Text analysis in translation (стр. 4 из 10)

For translation-oriented text analysis, it is most important to elicit features typical of the medium, i.e. features of content and/or form, and to classify them as culture-specific or transcultural or even universal. This is particularly relevant in those cases where the target text is to be transmitted through a medium or channel different from that of the source text.

How to obtain information about the medium

If the source text is not available in its original medium, but only in a copy or typescript (which actually occurs fairly frequently in translation practice), the translator must insist on having detailed information about the medium, as it is rather difficult to identify the medium from intratextual analysis alone. There may be some clues in the dimensions of the sender and his/her intention or motive; time and place, too, sometimes narrow the field of possible media. In some cases, the choice of medium is determined by convention since there are favourite media for particular communicative purposes in every culture (e.g. posters or newspaper advertisements for product promotion, leaflets for tourist information, etc.).

Checklist

The following questions may help to find out the relevant information about the dimension of medium or channel:

1.Has the text been taken from a spoken or a written communication? By which medium was it transmitted?

2.Which medium is used to present the text to the target audience? Is there any extratextual information on the medium?

3.What clues as to medium or channel can be inferred from other situational factors (sender, intention, motive, function)?

4.What conclusions can be drawn from the data and clues obtained about the medium as regards

(a)other extratextual dimensions, such as the addressees and their expectations, motive, and function, and

(b)the intratextual features?

Place of communication

The dimension of space refers not only to the place of text production, i.e. the actual situation of the sender and the text producer, but also, at least in connection with certain media, to the place of text reception. It cannot be equated with the dimension of medium. The dimension of space is of particular importance where languages exist in various geographical varieties (such as the Spanish spoken in Spain as opposed to Latin America or even Peru, Mexico, Argentina etc., and the English spoken in Great Britain as opposed to the United States, Australia, India etc..

Example

The Portuguese version of the information brochure published by the Tourist Office of Munich was accepted unhesitatingly as being correct and appropriate by a group of Brazilian teachers in a seminar on translation, whereas their colleagues from Portugal classified the text as "more or less understandable, but unidiomatic and not conforming to normal usage". In this case, an analysis of the dimension of place could not throw any light on this problem because the text had been produced in Munich for "Portuguese"-speaking receivers. As the name of the translator was not specified in the text imprint, the participants in the seminar could only assume that the translator - whether he or she was a native speaker or not - had used the Brazilian variety of Portuguese. The sender/initiator (the Tourist Office) had probably not been aware of the problem. For the German version of this brochure, however, the dimension of place (of reception) would suggest that the text is written in the variety used in Germany (as opposed to Austria or Switzerland).

In addition to the linguistic aspects, the dimension of space can be important for the comprehension and interpretation of a text in that the place of text production may be regarded as the centre of a "relative geography". The distance or significance of other places must often be judged in relation to this centre. The translator has to take into account that the "relative geography" from the standpoint of TT production may be quite different from that of ST production.

Example

a)The difference in cultural or social level could be called "downgrade" or "upgrade", depending on whether it is seen from the lower or the higher level.

b)The distance between London and Liverpool is much "shorter" as perceived by a Texan than by an Englishman,

c) The names of places, areas and tribes listed in Act 2, 9-11, do not make sense as a description of the "horizon of the Jewish world" unless Syria is assumed to be the place of text production, and not Jerusalem, where the Pentecostal event is set.

What to find out about the dimension of space

In the dimension of space we have to consider not only linguistic aspects but also cultural and political conditions. A text published in a country where literature is censored must be read "in another light" than a text whose author has not been subject to any restrictions, since authors under censorship often write "between the lines".

In addition to the name of the state or country the text comes from, it may even be necessary to know the exact area or town of text production in order to be able to interpret the deictic elements correctly. This applies to the ST as well as to the TT, which would normally be read in the target cultural environment.

