1. “Extratextual Factors in Translation Text Analysis”
Lecture 1. Systematic Framework for ExternalAnalysis
Introduction
Most writers on translation theory agree that beforeembarking upon any translation the translator should analyze the textcomprehensively, since this appears to be the only way of ensuring that thesource text (ST) has been wholly and correctly understood. Various proposalshave been put forward as to how such an analysis should be carried out and howparticular translation problems might best be dealt with. These tend, however,to be based on models of text analysis which have been developed in otherfields of study, such as that of literary studies, of text or discourselinguistics, or even in the field of theology.
But what is right for the literary scholar, the text linguistis not necessarily right for the translator: different purposes requiredifferent approaches. Translation-oriented text analysis should not only ensurefull comprehension and correct interpretation of the text or explain itslinguistic and textual structures and their relationship with the system andnorms of the source language (SL). It should also provide a reliable foundationfor each and every decision which the translator has to make in a particulartranslation process. For this purpose, it must be integrated into an overallconcept of translation that will serve as a permanent frame of reference forthe translator.
The factors of the communicative situation in which thesource text is used are of decisive importance for text analysis because theydetermine its communicative function. I call these factors «extraj textual»or «external» factors (as opposed to the «intratextual» or«internal» factors relating to the text itself, including itsnon-verbal elements). Extratextual factors may, of course, be mentioned, i.e.«verbalized», in the text, and in this case we speak of«metacommunicative utterances». The interplay between extratextualand intratextual factors can be conveniently expressed in the following set of«WH-ques-tions». Depending on their relationship to either thecommunicative situation or the text itself, these questions can be assigned tothe extratextual or intratextual factors of analysis.
Who transmits On what subject matter
to whom does s/he say
what for what
by which medium (what not)
where in what order
when using which non-verbal elements
why in which words
a text in what kind of sentences
with what function? in which tone
to what effect?
Extratextual factors are analysed by enquiring about theauthor or sender of the text (who?), the sender’s intention (what for?), theaudience the text is directed at (to whom?), the medium or channel the text iscommunicated by (by which medium?), the place (where?) and time (when?) of textproduction and text reception, and the motive (why?) for communication. The sumtotal of information obtained about these seven extratextual factors mayprovide an answer to the last question, which concerns the function the textcan achieve (with what function?).
Intratextual factors are analysed by enquiring about thesubject matter the text deals with (on what subject matter?), the informationor content presented in the text (what?), the knowledge presuppositions made bythe author (what not?), the composition or construction of the text (in whatorder?), the non-linguistic or paralinguistic elements accompanying the text(using which non-verbal elements?), the lexical characteristics (in whichwords?) and syntactic structures (in what kind of sentences?) found in thetext, and the suprasegmental features of intonation and prosody (in whichtone?).
The extratextual factors are analysed before reading thetext, simply by observing the situation in which the text is used. In this way,the receivers build up a certain expectation as to the intratextualcharacteristics of the text, but it is only when, through reading, they comparethis expectation with the actual features of the text that they experience theparticular effect the text has on them. The last question (to what effect?)therefore refers to a global or holistic concept, which comprises theinterdependence or interplay of extratextual and intratextual factors.
Since the situation normally precedes textual communicationand determines the use of intratextual procedures, it seems natural to startwith the analysis of the external factors although, in view of recursivenessand circularity, the order of the analytical steps is not a constituent of themodel. In written communication, the situation is often documented in the«text environment» (i.e. title and/or bibliographical references,such as name of author, place and year of publication, number of copies, etc.).This is what is usually called a «top down» analysis. If noinformation on the external factors can be inferred from the text environment(for example, in the case of old texts whose original situation of productionand/or reception is uncertain or unknown), the analysis of internal features,again in a recursive procedure, can yield information from which the translatoris able to make fairly reliable conjectures about the situation the text wasused in.14 The latter procedure is referred to as a«bottom-up» analysis.
The application of the model will show that normally bothprocedures have to be combined, demonstrating once more the recursive characterof the model.
Extratextual factors
External versus internal situation
In classifying the situational factors as «extratextualfactors» we have to make the following fundamental qualification. Whenreferring to «situation» we mean the real situation in which the textis used as a means of communication, and not any imaginary setting of a storyin a fictional text). The characteristics of a person who speaks in a fictionaltext do not belong to the dimension of sender, but have to be regarded as anintratextual factor which is analysed in connection with the internal dimensionof «content». It is the author of the text who has to be regarded as«producer» of the fictitious utterance, whereas the fictitiousspeaker is a «secondary sender» (S’).
This qualification also applies to the so-called complex texttypes, where a text of a certain genre is embedded into a frame text belongingto another genre. Complex text types occur not only in fiction, but also innon-fiction. For example, in newspaper reports authors often cite remarks madeby third persons in literal quotations in order to show that they do not sharethe speaker’s opinion. In this case, the sender of the quoted utterance is notidentical with the sender of the frame text.
Example
After King Juan Carlos of Spain had received an honorarydoctorate from New York University, the journalist who commented on the eventin a Spanish newspaper quoted verbatim parts of the King’s speech of thanks.For the translation of the quotation, the King has to be regarded as sender,whereas for the translation of the framing newspaper report, the journalist isthe sender (and author). The formulation of the two texts has to conform to thedifferent situations and positions of the two senders.
For both fictional and non-fictional complex texts it isadvisable to analyse the constituent texts separately according to theprinciple of recursiveness. The necessary information on the situationalfactors of the embedded text is usually given within the frame text.
Systematic Framework for External Analysis
If we want to encompass the whole situation of a text bymeans of a model that will serve for the analysis of any text with any possibletranslation skopos, we must ask the following fundamental question:
What information on the various factors may be relevant totranslation?
Neubert ([1968]1981: 60) regards «age, origin, socialenvironment, education etc.» as relevant information about the languageuser. Vermeer ([1974b] 1983: 23) in a matrix relates attitude, status, role,strategy, behaviour and activity of the participants of communication to thecorresponding features of the type of situation in order to furnish evidence ofthe conformist or deviant behaviour of the participants. Schmidt (cf. 1976:104) lists the following data: (a) socio-economic conditions (role, status,economic situation), (b) socio-cultural and cognitive-intellectual conditions(text and world knowledge, education, experience, models of reality), and (c)biographical-psychical conditions (individual competences and dispositions, presentbiographical situation, plans, intentions). Gulich & Raible (1977: 28) evenregard «hoarseness, cheerfulness, unhappiness» and the picture thatspeaker and hearer have of each other as factors which may influence thecommunicative act.
This list is in no way complete, but it clearly shows thatthe situation or world of a text cannot be analysed by a mere compilation ofinformational details. We have to find the categories by which we conceive theworld, which will apply equally to the world of a text, i.e. to its historicalsituation.
This applies to the situation of a text as well.
(a) The basic categories of any historical situationare time and space. The category of time also comprises the historic conceptiona world has of itself. The first fundamental aspect of analysis will thereforebe the temporal and spatial dimension of the situation.
(b) The situation of a text is always a part ofhuman culture. The second fundamental aspect of analysis therefore has to referto the culture-specific features of the situation.
(c) In its world, the text has a function which establishesits textuality. The third fundamental aspect therefore comprises therelationship between situation and communicative function of the text
The communicative function of a text has to be consideredwithin the framework of the transcultural, possibly universal, communicativefunctions of language in general.
We find four basic functions of communication: (a) thereferential (also denotative or cognitive) function, focussed on the referentor context referred to by the text, (b) the expressive or emotive function,focussed on the sender, the sender’s emotions or attitude towards the referent,(c) the operative (also appellative, conative, persuasive or vocative) function,focussed on the orientation of the text towards the receiver, and (d) thephatic function, serving primarily «to establish, to prolong, or todiscontinue communication between sender and receiver, to check whether thechannel works, to attract the attention of the interlocutor or to confirm hiscontinued attention. The phatic function is also responsible for thedevelopment of the social relationship between sender and receiver.
Apart from space, time, and culture, it is the influence ofthese basic functions that constitutes the „world“ of a text. Theywill therefore form the systematic framework for the range of possiblequestions which can be asked regarding the situational factors of ouranalytical model (see the standard or model questions in the „checklist“at the end of each chapter). In order to illustrate the interdependence offactors and dimensions, the last question will always refer to the expectationsraised by the analysis of the factor in question.
Sender
Sender vs. text producer
Although in many cases these two roles are combined in onepersona (e.g. in the case of literary works, textbooks, or newspapercommentaries, which are normally signed by an author’s name), the distinctionseems to be highly relevant to a translation-oriented text analysis.
Many texts do not bear any author’s name at all. These areusually non-literary texts for practical use, such as advertisements, laws orstatutes, or operating instructions. Nevertheless, there has to be a senderwho, even if not named explicitly, can be identified implicitly. For example,the sender of an advertisement is usually the company selling the product, andthe sender of statutes is normally the legislative body of a state. The factthat no text producer is named in these cases leads to the conclusion thateither they are not relevant as a person or — as is the case with certaingenres — they do not wish to be known.
If a text bears the name of both sender and text producer,the latter usually plays a secondary role because s/he is not expected tointroduce any communicative intention of her or his own into the text.
The sender of a text is the person (or institution, etc.) whouses the text in order to convey a certain message to somebody else and/or toproduce a certain effect, whereas the text producer writes the text accordingto the instructions of the sender, and complies with the rules and norms oftext production valid in the respective language and culture. The formal designof the text, such as the layout, may be assigned to another expert, and in somecases, the text is presented to the public by yet another person (e.g. a newsreader or an actor).
Example
The imprint on the back of a tourist information brochure ofthe city of Munich reads as follows: „Edited by the Tourist InformationOffice of Munich (…). Text: Helmut Gerstner.“ The Tourist InformationOffice, which intends to inform the visitors and to promote the beauties of thetown, is the sender of the text. Mr Gerstner is the text producer, and he isthe person responsible for the stylistic features of the text, but not for thesender’s intention. The imprints on the English, French, and Spanish versionsof the brochure contain the same information, which in this case is obviouslywrong. Although the Tourist Information Office is the sender of these texts,too, it is the respective translators who have to be regarded as textproducers. Their names ought to be mentioned in addition to, or instead of,that of Helmut Gerstner.
As is shown by the example, it is usually the textenvironment (imprint, reference, bibliography, etc.) that yields information asto whether or not the sender and the text producer are different persons. Ifthe author’s name is the only one given, she can normally be assumed to be thetext producer. However, this cannot be regarded as a hard and fast rule, as isillustrated by the following example.
Example
In her book Estudio sobre el cuento espahol contempordneo (Madrid1973), Erna Brandenberger has included the short story „Pecado deomision“ by the Spanish author Ana Maria Matute to give an example of acertain type of plot which she calls a „fast moving story“. For theGerman version of the book, Brandenberger (as sender and translator in oneperson) has translated the story into German with the intention of showing thetypical features of a fast moving story. If the same story is published in acollection of modern Spanish short stories, however, it is the author herselfwho acts as sender, and in translation it would be her intention thatdetermines translation strategies.
The situation of a translator can be compared with that ofthe text producer. Although they have to follow the instructions of the senderor initiator and have to comply with the norms and rules of the target languageand culture, they are usually allowed a certain scope in which to give freerein to their own stylistic creativity and preferences, if they so wish. On theother hand, they may decide to stick to stylistic features of the source textas long as their imitation does not infringe the text norms and conventions ofthe target culture.
Another aspect of sender pragmatics is the question as towhether a text has one or more than one sender (monologue vs. dialogue,question/answer, discussion, exchange of roles between sender and receiver,etc.). If there is more than one sender, the corresponding data have to beanalysed for each of them.
What to find out about the sender
Within the framework established by time, space, culture andthe basic functions of communication, what we regard as being relevant totranslation is all data which may throw light on the sender’s intention, on theaddressed audience with their cultural background, on the place and time of,and the motive for, text production, as well as any information on thepredictable intratextual features (such as idiosyncrasies, regional and socialdialect, temporal features, knowledge presuppositions, etc.).
Example
a) If a text is written in Spanish, it may be vital for comprehensionto know whether the author is from Spain or Latin America, since a large numberof words are used with different meanings in European and American Spanish.Even if a Peruvian like Mario Vargas Llosa writes in a Spanish newspaper forSpanish readers, he can be expected to use americanisms. b) In a Spanishedition of Cuban short stories (Narrativa cubana de la revolution, Madrid1971), certain cubanisms are explained to the Spanish readers in footnotes,e.g., duro: »moneda de un peso cubano” (which was then a fivepeseta coin in Spain), or neques: «sorpresas, golpesimprevistos». For the translator, these footnotes may be important notonly in the comprehension phase, but also — if the TT skopos requires thepreservation of the effect the book has on the European Spanish-speaking reader- in the transfer phase, c) The Portuguese eclogue Crisfal can beascribed either to Cristovao Falcaos or to Bernadim Ribeiro. In the first case,the text has to be interpreted literally as a naturalistic poem, while in thesecond case, it must be regarded as an allegory. As Kayser points out,«the words may have a completely different impact if they come from anauthor who really was put into prison for his love, who really was separatedfrom his lady, and whose lady really was forced to stay in the cloister ofLorvao» (Kayser 1962: 36, my translation).
How to obtain information about the sender
How can the translation-relevant information about the sender(or the text producer) be obtained? The first clues are provided by the textenvironment (imprints, blurbs, preface or epilogue, footnotes, etc.). Theauthor’s name may already carry further information which either belongs to thereceiver’s or translator’s general background knowledge or can, if necessary,be obtained. The name of a writer usually evokes some knowledge of theirliterary classification, artistic intentions, favourite subject matters, usualaddressees, status, etc.; similarly, the name of a politician evokes his or herpolitical standpoint, function or position, public image, etc. Since this isculture-specific knowledge, which belongs to the «hinterland» of thetext, it cannot be presumed that it is shared by the target receiver.Therefore, the translator has to consider whether the TT receiver might lackinformation. Whenever such a lack interferes with text comprehension, it shouldbe compensated for by some additional piece of information given in the targettext or in the TT environment.
Example
If ex-Prime Minister Edward Heath writes an editorial in aBritish newspaper, British readers will immediately know what political partythe author belongs to. If the text is translated and published in the Germanweekly paper DIE ZEIT, many German readers may not be able to«classify» the author as easily. If, however, the classification isrelevant for the comprehension and/ or interpretation of the article, theinformation has to be supplied in a few introductory lines or even in the textitself, if possible.
