were innocent. These indigenous
people were doing what everyone does in trying to make sense of a strange
statement: they immediately try to determine the meaning in terms of their own
culture.
In other instances the local culture can provide a fascinating context for a
correct understanding and appreciation of a biblical text. For example, in
explaining to some West Africans the creation story in Genesis, Chapters 1 and
2, the translator told the people that the name Adam actually means earth or
ground and that the name Eve means life, to which one insightful person
exclaimed, Then this means that the story is not just about two people, but
about everyone of us. This alert African had immediately associated the biblical
account with the mythic context of his own culture. Fortunately, he did not have the
literalist verbal background that is typical of so many people in the Western World.
Since all verbal communication is based on the two fundamental processes
of selection and arrangement and since the original author has already selected
certain basic concepts and has arranged these in a text, presumably a translator
only needs to duplicate what the author has already done. But translating is not
that simple. In the rst place, the ideas represented in the source text are a
reection of a particular culture, and the intended audience of a translation may
not share such concepts nor place the same value on the corresponding ideas.
Furthermore, languages do not dier in what they can say, but in how they say
it. What is linguistically obligatory in one language may not be so in another.
For example, singular versus plural number is obligatory in Indo-European
languages, but not in Chinese. In English all sentences must have a formal
subject, even if it is no more than a functional zero, e.g. there, as in there is a
worm in that apple or an anticipatory it in it is a shame for him to feel defeated, but
in Chinese a subject that is clearly evident from the total context is simply omitted.
Because language is linear, arrangements must also be linear, but they also
need to express dierent levels of relevance. That is precisely why all languages
A FRESH LOOK AT TRANSLATING 7
and distributional classes and not upon referential classes. This means that such
expressions as
(27) jumped the fence vs. broke the fence
(28) climbed the mountain vs. blew up the mountain
are considered to represent the same semantic relations. But in jumped the fence,
the so-called object marks the location of the jumping not the entity aected by
the jumping. The same type of distinction applies to the set climbed the mountain
and blew up the mountain. Compare also the following set:
(29) he followed the road vs. he wrecked the road.
Most grammars list be and become as attributive verbs in so-called equational
sentences, but other verbs serve the same purpose, e.g.
(30) They felt sick.
(31) They turned pale.
(32) They ended up tired.
(33) They seemed listless.
(34) They appeared dejected.
Some languages, however, have additional obligatory categories, e.g. degree of
reliability of information. Several indigenous languages of South America have
at least three degrees of certainty indicated by enclitics. The rst degree marks
information known personally by the speaker. The second degree indicates
information obtained from reliable sources, and a third degree takes no responsi-
bility for the information. In other words, the information is legendary or mythic.
The potential for building grammatical constructions is so enormous that at
times bureaucrats become more interested in their way of speaking or writing
than they do in producing understandable texts. In large international organiza-
tions the multiplicity of languages and the traditions of juridical texts tend to
produce grammatical absurdities in many texts that defeat the very purpose of
eective communication. The following sentence is not an unusual one in
documents of the Commission of the European Union:
(35) The Diario Ocial de las Comunidades Europeas (DOCE) of 13.1.98
publishes a notice (98/C 804) of initiation of an investigation of
imports of canned tuna originating in Ecuador with a view to
reintroducing the Common Customs Tari duty applicable to that
product, following the Commissions receipt from Spain of a com-
plaint pursuant to Article 14(1) of Council Regulation (EC) No
A FRESH LOOK AT TRANSLATING 11
12 EUGENE A. NIDA
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Albrecht Neubert
time was just as, if not even more inuential. I am, of course referring to Eugene
Nidas, seminal Towards a Science of Translation (1964). Though written from
the specic perspective of the practice of Bible translation, it must be looked
upon as the work of a well-known American linguist turned translation
student.
Linguistics was hailed as a science pilote that seemed to promise ample
rewards for all those students and scholars who had decided to make translation
their main academic occupation. Their professed goal to describe, explain and,
last but not least, to teach translation, that is, the task of rendering a product of
a source language into one of the target language, had to be formulated in terms
of linguistics. And this corpus of ideas about language was equally thought to be
the main source of knowledge that was to inuence the various components of
the students curriculum. Thus the institutionalisation of translation studies
occurred under the auspices of the study of languages, specically, as this
academic eld was understood in many philology departments. This latter
ingredient included, quite signicantly, much of literature plus culture and
civilisation of the respective countries, the languages of which happened to be
the working languages of the translation students. But everything was dominated
by how this was expressed by language.
More aptly, the linguistics of translation always referred to a language pair.
This is why I focused my Copenhagen paper on the correspondences between
source and target languages. The underlying idea, supposed to condition and
shape whatever translators would produce as a result of their endeavours, was the
replacement of L1 linguistic units and structures by L2 units and structures.
Individual renderings at sentence level, which came to be regarded as tertium
comparationis, were understood as being enabled by the resources of the target
language system in relation to the source language system.
In eect, a diagram of the then dominant linguistic model of translation
could simply be as follows (actually this was precisely the diagram I used in my
Copenhagen lecture!): L1 gets restructured by L2. For every L1 word or meaning
and every L1 grammatical, i.e. morphological and syntactical pattern, there are
one or several potential L2 correspondences. These correspondences make sure
that L1 is completely recovered by L2. The source system becomes projected
onto the target system, which acts as the L1s match. Or the linguistic means of
the L2, the translators tool kit, reect those of the L1. For instance, L2 tenses
step in for L1 temporal distinctions, L2 words rephrase L1 lexical originals. As
can be expected, the resulting system of correspondences exhibits very few one-
to-one relationships. One-to-two, -three, or one-to-many correspondences abound,
only to be disambiguated when the words and structures are translated on the
sentence level. Part of these linguistic juxtapositions were, of course, also one-to-
zero relations, which, though more intriguing, could mostly be treated with the
16 ALBRECHT NEUBERT
help of paraphrasing L2 means. The more elements of the two language systems
were included in the overall network of correspondences the more comprehensive
was the repertoire of building blocks accessible to the prospective translator.
However, the upshot of all this was the realisation that knowledge of
language was clearly not enough for successful translation. Students were asked
to develop a keen awareness of the matching potentials of the working languag-
es. Exercises might include methods of how to convert English progressive
tenses into languages where other constructions were supplied by the system. Or,
lexical elds characteristic of the German educational system had to be reordered
in terms of French, Spanish, or Russian when particular words were translated
into their respective sentence contexts.
Obviously, all considerations guiding the study and practice of translation in
the European universities tted perfectly into the contrastive brand of linguistics
well established as a new and ourishing branch of applied linguistics. Thus,
for translation studies to become a legitimate member of the academic family in
the arts sector seemed to be a foregone conclusion. Translation, by the mid-
seventies, had achieved the status of a linguistic paradigm, more precisely, a
contrastive linguistic paradigm.
And this is where the founding of European translation departments in the
academe found its higher justication. It looked as if translation studies lled
an existing slot. That the training of translators was a practical necessity for
society was one thing, but to install it in an academic setting was another. And
translation scholars had more or less persuaded their philological colleagues that
contrastive language studies, which had previously also transformed foreign
language teaching, supplied the necessary scholarly credentials.
The historical picture I have drawn so far is not complete. Convincing as it may
seem that translation students were able to make academic headway as contras-
tive linguists, the reality of the translation process had always proved much more
complex. As translators had always known and translation teachers had to
admit to their students in class an adequate target version of an original was
the result of system-linguistic recoding only to a certain extent. Often enough
target sentences which were neatly recoverable in terms of the correspondence
relations of contrastive linguistics turned out to be quite correct but not entirely
adequate renderings of their target originals. Evidently, the information as to
how to hit upon a more satisfying translation, which is both correct and
adequate is provided by insights from a corpus of knowledge that goes beyond
the translators language qua systemic competence.
THEORY AND PRACTICE OF TRANSLATION STUDIES REVISITED 17
decisive input came from the study of texts and not from contrastive linguistics,
where the topic of the text was not thematised until the mid-eighties or nineties.
By contrast, a fairly independent discipline was rapidly developing in the
seventies, whether it was usually called text linguistics, discourse analysis (van
Dijk 1985) or, more rarely, text science (Beaugrande 1980, 1981). Generally this
was not to the liking of the true-blooded linguists with structuralist and, soon
enough, Chomskyian leanings, who viewed this extension of the linguistic eld
of study to the text as impure, risky or, at least highly premature. Premature
and perhaps even misguided, was the tenor of the reproaches that were levelled
against the textlinguists in the light of the fact that so much about the subtleties
of the inner sentence had not yet been properly described and rigorously
explained. There is, I think, quite a lot to be said in favour of the implacable
attitude of the dyed-in-the-wool linguists when they regarded the inclusion of the
text into the realm of language studies with extreme suspicion. They feared, and
I think rightly, that the properties of discourse required much more than linguis-
tic expertise. There is more between sentence and text than is dreamed of in a
linguists philosophy.
This is why I wonder whether the methodology of linguistics as linguistics
is able to cope with this enormous expansion of scope. What was involved
turned out to be much more than the stu of language because texts are held
together by realms of knowledge that spread over many elds, in fact, text
structures are patterned by world knowledge. Linguistic aspects of the text
become overlaid by encyclopedic domains.
The textual or rather the text-scientic paradigm involves an explanatory
frame that is inseparable from the mindset of the expert who produces the text.
Translators, in exchange, must try to emulate real-life communication not only
between people with everyday or general interest, whose cultures may share
textual features, but more importantly and, of course, more intriguingly, between
specialists, whose knowledge and cultural worlds may be wide apart.
It is a well-known fact that a dicult L1 text can tax the L1 readers
immensely if they are not the normal L1 addressee. Imagine then the enormous
extra problems encountered by translators if they believe they can approach such
texts primarily as a linguistic construct. Instead, source texts should be, and
normally are, read and analysed as complex semantic loads coded by unique
discourse signals. These markers allow the allocation of a text to a particular text
class. At the same time they ensure that the text is interiorised as a unique
exemplar of its text class. And text classes are constituted by more than formali-
ties. They presuppose the competence of knowledgeable text users. Text mean-
ings are intricately interwoven with text shapes, both on a macro- and a micro-
textual level.
Think of the textual intricacies, such as the isotopic chains linking the words
THEORY AND PRACTICE OF TRANSLATION STUDIES REVISITED 19
and, above all, the technical terms of a textual superstructure (van Dijk 1980), or
of the characteristic sequences of morpho-syntactical conventions distinguishing
the discourse of expert communications. These have to be grasped and properly
identied as what they are to contribute to the global meaning to be translated.
Furthermore, the construction of the target text must be based on an intimate
knowledge of the text-building principles of the L2 culture. All this is part and
parcel of the overall message that has to be put across.
The textual paradigm of translation has as its background the textworlds of
the two communicative cultures involved. These cultures branch into vast
networks. They exhibit textual domains characteristic of all or more often
groups of L1 and L2 users. In particular, it is the vast framework of L1 and L2
parallel texts that lends itself as material support. By this term we mean texts
that are not directly related to translations. They are the normal products of L1
and L2 discourse, outside the realm of translation. What makes them parallel are
the identical or similar communicative conditions under which they have been
produced time and again. This is why they share signicant textual markers
although, and this is the point that makes them so informative and helpful for
translators, they may and often do exhibit striking lexical, syntactic, and stylistic
dierences in their respective L1 and their L2 realisations. Translators can take
parallel texts as their model if they are intent on producing target versions that
can be accepted by L2 recipients as genuine constituents of their familiar native
textworld. As an aside, Id like to point out that the adjustment of translations to
L2 parallel texts does not only apply to linguistic restructurings of various kind,
lexical, grammatical and textual. It also encompasses more substantial alter-
ations such as, for instance, additions and cuts as well as shifts, which are
deemed recommendable or even necessary in the L2 genre corresponding to its
L1 counterpart.
At this point I hasten to add that the enculturation of translations into the L2
communicative culture is by no means the only way to apply the textual model
of translation. A particular translation assignment may call for quite the opposite
procedure, viz. the target version should openly betray L1 textual features
because not familiarisation but alienation is expressly intended, maybe by the
commissioner of the translation or by the circumstances of the concrete trans-
lational situation. I think examples can easily be supplied.
What is essential in this context is the obvious fact that this method of
bringing the L2 reader closer to the L1 textworld is not a deviation from the
textual paradigm. It is rather a consequence because this approach oers a rich
diversity of textual options to the discourse-sensitive translator.
The way originals are approached is a function of textual considerations
couched in the realities of the translation market. The impact of discourse is
manifold. Generic provisions, aecting the classes of text, as well as holistic
20 ALBRECHT NEUBERT
concerns, arising out of the needs of any particular text, yield a multifaceted
repertoire of guidelines for prospective translators (Neubert 1996: 9194). As a
matter of fact, the integration of all translation activities into the prevalent
discourse habits of the receptor community, or, to paraphrase Even-Zohar (1978),
into the L2 communicative polysystem, present a most varied pattern with regard
to the relationship of translations to their translated source texts and, more
signicantly, the multiplicity of L1 discourse situations. This relationship is
anything but single-minded. It has nothing to do with such utterly misleading
notions as a translation must be such and such. On the contrary, thinking in
term of textboundness implies there can never exist such a thing as the
translation. Translations always vary over time and place.
tacitly been taken for granted, namely, that in a time of growing specialisation
when everyone was proud to admit that they knew more and more about less
and less, translators by contrast were expected to know everything about more
and more. With the spectacular penetration of translation activities into practical-
ly all areas of the global village, quantitative as well as qualitative demands on
translators and interpreters were raised dramatically. Though in the public eye the
translators craft is still largely misconstrued as that of a mere language
mediator, the normal pattern of expectation, both from the angle of the sender
and from that of the addressee, is by no means that restricted. Everyone expects
to be served with the real thing, that is, translators are always supposed to rise
to the occasion of oering their clients nothing but the true meanings of the
message across the language bar. By this demand, translation users insist that
translators be equipped with all the knowledge ingredients necessary to safeguard
smooth communication in politics or industry, in science and technology, in the
arts as well as in the world of sport, in short, in everyday matters as well as in
specialist contexts. Often enough the expert in a eld protests or, at least is taken
aback when a translator misses a point allegedly simple enough for a novice in
the specialist eld. We all have experienced cases like this.
subject matter, experience, language, textuality, etc. They are placed in the
background, whereas the forefront is given over exclusively to the mental
processes going on after reading the original and before formulating the target
version.
Of course it is quite another matter, how these disregarded features are
brought in at a later stage when insights of the mental model are used to shed
light on inquiries leading into other directions. It is certainly rewarding not only
to study the mental strategies adopted by professionals compared with beginners
(Krings 1988), but to apply the striking results in teaching novices.
Similarly the modelling of translation from the angle of comparative culture
studies, valuable as it is in its own right, aords elucidation and, in fact,
explanation of an approach that usually has translation criticism as its main
agenda.
Furthermore, the implication of the translation market, that is, the economics
of the profession, has very clear implications for the practical model of the
translation classroom. Translators are not only expected to produce perfect
translations t for the printer. Clients often demand a whole battery of working
and gist translations, to be completed in very dierent time spans.
Last but not least, there is a revolution under way as a result of the use of
electronic means to enhance the work of translators. I am not primarily thinking
in terms of automatic translation, but rather about the much more important and
promising perspective of computer-aided translation and the signicant way it
changes and expands the horizon of the craft. This new dimension is already
changing translation teaching, turning the classroom into computerised work
stations. It goes without saying that this transformation has an important impact
on translation studies.
A new synthesis?
with new authors and new topics entering the scene almost every month.
To conclude, it was no accident that I have not once used the term theory.
I do believe that the rise of the term translation studies has been positive. It is
true, the term translation theory appears now and again. But, I think, this usage
is usually meant to be a synonym for translation studies, depending upon the
author more than upon the language.
But I dont want to quarrel about words. If I bring up the theory issue now
it is for a more serious reason. Theory for me is an ambitious term and should
be used with discretion, at least in its dominant sense current in Britain. It is well
known, especially in American English, that theory can also be taken to mean a
particular conception or view of something to be done or of the method of
doing it, or even just a guess or conjecture (The Random House Dictionary of
the English Language, 2nd ed. 1987). Theory of translation, however, should
aspire to be a coherent group of general propositions used as principles of
explanation for a class of phenomena (ibid.).
It is my rm conviction that, in spite of their remarkable ndings in many
areas, so far translation studies have not achieved theoretical status. Maybe the
time is ripe, or perhaps just riper, to string together the various strands of our
knowledge about translations and translation processes. To be more specic, I
think the interdisciplinary paradigm has not only brought to light the pressing
need to look at the complexities of our eld from various angles. It has at the
same time cleared the ground that had been notoriously obscured by a host of
theorists who claimed to describe the translation as such from their favourite
vantage point, discouraging the views of others as o the point. In actual fact,
what we have been facing in the last quarter of a century has been an often
embarrassing and even irritating talking at cross-purposes.
Perhaps a new synthesis could spring up from the interdisciplinary para-
digm. Perhaps it would lead to a genuine theory. What might be feasible is the
development of a number of partial theories or subtheories, by systematically
amalgamating individual models or perspectives of translation. This process
could then be improved or speeded up by combining two or more mini-theories
to achieve more comprehensive conceptualisations, which would not only cover
more ground but would yield more overarching explanations by including more
classes of the phenomenon. In my view a genuine or comprehensive theory of
translation would be an exercise in dialectics. On the one hand it could be built
up by any number of specific theories concentrating on and explaining the
categories arrived at by looking at translation from dierent angles. This
development is certainly under way. On the other hand, and to some extent as a
result of integrating these partial views we would have to inquire into by which
factors can be brought together to yield a general theory of translation. Are there
any binding forces at work that can be recognised as holistic patterns? To
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26 ALBRECHT NEUBERT
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Zinaida Lvvskaya
Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria
Our dierences of opinion are not due to the fact that some opinions are more
reasonable than others, but rather that our thoughts run along dierent lines
and we do not contemplate the same things.
(Ren Descartes. Discourse on the Method)
Introduction
to translation theory, precisely because the research was not based on a scientic
hypothesis that could be conrmed, amended or rejected by empirical data.
The communicative approach to translation (where translation is seen as an
intercultural verbal activity) has thrown open a whole new realm of possibilities
for the Science of Translation. However, at the same time, the approach requires
the systematisation of dierent aspects of scientic knowledge, so that they can
be tested to see whether they really constitute a system and can be applied in
practice.
Here, we shall analyse the scope of a communicative theory of translation
(Lvvskaya 1997) using the scientic methodology and logic used by those
sciences which study objects which cannot be observed directly. The aim of this
analysis is to show that the scientic knowledge on which our communicative
theory of translation is based, does constitute a system. To that end, we shall use
the inductive-deductive method and scientic reection. We shall also indicate
the various stages in the development of our hypothesis.
Methodological premises
Theory about an object that cannot be observed directly does not use data which
can be analysed by the senses, or premises which are in themselves evident, or
axioms. On the contrary, this kind of theory has to cope with the absence of
completely reliable sources of scientic knowledge. This is not only true for the
Science of Translation, but also for other sciences which study objects that
cannot be observed directly or could not be observed during a certain period in
the development of this scientic knowledge. In such cases, scientic hypotheses
are advanced, based on the data provided by other sciences and scientic
reection.
Scientic methodology advances hand in hand with scientic knowledge
itself. For example, Descartes considered the only valid source of scientic
knowledge to be those premises which were beyond all reasonable doubt (what
we would now call common sense). Spinoza maintained that science could
deduce other truths beyond those supplied directly by the force of reason. Now,
these reasonable ideas seem to have lost ground with the development of
experimental sciences.
Science has made enormous progress and has discovered new truths.
Therefore, when attempting to develop a theory, it is important to bear in mind
the history of science, not only the history of one particular science, but also
other related sciences. In our case, these are all those sciences which study
human behaviour (psychology, the general theory of communication, sociology,
pragmatics, the theory of action and others).
THE SCOPE OF A COMMUNICATIVE THEORY OF TRANSLATION 29
Each science requires the development and the support of the rest and,
therefore, no one science can be considered fundamental or basic. Even philoso-
phy, which has always been considered to be the science draws upon other
elds. Thus, the interdisciplinary nature of the Science of Translation, which is
often stressed by translation theorists, is not an exclusive or distinctive character-
istic. Furthermore, all sciences start with questions, not certainties. Certainty
itself is always relative; it is an end, not a beginning.
The rst task faced by all research is to decide what we really want to
investigate. Once this has been done, we look for the factors of the problem,
that is, those factors which determine how the object of research functions. The
analysis of these factors may open up possible ways of solving the problem. In
the process of evaluating the various suggestions and suppositions, we may nd
new factors which are then incorporated into our hypothesis. This is the way
scientic hypotheses are developed, as the result of a chain of events. A system
may be discovered, if the original a priori is valid and the logic of the research
has not been infringed upon.
Any hypothesis should be applicable. That is, it should be possible to test
it in practice to see whether it can solve a given problem: in other words, that
it leads towards the prescribed goal. During the testing of a scientic hypothesis,
new suppositions or reasons will appear, which will either conrm or invalidate
the whole hypothesis or a part of it. The validity of a hypothesis can also be
conrmed if it is possible to deduce one part of the whole from another. It was
Kant who said that scientic knowledge can only exist when the human brain
orders and organises data.
Therefore, research begins with uncertainty and takes as given, or a priori, the
premise considered most adequate to solve a problem. Thus, the linguistic theory
of translation worked upon the supposition that the process of translation was a
linguistic operation. During the practical process of testing, this hypothesis was
proved to be mistaken. It could not explain the behaviour of the translator when
faced with no linguistic equivalences in the target language, or the impossibility
of always using linguistic equivalences in the target text even when such exist,
or the need to expand, or reduce, the target text. In short, it could not explain all
the partial or total changes in the linguistic (semantic) structure of the target text,
in comparison with the original (9\&@&F8"b 1985: 674).
In the communicative theory of translation, we start with a dierent
hypothesis: translation is deemed to be an intercultural communicative activity.
The activity of translating is like any other activity as dened by action theory:
30 ZINAIDA LVVSKAYA
it has a structure which includes its aims, the means to achieve them, the
dierent stages of the process, sub-phases, and the results of the process. The
aim of the activity of the translator will depend on how translation is dened.
We dene translation as equivalent intercultural communication, the product of
which can be dened as a communicatively equivalent representation of the
original text in another cultural milieu (Lvvskaya 1992: 313).
By comparing the structures of equivalent and heterovalent intercultural
activities (the latter being that which does not pursue communicative equivalence
between the ST and the TT) and noting their dierences, we have reached the
conclusion that dierent types of bilingual activity exist. This, in turn, has led
us to the following conclusion: dierent activities cannot be explained by the
same theory, given that they are determined by dierent factors. Each activity
requires its own scientic explanation, that is, its own theory.
Thus, in our opinion, the key problem of translation is the communicative
equivalence of two texts. The principal factor in this problem is how sense is
made and interpreted. Advances in the study of pragmatics, semantics and
information theory have suggested the importance of extralinguistic factors in
making and interpreting sense. However, these studies have not been sucient
to describe and dene the nature of the activity of the translator and the factors
which determine it. Pragmatics was right in linking the sense of a text into its
authors proposed intention. However, there is still a certain lack of denition of
the concept of sense and its relationship with a texts content/meaning. Obvious-
ly, these problems are directly related to equivalence in translation.
This presents us with a new problem to solve (9\&@&F8"b 1985: 76143;
Lvvskaya 1997: 342). Research into the sense of a text has allowed us to
discover other factors which inuence translating. The sense of a text is a
subjective and extralinguistic category, the product of the purpose of a given
individuals communicative activity in a given situation. The meaning (of a word,
a phrase or a series of phrases logically linked together) is a linguistic category
and, therefore, is objective for all the individuals who share the same culture.
The relationship which exists between the linguistic meaning and the sense of a
text is similar to that which exists between the philosophical categories of form
and content. If, within a cultural poly-system, the same sense can be expressed
with dierent meanings, all the more reason for this to be true when it is
transferred from one culture to another.
The sense of a text has a hierarchical structure that is made up of three
components: the situational component (the communicative situation), the
pragmatic component (the authors intentional-functional programme in the text)
and the linguistic component (the content of the text, which is the result of the
interaction between the lexical and the grammatical meanings). The communica-
tive situation dominates the hierarchy since it participates both in shaping the
THE SCOPE OF A COMMUNICATIVE THEORY OF TRANSLATION 31
sense of the text and its interpretation by the receiver.1 The pragmatic component
is subordinate to the situational component, and the linguistic component is
subordinate to the other two in the hierarchy of sense, since the author of the text
chooses the way of expressing his ideas according to his intentional-functional
programme and the given communicative situation.
Since no two individuals share the same knowledge, experiences or values,
the interpretation of a texts sense by a receiver will always be somewhat
dierent from the original sense intended by the author of the text. No message
is ever perfectly understood. However, the more knowledge author and receiver
share, the easier communication will be.
Research into the structure of sense has allowed us to deduce some charac-
teristics of the real nature of the activity of the translator and equivalence. These
deductions seem so clear that they could almost be regarded as axioms:
(1) Given the importance of extralinguistic knowledge (encyclopaedic, situational
and background) and its primacy over the linguistic component of sense,
translation, like any other verbal communication, involves intellectual activity.
(2) Given the inter-subjective nature of any verbal communication and the
relative nature of the receptors comprehension of the sense of the text (in
translation there are two receptors: the translator and the person for whom the
TT is designed), communicative equivalence will always be relative. (3) Given
the intercultural nature of bilingual communication, the communicative situation
always changes when the translator produces the TT. There is a basic contradic-
tion in trying to produce a TT which will preserve the pragmatic component of
the ST in a new communicative situation (in another cultural environment), given
the possible lack of coincidence between the knowledge, experience, values and,
naturally, the verbal and non-verbal behavioural norms of the two cultures (the
factor of cultural intertextuality). Clearly, the only possible way to solve this
contradiction is to modify the linguistic component of the TT with respect to the
ST in order to t the new communicative situation.
These deductions allow us to look more closely at the factors which
determine the activity of the translator and, thus, to formulate new suggestions.
All the preceding arguments lead us to conclude that these factors are situated in
two closely related spheres: cognitive and cultural. Cultural-cognitive competence
includes knowing how to use linguistic resources correctly within certain
conceptual frameworks and in accordance with the norms of verbal and non-
verbal behaviour. Without this competence, the translator cannot understand the
sense of the ST, de-objectivise it, nor produce the TT, objectivise it.
If we accept the mechanism described above for creating and interpreting
sense, the cognitive-cultural nature of the factors that determine translating, and
the conclusions reached by other authors (3.&,>8@ 1992) as the basis for our
research, we can use deductive logic and scientic reection to suggest, albeit
32 ZINAIDA LVVSKAYA
sketchily, what these factors are. They include the following: (1) The translators
presuppositionary, background and encyclopaedic knowledge, together with his
ideas about what is known by the other two communicants, seen as representa-
tives of their respective cultures. (2) The translators axiological knowledge and
his ideas about the axiological knowledge of the other two communicants, seen
as representatives of their respective cultures. (3) The translators knowledge
about the norms of verbal and non-verbal behaviour in both cultures, including
textual conventions. (4) The translators knowledge about other aspects of the
author of the ST and the receiver of the TT (seen as individuals) which may be
relevant (place of birth, life history, historical period, social condition) as well as
other circumstances relevant to both communicative situations (where, when and
in what circumstances the ST was produced and the TT is being produced).
(5) The translators ideas, reached by de-objectivising the ST, about the
authors own method of achieving the goals of his verbal activity (his idiolect).
(6) The translators ideas, resulting from all the above knowledge, about the
diculties the new receiver may have in interpreting the TT.
As translation is a poly-determined activity, some factors may conict with
others. Logically, the translator resolves this contradiction in favour of the factors
which are most important in any given situation (Lvvskaya 1997: 73).
In addition to the cognitive-cultural factors there are at least two more
evident factors. The rst is the translators professional experience, which
requires no further comment here. The second additional factor is working
conditions and it will be considered in relation to the dierent branches of the
science of translation (specic theories).
These suggestions about the factors which determine the options open to a
practitioner of equivalent intercultural activity are necessarily hypothetical and do
not pretend to be complete, even though they have been tested in practice in
translation classes and in several doctoral theses. A scientic hypothesis should
be able to indicate which lines of research should be followed, even though each
step of the research may suer modication or the hypothesis itself change. This
has been my experience. In a book about theoretical translation problems, written
fourteen years ago (9\&@&F8"b 1985), we claimed that translation competence
included expertise in the so-called translation techniques. Later, we rectied
this conceptual error and we are pleased to know this new vision of the problem
is shared by other researchers (Elena 1994).
The hypothetical nature of a theory does not mean certain deductions cannot
be made, so long as they do not contradict the remaining suppositions, that is,
they are logically sound. This method has allowed us to reach a further deduction
about the nature of translating. This is related to the normative nature of
translating (Lvvskaya 1997: 5860) and clearly contradicts the widely held
opinion that the Science of Translation is not normative. We believe this opinion
THE SCOPE OF A COMMUNICATIVE THEORY OF TRANSLATION 33
determine the activity of the translator are cognitive and cultural and, therefore,
the same for any combination of languages.
Teaching Translation
36 ZINAIDA LVVSKAYA
against the backdrop of comparative functional stylistics. The ideal aim of the
teaching of a language, be it the mother tongue or a foreign language, is to train
the student to understand and produce texts of dierent styles and functional
genres by applying the verbal and non-verbal norms of behaviour and, more
specically, the textual conventions of each culture. Unfortunately, this aim is
still very much of an ideal and not precisely because of any fault on the part of
the language teachers. Comparative functional stylistics still has a long road to
travel from the perspective of research despite the enormous practical importance
of the same, since translation of conventional texts represents almost one hundred
per cent of all the translations on call in the labour market. We cannot aord to
waste more time in this eld and, precisely for that reason, many of the research
projects which are currently underway in the various faculties of Translation and
Interpreting have to do with the problem of comparative functional stylistics.
Conclusion
Notes
1. The motivations and intentions of the author of the text are shaped as a result of the interaction
of individual characteristics relating to his individual mental framework and factors pertaining
to the communicative situation in itself. The person receiving the text, likewise, manages to
make sense of the communication by tallying the linguistic / semantic meaning of the text with
his own knowledge and with the factors which are relevant to the communicative situation in itself.
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this textual journey, are based on the conviction that it is possible to construct a
cultural object from the borderlands, from a space in which both subject and
object sense themselves to be in contact and in mutual contamination. In large
part, this is also the conviction of the person who translates as/like a woman.
What, however, does translating as/like a woman mean? Does it imply a non-
stable subject who is at home in all those borderland states found in life? Is it
possible to construct a politics of identity that presents an absolute, immobile,
silent subject? Above all, how can a translation survive if it does not question its
subject?
The theory and practice of translating as/like a woman, being a political and
social discourse that criticises and subverts the patriarchal practices which render
women invisible, assumes a feminine subjectivity. That is, it makes plain that the
common basis of its activity is a subject who, in the words of Milagros Rivera
(1994: 62), vive en un cuerpo sexuado en femenino (lives in a feminine body).
