As is illustrated by the example, the dimension of motive is of as much interest to the translator as that of time, because s/he has to contrast the motive for ST production with the motive for TT production and find out the impact this contrast has on the transfer decisions. While the motive for ST production is often to be found in the "environment" of the sender or text producer, the motive for TT production can be inferred from what is known about the transfer situation, i.e. the initiator and the translation brief. The effect of the motive on intra-textual features - as opposed to that of the dimension of time - is often merely an indirect one.
We can restate that the clues as to the motive or motive type are to be inferred from certain situational factors, such as medium (e.g. political section of a newspaper), place and time (in connection with the receiver's general background knowledge), and, of course, text function, if this is specified by unambiguous pre-signals, such as genre designations (e.g. "protocol") or text-type features (e.g. black edging). The information obtained on the sender and the intention usually permits only indirect conclusions as to the motive for communication.
Checklist
The following questions may help to find out the relevant information about the motive for communication:
1.Why was the text written or transmitted? Is there any information on the motive of communication to be found in the text environment? Is the ST receiver expected to be familiar with the motive?
2.Was the text written for a special occasion? Is the text intended to be read or heard more than once or regularly?
3.What clues as to the motive for communication can be inferred from other extratextual dimensions (sender, intention, receiver, medium, place, time, function)?
4.What conclusions can be drawn from the data and clues obtained about the motive for communication as regards
(a)other extratextual factors (expectations of the receiver, sender and intention), and
(b)the intratextual features?
5. What problems can arise from the difference between the motive for ST production and the motive for translation?
Text function
The relationship between text function and genre
Let me briefly restate that the notion of text function means the communicative function, or the combination of communicative functions, which a text fulfils in its concrete situation of production/reception. It is derived from the specific configuration of extratextual factors (sender/sender's role, intention, receiver/receiver's expectation, medium, place, time, and motive). The notion of text function is related to the situational aspect of communication, whereas the notion of genre is related to the structural aspect of the text-in-function. It is like looking at the two sides of a coin: they cannot be separated, but they are not the identical.
As was pointed out above, text can be classified on various levels of generalization. It is therefore not surprising that some authors specify text types as "newspaper reports", "sermons", or "resolutions", while others prefer a more general categorisation into "informative", "expressive", or "operative" texts.
Literariness as a text function
The notion of text function as a particular configuration of situational factors can be illustrated by the special function of literary texts. The senders of a literary text are usually individual authors who are also text producers and who in the literary context are known as "writers". Their intention is not to describe "reality", but to motivate personal insights about reality by describing an (alternative) fictitious world. Literary texts are primarily addressed to receivers who have a specific expectation determined by their literary experience, and a certain command of the literary code. As a rule, literary texts are transmitted in writing (= medium), although sometimes orally transmitted texts (such as fairy tales) are included in literature as well. The situational factors (place, time, motive) may not be of great significance in intracultural literary communication but they do play an important part in literary translation because they convey the culture-specific characteristics of both the source and the target situation.
The importance of ST function for translation
The basic principle of functionalism in translation is the orientation towards the (prospective) function of the target text. Since I have argued that a change of function is the normal case, and the preservation of function the special case in the process of intercultural text transfer.
If a translation is an offer of information about the source text, there can be two fundamental kinds of relationship between source and target text. Here again we find the two translation theories which have split translation scholars into two camps: the supporters of liberty and the adherents to fidelity. The target text can be (a) a document of a past communicative action in which an SC sender made an offer of information to an SC receiver by means of the source text, and (b) an instrument in a new TC communicative action, in which a TC receiver receives an offer of information for which the ST provides the material. Accordingly, we can distinguish between two translation "types": documentary and instrumental translation.
Documentary translations (such as word-for-word translation, literal translation) serve as a document of an SC communication between the author and the ST receiver, whereas the instrumental translation is a communicative instrument in its own right, conveying a message directly from the ST author to the TT receiver. An instrumental translation can have the same or a similar or analogous function as the ST.