Further information about the sender may be provided by otherfactors of the communicative situation (either individually or as a combinationof several factors). There may be clear and unambiguous information, which Icall «data», or there may be hints which may allow the necessaryinformation to be inferred. If the analyst knows, for instance, by whichmedium, at what time, and for which function a text has been published (local newspaperof the day X, death announcement), s/he is able to tell who the sender may be(relatives, employer, or friends of the dead person). The place of publicationpoints to the origin of the sender or possible origin, if the language isspoken in various countries (Great Britain — United States — Australia — India;Portugal — Brazil; Spain — Latin America -Bolivia), and the medium can throwlight on the possible status of the sender (specialized journal — expert;newspaper -journalist), etc.
Sometimes it may even be possible to ask the sender inperson, or a person related to him or her.
Another source of information is the text itself. If the textenvironment does not provide the necessary details, the analyst has to look forinternal hints about the characteristics of the sender. The use of a certainregional or class dialect may reveal the (geographical or social) origin of thetext producer (although not necessarily that of the sender, if they are not thesame person), and the use of obsolete forms may tell the analyst that the textproducer probably lived in another age. These questions, however, can only beanswered after completing the intratextual analysis.
Checklist
The following questions may help to find out the relevantinformation
about the sender:
1.Who is the sender of the text?
2.Is the sender identical with the text producer?If not, who is the text producer and what is his/her position with regard tothe sender? Is s/he subject to the sender’s instructions? Is s/he an expert intext production or an expert on the subject?
3. Whatinformation about the sender (e.g. age, geographical and social origin,education, status, relationship to the subject matter, etc.) can be obtainedfrom the text environment? Is there any other information that is presupposedto be part of the receiver’s general background knowledge? Can the sender orany person related to him or her be asked for more details?
4. What clues asto the characteristics of the sender can be inferred from other situationalfactors (medium, place, time, motive, function)?
5. Whatconclusions can be drawn from the data and clues obtained about the sender withregard to
(a)other extratextual dimensions (intention,receiver, medium, place, time, occasion, function) and
(b)the intratextual features?
The difference between intention, function, and effect
In order to ascertain the dimension of intention we have toask what function the sender intends the text to fulfill, and what effect onthe receiver s/he wants to achieve by transmitting the text. It may seemdifficult to distinguish the concept of intention from that of function andeffect. Biihler (1984), for example, equates «author’s intention»with «purpose and effect». The three concepts are three differentviewpoints of one and the same aspect of communication. The intention isdefined from the viewpoint of the sender, who wants to achieve a certainpurpose with the text. But the best of intentions does not guarantee that theresult conforms to the intended purpose. It is the receiver who«completes» the communicative action by receiving (i.e. using) thetext in a certain function, which is the result of the configuration or constellationof all the situational factors (including the intention of the sender and thereceiver’s own expectations based on his/her knowledge of the situation). Thequestion «What is S aiming at with the text?» can therefore not beassigned to the factor of text function, but belongs to the dimension ofintention.
Text function is defined «externally», before thereceiver has actually read the text, whereas the effect the text has on thereceiver can only be judged after reception. It is, so to speak, the result ofthe reception and encompasses both external and internal factors.
It is true that certain genres are conventionally associatedwith certain intentions, but these need not necessarily be realized in thecommunicative situation. Some ancient genres, for example, such as magic spellsor epic poems, are received today in a function which differs considerably fromthat intended by the original sender.
Ideally, the three factors of intention, function and effectare congruent, which means that the function intended by the sender (=intention) is also assigned to the text by the receiver, who experiencesexactly the effect conventionally associated with this function.Methodologically, the three factors have to be distinguished because theirseparate analysis allows for a different treatment (preservation, change,adaptation) in the translation process. If the intention has to be preserved intranslation, we must often be prepared for a change in function and/or effect.
The intention of (he sender is of particular importance tothe translator because it determines the structuring of the text with regard tocontent (subject matter, choice of informative details) and form (e.g.composition, stylistic-rhetorical characteristics, quotations, use ofnon-verbal elements etc.). At the same time, the specific organization of atext marks the text type and is a pre-signal which tells the receivers in whichfunction they are expected to use the text.
Example
A set of operating instructions is meant to inform the userabout a certain piece of equipment, e.g. a hairdryer, and to explain itscorrect use. Therefore, the text producer chooses the conventional forms oftext organization (composition, sentence structures, lexical cliches, etc.).Taking the text out of the box with the hairdryer, the receiver recognizes theparticular forms of text organization and immediately knows that the senderwants to inform about the hairdryer and the way it has to be used. Thereforereceivers will normally utilize the text in this particular function. In thiscase, the text type is linked with a particular intention on the part of thesender, which leads to the corresponding text function on the part of thereceiver. The effect will be that of «conventionality».
The sender’s intention is also important in connection withthe principle of loyalty. Even if the text function is changed in translation,the translator must not act contrary to the sender’s intention (if it can beelicited).
The information on the dimension of intention can throw somelight on other external factors (e.g., what effect on the receiver might beintended, which medium may be most appropriate or conventionally used torealize the intention in question, or whether there is a link between intentionand genre), and, to a large extent, on the intratextual features (e.g.composition, use of rhetorical devices or non-verbal elements, tone, etc.).
What to find out about the sender’s intention
What different types of intention can be associated with atext? There may be forms of «communication», where the sender is hisor her own addressee: somebody may write something down either to ease theburden of their memory or to sort out their ideas and thoughts, or they may justscribble something on a piece of paper while making a phone call(«zero-intention»). These forms would not appear to be relevant totranslation. In normal communication with two or more participants, thepossible intentions correspond with the four basic functions of communicationdescribed above in connection with the systematic framework. We may ask, forexample, whether the sender wants to inform the receiver about a certain issue(referential intention) or intends to express her/his feelings or attitudetowards things (expressive intention), whether s/he plans to persuade thereceiver to adopt a particular opinion or perform a certain activity(appellative intention), or whether s/he just wants to establish or maintaincontact with the receiver (phatic intention).
Of course, a sender may well have more than just the oneintention. Several intentions can be combined in a kind of hierarchy ofrelevance. For pragmatic reasons, this hierarchy may have to be changed intranslation.
How to obtain information about the sender’s intention
Normally, the receiver is not informed explicitly about thesender’s intention, but receives the text as the result of the sender’scommunicative purposes. One means of obtaining explicit or implicit informationabout the intention(s) of the sender or text producer, therefore, is theanalysis of intratextual features.
However, if we stay with the extratextual factors (sender,receiver, medium, place, time, motive, and function), these can throw somelight on the intention the sender may have had in transmitting the text.Paralinguistic phenomena, such as manifestations of the sender’s excitement orindignation, may have to be taken into account as well.
In determining the sender’s intention we have to consider therole the sender adopts towards the receiver in or through the text, a rolewhich is quite separate from the «real», status-based relationshipbetween the two. A sender who is superior to the receiver because of greaterknowledge about the subject in question may nevertheless try to play down thisknowledge in order to gain the receiver’s confidence. If the analyst knows thesender’s role (in relation to status), s/he may be able to draw someconclusions as to the sender’s intention.
The sender’s intention is of particular importance whenanalysing literary texts or texts marked as a personal opinion (e.g. politicalcommentaries, editorials) because there is no conventional link between genreand intention. In these cases, the translator may have to take account of the author’slife and background, events that have influenced his or her writings or anyliterary classification (such as «romantic» or«politically/socially committed literature»). There is no doubt thatfor a translation-relevant text analysis translators must exploit all sourcesat their disposal. The translator should strive to achieve the informationlevel which is presupposed in the receiver addressed by the author. For aliterary text this will not be the level of a literary scholar, but certainlythat of a «critical receiver».
Example
a) Bertolt Brecht is a representative of German politicallycommitted literature. If the receivers know that his story «Measuresagainst Violence» was first published in 1930, they may take this as aclue that the author intended to warn his readers about Nazi tendencies, b) Ifa text is published in a newspaper on the pages specially devoted to politicalcommentaries (which in quality papers is often separate from news and reports),this medium of publication can be taken as a clear hint that the sender’sintention was that of «commenting» on recent political events ortendencies, c) In a text marked as a «recipe» the reader can be quitesure that the sender’s intention was to give directions for the preparation ofa particular dish and to give a list of the necessary ingredients. However, ifthe same recipe is embedded into a larger unit, e.g. a novel, the sender’sintention may have been quite different.
Sometimes senders themselves give a metacommunicativeexplanation as to their intentions, as is shown in the following example.
Example
In the preface of his story Los cachorros (Barcelona1980), the Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa writes: «I wanted Loscachorros to sound like a story that is sung rather than told, andtherefore the criterion for the choice of each syllable was not only anarrative but also a musical one. I somehow had the impression that theauthenticity of the story depended on whether the reader really felt that hewas listening to the story and not reading it. I wanted him to perceive thestory with his ears.» (My translation)
Such a statement by the author is no guarantee that thesource text (actually, or even in the author’s opinion) conforms to thisintention.
Checklist
The following questions may help to find out the relevantinformation about the sender’s intention:
1.Are there any extratextual or intratextualstatements by the sender as to his or her intention(s) concerning the text?
2.What intention(s) are by convention associatedwith the genre to which the analysed text can be assigned?
3.What clues as to the sender’s intention can beinferred from other situational factors (sender — especially his or hercommunicative role -, receiver, medium, place, time, and motive)?
4.What conclusions can be drawn from the data andclues obtained about the sender’s intention with regard to
(a)other extratextual dimensions (receiver, medium,and function) and
(b)the intratextual features?
Lecture 2. Audience, Medium and Place of Communication
Source-text audience vs. target-text audience
During the process of text analysis the translator elicitsthose textual elements or features which can be considered to be determined bythe particular audience-orientation of the source text. Since each target textis always addressed to receivers-in-situation different from those to whom thesource text is or was addressed, the adaptation of precisely these elements isof particular importance.
Example
If the source text is a report on a recent event published inan American newspaper, it is addressed to a large, non-specific audience in the United States. In order to capture the attention of the readers the authorchooses a sensationalistic title plus an additional, informative subtitle anduses small text segments and quotations as sub-headings for the paragraphs. Thetext is accompanied by two photos. All these features are intended as«reading-incentives» for the receiver. If this text is translated fora journalist who has herself initiated the translation because she is interestedin the information provided by the text, the reading-incentives aresuperfluous, and the paragraph headings may even have a confusing effect.
Every TT receiver will be different from the ST receiver inat least one respect: they are members of another cultural and linguisticcommunity. Therefore, a translation can never be addressed to «thesame» receiver as the original.
Addressee vs. chance receiver
First of all, we have to distinguish between the addressee ofa certain text (i.e. the person or persons addressed by the sender) and anychance receivers who happen to read or hear the text, even though they are notaddressed directly, such as people listening to a panel discussion or watchinga televised parliamentary debate. In some cases, the «chance receiver»is actually a secondary addressee; for example, when a politician pretends tobe answering a question asked by an interviewer but is, in reality, addressinghis/her words to potential voters.
This aspect is relevant not only in cases where the chancereceiver’s comprehension of the message differs from that of the real addressee(which may have consequences for the participants), but particularly wheretranslation or interpreting is concerned. The transfer decisions of thetranslator will have to depend on which of the two audiences is supposed to beaddressed by the target text.
The case may even arise where the translator has a«chance receiver». If the SL participant in an interpreting sessionhas a passive command of the target language or if a translation is publishedpage-to-page with the original in a parallel text edition, the afore-mentionedSL participant or the reader with some SL knowledge, who compares thetranslation with the original, might be regarded as being a kind of«secondary receiver» as well. They are interested not only in themessage of the text but also in the way this message is transmitted to the TLreader. In view of such secondary receivers it may be advisable for thetranslator to comment on certain translation strategies in a preface orpost-script.
What to find out about the audience
After all the available information about the intended TTreceiver has been extracted according to the normal circular course of the translationprocess, then the translator can check this against the characteristics of theST receiver: age, sex, education, social background, geographic origin, socialstatus, role with respect to the sender, etc.
Example
A report on drugs published in a magazine for young people iswritten with teenage readers in mind. In order to appeal to the receivers andwarn them of the risks of drug addiction, the author uses words and phrasesfrom juvenile slang and drug jargon. A translation of the text which is alsoaddressed to young people may use the corresponding TL slang, whereas ifthe” same translation text (using slang words and jargon) were to appearin a section of a news magazine, whose readership is a mainly adult one, itwould either not be understood or would not be taken seriously.
The communicative background of the addressees, i.e. alltheir general background knowledge and their knowledge of special areas andsubject matters, is of particular importance for translation-oriented textanalysis. According to the assessment of the audience’s communicativebackground22, a text producer not only selects the particularelements of the code that will be used in the text but also cuts or omitsaltogether any details which can be «presupposed» to be known to thereceiver, whilst stressing others (or even presenting them with extrainformation) in order not to expect too much (nor too little) of the addressedreadership.
How much knowledge can be presupposed in a reader depends notonly on their education or familiarity with the subject but also on factorsrelating to the subject matter itself, e.g. its topicality. In this respect,the situation often varies widely for ST and TT receivers, as there is usually(at least in written communication) a considerable time lags between ST and TTreception.
Example
For a Spanish receiver, the heading «Nuestra integrationen Europa» above a commentary published in the Spanish paper El Pais inFebruary 1984 is not a thematic title which informs about the content of the text,but refers to the then current discussion on special agricultural problemsconnected with the negotiations on the Spanish entry into the EuropeanCommunity. For German ‘ ”’ or French newspaper readers the issue was not oftopical interest at that time; under the heading «Spain’s entry into theEC» (or «Our integration into Europe», for that matter) theywould have expected an article on the issue of Spanish (or German/French!?)integration into the European Community.
Like the author, who has a specific intention in transmittingthe text, the receiver, too, has a specific intention when reading the text.The receivers’ intention must not be confused either with their expectationstowards the text, which is part of their communicative background, or withtheir reaction or response to the text, which takes place after text receptionand is thus part of the text effect.
The information obtained about the addressee may throw somelight on the sender’s intention, on the time and place of communication (inrelation to the receiver’s age and geographic origin), on text function (inrelation to the receiver’s intention), and on the intratextual features (e.g.the presuppositions).
As was pointed out in connection with the sender, afictitious receiver is part of the «internal» communicative situationand not of the external communicative situation. But even externally a text canbe directed at different possible receivers.
Example
Whilst imprisoned for being a member of the Resistancemovement against the Nazi regime, the German writer G. Weisenborn (1902-1962)wrote some letters to his wife, Joy Weisenborn, which were published after thewar. In the original situation, these letters had one precisely defined andaddressed receiver. Published later in a book together with some answeringletters from his wife and some songs and poems, they address a group ofreceivers that is much larger and not so clearly defined, i.e. anyoneinterested in the documents and personal testimonies of Resistance in the ThirdReich. If a young man gives this book, which contains many tender love-letters,to his girlfriend many years later, the conditions of reception will bedifferent again, not to mention those of a translation of the book intoEnglish, Dutch, or Spanish.