However, despite sharing a common politics of identity, the dierent feminisms,
among them those in the eld of translation, interpret and express feminine
subjectivity, also known as feminine identication (Fuss 1995), in dierent
ways. Similarly, they also dier in their denitions of their universal categories,
such as women, identity, gender, sex, experience and history. As a
result, some translators, like Lori Chamberlain (1988) and Amy Kaminsky
(1993), suggest that these are unstable starting points for developing either a
theory or a practice of translation. For this reason, they cast doubt on the
possibility of building a feminist theory of translation given the contingency and
mobility of its universal categories.
This raises an urgent question: is it feasible to believe in a politics of
identity which, in its denition of itself, claims that its categories are premises
which are neither problematic nor questionable? How can a politics of identity
survive if it does not take into account the idea that its universal categories must
be permanently open and questioning in order to lay the ground for the inclu-
sions or exclusions of its future demands? Thus, if we wish to move closer to the
unresolved question of the feminine subject in the practice of translation as/like
a woman, as well as in all elds of general feminist study, we must rst inquire
into the theoretical problems and the practical limitations of the concept itself.
The rst problem challenging any attempt to establish the concept feminine
subject translator is the essentialism into which the intersection gender/
translation falls. Were a stable subject to become the starting point for a social
and political theory, such as the practice of translating as/like a woman, this
would imply the irrevocable closing of the debate regarding the construction of
the subject itself, and, therefore, the immobilisation of the subject/object relation-
ship. The desire to elaborate a more denitive theory embracing a more deni-
tive subject in order to facilitate the reconstruction of textual complexity in
40 PILAR GODAYOL NOGU
mind that all texts and all subjects say what they say on the basis of what they
do not say. Both a translated text and feminine subjectivity must be described not
only in terms of the content of their discourse, but also in terms of what is
excluded. The maxims: a text expresses what it expresses, but also expresses
what it does not express and a feminine subjectivity contains what it contains,
but it also contains what it does not contain, should be read not as negations
and contradictions but rather as corrections and (re)armations.
Moreover, translating as/like a woman does not presuppose a materialisation
of the feminine subject translator, but neither does it negate it rather, it
problematises it. The identity of all feminine subjects is found, then, in the
critical reection of the processes of exclusion which form the basis on which
the subject establishes her meanings, that is, what she provisionally excludes
from her representation while recognising that this judgment is neither denitive
nor irrevocable.
If the process of translating as/like a woman avoids postulating the existence
of a feminine subject translator as a xed, immobile, absolute category as the
traditional ontological arguments do (Butler 1990: 134), this means it can never
ascertain the absolute truth of any translation. This in turn implies that feminist
translation can only aim for permanent reection and self-criticism in its
representations, its methods, applications, focalisations, textual processes and
provisional tactical decisions.
Finally, to return to the concept-metaphor of the borderlands with which we
began since, although it may seem that we have left it far behind, it has served
as guide throughout this textual journey. Living on the border is an allegory for
translating as/like a woman. In the end, what is translating as/like a woman if not
situating oneself in an indeterminate space, neither inside nor outside, questioning
and problematising ones own identity? It is an activity that involves making use
not of speciously neutral, so-called objective strategies, but rather dynamic
procedures and tactics, which negotiate and are negotiable, open and contingent,
which never assume the absolute totality of a feminine subjectivity in translation.
Thus the non-absolute and non-categorical representation of the feminine subject
in the practice of translating as/like a woman neither means the collapse of nor
demonstrates the utopian nature of its politics of identity. Rather, it means the
demand for a kind of subjectivity dierent from the conventional, predetermined
and immobilised subjectivity of patriarchal discourses. It is a question of a
feminine subjectivity which demands openness in readings and meanings, which
makes plain that both text and translator say what they say on the basis of what
they do not say, and which implies that all feminine subjects neither entail nor
deny textual truth in translation. This means to assert our claim to dierence, to
the feminine, on the basis of questioning and problematising identity in translation.
This is tantamount to living the possible impossibility of translating on the border.
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Translation Theory in
Chinese Translations of Buddhist Texts
Chu Chi Yu
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Terminology
What are known as literal translation and free translation in the West are called
direct (or straightforward) and sense translation in China. In ancient times,
however, Chinese translators of the Buddhist scriptures referred to the binary
poles as simple (or plain) translation and sophisticated (or sometimes
polished, elegant, or elaborate) translation. The so-called simple
translation and sophisticated translation are largely synonymous with direct
vs. sense translation used in modern times, but they are not exactly identical.
Sophisticated translation is usually understood to be sense translation. For
example, a 6th century commentary states that, Zhi Qians translations are
elegant and sophisticated and procure the holy message indirectly. (quoted in
Shi Huijiao 1992: 15). Here sophistication was equated with indirectness
(sense translation).
However, the term sophisticated may sometimes contain the meaning of
44 CHU CHI YU
elegance of language, and the true taste attened by the extravagance of style
(quoted in Shi Sengrui 1984a: 36). The highly acclaimed translations by Kumara-
jiva, whom modern critics tend to classify as a sense translator, the ancient
scholars never termed as sophisticated; on the contrary, they spoke of his
versions as simple but not uncouth, brief but without losing the essence
(quoted in Shi Sengzhao 1984: 39). Apparently, the early views were in favour
of simple translation.
To what extent, then, are the simple translations simple? A verse from
Diamond Sutra provides a typical example: twelve hundred and fty bhikkhus
(the Buddhas disciples) was translated as ban shisan biqiu bai or, literally,
half thirteen bhikkhus hundred. It is virtually impossible for any reader without
knowledge of the original to understand that the number should be read as
(0.5+13)x100. It is like translating the Roman numerals IV as one ve
with the expectation that the reader will decipher it to mean minus one plus
ve. Even numbers, which are perhaps the easiest to translate, were rendered
unintelligible by early Chinese translators under the guidance of Indian monks.
This example shows that simple is not always as the name suggests.
Development
Let us turn to the theories. The earliest extant discussion on translation problems
is Zhi Qians Preface to Dhammapada, in which two opposing views of
translation were recorded:
Vighna of India came to Wuchang in the third year of Huanwu [224]. I studied
these ve hundred ghatas under him and asked his colleague Zhu Jiangyan to
translate them into Chinese. Although Zhu was well versed in Sanskrit, he
knew little Chinese. He often dictated his translation in Sanskrit or in translit-
eration. As a result, the language of the product was excessively simple and
straightforward. Initially, I objected to its being too inelegant. Vighna said,
Translation of Buddhas teachings should copy his words unadorned, and
reproduce his canons without decoration. A good translator of the Scriptures
should render the texts comprehensible without loss of meaning. People in the
audience all echoed, Laozi said, Beautiful words are not faithful, and faithful
words not beautiful.. Conveying the Sanskrit meaning, straightforward
rendition is preferred. Therefore, the translation was done following exactly
the literal meaning passed over by the translator without any literary embellish-
ment. (Zhi Qian 1984: 22).
46 CHU CHI YU
In this rst debate, the simple school prevailed. Translators before Zhi Qian were
all foreign monks. With their limited knowledge of the Chinese language and the
lack of theory and experience in translation, they had no alternative but to resort
to word-for-word rendering in order to convey faithfully the sacred message,
with the conviction that simple translation is closer to the source (Shi Huijiao
1992: 24). Earlier versions are generally inclined to direct translation. Some
parts follow the original structure, with repetitions and inverted word order and
thus are incomprehensible at the rst glance. (Lu Cheng 1979: 175). This was
the earliest direct translation. Although Zhi Qian was not Chinese either, he
was born in China. From childhood he read Chinese classics and at thirteen
devoted himself to study foreign language books and was procient in six
languages. His knowledge of the Chinese language and literature was far superior
to that of his precursors. He also studied Buddhist sutras extensively. By the time
he began to translate, Buddhist translation had made some progress. (Even
Vighna, who refuted Zhi Qians idea, claimed that translations should be
comprehensible.) He certainly was discontented with translations with inverted
word order, yet he was unable to theoretically discredit the far-fetched argument
of the people in the audience.
Shi Daoan (314385) was, in a manner of speaking, one of the few
professional theorists, for he was only in charge of the translation bureau and
did not do any translation himself. Daoan did not know any foreign language.
He compared several versions when he studied Buddhist sutras and found many
translation problems. He made the rst serious attempt to discuss translation
problems theoretically. In one of his essays, he quoted his colleague Zhao Zheng,
the imperial secretary, serving as the director of the translation bureau, as regards
attitudes towards translation:
Most translators of the past adapted their translations to their contemporary
style, because they disliked the simplicity of the Sanskrit language. With this
I do not agree. The reason is that the aim of translation is to convey the
meaning of the original which is otherwise unobtainable. Why should simplici-
ty of style matter? The simple style of sutras was ordained by the spirit of the
time when they were composed, and it was for a purpose. But if the translation
is incomplete, the translator is to blame (quoted in Shi Sengyou 1995: 382).
say that he allowed these losses in translation. The rst two types are: First, the
original word order may be reversed in order to conform to Chinese syntactical
rules. Second, Sanskrit is simple but the Chinese love polished literary style. To
conform to the taste of a large audience, only an embellished style can achieve
the desired eect (quoted in Shi Sengyou 1995: 290).
Zhi Qians simple theory only touched on comprehensibility and
without decoration, but Daoan stated at the outset that he allowed the word
order of the original to be changed. This is the rst time that the simple school
conceded that translations must obey the structural rules of the target language.
The second type is rather confusing: was he advocating polished translation
which he and Zhao Zheng criticized? The only rationalization might be that his
embellished style was meant for the benet of the reader, not for its own sake.
Many of Daoans discussions addressed the question whether translation should
be exhaustive or succinct i.e. the issue of editing out the repetitive parts.
Indeed, the last three of the ve types of losses addressed this problem. In this
regard he took a rm stand: repetitions should be removed. This, again, would
lead to the incomplete translation that Zhao Zheng abominated. In practice,
Daoan once reduced a text with 482,304 Sanskrit words to 195,250 Chinese
characters (Shi Sengyou 1995: 377). (Usually a Chinese translation from Sanskrit
is longer than the original in terms of the number of characters/words). Daoan,
as well as later critics, might like to think that he was a simplist, he neverthe-
less provided a theoretical ground for the sense translator Kumarajiva (344
413), who was still to come.
Daoan, however, did not indiscriminately cut all translations. A story he
recorded at his translation bureau, similar in a way to the above episode told by
Zhi Qian, will illustrate this point.
In the past, I got a book of disciplinary precepts from Faqian of Wusui. I did
not like its simple style. Thinking it was too long-winded and repetitive, I
asked Huichang to remove the repeated passages. Huichang stood up from his
seat and said, On no account should we do that, sir. The precepts are the
same as the Confucian rites. We have Confucian classics, which are
simple and straightforward in style, but no one dares to change it, because we
understand they are the words of the sage kings and should be followed. For
what reason, when it comes to the Buddhist precepts revered by saints and
worthy men, should we make changes so as to accommodate local prefer-
ence?. In the end, the translation adhered closely to the original; only the
inverted word order was reversed (quoted in Shi Sengyou 1995: 413).
Why didnt Daoan insist on weeding out the superuities and repetitions this
time? The words of Huichang (who acted as the pen-man, or the assistant who
48 CHU CHI YU
took the dictation) provide an answer: because they were translating Buddhist
precepts, similar to todays legal work. Daoan recorded this story because he
was vaguely aware of the relationship between text type and translation strategy,
even though he did not develop what we call translation typology today.
In fact, Daoan did not put too much emphasis on the distinction between
simple and sophisticated translation. He spoke highly of Parthamasiriss (
140) work, saying that he either replaced simplicity with sophistication, or
preserved the simplicity without decoration. Superb was Parthamasiris, who
captured the central theme (quoted in Shi Sengyou 1995: 367). To him, it seems,
as long as the translation captured the central theme, it was not essential
whether its style was simple or sophisticated. Daoans contribution to
Chinese translation theory consisted of objectively freeing the translator from the
yoke of simple translation.
Kumarajiva (350409), one of the four greatest translators in the history of
Chinese tripitaka, began his translation career about twenty years after Daoans
death. His translations are unparalleled either in terms of translation technique
or degree of delity (Lu Cheng 1979: 88). One of his famous remarks is that
translation from Sanskrit into Chinese could never capture the avour of the
original style, even though the main ideas can be more or less conveyed. It is
like feeding a person with food already masticated by another in that not only is
the taste lost, but it might cause nausea (Kumarajiva 1984: 32). Kumarajiva is
generally viewed as a sense translator. A typical example in this respect is also
a frequently quoted story:
[Shi Seng] Rui participated in Kumarajivas translation project. A line from
Lotus Sutra translated by Dharmaraksha reads: Heaven sees man, and man
sees Heaven. When Kumarajiva came to this line, he said, This is the same
as the original, but the language is too simple. Rui asked, Doesnt that mean
Heaven and man are united and see each other? Exactly, exclaimed
Kumarajiva with delight (quoted in Shi Huijiao 1992: 244).
problems. His views are scattered in the writings of his assistants and critics,
among whom the most theoretically perceptive was Daoans student Shi
Huiyuan (344416).
Like his master Daoan, Huiyuan did not translate himself, but he was an
astute critic and editor of translation. In his study of translation methodologies of
the Han and Jin dynasties, he concluded: In their translations, either the
meaning is obscured by the owery style, or the argumentation weakened by the
simplicity of diction (quoted in Shi Sengyou 1995: 391). He argued strongly
against the inexibility of translation methods adopted by both schools because
they disregarded the nature of the text being translated. He said, The saints set
down their directives in dierent styles as the subject matters required. To
translate a simple text using a sophisticated style gives rise to doubts; on the
other hand, to simplify what is sophisticated in the original pleases few (quoted
in Shi Sengyou 1995: 391). Contemporary theorists view this remark as a
compromise after hundreds of years of confrontation between the two schools.
But the real issue is whether the words simple and sophisticated were clear
enough to assist the working translator, and to describe the complicated phenom-
enon of translation.
Scholars tend to think of Kumarajiva as a sense translator, mainly because
his versions are succinct. But when Huiyuan edited Kumarajivas Treatise on
the Great Perfection of Wisdom, he cut the hundred juan [chapter], which had
already been abridged by Kumarajiva, to twenty juan. He gave his reason in the
preface:
In translation from Sanskrit, simplicity [verbosity] of style may cause obscurity
of meaning, and closeness in diction may lead to remoteness in theme. If the
meaning is obscure, the imagery will be lost, and if the theme becomes
remote, the subtleties will be hard to detect. An easy path will benet the
beginner; gradual progress brings enlightenment. Therefore, [Hui] Yuan
eliminated the redundant, cumbersome passages in order to highlight the
central theme. As a result, the translation is well balanced in style without
deviating from the original meaning (quoted in Shi Sengyou 1995: 391).
Even though the ancient translators placed considerable emphasis upon direct
(simple) translation, in practice, most of them, particularly the earlier ones,
unwittingly adopted a procedure which was actually sense (sophisticated)
translation. The procedure was called geyi or matching the meaning. In their
lectures, the Buddhist masters often used Daoist ideas as analogies to expound
certain dicult concepts for which there were no Chinese corresponding
expressions. For example, in one of Huiyuans lectures, some guests questioned
him about the theory of reality. Though the discussion continued back and forth
for some time, they became increasingly doubtful and bewildered. Thereupon
Huiyuan quoted ideas from Zhuanzi (a Daoist classic) as an analogy, and in this
way the sceptical came to understand.
This method of matching the meaning, when applied to translation, is
similar to Nidas dynamic equivalence, and it is sense translation in both
name and nature. One typical example is the concept of shouyi, or mind
concentration (used to translated the Sanskrit concept dhyana, a state of serene
contemplation attained by meditation), which is a Daoist method of body and
spirit cultivation. Although the misunderstanding caused by the translation proved
to be mutually benecial to the development of Buddhism and Daoism, it in fact
confused them at the same time. As the method was mostly used in translating
certain concepts, which seldom went beyond the word level, it was mistaken for
simple translation. This is also an indication that the so-called simple
methodology was, in the main, word-for-word translation.
Daoan later found the method to be contrary to reason (quoted in Shi
Huijiao 1992: 195). Shi Sengrui also said that matching the meaning is indirect
and misses the source (1984b: 37). Interestingly enough, it was Kumarajiva, a
sense translator, who corrected this procedure and provided authoritative
interpretations and translations.
Xuanzhuang (600664) of the Tang dynasty, arguably the greatest of all
Buddhist translators, gave an incisive analysis of the problem of matching the
meaning. Ordered by the emperor to translate the Daoist classic Dao de jing into
Sanskrit in order to promote Chinese culture in the West, he called in a group of
CHINESE TRANSLATIONS OF BUDDHIST TEXTS 51
Daoist priests to clarify some subtleties of the text. To his surprise, the priests
quoted Buddhist sayings to explain Daoist concepts. Xuanzhuang asked, Bud-
dhism and Daoism are as far apart as the heavens and the earth. How can you
use the words of the Buddha to explain Daoist classics? If you trace the words
to their origins, they are totally unrelated. The Daoist priests argued, But
Sengzhao [a Buddhist scholar] explained Buddhist concepts with Daoist ideas in
his treatises. Xuanzhuang replied, When Buddhism was rst introduced to
China, there were too many dicult texts, so Laozis Daoist ideas were
borrowed to explain the words of the Buddha. Sengzhao only used a method of
analogy in his treatises. How can one understand metaphors literally? (quoted
in Shi Daoxuan, 1891:9a). Xuangzhuang thus distinguished between the methods
of translating and original writing.
The Song monk scholar Shi Zanning (9191001) discussed in more detail
the procedure of matching the meaning in his analysis of translation styles. He
set himself squarely against using external (non-Buddhist) concepts in transla-
tion of Buddhist scriptures. His argument was presented in the form of a
dialogue:
Question: Do those who use the language of Chinese writings in translating
from Sanskrit abuse the Confucian classics?
Answer: No. But one can use it only if the language does not involve classical
allusions or the teachings of philosophers and historians. How can one mix the
language of the street into the translation?.
Question: This method of using Chinese classics was prevalent during the Han
and Wei dynasties, and as a result, Chen Shou wrote in The Record of the
State of Liner [Lumbini] of The Annals of the Three Kingdoms: What is said
in the Buddhist scriptures is similar to the ideas of Laozis Dao de jing. This
is because Laozi taught the Indians Buddhism when he went west of the pass
to India.
Answer: This mistake was caused by the misuse of Daoist terms by translators
which led Chen Shou to the belief that Buddhism and Daoism were related.
We learn from this that those who use external ideas in translation deserve to
be criticized. Kumarajivas version of the Lotus Scripture of the Mysterious Law
can be said to have struck a balance [between simple and sophisticated
methods] and retained the natural avour of the Sanskrit language.To use
crude and slangy language is to write like butchers and wine vendors. But if
we mix Chinese classics into the translation, we might as well not translate at
all. On the other hand, it is still better to be crude than to use allusions. But a
translation given over to crude style is seriously wrong. When we take care of
the balance, the language of the canons will take care of itself. This is the
essence of translation (quoted in Shi Zanning 1987: 5556).
52 CHU CHI YU
Zanning had denitions for his terms: elegant referred to the style of the
written language (language of the classics); crude to the spoken form (language
of the street). Translation, according to him, should be elegant. But this principle
must not be taken in terms of absolutes, as he knew that written Chinese was
mainly from Confucian and Daoist literature. Using this kind of language in
translation would inevitably bring Chinese concepts into Buddhist sutras, which
might lead to absurdities like the one found in the Annals of the Three Kingdoms,
and which, more importantly, might confuse the teachings of the Buddha. He
therefore drew the line: to use written Chinese which did not involve allusions;
otherwise, he would rather choose crude style, but not so crude as the language
of butchers and wine vendors. This is what he called balance.
Xuanzhuang separated original writing from translating, and Zanning went
one step further by distinguishing between language problems and cultural
problems in translation. As all allusions (as well as teachings of philosophers and
historians) are by denition tinged with a very strong cultural colour, the
slightest misuse might cause unnecessary confusion or misunderstanding.
Conclusion
Although the debate on simple and sophisticated translation was the central
issue of the theory of Buddhist translation in China, it was not its main achieve-
ment. It only provided a forum for discussion. The theory of simple and
sophisticated translation developed hand in hand with the practice of Buddhist
translators. The success of Parthamasiriss renditions led to the belief that
simple translation was close to the source. Later, ably assisted by the pen-
man at the translation bureau, Daoan discovered the relationship between text
type and translation strategy, and thus freed the translator from blind belief in
simple translation. In cutting redundant parts for his readers, Huiyuan brought
in the idea of the intention of the translator. Translation practice now began to
move towards sophistication, which Kumarajiva and Xuanzhuang brought to
perfection. But just because Kumarajiva and Xuanzhuang produced the authorita-
tive versions of Buddhist scriptures, it does not follow that sophisticated
translation is a preferred or more advanced methodology. Their new versions,
so were they called traditionally, are certainly more accurate and readable than
the old ones, but more importantly, they correct the errors of the old versions,
some of which are excessively simple, others overly sophisticated. Xuan-
zhuang and Zannings critiques of matching the meaning, particularly
Zannings analysis of translation style, are the highest achievements of the theory
</TARGET "chu">
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Helena Tanqueiro
Universitat Autnoma de Barcelona
1. Introduction
The ideas presented in this article are largely the fruit of personal experience
gained from translating El Cam de Vincennes by Antoni Mar into Portuguese.
This work concerns the friendship of Rousseau and Diderot while the latter was
a prisoner in the prison of Vincennes, and their ideological disagreements. The
work was originally written in Catalan and was then translated by the author
himself into Castilian Spanish. When I contacted the author for help in clarifying
a few diculties that had arisen, he told me that he too had gone through the
same process and suggested that he might send me his translation in the hope
that it would be of some help. Since I know both languages, I was now faced
with two works instead of one; and as a translator, I was in the lucky position to
have access to an especially privileged interpretation and translation of the work
I was myself translating, since it had been done by the author himself.
On the basis of a comparative study of the original work in Catalan and the
authors own translation into Spanish I was able to conrm that the author had
completely assumed his role as translator and that it constituted an extreme case
in the eld of literary translation since a single person was bringing to bear two
sets of skills and carrying out two tasks which are generally performed by two
dierent people. Study of this self-translated work permitted more objective
analysis of the specic role of the translator in comparison with conventional
translations, i.e., translations carried out by a separate translator.
For, no matter how close the author-translator relationship may be in
conventional translations and no matter how much the translator strives to reach
the real intentions of the author, there are always elements coloured by the
subjectivity of that other party to the process: i.e., the translator. It is all these
56 HELENA TANQUEIRO
elements that have always proved an obstacle to more precise and accurate study
of the complex product of the translators work.
In one of his communications on The task of the literary translator, the
prestigious translator of Portuguese literature into English, Giovanni Pontiero,
echoed the view that one of the main diculties faced by translators is We
must never forget that translation and translators are vulnerable to attack from all
quarters (quoted in Pontiero 1977: 62). I feel that study of a work translated by
the author his or herself may help to clarify and dene the role and the compe-
tence of the literary translator, since the third party mediator has been side-
stepped.
This article is based on a conception of the relationship between author and
translator which sees the role of the translator as one of co-authorship of the
literary work being translated, and this is especially so, of course, in cases where
the translator is also the author of the original work. From this basis, I suggest
that the study of self-translations could constitute another tool which might make
a worthwhile contribution to the theory and practice of literary translation, since
the self-translation is essentially free of external noise or secondary inuences
which could have the eect of distorting the results drawn from conventional
translation studies.
nds its extreme expression when authors translate their own works, that is,
when they self-translate, as follows:
Author [ / workL1 translator / ] workL2
While it is true that throughout history there have been many writers who wrote
in more than one language, such as for example, Paul Celan, Derek Walcott,
Samuel Beckett, Primo Levi, Jorge Semprn, Antonio Tabucchi, it is nevertheless
interesting to see that only a few, very few indeed, actually translated their own
work, despite the fact that all of these, and other important writers such as
Hlderlin, Ezra Pound, Valry, and so on, devoted much of their lives to
translation. It is interesting to note that Paul Celan, to take just one example, one
of the great literary translators whose name is today linked with the most
prestigious prize in German language literary translation, never translated any of
his own works, perhaps for the reason indicated by Antonio Tabucchi, () and
nally, and who knows whether this is not the main reason, I have always been
afraid, I have never been brave enough to walk along both my linguistic and
aective shorelines at the same time to use psychoanalytical terms. I have
often gone to the other shore, but I could never come back in the same boat
(quoted in Gumpert 1995: 186187).
If we focus on authors who did actually accept the challenge of self-
translation, such as Beckett, Joyce, Nabokov and Kundera, we intuitively sense
that they acted more like translators than authors. Nabokov, for example,
confesses that his aim was to make his already written work known among the
SELF-TRANSLATION 59
Let us start by assuming that the author-translator, when involved in the process
of creating a literary work, is absorbed in a complex system in which either
consciously or intuitively he interacts with multiple factors which will play a role
in determining the nature of the nal result. Two of these factors are especially
important for my purposes here: rstly, the construction of the ctional universe,
and secondly, the way in which this universe comes to life, through its transla-
tion into words which occur to the author at a given moment as the best ones
to translate his ideas and thus give form to the artistic creation.
When the author-translator take on the role of translator (and this is much
easier to detect in cases of self-translation, since author and translator are one
and the same person), his creative work is now channelled more directly into
linguistic creation as opposed to the processes of non-purely linguistic ctional
creation that give rise to characters, the relationships between them, the construc-
tion and denition of time and space, the narrators perspective, and plot
coherence.
Similarly, since the author is absorbed in the complicated process of
building this ctional universe, which becomes as real to him as outside reality
and life itself, he may sometimes neglect to some extent certain aspects related
more directly to linguistic expression, style, rhythm, the music of the words,
prosody, cohesion, and so on, or indeed the veracity of some seemingly factual
claims. All of these are aws the author-turned-translator is quite likely to detect
SELF-TRANSLATION 61
Conclusions
My aim in this short article was to show that self-translation pertains to the
specic area of literary translation and that its study could prove highly fruitful,
and indeed could even constitute an alternative line of study, within literary
translation theory. I have tried to show that the author, when deciding to self-
translate, plays more the role of translator and rather less that of author, mainly
</TARGET "tan">
SELF-TRANSLATION 63
References
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Within the framework of translation-oriented text analysis (cf. Nord 1991), the
grammatical complexity of sentence structure is one element of style to be taken
into account. In fact, when it comes to literary texts, varying degrees of gram-
matical complexity may be said to mark the authors stylistic intentions, thus
providing a direct link to the works basic thematic concerns and the kind of
experience it attempts to convey.
It is a well-known fact that not all languages accept the same degree of
grammatical complexity. In the present article we are therefore not so much
concerned with the contrastive aspect of grammatical complexity as with its
potential as an expressive device. While contrastive studies generally aim to
register the similarities and dierences in the discursive practices of two or more
languages, attempting to describe what is normal or unmarked for each language,
the present article will deal with the creative, and therefore unpredictable use
which literary discourse (as exemplied in English literary texts and their
corresponding translations into Spanish and Catalan) makes of grammatical
complexity.
Before engaging in a detailed analysis of source and target texts, however,
we will do well to determine precisely what aspects of the issue of grammatical
complexity may be of interest to the translation scholar. Once again, with special
regard to literary translation, we believe it is fundamental to take the following
two factors into account:
(1) the degree of grammatical complexity present in a text, if possible
in quantitative terms;
(2) the stylistic function of varying degrees of grammatical complexity,
in accordance with the use made of each in a given text.
66 ISABEL GARCA IZQUIERDO AND JOSEP MARCO BORILLO
Yet this quotation merely suggests what Halliday has openly expressed else-
where: contrary to what is often said or assumed, oral discourse is characterised
by grammatical complexity, whereas the main feature of written discourse is
lexical density. Halliday substantiates his view by arguing that written discourse
does not require a high degree of grammatical complexity because the fact that
the speaker can plan ahead what s/he wants to say brings about a considerable
compression or condensation of meanings. In other words, in written discourse,
meanings may in fact be conveyed through the use of relatively simple struc-
tures. Oral discourse, on the other hand, due to time constraints and the inability
of the speaker to plan ahead, must resort to the use of more complex grammati-
cal structures in order to compensate for the relative semantic poverty of its
lexical content. Eggins (1994: 6061) oers the following account of the issue:
Halliday points out that [] spoken language has a higher level of grammati-
cal intricacy. Grammatical intricacy relates to the number of clauses per
sentence, and can be calculated by expressing the number of clauses in a text
as a proportion of the number of sentences in the text. Whereas in spoken
language we tend to chain clauses together one after another, to give often
very long sentences, in written language we tend to use relative few clauses
per sentence.
Examples of how this formula may be applied to actual texts are provided later
on in this article.
For the translation scholar, however, applying the formula described above is of
interest only as a preliminary step toward discovering the stylistic function of
grammatical complexity, and how it contributes to textual meaning. To this end,
a scale may be established, ranging from zero signication (when grammatical
complexity makes no apparent contribution to meaning) to the more or less
iconic value of grammatical structure (when the relationship between meaning
and grammatical form is non-arbitrary or motivated).
The relationship between elements of grammatical structure and aspects of
a texts overall meaning is most signicant when it can be referred to as iconic,
in the sense that Leech and Short (1981) aord to the term. According to these
authors, iconicity occurs mainly, though not exclusively, in literary texts, and
may be dened as follows (1981: 233235):
A code is iconic to the extent that it imitates, in its signals or textual forms,
the meanings that they represent. The code of trac signs is largely iconic: a
crossroads is signalled by a cross, a narrowing road by converging lines, etc.
The maritime ag code, on the other hand, is non-iconic: there is no connec-
tion between the colour and design of a ag and the meaning [] which it is
used to signify. One of the tenets of modern linguistics is that language is
essentially non-iconic, that the form-meaning relationship is arbitrary. []
Against this orthodox view it can be urged, that iconicity is inherent in
language in a way that the mention of odd words like miaow and thunder does
not begin to show. [] Presumably, then, we are conditioned to expect that
language, for all its arbitrariness, is in various ways an iconic mirror of reality.
It is in the nature of literature to exploit these iconic possibilities: to bring out
68 ISABEL GARCA IZQUIERDO AND JOSEP MARCO BORILLO
Table 1: The Old Man and the Sea: source text (pp. 2325), Catalan translation (pp.