In a documentary translation, certain aspects of the ST or the whole ST-in-situation are reproduced for the TT receivers, who is conscious of "observing" a communicative situation of which they are not a part. A documentary translation can focus on any of the features on each rank of the source text, pushing others into the background. In a word-for-word translation, for example, which aims to reproduce the features of the source language system, the focus is on the morphological, lexical, and syntactic structures presented in the source text, whereas textuality is bound to be neglected.
An instrumental translation, on the other hand, serves as an independent message-transmitting instrument in a new communicative action in TC, and is intended to fulfill its communicative purpose without the receiver being aware of reading or hearing a text which, in a different form, was used before in a different communicative action. This translation type comprises three forms. First, if the target text can fulfill the same function(s) as the source text, we speak of an "equi-functional" translation (used, for example, in the case of operating instructions or business correspondence). Second, if the ST functions cannot be realized as such by the TT receiver, they may be adapted by the translator, provided that the TT functions are compatible with the ST functions and do not offend against the sender's intention (e.g. the translation of Swift's Gulliver s Travels for children). This form is referred to as "heterofunctional translation". The third form is intended to achieve a similar effect by reproducing in the TC literary context the function the ST has in its own SC literary context. This form is often found in the translation of poetry.
How to obtain information about text function
The most important source of information is, again, the text environment, since designations like "operating instructions" or "anecdote" call on the receivers' reading experience of the text type in question and build up a specific expectation as to text function(s). It is obvious that these "labels" can be misleading if they are used inadequately by the author or sender (whether intentionally or unintentionally). On the other hand, it may be assumed that in normal communication such designations are in fact intended as a guideline for the receiver.
If there is no genre designation, the text function or functions have to be inferred from the configuration of the external factors. This is why text function should be analysed last when as much information as possible is available. As was illustrated by the example of literary texts, the intention of the sender and the expectations of the receiver are the crucial dimensions in this respect. However, other factors may also narrow the range of possible functions, such as sender (e.g. a candidate for presidency), medium and place (e.g. a public speech in the market place of a mountain village), time (e.g. shortly before the general elections), and motive (e.g. an election campaign).
The pragmatic relationships between sender, receiver, medium, and motive, provide the translator with a number of pre-signals announcing a particular function, which will be either confirmed or rejected by the subsequent analysis of the intratextual features. If the translator finds his or her expectations confirmed, s/he has reason to believe that s/he has elicited the correct function - if not, there are two possible explanations: either the author has intentionally violated the norms and conventions of the text type, or the translator has interpreted the pre-signals wrongly and therefore has to go through the process of eliciting the text function on the basis of pragmatic pre-signals again.
Checklist
The following questions may help to find out the relevant information about text function:
1. What is the text function intended by the sender? Are there any hints as to the intended function in the text environment, such as text-type designations?
2. What clues as to the function of the text can be inferred from other extratextual dimensions (motive, medium, receiver, intention)?
3.Are there any indications that the receiver may use the text in a function other than that intended by the sender?
4. What conclusions can be drawn from the data and clues obtained about text function as regards
(a)other extratextual dimensions (sender, intention, receiver, medium, time, place, and motive), and
(b)the intratextual features?
The interdependence of extratextual factors
The checklist questions suggested in connection with the extratextual factors illustrate the interdependence of the extratextual factors on the one hand, and of the extratextual and intratextual factors (which have so far not been specified), on the other. Data and clues about a single factor can be derived from the data and clues obtained about the other factors.
The most important principle, however, is that of recursiveness. This type of analysis is no one-way process, but contains any number of loops, in which expectations are built up, confirmed, or rejected, and where knowledge is gained and extended and understanding constantly modified. This applies not only to the analysis of the text as a whole and to the individual text factors but also, if the analysis and translation of microstructures leads incidentally to new discoveries requiring previous transfer decisions to be corrected, to the processing of smaller text units such as chapters or even paragraphs.