Therefore, the translator must analyse not only thecharacteristics of the ST addressees (or receivers) and their relationship tothe source text, but also those of the TT receiver, whose expectations,knowledge and communicative role will influence the stylistic organization ofthe target text.
The stronger the orientation of the ST towards a particularSL addressee or audience, the higher the probability that the ST has to betranslated in a documentary way, which means that the target text can only giveinformation about the source text in its situation but not fulfil an analogousfunction.
How to obtain information about the addressed audience
As in case of the sender, information about the addresseescan first of all be inferred from the text environment (e.g. dedications,notes), including the title (e.g. Bad Child s Pop-Up Book of Beasts). Itcan also be elicited from the information obtained about the sender and his/herintention or from the situational factors, such as medium, place, time, andmotive. Standardized genres often raise equally standardized expectations inthe receivers.
Example
A housewife normally expects a recipe to contain instructionsfor the preparation of a certain dish, and, indeed, that is why she reads it.Her attention is directed at the content of the text (e.g. what ingredientswill she need, what has she got to do?). Recipes usually have a ratherconventionalized form, not only with regard to their composition (first a listof ingredients, then the instructions in chronological order) but also withregard to syntactical structures (e.g. imperatives, parataxis) and lexicalfeatures (e.g. terminology and formulaic expressions, such as «bring tothe boil», «stirring constantly», etc.). The reader will onlybecome aware of the text form if it is not as expected: if, for example, therecipe is written as a poem or if the list of ingredients is missing.
The expectation of the receiver can sometimes lead to acertain tolerance. For example, when reading a menu, whose text function canclearly be inferred from the situation, but which is translated badly intotheir own language, tourists in a foreign country may not feel annoyed, as theynormally would, but rather amused by the orthographic mistakes or unidiomaticcollocations as long as they get some information about what to eat or drink.
Normally, of course, the text producer will try as far aspossible to meet the expectations of the addressed audience. There are cases,however, where an author disregards or even deliberately ignores theaddressees’ expectations in order to make them sit up and take notice or tomake them aware of certain patterns of thinking, etc.
Checklist
The following questions may help to find out the relevantinformation
about the addressed audience and their expectations:
1. Whatinformation about the addressed audience can be inferred from the textenvironment?
2. What can belearned about the addressees from the available information about the senderand his/her intention?
3. What clues tothe ST addressee’s expectations, background knowledge etc. can be inferred fromother situational factors (medium, place, time, motive, and function)?
4. Is there anyinformation about the reactions of the ST receiver(s) which may influencetranslation strategies?
5. Whatconclusions can be drawn from the data and clues obtained about the addresseeregarding
(a)other extratextual dimensions (intention, place,time, and function), and
(b)the intratextual features?
Medium
Speech vs. writing
The concept of medium or channel has to be interpreted ratherbroadly. We refer to «medium» as the means or vehicle which conveysthe text to the reader (in communication theory, «channel» stands forsound waves or print on paper). The translator is, however, interested less inthe technical distinctions and more in the aspects of perceptibility, storageof information and the presuppositions of communicative interaction.
First of all we have to ask whether the text is beingtransmitted in a face-to-face communication or in writing. The means oftransmission affects not only the conditions of reception, but moreparticularly also those of production. It determines how the information shouldbe presented in respect of level of explicitness, arrangement of arguments,choice of sentence types, features of cohesion, use of non-verbal elements suchas facial expressions and gestures, etc. The effect of the chosen medium on theintratextual factors can be illustrated by looking at the deictic aspect:situational references, which in face-to-face communication do not have to beverbalized explicitly because the participants are a part of the situation,must be expressed much more clearly in written communication.
Example
In face-to-face communication, deictic expressions, such as here,by my side, or today, or expressions referring to the participantsof communication, such as all of us, or as the speaker before mecorrectly remarked, are unambiguous. However, in a written text they canonly be decoded correctly in connection with the information on time, place,sender, receivers, etc. given in the text itself or in the text environment,such as title page, imprint, introduction lead, etc.
The categories of speech and writing cannot, however, alwaysbe separated completely, as there are spoken texts which are reproduced in awritten form (e.g. a statement made by a witness) and written texts which arespoken (e.g. lectures). Crystal & Davy (1969) therefore introduce theconcept of complex medium, comprising «language which is spoken to bewritten, as in dictation, or language written to be spoken, as innews-broadcasting», and even subclassifications such as «languagewritten to be read aloud as if written».
This shows that for our purposes it would not be wise to aimat a mere «labeling» of texts as regards medium. What we have to dois elicit specific features of the medium such as coincidence or discontinuityof text production and reception, indirect or direct form of communication,spontaneity of text production, opportunities for feedback operations, one-waycommunication, etc.
What to find out about the medium
In spoken communication, the dimension of medium includes thetechnical devices for information transfer (such as telephones or microphones),and these, of course, affect the production, reception and comprehension of thetext. In written communication, on the other hand, it is the means ofpublication that is referred to as the «medium», i.e. newspaper,magazine, book, multi-volume encyclopedia, leaflet, brochure, etc., as well assubclassifications such as business news, literary supplement, etc.
The dimension of medium is relevant because it provides someclues as to the size and identity of the addressed audience. The readership ofa national daily newspaper is not only much larger, but usually represents adifferent level of education and information with different expectations anddifferent standards of stylistic quality from that of a medical, not to mentiona neurosurgical, journal. The cheap paperback edition of a novel would beexpected to reach a wider public than an expensive, multi-volume collection ofCantonese love poems. A personal letter is directed at one individual receiverwhereas a standard business letter can be addressed to any number of companieson a mailing list, and a poster on an advertising board is targeted at anyonepassing by, etc., etc.
In addition, the specification of the medium may give someclue as to the sender’s intention (e.g. in the case of a poster or a picturepostcard) and to the motive for the communication (e.g. in the case of a deathannouncement in a newspaper). Since the range and conventions of medium use mayvary from culture to culture and from one generation to another, thespecification of medium may even give some idea of the time and place of textproduction.
Although the choice of a particular medium obviously providespre-signals for the receiver’s expectations regarding the intended textfunction, function and medium must not be automatically associated or evenequated. The receivers’ expectations are certainly based on their experiencewith the medium in question, but, again, a particular sender may intend tosurprise or disappoint the receiver by using a medium for a purpose quitedifferent from that usually associated with it. For the translator it is important,too, to take into account the fact that the «same» media may havequite different functions in another culture.
As a general rule, however, the medium determines thereceiver’s expectations as to text function. A leaflet distributed at theentrance of a famous church is expected to contain basic information on theobjects of interest in the form of a guided tour. The text in a guidebookusually has the functions of information plus advertising, and an article in anencyclopedia is expected to provide detailed information not only on thepositive but also on the negative aspects of a place.
Example
a)This plan draws your attention to some of themain features of the building. More details may be obtained from guide books onsale in the shop. The Nave, begun in 1291 and finished in the 1350’s in theDecorated Gothic style, is one of the widest Gothic naves in Europe. It is used for services throughout the year. The pulpit on the left commemorates Archbishops Temple and Lang, and the brass lectern has been used since 1686. The Great WestWindow is being repaired and cannot at present be seen. (First paragraphs ofthe information leaflet Welcome to York Minster. There is a plan withnumbers on the opposite page.)
b)THE MINSTER (by the late Chancellor F. Harrison)
Beloved to Yorkshiremen, renowned the world over. This istrue. Of great and noble churches in this country, probably three attract thegreatest number of visitors. These three are Westminster Abbey, St. Paul’s Cathedral and York Minster). (…) The east window deserves a note of its own.Seventy-six feet high and thirty-two feet broad, containing therefore more thantwo-thousand square feet of medieval glass — the great window at GloucesterCathedral measuring seventy-two feet by thirty-eight feet, and containing morethan two-thousand-three-hundred square feet of glass, but not wholly coloured — this great and grand window never ceases to excite admiration and wonder. Themaster-glazier, John Thornton, of Coventry, received for his work, in all, thesum of Ј 55 in three years, worth in modern currency — Ј 2,000? Who knows, evenapproximately? This was the pay of only one man. (From the brochure City andCounty of the City of York, Official Guide, 112 pages. I have left out the12 pages on the history of the Minster.).
c)There are many small old churches, quaint andoften glorious towers and the breathtaking spectacle of the Minster. It tooktwo-and-a-half centuries, from 1220 to 1470, to complete this poem in stone.Inside, a kaleidoscope of light explodes from windows of medieval stained glassthat are among the art treasures of the world. (Last of the three paragraphs on York, from the book AA Illustrated Guide to Britain, 544 pages)
d)York Minster is the largest of England’s medieval cathedrals. The result of 250 years of building, it shows a variety ofstyles. The transepts are the earliest part of the present building, datingfrom 1220-1260; the nave, chapter/> house, andvestibule were built in 1291-1345 in Decorated style; the choir in 1361, thecentral tower in 1400-1423, and the western towers in 1433-1474 in early and late Perpendicular. The Minster contains some of the earliest glass and thebiggest acreage of stained glass in Britain. The lancet lights of the«Five Sisters» in the north transept are a particularly fine exampleof 13th-century grisaille glass. (Paragraph on York Minster — under the heading«York» -from The New Caxton Encyclopedia, 18 vols.)
For translation-oriented text analysis, it is most importantto 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 betransmitted 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 intranslation practice), the translator must insist on having detailedinformation about the medium, as it is rather difficult to identify the mediumfrom intratextual analysis alone. There may be some clues in the dimensions ofthe sender and his/her intention or motive; time and place, too, sometimesnarrow the field of possible media. In some cases, the choice of medium isdetermined by convention since there are favourite media for particularcommunicative purposes in every culture (e.g. posters or newspaperadvertisements for product promotion, leaflets for tourist information, etc.).
Checklist
The following questions may help to find out the relevantinformation about the dimension of medium or channel:
1.Has the text been taken from a spoken or awritten communication? By which medium was it transmitted?
2.Which medium is used to present the text to the targetaudience? Is there any extratextual information on the medium?
3. What clues asto medium or channel can be inferred from other situational factors (sender,intention, motive, function)?
4. What conclusionscan be drawn from the data and clues obtained about the medium as regards
(a)other extratextual dimensions, such as theaddressees 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 textproduction, i.e. the actual situation of the sender and the text producer, butalso, at least in connection with certain media, to the place of textreception. It cannot be equated with the dimension of medium. The dimension ofspace is of particular importance where languages exist in various geographicalvarieties (such as the Spanish spoken in Spain as opposed to Latin America oreven Peru, Mexico, Argentina etc., and the English spoken in Great Britain asopposed to the United States, Australia, India etc…
Example
The Portuguese version of the information brochure publishedby the Tourist Office of Munich was accepted unhesitatingly as being correctand appropriate by a group of Brazilian teachers in a seminar on translation,whereas their colleagues from Portugal classified the text as «more orless understandable, but unidiomatic and not conforming to normal usage».In this case, an analysis of the dimension of place could not throw any lighton this problem because the text had been produced in Munich for«Portuguese»-speaking receivers. As the name of the translator wasnot specified in the text imprint, the participants in the seminar could onlyassume that the translator — whether he or she was a native speaker or not — had used the Brazilian variety of Portuguese. The sender/initiator (the TouristOffice) had probably not been aware of the problem. For the German version ofthis brochure, however, the dimension of place (of reception) would suggestthat 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 spacecan be important for the comprehension and interpretation of a text in that theplace of text production may be regarded as the centre of a «relativegeography». The distance or significance of other places must often bejudged in relation to this centre. The translator has to take into account thatthe «relative geography» from the standpoint of TT production may bequite different from that of ST production.
Example
a)The difference in cultural or social level couldbe called «downgrade» or «upgrade», depending on whether itis 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 Jewishworld» 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 onlylinguistic aspects but also cultural and political conditions. A text publishedin a country where literature is censored must be read «in anotherlight» 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 textcomes from, it may even be necessary to know the exact area or town of textproduction 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 inthe target cultural environment.
Example
In the case of newspaper articles, the place where the paperis 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 articleson the first page of the international edition of the Herald Tribune have toindicate the place the article refers to: «U.S. Banks Lower Prime InterestRate», «In Leipzig, Protesters Fear Resurgence of CommunistPower», «Tamil Guerrilla Army Nears Goal in Sri Lanka», etc. Ifcorrespondents send their reports from somewhere else, the place of textproduction is usually specified together with the author’s name («By DavidBinder, New York Times Service, Bucharest») or at the beginning of thetext («LEIPZIG, East Germany»), so that the reader can interpret asentence as «Now everything is quiet around here again» correctly. Ina translation, too, the dimension of place has to be specified eitherexternally (e.g. in an introduction) or internally (e.g. «Now everythingis quiet around Leipzig again»).
Information about the place of text production also gives anindication of the cultural affiliation of the sender and/or the addressees, themedium (in the case of culture-bound or culture-specific media), the motive (atleast where combined with the dimension of time) arid the in-tratextualfeatures (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 befound in the text environment in the form of the place of publication, the nameof the publishing company, the first edition details, or newspaper headlines,or in the secondary literature. Sometimes, it is presupposed to be part of thereceiver’s general background knowledge (e.g. in the case of publications byinternational organizations or institutions or by world-famous writers). Fromthe intratextual point of view, certain linguistic features may provide a clueas to where the text was written or intended to be read.
Other clues may be obtained from the information about thesender (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 thereceiver?), 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 relevantinformation about the place of communication:
1.Where was the text produced or transmitted? Isany 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 generalbackground knowledge?
2.What clues as to the dimension of space can beinferred from other situational factors (sender, receiver, medium, motive)?
3.What conclusions can be drawn from the data andclues 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 thedimension of time and text function
Time of communication
Every language is subject to constant change in its use andits norms. So the time of text production is, first and foremost, an importantpre-signal for the historical state of linguistic development the textrepresents. This applies not only to language use as such (from the sender’spoint 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 periodor epoch, since linguistic changes are usually determined by socio-culturalchanges.
Moreover, this process of change affects the area of texttypes. Certain genres are linked to a particular period (e.g. oracles and epicpoems as opposed to weather reports and television plays), and, of course,genre conventions also undergo change. Depending on the age of the text, thereceiver/translator may have totally different expectations as to the typicalfeatures of the text type in question. S/he may even expect obsolete forms thatare not used any more.
Example
Being asked what they thought to be the typical syntacticfeature of a German recipe, the majority of competent native speakers of Germanmention the subjunctive of the present tense: «Man nehme…», whereasmodern German recipes are written exclusively in infinitive constructions.Today, thesubjunctive is used only to give a recipe an old-fashionedtouch, as if it was from Grandmother s Recipe Book.