8082), Spanish translation (pp. 3133)
English source text Catalan translation Spanish translation
Sentence Rate Sentence Rate Sentence Rate
01 ( her.) 7 01 ( lestima.) 9 01 ( la mar.) 1
02 ( woman.) 6 02 ( dona.) 6 02 ( la quieren.) 5
03 ( masculine.) 100 03 ( el mar.) 8 03 ( mujer.) 6
04 ( enemy.) 1 04 ( enemic.) 3 04 ( el mar.) 9
05 ( them.) 9 05 ( tarann.) 130 05 ( enemigo.) 1
06 ( thought.) 5 06 ( dona.) 5 06 ( remediarlo.) 9
07 ( current.) 5 07 ( corrents.) 6 07 ( mujer.) 3
08 ( hour.) 8 08 ( semblant.) 100 08 ( corriente.) 5
09 ( thought.) 4 09 ( buit.) 4 09 ( hora.) 100
10 ( them.) 4 10 ( entremig.) 6 10 ( nada.) 4
11 ( current.) 4 11 ( corrent.) 4 11 ( ellos.) 4
12 ( fathoms.) 1 12 ( braces.) 1 12 ( corriente.) 4
13 ( fathoms.) 2 13 ( blava.) 3 13 ( brazas.) 1
14 ( sardines.) 5 14 ( ferm.) 8 14 ( brazas.) 1
15 ( steel.) 3 15 ( fresca.) 1 15 ( amarrado.) 6
16 ( good-tasting.) 5 16 ( lham.) 3 16 ( frescas.) 1
17 ( attractiveness.) 100 17 ( gros.) 3 17 ( saliente.) 3
18 ( line.) 100 18 ( escaients.) 8 18 ( apetecible.) 5
19 ( depths.) 4 19 ( uixa.) 9 19 ( atraccin.) 8
20 ( rise.) 2 20 ( escaient.) 5 20 ( brazas.) 100
21 ( sortir.) 2 21 ( profundidad.) 4
22 ( momento.) 2
Obviously, beyond any personal evaluations, Pol identies the feature in question
as deliberate, and assigns it a stylistic value. He therefore attempts to reect this
feature in his translation, but not without a good deal of eort, as he suggests
later on in the acknowledgements (1984: 58): I am glad to publicly show my
gratitude to my wife, Esyllt T. Lawrence, who has revised the translation and
whose advice has helped me grasp the tone of dicult simplicity of the
original [our translation]. The Spanish translation includes no preface or
introduction, so it is impossible to know to what extent the translator (Lino
Novas) was also aware of this stylistic feature and its function, and yet, his
translation decisions are very similar to those of Ferran de Pol.
Moving on now to the novel Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe, which exhibits
a relatively high degree of grammatical complexity, we may observe that the
corresponding Catalan and Spanish translations are both unlike the translations
of Hemingway just discussed and dissimilar to each other in the solutions they
propose. Pages 7 through 9 of the source text (Defoe 1981) have been selected
for analysis, together with the corresponding passages in Catalan (Defoe
1982: 1516) and Spanish (Defoe 1996: 78). The following is a representative
fragment of the original English passage:
GRAMMATICAL COMPLEXITY AS A TRANSLATION PROBLEM 71
Text 2
I have been told, that in one of our Neighbour Nations, whether it be in
France, or where else, I know not; they have an Order from the King, that
when any criminal is condemnd, either to Die, or to the Gallies, or to be
Transported, if they leave any Children, as such are generally unprovided for,
by the Poverty or Forfeiture of their Parents; so they are immediately taken
into the Care of the Government, and put into a Hospital calld the House of
Orphans, where they are Bred up, Cloathd, Fed, Taught, and when t to go
out, are placd out to Trades, or to Services, so as to be well able to provide
for themselves by an honest industrious Behaviour. (Defoe 1981: 78)
An analysis of the grammatical complexity of the selected passage (in its full,
two-page version in the three languages concerned) yields the results reected in
Table 2 below.
Table 2: Moll Flanders: source text (pp. 79), Catalan translation (pp. 1516), Spanish
translation (pp. 78)
English source text Catalan translation Spanish translation
Sentence Rate Sentence Rate Sentence Rate
01 ( Work.) 10 01 ( famlia.) 07 01 ( obra.) 06
02 ( Crimes.) 05 02 ( cosa.) 01 02 ( delitos.) 04
03 ( am.) 21 03 ( delictes.) 06 03 ( actualidad.) 21
04 ( Behaviour.) 23 04 ( sc.) 21 04 ( medios.) 14
05 ( Body.) 19 05 ( treballador.) 19 05 ( honrada.) 10
06 ( here.) 01 06 ( cos.) 15 06 ( suerte.) 05
07 ( Cheapside.) 09 07 ( diferent.) 01 07 ( remediarla.) 04
08 ( Account.) 06 08 ( costa.) 05 08 ( alma.) 02
09 ( sure.) 20 09 ( Cheapside.) 03 09 ( Cheapside.) 03
10 ( it.) 21 10 ( justa.) 08 10 ( verdadera.) 08
11 ( recomanables.) 20 11 ( culpable.) 05
12 ( oral.) 05 12 ( meses.) 08
13 ( dir-ho.) 21 13 ( caso.) 02
14 ( manos.) 06
15 ( certeza.) 01
16 ( odas.) 05
17 ( infancia.) 11
18 ( ms.) 13
The average rate of grammatical complexity is 13.5 in the source text, 10.15
in the Catalan translation and 7.52 in the Spanish translation. These dierences
are due to the fact that both translators have broken down the target texts into a
72 ISABEL GARCA IZQUIERDO AND JOSEP MARCO BORILLO
Both the fact that he refers to the style as slapdash and sometimes muddled
and the small dierence between narrative and dialogue are perfectly consistent
with the sense of orality alluded to above. Spoken language is indeed more
GRAMMATICAL COMPLEXITY AS A TRANSLATION PROBLEM 73
slapdash than written language, for reasons linked to the amount of time the
speaker has to plan his/her utterances. Furthermore, if the narrative mode here is
deliberately oral, the distance separating the narrative proper from the dialogues
has naturally been reduced or even neutralised. Unfortunately, no direct informa-
tion regarding the Spanish translators stylistic awareness is available to us, as
the Spanish version includes no preface or presentation.
Conclusion
In light of the data gleaned from our analysis, the following (tentative) hypothe-
sis may be put forth: regardless of stylistic function, the more grammatically
complex the English source text is, the more translators tend to alter its gram-
matical structure in Spanish and Catalan. However, two caveats are in order here.
First, saying regardless of stylistic function does not mean that translators pay
no attention to stylistic function; in this sense we have seen how Miquel Desclot,
in the case of Moll Flanders, and Ferran de Pol, in the Catalan translation of The
Old Man and the Sea, were fully aware of it, as indicated in their own prefaces.
Secondly, the corpus used for this study is, needless to say, far too limited to
allow for any sort of denitive conclusion. If our hypothesis is to be elevated to
the rank of a law (in Tourys sense, e.g. 1995) or a general tendency, it must
rst be validated by studies of other translations, both of the same texts consid-
ered here and of other, alternate source texts.
Should our hypothesis prove to be valid, the tendency to simplify the
grammatical structure of complex source texts may be seen as totally consistent
with a more general tendency noted by Baker (1992: 212), namely that translators
often choose to reduce the processing eort required of the reader by making
explicit what the original left implicit, or by simplifying what was complex in
the source text, as in the present case. Again, this tendency must be understood
only in terms of statistical validity, for it will not always match actual translation
practice, with all its richness of detail and particularity.
In sum, if one of the ultimate goals of Descriptive Translation Studies, as
Toury (1995) claims, is to set up general laws of translation behaviour, such laws
must be well grounded in a careful study of the facts, in this case, of source texts
and their corresponding translations. It has been the aim of this article to draw
attention to a tendency observed, but the need for further study in this regard can
hardly be overstressed.
</TARGET "izq">
References
AUTHOR ""
KEYWORDS ""
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VOFFSET "4">
S II
KEYWORDS ""
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C 8
Daniel Gile
Universit Lumire Lyon 2
found anything in theory which has been the least use in [his] practice, or
even had relevance whatever to [his] work) , most of them are indierent
at best, and even hostile to research work which they perceive as useless,
and often dangerous (see Stenzl 1983; Shlesinger 1989; Gile 1995b).
3. Opportunities
As mentioned above, the paucity of CIR so far means that much ground remains
to explore. Moreover, the diversity of situations means there is still much
potential added value in descriptive work to document it (see Gile 1999 on
variability in delity perception, and see the recent doctoral thesis by Lamberger-
Felber (1998) for data on variability in several interpreting parameters). Method-
ologically speaking, scientic exploration generally starts with gross observa-
tions, theories and tests, and gradually goes into ner and ner observations with
more sophisticated tools and methods which are developed as a function of
ndings, of obstacles encountered, of new questions and of newly developed
tools (see Kourgano 1958). The scarcity of descriptive work in CIR so far
suggests that there is still much to discover with simple methods.
The following are a few examples of CIR which require no highly sophisticated
tools and methods. This does not mean that research is therefore easy and can be
conducted carelessly. Even in the simplest research techniques, there are many
pitfalls associated with the lack of careful planning, inappropriate sampling
methods, loose inferences, excessive reliance on the face value of utterances by
interviewees, etc. (see for example Gile 1995d), but technically speaking, no
complicated tools and methods need to be used for studies such as suggested here.
a. Quality perception
A solid comprehension of quality-perception components which determine the
response of various actors directly and indirectly involved in the interpreting
process, including the speaking interpreters, non-active interpreters in the booth,
employers and end-users of interpreting are an essential foundation for training
and for professional rules of behavior. And yet, traditionally, both in interpreting
and in translation, the literature has been presenting prescriptive views, but very
little descriptive and analytical research data. The situation is slowly changing,
but the amount of work to be done at a very fundamental level is still consider-
OPPORTUNITIES IN CONFERENCE INTERPRETING RESEARCH 81
able (see for instance Kurz 1996). At this stage, general questionnaires and eld
interviews are still required to collect raw data, though a few studies (Gile
1995c; Collados Ais 1996; Gile 1999) have already started to zero in on specic
variables.
b. Language performance
Another relevant aspect of interpreting performance is the linguistic quality of
the target speech. In particular, naturalistic error analysis of linguistic output in
both A and B languages in students and professionals is likely to reveal frequent
language-combination-specic weaknesses (typical errors of native French
speakers in English, of native Spanish speakers in German, etc.) and to suggest
remedial action through appropriate exercises. At the simplest level of investiga-
tion, such research involves listening to interpreted speeches, identifying
linguistic weaknesses, measuring their relative frequencies in specic language
combinations and classifying them appropriately. So far, no studies devoted to
the exploration of linguistic weaknesses in interpreting are known in mainstream
interpreting literature, except for Kopczynski 1980 and Gile 1987, both of which
only deal with student interpreters. Part of the problem is due to historic reasons:
throughout the seventies and up to the mid-eighties, the prevailing paradigm in
the interpreting community forcefully claimed that by denition, professional
interpreters had achieved thorough mastery of their working languages, and that
any investigation of linguistic issues in the eld of interpreting was out-of-place,
as it could not pertain to competent interpreters (see the analysis in Gile 1995a).
Attitudes have changed, and there is ample room for simple descriptive studies
of the interpreters linguistic output.
c. Interpreting strategies
In recent years, the concept of strategies in translatorial behaviour has become
popular. The reference here is to both deliberate problem-solving strategies and
to unconscious behavioral patterns before and during the translation act (prepara-
tion for a conference, behavior when encountering diculties, etc.). An increas-
ing number of texts in the literature have been using this term, but a much
smaller number of studies have attempted to describe such strategies through
observation and interviews (see however Ahrens 1994; Gile 1995a,b; Kalina 1996).
The following are a few examples of descriptive studies which can be conducted
with a rather modest set of skills and tools:
The most frequently found studies in this category are interdisciplinary and deal
with testing and/or implementing linguistic, psychological and neurophysiological
theories and methods. Besides the studies in the sixties and seventies in the
cognitive psychology paradigm reported regularly in recent dissertations (see also
Lambert and Moser-Mercer 1994), a few dozen examples can be found in Gran
and Taylor 1990 and Tommola 1995. Dillinger 1989 is a typical example of the
complexity of such a study, in which even the speeches to be interpreted were
written specically for the purpose of complying with specic linguistic require-
ments. Opportunities with advanced methods are numerous, but they require
either a solid foundation in the relevant discipline, or at least the availability of
an expert for team work.
Before embarking upon new research projects, beginners would gain from careful
planning taking into account the following diculties, for fear of nding
themselves stuck for months or years anywhere along the path and eventually
giving up, as has happened dozens of times in past years:
This problem, explained in Section 2.3, implies that those studies which require
a large number of subjects, for instance experimental studies under more than
two conditions, may simply not be feasible, depending on the local environment.
One easy way out is to use students: this is legitimate for studies of the students
environment (for instance in research on training and on the evolution of the
students skills see Kurz 1996), but questionable in research on interpreting
per se (see Gile 1995a).
guidance that experts in the relevant discipline benet from is quite another.
Depending on whether such expert supervisors are available to guide the
beginner, the project may not be feasible at all, or be feasible, but at the expense
of disproportionate eorts. There is also a risk that theories and methods from
cognate disciplines may be misperceived due to insucient contact with the
eld. Alan Baddeley, whose model of working memory (see for example
Baddeley and Hitch 1974) has developed into a central concept and investigation
area in cognitive psychology and is also used extensively in CIR theorizing,
pointed out in a private conversation that a statement on memory in note-taking
in consecutive interpreting in a paper by one (well known) CIR researcher was
based on an incorrect interpretation of the model.
experiments are not always the best investigation method in the CIR environ-
ment. Yet another point is that interpretation is highly strategy-oriented (as is
translation). Analyzing it in the sole framework of linguistic or cognitive theories
amounts to neglecting relevant and sometimes very important variables. A case
in point is propositional analysis, which is being explored by Tommola in
particular (see for example Tommola & Lakso 1997). The idea is to break-up the
source speech and the target speech into small meaning units (propositions) and
to count the proportion of such units which correspond in the source and target
texts, vs. those which do not, presumably indicating a problem in the inter-
preters performance. While the metric is appropriate much of the time, some-
times, the interpreter feels that a better interpretation would result from some
additions and omissions in the target speech (see for example Jones 1998), but
does not nd the necessary cognitive resources to make the changes. In such
cases, a target-text formulation which mirrors the corresponding source-text
proposition may be a sign of diculty rather than a sign of optimal interpreting.
Propositional analysis may therefore produce misleading results.
Young scholars are often attracted by the idea of developing a new theory which
will explain a central phenomenon in translation or interpretation. The fact that
existing theories contain visible gaps, lack supporting evidence or do not
incorporate all state-of-the-art developments in the relevant disciplines (especially
in the cognitive sciences) tends to encourage them to go ahead in that endeavor.
Unfortunately, most of the time, not only will it take the young scholar too much
time and eort to read and understand all the literature forming the basis for
existing theories, but coming up with a stronger, new theory is a dicult task,
requiring long-winded work at PhD level and beyond, to appreciate the
amount of work and diculty involved in coming up with an original theoretical
contribution, see for example Setton (1997).
In many cases, students who are unaware of these diculties start with an
overly ambitious project and give up after several months or years without
having ever taken o, or else waste much time trying to achieve the initial
research objectives and change direction at the last moment, when they realize
these objectives are beyond their reach, ending up with an unsatisfactory result.
86 DANIEL GILE
As pointed out earlier, many young student-interpreters who must write a thesis
for graduation have had no training in research methods and work with supervi-
sors who are in the same situation. They often proceed by imitating authors of
previous theses and other publications, just as one would prepare a contract in
business after having read other contracts but without having studied law. Some
of the results are surprisingly good in spite of this handicap, but in other cases,
the texts appear acceptable at rst sight, since the appropriate structure of the
thesis or paper, the language and the bibliographical references comply with the
standards, but a careful reader will soon encounter methodological weaknesses,
some of them very serious, beneath the surface. In particular, previous ndings
are not taken into account, the methods used are not described explicitly enough
for readers to be able to assess the results, and there are many problems with the
rationale (see Gile 1995d). Such weaknesses reect not a lack of intelligence or
dedication, but a lack of training, and it is important that authors receive some
training before they start and solid guidance throughout their work.
Such basic training, which is most easily organized by academic institutions
(in this respect it is encouraging to see the doctoral courses being set up in
Spanish universities), could include input on the nature of scientic investigation
OPPORTUNITIES IN CONFERENCE INTERPRETING RESEARCH 87
5.2 Replication
6. Conclusion
KEYWORDS ""
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Wilhelm Neunzig
Universitat Autnoma de Barcelona
Introduction
refer to the criteria that the experiment should reect a normal situation, as
unarticial as possible; the denition of ecological validity is still ambiguous).
In addition, the experimental design should include, in our opinion, certain
criteria which are derived directly from the experimental context in which
experiments in the didactics of translation are normally carried out and in which
at least some of the subjects are students of the teacher/researcher. Those criteria
are fairness (teaching ethics requires that all the students should have exactly the
same opportunity to learn the contents and/or skills being taught), and experi-
mental practicability and economy (the experiment must be conducted in normal
classroom situations so that students are prevented from spending too long on the
experiment; otherwise, their motivation would be aected and the results
distorted.
Regarding experimental design, translation studies research most often
conceives eld experiments, in which measurements are taken in a natural
environment to determine the inuence of a given variable, but which pose the
considerable problem of making it dicult or even impossible to control many
extraneous variables. Their great advantage is that the subjects act in a natural
context, their reactions therefore being spontaneous, a fact which has a positive
inuence on the environmental validity of the experiments.
Recently, there has been a growing tendency to design laboratory experi-
ments, in which experimental conditions are controlled and which allow extrane-
ous variables to be eliminated or systematically controlled; moreover, they permit
more exact measurements. The major problem with this kind of experiment is its
environmental validity; in other words, the articial nature of the situation in
which the data are obtained.
there is a special anity between translating aloud and thinking aloud, given
that the verbal expression of everything (thoughts, previous knowledge, memo-
ries, procedures and the search for solutions) that is entailed in the nal written
product depends on cognitive processes, thus validating the result of the analysis
of the protocols, the method is clearly articial: how often does a translator
actually translate before a video recorder while explaining what is going through
his or her mind? However, what I consider to be the most convincing argument
is to be found in Hansen et al. (1998: 62): One of the problems in relation to
TAPs is whether it is possible to engage in two complicated actions of a similar
nature (namely translating and thinking aloud) simultaneously, and whether one
inuences the other. Having to think aloud during the translation process may
change the process, which obviously aects the quality of the data. (For a
consideration of the advantages and disadvantages of using TAPs, see Schmid 1994).
In our opinion, another instrument is needed in order to ensure, at least from
a theoretical point of view, the objectivity and environmental validity of the
experiment, since these criteria are central to empirical research in the eld of
translation studies in general, and the didactics of translation in particular.
It is an accepted fact that the computer is a means that can assist the teacher in
developing aspects of the competencies that dene the translator, such as
linguistic, documentational, cultural, terminological competence, etc., but of
immediate concern to us in the present study is its application in supporting
research in translation studies, particularly in the eld of the didactics of
translation. In my opinion, the characteristics of this medium make it more
suitable than other instruments (only in certain experimental designs, of course)
for the following reasons:
1. Translating directly onto the computer is common practice among professional
translators and students. That is to say, a student using a computer, for whatever
reason, in the computer room at the Faculty is not in an articial situation. This
ensures, at least in part, environmental validity.
2. Students are used to working with self-teaching computer programmes in their
free time and accept this medium as a virtual teacher, as has been conrmed
in various studies (see Ensinger 1997). Learning by means of computer-assisted
teaching programmes can be considered a normal pedagogical situation among
students these days, a fact which further conrms the environmental validity of
the medium.
THE DIDACTICS OF TRANSLATION 95
Until some years ago, it was common practice for translators to rst do a
handwritten draft of their translation, which was only typed after a process of
revision. In the case of a text intended for publication, the translator (especially
the literary translator) latter received the galley proofs which again required nal
checking before denitive publication of the text. Study of all these versions
would have enabled researchers to observe the modications eected and thus
gain indirect access to the translation process, surprisingly however, as far as I
can tell, translation studies has never paid much attention to this potential source
of data. Nowadays however, translators tend to work directly onto the computer
and corrections and modications made are not recorded, and so we have no
96 WILHELM NEUNZIG
analyzing what the student does immediately after receiving the teachers
feedback. When the subject pauses (for example, a full-stop), the teacher, who is
located in an adjoining room and whose computer is connected to the students,
sends feedback in the form of a comment on the translation, however this
feedback appears to be generated by the computer itself.
This experiment is part of a line of research being pursued by the author for
a number of years and represents a modication of the approach taken in a wider
study the results of which are available in Neunzig (1997a, 1997b, 1998). An
exercise was designed for computer simulation of a translation class involving a
text in Spanish which was to be translated into German and which included two
feedback messages for the same foreseen student input: in one exercise the
feedback is designed to inuence the translation process and we could term it
cognitive feedback and, in the other, the responses provide information on the
product, through what we could term punishment /reward feedback. The experi-
ment aimed to determine the dierences between the reactions of the students to
each of the two types of feedback.
This on-line feedback can also be used by the teacher for individual and
interactive teaching in the computer room, since he or she can access each
computer individually and provide a response to the translation of a single
student, in a way similar to what occurs in the interpreting room.
In the experiment described above, the computer helps to ensure objectivity since
it guarantees that all subjects receive the same feedback for the same translation,
which, I believe, cannot be guaranteed when using human feedback, no matter
how great an eort is made to always provide the same response to the students
input.
98 WILHELM NEUNZIG
from German into Spanish, one group gathers in-depth information on the subject
matter (of a markedly culture-centered nature) prior to commencing translation
work through a computer exercise, while the other group (the control group) does
not. Once again the entire translation process is recorded to allow analysis of the
dierent choices of translation strategy.
AUTHOR "PACTE"
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PACTE
Universitat Autnoma de Barcelona
Introduction
* The PACTE Group includes A. Beeby, L. Berenguer, D. Ensinger, O. Fox, A. Hurtado Albir, N.
Martnez Melis, W. Neunzig, M. Orozco, M. Presas and F. Vega.
100 PACTE
Just as increasingly detailed models have been developed for linguistic compe-
tence, so componential models have been proposed for translation competence.
As they are all based on observation of the translators behaviour, there is
agreement about some basic components, such as, bilingual competence, transfer
competence, world or subject knowledge (Bell 1991; Wilss 1992; Beeby 1996;
Hurtado 1996a; Presas 1996; Shreve 1997, among others). Furthermore, it seems
obvious that if the translation process is building a target text (TT) from a source
text (ST), translators will always be detecting and solving new problems of a
linguistic nature (Krings 1987; Blanger 1992; Demers 1992; Mondahl and
Jensen 1992). Depending on the type of text they are working with, translators
will use special subject knowledge (Schner 1993; Dancette 1994) and
dierent tools, such as dictionaries or databases (Fraser 1994). Translators are
able to do all this, eciently, without losing sight of their objectives.
However, various studies seem to show the existence of two further types
of sub-competencies. The rst is related to specic problem-solving strategies
(Krings 1986; Lrscher 1991, 1992a, 1993; Kussmaul 1991, 1995; Wilss 1992;
Kiraly 1995). The second is related to certain psychological qualities and skills
that translators draw on, such as creativity (Kussmaul 1995) or attention span
(Jskelinen 1993). Therefore our model of translation competence includes a
problem solving or strategic component and a psycho-physiological component,
as can be seen in Figure 1.
ACQUIRING TRANSLATION COMPETENCE 101
TRANSLATION COMPETENCE
COMMUNICATIVE EXTRA-LINGUISTIC
COMPETENCE IN THE TWO COMPETENCE
LANGUAGES
TRANSFER COMPETENCE
PROFESSIONAL
PSYCHO-PHYSIOLOGICAL
INSTRUMENTAL
COMPETENCE
COMPETENCE
STRATEGIC COMPETENCE
Hypotheses
In order to investigate translation competence and its acquisition using the above
models, we have formulated the following theoretical and working hypotheses.
The theoretical hypotheses related to translation competence are that
translation competence is a system of sub-competencies that are (1) interrelated,
(2) hierarchical, (3) used in every translation act and (4) whose interrelation and
hierarchy are subject to variations. The working hypotheses are as follows: (1)
the sub-competencies of translation competence are communicative, extra-
linguistic, professional-instrumental, transfer, strategic and psycho-physiological,
(2) transfer competence plays a central role in the hierarchy of sub-competencies,
104 PACTE
pre-translation competence
A
C
Q
U
I
development and integration S learning strategies
of sub-competencies I
T
I
O
N
translation competence
106 PACTE
Conceptual
8. Generalize results
level 1. Delimit the object to be studied
or modify hypotheses
Methodological
level 4. Research design
Analytical
level 6. Analysis of empirical data
Notes
1. For a further discussion of the criteria required in translation research, see W. Neunzigs
contribution in this volume.
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Christopher Scott-Tennent
Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona
Introduction
This research project is an empirical study carried out to observe the eects of
a specically designed training programme on the students application of
translation strategies and solutions. The project has been carried out through
three clearly dierentiated stages. First, the existing literature on translation
strategies was studied, three types of translation problems were chosen and a
theoretically optimal methodology was designed in order to teach the strategies
to solve those problems.1 Then, a pilot study was conducted with two groups
(experimental and control) of undergraduate translation students. The subjects in
the experimental group were trained in the selected strategies, whereas the
control group did not receive this specic training. Finally, data analysis and
interpretation were carried out, and conclusions were drawn in order to optimise
preparation of a second study and decide on our future approach to this particular
area of research.
* Research funded by the Universitat Rovira i Virgili (Tarragona, Spain). Grant: Ajuts a la recerca
9678C.
108 SCOTT-TENNENT, GONZLEZ DAVIES AND RODRGUEZ TORRAS
STRATEGIES SOLUTIONS
Read aloud to somebody else Reformulation
Gapping the text for another reader to Leave in SL () in the target text and
complete and discover/discuss other trans- use literal translation or paraphrase either
lation options. in a footnote or in the text itself
Figure 1: Examples of translation strategies/solutions (from the literature and proposed by
the learners).
(2) Pre- and post-test: translation of the same text by both groups at the
beginning and end of the training period.
3. To test hypothesis 3:
(1) Pre- and post-test: translation of the same text by both groups at the
beginning and end of the training period.
TRANSLATION STRATEGIES AND TRANSLATION SOLUTIONS 111
The students in both the experimental and the control groups carried out the
same translation at the beginning and at the end of the training period, with no
previous notice, of a popular science text called Dino DNA?, (Time,
24.11.1994) from English into their L1.
External markers assessed the translation. The overall mark for the transla-
tion test was the sum of the marks obtained for each criterion (see Figure 2).
These criteria had previously been statistically tested for inter-marker reliability.
In order to detect whether an adequate correlation between markers had
been established, a Pearson-moment test was applied and showed that the degree
of interrater correlation for the experimental group is acceptable (correlation 0.8
or above) even for most partial ratings and clearly more than acceptable for total
marks. Therefore, the marks from both raters were averaged out into one set.
A T-test to verify if changes between the results were signicant was then
done in order to observe if there had been a signicant increase in the overall
quality of translation. level, i.e. the level required for a result to be deemed
signicant, was set at the conventional 0.05.
112 SCOTT-TENNENT, GONZLEZ DAVIES AND RODRGUEZ TORRAS
The results show a clearly signicant increase in the overall quality of the
translation in the experimental group (0.01008859), as well as a signicant
increase in 2 of the 4 criteria involved: intelligibility of TT (0.03253924) and
ST-TT correspondence in style and register (0.02341299). The criterion in which
improvement was least signicant is transfer of ST content (0.14727353).
In the case of the control group, markers did not correlate, so T-tests were
carried out separately. However, the markers verdicts are opposed: for some
improvement was very signicant, and for others it was not signicant. No
conclusions may therefore be reached regarding this group.
The pilot study started with a reading comprehension test in the source language
and 2 writing tasks in the target language in both the experimental and the
control groups at the beginning and end of the training period. Since these
TRANSLATION STRATEGIES AND TRANSLATION SOLUTIONS 113
The written protocols that the students in the experimental group lled in on a
weekly basis during the training period reect the percentage of correctly/
incorrectly identied problems and of adequately applied solutions as a result of
a reection on the translation process. They were considered a signicant
element in the experimental training due to their potential consciousness-raising
eect as a result of being a formative self-assessment activity. The categories of
solution production observed in the written protocols were the following:
114 SCOTT-TENNENT, GONZLEZ DAVIES AND RODRGUEZ TORRAS
The class diary written by the teacher of the experimental group was an impor-
tant element of course evaluation. In this diary the teacher wrote down a priori
the aims of each session as well as her observation a posteriori. Data were later
extracted from this observation, and subsequently analysed, under the following
four categories:
Evidence of characteristic methodological aspects of the experimental training.
Evidence of students awareness of the strategies.
Evidence of positive attitudes from the students.
Evidence of negative or questioning attitudes from the students.
At the end of the training period, the students in the experimental group evaluat-
ed the experimental training through a written commentary and in semi-struc-
tured oral interviews.
TRANSLATION STRATEGIES AND TRANSLATION SOLUTIONS 115
Conclusions
Regarding the experimental group, all three hypotheses can be said to have been
proved. The rst hypothesis is valid according to the data gathered by observa-
tion in the teachers class diary, as well as through the questionnaires and
interviews. Data from the diary show an initial phase of uncertainty until what
turned out to be the main diculty for the learners was overcome, i.e. distin-
guishing clearly between problem, strategy and solution: clearing up this
particular confusion required a month of training and the positive change in the
students attitude began when this was achieved. The most conclusive data are:
on the one hand, at the end of the experimental training, 83% declared them-
selves completely in favour of specic training in the application of strategies
and solutions, 17% were partially against it but none of them totally against.
Concerning the teacher, the best proof as to her view on this methodology is
that, after ending the study, she spontaneously integrates this type of training in
her subsequent teaching.
The second hypothesis is also valid according to the relevant data. On the
one hand, the increase in the frequency of eective strategy and solution
application in the pre- and post-test is very signicant (T-test = 0.005). On the
other hand, if we also consider what happened during the training according to
the written protocols, the percentage of eectively applied strategies and
solutions uctuates at the beginning of the training period, but it then rises
steadily. Furthermore, the percentage of eectively chosen and applied solutions
was 60% at the beginning and, after two uctuations, it rose steadily to 80% at
the end. Also at the end, data from the class diaries show that some students
were applying strategies and solutions without any explicit elicitation, which
shows that they were already being acquired (Kiraly 1995). An interesting by-
product is that during the experimental training the teacher discovered that
certain strategies and solutions can be applied more often and better in given
types of text. This can explain, at least partially, the fact that the most signicant
increase in the eective application of strategies and solutions was in those of
Type 1. It also poses a question for future research: is it possible to associate
certain strategies and solutions to certain types of text?
As for the third hypothesis, as is shown in the pre- and post-test, the
increase in the overall quality of translation was clearly signicant (T-test =
0.01). This increase can only have been resulted from the experimental training,
since there was no signicant increase in reading competence in the SL or in
writing skills in the TL. The improvement is also signicant in specic aspects
of overall translation quality, such as the clarity of expression in the TT and
</TARGET "sco">
textual correspondence in style and register. The specic aspect in which there
was least improvement is that of content correspondence, and this is logical since
this particular feature depends almost exclusively on reading competence in the
SL, which did not increase signicantly, as has been mentioned. These data thus
suggest that a greater and/or more eective application of strategies and
solutions contributes to an increase in the students translation competence.