Example

In the case of newspaper articles, the place where the paper is published is normally taken to be the place of text production as well. Therefore, readers of the Sunday Times can assume that the information "Mortgage cut in sight" refers to Great Britain, while all articles on the first page of the international edition of the Herald Tribune have to indicate the place the article refers to: "U.S. Banks Lower Prime Interest Rate", "In Leipzig, Protesters Fear Resurgence of Communist Power", "Tamil Guerrilla Army Nears Goal in Sri Lanka", etc. If correspondents send their reports from somewhere else, the place of text production is usually specified together with the author's name ("By David Binder, New York Times Service, Bucharest") or at the beginning of the text ("LEIPZIG, East Germany"), so that the reader can interpret a sentence as "Now everything is quiet around here again" correctly. In a translation, too, the dimension of place has to be specified either externally (e.g. in an introduction) or internally (e.g. "Now everything is quiet around Leipzig again").

Information about the place of text production also gives an indication of the cultural affiliation of the sender and/or the addressees, the medium (in the case of culture-bound or culture-specific media), the motive (at least where combined with the dimension of time) arid the in-tratextual features (such as regional dialect or deictic expressions).

How to obtain information about the dimension of space

As a rule, information about the dimension of space can be found in the text environment in the form of the place of publication, the name of the publishing company, the first edition details, or newspaper headlines, or in the secondary literature. Sometimes, it is presupposed to be part of the receiver's general background knowledge (e.g. in the case of publications by international organizations or institutions or by world-famous writers). From the intratextual point of view, certain linguistic features may provide a clue as to where the text was written or intended to be read.

Other clues may be obtained from the information about the sender (e.g.: Where did s/he live, work, etc.?), the addressed audience (e.g.: What culture-specific information may be presupposed to be known by the receiver?), medium (e.g.: Is it bound to a certain culture?), or motive (e.g.: Is it a culture-specific motive?).

Checklist

The following questions may help to find out the relevant information about the place of communication:

1.Where was the text produced or transmitted? Is any information on the dimension of space to be found in the text environment? Is any information on space presupposed to be part of the receiver's general background knowledge?

2.What clues as to the dimension of space can be inferred from other situational factors (sender, receiver, medium, motive)?

3.What conclusions can be drawn from the data and clues obtained about the dimension of space as regards

(a)other extratextual factors (sender, receiver, medium, motive) and

(b)the intratextual features?

Lecture 3. The relevance of the dimension of time and text function

Time of communication

Every language is subject to constant change in its use and its norms. So the time of text production is, first and foremost, an important pre-signal for the historical state of linguistic development the text represents. This applies not only to language use as such (from the sender's point of view) but also to the historical comprehension of linguistic units (from the receiver's point of view), which is itself bound to a certain period or epoch, since linguistic changes are usually determined by socio-cultural changes.

Moreover, this process of change affects the area of text types. Certain genres are linked to a particular period (e.g. oracles and epic poems as opposed to weather reports and television plays), and, of course, genre conventions also undergo change. Depending on the age of the text, the receiver/translator may have totally different expectations as to the typical features of the text type in question. S/he may even expect obsolete forms that are not used any more.

Example

Being asked what they thought to be the typical syntactic feature of a German recipe, the majority of competent native speakers of German mention the subjunctive of the present tense: "Man nehme...", whereas modern German recipes are written exclusively in infinitive constructions. Today, thesubjunctive is used only to give a recipe an old-fashioned touch, as if it was from Grandmother s Recipe Book.

In addition to the linguistic aspects, the dimension of time can throw some light on the communicative background of the sender and the addressed audience, and thus provide a clue to understanding the sender's intention. In the case of text types of topical interest, such as news items and news reports, political commentaries, election speeches, weather reports, etc., the dimension of time can be the decisive criterion as to whether there is any point in a text being translated at all, or, if there is, under which circumstances and with which skopos it may be worthwhile.

In connection with the dimension of space, deictic elements refer directly to the situation. Like spatial deixis, temporal deixis can only be interpreted correctly if the receiver knows the time of text production.

Example

In the International Herald Tribune of January 9, 1990, we find the following notice: "NEW YORK - The hopes entertained that the grippe was relaxing have been destroyed by the mortality returns of yesterday (Jan. 7), which show an increase of nearly 100 over the toll given three days ago, with 134 deaths traceable to the epidemic." No need to be alarmed: the notice is to be found under the heading "100, 75 and 50 years ago", and dates from 1890.