In addition to the linguistic aspects, the dimension of timecan throw some light on the communicative background of the sender and theaddressed audience, and thus provide a clue to understanding the sender’sintention. In the case of text types of topical interest, such as news itemsand news reports, political commentaries, election speeches, weather reports,etc., the dimension of time can be the decisive criterion as to whether thereis any point in a text being translated at all, or, if there is, under whichcircumstances and with which skopos it may be worthwhile.
In connection with the dimension of space, deictic elementsrefer directly to the situation. Like spatial deixis, temporal deixis can onlybe 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 thatthe grippe was relaxing have been destroyed by the mortality returns ofyesterday (Jan. 7), which show an increase of nearly 100 over the toll giventhree days ago, with 134 deaths traceable to the epidemic.» No need to bealarmed: the notice is to be found under the heading «100, 75 and 50 yearsago», and dates from 1890.
However, it may also be necessary to know the genreconventions in this respect, as the following example shows.
Example
In Madras, I was surprised to read in the morning paper lyingon 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 wasquite right to say «this afternoon» — but in a German newspaper (andnormally in British and American papers as well) the author would have written yesterdayafternoon because it seems to be a convention here for newspaper writers toimagine themselves in the situation of the reader who receives the text thenext morning, whereas obviously the Indian readers are expected to putthemselves in the writer’s shoes.
/>Sometimes it may be wisefor the translator to check on the validity of the information given in thesource text (if possible) or at least to point out to the initiator that someinformation in the text may not be up to date.
Example
In some tourist information leaflets, the information onopening 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 Iwent there to have a look at the prehistoric paintings, I found out that therewas a pavilion with beautiful reproductions of the paintings — but the caveshad not been open to the public for the past few years. Only persons presentingproof of a particular research project were allowed to enter.
The dimension of time influences directly or indirectly thedimensions of sender (e.g.: Is s/he a contemporary of the receiver/translatoror 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, aboveall, 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 STproduction and reception but also that of TT production (= translation) andreception. The original communicative situation as well as the inter-culturalcommunicative situation are determined by their respective temporal contexts.
In connection with the dimension of time, we must thereforelook at the traditional translations of classical texts and consider the problemsinvolved in translating or re-translating old texts. Whether and how thedimension of time has to be taken into account for the translation of, say,Homer’s Iliad, Shakespeare’s King Lear, or Cervantes’ DonQuixote depends on the translation skopos. Popovic ([1977]1981: 103f.) distinguishes between the «synchronous translation» of a contemporary authorand 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» onedepends on the prevailing translation tradition or concept, which may beregarded as a kind of culture-specific convention.
How to obtain information on the dimension of time
Information on the dimension of time can sometimes beinferred from thedate of publication of the text or other clues fromthe text environment, although this is not always reliable, as texts are oftenpublished yearsafter they have been written. However, they cannot bepublished text type, it will be mainly the following intratextual features thatare determined by the motive of communication: content (insofar as the motiveis explicitly mentioned in the text), vocabulary and sentence structure (e.g. ina memorial address), suprasegmental features (memorial address vs. electionspeech), and non-verbal elements (e.g. black edging round a deathannouncement).
How to obtain information about the motive for communication
Although the motive for communication is closely linked withthe dimension of time, the two factors must not be confused. While thedimension of time is part of the communicative situation (in the narrowersense), the dimension of motive relates the communicative situation and theparticipants to an event that is outside, or rather prior to, the situation.
It is not always easy therefore (and not always relevant totranslation!) to find out which event has motivated a certain text. Sometimesthe 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 70thBirthda); but there are communicative situations in which the motive isonly an indirect reason for the author to deal with a loosely connectedsubject.
Example
On March 12th, 1984, the Spanish daily paper El Pais publisheda commentary under the title «El Dfa de la Mujer» (InternationalWomen’s Day). It is the motive for text production this title alludes to andnot the subject matter, because the text deals with the situation of workingwomen in Spain in 1984. The newspaper reader was expected to be familiar withthe occasion, International Women’s Day, since it had been commented on quitefrequently at the time. If the text is to be translated, it is the motive fortranslation (as well as the dimensions of time and place) that has to be takeninto account. Only a few days later the date will have been pushed into thebackground by other events, and a title like «International Women’sDay» will arouse specific expectations about the subject matter, which thetext cannot meet.
As is illustrated by the example, the dimension of motive isof as much interest to the translator as that of time, because s/he has tocontrast the motive for ST production with the motive for TT production andfind out the impact this contrast has on the transfer decisions. While themotive for ST production is often to be found in the «environment» ofthe sender or text producer, the motive for TT production can be inferred fromwhat is known about the transfer situation, i.e. the initiator and the translationbrief. The effect of the motive on intra-textual features — as opposed to thatof the dimension of time — is often merely an indirect one.
We can restate that the clues as to the motive or motive typeare to be inferred from certain situational factors, such as medium (e.g.political section of a newspaper), place and time (in connection with thereceiver’s general background knowledge), and, of course, text function, ifthis is specified by unambiguous pre-signals, such as genre designations (e.g.«protocol») or text-type features (e.g. black edging). Theinformation obtained on the sender and the intention usually permits onlyindirect conclusions as to the motive for communication.
Checklist
The following questions may help to find out the relevantinformation about the motive for communication:
1.Why was the text written or transmitted? Is thereany information on the motive of communication to be found in the textenvironment? Is the ST receiver expected to be familiar with the motive?
2.Was the text written for a special occasion? Isthe text intended to be read or heard more than once or regularly?
3.What clues as to the motive for communication canbe inferred from other extratextual dimensions (sender, intention, receiver,medium, place, time, function)?
4.What conclusions can be drawn from the data andclues obtained about the motive for communication as regards
(a)other extratextual factors (expectations of thereceiver, sender and intention), and
(b)the intratextual features?
5. What problems can arise from the difference between themotive 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 meansthe communicative function, or the combination of communicative functions,which a text fulfils in its concrete situation of production/reception. It isderived 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 thesituational aspect of communication, whereas the notion of genre is related tothe structural aspect of the text-in-function. It is like looking at the twosides of a coin: they cannot be separated, but they are not the identical.
As was pointed out above, text can be classified on variouslevels of generalization. It is therefore not surprising that some authorsspecify 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 ofsituational factors can be illustrated by the special function of literarytexts. The senders of a literary text are usually individual authors who arealso 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 havea specific expectation determined by their literary experience, and a certaincommand of the literary code. As a rule, literary texts are transmitted inwriting (= medium), although sometimes orally transmitted texts (such as fairytales) are included in literature as well. The situational factors (place,time, motive) may not be of great significance in intracultural literarycommunication but they do play an important part in literary translationbecause they convey the culture-specific characteristics of both the source andthe target situation.
The importance of ST function for translation
The basic principle of functionalism in translation is theorientation towards the (prospective) function of the target text. Since I haveargued that a change of function is the normal case, and the preservation offunction the special case in the process of intercultural text transfer.
If a translation is an offer of information about the sourcetext, there can be two fundamental kinds of relationship between source andtarget text. Here again we find the two translation theories which have splittranslation scholars into two camps: the supporters of liberty and theadherents to fidelity. The target text can be (a) a document of a pastcommunicative action in which an SC sender made an offer of information to anSC receiver by means of the source text, and (b) an instrument in a new TCcommunicative action, in which a TC receiver receives an offer of informationfor which the ST provides the material. Accordingly, we can distinguish betweentwo 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 theauthor and the ST receiver, whereas the instrumental translation is acommunicative instrument in its own right, conveying a message directly fromthe ST author to the TT receiver. An instrumental translation can have the sameor a similar or analogous function as the ST.
In a documentary translation, certain aspects of the ST orthe whole ST-in-situation are reproduced for the TT receivers, who is consciousof «observing» a communicative situation of which they are not apart. A documentary translation can focus on any of the features on each rankof the source text, pushing others into the background. In a word-for-wordtranslation, for example, which aims to reproduce the features of the sourcelanguage system, the focus is on the morphological, lexical, and syntacticstructures presented in the source text, whereas textuality is bound to beneglected.
An instrumental translation, on the other hand, serves as anindependent message-transmitting instrument in a new communicative action inTC, and is intended to fulfill its communicative purpose without the receiverbeing aware of reading or hearing a text which, in a different form, was usedbefore in a different communicative action. This translation type comprisesthree forms. First, if the target text can fulfill the same function(s) as thesource text, we speak of an «equi-functional» translation (used, forexample, in the case of operating instructions or business correspondence).Second, if the ST functions cannot be realized as such by the TT receiver, theymay be adapted by the translator, provided that the TT functions are compatiblewith 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 formis referred to as «heterofunctional translation». The third form isintended to achieve a similar effect by reproducing in the TC literary contextthe function the ST has in its own SC literary context. This form is oftenfound in the translation of poetry.
How to obtain information about text function
The most important source of information is, again, the textenvironment, since designations like «operating instructions» or«anecdote» call on the receivers’ reading experience of the text typein question and build up a specific expectation as to text function(s). It isobvious that these «labels» can be misleading if they are usedinadequately by the author or sender (whether intentionally orunintentionally). On the other hand, it may be assumed that in normalcommunication such designations are in fact intended as a guideline for thereceiver.
If there is no genre designation, the text function orfunctions have to be inferred from the configuration of the external factors.This is why text function should be analysed last when as much information aspossible is available. As was illustrated by the example of literary texts, theintention of the sender and the expectations of the receiver are the crucialdimensions in this respect. However, other factors may also narrow the range ofpossible functions, such as sender (e.g. a candidate for presidency), mediumand 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 electioncampaign).
The pragmatic relationships between sender, receiver, medium,and motive, provide the translator with a number of pre-signals announcing aparticular function, which will be either confirmed or rejected by thesubsequent analysis of the intratextual features. If the translator finds hisor her expectations confirmed, s/he has reason to believe that s/he haselicited the correct function — if not, there are two possible explanations:either the author has intentionally violated the norms and conventions of thetext type, or the translator has interpreted the pre-signals wrongly andtherefore has to go through the process of eliciting the text function on thebasis of pragmatic pre-signals again.
Checklist
The following questions may help to find out the relevantinformation about text function:
1. What is the text function intended by the sender? Arethere any hints as to the intended function in the text environment, such astext-type designations?
2. What clues as to the function of the text can beinferred from other extratextual dimensions (motive, medium, receiver,intention)?
3.Are there any indications that the receiver mayuse the text in a function other than that intended by the sender?
4. What conclusions can be drawn from the data and cluesobtained 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 theextratextual factors illustrate the interdependence of the extratextual factorson the one hand, and of the extratextual and intratextual factors (which haveso far not been specified), on the other. Data and clues about a single factorcan be derived from the data and clues obtained about the other factors.
The most important principle, however, is that ofrecursiveness. This type of analysis is no one-way process, but contains anynumber of loops, in which expectations are built up, confirmed, or rejected,and where knowledge is gained and extended and understanding constantlymodified. This applies not only to the analysis of the text as a whole and tothe individual text factors but also, if the analysis and translation ofmicrostructures leads incidentally to new discoveries requiring previoustransfer decisions to be corrected, to the processing of smaller text unitssuch as chapters or even paragraphs.
The interdependence of the extratextual factors isillustrated by a diagram (Figure 5), in which arrows are used to show thecourse of the analytical procedure. Those steps which yield reliable data aredepicted by a continuous line, while the steps which merely lead to clues arerepresented by a dotted line.
2. “Intratextual Factors in Translation Text Analysis”
Lecture 1. Basic notions
It is the verbal elements (lexis, sentence structure and thesuprasegmental features, i.e. the «tone» of the text) which are mostimportant for conveying the message. In both written and spoken textssuprasegmental features serve to highlight or focus certain parts of the textand to push others into the background. All these elements have not only aninformative (i.e. denotative), but also a stylistic (i.e. con-notative)function.
The intratextual features are influenced to a large extent bysituational factors (e.g. the geographical origin of the sender, the specialrequirements of the chosen medium, the conditions of the time and place of textproduction, etc.), but they can also be determined by genre conventions or bythe sender’s specific communicative intention, which affects the choice of theintratextual means of communication. We also have to account for the fact thatstylistic decisions are frequently interdependent. If, for example, the senderdecides on a nominal style in the area of lexis, this will naturally affect thechoice of sentence structure.
We distinguish eight intratextual factors: subject matter,content, presuppositions, composition, nonverbal elements, lexis, sentencestructure, and suprasegmental features. In practical analysis it has provedeffective 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 theprinciple of recursiveness again allows any feedback loops which may be deemednecessary.
In the practical application of the model it may not alwaysbe necessary to go through the whole process of intratextual analysis step bystep. Some translation briefs will be such that merely a cursory glance at theintratextual features is sufficient (just to find out, for example, whether ornot the framing of the text corresponds to genre conventions), whereas othersmay require a detailed analysis right down to the level of morphemes orphonemes.
Example
If a strongly conventionalized text, such as a weatherreport, has to be translated in such a form that the target text conforms tothe target-culture conventions of the text type, there is no need to analyseall the intratextual details of the source text, once it has been stated thatthey are «conventional». Since the intratextual framing of the TT hasto be adapted to TC conventions anyway, the intratextual framing of the ST maybe 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 dependon situational conditions which cannot be controlled or modified by the sender(e.g. pragmatics of time and space, geographical or socio-cultural backgroundof the sender himself) or features that may have been determined by a decisiontaken prior to text production (e.g. choice of medium or addresseeorientation). Then, there are other features which are dictated by social norms(e.g. text-type or genre conventions and so on). During the process ofanalysis, therefore, the translator constantly has to go back to factors whichhave already been analysed (= principle of recursiveness). Lastly, there is atype of feature which depends on the sender deciding on one out of severalalternative means of expression, a decision determined by the intention toproduce 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 commandof stylistic patterns and of the functions that they are normally used for. Thisknowledge is part of text competence and will enable the receiver to infer theintentions or attitudes of the sender from the style presented in the text. Itis based on the fact that most communicative actions are conventionalized andthat text producers almost always proceed according to a given pattern. Inordinary communication an intuitive, unconscious, or «passive»knowledge of stylistic patterns will be more than sufficient to ensure thecomprehension of the text. However, the receiver/translator cannot managewithout 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 inthe source text, and to decide which of these elements may be appropriate forachieving 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 typesseem to dictate that the title or heading or the title context (comprising maintitle, subtitle(s) and the like) represent a kind of thematic programme. Anexample of this is the following title of a linguistic article:«Understanding what is meant from what is said: a study inconversationally conveyed requests» (Clark & Lucy 1975).