Data were gathered from the control group to be contrasted with experimen-
tal group data regarding the second and third hypotheses. Concerning the second
hypothesis, the increase in the eective application of solutions in the translation
pre- and post-test was also signicant in the control group, though not nearly as
much as in the experimental group (T-test = 0.04). This increase may have been
caused by both or either of two factors: (a) the non-experimental teaching in fact
included some elements of implicit or explicit training in the application of
strategies and solutions as a part of the teachers habitual practice, or (b) the
signicant increase in writing skills in the TL that was observed in this group
produces some similar eects to those of a more eective application of
strategies and solutions. The latter possibility is especially interesting. As far as
the third hypothesis is concerned, the results are not conclusive: it can neither be
stated that there was a signicant increase in overall quality of translation, nor
that such an increase did not take place.
Particularly interesting possible directions which have emerged for future
research are: (a) qualitative aspects of the application of strategies and solutions,
(b) a taxonomy of problems, strategies and solutions, (c) studies to explore
whether certain translation strategies are acquired before others, or (d) to discern
to what extent learning or teaching styles, or even translating style, inuence the
acquisition of translation strategies. Directly related to the present pilot study, a
full-blown empirical study of a larger population and a greater control of
variables should throw more light on the results shown here.
Finally, it must be said that the collaboration between specialists in Psycho-
linguistics and in Translation Studies has turned out to be positive and fruitful,
as anticipated by Krawutsche (1989).
Note
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C 12
Patrick Zabalbeascoa
Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona
Introduction
The aim of this paper is to present a brief review of translation techniques and
study the development of Vinay and Darbelnets initial proposal (henceforth the
initial proposal). For some people, the study of translation techniques is the
cornerstone of translation methodology and translator training; for others it is a
theoretical anacronysm. Does this mean that some teachers and textbook writers
are not keeping up to date with the latest developments in theoretical studies, or
does it mean that the theorists have chosen to sweep the issue under the carpet
and direct their interests elsewhere? We must be very careful not to oversimplify
the answer to this, although the real question is, put bluntly, in what way is
technique a useful concept? Possible answers might include: (i) to better under-
stand or explain certain phenomena (from the theoretical domain); (ii) as
categories and tools for description (within descriptive studies); (iii) to make the
learning process of trainees more ecient, or to ll in important terminological
gaps for reviewers and critics (within the applied extensions).
The problems posed by the proposal have been pointed out and discussed by
numerous scholars, but that does not seem to have been enough, in many cases,
to break the deadlock. The present situation oers us a host of names such as
procedures, strategies, shifts, methods, replacements and operations, all of which
are synonymous to a greater or lesser degree with techniques, while polysemy is
also a fact of many of these terms due to conceptual distinctions that are drawn
* This study was carried out as a part of Research Project Num PB 950985-C03101 Anlisis
contrastivo de los elementos conectores de la argumentacin y de los elementos temporales en textos
de especialidad (francs/castellano, ingls/castellano) nanced by the Spanish Ministry of Education
and Culture.
118 PATRICK ZABALBEASCOA
When dealing with the term process, I propose that we distinguish as much as
possible between the concept of a broad context where process covers the
stages of designing a translation project, selecting the source text (ST), hir-
ing/selecting translator(s), getting the ST to the translator, getting the target text
(TT/translation) back from the translator, editing1 of the text and all of the other
stages of publishing (or broadcasting, etc.) and distributing a TT and getting it to
its target users. In this broad context one might even include the process of
keeping the text alive by further stages of critical reviews, reprints and editions,
appearance in bibliographies, quotations, imitations, and the event that the
translation may end up being used as a ST for translation into a third language.
So, the broad context includes aspects of the initial norm (as coined by Toury
1980, referring to translation policies), and the various means of rewriting (as
proposed by Lefevere 1992). The concept of initiator is used to refer to the
person or institution that starts the process in its broad context, i.e. the initiator
sees the need and purpose for the future TT, and acts in order to enable the
existence of a translation process, typically, but not necessarily, by paying for the
whole project (see patronage in Lefevere, op. cit.); the process is completed, in
a way, once it reaches its initially-intended users, whereas the whole life-cycle
of the text is not over until it has ceased to be rewritten and is no longer used
(i.e. read, listened to, or watched). In any case, the process of translation in its
broad context may take weeks, months or years.
Process is also used to refer to the linguistic and/or mental operations
within the narrow context of a translator who is faced with a ST and a
commission to translate it. In this case the process begins when the translator
starts to analyse a text as source-text-to-be-translated and goes on for as
long as s/he tries to nd satisfactory renderings for individual aspects and items
of the ST in the TT and for the text as a whole.
Narrow context studies are primarily interested in linguistic and stylistic
phenomena, and focus on a bottom-up analysis of the process; this is also the
context for psycholinguistic and cognitive notions of process, nurturing the belief
that translation is fundamentally an individual activity, ignoring the possibility of
a task carried out by more than one translator (this would force us to consider
FROM TECHNIQUES TO TYPES OF SOLUTIONS 119
Below are related denitions proposed for method, strategy, solution and
technique.
A method is usually dened as way of doing something in accordance with
a predened plan; it is less sensitive to contingencies than a strategy. From this
point of view, the term method would naturally fall in the realm of process rather
than product. However, a translation method is almost always used to refer to the
global characteristics of the product, especially in relation to its source text.
Method is used in product-oriented studies to refer to one or more translational
criteria; it can be distinguished from strategy by introducing the requirement that
it be identiable on the basis of the formal and functional characteristics of a TT
and its ST. Method is the relationship between the source text and its translation
and their respective communicative situations. A good example of a list of
normative methods can be found in Newmark (1988); the range covers the
ground between the long-standing methods of word-for-word and adaptation,
120 PATRICK ZABALBEASCOA
with his own communicative and semantic methods at the centre. Each one
comes with a short recommendation for when it applies (or not, as the case may
be). Another example can be found in the rank-bound v. nonrestricted methods
proposed by Catford (1965). Normative approaches will prescribe certain
methods for certain occasions, although they have also aspired to prescribe a
single, universal method, whereas descriptive studies aim at nding a pattern in
the relationship between each method and other common characteristics of the
TTs that share the same method (e.g. historical period, political regime, status of
translations in the target community). In the paradigm of norm theory and
descriptive studies, a given method can be postulated as the name given to a
combined group of norms for a given TT.
A strategy is a specic pattern of behaviour aimed at solving a problem or
attaining a goal; in translation, the goal is the TT according to its specications.
Strategy is proposed here as any conscious action(s) intended to enhance a
translators performance for a given task, especially in terms of eciency and
eectiveness. Strategies of this kind cannot be discovered by descriptive studies
of the texts alone since the underlying principle is that a given result might be
reached by dierent paths. In a way, this is related to some of the discoveries of
TAPs2 that show how trainees and experienced translators have dierent
behavioural patterns, although this does not necessarily lead to dierent results
(see Kiraly 1995). It seems useful to distinguish behavioural strategies from
mental activity, where the former would include actions that could be observed
directly by the researcher and recorded on video as the translating job is carried
out (consulting a dictionary, writing a draft version, underlining while reading,
taking a break at certain intervals, etc.). Mental activity refers to the thought
processes that can only be detected indirectly by noticing indicators or symptoms
(hesitations, mumblings), or otherwise by means of interviews and think-aloud
protocols, or by special equipment that can track neural activity. If we take an
analogy from chess, mental activity is not included in the strategies. They are
always understood to be the actual movement and arrangement of the chess-
pieces, and also the strategic distribution of time adapted to the players charac-
teristics and the type of moves that are planned or predicted; strategies depend
on the desired result (a win or a draw).
Here are a few examples of areas where various strategies specically
directed at improving translational performance might be put into practice: text
analysis and reading strategies, (TT) writing strategies, research strategies,
information processing (nding, retrieving, ling, exchanging, etc.), revision
strategies, eciency-oriented organizational strategies (systematizing, planning,
distribution of time, layout of materials), fallback strategies (to adapt to new or
FROM TECHNIQUES TO TYPES OF SOLUTIONS 121
From the point of view of translator training the word technique conjures up the
image of the learner acquiring the necessary set of translation techniques in order
to become a qualied professional. This image is somewhat inaccurate, or
overambitious, especially when technique is too closely linked to the idea of
applying certain mechanical procedures or formulae. If our view of translating is
FROM TECHNIQUES TO TYPES OF SOLUTIONS 123
Certain trends within translation studies are more likely than others to drop or
ignore the initial proposal. The notion of technique relies heavily on the concept
of equivalence, so schools of thought that have argued against the use of
equivalence would understandably make little or no use of the initial proposal.
Descriptivists will frown on its aprioristic and underlying prescriptiveness, while
polysystem-oriented studies tend to be more interested in comparing translations
with target-language originals or other TTs in that language rather than with their
STs. Models based on the concept of deverbalization are not really suitable,
since they are born out of a psycholinguistic approach and the initial proposal is
rooted in comparative stylistics. Equally likely to abandon presentations of
techniques are the didactic models which are more focused on developing
reading, writing, investigative and analytical skills (i.e. strategies) in their
students, and communicative skills in general as well as ways of dealing with
highly specialized situations, rather than getting students to produce, somewhat
mechanically, translations that are as similar as possible their teachers version
by applying certain rules of thumb and transfer procedures.
The alternative to abandoning the initial proposal is to build on it, or aspects
of it, by putting a ner point on some of its concepts, or use some of the
categories for descriptive studies. One can look for norms and frequencies and
124 PATRICK ZABALBEASCOA
STTT relationships
Here are levels, or discrete planes, on which STTT relationships can be found,
based on verbal/nonverbal, formal/functional and segmental/non-segmental
distinctions. From this basic framework, various types of STTT relationships
can be postulated, such as equivalence and compensation, outlined below.
Formal plane of verbal segments (of any meaningful length, including all
linguistic and textual units)
Formal plane of nonverbal and paralinguistic segments (gestures, pictures,
signs)
Functional plane of abovementioned segments (e.g. cohesive, semantic,
referential, communicative, aesthetic, semiotic functions)
Formal plane of nonsegmental aspects (rhyme, alliteration, intonation,
layout, etc.)
Functional plane of nonsegmental aspects, i.e. the cohesive, etc. functions of
these forms.
Equivalence
Let us consider equivalence as a variable for the lower levels of the text. We
could then use it as a basis for oering a list of types of equivalence as a means
of classifying translational solutions and proposing categories of solution-types.
Equivalence, here, is used to mean: sameness or a degree of similarity that, for
practical purposes, justies being qualied as sameness in dierence (resulting
from two dierent communication acts). Constituent elements might show
equivalence in any one of the following areas:
The functional plane (giving rise to functional equivalence), with a dierent
level for each function, e.g. propositional, interpersonal, aesthetic, intra-
textual, semiotic equivalence
The formal plane (producing formal equivalence), with a dierent level for
each type of form, e.g. morphological, stylistic, structural, and lexical
equivalence
Equivalence of merit, from an evaluative point of view, of such aspects as
quality and originality (of the texts as they are perceived by their respective
users, not necessarily of the translators contribution)
FROM TECHNIQUES TO TYPES OF SOLUTIONS 125
Compensation
Conclusion
In this paper I have argued for a more coherent terminology in the eld and
proposed terms and denitions to that eect. We have a history and a tradition
in Translation Studies, and these cannot and should not be ignored, nor should
they be perpetuated in the theoretical and pedagogical domains. My answer to
this situation is to propose that the term techniques be given a historical dimen-
sion to refer exclusively to Vinay and Darbelnets initial proposal and to similar
proposals by other authors such as Newmark. For the theoretical eld, the
recommendation is to continue working in establishing discrete categories along
the lines of what is proposed above for equivalence and compensation. We need
to change a single list of overlapping categories such as the initial proposal,
probably for several lists of solution-types (one for types of equivalence, another
for types of compensation, etc.) which contain a more coherent set of categories
for research and for better communication among scholars.
The conclusion for translator training is that the initial proposal, if used at
all, should be presented with great caution. The purpose of grouping solutions
into solution-types is to provide meaningful samples of options for the trainee
and illustrations of translator behaviour. Ultimately, the future translator will
have to deal with situations and contingencies that have not been presented in
class or studied in the literature, and it is with this in mind that strategies and
attitudes are to be worked on. Strategies and solution-types are to be presented
as mind-openers, not as a closed set of categories that act as blinkers in the
search for optimal solutions and fully satisfactory translations.
Notes
1. Post-editing of the TT is what usually comes to mind, but pre-editing of the ST must also be
contemplated.
2. Think-aloud protocols, whereby translators are asked to verbalise their thoughts as they go
along.
3. See STTT relationships below.
4. Bitext as proposed by Harris 1988 and dealt with in Toury 1995: 96.
5. Presumably of a TT segment that has no ST equivalent of the same rank.
</TARGET "zab">
6. A ST segment with no equivalent of the same rank in the TT, or the TT segment is empty.
7. In some accounts there seems to be a strong implication that when a solution is at the same
time a lexical equivalent and a functional equivalent it counts as lexical equivalent, so
functional equivalence as a label is actually meant for functional equivalents that cannot be
classied as lexical equivalents, thus making them mutually exclusive by denition.
<TARGET "mun" DOCINFO
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C 13
Translation Strategies
Somewhere Over the Rainbow
Introduction
In 1982, Hnig and Kussmaul wrote that translation strategies are the main link
between theory and practice, and stated that translation strategies justify transla-
tion theory and should be integrated in the teaching of translation. Ten years
later, Gile (1995b: 13) seemed to think that the teaching of these strategies is
already common in many courses. Translation strategies are also present in most
of the recently published translation manuals, some of them even with exercises
on this topic. The present article aims to propose another way to approach them,
which can be applied to the teaching of translation.
parameters and features, and not an abstract, rationalistic directive. The concept
of text segment is preferred here to that of translation unit, and is dened as any
piece of text separated from the rest to be analyzed as a whole.
From the point of view of the scope they adopt, the attempts to formalize
translation strategies can be grouped in three main lines. The rst group focuses
on text segments, and encompasses the comparative/contrastive proposals of
Vinay and Darbelnet (1958), Vzquez Ayora (1977), Wotjak (1981), and Malone
(1988) on the one hand, and most cognitive approaches, such as Krings (1986),
Lrschers (1991), Sguinots (1991), and Rastalls (1994), to name but a few.
We will come back to these proposals below.
The second group consists of proposals which envision translation strategies
as procedures which aect the processing of the whole text. Reiss (1976) denes
some methods of translation which would apply to the text as a whole, and not
to smaller segments of it. Thelen (1990) also adopts a highly abstract level, and
proposes a two-phase strategy model: analysis and synthesis. Atari (1994),
following Tannen (1980, 1982), uses strategies to refer to the sets of resources
and characteristics associated to either spoken or written language, which he
applies to the teaching of translation. Venuti (1995) uses the term strategy to
mean the attitude or goal with which translators approach their tasks, and
distinguishes between domesticating and foreignizing strategies. Kohn & Kalina
(1996) focus on interpreting (oral translation) strategies, but still from a general
perspective of the activity as a whole. These proposals are either focused on the
translation product or too abstract to be of any use to further students translation
skills, and will not be commented upon.
The third group combines the former scopes in complex proposals which
contain dierent categories. Wilss (1988) makes a dierence between methods,
due to dierent conceptions (hermeneutic and analytical) of what translating is
about (Cap. 7). Then he introduces other categories, such as strategies and
techniques interiorized translation routines (1988: 157), procedures (Cap.
6) and skills (1988: 37) which are synonymous to experience. Newmark (1988)
sees a dierence between translation methods semantic, communicative, etc.
and translation strategies, most of which are drawn from Vinay and Darbel-
nets 1958 spearheading denitions. Hurtado (1996b) distinguishes between types
and methods of translating. In general, all these formulations lack empirical
evidence and the denitions of their categories, let alone the dierences amongst
them, are far from clear and somewhat shaky.
There is still at least one more approach belonging to the third group which
seems to deserve more attention, namely, Kiralys (1990) and Hnigs (1991)
distinction between macro- and microstrategies. Hnig (1991: 8085) postulates
a general strategy that would govern microrules, and which needs to be learned:
Transfer (innate) competence may sometimes produce perfectly acceptable
TRANSLATION STRATEGIES 131
solutions which, however, are not recognized as such by the translator because of
his lack of translatory (acquired) competence, i.e. a macrostrategy. Hnigs
proposal seems intuitively correct, but no proof can yet be submitted on the
nature, content, and structure of these macrostrategies. Here we want to deal,
more modestly, with what he dubs microstrategies translation strategies from
now on because they are more concrete and seem easier to discern. In other
words, it is theoretically sound to propose the smallest analytical frame and let
the data drive its development. A short review of the proposals of the rst group
follows in the next two sections.
That probably explains why Sguinot (1991) observed that students formally
instructed in the use of these strategies promptly abandoned them when facing
practical translation tasks in class. Mason (1994) points out that the view of
translating underlying the techniques is one of langue-to-langue comparison, i.e.,
an exercise in contrastive linguistics. Thus, the comparative/contrastive approach
might then be of interest when teaching contrastive textual analysis as a prepara-
tion to learn how to translate (Lpez and Minett (1998: 235) but Elena (1994: 61)
does not nd them useful even in retrospective analysis. The comparative/
contrastive approach has made its way into most translation manuals, but their
authors seem unsatised with it and tend to adapt the theoretical proposals in
such a way that no list is identical to any other, as shown for some cases in
Table 2. It is not surprising, then, that other approaches have been tried, such as
the empirical psycholinguistic studies which will be commented below.
today intuition seems to be more important. Dreyfus & Dreyfus (1986: 1651)
already pointed out that the decision-taking model (which they seem to consider
synonymous of the problem-solving model) can only apprehend but a small part
of the translation process. Wilss (1996) makes a dierence between original and
automated strategies and claims that the second is a rule-governed behavior, and
Mondahl & Jensen (1996: 102) distinguish spontaneous sequences from problem
sequences.
The psycholinguistic approaches have also dealt dierently with the level
of analysis. While most scholars focus on text segment levels, others, such as
Nord (1993: 290) think that a translation strategy applies to the translation of the
whole text, and that it is rational, although not necessarily conscious:
Anhand des Vergleichs der Ergebnisse von Auftragsanalyse und Ausgangstext-
analyse kann der bersetzer entscheiden, welche bersetzungsstrategie (im
Sinne der Gesamtheit der zu einem bestimmten Ziel fhrenden Verfahrens-
oder Verhaltensweisen) zur Erfllung des bersetzungsauftrags geeignet ist.
Dabei erscheint mir die Feststellung wichtig, dass es sich hier um eine
rationale, vor Beginn der bersetzungsttigkeit unter Bercksichtigung aller
relevanten Faktoren und Gegebenheiten getroene Entscheidung handelt, auch
wenn das routinierte Vorgehen eines professionellen bersetzers die
einzelnen Stufen der Entscheidungsndung nicht (mehr) in jedem Falle
erkennen lsst.
A pedagogical proposal
In spite of all what has been said, some advances may already be applied to the
practical teaching of translation. Sguinot (1991) nds that beginning students
apply inadequate translation strategies whereas excellent students analyze both
the source and the target language texts at various levels, focusing on meaning,
register, structure, cohesion, and so on. Thus, translation strategies can be
thought of as active at various levels, and not necessarily as the binary opposi-
tion between macro- and microstrategies proposed by Hnig (1991) and Kiraly
(1990). The possibility of teaching these strategies independently from the
fact that some people seem to have them from the start is a postulate of
translation theory and will not be further discussed. A second consequence to
draw from Sguinots observation is that some students have or acquire transla-
tion strategies, and that these strategies tend to consider larger segments of text,
or even the text as a whole. The main point here is not whether a translation
strategy applies to the way to translate a given text, but that similar problems
should be given similar solutions throughout the whole text (hence the divergent
denition of translation unit oered by Nord).
Lrscher (1991: 76 passim) correctly states that a translation strategy starts
with the identication of a problem and ends with its solution or with the belief
that it cannot be solved. Note that Lrscher does not necessarily imply that
identifying the problem is a conscious matter. Hnig (1991: 80) thinks that
rational and intuitive elements alternate, follow each other, and combine, in such
a way that the process as a whole is a sort of intuitive-rational hybrid, an opinion
apparently sustained by Kiraly (1990) as well. There are empirical reasons to
believe that intuitive behavior is the rst step of a single, general way of
translating, which would imply supercial processing (basically, searching for
stored potential solutions or models by analogy), that, when unsuccessful, would
lead to a deeper, more eort demanding way of mental processing, oriented to
problem solving (Muoz 1994, 1996; Mayoral and Muoz 1997). In fact, given
that rational strategies may become automated, the dierence between rational
and intuitive seems to blur over time. In a way, learning how to translate is a
process by which many conscious analysis and decision-taking processes become
interiorized.
Beaugrande (1978: 13) stated that translation strategies are the consequence
of combining textual constraints and communicative goals. Rastall (1994: 38f)
also implies that the factors which determine the target-language text play a role
in the choice of the translation strategy:
TRANSLATION STRATEGIES 135
From all these considerations, and given the current impossibility of directly
accessing mental processes, a translation strategy could be substituted by a
pedagogical framework consisting of the analysis of the potentially relevant
elements in the source text and in the communicative context postulated for the
target text, an analysis centered in the production of potential solutions. This
framework makes use of published original texts and their translations, since the
study of regularities in the products can shed light on translation norms (Mason
1994: 65). Here is where the concept of space of the problem becomes
relevant. One of the ways of studying complex problem-solving is drafting a
diagram that contains the variables which play a role in a given problem, which
are matched with potential solutions. The goal of this approach is to sensitize
students towards developing and interiorizing their own translation strategies,
which remain unknown, as in the black box model. In other words, students can
be taught to focus on certain textual and contextual constraints, to develop
potentially optimal solutions corresponding to the constraints they have identi-
ed, and to establish an order of precedence in those elements. The result of this
process is a decision tree, the rst attempt of which can be seen in Diagram 1.
The way the decision tree is developed is as follows:
(a) A translation problem is tentatively dened.
(b) A statistically signicant number of published problem instances and their
translations is collected.
(c) The problem denition is rened and statistical analyses are made to
determine the absolute and relative frequency of each identied subtype of
problem and also of their published solutions.
(d) TL communicative contexts are analyzed to establish hypotheses about the
constraints that have determined the choice of one or other solution.
(e) TL communicative contexts constraints are ordered, according to their
precedence.
(f) SL segments and potential solutions are matched, depending on their
frequency in published texts.
(g) The validity of the decision tree arrived at is checked with a statistically
signicant number of new problem instances.
This approach is not free from problems. For instance, it can only be applied to
well dened problems, which is painfully obvious in the early attempt of
136 RICARDO MUOZ MARTN
is the SL segment
irrelevant yes
omission
as a whole?
(a)
no (1)
is there a precedent
for translating yes Established
the SL segment? translation
(b)
no (2)
Is the potential
TL solution yes
paraphrase
free of restrictions?
(d)
no (4)
Is it important
to know the SL yes
Combine 4+5
segment anyway?
(f)
no (6)
Create new
(7)
Diagram 1: Mayoral and Muozs (1997) model of translation strategy for culturally
marked text segments
</TARGET "mun">
decision tree proposed in Diagram 1. Diagram 2 shows a more solid decision tree
developed by a Granadas Translation School former student, Eva Mara del
guila, for her graduation nal project.
There is only a handful of translation problems so well dened as institu-
tional names and, consequently, the validity of the approach can be questioned.
The same can be said about the binary structure chosen in both models, since
thought is not necessarily binary. But this approach is not trying to pin down a
mental translation strategy. Instead, the diagram is just an attempt to formalize
the variables which have an inuence on the felicity of the matching potential
solutions. In any case, what is really valuable is not the result of the task,
namely, the decision tree, but the perspective gained by the students in their
attempts to formalize such decision trees.
138 RICARDO MUOZ MARTN
Is the SL segment
transparent or yes Banco Bilbao Vizcaya
descriptive? Transcription Banco Bilbao Vizcaya
(d)
No (4)
Is the SL segment an
essential element for yes Transcription Cortes Generales
understanding the TL text? + explanation Cortes Generales, Spains Parliament
(e)
No (5)
(8)
Diagram 2: Del guilas (1997) Model of translation strategy for Spanish English
translation of institutional names of economic and juridic institutions
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S III
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C 14
Joaquim Mallafr
Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Reus-Tarragona
This understanding, the fruit of a literary school and certain political conditions,
has been combined with linguistic norms. Together, they have certainly achieved
undeniably ecient results. However, there are critics that blame both the
literary tradition and the strictly linguistic regulations for creating serious
limitations or imposing a single model, that act as a dead weight round the necks
of creative writers and translators.
This is the position of Pericay and Toutain (1996), who provide arguments
and data, with reference to prose in particular. Their criticism is both skilled and
useful and it makes sense to me as a translator; which is justication enough.
Nevertheless, they do not so much criticise the model itself as models they
consider to be poor imitations. So, despite their contribution, I would question
some over-simplications, their choice of certain examples and partial criticisms
of some translators.
In my opinion, there is a tendency in Pericay and Toutain more exagger-
ated in other less well documented critics to group together both formal
creations and expressions widely used by Catalan speakers as articial creations
belonging to the Noucentisme, and as such to be excluded. This is hardly
justied, any more than would be the exclusion of Joyces use of the Dubliners
language, or his formal expressions based on Tomas de Aquinas. Formal words,
such as, tocom, llur, ensems, de bon antuvi, perfectly legitimate of their kind
should not be classed together with colloquial expressions, such as, abellir,
virosta or enguany, that I, and others, have learned in everyday use, not from
noucentist texts.
In any case, I think too much weight has been attributed to a single tradition,
even though it has become the principal, ocial norm. All language models,
authors, or translators transcend the ocial norm, which is no more than a basic
guide, some unied rules in the varied and unpredictable game of literary
creation. We should not forget that the rst obligation of the responsible
translator is to the model imposed by the author they are translating, his thought,
language and style.
Therefore, I think it may be of interest to consider my own model of
language, which was, of course, nurtured by a linguistic community. But it was
rst structured by conversations in the family and the society, and only later, by
LANGUAGE MODELS AND CATALAN TRANSLATION 143
original text, a text that has aged for readers who have lost touch with their own
tradition? The role of the language authorities is especially delicate in these
circumstances. Perhaps the translator should concentrate on the dicult task of
developing good taste as Alln (1997) suggested. In fact, this is what Carles Riba
suggested in his preface to the second edition of Fabras dictionary (1954) Good
taste: this is a sentiment that is not hereditary; but it is possible to transmit a set
of criteria that will improve the education of each and every one.
If the author can be creative, the translator can only be creative to reect
what the author says. This reection has to be as natural or articial as the
original. Pym (1997: 51) was quite right to suggest we should encourage the idea
that one should translate as one would wish to be translated. This seems to me
to be a fundamental requirement.
If language is to be authoritative it is not enough for it to be real, but it has
to appear real. The artice that is constructed using the language of the commu-
nity and the individual should be plausible, natural for the reader. With time, it
may inuence the readers taste, or, he may even use the language of certain
authors. This was what happened with a famous author of crime novels. On
being told that he seemed very familiar with the underworld that he was able to
reproduce with such realism in his novels, he replied that, in fact, it was the cops
and robbers who were familiar with his novels. The translator also has to
combine the reality and the seeming reality of the original language and repro-
duce it with the tools of the target language, starting from a landscape that is
alien in space, time and culture.
After the Spanish Civil War, translation into Catalan practically disappeared, due
to the political repression. The sixties marked the rst major recovery, with the
successes and failures described by Broch (1991: 189) and Vallverd (1987: 103).
In the eighties there was a second major attempt to publish translations in
Catalan. This was a bigger movement and included initiatives to incorporate
dierent genres, such as the collections of the MOLU (Les Millors Obres de la
Literatura Universal), MOLU XX (Les Millors Obres de la Literatura Universal
segle XX), Poesia del segle XX. Textos loscs, Clssics del pensament modern.
This was possible, in part, due to institutional support and aid from savings
banks. In this period the most important works of Joyce, Proust, Kafka,
Maiakovsky and Henry Miller were also translated and rigorous criteria were
used to translate Boccaccio, Shakespeare, La Fontaine, Sterne and Melville.
LANGUAGE MODELS AND CATALAN TRANSLATION 147
In this article, two of these collections will be described: MOLU and MOLU
XX, directed by Joaquim Molas and assessed by J.M. Castellet and Pere
Gimferrer. The rst collection included 50 books published between 1981 and
1986. The rst 50 books of the second collection were published between 1986
and 1990. The collections are interesting, not only from the point of view of the
translated texts themselves, but also because of the sociological context in which
they were produced. They provide us not only with the translations, but also with
a whole series of other criteria that can throw light on translation studies. As
Parcerisas (1997) suggested, these criteria are commercial, political, institutional
and historical, and they may all inuence the language model, or models, used.
For example, these two collections cannot be explained without the institutional
aid from the Servei del Llibre of the Catalan Ministry of Culture and the
combined eort of the publishers, Edicions 62, and la Caixa savings bank.
It is very dicult to speak of a single language model for these collections,
given the variety of genres, source text languages, authors and translators, as the
following description shows.
The predominant genre was the novel, taking the place of poetry, which had
been very important in Catalan translation in the past. Of the 100 books studied
in the two collections, 73 were ction (34 and 39 in MOLU and MOLU XX,
respectively), 14 were poetry (9 and 5) and 13 were drama (7 and 6).
The choice of source text languages shows that our vision of universal
literature remained linked to the Western world. There are only 12 languages:
English 32 (13 and 19), French 21 (13 and 8), Italian 15 (6 and 9), German 15
(7 and 8), Russian 9 (7 and 2), Galician and Portuguese 3 (1 and 2). In the rst
collection, MOLU, there are single examples of translations from Latin, Proven-
al, Swedish and Norwegian, and in the second collection, MOLU XX, there are
single examples of translations from Polish and Modern Greek.
The fact that 25% of the translators were also writers proves the dedication
of many Catalan authors to translation. Leaving aside the translators of antholo-
gies that included the work of several translators, many of the translators/authors
are best known for their own work as writers. 13 of the books were translations
by Josep Carner, Manuel de Pedrolo, Josep M. de Sagarra, etc., which had been
published previously, but revised for these collections. 12 were translations by 9
modern authors, Pere Gimferrer, Miguel Mart i Pol, Quim Monz, etc., prepared
especially for these collections. However, it is interesting to note the growing
number of translators who are not creative writers in their own right, some of
them are academics who have specialised in the subject or the author of the book
they have translated. It is signicant that 48 of the translators also wrote the
introductions to the books they translated.
148 JOAQUIM MALLAFR
On the whole, the translation criteria used in these collections show that the
books are aimed at the general reader rather than the academic. As Josep
Murgades warned when presenting the translation of Goethe, A translation is
not supposed to be a critical edition, (MOLU 41: 11). J.M. Gell did not attempt
to represent Gogols linguistic variations because he considered them to be
more suitable for an edition addressed at specialists and academics than for an
edition addressed at the general public. Despite this non-academic approach, the
collections are full of translators notes, some of which illustrate interesting
theoretical considerations.