The interdependence of the extratextual factors is illustrated by a diagram (Figure 5), in which arrows are used to show the course of the analytical procedure. Those steps which yield reliable data are depicted by a continuous line, while the steps which merely lead to clues are represented by a dotted line.
2. “Intratextual Factors in Translation Text Analysis”
Lecture 1. Basic notions
It is the verbal elements (lexis, sentence structure and the suprasegmental features, i.e. the "tone" of the text) which are most important for conveying the message. In both written and spoken texts suprasegmental features serve to highlight or focus certain parts of the text and to push others into the background. All these elements have not only an informative (i.e. denotative), but also a stylistic (i.e. con-notative) function.
The intratextual features are influenced to a large extent by situational factors (e.g. the geographical origin of the sender, the special requirements of the chosen medium, the conditions of the time and place of text production, etc.), but they can also be determined by genre conventions or by the sender's specific communicative intention, which affects the choice of the intratextual means of communication. We also have to account for the fact that stylistic decisions are frequently interdependent. If, for example, the sender decides on a nominal style in the area of lexis, this will naturally affect the choice of sentence structure.
We distinguish eight intratextual factors: subject matter, content, presuppositions, composition, nonverbal elements, lexis, sentence structure, and suprasegmental features. In practical analysis it has proved effective to deal with the factors in the order in which they appear here. However, there is no real reason why this cannot be changed, since the principle of recursiveness again allows any feedback loops which may be deemed necessary.
In the practical application of the model it may not always be necessary to go through the whole process of intratextual analysis step by step. Some translation briefs will be such that merely a cursory glance at the intratextual features is sufficient (just to find out, for example, whether or not the framing of the text corresponds to genre conventions), whereas others may require a detailed analysis right down to the level of morphemes or phonemes.
Example
If a strongly conventionalized text, such as a weather report, has to be translated in such a form that the target text conforms to the target-culture conventions of the text type, there is no need to analyse all the intratextual details of the source text, once it has been stated that they are "conventional". Since the intratextual framing of the TT has to be adapted to TC conventions anyway, the intratextual framing of the ST may be regarded as irrelevant for translation.
When we analyse the linguistic features of a particular text, we soon realize that they all have to be evaluated in a different way, depending on the function they have in the text. There are features that depend on situational conditions which cannot be controlled or modified by the sender (e.g. pragmatics of time and space, geographical or socio-cultural background of the sender himself) or features that may have been determined by a decision taken prior to text production (e.g. choice of medium or addressee orientation). Then, there are other features which are dictated by social norms (e.g. text-type or genre conventions and so on). During the process of analysis, therefore, the translator constantly has to go back to factors which have already been analysed (= principle of recursiveness). Lastly, there is a type of feature which depends on the sender deciding on one out of several alternative means of expression, a decision determined by the intention to produce a certain effect on the receiver.
General considerations on the concept of style
In order to be able to understand a stylistic signal or sign, the receiver has to be equipped, like the sender, with a knowledge or command of stylistic patterns and of the functions that they are normally used for. This knowledge is part of text competence and will enable the receiver to infer the intentions or attitudes of the sender from the style presented in the text. It is based on the fact that most communicative actions are conventionalized and that text producers almost always proceed according to a given pattern. In ordinary communication an intuitive, unconscious, or "passive" knowledge of stylistic patterns will be more than sufficient to ensure the comprehension of the text. However, the receiver/translator cannot manage without an active command of such patterns of expression both in SL and TL, since it enables them to analyse the function of the stylistic elements used in the source text, and to decide which of these elements may be appropriate for achieving the target function and which have to be changed or adapted.
Subject matter
How to obtain information about the subject matter
As was mentioned above, the conventions of certain text types seem to dictate that the title or heading or the title context (comprising main title, subtitle(s) and the like) represent a kind of thematic programme. An example of this is the following title of a linguistic article: "Understanding what is meant from what is said: a study in conversationally conveyed requests" (Clark & Lucy 1975).