Where the information is not given by a thematic title likethis, the subject matter of a text can be formulated in an introductory lead,as is very often the case, for example, in newspaper articles (cf. Liiger 1977:49ff.) or in the first sentence or paragraph which can then be regarded as akind of «topic sentence» paraphrasing the thematic essence of thetext.
Example
The Soviet Disunion
UNITED IT STANDS …DIVIDED IT FALLS
While 1989 was the year of eastern Europe, 1990 may be theyear of the Soviet Union. Confronted by growing nationalist unrest and economicmayhem, the empire is beginning to come apart at the seams. James Blitz in Moscow reports on the crisis in the Kremlin (…). (The Sunday Times, 1 January 1990, p.A l.)
Example
Title: Ford Is Rebuffed By Mazda Sub-title: No Chance SeenFor Larger Stake
TOKYO — Mazda Motor Corp. said Monday that it saw noopportunity for Ford Motor Co. to enlarge its stake in the Japanese company andthat Mazda had no plans to raise funds by issuing new shares, warrant bonds orconvertibles. (…) (InternationalHerald Tribune, 9 January, 1990, p. 9)
This applies not only to titles which are a shortenedparaphrase of the text, but also to descriptive titles, e.g. of literary works.
Example
The original title El sigh de las luces («The Ageof Enlightenment») indicates the subject matter of the novel, while thetitles of the English and the German translation (Explosion in A CathedralExplosion in der Kathedrale) use the name of a picture that plays asymbolic part in the story. The reader, however, cannot recognize it as suchand will probably interpret it as an indication of the subject matter orcontent. This may lead to a (wrong) classification of the book as a kind ofthriller.
If the subject matter is not described in the title ortitle-context, it can be elicited by reducing the textual macro-structures tocertain basic semantic propositions or information units, which constitute akind of resume or «condensation» of the text. Occasionally, thetranslator is even asked to produce a short version of the text (i.e. asummary, abstract, or resume) in the target language. In translation teaching,the production of summaries can be used for checking text comprehension.
Condensing and summarizing, however, does not in all textslead to an elicitation of the real subject matter, since in some cases this isobscured by a «false» subject occupying the foreground of the text.In these cases it is the analysis of other intratextual factors, mainly oflexis, which may lead to success.
The crucial concept in the analysis of the subject matter atthe level of lexical items is that of isotopy. Isotopic features are semesshared by various lexical items in a text, thus interconnecting the lexicalitems and forming a kind of chain or line of isotopies throughout the text. Thelexical items linked by isotopy are referred to as the «isotopiclevel», which may indicate the subject matter(s) of the text. There can bevarious isotopic levels in a text, either complementing each other orhierarchically subordinate to one another.
Checklist
The following questions may help to find out the relevantinformation about the subject matter of the text:
1. Is the sourcetext a thematically coherent single text or a text combination?
2. What is thesubject matter of the text (or of each component of the combination)? Is therea hierarchy of compatible subjects?
3. Does thesubject matter elicited by internal analysis correspond to the expectationbuilt up by external analysis?
4. Is the subjectmatter verbalized in the text (e.g. in a topic sentence at the beginning of thetext) or in the text environment (title, heading, sub-title, introduction,etc.)?
5. Is the subjectmatter bound to a particular (SL, TL, or other) cultural context?
6. Do the TCconventions dictate that the subject matter of the text should be verbalizedsomewhere inside or outside the text?
Content
General considerations
Where the translator has a good command of the sourcelanguage and is fully conversant with the rules and norms governing textproduction, s/he will usually have little or no difficulty in determining thecontent of a text. Even so, it would still be useful to have some means ofchecking this intuitive understanding. It would be even more useful, of course,to have some guidelines available in translator training, where competence inthis area is still inadequate.
Paraphrase as a procedure for content analysis
By «content» we usually mean the reference of thetext to objects and phenomena in an extralinguistic reality, which could aseasily be a fictitious world as the real world. This reference is expressedmainly by the semantic information contained in the lexical and grammaticalstructures (e.g. words and phrases, sentence patterns, tense, mood, etc.) usedin the text. These structures complement each other, reduce each other’sambiguity, and together form a coherent context.
Therefore, the starting point for the analysis of content hasto be the information carried by the text elements linked on the surface of thetext by the text-linguistic linking devices, such as logical connections,topic-comment relationships, functional sentence perspective, etc.
Since at this stage the external analysis of thecommunicative situation has been completed, the meaning of the text can beelicited, as it were, «through the filter» of extratextual knowledge.
Analysing the content of syntactically or semanticallycomplicated texts can be made easier by a simplifying paraphrase of theinformation units, which can be formulated independently of the sentencestructure. However, in so far as they are explicitly verbalized in the text,the logical relationships between these units should be noted. This procedurepermits the translator to identify (and possibly compensate for)presuppositions, and even defects in coherence, which frequently occur intexts.
These paraphrases have to be treated with great caution,however. The paraphrased information units form a new text which is in no wayidentical to the original. Paraphrases can only be used in order to simplifytext structures, making them more transparent. When paraphrasing lexical itemswe also have to take account of the connotative content, which has to bepreserved, or at least marked, in the paraphrased text.
In any case, it must not be the simplified paraphrase whichshould be taken as a starting point for translation, but the original sourcetext.
Connotations
The amount of information verbalized in a text includes notonly denotative but also connotative (or «secondary») meaning, i.e.the information expressed by a language element by virtue of its affiliation toa certain linguistic code (stylistic levels, registers, functional style,regional and social dialects, etc.). By selecting one specific element inpreference to another from a number of possible elements the author assigns asecondary meaning to the text. Since the connotative meaning can only beanalysed in detail in connection with the stylistic values of lexis, sentencestructure and suprasegmental features, I would recommend at this stage of theanalysis provisionally marking those text elements which can be intuitivelyclassified as «probably connotative». The extratextual category oftext function often provides a certain expectation here.
Example
Kate Saunders in The Sunday Times, 7 January 1990:Career woman — or just the little woman?
Chic dinner tables are resounding with funereal orations overthe twitching corpse of the women’s movement — they come to bury it, certainlynot to praise it. It was so selfish, so uncaring, so unnatural — surelyhome-building is nicer and more fulfilling than hacking through theprofessional jungle? The Eighties’ ideal was the woman who ran a business, madebreakfast appointments with her own husband, and spent 20 minutes’«quality time» a day with her children. But women are wondering nowwhether the effort of juggling home and career was worthwhile. All you got foryour pains was nervous exhaustion, and kids who spoke Icelandic because theywere brought up by the au pair. How much simpler to give up the struggle anddevote yourself to stoking the home fires. Part of the problem seems to be thatwomen are discovering the real snag about equality — work is a pain. Any mancould have told them this. (…)
Certain connotations are a part of every speaker’s communicativeknowledge whether they speak the standard language or a particular regionaland/or social dialect. They are linked so closely to a lexical item that theywould be specified in the dictionary (e.g. kid is marked«slang» in OALD 1963, and «informal» in OALD 1989, whereas snagis marked «colloquial» in OALD 1963 and not marked at all in OALD1989). Connotations such as these, even though they may change in the course oftime, must be considered to be part of the «linguistic competence» ofsender and receiver. Other connotations, however, are merely valid for certainpersons, since they can only «work» if the participants knowparticular social, political, regional or cultural phenomena, e.g. careerwoman vs. the little woman or the allusion to Shakespeare’s JuliusCaesar in example 3.2.274. Such connotations belong to the«horizon» of sender and receiver.
In his famous book How to Be an Alien, George Mikesgives a humorous example.
Example
«You foreigners are so clever,» said a lady to mesome years ago. First, thinking of the great amount of foreign idiots andhalf-wits I had had the honour of meeting, I considered this remark exaggeratedbut complimentary. Since then I learnt that it was far from it. These few wordsexpressed the lady’s contempt and slight disgust for foreigners. If you look upthe word clever in any English Dictionary, you will find that thedictionaries are out of date and mislead you on this point. According to the PocketOxford Dictionary, for instance, the word means quick and neat in movement,skilful, talented, ingenious. (…) All nice adjectives, expressing valuableand estimable characteristics. A modern Englishman, however, uses the word cleverin the sense: shrewd, sly, furtive, surreptitious, treacherous, sneaking,crafty, un-English, un-Scottish, un-Welsh (Mikes 1984: 42).
The «internal situation»
The information in the text can be «factual», i.e.based on the facts of what is conventionally regarded as «reality» bysender and receiver, or «fictional», i.e. referring to a different,fictitious world imagined or invented by the author, which is quite separatefrom the «real world» in which the communicative action takes place.However, this distinction is not of immediate importance for content analysis.Fictionality is a pragmatic property which is assigned to a text by theparticipants in communicative interaction. Its definition depends on the notionof reality and the norms of textuality prevailing in the society in question.If the notion of reality changes, then a text which was intended to be factualmight be read as fictional, or vice versa. If we look at Aldous Huxley’s BraveNew World or George Orwell’s 1984 we might come to the conclusionthat a fictional text describing a Utopian situation could even become factualif reality were to change accordingly. However, the question of fictionality orfactuality really becomes relevant to translation when we considerpresuppositions.
Nevertheless, an analysis of content will have to specifywhether or not the internal situation of the text is identical with theexternal situation. If it is not, the internal situation will have to beanalysed separately, using the same set of WH-questions applied in the externalanalysis. This is very often the case in fictional texts, and in factual textsof the complex text type which contain embedded texts of another category.
In an internal situation there might be an internal sender(speaker, narrator), who may adopt various attitudes or perspectives towardsthe narration (e.g. «author’s perspective», or «camera-eye»perspective), or there might be an implicit reader or listener, and implicitconditions of time and place; there may also be hints as to the medium used,the motive for communication and the function assigned to the particularembedded text. The internal situation may even, like the famous Russian doll,contain further embedded situations.
The situational factors of an embedded text are normallymentioned explicitly in the frame text, whereas the internal situation of afictional text (i.e. its «setting») can often only be inferred fromhidden clues or indirect hints, such as proper names of persons and places,references to culture-specific realities, elements of regional dialect in adialogue, etc.
However, there are cases where an analysis of the externalsituation yields information on the internal situation, as shown in thefollowing example.
Example
In one of his short stories written in his French exile in Paris, the Argentinian author Julio Cortazar describes an urban environment which is not namedexplicitly, but hinted at by the information that from the window of hismultistorey apartment block the auctorial narrator sees a sign saying Hotelde Belgique. The reference to the setting is not crucial to theinterpretation of the story, which deals with the problem of daily routine andthe hopelessness of life in modern society. The plot might equally well be setin any big city of the Western industrial world. But still, by describing (orpretending to describe) the view from his own window, the author gives a«personal touch» to the story, which makes it more authentic. Thismay be important for the translator when she has to decide whether to translatethe description of a routine breakfast situation (tomamos cafe con leche) by«we drink our morning coffee» (neutral), «we have our coffeewith milk» (non-specific strangeness) or «we have cafe au lait»(specific strangeness, explicitly referring to France as the setting of the story)or even «we have our ham and eggs» (receiver-oriented adaptation).
Checklist
The following questions may help to elicit the relevantinformation
about the content of the text:
How are the extratextual factors verbalized in the text?
Which are the information units in the text?
Is there a difference between the external and the internalsituation?
4. Are there anygaps of cohesion and/or coherence in the text? Can they be filled without usingadditional information or material?
5. Whatconclusions can be drawn from the analysis of content with reference to otherintratextual factors, such as presuppositions, composition, and the stylisticfeatures?
Presuppositions
What is a presupposition
The notion of presupposition is rather complex because Whatwe mean here is the «pragmatic presupposition». These presuppositionsare implicitly assumed by the speaker, who takes it for granted that this willalso be the case with the listener. Communication can therefore only besuccessful if speaker and listener both implicitly assume the samepresuppositions in sufficient quantity.
For example, the answer Twelfth Night or What You Will presupposesthe knowledge on the part of the receiver that this is the title of a play, andthis presupposition forms the basis on which the joke «works».
In everyday communication it is usually the factors of thecommunicative situation which are presupposed to be known to the participantsand which are therefore not mentioned explicitly. Nevertheless, they have to betaken into consideration when the utterance is made. If, for example, thereferent of the information is a person present in the room, the speaker maylower or raise his/her voice or choose simple or complicated or even codedformulations, etc. Of course, it is usually superfluous to mention the thingsand persons one can point at.
Presuppositions comprise all the information that the senderexpects (= presupposes) to be part of the receiver’s horizon. Since the senderwants the utterance to be understood, it seems logical that s/he will onlypresuppose information which the receiver can be expected to be able to«reconstruct».
Presuppositions may refer not only to the factors andconditions of the situation and to the realities of the source culture, but canalso imply facts from the author’s biography, aesthetic theories, common texttypes and their characteristics, metric dispositions, details of subjectmatter, motives, the topoi and iconography of a certain literary period,ideology, religion, philosophy and mythical concepts, cultural and politicalconditions of the time, media and forms of representation, the educationalsituation, or the way a text has been handed down.
Since it is one of the social conventions of communicationthat an utterance must be neither trivial nor incomprehensible, the sender hasto judge the situation, the general background knowledge of the addressee, andthe relevance of the information that will be transmitted in the text, in orderto decide which presuppositions can be made and which cannot. This conventionapplies not only to the relationship between the ST sender and the ST receiver,but also to that between the TT producer, i.e. the translator, and the TTreceiver. The translator has to take account of the fact that a piece ofinformation that might be «trivial» to the ST receivers because oftheir source-cultural background knowledge (and therefore is not mentioned inthe source text) may be unknown to the TT audience because of theirtarget-cultural background knowledge (and therefore has to be mentioned in thetarget text) — or vice versa.
How to identify presuppositions in the text
Since a presupposition is by definition a piece ofinformation that is not verbalized, it cannot be «spotted» in thetext. In their role as ST receivers, translators are familiar with the sourceculture and — ideally -understand the presupposed information in the same wayas a source-culture receiver. This makes it rather difficult to discover thepresuppositions which are contained in the text.
In order to identify the presuppositions, the translator hasfirst of all to ascertain which culture or «world» the text refers to(which may have already been established in the content analysis). Here, animportant distinction must be made between factual and fictional texts. Factualtexts claim to make a proposition about reality (as generally accepted in theculture in question) whereas fictional texts make no such claim — or at leastnot in the same way as factual texts. The difference lies in the relationshipbetween the text and the (assumed) reality. Fictional texts are, of course, asreal as factual texts, and fictitious information can be contained both infictional and factual texts.