There are dierent opinions about translators notes. Some claim they have
no place in an artistic translation, as the translation has to be solved in the text
alone, others use them generously, or keep them down to an absolute minimum,
using them when they are absolutely essential. It would be useful to study the
criteria used and to try to systematise this area where anarchy often reigns, not
only in Catalan translations, but elsewhere as well. The MOLU collections allow
a great deal of freedom for individual initiatives, although there are some
attempts to systematise. In the second collection the translators notes are always
explicit and regularly marked with an asterisk. However, in the rst collection
there are notable irregularities.
In the rst place, the translators notes in the footnotes are not always really
translators notes. Although it is true that the limits are hard to establish, I
believe there are some that are clear. These are: explanations of word play,
borrowing (by the author or the translator), the translation or not of quotations,
verses included in the original language in the text and translated in a footnote
or viceversa, the recognition of earlier translations used by the translator, specic
allusions or references that would not be directly understood by the translation
reader and require translation decisions. There are other notes that do not aect
the translation and are really editorial notes, for example, notes that clarify who
a person is, or what an institution is, or encyclopaedic notes. Secondly, it is not
always clear if the notes are from the original edition or by the translator. It
would be useful to make the distinction. Thirdly, notes that seem to correspond
to specic translation problems are not always marked as being by the translator.
Discussion of translation criteria can also be found in the introduction or in
a preliminary translators note. Many of the theoretical considerations are
concerned with faithfulness, in one or other of the senses of the notion, although
none would defend the use of archaic language to reect the original. As far as
the language is concerned, we have tried to maintain, as far as was possible, the
LANGUAGE MODELS AND CATALAN TRANSLATION 149
unpolished and sometimes confusing style of the original. We have not altered
the minimal change in style between the narrative and the dialogues, a change
that is hardly noticeable in the original (Desclot, MOLU 11: 7).
Faithfulness to the source text may make the translator consider a literal
translation. I have preferred to run the risk that my translation may sound rigid
because it is so literal, rather than risk the debilitating loss of an overly free
translation, wrote Murgades about his translation of Goethe (MOLU 41: 10).
Joan Casas tended towards a literal respect for the original in his translations,
despite the diculties this involved, so that the deformation is minimal in a
process that is in itself extremely traumatic, a betrayal, the process of passing
from the mould of one language to another. No concessions should be
permitted under the excuse of bringing the original up to date, a concept which
is, after all, no more than a subjective impression (MOLU 42: 11). The resulting
syntax could be complicated, as Joan Casas himself showed with an example of
his translation of a verbal structure by Saint-Simon, es va deixar arrossegar a
gosar fer saber que desitjava (MOLU 37: 10). Casas also translated Bassani,
whose precise language was a sort of spirit that Bassanis own prose recom-
mended to the translator, who soon found himself submerged in the same feeling,
in the certainty that to alter the sense of an adjective, the rhythm of a sentence,
could open an irreparable breach in the soundness of the structure (MOLU XX
33: 10). But when Casas had to translate Cline, he opted for a possible
translation, given the poverty of non-standard urban registers in Catalan. The
lexical limitations were compensated by the use of oral syntax, rhythmical
sentences and set expressions that were not necessarily literal translations
(MOLU XX 19: 1112).
Thus, when a literal translation would be in conict with faithfulness to the
original text, because the literal translation would be incomprehensible, the
translators opt for a certain degree of freedom, for example the translations of
Svevo and Beckett. The same approach is obviously inevitable when translating
poetry. As Miralles remarked, translated poetry has to be read not only as a text
that tries to reect the original correctly, but also as a text with ambitions to
achieve a poetic result in the target language (MOLU XX 25: 16). The transla-
tions of the anthologies vary according to the translators sensitivity and skill and
do not always reect the original poets sensitivity and skill. According to Alain
Verjat, this approximation is perfectly valid because the perfect translation does
not exist (MOLU 44: 18).
The comments made by the translator of Moby Dick, M. A. Oliver, are
particularly interesting in this context. She cites the informants who helped her
to nd Catalan words used in navigation and how to adapt the vocabulary related
150 JOAQUIM MALLAFR
to whales, animals and plants, the set expressions and registers, to identify the
Biblical references or help her to understand certain dicult constructions in
English (MOLU 30: 12).
The question of language models and Catalan translation was also some-
times raised in the introduction or in the translators preliminary note. Dierenc-
es on this point can be seen between the new translations and the 13 books that
were re-editions of earlier translations within the tradition of Noucentisme. In the
earlier translations there are references to the inuence of translation on Catalan
literature and language. For example, in 1921 Carles Riba talked of patriotic
egoism when he saluted the translation of Molire into Catalan by Josep Carner.
Ribas appraisal was reproduced as a foreword to the MOLU edition, This is
our hope, that the Catalan word, following the path laid out by the admirable
translator, may reach its nal and most dicult triumph: to reign supreme in
comedy. We need a language that is independent of Rambouillet Palace, a
language both t for the ear of the Great King, and suited for the good bour-
geois, whether he believes himself to be a gentleman or not (MOLU 2: 6).
However, even a contemporary writer, like Gimferrer, translator of part of
Lducation Sentimentale, acknowledged the inuence of the Catalan style forged
by both translators and writers, and the impact of translation on his own writing.
He stressed his obsession with the prose that was the result of Carners
translations of Dickens, the prose of Josep Vicen Foix and Josep Pla. I gained
another verbal obsession from submerging myself in translating Flaubert and this
prevented me from writing myself for a year and a half (MOLU 20: 7).
However, in the books translated after the 1960s, few translators discussed
language models explicitly. It seems as if there was more condence in the
normative and it was not questioned. These rules in the target language and a
more or less shared cultural and linguistic experience, such as the one described
in the rst part of this paper, provided a language model for translation. Never-
theless, we should not forget the importance of each source text in determining
the translators use of grammar, syntax, register and the personal rhythm of the
work of art.
Conclusions
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Natlia Izard
Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona
(1)
ANGELINA: ben non Il est tout petit ANGELINA: Va, dona, s poca
Tout chtif Tout malingre cosa. s petit i esquidet. La
Finalement Je me suis laisse veritat, si mhe deixat enredar s
avoir parce que ctait le premier perqu era el primer catalanet
petit frenchie que je recontrais que trobava.
154 NATALIA IZARD
(2) HELENE: Bof, a doit pas tre HELENA: Bah, no deu ser ms fumut
plus dur que le Bac quand que aprovar el COU! Has de pencar i
mme! Ya qu travailler, cest prou!
tout
(Fragment from episode 12)
champagne becomes its Catalan equivalent, cava:
(3) JOHANNA: Finalement cest JOANA: Finalment, est b que sigui
bien que a tombe le jour de el dia del meu aniversari. Perqu
mon anniversaire comme a men recordar! I si prenem una mica
je men souviendrai on boit ms de cava?
un peu de champagne !!???
(Fragment from episode 28)
Alfredos, the cafeteria, becomes Can Pere or la granja (the cafeteria).
Other references to French culture are not Catalanized but rather neutralized. In
other words, they loose their Frenchness. In most of the cases the neutraliza-
tion is done by means of hyperonyms:
baguette becomes barreta (roll):
(4) JOHANNA: Moi?! Arrter la JOANA: Ah-ha! Voleu que deixi les
baguette?! Mais a va pas les barretes? No, ni parlar-ne! No,
lles! Pourquoi vous croyez que no, no, no Per qu us penseu que
je suis venue en frane, hein?! he vingut a Frana, pel pa! O sigui
cause du pain! Alors si on que si mel treieu
menlve a
(Fragment from episode 13)
the tour de France becomes the volta ciclista (cycle race)
the university looses its French name: Paris Nord is translated as la
facultat (college):
DUBBING FOR CATALAN TELEVISION 155
character, an American soldier hiding in an island in the Pacic, realizes that his
radio is out of order and yells: Punyeta, ja ha tornat a fer ga! Renoi!. In Acci
judicial (dubbed version of Class Action) we can hear expressions like Ja s que
no s peix al cove. In both cases we are dealing with expressions that are
extremely idiomatic, that the users of the language immediately identify with the
Catalan language. They are the kind of idioms the audience would expect in an
original Catalan product, and not in a dubbed product, which tends to use a more
standard level of language. It is as if these translations were not presented as
translations, but as Catalan products. In fact, in the TVC stylebook for dubbing,
we nd a recommendation of this kind: A good translation would be that which
looks like it has been conceived in Catalan (Televisi de Catalunya 1997: 14;
authors translation).
Using this kind of genuine language means moving away from literal
translations. The introduction to a dubbing stylesheet, published internally by
TVC in 1993, says:
We want to contribute to the task of the translators and the dubbing consul-
tants, providing them with alternatives () to literal translations -especially
from English- which distort Catalan as a support of dubbed products ().
Bearing in mind, though, that the adaptation should not loose the original tone
and that a common aim of the professionals of the language is to avoid
expressive poverty through a more open and richer use of the means that are
available to give the dialogs connotation and make them closer and more
credible to the audience who has chosen to watch TVC (Comissi de Norma-
litzaci Lingstica, 1993: 5; authors translation).
Notes
1. We must say that no translation is completely adequate nor acceptable. Each one takes a
position of commitment, but a position that is always closer to one of the two poles.
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Tal como puede observarse, raramente se lleva a cabo una traduccin literal del
ttulo en ingls; en la mayora de los casos, ste se adapta de manera que se
integre en el ambiente de rectitud moralista de la poca. Sustantivos como
tortura, pecado, conciencia o mal, forman parte de la terminologa que los
jerarcas eclesisticos del momento empleaban constantemente para censurar
malos hbitos o costumbres. Por poner tan slo un ejemplo, el arzobispo de
Sevilla dena los bailes en una pastoral de 1946 de la siguiente forma (Abella
1996: 110): El baile es gavilla de demonios, estrago de la inocencia, solemnidad
del inerno, tiniebla de varones, infamia de doncellas, alegra del diablo y
tristeza de los ngeles.
Vistos los ejemplos anteriores, cualquiera de las deniciones del baile
empleadas por el cardenal Segura poda haber sido utilizada por los tituladores
de entonces para sus propias pelculas. No obstante, en ocasiones, se iba an ms
all y se haca referencia directa a los mandamientos (El cuarto mandamiento,
The Magnicent Ambersons, 1942); o incluso a pasajes sagrados, tal como en el
caso del Salmo 23 sobre El buen pastor, una de cuyas partes es empleada en
su doble versin para la traduccin de Dark Passage (La senda tenebrosa,
1947) y The Story of Dr Wassell (Por el valle de las sombras, 1944). Igual-
mente, el constante empleo de ciertas palabras de marcado cariz religioso es otro
de los rasgos caractersticos que presentan los ttulos de las producciones
extranjeras exhibidas durante el rgimen franquista. As, amn de las vistas en el
grupo anterior, ngel, demonio, alma,7 cielo o milagro son un referente constante
para los distribuidores de estos lmes, tal como puede comprobarse en los ttulos
que se exponen a continuacin:
(1) Dos en el cielo (A Guy Named Joe, 1943)
(2) Niebla en las almas (Faces in the Fog, 1944)
(3) El callejn de las almas perdidas (Nightmare Alley, 1947)
(4) El milagro del cuadro (The Light Touch, 1951)
(5) El refugio de los ngeles (The Village, 1954)
(6) El demonio, la carne y el perdn (The Singer, not the Song, 1961)
(7) ngeles sin paraso (A Child Is Waiting, 1963)
(8) Almas de metal (Westworld, 1973)
Sin embargo, el carcter educativo (en el sentido que ya hemos expuesto) de
todas estas traducciones/adaptaciones, podra entenderse tambin ms all de su
funcin de gua positivo hacia todo lo bueno (Burke 1955: 90). Y es que, a
travs del empleo de unos ttulos alusivos a hbitos o conductas calicadas
tradicionalmente de pecaminosas, se estaba lanzando una excitante invitacin a
la morbosa curiosidad de los millones de espaoles que se sentan acosados por
166 VCTOR M. GONZLEZ RUIZ
las constantes llamadas al orden moral desde los plpitos y las instituciones
estatales. De esta forma, ante el reclamo de dos ttulos tan diferentes como El
hombre que vendi su alma (The Devil and Daniel Webster, 1945) y Vocacin
de marino (Youth Takes a Fling, 1938), es probable que el pblico encontrara el
primero mucho ms sugerente y atractivo; hecho del que, con toda seguridad, los
distribuidores eran muy conscientes y que, en consecuencia, explotaban para su
propio benecio.
Parece claro, por tanto, que los encargados de distribuir las pelculas
extranjeras compartan con la jerarqua eclesistica el convencimiento de que el
pblico cinematogrco necesitaba que se le mostrara el camino. Son ml-
tiples las referencias dentro de documentos catlicos a la minora de edad de los
espectadores con respecto a los temas morales. Desde la consideracin de que,
en lo relativo a la sexualidad en el cine, todos son menores (Begoa 1956: 14),
hasta la denicin del sptimo arte como rerum scholae por parte del Papa Po
XI (Bonet 1957: 25), es evidente que, para la Iglesia catlica, la exhibicin
cinematogrca deba ser utilizada como inmejorable medio de propagacin de
sus ideas.
Es por esto que, adems de para juzgar conductas inmorales (tal como
hemos podido comprobar en los ttulos ya presentados), tambin se impona la
utilizacin del cine como forma de expresar el optimismo y el lado positivo de
una cotidianidad que se haca demasiado cuesta arriba para la gran mayora de
espaoles. En consecuencia, se pudieron observar en la pantalla historias y
personajes que demostraban que, tras el sufrimiento, y gracias a una buena dosis
de paciencia cristiana, se encontraba la felicidad completa. Estas ideas se
reejaron tambin en varios ttulos, expresin del gozo y la actitud optimista ante
la vida, tal como puede apreciarse en los siguientes:
(1) El sol sale maana (Our Vines Have Tender Grapes, 1945)
(2) Maana es vivir (Tomorrow Is Forever, 1946)
(3) De ilusin tambin se vive (The Miracle on 34th Street, 1947)
(4) Viva la vida! (You Gotta Stay Happy, 1948)
(5) Vivir es lo que importa (The Young Doctors, 1961)
(6) Una razn para vivir (The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come, 1961)
(7) La vida vale ms (The Slender Thread, 1965)
(8) Qu hermosa es la vida (Whats So Bad about Feeling Good?, 1968)
Sin embargo, el trabajo de los tituladores no se limit a censurar comporta-
mientos indecentes y a resaltar el lado alegre de una existencia insulsa. La
necesidad de conseguir buenos resultados econmicos llev a los distribuidores
de los lmes a jugar, una vez ms, la carta de la doble moral y la ambigedad
CENSURA Y TRADUCCIN DE TTULOS CINEMATOGRFICOS 167
5. Conclusin
tras la proyeccin del lme, puesto que su ttulo haba alentado unas expectativas
que difcilmente podan ser satisfechas.
Todo esto nos devuelve, nalmente, al punto inicial de discusin sobre la
metodologa que se debe emplear a la hora de estudiar los ttulos cinematogr-
cos. Parece claro que no es viable ligar el estudio de stos al de los ttulos
literarios, ya que las caractersticas industriales y masivas de los primeros
raramente pueden aplicarse a los ltimos. Por lo tanto, englobar ambos en un
mismo apartado seguramente llevar a juicios errneos. De la misma manera,
sugerir que el ttulo cinematogrco debe mejorar y facilitar la comunicacin, as
como evitar la comprensin errnea del texto -en este caso, el flmico-
(Jovanovic 1990: 213), tal como se hace al igualarlo a aqul literario, resultara
demasiado ingenuo a la vista de todo lo estudiado en estas pginas.
En el caso de los ttulos cinematogrcos, la armacin de R. Rabadn
(1994: 137) de que los textos traducidos funcionan como una til herramienta
para justicar ciertos valores ya presentes, o que se quieren imponer a una
sociedad, es especialmente cierta. Y esto es as en la medida en que las
versiones espaolas de estos ttulos se ajustan perfectamente a la denicin
cultural que de la traduccin como reescritura dan S. Bassnett y A. Lefevere
(1990: 113), entendiendo sta como manipuladora y cargada de ideologa. Por
lo tanto, muy diversas circunstancias de todo tipo (como, por ejemplo, las
religiosas y econmicas, por citar las ms relevantes en nuestro artculo) han de
tenerse en cuenta si se pretende investigar seriamente en este campo.
Notas
1. En este sentido, otros estudios, como los de I. Pascua Febles (1994) y M. Jovanovic (1990),
prcticamente olvidan la importancia de los factores extralingsticos y se centran en la
manifestacin de errores de traduccin y en la correccin de stos.
2. Ilustracin de este singular matrimonio de fuerzas es el extenso muestrario de discursos, toda
una declaracin de intenciones sin resquicio alguno de ambigedad, realizados tanto por la
jerarqua eclesistica como por el propio Franco, donde se reconocan al dictador mritos casi
divinos. En 1939, por ejemplo, se presentaba al general de esta manera (Abella 1996: 23): El
Caudillo impetra la ayuda de Dios para la forja del Imperio, y es ungido con las palabras
sacramentales de la Iglesia. Igualmente, el nuevo Jefe de Estado asuma sin problemas su
propia tarea como lder espiritual con estas palabras (Abella 1996: 23): Seor Dios, en cuyas
manos est todo derecho y todo poder, prstame tu asistencia para conducir este pueblo a la
plena libertad del Imperio para gloria tuya y de tu Iglesia.
3. Una de las primeras muestras de esta inuencia vendra con la promulgacin, en 1943, de la
Ley de Ordenacin de la Universidad Espaola, en la cual se prescribe que la Universidad
adaptar sus enseanzas al dogma y a la moral catlicas y a las normas del Derecho Cannico
en vigor (Gubern 1981: 54).
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John Milton
Universidade de So Paulo, Brazil
Despite the enormous amount of mass literature that is translated, little has been
written about these translations. Robyns (1990) looked at the omissions made in
detective novels translated into French, using the belles indles image; Paizis
(1998) found similar omissions in romances translated into French and Greek;
Sohr (1996, 1997) examined pseudotranslations of science ction into Hungari-
an; while Gouvanic (1997) found French translations of science ction novels
more faithful to the originals. This paper will contrast the translation of mass
ction, to which I give the name of factory translation, and whose characteris-
tics I detail at length, with that of literary, philosophical and erudite works, to
which I give the name of aristocratic translation.
Translation studies have traditionally been an integral part of high culture,
dominated by an aristocratic and gentlemanly coterie who have access to foreign
languages and literature. One can think of the Royalist aristocrats in the 17th
century, many of the names Tytler mentions in his Essay on the Principles of
Translation, and the many gentlemanly discussions around translations of Homer.
Many literary translations have been aimed at the learned few, the aristocrat-
ic, gentlemanly or academic coterie. This can clearly be seen, for example, in the
ideas of the German Romantics. More specically, Lawrence Venuti comments
that the kind of translation that Schleiermacher recommends aims to preserve
the linguistic and cultural dierence of the foreign text, but only as it is
perceived in the translation by a limited readership, an educated elite (Venuti
1991: 130). So, paradoxically, a translation, which should or could make a work
available to all the literate members of a new language group, may be directed
to a specic clique or coterie, thereby excluding the great majority of readers.
The rise of democracy with the enfranchisement of the masses in the 19th
172 JOHN MILTON
references and dicult words. Footnotes would also warn against the dangers
of drinking alcohol and bad eating habits.
3. Factory Translation
Much of translation theory has worked within the faithful-unfaithful and content-
style frameworks. In recent years we have seen attempts to break out of this
straitjacket with scholars connecting translation with other areas such as psycho-
analysis, deconstruction, philosophy. However, many of these remain within the
area of high culture. Jos Lambert (1994) has written that translation studies
must break the boundaries of high culture, that translation is linked to larger
series and frames of communication. He also writes about the enormous amount
of invisible translation that takes place in every day situations. For example,
when we buy a packet of soap powder, the name, the instructions, the advertis-
ing, the production manuals will almost certainly have involved a large amount
of translation, which is never made obvious.
This study looks at the classic as an artifact, handled and bought by the
masses, used and altered at will by editors, adapters, cartoonists, lm makers, the
record business, abridgers and CD-ROM makers. To use Walter Benjamins
famous metaphor, the translation will certainly have an afterlife, but this afterlife
may take on a very dierent form to the original.
Let us look at some of the characteristics of this kind of translation:
1. Rather than being the work of an individual, the condensed or adapted
translation, or, for that matter, the dubbed or subtitled lm, or the translation
made within industry, will be the work of a team. It is a mere part of the
assembly line. The name of the translator may not appear on the work. If it
does, it may be a pseudonym: a highbrow translator may not wish to have his
name associated with the work, or it may even be an invented name for a team.
Jerusa Pires Ferreira, in her study of O Livro de So Cipriano (1992), shows how
the author of these popular collections of legends, almanacs, spells and
fragments is usually a compiler, a copier, a translator, an updater and an
inventor. In most cases the author was anonymous or used a pseudonym.
Historical parallels can be found in medieval translation, where adaptation,
omissions, retellings, alterations, etc., were a normal part of what we now call
translation.
2. Standardization, or Fordism, is an important factor in the production of
factory novels and translations. Dierent forms of standardization can be
176 JOHN MILTON
found: (a) theme: the work is tailored to suit the tastes of the reader; (b) lan-
guage: sub-standard language and dialect is cut out; (c) style: the work should
not deviate from a strict narrative style; (d) size: after 1960 the Clube do Livro
publications were standardized to 160 pages; (e) weight: a low weight to cut
postal costs will be an important economic factor in many book clubs.
3. Commercial production ignores the so-called sacredness of the author. Walter
Benjamins well-known essay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical
Reproduction (1969) emphasizes the fact that the contemporary mechanical
possibilities of reproducing the object will change our relationship to the work of
art and destroy the ritualistic and magical elements surrounding the original.
With lm and photography there is never a single original. The very nature of
both arts is essentially reproductive: lms and photographs cannot be collected
as paintings can. Moreover, the cost of a lm is so high that it must be made
available to the highest number of people possible. Indeed, the nature of lm is
highly democratic as it will make all myths and great authors and artists
available to cinema goers.
The fragmentation of a lm is very dierent to the unity of a painting or
a poem. The director, responsible for the nal product, will depend on the
expertise of many other dierent areas, sound, photography, etc., of which he
will have only a limited knowledge. He or she will be more of a manager of the
nal product. Compare this with the painter or novelist, who will have all
elements of the work of art under his control. The nal result of the lm will
come about as the result of the combination of a number of very dierent
elements. Though Benjamins essay concentrates on the reproducible arts of lm
and photography, his essay also helps us to understand the commercial transla-
tion, such as that of the Clube do Livro, where the editor will coordinate the
work of the translator, sub-editors, illustrator and nance department.
4. Denite commercial strategies will be used. The translation will be directed
to a denite market. There will be markets for dierent segments of society.
Non-condensed, carefully produced translations will be directed towards markets
from a higher social class. (Adapted) translations of Pride and Prejudice and
Wuthering Heights are often directed towards a market of female readers.
Similarly, Moby Dick, Kidnapped, Huckleberry Finn and Gullivers Travels are
usually directed towards the juvenile market.
5. Deadlines are all-important. The product must be released on time even though
it may have a few aws, particularly if it is not a product which is aimed at an
erudite market. Meeting deadlines is much more important than perfectly accurate
copy. The monthly deadline of the Clube do Livro meant a minimum of time for
THE TRANSLATION OF MASS FICTION 177
4. Conclusion
This article has examined the characteristics of translations of mass ction and
has criticised the quality of translations such as those of the Clube do Livro for
their censorship, lack of attention to detail and style and carelessness. In terms
of a mere qualitative analysis, such translations will always lose to more
carefully made academic translations. Yet such criticism does not take into
account the fact that these cheap and accessible translations were able to
introduce classic Brazilian and foreign novels to an audience which did not have
a book-buying habit, and may have resulted in an interest in literature and further
reading, playing a signicant part in improving the level of education and world
knowledge in Brazil, where educational facilities were, and still are, precarious.
Translations cited
Austen, Jane. 1970. Orgulho e Preconceito, retold by Nair Lacerda. Rio de Janeiro: Ouro.
Austen, Jane. 1970. Orgulho e Preconceito, retold by Paulo Mendes Campos. Rio de
Janeiro: Ouro.
Austen, Jane. No date. Orgulho e Preconceito, Faixa Preta Romances. Rio de Janeiro:
Faixa Preta Romances. Gerstum Carneiro.
Balzac, Honor de. 1945. Eugnia Grandet. no translator. So Paulo: Clube do Livro.
Balzac, Honor de. 1972. Eugnia Grandet, retold by Marques Rebelo. Rio de Janeiro:
Ediouro.
Bront, Charlotte. 1958. O Professor, tr. Jos Maria Machado. So Paulo: Clube do Livro.
Bront, Emily. No date. O Morro dos Ventos Uivantes, tr. Vera Pedroso, condensao
Luthero Maynard, Romances de Amor da Nova. So Paulo: Cedibra
Dickens, Charles. 1969. Hard Times, tr. Jos Maria Machado. So Paulo: Clube do Livro.
Dickens, Charles. 1960. Dombey & Filho, tr. Vicente Pedroso. So Paulo: Edies
Paulinas.
Eliot, George. 1973. O Tesouro de Silas Marner, translated and adapted by Aristides
Barbosa and Henrique J. Delm. So Paulo: Clube do Livro, 1973
Rabelais, Franois. 1961. O Gigante Gargntua, tr. Jos Maria Machado. So Paulo:
Clube do Livro, 1961.
Swift, Jonathan. 1940. As Viagens de Gulliver a terras Desconhecidas. Portuguese
translation scrupulously revised and modernized. So Paulo: Cultura.
Swift, Jonathan. 1956. As Viagens de Gulliver, tr.: Jos Maria Machado. So Paulo,
Clube do Livro.
Swift, Jonathan. 1957. Viagens de Gulliver, tr: Cruz Teixeira. So Paulo: Jackson.
<TARGET "cla" DOCINFO
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Abstract
This paper aims at reecting upon the translation of fairy tales into Portuguese,
more specically about forty versions of the tale Little Red Riding Hood,
published in Brazil since 1953. Trying to analyze the particularities of the
several translations, each was compared to Perraults French model and to the
Grimm Brothers German model. Such a research led me into the following
conclusion: in place of the traditional tale, children are offered gross adapta-
tions of the classical story, marked, in its vast majority, by the omission of
scenes that are important to the narrative in favor of descriptions that idealize
the childs universe. The emphasis on the moralizing tone and the oversimpli-
cation of the language are also characteristics of these translations, traits that
presuppose a nave reader, feeble and incompetent, very different from todays
children who have gradually been inserted in the computer universe and
exposed to the national and international problems of an era of Globalization.
avis, aucune de ces tudes ne pose la question essentielle: comment ces rcits
sont-ils prsents aux enfants, aujourdhui, dans les divers pays? En dautres
termes, quelles sont les caractristiques des diverses traductions (ou adaptations),
leur degr dcart par rapport aux adaptations classiques de Perrault et de
Grimm? A quel enfant ces nouvelles productions seraient-elles adresses?
Comme nous lavons dj dit, an de tenter dclaircir ces points, nous
avons choisi danalyser le conte Le Petit Chaperon Rouge, lun des plus diuss
parmi les nombreux contes de fes.2 En choisissant les textes analyser, nous
avons slectionn dabord trente-trois versions (publies au Brsil entre 1953 et
1985), narrant lhistoire traditionnelle (celle de Perrault ou celle de Grimm), sans
quil y ait, mon avis, une intention dlibre de la parodier.
An de faire apparatre plus clairement les caractristiques des diverses
versions, nous examinerons les dirences principales existant entre ladaptation
de Perrault et celle des Frres Grimm.
En ce qui concerne la caractrisation du Petit Chaperon Rouge, la version
de Perrault ne met en relief que sa beaut. Celle de Grimm nous apprend quelle
est petite et tendre. Dans la premire, la mre ne donne pas de conseils sa lle
quand elle lui demande dapporter une galette et un petit pot de beurre la
grand-mre. Dans la seconde, la petite lle doit apporter sa grand-mre un
gteau et une bouteille de vin, et sa mre lui donne plusieurs conseils pour un
bon comportement. Dans le texte franais, en rencontrant le Petit Chaperon
Rouge dans la fort, le loup essaye de la tromper, en lui suggrant un chemin
plus long jusqu la maison de sa grand-mre, tandis quil dcide daller par un
autre, plus court, ce qui fait quil arrive chez la grand-mre plus tt quelle. Dans
le texte allemand, le loup lui suggre dobserver la nature, et lenfant lui obit et
nit par quitter son chemin, en pntrant trs loin dans la fort. Dans les deux
versions, le loup avale la grand-mre en entrant chez elle et, couch dans le lit,
attend larrive du Petit Chaperon Rouge. Dans la premire, quand elle entre
dans la maison (aprs avoir frapp la porte), la petite lle reoit une invitation
du loup: Viens te coucher avec moi . Elle se dshabille et va se mettre dans
le lit avec le loup. Dans la deuxime version, le Petit Chaperon Rouge entre dans
la maison sans frapper (la porte est ouverte) et stonne de lapparence de la
grand-mre . Dans la version franaise, le dialogue nal contient des rfren-
ces aux bras, aux jambes, aux oreilles et aux dents du loup. Dans la version
allemande, le Petit Chaperon Rouge parle des oreilles, des yeux, des mains et du
museau de lanimal. Dans la premire, le loup mange le Petit Chaperon Rouge
et lhistoire se termine sur cela. Ensuite, on prsente la moralit, dans laquelle on
avertit les jeunes lles du danger que reprsente le fait dcouter les loups
doucereux. Dans la version allemande, le loup mange galement le Petit Chape-
ron Rouge, mais le dnouement est heureux: un chasseur arrive providentielle-
ment et ouvre le ventre du loup endormi, en sauvant la grand-mre et sa petite-
184 ANA MARIA CLARK PERES
tombe par terre de toutes ses forces ); ores lindssimas (des eurs dune
extrme beaut ); a av, a menina e o caador alegram-se imensamente (la
grand-mre, lenfant et le chasseur se rjouissent normment ); Chapeuzinho
segue seu caminho bem direitinho (le Petit Chaperon Rouge suit trs
sagement son chemin), etc.; (4) omission de certains passages du rcit (parmi
les versions qui suivent Perrault, seulement une arme que le Petit Chaperon
Rouge rejoint le loup dans le lit).
Des quatre textes qui se veulent des traductions de Perrault, trois ont un
dnouement malheureux, et un seul contient la moralit la n de lhistoire. Des
trois versions qui se disent originaires de Grimm, deux dentre elles seulement
contiennent le retour du Petit Chaperon Rouge chez sa grand-mre.