However, it may also be necessary to know the genre conventions in this respect, as the following example shows.

Example

In Madras, I was surprised to read in the morning paper lying on my breakfast table that "there was a train crash this afternoon". Of course, the text had probably been written late at night, and the author was quite right to say "this afternoon" - but in a German newspaper (and normally in British and American papers as well) the author would have written yesterday afternoon because it seems to be a convention here for newspaper writers to imagine themselves in the situation of the reader who receives the text the next morning, whereas obviously the Indian readers are expected to put themselves in the writer's shoes.

Sometimes it may be wise for the translator to check on the validity of the information given in the source text (if possible) or at least to point out to the initiator that some information in the text may not be up to date.

Example

In some tourist information leaflets, the information on opening hours, prices etc. or warnings such as "is being repaired" (cf. example 3.1.4./2a) are not up to date. For example, the latest (translated) published information on the famous Altamira caves in Northern Spain specifies that the caves can be visited by anybody "on request". When I went there to have a look at the prehistoric paintings, I found out that there was a pavilion with beautiful reproductions of the paintings - but the caves had not been open to the public for the past few years. Only persons presenting proof of a particular research project were allowed to enter.

The dimension of time influences directly or indirectly the dimensions of sender (e.g.: Is s/he a contemporary of the receiver/translator or not? What situational presuppositions can be made?), intention, audience (expectations, temporal distance between ST and TT addressees), medium (historical or modern forms of medium), motive (e.g. topicality), and, above all, intratextual features (e.g. presuppositions, historical language variety, deictic elements).

The traditions and conventions of translation

The dimension of time encompasses not only the time of ST production and reception but also that of TT production (= translation) and reception. The original communicative situation as well as the inter-cultural communicative situation are determined by their respective temporal contexts.

In connection with the dimension of time, we must therefore look at the traditional translations of classical texts and consider the problems involved in translating or re-translating old texts. Whether and how the dimension of time has to be taken into account for the translation of, say, Homer's Iliad, Shakespeare's King Lear, or Cervantes' Don Quixote depends on the translation skopos. Popovic ([1977]1981: 103f.) distinguishes between the "synchronous translation" of a contemporary author and modern translations of older texts, which in his opinion can be either "re-creative" (i.e. actualizing) or "conservative" (i.e. historicising).

Which approach is regarded as the "correct" one depends on the prevailing translation tradition or concept, which may be regarded as akind of culture-specific convention.

How to obtain information on the dimension of time

Information on the dimension of time can sometimes be inferred from thedate of publication of the text or other clues from the text environment, although this is not always reliable, as texts are often published yearsafter they have been written. However, they cannot be published text type, it will be mainly the following intratextual features that are determined by the motive of communication: content (insofar as the motive is explicitly mentioned in the text), vocabulary and sentence structure (e.g. in a memorial address), suprasegmental features (memorial address vs. election speech), and non-verbal elements (e.g. black edging round a death announcement).

How to obtain information about the motive for communication

Although the motive for communication is closely linked with the dimension of time, the two factors must not be confused. While the dimension of time is part of the communicative situation (in the narrower sense), the dimension of motive relates the communicative situation and the participants to an event that is outside, or rather prior to, the situation.

It is not always easy therefore (and not always relevant to translation!) to find out which event has motivated a certain text. Sometimes the motive is referred to in the text or mentioned in the text environment (e.g. in the title: To Honor Roman Jakobson on the Occasion of his 70th Birthda); but there are communicative situations in which the motive is only an indirect reason for the author to deal with a loosely connected subject.

Example

On March 12th, 1984, the Spanish daily paper El Pais published a commentary under the title "El Dfa de la Mujer" (International Women's Day). It is the motive for text production this title alludes to and not the subject matter, because the text deals with the situation of working women in Spain in 1984. The newspaper reader was expected to be familiar with the occasion, International Women's Day, since it had been commented on quite frequently at the time. If the text is to be translated, it is the motive for translation (as well as the dimensions of time and place) that has to be taken into account. Only a few days later the date will have been pushed into the background by other events, and a title like "International Women's Day" will arouse specific expectations about the subject matter, which the text cannot meet.