The categorization of a text as factual or fictional does notprimarily depend on the structure of the text itself. It is the author and,above all, the reader who classifies the text according to the concept ofreality prevailing in their culture — a concept which is, of course, determinedby philosophical and sociological conventions. A text intended to be factual bythe ST sender can therefore be «understood» as fictional (and viceversa) by a TT receiver who has a different, culture-specific view of what is«real».
If the ST is «anchored» in the world of the sourceculture, some information on this world will usually be presupposed in the textbecause of the maxim of relevance, to put it in Gricean terms. If, on the otherhand, the ST refers to the world of the TT receiver, which cannot be assumed tobe familiar to the ST receiver, it would seem logical for the ST producer toverbalize a certain amount of information for the ST receiver which then wouldseem irrelevant to the TT receiver. In either case, the translator willnormally adjust the level of explicitness to the (assumed) general backgroundknowledge of the intended TT audience using, for example, expansion orreduction procedures.
If the ST refers to a world that is equally«distant» to both the ST and the TT receivers, it is less probablethat translation problems will arise from the contrast of ST and TTpresuppositions. In these cases the subject matter dealt with in the ST can beregarded as «generally communicable» or, at least, as«transculturally communicable», i.e. between the two culturesinvolved in the translation process.
The level of explicitness varies according to text type andtext function. It is interesting in this context to note that in fictionaltexts the situation is often made more explicit than in non-fictional texts.While the comprehension of factual texts is based on the fact that sender andreceiver share one model of reality, the fictional text has to start buildingup a model of its own, either referring explicitly to a realistic model orcreating a fictitious one in the text, which can then be related in some degreeto an existing realistic model. It can even be contrary to the normal truthvalues of non-fictional utterances (e.g. in fairy tales). A fictional textmust, however, also contain some reference or analogy to the receivers’ realitybecause otherwise they would not be able to find access to the world of thetext.
If the information on the internal situation is hidden incertain elements of a fictional text, such as in proper names, regional orsocial dialect (e.g. Shaw’s Pygmalion) etc., it is often extremelydifficult to transmit it to the target text, as for instance in the followingexample, because in a literary text it is often not appropriate to usesubstitutions, explanatory translations or footnotes.
Example
In Ana Maria Matute’s short story Pecado de omision thecharacters are socially classified by their names. The main character, a simplevillage boy who in spite of his talents does not get the chance to train for aprofession, is only called by his Christian name Lope, whereas his classmate, whose father can afford to let him study law, is introduced by Christianname and surname: ManuelEnriquez. Lope’s uncle, the village mayor, hasthe rather pompous name Emeterio Ruiz Heredia; the school teacher isreferred to
by the respectful combination of don together with his Christian name (donLorenzo). The simple shepherd with whom Lope has to stay in the mountainscannot even boast an individual name: he is called Rogue el Mediano (i.e.«Roque the middle one»).
These hidden clues cannot be explained to the TT receiverwithout running the risk of losing the literary charm of the text. Fortunately,most authors do not rely exclusively on implicit characterizations, but includesome explicit hints, as does Ana Maria Matute in the above-mentioned text.
Presupposition indicators
The probability of presuppositions being present can becalculated from the distance of the ST and TT receiver to the culturalenvironment of the subject matter, as well as from the level of explicitnessand the level of redundancy. Text contains certain «elements ofcrystallization» which may indicate presuppositions. These elements mightbe attached to certain syntactic or lexical structures, such as the gerund,infinitive, or passive constructions, modal auxiliary verbs or valences oflexemes, as in the following example.
Example
«John will be picked up at the station. Peter is alwaysin time.» Since the verb to pick up requires two actants,semantically specifiable as agent and patient, the reader will automaticallyknow that Peter has to refer to the person who is going to pick up Johnat the station. If the two sentences are to constitute a text, the existence ofthe agent is presupposed in the first sentence .
Other signals pointing to presuppositions can be provided bythe intra-textual dimensions of subject matter, content, sentence structure,and suprasegmental features. The negation left out in an utterance meant to beironic can, for example, be signalled by a certain intonation: «How very,very clever of you!» Non-verbal elements, such as a photo showing theskyscraper environment of the «immaculate garden flat», can alsoillustrate presupposed situational conditions.
The analysis of the extratextual dimensions of sender,receiver, time, place, and motive of communication can also reveal presupposedinformation, as has been pointed out above. With their TC competence,translators will be able to check the comprehensibility of the verbalizedinformation from the TT receiver’s point of view. Thus, any possibleinformation gap or surplus in the background knowledge of the intended TTreceiver, as described by the translation brief, can be localized and, ifnecessary, compensated for.
Checklist
The following questions may help to discover thepresuppositions made in the source text:
1.Which model of reality does the information referto?
2.Is the reference to reality verbalized explicitlyin the text?
3.Are there any implicit allusions to a certainmodel of reality?
4.Does the text contain redundancies which might besuperfluous for a TT receiver?
5.What information presupposed to be known to theST receiver has to be verbalized for the TT receiver?
Lecture 2. Text Composition
General considerations
The text has an informational macrostructure (i.e.composition and order of information units) consisting of a number ofmicro-structures. The text segments forming the macrostructure are marked ordelimited primarily by the continuity or discontinuity of tenses.
There are several reasons why both the macro andmicrostruc-ture of the text are important aspects of a translation-orientedtext analysis.
1. If a text ismade up of different text segments with different situational conditions, thesegments may require different translation strategies according to theirdifferent functions.
2. The specialpart that the beginning and end of a text play in its comprehension andinterpretation means that these may have to be analysed in detail in order tofind out how they guide the reception process and influence the effect of thewhole text.
3. For certaingenres, there are culture-specific conventions as to their macro and/ormicrostructure. The analysis of text composition can therefore yield valuable informationabout the text type (and, perhaps, the text function).
4. In verycomplex or incoherent texts, the analysis of informational microstructures mayserve to find out the basic information or subject matter of the text.
Text ranks
A source text can be part of a unit of higher rank, which wemay call a text combination or hyper-text. Thus, a short story or a scientificarticle might be included in an anthology or a collection, in which the othertexts constitute a frame of reference, and a novel might be intended to formpart of a trilogy or tetralogy. The different texts can be related and linkedin various ways.
In the practice of professional translating, the parts of atext combination are sometimes translated by different translators, as is shownin the following example.
Example
The German version of the textbook on linguistics edited byAndr6 Martinet (Martinet 1973) was produced by two translators: Chapters 1 to25 were translated by I. Rehbein, and Chapters 26 to 51 by S. Stelzer. Each ofthe chapters is an independent text and, at the same time, part of a largerunit, whose characteristics have to be taken into account by both translators.
The inclusion of a text in a unit of higher rank is usuallysignalled by the title and/or the title context, which can be regarded as asort of «hyper-sentence» or «metacommunicative utterance».
On the highest rank this hyper-sentence is often replaced bythe information about the communicative situation which the receiver infersfrom extratextual clues. If the extratextual analysis shows, however, that thesituation of the TT will differ considerably from that of the ST and that theTT receiver cannot infer sufficient information about the ST situation, thetranslator may feel obliged to add some kind of hyper-sentence (e.g. in theform of an introductory lead) to the translation.
Example
In German newspapers, comments taken from other papers areusually introduced by hyper-sentences, such as «President Reagan’s speechbefore the UN is commented on by The Times (London)» (cf. SuddeutscheZeitung, Oct. 26/27, 1985; my translation). The form of thesehyper-sentences is culture-specific, and they may even be rather elliptic. Inthe International Herald Tribune, for example, texts quoted from otherpapers are printed in a special column under the heading «OtherComments» and signed with the name and place of publication of thereference paper, e.g. «Asiaweek (Hong Kong)».
Macrostructure
Metacommunicative sentences of the type «A says (toB)» can also be signals for the beginning of an embedded text (cf. example3.1.0./1), these signals separating the different levels of communication. Thisis particularly important in translation, because, as was pointed out earlier,each level of communication may require a situational analysis of its own. Oneof the crucial aspects in the analysis of macrostructure is therefore thequestion of whether there are any sub-texts or in-texts embedded in the ST.
Other forms of in-texts are quotations, footnotes, andexamples (e.g. in scientific texts, such as the present study). The main taskof the translator is to find out which function the in-text fulfils in theembedding text. Although other extratextual factors (e.g. audience, place, time,medium) may be the same for the embedding text and the in-text, the functionmust be analysed separately.
Example
Quotations, like other texts, can have an informative,expressive, appellative, and phatic function. The function of a quotation isbasically independent of that of the embedding text, although there seems to bea certain correlation between genre and quotation types. For example: Inscientific and technical texts we find more informative quotations, whose formis rather conventional (especially where bibliographical references areconcerned) than in popularizing texts or (literary) essays, which more oftencontain expressive quotations stressing the author’s own opinion, or quotationsappealing to the reader’s own experience or which are intended to impress thereader by citing a famous authority, such as Aristotle or Shakespeare.
Footnotes inserted into a target text in order to providebackground information or give additional explanations, can also be regarded asin-texts. Since the effect that a text with footnotes has on the reader isdifferent from that of a text without footnotes, the translator has to considercarefully whether other procedures, such as explanatory translations orsubstitutions, would be more appropriate to the genre and function of thetarget text than footnotes.
The relationship between the in-text and the embedding textcan be compared with that between titles or heading(s) and the text they belongto. A title is a metatext which tells us something about the co-text inquestion and can equally fulfil various other communicative functions.
Example
The title of Chapter VII of Charles Dickens’ The PickwickPapers not only informs the reader about the contents of the chapter butalso recommends the text to the reader: «How Mr. Winkle, instead ofshooting at the pigeon and killing the crow, shot at the crow and wounded thepigeon; how the Dingley Dell cricket club played All-Muggleton, and howAll-Muggleton dined at the Dingley Dell expense; with other interesting and instructivematters.» The metacomrnunicative function of the title is in this casesignalled by the form of an indirect question introduced by how. In thetitle of Chapter I of Jonathan Swift’s A Voyage to Lilliput it is madeeven more explicit: «The author gives some account of himself and family(…)».
Inclusions commenting on the text itself (e.g. so to speakor as I pointed out earlier or to put it into a nutshell) canalso be regarded as metacommunicative utterances. At the same time they havethe (phatic) function of giving a signal to the receiver, thus representing the(extratextual) audience orientation by intratextual means.
Within the text itself, macrostructure is defined from asemantic point of view. Hierarchical delimitations of text sections (chapter,chunk, paragraph, complex sentence, non-complex sentence, etc.) can onlyprovide a rather superficial orientation. Since the days of classical rhetoric,the beginning and the end of a text are considered to be of particularimportance in the interpretation of the whole text. This is why they should beanalysed separately.
The beginning and end of a text can be marked by certainverbal or non-verbal features, which in some genres will be even conventional,such as the moral at the end of a fable or the expression once upon a time atthe beginning of a fairy tale. The end tends to be less frequently marked thanthe beginning (the words The End at the end of a film are probably aremnant from the time when the end of a text was conventionally marked by finis).The imminent end of a text can also be signalled by the shift to a higherlevel of communication, e.g. a metacommunicative recapitulation like «inconclusion, let me restate…». Thus, in the fable The Lover and hisLass, for example, the moral («Laugh and the world laughs with you,love and you love alone.») establishes a direct communication betweensender and receiver.
The example of the fable shows that certain features of textcomposition are genre specific. Certain text types are characterized by aparticular macrostructure and particular structural markers, as well asparticular means of conjunction between the text parts. A good example is thetext type «letter» with the conventional text segments date, address,salutation, message, and complimentary closing. In an instrumental translationthe translator should observe the target-cultural convention for the text typein question.
Microstructure
Both in macro and microstructure we have to distinguishformal and semantic or functional structures. If the highest rank is that ofmeta-communication and the second rank is constituted by macrostructural unitssuch as chapters and paragraphs (formal structure) or beginning and end(functional structure), the third rank will be that of simple and complexsentences (formal structure). From the semantic or functional point of view wecan distinguish information units, utterances, steps of the course of action orplot, or logical relations, such as causality, finality, specification, etc.The fourth rank will then be that of sentence-parts and their relation, such asthe theme-rheme structure (TRS).
In written texts, a «sentence» is the unit betweentwo full stops (or question marks, exclamation marks, etc.). In spoken texts itis delimited by intonatory devices, such as pitch or lengthy pauses. In eithercase, grammatical completeness is not taken into account as a criterion. Inspite of all possible reservations regarding this definition, the division intosentences can provide a first approximation to the micro-structure of a text.Moreover, it will lead into the analysis of sentence structures. In a secondstep, the analyst has to prove whether the formal division into sentencescorresponds to the semantic division into information units.
In narrative texts, the information units can coincide withthe steps of the course of action. One of the intratextual features of textcomposition is, in this connection, the order of tenses used in the text.
A composition which follows the course of action represents astructure with an analogy to objects and situations in the real world(«ordo naturalis»), which is not language-specific and therefore doesnot raise unsolvable problems for the translator — at least where there is nogreat distance between SC and TC. This applies also to dialogues, which can beregarded as a (chronological) sequence of various monologues.
Composition structures which do not follow the «ordonaturalis» are determined — both on the macro and microstructural level — by culture-specific norms. They are marked by language-specific linking devices(such as renominalization, adversative conjunctions, etc.) or even by means ofmetre, rhyme, alliteration, and other sonorous figures, which may help tostructure the text.
Thematic organization of sentences and clauses
The semantic and functional division of sentences orinformation units into theme and rheme (TRS, also topic and comment), whichbelongs to the microstructure of a text, is independent of the syntacticstructures, although it is frequently combined with certain syntacticalfeatures. Linking the information units by the device of thematic progressionthe writer at the same time produces a certain macrostructure. Thus, TRS is afeature overlapping micro and macrostructural composition.
For translation-oriented text analysis, we can confineourselves to the context-bound aspects of TRS. From this point of view, thetheme refers to that part of the information presented in a sentence or clausewhich can be inferred from the (verbal or non-verbal) context (= giveninformation) whereas the rheme is the non-inferrable part of the information (=new information). Irrespective of its grammatical function as subject orpredicate or its position at the beginning or the end of the clause, the themerefers to the information stored in what Brown & Yule (1987) call the«presupposition pool» of the participants. This pool contains theinformation gained from general knowledge, from the situative context of thediscourse, and from the completed part of the discourse itself. Eachparticipant has a presupposition pool and this pool is added to as the discourseproceeds.
TRS has to be regarded as a semantic universal which isrealized in different ways by different languages.