Voyons maintenant les principales caractristiques des ditions qui prten-
dent tre des adaptations ou qui nexplicitent pas si elles sont des traductions ou
des adaptations:
(1) Lattribution dun nom ou dun ge au Petit Chaperon Rouge est
frquente, en mme temps que lon omet souvent lexpression Il tait une fois
(ces deux modications violent le principe de lindnition, propre aux contes
traditionnels);5 (2) les caractristiques morales de la petite lle sont presque
toujours renforces (elle devient gentille , bonne , obissante , bien
leve , etc); (3) sont introduits galement des ftes, des habitudes, des prome-
nades et des jeux du Petit Chaperon Rouge avec ses petits amis, les petites btes;
(4) de nouveaux conseils sont donns par la mre au Petit Chaperon Rouge; (5)
les aliments varient galement, un appel net ce qui est soi-disant enfantin: ce
sont des plats savoureux ou bien des tartes dlicieuses , places dans de
jolis petits paniers; (6) en arrivant au bois, lenfant emploie son temps faire
de longues promenades, avant mme de rencontrer le loup: elle saute, elle bondit,
elle chante, elle joue avec de petits lapins, qui lui donnent aussi des conseils; (7)
quand le loup rencontre la petite lle, il lui suggre des promenades et des jeux
les plus divers, et fait mme la course avec elle; (8) lentre de lanimal dans la
maison de la grand-mre (et celle du Petit Chaperon Rouge, un peu plus tard),
qui se passe rapidement dans les textes originaux, se prolonge dans les versions
que nous avons analyses; (9) dans un grand nombre de textes le loup ne mange
pas la grand-mre, puisque celle-ci svanouit, ou fuit, ou se cache dans lar-
moire (ou bien y est enferme par lanimal) ou dans le grenier ou dans la cave;
(10) la deuxime rencontre de la petite lle avec le loup est aussi considrable-
ment retarde, grce lintroduction de dialogues divers; (11) aucune de ces
versions ne signale que le Petit Chaperon Rouge se dshabille et se couche dans
le lit avec le loup; (12) quant au dialogue nal, aucun texte ne parle des jambes
du loup, comme le fait Perrault; (13) dans la plupart des versions, le loup ne fait
que menacer le Petit Chaperon Rouge de la manger: celle-ci crie au secours et
est aide par ses amis, les petites btes; ou bien, elle court, poursuivie par le
186 ANA MARIA CLARK PERES
loup, au milieu dune norme agitation; (14) des chasseurs la sauvent, battent le
loup, tirent sur lui avec un fusil ou le laissent senfuir (ou il est arrt, ou bien
il tombe dans un roncier et devient un bon loup); (15) la grand-mre est
libre et il y a de longues ftes pour commmorer la n heureuse, en plus de
nouvelles leons de morale de tous les adultes prsents et des promesses ritres
du Petit Chaperon Rouge de toujours bien se comporter; (16) seule une version
contient le retour du Petit Chaperon Rouge chez sa grand-mre.
En ce qui concerne le langage de ces versions, nous observons une intensi-
cation des procds dj rencontrs dans les traductions des contes: (1) une
utilisation excessive de diminutifs et aussi de nombreux clichs de langage:
belle comme une eur , des cheveux si blonds, qui paraissent des ls dor ,
des eurs couvrent le sol comme un tapis ; (2) emploi excessif aussi dadjec-
tifs: la petite lle est toujours gaie , contente , heureuse ; cest une petite
innocente (le loup, son tour, apparat, dans quelques versions, comme un
gnie de la fort, et, dans dautres, dguis en ange, il a mme un surnom:
Bonbon , et, de mchant, il passe, parfois gourmand , espigle ou
devient un petit loup).
Aprs ce rsum rapide des caractristiques principales des versions en
langue portugaise, au Brsil, il est possible de faire une synthse des modica-
tions proposes:
1. omission de passages du rcit: il semble que des scnes considres comme
tristes, violentes ou indcentes sont supprimes, pour prserver la soi-disant
innocence et ingnuit des enfants;
2. surcrot dinformations ou substitution dexpressions: en retardant le suspens
du rcit, on introduit beaucoup dactions, des dialogues divers, de longues
descriptions: lunivers enfantin est strotyp et idalis, marqu toujours par la
lgret, la joie constante, lingnuit, lirresponsabilit et linconsquence.
Visant peut-tre une simplication du langage et une intensication de
laectivit, il y a un excs de diminutifs et dadjectifs qui ne se trouvent pas
dans les textes originaux. En prtendant transmettre beaucoup dmotion, on
arrive facilement au mlodrame ou une grande banalit, avec lemploi de
plusieurs clichs de langage;
3. emphase du ton moralisateur: la morale exprime dans de nombreux textes ne
se situe plus hors de lhistoire, comme chez Perrault, ou sous la forme de
recommandations de la mre et dune promesse du Petit Chaperon Rouge,
comme chez Grimm. Dans la plupart des versions tudies, nous la trouvons tout
au long du rcit, sous la forme de conseils varis qui doivent tre assimils par
la protagoniste. (En ralit, ce rappel est adress lenfant lecteur.)
Dans la tentative de vrier si les traductions ou adaptations plus rcentes du
LA TRADUCTION DES CONTES DE FES 187
conte Le Petit Chaperon Rouge ont subi une modication signicative, jai essay
rcemment de slectionner et danalyser un nouveau corpus.
Pour ne pas restreindre ma slection des librairies et des maisons
ddition dune seule ville, jai choisi de faire des recherches partir des ditions
du conte existantes dans une librairie virtuelle qui reoit des commandes de
livres via Internet et les envoie la plupart des tats brsiliens. Jai pu avoir
accs sept ditions du conte.
De ces sept versions, cinq ne se rfrent pas ladaptateur original (Perrault
ou Grimm), mais toutes contiennent le dnouement heureux de Grimm. Quatre
dentre elles, non seulement ne prcisent pas leur origine, mais ne spcient pas
sil sagit de traductions, au sens strict du mot, ou bien dadaptations, et ne
contiennent aucune autre rfrence, hormis le titre de lhistoire. Trois versions se
disent des adaptations (nous navons pas trouv de traductions des originaux).
De nombreuses caractristiques signales auparavant persistent dans la
plupart de ces ditions actuelles du conte Le Petit Chaperon Rouge, savoir: de
nouveaux conseils et des leons de morale sont donns lenfant par sa mre;
des promenades et des jeux avec ses petits amis les btes marquent le chemin du
Petit Chaperon Rouge, qui se dirige vers la maison de sa grand-mre, joyeuse et
bondissante; le loup ne mange ni la grand-mre ni la petite lle; un excs de
diminutifs est prsent dans la plupart des descriptions et des dialogues.
On se rend compte alors que les transformations de notre socit nont pas
t susantes pour altrer la situation de la traduction (ou de ladaptation) des
contes de fes au Brsil, un pays o le genre littrature enfantine a atteint,
comme nous lavons dit, un dveloppement dmesur, notamment partir des
annes soixante-dix.6
Quelle conclusion tirer de toute cette tude?
Lanalyse de toutes ces traductions et adaptations nous montre quelles prsuppo-
sent un lecteur innocent, ingnu, fragile, infrieur, incapable de regarder certaines
scnes ou de comprendre un langage moins simple et aectif . Si le texte de
Perrault, publi au XVIIe sicle, comme nous lavons vu, prsupposait dj un
lecteur peu form, qui avait besoin davoir une bonne formation, et si le texte de
Grimm, au dbut du XIXe sicle, mettait en valeur des leons de bon comporte-
ment, de telles productions intensient considrablement le ton moralisateur et
ce qui est pire, quand il est question de ralisations littraires banalisent la
trame, en utilisant un langage strotyp et soi-disant motif, qui rduit lunivers
de lenfant, conu, avant tout, comme un tre non seulement naf, mais bte.
Mais comment concevoir lenfant aujourdhui?
Comme il est impossible, mon sens, de dnir lenfant contemporain ,
188 ANA MARIA CLARK PERES
paradigme de tous les enfants, une approche qui les situe entre la tradition et
lavenir est peut-tre viable.
Insrs graduellement dans le monde complexe de lInformatique et ouverts
aux problmes nationaux et internationaux, dans cette re de la mondialisation,
beaucoup dentre eux anticipent un avenir dans lequel les exigences de technolo-
gies nouvelles et imprvisibles les rendront de plus en plus actifs et capables.
Ces enfants sintresseraient-ils encore des rcits forcment simplis et
didactiques? Des enfants qui reoivent quotidiennement des invitations trs
sductrices de jeu-vido sophistiqu et sont capables dutiliser avec dsinvolture
des logiciels parfois diciles mme pour les adultes, seraient-ils sensibles, je le
rpte, des histoires de petits lapins qui sautent, de petites lles trs obissan-
tes, de petits paniers, de petites grand-mres, de loups qui ne peuvent pas tre
mchants, des leons et des leons de morale?7
Les contes europens classiques auraient-ils perdu, alors, leur validit?
Je ne le crois pas. A mon avis, il y a quelque chose dimpossible briser: la
prsence, dans lenfance, de la pense magique, de lanimisme, de lattraction
pour le merveilleux, inhrents aux contes de fes anciens. Si comptent et bien
inform quil soit, lenfant ne cesse dtre attir par le monde magique et
incantatoire des rcits anciens qui, originaires des vieilles lgendes et des mythes,
sduisent lhumanit, depuis toujours.8
Si ce sens du merveilleux persiste, une sorte de tradition, cependant, pourrait
tre rompue: celle du didactisme de certaines productions dites littraires , qui
veulent considrer lenfant comme un tre infrieur et mme idiot, qui a besoin
de certaines traductions ou adaptations, pour pouvoir devenir un adulte savant
et intgre .
Dailleurs, cette distinction mme rigide entre littrature pour enfants et
littrature pour adultes ne serait-elle pas un vestige de la socit du XVIIe sicle
(qui avait besoin de sparer les deux mondes pour prserver la soi-disant
innocence enfantine) prsent dans la socit contemporaine?
Notes
1. Il faut souligner quil nexistait pas de particularisation de lenfance dans la socit mdivale
et dans le dbut de lre moderne. Ds quils pouvaient se passer des soins de la mre, les
enfants taient introduits dans la socit des adultes, et se mlaient eux. Tout le monde
samusait et travaillait ensemble, tant donn que les enfants nallaient pas rgulirement
lcole, destine un petit nombre de clercs.
2. Le Petit Chaperon Rouge, ainsi que dautres contes adapts par Perrault, ne contient pas de fes.
Ce seraient avant tout des contes merveilleux, o il y a lintervention de llment magique (par
LA TRADUCTION DES CONTES DE FES 189
exemple, un loup qui parle). Cependant, on a lhabitude, en France et ailleurs, dappeler tous
ces rcits contes de fes .
3. Daprs les recherches de Paul Delarue et de Madame Rumpft, le conte des Frres Grimm
drive de celui de Perrault. Ils auraient recueilli leur version chez une conteuse dhistoires
dorigine franaise et insr dans le conte la partie nale dautres rcits, comme Le loup et les
sept chevreaux. (In Soriano 1977: 150.)
4. Le suxe inho , en portugais, correspond peu prs au suxe diminutif -ette ou -on ,
en franais.
5. Selon Cooper, Il tait une fois quivaut au Premier Temps des anciens Egyptiens, au temps
mythologique qui fait partie de toutes les traditions du monde . In Cooper 1986: 112.
6. Il est bien vrai que ce boom de livres pour les enfants a favoris, au Brsil, lmergence
duvres polmiques et stimulantes, appeles enfantines , mais, mon avis, la quantit de
titres publis dans les derniers temps, fait progressivement baisser la qualit des productions.
7. Au Brsil, pays marqu par une diversit socio-conomique considrable, tous les enfants ne
sont pas comme cela. Beaucoup dentre eux, ds leur plus jeune ge, doivent lutter contre la
pauvret et labandon pour subsister. Mais, ces enfants non plus ne peuvent pas tre considrs
comme des tres nafs et innocents, pas plus que fragiles et dbiles.
8. Pourquoi alors ne pas traduire, avec une certaine dlit, les adaptations de Perrault et de
Grimm, qui, ayant une structure narrative cohrente et ne prsentant pas un langage imbcile,
demeurent au cours des temps? Pourquoi ne pas les recrer ou les reconstruire en y
introduisant les exigences de la vie contemporaine? Et encore davantage: si les recherches nous
prsentent dj les versions populaires des contes qui ont servi de modle aux adaptations
enfantines de Perrault, pourquoi ne pas les traduire, permettant ainsi aux enfants davoir accs
dautres versions qui nont pas t crites spcialement pour eux?
Works cited
En allemand
Grimm, B. 1974. Rotkppchen. Kinder und Hausmrchen. Frankfurt: Insel.
En franais
Perrault, C. 1984. Le Petit Chaperon Rouge. Contes de Perrault. 7 me tirage. Paris: Grnd.
En portugais
dAguiar, C. D. 1975. O Chapeuzinho Vermelho. Rio de Janeiro: Tecnoprint.
Bandeira, P. Chapeuzinho Vermelho. Alegria, Suplemento da Revista Cludia, So
Paulo, Abril, 262, 36.
Bilder, P. 1983. Chapeuzinho Vermelho. 3a. ed. So Paulo: Melhoramentos (Srie Ver e
Ouvir).
Chapeuzinho Vermelho. Rio de Janeiro: Brasil-Amrica (Coleo Estrelinha).
1982. Chapeuzinho Vermelho. Rio de Janeiro: Cedibra (Coleo Grandes Contos).
1982. Chapeuzinho Vermelho. Rio de Janeiro: Cedibra (Coleo Contos Alegres).
1982. Chapeuzinho Vermelho. Rio de Janeiro: Cedibra (Coleo Contos Fantsticos).
1982. Chapeuzinho Vermelho. Orient. M. C. Machado. Rio de Janeiro: Cedibra.
190 ANA MARIA CLARK PERES
AUTHOR ""
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What Do We Know
About the Target-Text Receiver?
Christiane Nord
Fachhochschule Magdeburg
Preliminary remarks
There are three aspects in text production where the inuence of the addressee
prole is felt most:
how much and which information is presented in the text,
how is this information structured, and
which linguistic and stylistic devices are used to present the selected
information.
The rst aspect refers to the knowledge presuppositions. In order to be accept-
able, there has to be achieved an equilibrium between old, i.e. previously known,
information and new information. It is fairly obvious that a text that contains too
much information already known to the receiver will be considered redundant
and of little interest. But if the amount of new information is too high, the text
may be dicult to understand or even incomprehensible to the reader. We have
to ask, therefore, which amount of information is necessary to make the text
understandable, and which details can be expected to belong to the readers
general or culture-specic world knowledge and need not be verbalized in the
text. What will be an adequate degree of specicity in order to achieve the
intended communicative functions? Let us look at an example. In a package of
Danish chocolates we nd a slip of paper with a guarantee cupon in ve
languages, of which I reproduce the Danish original and the English, German
and Spanish translations, indicating the dierences with regard to knowledge
presuppositions by italics.
198 CHRISTIANE NORD
Anthon Berg har altid bestrbt sig for Anthon Berg, Kopenhagen, seit 1884
at levere varer af neste kvalitet. berhmte Schokoladenfabrik, hat
ihren Ruf auf Verwendung feinster
Chokoladen kann dog tage skade ved Rohstoe, strengster Qualitts-
tryk eller std, eller den kann kontrolle und sorgfltiger Ver-
pvirkes af varme, strk kulde eller packung aufgebaut.
fugtighed. Sdanne pvirkner lam
fremcalde et grligt skr p over- Schokolade kann jedoch auf dem
aden, hvilket dog ikke behver at Transport Beschdigungen erleiden
pvirke smagen og heller ikke oder unter dem Einuss von
behver at betyde, at varen er Wrme, Klte oder Feuchtigkeit
gammel eller beskadiget. einen blulich-grauen Schimmer
bekommen, der indessen Qualitt
Skulle der imidlertid vre noget, De und Geschmack in keiner Weise
ikke er tilfreds med, s send venligst beeintrchtigt. In allen solchen
sken med den beskadigede vare Fllen, die sich unserer Kontrolle
sammen med denne garantiseddel i entziehen, bitten wir Sie,
udfyldt stand til Anthon Berg (se umseitigen Garantieschein auszufl-
bagsiden). len und ihn zusammen mit der
Packung und dem Rest ihres Inhalts
an uns zurckzusenden. Wir werden
Ihnen alsdann umgehend Ersatz
schicken.
WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT THE TARGET-TEXT RECEIVER? 199
For Danish receivers, Anthon Berg needs no explication, neither with respect
to its importance and fame nor with respect to its localization. Obviously, Danish
consumers are expected to have bought the product in Denmark, therefore careful
packaging is not mentioned either, whereas English-speaking receivers are even
asked to return the coupon via airmail. German readers are expected to know
where Copenhagen is, whereas for those readers of the English, French and
Spanish texts living in America, Asia or Africa, the reference to Denmark makes
damaging much more likely and, perhaps, even pardonable.
The second aspect refers to the textual macrostructure, that is, the order in
which information bits are presented, including the distribution of topic and
comment elements. A linear thematic progression makes understanding easier,
200 CHRISTIANE NORD
but may also lead to a lack of tension or suspense. Folk tales or childrens
stories very often have a linear progression, as is shown in Example 2. By
changing the order of the topical elements, we produce a text that lacks cohesion.
The reader then has to invest much more eort on nding the narrative thread.
Example 2: A Spanish folk tale
The rst sentences taken from a Spanish folk tale present an absolutely linear
thematic progression (see Figure 2a):
Era un caballero (T1) que sali por el mundo alante a buscar la vida y las
aventuras (C1). Y caminando, caminando (T2) se encontr con tres [!] animales,
un len, un galgo, un guila y una hormiga (C2) que (T3) estaban pelendose por
una era muerta que haban encontrado en el camino (C3).
[Once upon a time] there was a nobleman who went out into the world to seek
life and adventures. As he was wandering along, he met three [!] animals, a lion,
a greyhound, an eagle and an ant, who were struggling over a carcass they had
found on the road. (T = topic, C = comment)
T1 C1
T2 C2
T3 C3
Por el mundo alante sali (C1a) un caballero (T1) a buscar la vida y las aventuras
(C1b). Un len, un galgo, un guila y una hormiga (T2) estaban pelendose por
una era muerta (C2a). Caminando, caminando, (C3a) el caballero (T3=T1) se
encontr con los animales (C3b =T2), que (T4 = T2) haban encontrado la era
muerta (C4a = C2a) en el camino (C4b C3a C1a ).
The third aspect refers to the style norms and conventions expected in certain
text types and genres. Reading a text that follows conventional syntactic and
lexical patterns, the reader can concentrate on the contents of the message. On
the contrary, stylistic originality attracts the readers attention to the form in
which the message is presented. Therefore, any text producer has to take into
consideration the specic formal and stylistic patterns the reader may expect in
a text even in those cases where they decide precisely to avoid conventional style.
Looking at the texts reproduced in Example 1, we nd a number of
typical patterns both in the English and the German translations (should the
chocolate reach you in less than prefect condition, conditions beyond our
WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT THE TARGET-TEXT RECEIVER? 201
C1a T1 C1b
T2 C2a
C3a T3 C3b
T4 C4a C4b
control, The terms of this guarantee, bitten wir Sie, umseitigen Garantie-
schein auszufllen, Schokolade kann jedoch), whereas the Spanish version
does not conform to conventional patterning.
When a translated text enters the intertextual system of the target culture, it
has to nd its proper place, either in a particular genre or text type or in a
special category consisting of all translated texts, perhaps with sub-groups
according to the source languages from which they have been translated or a
particular translator by which they have been translated. Some texts may belong
to the overlapping section of two or even more categories (for example, an
instruction manual translated from English by Mary Jones). And there may be
categories which (at a particular moment in time) do not contain any element
whatsoever (see Figure 4).
X XY Y Y
X X X XY Y Y
X XZ XYZ Y
XZ YZ
Z Z Z Z Z Z
ZZZ
familiar with all categories and subcategories of texts. This explains, in part, the
frequent cases of dissent between teachers and students in translation classes
about what is normal in a particular text type or genre. Moreover, our textual
knowledge is, to a great extent, passive. That is, we intuitively recognize
certain formal, stylistic or structural characteristics as acceptable or function-
al (or inacceptable and dysfunctional) in a particular text, but we nd it
very dicult to produce a text that will have precisely these (acceptable,
functional) characteristics intuitively recognized by somebody else.
Therefore, what is needed is an intersubjective reference system which
provides reliable information about
the information structures and
the formal and stylistic characteristics
that are considered acceptable and functional, respectively, in a particular text (or
text category) by a large number or, possibly, the majority of text users. To
obtain this information, we need a corpus of parallel texts, preferably in electron-
ic form, which should be composed of three categories of text:
original texts belonging to a particular text type X, e.g. patents or instruc-
tion manuals or scholarly articles, in culture A,
original texts belonging to the same text type in culture B, and
professional translations from A to B (and/or viceversa) of texts belonging
to this text type.
This latter part, i.e. the translation corpus, is intended to provide information on
whether, in a particular culture, existing professional translations that have been
accepted by revisors and clients
reproduce the characeristics of this text type typical of the source culture, or
conform to the patterns of this text type typical of the target culture, or
show characteristics not found in original texts of this type in either culture,
but shared with other translations based on one particular or various source
cultures. This last aspect makes some scholars believe that translations form
a text type of their own (cf. Dressler 1975: 98 or Bhler 1984: 253).
The aim of this corpus-based project is not to analyse and compare linguistic
structures, as in Comparative Linguistics, but to nd out (and compare) the form,
distribution and frequency of certain communicative acts in two cultures in order
204 CHRISTIANE NORD
These dierences, which Agar calls rich points (Agar 1991: 168), will be
analysed in the corpus. The tertium comparationis of such an analysis will be any
communicative function or subfunction represented by behaviour units or
culturemes. According to Vermeer (1983: 8), a cultureme is a social phenome-
non of a culture X that is regarded as relevant by the members of this culture
and, when compared with a corresponding social phenomenon in a culture Y, is
found to be specic to culture X. The relevant parameters of the comparison will
be form, distribution and frequency, that is: in which situation do text producers
prefer (and text receivers, therefore, expect) which form with which frequency.
In the following sections, we will look at a few pilote studies based on
this concept.
WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT THE TARGET-TEXT RECEIVER? 205
The last study I would like to comment on was inspired by the diploma thesis on
audience orientation mentioned above. It was based on a corpus consisting of 30
original introductory textbooks for rst-year university students, published in
Germany, France and Spain (10 of each culture). Supposing that the form,
frequency and distribution of metacommunicative utterances did probably not
correlate strongly with subject elds, I included a random range of elds:
economics, linguistics, terminology, translation studies, information technology.
According to Lauer (1986: 33) and Techtmeier (1984: 133), metacommuni-
cation may be dened as the sum total of verbal and nonverbal means used by
the sender/author to comment on both the conditions and factors of the commu-
nicative situation and the interacting partners (author and audience) and their
relationship. Metacommunication aims at monitoring ones own communicative
activities and the (expected, anticipated) reactions of the audience, which have to
be in line with the intended purpose of the communicative act, and thus repre-
sents an ecient way of controlling the social interaction that develops between
author and audience.
When teaching in the classroom, a positive interaction is vital for the
achievement of the intended pedagogical aim or purpose. Metacommunication
may stabilize the relationship between teacher and learner, which is always
asymmetrical: the teacher has some knowledge which the learners do not have
but have to acquire in order to pass their exams. Baumann (1992: 38) states that
the frequency of metacommunicative utterances correlates with the degree of
symmetry between sender and receiver with regard to knowledge: In asymmetri-
cal communication acts, metacommunicative utterances tend to be much more
frequent than in symmetrical communication acts. The greater the equilibrium,
the fewer metacommunicative utterances. Moreover, it aims at keeping alive the
students interest in the subject and producing a relaxed atmosphere that makes
learning easier and more fun. Textbooks are a kind of simulation of classroom
teaching. Therefore, they are usually rich in metacommunicative utterances, as is
emphasized by Gpferich (1995: 405). Here, metacommunication is a subfunc-
tion of the phatic function (cf. Nord 1997: 44.), which aims at establishing,
maintaining or ending contact between sender and receiver, dening their status
and the relationship holding between them (cf. Jakobson 1960).
Experience shows that, as a general rule, the phatic function relies on the
conventionality of the linguistic, non-linguistic and paralinguistic means used in
a particular situation, such as ritualized small talk about the weather or salutation
formulae in letters (for phatic function in titles see also Nord 1993: 102). In
WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT THE TARGET-TEXT RECEIVER? 207
these cases, unconventionality of form strikes the eye of the reader and makes
them think the author had a special reason for saying something precisely in that
way. A phatic utterance meant as a mere oer of contact may be interpreted
as referential, expressive or even appellative if its form does not correspond to
the receivers expectation of conventional behaviour.
These considerations can also be applied to metacommunication in student
textbooks. Since the situation is the same in all cases (teacher gives students
necessary information on limited subject in written form), any dierences in
form, frequency and distribution of metacommunicative utterances in our corpus
can be considered as culture-specic.
Example 3: Conventionality of metacommunication
Personal opinion may be expressed by an adverbial phrase meiner Meinung
nach, by a verb in the rst person singular creo que or by a verb in the rst
person plural nous pensons que.
Examples can be introduced by z. B. (= zum Beispiel), veamos un caso
ejemplar or titre dexemple.
Conclusions
To conclude, I would like to present some of the ndings. The comparison of the
three corpora shows that the sender-audience relationship is much more empha-
sized in Spanish and French texts than in German. As could be expected, when
referring to their own intentions and actions, German authors prefer impersonal
constructions (passive, ist zu + innitive, impersonal pronoun man),
personication of the book, of problems, theories, and the like, even referring to
themselves in the third person (der Autor). Spanish and French authors prefer
personal constructions. Spanish authors alternate between the rst person singular
and plural, while French authors almost exclusively use the rst person plural,
occasionally on. It is interesting to note, moreover, that the rst person plural
in French and Spanish and the pronoun on in French include the audience, as
can be inferred from the verbs used in these contexts (Example 8).
Example 8: Implicit references to the reader
les notions nous seront utiles dans le prochain chapitre (= will be useful for
you)
considrons lexemple (= look at the following example)
on remarque, on verie (= you will nd)
Consideremos, por ejemplo (= think of)
Reexionemos: existe siempre ese primer medio? (= you might ask your-
selves if)
Man erinnere sich, man beachte, man vergleiche (= remember, consid-
er, compare)
X bleibt zu bedenken (= you should take into account)
Immer wird man zu dem Ergebnis kommen, da (= you will always nd)
Pinsese y se comprender (= if you think of, you will understand)
Apart from these implicit references, the frequency of direct references to the
readers and their expected or anticipated reactions is also much higher in Spanish
and French than in German texts, as is shown in Example 9.
Example 9: Explicit references to the reader
Intentamos proporcionar al lector (3rd person singular, object case)
El lector ms avisado podr advertir (3rd person singular, subject case)
Le lecteur constatera, stonnera (3rd person singular, subject case)
X soll es dem (interessierten) Leser ermglichen (3rd person singular, object
case)
the answer yes or no, but also open questions which serve to introduce a
new topic or sub-topic (topical questions). The latter are very frequent in the
French textbooks, a little less frequent in the Spanish textbooks, while they are
almost nonexistent in the German textbooks. German textbook authors prefer
indirect questions, if any.
Example 10: Asking questions
No nos ocultan las cifras una serie de realidades?
(rhetorical question, implied answer: yes, they do)
Faut-il ajouter que?
(rhetorical question, implied answer: no, it is not necessary)
Quelle est alors lutilit de la rhtorique?
(topical question, next subject: the use of rhetoric)
Que faut-il aujourdhui penser des sophistes?
(topical question, next subject: the sophists)
Wie stellt sich die Situation heute dar?
(topical question, next subject: the situation today)
Hier mssen wir uns fragen, wie die Situation sich heute darstellt.
(indirect topical question, next subject: the situation today)
Of course, these results are no proof, they are just an indicator of the culture-
specicity of metacommunicative behaviour in some German, French and
Spanish introductory textbooks for university students. It would be great to be
able, one day, to quantify the dierences, and, of course, to nd out whether
and to what extent they are taken into account by translators. But there is still
</TARGET "nor">
quite a long way to go until we know a little more about what the target-text
receivers expect.
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C 20
Rosemary Mackenzie
University of Turku, Centre for Translation and Interpreting
Introduction
The ISO 9000-based quality systems applied to services are built on the principle
that the ultimate measure of quality is customer assessment of the service. The
POSI project (practical orientation of studies in translation and interpreting (T/I)
arose originally out of a need to improve the quality of the T/I graduates entering
the profession in Germany. This later grew into a pan-European project aimed at
a higher and more uniform quality of T/I training and a better match between the
training oered and the needs of the profession and the global market. The
current stage of the POSI project involved setting up national committees which
were to be as representative of the profession and market as possible, including
members from the training institutions, professionals and users of T/I services.
The committee set up in Finland consisted of ve members representing the
universities that oer specialised training in T/I (a rst degree), three representa-
tives from the Finnish Associations of Translators and Interpreters, Translation
Companies and Professional Translators, but only one member from a user of
translation services Nokia Communications. It was decided that the best way
to gather information about the needs of users was to conduct a survey using a
questionnaire. One of the purposes of the questionnaire was to nd out how the
users of T/I services assessed the quality of these services, how well they
considered the basic T/I training to meet the demands translators/interpreters face
in practical work situations and how they considered the training could be
improved. This information can be compared with the opinions of T/I service
providers on the same issues. This is the aspect of the questionnaire I shall
concentrate on here.
214 ROSEMARY MACKENZIE
The target group of the users of T/I services consisted of 48 major companies in
Finland (from the list of the 500 biggest enterprises in Finland), 53 SMEs from
the Turku area engaged in foreign trade, 11 ministries and the information unit
of the Council of State and the administrative oces of the 10 biggest cities in
Finland. The suppliers of translation/interpretation services were 22 translation
companies (which from the point of view of training are classied as users), 20
of them members of the Finnish Association of Translation Companies, and 212
members of the Finnish Association of Translators and Interpreters. Of transla-
tors/interpreters 110 live in Finland and 102 reside at present in another Europe-
an country, some of them as employees or freelancers working for the EU. The
questionnaire was also sent to 3 people responsible for co-ordinating or supervis-
ing translation activities in the EU with the request that they forward the
questionnaire to translators and interpreters and their superiors. The questionnaire
sent to enterprises and to the public sector was to be answered by persons who
act as superiors of translators/interpreters, who outsource T/I services and/or are
responsible for quality control of translations. The users of T/I services also
received a copy of the translator/interpreter questionnaire to be distributed to the
T/I sta in various departments of the organisations.
Respondents
The number of respondents among users totalled 58, 19 major Finnish compa-
nies, 14 SMEs, 8 T/I companies, 15 ministries, 8 municipalities and 2 from the
EU. Thus 33 respondents were from the private sector and 25 from the public
sector. One interesting question is whether their expectations diered.
Among providers of T/I services the total number of respondents was 149,
122 translators and 16 working mainly as interpreters. Eleven were both transla-
tors and interpreters. Of the total number of respondents 106 were employed, 62
in the private and 44 in the public sector, while 43 were either self-employed or
freelancers.
In the question I deal with here the service users were asked to rate on a scale
from very important to not important at all the knowledge and skills (in
POSI-TIVE THINKING ABOUT QUALITY 215
The organisations were asked what basic skills they felt to be lacking in newly
recruited translators. All the organisations pinpointed mastery of terminology as
being inadequate in their translators/interpreters, but this deciency is no doubt
remedied with experience as it is not ranked high in the skills required. The
major companies also pointed to a need for more profound knowledge of the
sector concerned. An ability to communicate eectively and to use the Internet
in nding information were also stressed. Special mention was made of decision-
216 ROSEMARY MACKENZIE
making in matters such as: what should be added to the text in order to ensure
eective communication, i.e. skill in transediting texts. Journalistic skills were
also considered desirable, i.e. the ability to write texts directly in a foreign
language rather than translating them. It was also claimed that translators/
interpreters are not suciently well informed about the functioning and language
of the economy. Further education in business economics, accounting, nance
and business contracts and related terminology were suggested as improvements
Of the SMEs, 2 respondents commented on this point, emphasising know-
ledge of technical terminology and basic understanding of technology. Also
mentioned was the importance of knowing how to tackle a new subject and the
skill to read and write between the lines. It was stated that further training
covering everything is naturally not a realistic target, but some introduction to
various elds could in the respondents opinion be provided.
The public sector respondents found many of the same skills to be lacking
in their new translators: terminology, subject knowledge, social skills and
teamwork. One aspect not mentioned elsewhere was accuracy and attention to
detail. Especially for interpreters self-presentation, knowledge of etiquette and
general knowledge were often felt to be lacking.
A total of 7 respondents representing T/I companies expressed their views
on development of training and further training needed. Creating possibilities for
on-the-job learning was found very important. Therefore a period of practical
training should be included in the basic education of translators/interpreters. In
addition to computer skills and subject knowledge the following aspects were
emphasised: matters of economics, productivity and its meaning for the employ-
er, customer orientation and exibility in adapting to changing demands. Further,
know-how in using existing sources of information and mastery of the means of
expression and the grammar of ones mother tongue were pointed out. In
addition to this, translators/interpreters should have the ability to consult custom-
ers (interpersonal skills) and the courage to question the source text when
necessary. The ability to assess the time required for and price of work and the
ability to meet deadlines were further points mentioned by T/I companies.
The questionnaire sent to translators and interpreters contained the same ques-
tions as discussed above asking them to rate the skills they need in their jobs.
The most heavily stressed skills were ability to search and evaluate information,
followed by a profound knowledge of ones own and other cultures, with
POSI-TIVE THINKING ABOUT QUALITY 217
computer skills in third place. The least importance was attached to basics of
glossary and terminology work.
The translators/interpreters were also asked to mention other skills they
rated as important over and above those mentioned. The translators and interpret-
ers employed by companies and organisations mentioned social skills, ability to
communicate, co-operate and negotiate, PR skills, ability to make decisions
rapidly and to justify decisions, ability to concentrate, logical thinking and
analytical skills, exibility and adaptability to new situations, ability to edit and
revise texts, accuracy and speed, teamwork skills, leadership and management
skills as well as broad general and special knowledge economics and law
were the elds most often mentioned. Freelance and self-employed translators
stressed marketing and interpersonal skills, time management, a positive profes-
sional image, social skills cooperation, customer service and good relations
with experts in various elds and not surprisingly knowledge of business
routines, taxation, bookkeeping, invoicing and pricing.
The translators and interpreters were asked how satised they were with the
training they had received. The majority felt their training had equipped them for
working life either well or mainly. Those who had received a university-
level training in T/I were more satised than those who had received another
training. When the translators and interpreters employed in companies and
organisations (106) were asked what they felt to have been missing in their
training, the most frequently mentioned lack was in the teaching of computer
skills for assisting translation and information searching. This is understandable
in the case of older graduates, but even fairly recent graduates complained of
this. Other areas where the training had been found inadequate were: the teaching
of subject knowledge in special elds, terminology research and information
acquisition, cooperation and teamwork with colleagues, editors, experts, custom-
ers etc., entrepreneurial skills including marketing, pricing, invoicing and market
knowledge in general. One translator mentioned knowledge of quality control and
quality criteria in translation. Many felt that not enough attention had been paid
to the mother tongue in teaching (especially interpreters): knowledge of dierent
text types was mentioned as were ability to write uently and logically. Ability
to revise the texts of others was an aspect that one respondent felt to be lacking
in her training. Speed and ability to work under stress were considered to have
been neglected (especially in interpreter training). In general many felt there had
218 ROSEMARY MACKENZIE
not been enough contact between the training institution and real working life in
their training.
In fact therefore, these translators/interpreters had experienced dissatisfaction
with almost every aspect of their training. It must be mentioned that T/I training
has developed by leaps and bounds in recent years, as many respondents also
mentioned. As might be expected, the freelance and self-employed translators
and interpreters (43) stressed the lack of training about the realities of life as an
entrepreneur matters such as founding a company, pricing, invoicing, taxation,
marketing and how to nd customers, management of real translator/client
relations (tight schedules etc.), pensions and so on. Teaching in computer skills
and information technology were mentioned most frequently as having been
neglected in training.
Development of training
Professional development
When asked what kind of further training would be most useful to improve their
qualications in order to better meet the requirements of working life, the most
frequent response was deepening of subject knowledge in various elds (the
most commonly mentioned were economics, law and various elds of technolo-
gy). This was followed by improvement of language skills through intensive
courses or language immersion and teaching in the use of modern information
search methods (Internet and data banks). Training in software and the basics of
glossary terminology was surprisingly low in the rating. Probably working
translators/interpreters have acquired these skills on the job.
Other suggestions for further training included courses in administration of
projects, management and leadership, entrepreneurship, marketing skills, found-
ing a company, courses in communication, advertising and journalism. Interpret-
ers, especially in the service of the EU, felt the need for regular courses to keep
up their mother tongue skills. Traditional translation workshops and seminars in
translation were also suggested. Freelancers and self-employed translators wanted
more or less the same further training with the addition of simultaneous interpre-
tation practice.
Students
there should be possibilities for internships and other links with business and
industry, and students should be taught to use the tools of the trade (information
technology).
The students were asked whether they felt that they had abundant, sucient
(but could be more) or too little opportunity to practice translation/interpretation
in real life or real-life-like situations, to practice working as a member of team,
nding information from various sources, evaluating their own translations and
those of others, and whether translation tests were arranged in such a way as to
give a realistic picture of their skills, whether they received sucient feedback
on their skills, whether they were given a suciently clear picture of the work
of a professional T/I, whether sucient possibilities for internships and other
links with business and industry were available, and nally whether they had
sucient teaching in the use of information technology and its applications to
translation. The last two questions were the only two to which the response was
clearly negative, i.e. the question about traineeships and the teaching of informa-
tion technology. With other aspects of translation teaching varying degrees of
satisfaction were expressed, but no major dissatisfaction, so that no conclusions
could be drawn on a national level.
Implications
I shall not propose a curriculum here, but only make a few proposals for
teaching T/I. It is obvious that all the skills felt to be important by employers of
translators/interpreters and the professionals themselves cannot be tted into a
single rst degree, especially if students are also expected to learn research
methods and write a research thesis. Many of the required skills, e.g. subject
knowledge can only be acquired through years of experience and/or study.
However, considering the importance given to subject knowledge in the survey,
some introduction to special elds should be retained in the curriculum. As T/I
training establishments cannot be expected to provide expert teaching in many
dierent disciplines there is a case for cooperation with other departments, and
students should have easy access to basic courses in subjects taught at other
faculties or institutes. Graduates will have to be prepared to supplement their
knowledge through further education.
IT skills in such areas as information and terminology management are
nowadays essential for all translators entering the profession and need to be part
of the training. Some knowledge of the more advanced computer-assisted
translation tools, such as translation memory tools, is an advantage. Many
</TARGET "mac">
teachers also need training in these aspects of translation, and this stresses the
need for the development of further training and post-graduate degree program-
mes for translator trainers.
Practical translation classes can be made more motivating by assigning
students simulated and later real translation projects. In this way translators/
interpreters learn the skills of teamwork and cooperation with clients, experts and
colleagues, revision and quality control, i.e. the realities of professional life. The
teachers who manage these projects need to be professional translators with
recent experience in the eld. In this context students can also be given basic
information about such matters as contracts, deadlines, dealing with clients,
pricing etc., but more detailed knowledge, e.g. of bookkeeping, taxation etc. will
have to be acquired through further education. However, a voluntary course in
entrepreneurship for those interested is a feasible suggestion.
The question of internships is considered of the utmost importance by T/I
students, by practising translators and by users. Translation companies have
expressed willingness to take on interns, but there are rather few translation
companies with the resources to do so. The University of Turku Centre for
Translation and Interpreting is setting up a pilot project in 1999, in which the
ground rules will be laid down for translation companies taking interns and for
students and supervisors involved in internships.
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C 21
Beverly Adab
Aston University, Birmingham
Introduction
This paper seeks to oer guidelines for the translation of advertising, by looking
at examples of practice and relating these to the communicative aim(s) of
advertising messages. Limits of time and space mean that reported ndings must
of necessity be summative. The purpose of the study, as reported in this paper,
was therefore to compare Source and Target versions of a corpus of advertising
texts, in order to speculate on:
The nature of the dierent factors of text production: these include compa-
ny practice and translation brief, translator prole and place of professional
activity
The nature of the overall approach apparently adopted by individual
translators in the specic circumstances of text production
The potential for communicative success of each target language text,
produced from an original source language text
The potential contribution of the translator in enhancing communicative
eectiveness in the advertising message.
Advertising messages have a similar function across languages and cultures; they
rely on a primarily persuasive form of discourse, based on socio-cultural values
(De Mooij 1998), and use appropriate linguistic and other strategies to achieve
this function. Such texts therefore contain a number of language- and culture-
specic mechanisms, values and associations, which represent potential problems
for translation. Studying how these problems have been dealt with in actual
translation performance could therefore provide insights into the approaches
adopted by individual translators. Hence the use of a comparative analytical
224 BEVERLY ADAB
The corpus
All the texts in the corpus were designed to promote a non-essential service or
product. Cook (1992: 11) comments that, More expensive items, whose purchase
merits longer consideration, are prone to reason selling and therefore to longer
written copy. The study deliberately focused on messages consisting mainly or
solely of written copy, involving communication of associated values, which are
integral to product promotion, through language signs. Message interpretation for
such texts relies on Grices principle of co-operation between text producer and
text user (Grice 1975) to achieve the persuasive aim. If any images accompanied
the texts, these were simply logos or pictures of the product.
Since the appeal of these messages is based on associated qualities and
lifestyle, analysis could be expected to show evidence of some degree of
adaptation of culture-specic connotative values in order to preserve the intended
text impact. However, it was also anticipated that the ST might be contextualised
within a more international business culture, where fundamental domain-specic
values may not dier signicantly from one target group to another. This is the
226 BEVERLY ADAB
Methodology
The findings
Detailed analysis conrmed the above. The ndings for each text are evaluated
within the stated parameters dening text production, which include translator
prole as well as individual translation briefs reecting dierent overall
translation policies. A link can be postulated between these factors of text
production, the probable approach adopted (broadly linguistic or broadly
functional) and the potential success of message reception in the target culture.
ments, but this does not require creative or culture-specic concept sensitivity,
simply technical accuracy. Thus the translation aspect of the product image is
included in the marketing process and may be delegated to an agency or to a
marketing expert who is also uent in a target language.
2. Softrans, a company specialising in the translation of computer software,
ensures that translators are trained in the use of the product. In this way transla-
tors are better able to select TL terms and forms of expression within the
constraints of time and space imposed by the task and by the nature of the
software. Translators build up repetition les using MAT to ensure uniform
language use and standardised terminology is agreed on with a representative of
the software producer in the target country, to guarantee appropriacy, acceptabili-
ty and conformity to existing use in that country. The company has an in-house
team of translators, complemented where necessary by translators working free-
lance, who are often former members of the Softrans in-house team. Translators
are recruited according to strict standards and have to submit sample work for
assessment prior to interview. This is a clear example of good practice at the
multinational level combined with the concept of localization.
3. A company which claims to proceed in a similar manner is the 4-T agency,
oering its translation services, which are claimed to be specially tailored to the
needs of the client. However, close examination of the actual style of the TL in
the corpus studied (TL in English) would seem to attest to a lack of linguistic
and socio-cultural competence on the part of the translator and of the agencys
translation reviewer.
4. The Rolex company, manufacturers of quality watches, have adopted a more
global approach, building their advertisements around famous people or types of
people who use the watches (e.g. Kiri Te Kanawa), or around events at which
Rolex is the ocial time-keeper (e.g. Wimbledon). The qualities of the watch
are described both overtly and by implication, through a process of analogy with
the stated qualities of the celebrity user. The same qualities recur in all the
advertisements, giving a recognisable structure to the Rolex campaign, a certain
predictability of style which would, in journalism, be described as a kind of
reader-attraction, creating and then fullling reader expectations. It would appear
that Rolex select their celebrity users on the basis of an international reputation,
thereby avoiding costly reformulation of a particular text and message, relying in
this way on successful translation of a source text into dierent target languages.
Rolex relies therefore on the global market having a system of shared myths and
values, so that target readers will recognise and wish to identify with those
qualities associated with the product in the advertising message. For this to
THE TRANSLATION OF ADVERTISING TEXTS 229
succeed, the target languages must be suciently in contact for the experience
portrayed to be common to the dierent socio-linguistic cultures, and a means
for expressing the concepts must already exist in these languages.
5. Some companies appear to assume that the target language market will share
the expectations of the SL market, although some socio-cultural knowledge of
the TL community may indicate that this may not be the case, or at least, not to
such an extent as may have been assumed. The Qualcast advertisement would
seem to conrm this observation, as product appeal is based on the expectations
of the British user of the lawn mower, with all the underlying social connota-
tions, which may or may not be of relevance for other target language users.
6. Other companies or organisations, with a low budget, or which give low
priority to translation within their marketing strategy, prefer to farm out
translation work to local university students, who may or may not have any
training in marketing, inter-cultural communication and text type awareness.
Such is the case of the Clermont text.
7. Some companies, such as Eurotunnel, have a team of accredited free-lance
translators who ensure standardised terminology through repetition. Quality
control is undertaken by the public relations oce in the country where the TT
is produced, using native-speakers.
8. Other companies, such as Barclays Bank, may use a specialised agency for
translation work, but rely on company employees with a good level of compe-
tence in the language to proof-read and check translations. However, there is no
pre-specied or required standard of linguistic competence. Some agencies are
able to oer subject knowledge combined with marketing experience, technical
writing and translation, but their services are not always aordable or even
considered necessary.
9. Companies such as Twinings, on the other hand, rely entirely on recruiting
employees for the marketing department who also have near-native or native
competence in a target language, and much of the translation work is done by
these employees. In the case of the Old Charm text, translation into French is
undertaken by one of the Managing Directors, who is a French native speaker,
with quality control being also the responsibility of this person.
10. A further practice is to have a list of translators, who may or may not have
product-specic experience and over whom there is a minimal check of linguistic
competence. Product-specic knowledge (use and terminology) may accrue
through practice. Such is the case of some smaller Staordshire pottery and
ceramics companies (but not Minton, who use an agency).
230 BEVERLY ADAB
11. A new translation services company relies on a bank of tried and tested
professional translators, each a native speaker having expertise in a given eld
(usually information technology in this case). Translators are resident in their
country of origin, translate into their mother tongue, and receive and transmit
their work by fax or by electronic mail. This approach reduces overheads for the
service-provider, whilst ensuring high-quality work from highly motivated sta
with the relevant expertise in the subject area. Rewards are high in return for
eort and motivation; professional status is taken as the norm. No texts were
provided by this company.
Translator Prole
These details relate to the level, or lack of, professional translation training, also
to the role of the translator in text production and text evaluation.
A. Agency:
1. Undertakes translation and quality control.
2. Undertakes translation, company has input for marketing and informativity.
B. In-house translator:
1. Undertakes translation with some quality control and input for marketing
and informativity from the company, often from an agent of the company
in the target culture.
2. Undertakes translation with some quality control from other translators
within the company.
3. Undertakes translation and quality control.
C. In-house translator, non-linguist, usually marketing specialist:
1. Undertakes translation, with some quality control from the company, usually
from an agent of the company in the target culture.
2. Takes full responsibility for translation and quality control.
D. Freelance translator:
1. Undertakes translation, with some quality control from the company, usually
from an agent of the company in the target culture.
2. Takes full responsibility for translation and quality control.
In the cases studied, there was a range of translator proles, but little indication
of any systematic quality control of the TT.
THE TRANSLATION OF ADVERTISING TEXTS 231
Translation brief:
According to information obtained from dierent text providers, the following
range of translation briefs could be said to represent the types of instructions
given to the translator, by either the text producer or the translation commission-
er, who may or may not be the same.
1. Total delity to ST form and content
2. Fidelity to ST formats and content but some exibility for form, to ensure
TL acceptability
3. Fidelity to ST function within norms of TL acceptability
4. Adaptation of ST for TL function in terms of text type norms, linguistic and
stylistic conventions
5. Working from a global mission, information and concepts but no xed ST.
The majority of texts studied were produced on the basis of the rst and second
types of instruction. This had the predictable limiting eect on potential choices
of TL forms to express SL units of meaning. This also meant that there was little
scope for adaptation of ST units according to Target Addressee prole, needs or
expectations.
Summary of findings
From a total of twenty-ve texts studied, the following points were noted:
Native Speaker of TL: 17
Internal or External quality control: all underwent some quality control, but to
diering degrees. There was no systematic criterion-referenced evaluation.
Situation of text production:
Agency: 19; In-house Translator (trained linguist): 2;
In-house Translator (non-linguist): 1; Freelance translator: 3.
Brief (see list above):
1st Brief: 0; 2nd Brief: 17; 3rd Brief: 4; 4th Brief: 2; 5th Brief: 0.
Overall approach (apparent):
Functional: 5; Linguistic: 15; Combination of both: 3.
As might be expected, translator prole (professional translation training, or lack
of this) was a factor in determining successful target text production. However,
in cases where experienced translators were faced with the obligation to create
a closely similar relationship of form and structure between Source and Target text,
this was observed to act as a constraint on freedom of choice of transfer strategies.
232 BEVERLY ADAB
This table seeks to link the overall approach, whether linguistic or functional, to
the potential success of text reception. Taken in conjunction with the other
information reported above, conclusions can be drawn about aspects of good
practice.
Recommendations
It is hoped that the ndings of this study, however limited, will encourage
further similar analysis, so that it will eventually be possible to formulate a set
of guidelines for the industry, to serve as a framework for the translation of
advertising texts. The recommendations of this paper can be summarised as a set
of DOs and DONTs, based on the ndings of the study.
DO
* Use suitably trained and qualied translators.
* Include translators early on in the process of producing the SL advertising
message.
* Where possible, develop a formula for SL advertising texts which can be
adopted for TT production with minimal adaptation to TL reader needs.
* Keep records of previously translated texts.
* Devise and promote a framework of criteria for evaluation of the potential
success of a TT.
* Use suitably qualied editors to proof-read and evaluate all translations
within these criteria.
* Give clear information to the ST producer and to the translator about:
the nature of the product
the qualities to be associated with the product for the target culture (SL
or TL)
(it is assumed that marketing research will have identied the prole of the
target reader, whatever the language community).
* Allow and trust translators to exercise their professional expertise.
</TARGET "ada">
DO NOT
* Underestimate the TTs potential impact (positive or negative) on both the
product to be promoted and the company itself within the target culture.
* Constrain the translator and prejudice the TTs chances of success by
insisting on a particular methodology or approach to the task of translation.
* Fail to appreciate the need for proper translator expertise, to be acquired
through appropriate training programmes which include not only practical
development of competence but also an understanding of how the theoretical
concepts of Translation Studies can contribute to improved performance.
<TARGET "fue" DOCINFO
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C 22
Introduction
the case that many national markets, including Spains, often limit the translator
to purely linguistic matters in the translation of advertising, or even directly
farm entire responsibility for their marketing campaigns out to agencies in the
target countries (Beltrn 1999).
The human brains need to use shortcuts in the process of apprehending the
many, varied and complex messages which it receives every day leads to its
developing a series of stereotypes within which it is able to interpret messages.
These stereotypes may be positive, negative or neutral, although there is a strong
tendency for them to be negative when they are perceptions of the other, as
opposed to self-perceptions. Sangrador comments de hecho el extranjero es
caricaturizado casi siempre, y muy pocos son los que perciben favorablemente a
los miembros del pas vecino: es algo, al parecer, connatural a las relaciones
humanas1 (1981: 99100). This is probably due to the need to generate a
positive self-perception, which is easier to develop by distancing oneself from all
that is undesirable in the other. As several authors have pointed out, these
stereotypes are tremendously powerful: In extreme cases a single word can
suce to trigger not only an entire stereotype but also (at least elements of) the
THE TRANSLATOR AS MEDIATOR 237
macrodiscourse in the readers mind (ODonnell 1994: 359). They are also
extremely longlasting: Distintos investigadores han comprobado cmo las
imgenes de los distintos pueblos persisten durante aos, e incluso muestran una
gran similaridad de unos lugares a otros2 (Sangrador 1981: 27).
The use of this power, deliberate or otherwise, by the mass media has been
studied on numerous occasions. In this case, we are interested in its use in the
world of international marketing, where it has become a well-established tool in
the hands of advertisers. Let us now turn specically to the image of Spain in
English-speaking countries, particularly the United Kingdom, in order to see how
this image aects the commercialisation of Spanish products on these markets.
A study, commissioned in 1996 by the then Spanish Ministry for Trade and
Tourism to establish how Spain was seen abroad as regards trade, tourism and
investment, oers the following conclusion on the image of Spain in its four
largest European neighbours:
una imagen poltica muy buena para un pas latino y mejorando, con niveles
crecientes y altos de conanza hacia el pas y hacia las personas. Una muy
buena imagen cultural y artstica. Un fuerte estereotipo, simplicado y rodeado
de un espacio de gran ignorancia hacia la realidad del pas. Perjuicios arrai-
gados de tendencia incierta. Una imagen econmica buena pero no excelente,
en la cola del pelotn de cabeza y en cierto modo inferior a la capacidad
econmica real del pas. Un made in regularmente valorado a consecuencia de
un muy escaso conocimiento de productos y marcas espaolas y de cierta
imagen de rusticidad. Y nalmente una excelente imagen como destino
turstico slidamente asentada.3
(Lamo de Espinosa 1996: 212)
Despite the apparent optimism with which these ndings are presented, the
authors of this study clearly recognise that the image of Spain abroad is not
really the one the country deserves, and in fact the details of their study
contain data which are much more worrying. Specically, the British perception
of Spain is more negative than the French, the Italian or even the German
(although in this case there are more similarities): in these perceptions, Spain is,
for example, a lazy, inecient, and corrupt country (the famous Spanish
practices), which is technologically underdeveloped. These ndings coincide
with those of Kelly (1997) in a large corpus study of the discursive construction
of Spain in the British press. In addition to this perception and construction of
238 ADRIN FUENTES LUQUE AND DOROTHY KELLY
Corpus
Our corpus consists basically of two main groups of advertising texts: advertise-
ments used, rstly, by major private Spanish companies (some of which have a
degree of state participation), and secondly, by dierent Spanish state and
regional institutions, including the ocial tourist promotion campaigns. It is
taken from English-language publications from the UK (The Times, Economist,
Financial Times, Daily Express), Canada (Macleans), the USA (Time, News-
week), and from Iberias bilingual in-ight magazine, Ronda Iberia, over the
period 1989 to 1997. Our intention was to detect presence or absence of explicit
or implicit reference to Spain in the texts. Space limits mean that our ndings
can be described only very briey here.
In the case of the private sector, the corpus includes, amongst others, texts
produced to advertise some of the major Spanish companies: Telefnica, Iberia,
Banco Central Hispano, Banco Bilbao Vizcaya, El Corte Ingls, SEAT, etc. As
Cannon suggests, we also nd that the general tendency here is for the country
of origin, Spain, to be absent, or only very marginally present in the texts. As
examples, we will mention the banking and wine sectors. In the former, there is
absolutely no reference (verbal or iconic) to Spain in any of the texts in the
corpus. Similarly, for instance, in the case of Freixenet cavas, we nd absolutely
no mention of Spain, to the point that the company is identied by its British
address at Freixenet House, with the exception of one advertisement, which
was published in the Spanish edition of the Daily Express, for British tourists in
Spain, for whom the origin of the drink was perhaps considered of some
relevance. In the same vein, several UK supermarket catalogues consulted
contained references to the nationality of practically all the wines they sold, with
the exception of those from Spain (cavas included). This is possibly linked to a
tendency detected amongst Spanish wine producers to entrust their entire export
marketing campaigns to agencies in the target countries (Beltrn 1999).
Institutional advertising
Spain. The most outstanding (and numerous) of the texts in this group of our
corpus belong to the dierent campaigns used by Turespaa to promote Spain
as a tourist destination. These are very professional texts, which make excellent
use of photographs and other images to attract the potential consumers attention.
During the period of the corpus, there are two separate sets of texts, the rst
centred on the slogan Passion for Life, and the second, Spain by. The rst
is particularly interesting in its skillful exploitation of single key words associat-
ed with Spain (soul, ol) which appear in the background of each of the ads.
The second invokes the stereotyped image, to a lesser degree, through the use of
photography (monuments, countryside, women in traditional attire). In both
cases, the campaigns, far from shying away from the impact of stereotypes, make
use of them (and the fact that they are so deep-rooted) to the benet of the
promotion of Spanish tourism. Since our initial study, Turespaa has begun a
new campaign under the slogan Bravo, which plays on a very successful
combination of traditional and modern images.
An interesting parallel may be drawn here with the institutional advertising
of the Basque Country and Catalonia, destined mainly to consolidate the separate
identity of these areas as sites for good investment opportunities. The texts use
the concepts of Europe and the Mediterranean (for the latter) as strong selling
points. Indirect, or even on occasion direct, reference to the negative stereotypes
of Spain is deliberately used here also, but in this case to dissociate these two
regions from the image of the rest of the State.
only one of several idiomatic expressions which could be used. But how would
the target readers react? Would this text really be able to persuade them that
Iberia is one of the most punctual commercial airlines, when the inability to
arrive on time is an essential part of the macrodiscourse of Spanish-ness in their
culture? As we suggested above, the rst role of the translator is to identify this
diculty as an intercultural issue and to advise the commissioner on the subject.
There will be a variety of possible solutions, ranging from engaging the stereo-
type in a fairly outright fashion So who said Spaniards are never on time?, or
the less aggressive When maana is a thing of the past (both of which use the
stereotype as a marketing tool, as Spain institutional advertising seems to do), to
a much more neutral The quickest way to Spain, As the crow ies (which
avoid the clich, as Spains private companies seem to do).
These are not the only solutions open to the translator, however. As Resch
(1998) points out, the advertising text must be taken as a whole in which the
verbal elements are but a small part. As verbal and visual elements form an
inseparable whole, the translators intervention could, or indeed should, also
aect the visuals. In this case, the translator may decide that there is not an
English-language slogan to complete the text suitably, and that the most appro-
priate action is to discard this particular idea for the English-speaking market.
Unfortunately, there are often immediate nancial considerations which lead the
commissioner to reject such solutions, despite the fact that they may make for
more ecient marketing and thus be more protable in the long run.
To conclude, then, in general the role of the translator in international
advertising is a complex one, which can in no way be limited to purely
linguistic issues. Increasing recognition of translators as intercultural experts,
and awareness within the profession and on training courses of this aspect of our
professional activity, will ensure better results, and doubtless avoid intercultural
blunders of the kind which abound as anecdotes in the pages of advertising
manuals. More specically, translators working for Spanish companies launching
export campaigns abroad might do well to consider the current limitations of the
advertising of Spanish products and take the bull by the horns, so to speak, in
the thorny issue of negative national stereotypes.
Notes
1. In fact, the foreigner is almost always caricatured, and only very rarely are those who come
from a neighbouring country perceived in a favourable light: this would seem to be an inherent
part of human relations. [Our translation]
</TARGET "fue">
2. Several researchers have found that the images of dierent peoples persist for years, and are
even very similar from one place to another. [Our translation]
3. a very good political image for a Latin country, with a tendency to improve, high levels of
condence in the country and its people, with a tendency to improve. A very good cultural and
artistic image. A strong, simplied stereotype, together with considerable ignorance of what the
country is really like. Deep-rooted prejudice with no clearly dened tendency for the future. A
good, but not excellent image of the economy at the back of the leading group, in some way
underestimating the real economic potential of the country. Low value given to made in Spain
due to very little knowledge of Spanish products and brands, together with a certain rustic
image. And nally, an excellent image as a well-established tourist destination. [Our translation]
<TARGET "par" DOCINFO
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C 23
Translation as a Component
of Software Localization Projects
Joan Parra
Universitat Autnoma de Barcelona
Introduction
Today, software localization is one of the biggest and fastest growing sectors
within the language industries, and in all probability it is also the fastest chang-
ing. Localization has played a seminal and central role in all the changes that
have occurred in recent years in professional translation practice. This entails
implications both for translation theory in its broadest sense and the teaching of
translation.
The term localization, which has now entered other languages as a loan
from English, refers to the process of producing specic versions of software
programs1 for use in markets other than those for which the original was
developed. In other words, localization is the process by which the original
characteristics of a program designed for one market are modied so that it can
be used or used more successfully in a dierent market. Among the many
denitions existing, of special interest for their conciseness are those of Seoane
(1997): to localize a product is to make it usable in a local environment and
Esselink (1998): Localization is the process of adapting and translating a
software application into another language in order to make it linguistically and
culturally appropriate for a particular local market.
In most cases, modifying a program for its sale in another market will mean
translating it: Purchasers perceive [the] product as having been developed and
produced in their own country not as something that has been developed
244 JOAN PARRA
user interface, the on-screen help program, the various manuals, the software
license contract, the promotional materials and the packaging.
Among other items the user interface may include menus, dialog boxes,
screen messages and other textual elements, plus graphic and multimedia
components. It requires specic treatment because of its technical diculty, its
high visibility and a possible lack of context.
Localizing the on-screen help entails translating codied text and modifying
graphics, all of this as part of a process which can include preliminary break-up
and subsequent re-assembly of the materials.
Many software packages include documents intended to be used as exam-
ples or as templates for the creation of documents by the nal user. The
translation of these documents often entails great complexity, because it may
require cultural and functional adaptation.
Localization of manuals tends to be a complex task by virtue of the sheer
volume involved, the fact that text must be dealt with in desktop publishing
formats, and the fact that graphics must be handled (Uren et al. 1993: 8083). A
distinction must be drawn between manuals aimed at system administrators and
those designed for individual users.
Translation of the software license contract calls for legal translation skills.
Promotional materials come in all shapes and sizes and may include paper
documents and webpages. In addition to handling codied text and graphics, the
translator must have some degree of expertise or air for advertising; indeed,
along with the sample documents, this is the area of the localization process
which calls for most creativity on the part of the translator.
Software may include images, sounds, video sequences and other elements
often included under the general heading of multimedia. Each type of material
calls for specic treatment from the technical and translational point of view.