Markers of text composition
The macrostructure of a text is first and foremost signalledby formal devices used to mark the boundaries of segments of both written andspoken discourse which form large units, such as chapters or paragraphs inwritten texts and «paratones» in spoken texts. Chapters are marked bychapter headings or numerals, paragraphs by indentations, and paratones byintonation, pauses of more than a second, etc. These non-verbal markers areoften combined with lexical markers, e.g. adverbial clauses in initial (first- then -finally) or focussed position (on the one hand — on the otherhand). In text types with a conventional «ordo naturalis» (e.g.reports) the composition is marked according to subject matter and content.
Microstructures are marked by means of syntax structures(main/subordinate clauses, tenses, inclusions, etc.) or lexical devices (e.g.cataphora) and by suprasegmental features (focus structures, punctuation,etc.).
Checklist
The following questions may help to discover the maincharacteristics
of text composition:
1.Is the ST an independent text or is it embeddedin a larger unit of higher rank?
2.Is the macrostructure of the text marked byoptical or other signals?
3.Is there a conventional composition for this typeof text?
4.Which form of thematic progression is realized inthe text?
Non-verbal elements
General considerations
Signs taken from other, non-linguistic, codes, which are usedto supplement, illustrate, disambiguate, or intensify the message of the text,are referred to by the functional concept of «non-verbal elements». Theterm, comprises the paralinguistic elements of face-to-face communication (e.g.facial expressions, gestures, voice quality, etc.) as well as thenon-linguistic elements belonging to a written text (photos, illustrations,logos, special types of print, etc.). However, intonational features, pauses,etc. and the graphical devices that perform analogous functions in writtencommunication (punctuation, capitalisation, itali-cisation, etc.) areclassified as «suprasegmental features».
Example
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In addition to itemized billing, the AT&T Card makesit easy to reach family, friends and business associates in the States. And,you can take advantage of AT&T USADirect® service, which gets youthrough to an AT&T Operator in seconds.
For an AT&T Card application, call us collect at 816-6004Ext. 60, or write to AT&T Card Operations, P.O. Box 419395, Kansas City, MO 64141-0434.
So if you want to know who you called, get the AT&TCard.
Non-verbal elements are particularly audience-oriented.
Forms and functions of non-verbal elements
We have to distinguish non-verbal elements accompanying thetext (e.g. layout or gestures) from those supplementing the text (e.g. tablesor graphs) or those constituting an independent text part (e.g. pictures of acomic strip) or replacing certain text elements (e.g. the * that replaces ataboo word).
In face-to-face communication we tend to use gestures of theface and the body (such as winking or shrugging). We distinguishe betweengestures used more or less involuntarily by speakers to express their feelingsand those used intentionally with a specific meaning. While involuntarygestures constitute a universal phenomenon, which, apart from differences intemperament and certain culture-specific conventions, are common to all thepeoples of the world, intentional gestures are signs belonging to aculture-specific code. In an interpreting situation it may therefore benecessary for the interpreter to verbalize certain gestures made by thespeaker, if there is any risk of misinterpretation. The receivers only see thegestures of the ST speaker and do not usually notice the interpreter in thebooth «translating» the gestures into a TC code.
The interplay of verbal and non-verbal text elements isparticularly important on the stage. Plays in which the word is subordinate tothe gestures are less problematic in translation than plays in which there is acarefully balanced tension between words and gestures. This tension should beregarded as an intentional feature of the text, which the translator may haveto reproduce in the TT.
In spoken discourse there are situations where the hearerwould not perceive any mimical expressions or gestures of the speaker becauseof the spatial distance between them (e.g. in an electoral speech on a marketsquare). And there are text types or functions where the use of non-verbalsignals is conventionally forbidden. In these cases, non-verbal elements aremore and more replaced by suprasegmental linguistic signs, such as stress,intonation, slowing down, etc., which can even develop into genre-specificfeatures (e.g. sermon).
In written communication, mimical expressions or gesturescannot be used; but the reduced pragmatic contextuality of written texts must,of course, be compensated for. This is done partly by the selection ofparticular verbal elements, especially those representing supra-segmentalfeatures in writing (e.g. punctuation, dash, bold type), and partly by additionalnon-verbal means, such as pictures (a photo of the author, a cartoonillustrating the subject, a drawing showing how to hold the handle of amachine). It may happen that the non-verbal elements convey a piece ofinformation that is even more relevant to the reader than the messagetransmitted by the text. A number in small print on the label of a wine bottlemay in itself be of little interest, but it tells the «connoisseur»more about the quality of the wine than the name.
The range of non-verbal elements used in literature extendsfrom the ancient acrostics to the typographical means which are found in thepoems of Klopstock or Stefan George, Apollinaire or E. E. Cummings.
Non-verbal elements can belong to the conventional form ofcertain text types, such as the shorter lines of traditional poetic texts orthe «small print» in contracts.
Of course, it is not always the author or sender with theirspecific communicative intention who is responsible for the layout and formatof a text. But no matter who makes the final decision on text organization — the effect that these elements produce on the receiver remains the same. If thetranslation skopos requires «equivalence of effect», the translatormust, therefore, take account of all types of nonverbal elements.
Illustrations, diagrams, drawings of certain operations, etc.are conventional supplements or even form an integral part of operatinginstructions or manuals. In some cases it may even be convenient for thetranslator to try and carry out the instructions him or herself in order tocheck the coherence of verbal and non-verbal elements and the functionality ofthe text.
The analysis of non-verbal text elements usually yields someinformation about the aspects of text composition (e.g. paragraph markers),presuppositions (e.g. marks of omission), lexis (e.g. facial expressions whichsuggest an ironic meaning), and suprasegmental features (e.g. shortened linesin a poem). Of the extratextual factors it is mainly the intention of thesender and the function of the text which may be characterized by non-verbalelements.
The importance of non-verbal elements in translationNon-verbal text elements are, like verbal elements, culture-specific. Withinthe framework of a translation-relevant ST analysis the translator has to findout which of the non-verbal elements of the ST can be preserved in translationand which have to be adapted to the norms and conventions of the targetculture. A particular logo or name which is intended to have a positive connotationin the source culture may be associated with a negative value in the targetculture; the TC conventions may not allow the graphic representation of acertain piece of information; the TC genre norms may require non-verbal insteadof verbal representation, etc. What is taken for granted as regards linguistictext elements (that they have to be «translated»), is not alwaysaccepted for non-verbal elements, because initiators are often unwilling tocommit themselves to the extra expense involved in adapting nonverbal material.
It is not difficult to identify the non-verbal elements ofthe source text, as they are usually fairly obvious and often predictable incertain media or text types. But it is important in each case to analyze thefunction of these elements. Quotation marks, for example, can point to anironical meaning (in which case they represent a suprasegmental feature, i.e. acertain intonation) or to a neologism introduced ad hoc and explained in thetext or to a reference to somebody else’s utterances (in which case the textproducer may want to express a mental reservation, which would have been markedby a wink of the eye in spoken discourse).
Checklist
The following questions may lead to a functionalinterpretation of
non-verbal elements:
1.Which non-verbal elements are included in thetext?
2.Which function do they perform with regard to theverbal text parts?
3.Are they conventionally bound to the text type?
4.Are they determined by the medium?
5.Are they specifically linked to the sourceculture?
Lecture 3. Lexis and Sentence
Lexis
The choice of lexis is determined by both extra andintratexrual factors. Therefore, the characteristics of the lexical items usedin a text often yield information not only about the extratextual factors, butalso about other intratextual aspects. For example, the semantic and stylisticcharacteristics of lexis (e.g. connotations, semantic fields, register) maypoint to the dimensions of content, subject matter, and presuppositions,whereas the formal and grammatical characteristics (e.g. parts of speech, wordfunction, morphology) refer the analyst to predictable syntactic structures andsuprasegmental features.
Intratextual determinants of lexis
The selection of lexical items is largely determined by thedimensions of subject matter and content. Depending on the subject matter,certain semantic fields will be represented by more items than others, and thetextual connection of key words will constitute isotopic chains throughout thetext.
In this context, morphological aspects (suffixes, prefixes,compositions, acronyms, etc.), collocations, idioms, figurative use (metonymy,metaphor), etc. have to be analysed from the point of view of textualsemantics. Componential analysis, etymological investigations, and comparativelexicological studies can also be helpful when the meaning of certain words,especially of neologisms, is not clear.
Extratextual determinants of lexis
The field of lexis, on the other hand, illustratesparticularly well the interdependence of extratextual and intratextual factors.The extratextual factors not only set the frame of reference for the selectionof words, but they are themselves often -directly or indirectly — mentioned inthe text. I will therefore deal with the extratextual factors one by one inorder to explain the impact these factors can have on the choice of lexicalitems.
The first question is whether or not the expectationsderiving from the external information and clues as to the general character ofthe sender (time, geographical and social origin, education, status, etc.) orhis/her particular position regarding the analysed text (e.g. communicativerole) are verified by the text. This also applies to any internal sender whomay be mentioned or presupposed in the text, e.g. in the case of quotations orin fictional texts. If the analysis confirms the expectations, suchcharacteristics can be assumed to be non-intentional; if not, it seems likelythat by disappointing the receiver’s expectations the sender wanted to producea certain effect. If there is little or no external information on the sender,the analysis of the pragmatic aspects of lexis may provide some clues to theperson of the sender.
The second question is whether the author is mentioned in thetext as sender. In such a case, the use of the first person, of expressionslike in my view in contrast with other persons’ opinions, etc. gives thereaders the impression that the sender is addressing them directly. Innon-fictional texts we can assume that the first person really does refer tothe author. For some text types, there are even conventions as to how authorsshould refer to themselves, e.g. the use of the first person plural or thethird person singular
As far as the impact of the sender’s intention on lexis isconcerned, we have to ask whether and how the intention is reflected by theselection of words or, if there is no external information, what intention canbe inferred from the use of words in the text. It is the pragmatic aspect ofintentionality in the sense of «concrete interest» underlying thetext production which is being analysed in this context.
This intentionality is reflected by those characteristics oflexis which are not due to the specific situational conditions or tonorms and conventions, as well as by those features which appear to signal anintentional «violation» of any norms and conventions valid both forthe genre in question and for the conditions of medium, place, time, and motiveof communication characterizing the situation of the text. This means that afeature of lexis can be assumed to be intentional if the translator has toanalyse the interest and the purpose which induced the author to use preciselythis expression, this figure, this word.
Example
Language can be used, for example, to camouflage the realsignificance of an event, as is shown in the following paragraph from anarticle on «doublespeak»: «Attentive observers of the Englishlanguage also learned recently that the multi-billion-dollar stock market crashof 1987 was simply a fourth-quarter equity retreat; that aircraft don’tcrash, they have uncontrolled contact •with the ground; that janitorsare environmental technicians; that it was a diagnostic misadventureof a high magnitude which caused the death of a patient in a Philadelphiahospital, not malpractice; and that Ronald Reagan wasn’t really unconsciouswhile he underwent minor surgery, just in a non-decision-making form.»(THE SUNDAY TIMES, 7 January 1990)
In order to elicit the sender’s intention it seems advisableto analyse the «degree of originality» of the lexis used in the text.This is common practice with similes and metaphors. But it can also be appliedto other figures of speech, such as the adoption of words from other areas oflexis (e.g. language for special purposes in a general text), other registers(e.g. slang words in a formal text), or from regional or social dialects, andto the metonymic use of words (e.g. the Pentagon for the US Ministry ofDefense). In all these cases the translator has to examine whether the choiceof words is common or at least standardised for certain text types or whetherit can be regarded as original or even extravagant.
The analysis of various lexical items in a text can oftenshow that a particular stylistic feature is characteristic of the whole text.If the translation skopos requires the preservation of such features,individual translation decisions (in the field of lexis as well as content,composition, sentence structure, etc.) have to be subordinated to this purpose.The translator has to plan the translation strategies with this overall purposein mind, looking for the stylistic means which serve to achieve this purpose inthe target language and culture instead of translating metaphor by metaphor orsimile by simile.
Similarly, the translator should also assess the stylisticimplications of the author’s «semantic intentionality». Semanticintentionality refers to the reasons which have induced the author to selectone particular piece of information for his or her text from the wide range ofall possible information, and to the effect that this choice has on theaudience. This can be of particular importance in fictional texts since it maybe assumed that the number of informational details which the author may choosefrom is limited only by the situational conditions. The decision to take onespecific detail rather than another constitutes an important clue to theauthor’s (stylistic, literary) intention.
A text may not only contain implicit clues to the sender’sintention, but also explicit expressions or (often conventional) cliches bywhich the sender’s intention is announced.
Example
«Our aim is therefore to replace a sporadic approachwith a systematic one; to minimise — we can never remove — the intuitive elementin criteria of analysis.» (From the Introduction to Crystal &Davy 1969: 14).
The medium mainly influences the level of style of thelexical elements (colloquial, formal), word formation (e.g. abbreviated wordsor acronyms as used in mobile phone messages) and deictic expressions (e.g.operating instructions, which come to the receiver together with the machine).
Example
Just a few examples of typical newspaper abbreviations andcompounds, collected from one page of THE SUNDAY TIMES (7 January 1990,p. El); Ј215m fraud, pre-tax profits, RAF, ISC, CSF, GEC, GrandMet, Bond Corp,a pubs-for-breweries swap, the UK dairy-produce company, cash-richinstitutions, PR group.
The aspect of time is also reflected in deictic elements, ininternal time references, and in temporal markings of certain lexical items.This last aspect is particularly relevant both to the translation of old textsand to that of texts whose language is marked as «modern». In oldtexts we would not expect «modernisms» (and vice versa).
However, the translator has to decide whether the translationskopos requires a «synchronous» or an «actualizing»translation. As it might be difficult for a 21st century translatorto render a text in the language of the 18th century, s/he should atleast take care not to use typically 21st century lexis (e.g.fashion words).
In Jonathan Swift’s A Voyage to Lilliput, archaicforms like giveth, mathema-ticks, physick, Old Jury instead of OldJewry, my self and words like hosier (in the 1735 edition, reprintedin Gulliver s Travels, Everyman’s Library, London 1940) mark the text as«old» without being an obstacle to comprehension. The Germantranslation (Swift 1983), however, is written in unmarked modern German.
Certain text types, such as legal documents, arecharacterized by archaic lexis.
The motive or occasion for communication may influence thechoice of lexis by requiring a particular level of style (e.g. in a funeraladdress) or certain formulas or cliches. This can be an important aspect whenthe target text is intended to be used on a different occasion from that of thesource text.
Text function (in correlation with the text type) is alsofrequently reflected in the choice of lexical items. For example, some examplesof typical lexical features of the language of newspaper reporting: complex preand postmodification, typical adjective compounds such as more andfaster-arriving, sequences of adjectives; emphatic and colloquial lexis,etc. Language for special purposes and metalanguage are other function-specificfields of word use. Genre conventions point to the fact that the sender isinterested in subordinating form to content, thus setting guidelines for aparticular effect of the text. If the function changes within the text, the useof text-type conventions or of functional style can signal a particularstylistic interest on the part of the author.