Software is by nature dynamic. Programs carry out tasks, unlike other
communicational products which are static in nature (Uren et al. 1993: 1.). The
functional complexity of some programs means that the nature of the task is
often unforeseeable since each of the translatable elements may operate in a
multiplicity of situations. Thus, the same text segment may appear in a large
number of dierent micro-contexts.
All the elements of visual interaction between the software and the user
(and that includes most of the components to be translated) must t on the
computer screen. In some cases the text expansion which arises from translation
(for example, from English into French) leads to space problems which must be
resolved by means of changes in the programming or the use of abbreviations
and other resources.
246 JOAN PARRA
original product aim to facilitate translation (Uren et al., 1993: 1191). The
original product is seen as a translatable object from the earliest planning stages.
As a result, the translatable elements of the software are isolated and made
separately available to the translator. The purpose of this is to cut costs, speed up
turn-around and marketing time and improve the quality of the nal result.
It is very common, indeed, inevitable, that the original software will
undergo further changes once the localization process is underway, for in the
world of software there is no such thing as a nal version and programs are
always liable to further development and modication. Hence, the user interface
may change half-way through the translation process and this will entail further
changes in the on-screen help and user manuals, etc. For this reason, translation
work begins on software, on-screen help programs and documentation well
before they are nished. Indeed, there is enormous pressure to have simultaneous
launches of original and localized software programs.
The dynamics of the software market tend to press for as early a product
launch as possible, and as a result most localization projects, many of which
involve enormous volumes of words, must be completed in a relatively short
space of time. This demands in-depth planning, organization of group work, the
use of assisted translation technologies and other time-saving strategies.
Software manufacturers, especially those with high outputs, have made and
continue to make eorts to standardise terminology, for a range of dierent
reasons. Therefore localization is glossary-based and this involves a number of
advantages, such as less time spent on terminological research work. However,
it also entails disadvantages (see Gardner 1992).
In software localization, the source language is in most cases American
English, and this is increasingly the case, at least in global terms. On the other
hand however, the number of target languages involved never stops growing and
internationalization technologies such as double byte character sets greatly
facilitate localization into Far Eastern, Arab and South Asian languages, etc.
(Kano 1995: 57113). In this context however, there are few grounds for opti-
mism as regards the situation of minoritised languages in the eld of software
localization, despite the existence of some promotional initiatives on a local
scale. Some characteristic features of localization into minoritised languages have
been described (see Griths 1995).
</TARGET "par">
Conclusion
From the above, it can be seen that at very least, the specic conditions which
accompany translation in software localization and the situations and settings in
which it takes place set it apart from other types of translation. The consequences
of this for translation theory are not at all easy to predict, but there is one certain
conclusion: translation teaching must pay attention to the phenomenon, and
translator training institutions must either develop or acquire the resources that
are necessary to teach the specic skills required. Both localizable software and
localization technologies and tools are evolving at great speed. The changes
taking place are so diverse and complex, and their consequences so far-reaching,
that it will be impossible for the academic world to broach the area alone. For
this reason, any approach that is to achieve valid results will need to obtain
funding and support from the professional sector.
Note
1. For the purposes of this paper, software is taken to be the standard and widely-used computer
programs run on PC/Windows platforms.
<TARGET "gar" DOCINFO
TITLE "Traduccin de los nombres vernculos ingleses de animales en los textos de divulgacin cientifca"
KEYWORDS ""
WIDTH "150"
VOFFSET "4">
C 24
Carlos Garrido
Universidade de Vigo
Abstract
Problems and strategies in the translating English common names for animals in
scientic texts for non-specialists. Common, non-scientic, names for animals
make up an important part of the terminology used in scientic texts for non-
specialists in English. This is due to both the genres thematic orientation
toward nature as well as to the wide variety of common names available to the
English language which is, in turn, partly a consequence of the long-standing
English tradition of amateur and specialist study of fauna which has led to the
coining of a great number of articial, non-scientic animal names. After
briey explaining the basics of taxonomic naming and vernacular zoonymy,
this paper goes on to discuss the problems which arise when translating such
animal names into Spanish. Bearing in mind a series of translation errors
detected in the Spanish version of several articles taken from newspapers,
Scientic American and National Geographic Magazine, a number of transla-
tion strategies are proposed in order to overcome three main following
problems: (1) the fact that bilingual English-Spanish dictionaries fail to include
many common names for animals; (2) the frequent absence of scientic names
to accompany their popular equivalents in English texts for non-specialists; and
(3) the frequent lack of a popular Spanish equivalent for the corresponding
common name in English.
Introduccin
lengua inglesa, tanto por la inherente conexin temtica del gnero con la
naturaleza, como por la circunstancia de que, segn ms adelante se expondr,
la rica tradicin anglosajona de observacin de la fauna, por parte de acionados
y de especialistas, ha determinado una masiva y sistemtica instauracin de
nombres vernculos de organismos, incluso para especies y grupos exticos,
inconspicuos o desconocidos para el gran pblico.
El hecho de que la mayora de los nombres vernculos ingleses de animales
no sean catalogados en los diccionarios bilinges ingls > espaol ni, a veces, en
los monolinges, que sus equivalentes vernculos no existan en espaol, y que
frecuentemente no aparezcan acompaados en el texto original de sus correspon-
dientes designaciones cientcas o semicientcas (vid. infra), los torna en un
verdadero escollo en el proceso de traduccin de la divulgacin cientca.1 A
modo de botn de muestra de este problema, que puede comprometer seriamente
la validez de una traduccin, nos remitimos (cf. Maillot 1997: 195) al siguiente
juicio de Fernando Parra contenido en su recensin de El ltimo panda, versin
espaola de una monografa faunstica del conocido zologo George B. Schaller:
Un s[o]lo reproche a la edicin espaola. Correctamente traducido[, el texto]
debera, sin embargo, haber sido revisado por un bilogo; los nombres de las
especies son a menudo incorrectos en castellano y las notas a pie de pgina del
traductor a menudo suman incorrecciones a lo que pretendan aclarar. (Babelia,
El Pas, 8 de noviembre de 1997: 16)
Los seres vivos pueden clasicarse siguiendo criterios diversos, lo que constituye
el objeto de estudio de la disciplina biolgica de la sistemtica o taxonoma.
sta, de acuerdo con un criterio y una nalidad a la vez tericos (la clasicacin
TRADUCCIN DE LOS NOMBRES VERNCULOS 253
Esta circunstancia no ha sido tenida en cuenta por el traductor del artculo en que
se incluye el siguiente trecho, pues, si bien ha traducido correctamente warblers
por reinitas, dado que el contexto geogrco es norteamericano, en su ampli-
cacin explicativa del nombre vernculo (vid. infra) habla de la familia Sylviidae
(la de las currucas europeas) en relacin con las reinitas, en vez de la familia
Parulidae (parlidos) que correspondera:
256 CARLOS GARRIDO
(1) NGA, 192 (4), p. 83: The brown-headed cowbird is an egg dumper, deposit-
ing its eggs in the nests of warblers [] > NGE, 1 (1), p. 83: El boyero de
cabeza parda es un pjaro parsito, que deposita sus huevos en los nidos de
las reinitas (slvidos parecidos a las currucas), []
El siguiente ejemplo (2), extrado del mismo artculo, ilustra la necesidad de que
el traductor, mediante la documentacin, profundice en la adscripcin taxon-
mica, en la identidad, del animal citado en el texto original y en el nal, de
manera que se pueda asegurar de la exactitud de la equivalencia propuesta:
(2) NGA, 192 (4), p. 90: To complete their life cycle, trematode larvae lodged
in a mud snail must nd their way into a beach ea and, from there, into
the digestive system of a bird. [] When a shorebird eats the ea [] >
NGE, 1 (1), p. 90: Para completar su ciclo biolgico, las larvas de trema-
todo alojadas en un caracol del fango tienen que labrarse camino en una
nigua y, desde all, hacia el aparato digestivo de un ave. [] Cuando un
ave limcola traga la nigua []
Aqu el traductor se ha dejado engaar por el apelativo ea (>pulga) que gura
en el texto original, pues ha convertido beach ea (>pulga de mar), un crustceo
anfpodo no parasitario que habita el litoral de las regiones templadas-fras (por
ejemplo, la especie Talitrus saltator), en un insecto sifonptero tropical y
parasitario, la nigua (Tunga penetrans). La confusin tal vez se haya debido a
que sand ea, nombre prximo al original beach ea, designa en ingls, adems
de la pulga de mar, la nigua (tambin denominada chigoe, chigger o jigger ea).
En caso de que el nombre vernculo ingls no sea registrado por los
diccionarios bilinges, habr de determinarse, para proseguir en la investigacin
del equivalente, el correspondiente nombre cientco (o semicientco). ste
puede hallarse a veces acompaando al nombre vernculo en el texto original, o
en un apartado previo del mismo, pero, si no es as, podr encontrarse en una
enciclopedia o en un buen diccionario monolinge de ingls en la denicin
encabezada por el pertinente nombre vernculo.5
Una vez determinada la designacin cientca (o semicientca), de mbito
internacional, que corresponde al nombre vernculo original, el problema de
traduccin puede resolverse total o parcialmente recurriendo a bibliografa
adecuada compuesta en castellano: si existe un equivalente vernculo espaol,
ste puede encontrarse consultando el nombre cientco pertinente (o el vern-
culo del grupo que lo incluye) en una enciclopedia o en el ndice alfabtico
remisivo de un manual universitario de zoologa, de una gua de la naturaleza o
de una monografa/enciclopedia faunstica (ej.: Rodrguez de la Fuente 1970;
TRADUCCIN DE LOS NOMBRES VERNCULOS 257
Barnes 1984). As, por ejemplo, para determinar el equivalente vernculo espaol
de hartebeest puede consultarse un diccionario o enciclopedia redactados en
ingls, donde se descubrir que se trata de un antlope africano perteneciente a
la especie Alcelaphus buselaphus; en el artculo encabezado por la voz antlope
de una enciclopedia espaola podr verse a continuacin que una de las especies
de antlope es el alcelafo o bubal, de nombre cientco Alcelaphus buselaphus.
Si no existe equivalente vernculo espaol para el nombre ingls original y,
por tanto, la estrategia que se acaba de describir resulta infructuosa, deber
utilizarse en la traduccin el correspondiente nombre cientco (o semicientco).
As, para verter al espaol en un texto sobre pesca la denominacin inglesa
roughy, correspondiente a un pez tropical, deber recurrirse a su nombre
cientco (Trachichthys australis), pues, como atestigua el diccionario multi-
linge de especies marinas de Vera Kirchner (1992), para esta especie no existen
denominaciones vernculas en espaol (ni en francs, ni en alemn).
Esta sustitucin de nombre vernculo por nombre cientco debe realizarse
con cuidado porque, incluso en el caso de que la correspondencia sea correcta y
no conlleve un cambio de la designacin original, en ciertas ocasiones puede
alterar innecesariamente el registro del texto y causar extraeza. Considrese, por
ejemplo, la siguiente traduccin:
(3) SciAm, noviembre 1996, p. 110: The aardvark > IyC, enero 1997, p. 80: El
mamfero nocturno de la especie Orycteropus afer.
Aqu lo apropiado hubiese sido, para traducir aardvark, utilizar las equivalencias
verncula o semicientca cerdo hormiguero u oricteropo, con lo que se hubiese
conservado el efecto pragmtico del original. Tngase en cuenta, por otra
parte, que la elevacin de registro respecto al original que acarrea la sustitu-
cin de un nombre vernculo por otro (semi)cientco resulta en muchos casos
inevitable y no hace sino conrmar que la divulgacin cientca en espaol, por
el carcter exclusivamente grecolatino de gran parte de su vocabulario especial-
izado, se halla ms alejada de la lengua comn que la que se compone en ingls
(y, sobre todo, en alemn).6
Lo que nunca se debe hacer en caso de inexistencia de equivalente vern-
culo espaol para el nombre original es acuar un falso nombre espaol mediante
la traduccin palabra por palabra del nombre ingls, pues el uso del nombre
vernculo inventado por el traductor, aunque en algunos casos pueda resultar
ms descriptivo que el nombre (semi)cientco, en general obscurece el texto
traducido al impedir tanto la identicacin inmediata del animal por parte del
especialista como una consulta provechosa de bibliografa adicional por parte del
lego interesado. En el ejemplo siguiente se muestra este tipo de instauracin
258 CARLOS GARRIDO
Formulacin de la traduccin
Conclusiones
Como estrategia general para traducir al espaol los nombres vernculos ingleses
de animales que con gran frecuencia guran en los textos de divulgacin
cientca, el presente trabajo propone: (1) no conarse exclusivamente a los
diccionarios bilinges y, para cerciorarse de la exactitud de las equivalencias,
realizar una confrontacin de deniciones en los dos idiomas (diccionarios y
enciclopedias monolinges) que incluya nombres cientcos, ilustraciones y
mbitos ecolgicos y geogrcos de los animales en cuestin; (2) en caso de que
el nombre vernculo ingls no sea registrado en los diccionarios bilinges,
recurrir al respectivo nombre cientco o semicientco, o al vernculo del grupo
supraordinado, para acceder, mediante la consulta de enciclopedias, manuales o
monografas, al equivalente vernculo espaol; (3) ante la frecuente inexistencia
en espaol de nombres vernculos para traducir los nombres vernculos ingleses,
utilizar en el texto nal los correspondientes nombres cientcos o semicien-
tcos, teniendo cuidado de no alterar innecesariamente el registro y de no
acuar falsos nombres vernculos espaoles por traduccin literal de los ingleses;
(4) al formular la traduccin de un nombre vernculo ingls que carece de
</TARGET "gar">
Notas
1. Entendemos por divulgacin cientca aquella transmisin de informacin relativa a las ciencias
naturales y a la tcnica que tiene por emisor un especialista o mediador especializado (perio-
dista cientco) y por receptor un lego interesado. Debido a la creciente curiosidad del hombre
por el mundo que le rodea y a la transcendencia que la ciencia y la tecnologa han adquirido en
nuestras sociedades, hoy en da los conocimientos cientco-tcnicos forman parte importante
del bagaje cultural del ciudadano medio, de manera que nunca como ahora la divulgacin
cientca haba conocido una poca de tanto cultivo (artculos de prensa, artculos de revistas,
libros, documentales televisivos, vdeos, etc.).
2. Ttulos aqu abreviados como, respectivamente, IyC, NGE, SciAm y NGA.
3. No es tanto que el castellano carezca de nombres vernculos para animales exticos (la
magnitud de su actual extensin geogrca, prxima a la del ingls, lo ha puesto en contacto
con muy diversas ecologas), sino que el dcit frente al ingls (compartido por la mayora
de las otras lenguas) se registra ms bien en los mbitos de la instauracin erudita de, por una
parte, denominaciones vernculas para grupos de animales raros o poco llamativos (aunque no
necesariamente exticos) y, por otra, de nombres de categora especca en el seno de grupos
ms o menos conocidos por el gran pblico.
4. Los diccionarios bilinges de la lengua general no suelen contener sino los nombres de los
animales ms comunes y conocidos. Existen tambin algunos diccionarios multilinges, que
incluyen el ingls y el espaol, de nombres de animales (p. ej., para los peces: Vera Kirchner
1992; AA.VV. 1995), pero su nmero y su caudal lxico, por diversas causas, resulta escaso.
5. Los diccionarios ingleses de lengua comn suelen ofrecer, en contraste con, por ejemplo, la
mayora de sus homlogos espaoles (DRAE), portugueses (Porto Editora) y alemanes (Duden,
Wahrig), las designaciones cientcas de las especies y grupos de especies que corresponden a
los nombres vernculos lematizados. Otra fuente muy til de nombres cientcos son las guas
faunsticas especializadas en diversos grupos de animales (p. ej.: Campbell 1983; Peterson,
Mountfort y Hollom 1989).
6. Consltese, por ejemplo, la Nota a la edicin espaola que J. Ros i Aragons antepuso (p.
3) a su traduccin de una gua de la naturaleza inglesa (Campbell 1983), o, para el caso del
alemn, Rlker (1972: 52, 53).
<TARGET "ter" DOCINFO
KEYWORDS ""
WIDTH "150"
VOFFSET "4">
C 25
Maribel Tercedor-Snchez
Universidad de Granada
Introduction
* We are grateful to Dr. Abada Molina of the University of Granada and Dr. Cabrera Ibolen of
the Palliative Care Unit (Hospital Clnico Universitario, Granada) for their kind help in choosing
sources and supplying expert knowledge.
262 MARIBEL TERCEDOR-SNCHEZ
In the domain of Oncology the specialist often tends to use deliberately abstruse
language; this means that the patient is faced with many obstacles as a result of
the specialists concern to inform to the minimum in order to avoid iatrogenic
illnesses (Grinev et al. 1991: 183).
In contrast to the often secretive and esoteric nature of biomedical language,
the scientic writer and the translator have to adapt terminology to dierent
receivers in order to facilitate understanding.
The goal of terminology insofar as its function in society goes is the
ecient transmission of specialized information. In this regard, it is concerned
with the combinations of terms and words from the general language that vary
according to dierent parameters such as type of text, communicative aim of the
discourse, text sender and receiver, register and situation.
In the domain of Oncology there is important terminological and phraseo-
logical variation as a result of the sheer quantity of information available at all
levels in response to the desire of people to access information about cancer.
This situation demands a greater attention to the social aspect of terminological
work. In order to assist the translator, terminological description should be done
within the most frequent types of contexts in which the translator carries out
his/her work. For the accomplishment of this task, the description of phraseology
is essential given the possibilities it oers in translation-oriented discourse
analysis. Among the pragmatic components, special attention should be paid to
the notion of register as a parameter that allows the text to be coherent with the
situation (Halliday and Hasan 1976: 23) and which thus is essential for the
ecient transfer of information to specic users. A descriptive study of
phraseological units following such pragmatic approach is a necessary step prior
to the elaboration of tools for assisting the translator in decoding source texts and
helping the translator and technical writer to encode texts with specic pragmatic
features.
PHRASEOLOGY IN BIOMEDICAL TEXTS 263
Corpus selection
Translation oriented terminological work can benet greatly from corpus studies.
We believe that in order for the corpus to be representative it must contain as
many text types and genres as are relevant within the domain. For our study we
are in the process of elaborating a corpus of comparable (original) and parallel
(translated) biomedical texts in English and Spanish on dierent aspects within
the domain of Oncology. The texts are checked for adequacy from a terminologi-
cal point of view; in this regard experts in biology and oncology have validated
the selection of specialized sources. Since the corpus must also be adequate from
a translational perspective, it is indicative of communicative situations that are
typical of professional contexts in translation. The text types included are:
1. Specialized publications in Oncology
2. Specialized publications in the area of General Medicine
3. Texts on cancer aimed at the general public
4. University textbooks
5. Information leaets
Methodology
Terms and phraseological units have been assigned to the particular concepts
they are related to and located within the dierent dimensions in the domain of
Oncology following an onomasiological approach. With the aid of a KWIC (Key
Word in Context) tool, the phraseological information present in the corpus has
been extracted within the dierent types of texts classied according to the
degree of specialization. The data have rst been extracted and described in each
language and then contrasted interlinguistically.
The concept apoptosis used to illustrate this analysis presents the following
conceptual features:
1. According to the literature, it is closely linked to cancer and more speci-
cally to its causes and treatments; apoptosis or programmed cell death plays
an important part in several processes to prevent illnesses and maintain
homeostasis, therefore, defects in the mechanisms of programmed cell death
can lead to dierent alterations.
2. It is a multidisciplinary concept since it is part of scientic domains such as
Cell Biology, Genetics, Biochemistry, Developmental Biology and medical
domains such as Oncology, Infectious Diseases, Immunology, Neurology,
264 MARIBEL TERCEDOR-SNCHEZ
Figure 1: Concordances of the term apoptosis from texts in Spanish and English, marked
as formal and addressed to the researcher.
PHRASEOLOGY IN BIOMEDICAL TEXTS 265
The description of phraseology in biomedical texts should take into account all
units that transfer specialized information. In this sense, as Rey (1995: 131)
points out, terminology deals with units (terms, nouns) of sociolinguistically
variable nature, ranging from terms only known to a few users of a restricted
eld of knowledge or a professional group to terms known by the general
public. The author reveals the importance of focussing on the specialized
content and not on the specialized form of the language that might well be that
of a general word. Furthermore, it is impossible to separate words from terms,
[] there are a large number of lexical units which are both words and terms
(De Bess 1995: 3). The analysis of phraseology can reveal the interaction
between general and specialized language for dierent communicative situations
and is crucial in the sociolinguistic aspect of terminology. It is crucial to consider
all types of texts in terminological description for the translator and the technical
writer who work in dierent contexts. The analysis of concordances reveals the
relevant collocators for a particular unit. These must be inserted into the database
or information system for the access of the translator. Some of the most promi-
nent collocational data for the central term of this analysis are:
(1) V + N (apoptosis): induce, increase, inhibit, trigger (Eng); inducir, provocar,
aumentar, inhibir (Spa).
(2) Nphrase + N (apoptosis): increase of, degradation of, inhibition of (Eng);
aumento de la, prdida de, fenmeno de, control de (Spa).
(3) N(apoptosis) + N phrase: in #cancer cells, control (Eng); en la progresin
metastsica, en clulas hematopoyticas, en clulas 435 brain (Spa).
A close study of concordances can reveal the activation and interrelation of
dimensions within the domain. In this sense, the term in the example is related
to dierent dimensions in the domain. These conceptual dimensions or subelds
can be observed through the collocators that co-occur with the term. For
example, the numerous occurrences of the collocator #cell reveal that the term
apoptosis, within the domain of Oncology, is relevant in the subeld of Cell
Processes.
An analysis of the main implications of such phraseological analysis for
terminology and translation is set out below.
266 MARIBEL TERCEDOR-SNCHEZ
The text sender, in order to explain concepts, resorts to forms that compare the
concept described with others in more familiar domains. It is common practice
to use a simple denition before or after introducing a specialized term, as
happens with cell suicide or apoptosis or anti-sickness drugs or antiemetics.
These paraphrases or denitions are phraseological units that replace the term
and carry out the same functions in the texts addressed to the non-specialist. The
units with a high metaphoric component are often those that transfer the notion
in a clearer way and oer valid information about the conceptual structure of the
domain.
In contrast with the data oered by other authors, in our corpus we have
found that the language of Oncology is full of phraseology made up of words
from the general language. More specically there are also many metaphors and
similes with a denitional function that bring specialized information closer to
the lay person. In this sense, in the concept APOPTOSIS, the metaphor cell
suicide claries its meaning if we consider that the cell, once it has commited
suicide, cannot reverse the process. Surrounding this concept, there are metaphors
that are informative about ways of representing knowledge in the domain; for
example, the p53 murder mystery. Complex processes are frequently explained
with similes: A picture is emerging of a complicated protein, which in some
ways resembles p53 in that it has multiple independent functions, rather like a
Swiss army knife (Reed 1997: 773).
The analysis of these units helps to locate the concepts within the domain
and also marks their relations to other domains. Moreover, it can highlight the
conceptual schema for the lexical units of the domain. In this regard, termino-
graphy as well as translation can benet from context-oriented terminological
studies that reveal the conceptual structure of the domain, with certain limitations
as to the routes for term formation: Any attempt to discover regularities in term
formation must be fully aware of the limited usefulness of this enterprise [] the
linguistic sign for a concept can be quite arbitrarily chosen and often is (Sager
1990: 62).
Most specialized vocabularies designed for the translator still contain names and
nominal phrases and rarely verbs and verb phrases (Pavel 1993: 29). Verb
analysis in specialized texts is crucial since there are terminology proper verbs
and verbs from the general language which acquire terminological meaning when
combined with certain collocators:
VPhr- V+ N:
recibir alquitrn: el pulmn recibe el alquitrn equivalente a
to receive tar: the patient receives an amount of tar comparable to
entrar a quirfano:no siempre el enfermo est en condiciones de entrar a
quirfano
to enter the operating room: not always is the patient ready to enter the
operating room
cometer suicidio: la apoptosis es una respuesta genticamente controlada para que
la clula cometa suicidio.
to commit suicide: apoptosis is a genetically controlled response for cells to
commit suicide.
268 MARIBEL TERCEDOR-SNCHEZ
Results
The need for transferring specialized information not only among specialists but
at all levels implies adapting the terminology to the particular audience. This
occurs for example through the use of lexical units from the general language
and the use of metaphors that acquire terminological functions.
The concordance analysis of the concept under study has identied the
following morpho-syntactic features:
The concept APOPTOSIS is introduced by the term apoptosis alone or together
with several phraseological units through the following patterns:
[X llamado/called Y] [X o/or Y]
[Y o/or X] [X (Y)]
[Y (X)], [X ,Y,]
[X] [Y]
[X (X1)]
In the above example, X represents the term apoptosis and Y is the phraseo-
logical unit that can take the following relevant forms in Spanish and English
from a more formal or technical register to an informal register:
mecanismo programado de muerte programmed form of cell death
muerte programada de la clula programmed cell death
muerte celular programada
suicidio celular cell suicide
cellular suicide
programa de suicidio celular cellular suicide programme
muerte siolgica o programada
Frequently, compound terms, representative of a concept, are not considered
under the scope of phraseology in terminological studies. However, there are
many simple terms that can be replaced by a type of unit that is representative
of one concept. Such a unit is not a typical phraseological unit, which is usually
the combination of two or more concepts. This is the case of the concept
APOPTOSIS, which is represented by the term apoptosis and the various phraseo-
logical units shown. Furthermore, these units, far from being xed, which is a
typical characteristic of compound terms, manifest a high degree of variation.
Since they encode a specialized concept and transfer specialized knowledge to
dierent audiences, their terminological treatment is desirable from the interest
of skopos-dependent translation.
For the creation of a terminographical tool, information on this type of units
PHRASEOLOGY IN BIOMEDICAL TEXTS 269
Conclusions
AUTHOR ""
TITLE "References"
KEYWORDS ""
WIDTH "150"
VOFFSET "4">
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<TARGET "ni" DOCINFO
AUTHOR ""
KEYWORDS ""
WIDTH "150"
VOFFSET "4">
Name Index
A H
Agar 204 Halliday 66, 262
Anzalda 37ff Hansen 17
Hartmann 17
B Hasan 262
Bassnett 168 Holz-Mnttri 224
Baumann 206 Hnig 129, 134
Beaugrande 18, 134ff Hurtado 130
Bourdieu 172
J
C Jensen 133
Cannon 238
Catford 14, 120 K
Chamberlain 39 Kaindl 22
Chesterman 225ff Kaminsky 39
Chomsky 18 Kiraly 120, 134
Cook 225 Krings 24, 132ff
Kuhn 17
D Kussmaul 129, 132ff
Danks 108
Darbelnet 117ff, 131 L
Delisle 131ff Lambert 175
De Mooij 223ff Lauer 206
Leech 67
E Lefevere 118, 168
Elena 132 Lrscher 108, 134
Lugones 38
F
Fusco 38 M
MacDonald 173
G Maier 41
Gpferich 206 Malmkjaer 17
Grice 225 Malone 131
</TARGET "ni">
Marcuse 173 S
Mason 121, 124, 132 Sager 266
Mondahl 133 Sguinot 132ff, 235
Short 67
N Shreve 23
Neubert 17, 23, 225ff Snell-Hornby 22
Newmark 119, 130ff Sohr 177
Nida 15
Nord 133ff, 224ff T
Techtmeier 206
O Toury 118, 226
Ortega y Gasset 172 Trosborg 225
P V
Pchhacker 22 Van Dijk 18
Vzquez Ayora 131
R Venuti 171
Rabadn 168 Vermeer 204
Rastall 134ff Vinay 117ff, 131
Reiss 130
Resch 235 W
Ritzer 226 Wilss 129ff, 133
Wotjak 131
<TARGET "si" DOCINFO
AUTHOR ""
KEYWORDS ""
WIDTH "150"
VOFFSET "4">
Subject Index
E interdisciplinary paradigm 22
empirical experimental research 105 internationalization 248; see also
environmental validity 91 globalization, glocalization,
equivalence 4, 5, 123ff, 129 localization
communicative equivalence 31 interpreting research 77
functional equivalence 35, 122 intertextuality 201ff, 225, 235
lexical equivalence 122 intracultural communication 201
linguistic equivalence 29 intuition 133
F K
factory translation 171; see also kitsch 173
aristocratic translation
feminine subject translator 39 L
eld experiment 92 laboratory experiment 92
foreignizing 130, 159, 172; see also language pair 15
domesticating language studies 14
freedom 59 lexical density 66
function 129 linguistic approach 227, 232; see also
functionalist approach 195, 227, functionalist approach
232; see also linguistic literary translation 146
approach literary canons 142
literary translator 57
G localization 224, 243; see also
gender/text 41 globalization, glocalization,
general strategy 69; see also internationalization
translation method localization tools 247
genres 17, 200ff, 204
globalization 224, 236; see also M
glocalization, internationalization, matching the meaning 50; see also
localization, sophisticated translation
glocalization 224; see also McDonaldisation thesis 226; see also
globalization, internationalization, globalization
localization, measuring instrument 92
metacommunication 206ff
H method
highbrow translation 173; see translation method 117ff
aristocratic translation translation research method,
methodology 84, 88, 91
I interpreting research tools and
imitation 118 methods 80,
initiator 118 midcult 173; see also kitsch
intercultural communication 30, 201
SUBJECT INDEX 293
N S
narrow context 118ff; see also broad shifts 117, 121; see also operations,
context procedures, replacements,
national identity 235ff techniques
norms 156, 226 simple translation 44; see also
initial norms 118 sophisticated translation
linguistic norms 142 skills 214ff; see also competence and
style norms 200 translator (knowledge) prole
textual norms 17 skopos 129
translation norms 33, 156 skopos-dependent translation 268
TT-norms 142 solution 68, 108, 121ff
solution-type 122ff
O sophisticated translation 44; see also
operations 117; see also procedures, simple translation
replacements, shifts, techniques speech acts 33
oral discourse 66 standardization 175
strategies 99, 108, 117, 120ff, 129ff
P
interpreting strategies 81
parallel texts 19
stylebook 157
patronage 118
phatic function 206
T
phraseological analysis 265
taxonomic naming 251ff; see also
phraseological units 261ff
designacin taxonmica
pragmatics 17
teaching 35, 134, 249
problem 68, 108, 121, 251ff
computer-assisted teaching
problem solving 132
programmes 94; see also training
procedural knowledge 22, 102; see
techniques 117, 121ff; see also
also declarative knowledge
operations, procedures,
procedures 117, 123; see also
replacements, shifts
operations, replacements, shifts,
addition 122, 125
techniques
compensation 125
process 99, 108, 118ff, 132
deletion 122
pseudotranslation 178
displacement 125
psycholinguistics 132
explicitation 125
Q omission 125
quality of translation 195 rearrangement 126
substitution 125
R transposition 121
receivers (of texts) 196 terminology 251ff, 261ff
reescritura 168 text production 197
replacement 117; see also operations, text segment 130ff; see also translation
procedures, shifts, techniques unit
replication 87 text types 17, 200ff
</TARGET "si">