Checklist
The following questions may be helpful in analysing the lexisused in a text.
1. How are the extratextual factors reflected in the use of lexis(regional and social dialects, historical language varieties, choice ofregister, medium-specific lexis, conventional formulas determined by occasionor function, etc.)?
2. Which features of the lexis used in the text indicate the attitudeof the sender and his/her «stylistic interest» (e.g. stylisticmarkers, connotations, rhetorical figures of speech, such as metaphors andsimiles, individual word coinages, puns)?
3. Which fields of lexis (terminologies, metalanguage) are representedin the text?
4. Are there any parts of speech (nouns, adjectives) or patterns ofword formation (compounds, prefixed words, apocopes) which occur morefrequently in the text than would normally be the case?
5. Which level of style can the text be assigned to?
Sentence Structure
General considerations
The formal, functional and stylistic aspects of sentencestructure are mentioned as an important factor in almost all approaches totranslation-relevant text analysis, although they are not dealt with in anysystematic way.
In spite of the transcultural repertoire of syntactic figuresof speech, such as parallelisms, chiasms, rhetorical questions, etc., theeffect of these figures may vary slightly according to the different languagestructures. Complex hypotactic sentences are generally regarded as anappropriate means to describe complex facts. However, in German, hypotacticsentences are much more likely to look complicated and intricate (partlybecause the verb has to be put at the end of subordinate clauses) than, forinstance, in Spanish, where the syntax has a principally linear character andwhere isolated non-finite constructions (gerund, participles, infinitives) areoften preferred to subor-i clinate clauses.
The analysis of sentence structure yields information aboutthe characteristics of the subject matter (e.g. simple vs. complex), the textcomposition («mise en relief, order of informational details), and thesuprasegmental features (stress, speed, tension), and some syntactic figures,such as aposiopesis, may indicate presuppositions. Among the extratextualfactors it is primarily the aspects of intention, medium and text function thatare characterized by particular sentence structures.
How to find out about sentence structure
The translator gets a first impression of the typicalsentence structure of a text by analysing the (average) length and type of thesentences (statements, questions, exclamations, ellipses) and the other constructionswhich replace sentences (infinitives, past and present participles, gerunds),the distribution of main clauses and subordinate clauses -and inclusions — inthe text (paratactical vs. hypotactical sentence structures), and theconnection of sentences by connectives, such as conjunctions, temporal adverbs,substitutions, etc… On the basis of such an analysis, s/he is able to find outhow the information given in the text is structured. I wish to stress thepoint, however, that the analysis of sentence structure is not an aim in itselfbut must lead to a functional interpretation.
Below the level of sentences and clauses it is the order ofthe constituents (such as Subject-Predicator-Complement/SPC) or words (e.g. theposition of adverbials) that may lead to a further structuring. Depending ontheir respective norms of word order, intonation, pitch patterns, etc.,different languages use different means of focussing certain sentence parts orof giving a „relief to the text. By analysing the different aspects ofsyntax (e.g. distribution of main and subordinate clauses and non-finiteconstructions, “mise en relief by tense and aspect) the translator mayachieve a solid basis for text interpretation.
In addition to the classical figures of speech it is (mainly,but not only, in literary texts) the deviation from syntactic norms andconventions which is used in order to produce a particular stylistic effect. Inthese cases, the translator has first to find out what kind of deviation isused and how it works before s/he can decide, whether or how to»translate” it (in the widest sense of the word) in the light of thetranslation brief.
Example
In his short story Los cachorros («The LittleDogs»), the Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa plays with syntacticstructures, boldly mixing narration, direct speech and stream-of-consciousnesstechnique: «Y un dia, toma, su mama, corazon, le regalaba ese pic-up,ipara el solito?, si…». By a syntactic analysis, we can separate thenarrative sentence, which conforms to the syntactical norms («Y un dia sumama le regalaba ese pic-up»), from the inserted elements of direct speech{toma, corazon, si) and interior monologue Qpara el solito?). Reversingthese steps of analysis, the translation is easy: «And one day, here youare, his mummy, darling, gave him that record-player, just for him?,yes…»
The syntactic features, too, depend on various otherintratextual features, especially content and composition (e.g. distribution ofinformational details both in the text and in the sentences), lexis (e.g.verbal or nominal constructions), and suprasegmental features (especiallyfocus, intonation). Among the extratextual factors it is mainly the aspects ofintention, audience, medium (e.g. speech vs. writing), and function (e.g.conventional structures), which affect the syntactic features.
Checklist
The following questions may be helpful in analysing sentencestructure:
1.Are the sentences long or short, coordinated orsubordinated? How are they linked?
2.Which sentence types occur in the text?
3.Does the order of sentence constituentscorrespond to the theme-rheme structure? Are there any focussing structures ordeviations from normal word order?
4.Is there any text relief?
5.Are there any syntactic figures of speech, suchas parallelism, chiasm, rhetorical question, parenthesis, aposiopesis, ellipsis,etc.? What function do they perform in the text?
6. Are there any syntactic features which are determined byaudience orientation, text-type conventions, or by the medium? Does thetranslation skopos require any adaptations?
Suprasegmental features
General considerations
The suprasegmental features of a text are all those featuresof text organization which overlap the boundaries of any lexical or syntacticalsegments, sentences, and paragraphs, framing the phonological«gestalt» or specific «tone» of the text.
The particular framing of a text depends, first and foremost,on the medium by which the text is transmitted. In written texts, thesuprasegmental features are signalled by optical means, such as italics, spacedor bold type, quotation marks, dashes and parentheses, etc.
In spoken texts, the suprasegmental features are signalled byacoustic means, such as tonicity, modulation, variations in pitch and loudness,etc… This applies both to spoken texts which are produced spontaneously (e.g.a contributions to a discussion, a statement by the witness of an accident) andto written texts which are presented orally (e.g. lectures, radio andtelevision news, etc.).
It is important to distinguish suprasegmental features, intheir function as features of verbal text organization, from the non-verbal orpara-verbal elements accompanying the text, such as facial expressions,gestures, etc. On the other hand, habitual psycho-physical and physicalfeatures of speech (such as quality of voice or excitement) as well as featuresresulting from biographical factors (such as origin, age, status, e.g. socialor regional dialect) must be distinguished from «controllable»functional features, i.e. features depending on the sender’s intention or onother situational factors such as the relationship between sender and receiveretc.
Prosody, intonation, and stress
The concept of intonation refers to «the totality ofprosodic qualities of utterances which are not linked to individualsounds». It includes the general features of tonicity and pitch,modulation, rhythmicality, speed, loudness, tension and pauses.
Intonation as a means of text organization (as opposed tointonation indicating psychical states, habitual characteristics of the senderor even psycho-pathological phenomena) serves mainly to mark the informationstructure and to divide the speech stream into tone units separated by pauses.The tone units usually correspond to information units. Another function ofintonation is to mark the semantic nucleus of the sentence.
Moreover, intonation helps to disambiguate the variouspossible meanings of a sentence (e.g. serious vs. ironic meaning in thesentence «That was very clever of you!»). The «meaning»conveyed by intonation is independent of, i.e. not subordinated but coordinatedto, that of lexical and semantic units. Intonation signals the attitude of thespeaker towards the message and, in this respect, its function can be comparedwith that of the stylistic function of lexis and sentence structure. It can beanalysed only in connection with the other two factors.
The analysis of prosodic features is of particular relevanceto the interpreter. It facilitates the comprehension of content and textcomposition, since stress markings are a textological instrument for making therelations of coherence between sentences explicit. For example, the stress onthe word money in the sentence «John found some money today»points to it in the following sentence: «But he spent it immediately.»In simultaneous interpreting, the analysis of intonation therefore can make iteasier for the interpreter to anticipate how the text will continue. The pausesbetween the informational elements, whether «empty» or «filled»by sounds such as ah, hum, etc., divide the stream of speech and give abreathing space to the interpreter.
On the other hand, «contrastive» stress may revealthe speaker’s intention. In the sentence pair «John found some money today»and «Peter found happiness», the stress on money formsa paradigmatic contrast with the stress on happiness. Syntagmaticcontrast is produced by the two stress points in the sentence «John foundsome money today» if the following (or preceding) sentence is«He found happiness yesterday». In English, contrastive stressis often combined with certain syntactic structures, such as clefting: «Itwas John who found some money today, but Peter was the one whofound happiness.» Contrastive stress, too, can be very helpful tothe interpreter because it limits the variety of possible «nextsentences» and thus makes anticipation easier. Of course, the proceduresfor source text analysis have to be automatized or internalized in interpretertraining, since there is not much time to start thinking about contrastivestress in the process of simultaneous interpreting.
Word stress can serve to differentiate meaning, e.g. in conductvs. conduct, whereas tone-unit stress sets focus points (e.g.«a clever child» vs. «a stupid child»), andsentence stress often signals emphasis. Some forms of sentence intonation or«intonation contour» are linked by convention with certain sentencetypes (e.g. question, inclusion, incomplete sentences, etc.) or rhetoricalintentions.
Certain genres, such as a radio commentary of a footballmatch or the arrival of a train being announced by loudspeaker at a railwaystation, are characterized by a specific intonation which we would be able toidentify at once even if we did not understand the information or if we heardthe text in another place.
The «phonology» of written texts
The representation of suprasegmental features in writing
The phonological organization of a text is represented inwriting by the selection of particular words, word order, onomatopoeia, certainfeatures of typeface such as italics or spaced words, orthographic deviations
In this sense, we can distinguish between«syntactic» or «discoursive» punctuation marks (full stop,comma, question and exclamation marks), which serve to guide comprehension byconventional signals, and «stylistic» punctuation marks which give«elegance and expressivity» to the sentence. Thus, punctuation,whether conventional or stylistic, is used principally as a means ofrepresenting intonation and prosody in writing.
The analysis of suprasegmental features often yieldsinformation about the content (e.g. irony) and the subject matter (e.g. the«solemn» tone of a funeral address), as well as presuppositions (e.g.an interruption of the intonation contour in allusions) and composition (e.g.pauses, stress on the rhematic parts of the utterance). Of the extratextualfactors, it is the aspects of sender, intention, place and motive/occasion andtext function which are mainly characterized by suprasegmental features.
e. How to elicit suprasegmental features in a written textAffectivity and expressivity are mainly reflected in the choice of lexis.Certain affirmative words, such as actually or in fact, andemphatic evaluations like fantastic or great seem to attractsentence stress.
In syntax, it is mainly focusing structures, such as clefting(e.g. It was John who kicked the ball), inclusions, which are spoken ina lower tone and at a higher speed than the embedding sentence, ellipses, oraposiopeses which seem to suggest special intonation patterns. Asyndeticenumerations, for example, are characterized by a higher speed thanpolysyndetic enumerations {John, Peter, Mary, Paul were there vs. Johnand Peter and Mary and Paul were there).
If not supported by lexical or syntactic means, contrastivestress is usually produced by the context. If the context is not sufficientlyclear, the reader has to be guided by graphic features, such as underlining,spaced or bold type or italics, quotation marks, etc.
Finally, the phonological image of a text is also determinedby theme-rheme structures. Since the thematic element normally links a sentenceto the preceding utterance, it is often put in initial position with the rhemeforming the end of the sentence, which is, of course, the appropriate place forthe elements which the sender wants to stress. A deviation from this patterncauses surprise or leads to a certain tension between the two sentences, whichis also reflected in the intonation contour.
For the translator, these considerations on phonology and intonationare of particular importance because the reader’s acoustic imagination isdetermined by language-specific patterns. Each receiver reads a text againstthe background of their own native knowledge of intonation and stress patterns.Since in most cases this is an intuitive knowledge, they may not be able toadapt themselves to strange patterns even if they are told that they arereading a translation. After analysing its functions, the translator shouldtherefore adapt the ST intonation to TL patterns.
Checklist
The following questions, referring to prosody and intonationin spoken texts and their graphic representation in written texts, may behelpful in analysing suprasegmental features:
1.Which suprasegmental features are present in thetext? How are they represented graphically?
2.Are the suprasegmental features genre specific?
3.Do the suprasegmental features provide any cluesto the habitual characteristics or to the emotional or psycho-pathologicalstate of the sender?
4.Can the text be divided into prosodic units? Doesthe intonation contour indicate the sender’s intention to clarify, stress orfocus any elements of the utterance?
5.Do the suprasegmental features correspond to thetheme-rheme structure of the text?
6.Does the translation skopos require anyadaptations of suprasegmental features to TL patterns?
Example of Intratextual Text Analysis
Example
Bertolt Brecht: Measures Against Violence
When Mr. Keuner, the Thinking Man, pronounced himself againstviolence in front of a large audience, he noticed that his listeners backedaway from him and left the room. He turned round and saw behind him — Violence.
«What did you say?» asked Violence.
«I pronounced myself in favour of violence.»
After Mr. Keuner had also left, his disciples asked him wherehis backbone was. Mr. Keuner replied: «I haven’t got a backbone. It is mewho has to live longer than Violence.»
And he told the following story:
One day, in the time of illegality, there came to the houseof Mr. Egge, a man who had learned to say no, an agent who presented a documentsigned by those who held sway over the city, which stated that to him shouldbelong any house in which he set foot; similarly any food should be his for theasking; and any man that he set eyes on should serve him.
The agent sat down, demanded food, washed himself, went tobed, and said, with his face to the wall, «Will you be my servant?»
Mr. Egge covered him with a blanket, shooed away the flies,and watched over him while he slept; and, as he had done on the first day, sodid he obey him for seven years. But for all that he did for him, there was onething he took good care not to do, and that was to say a word. And when theseven years had passed and the agent had grown fat by all the eating, sleepingand giving orders, the agent died. And then Mr. Egge wrapped him in thetattered, old blanket, dragged him out of the house, cleaned the bed,whitewashed the walls, breathed a sigh of relief and replied: «No.»
As the title suggests, the subject matter of the text is whatcan be done against violence. Mr. Keuner is a fictitious person who alsoappears in some other of Brecht’s stories. Therefore he can be introduced byhis name as somebody «known» to the reader. It may be assumed thatthe name Keuner is a distortion of keiner («nobody»). Mr.Keuner, who is characterized by the epithet the Thinking Man, exhibits aparticular behaviour towards violence: having pronounced himself to be againstviolence in public, he denies his conviction when personally confronted withviolence. By means of the parable of Mr. Egge he tells his disciples, whowonder why he shows so little backbone, that it is more important to outliveviolence than to become its victim. Mr. Keuner (and Mr. Egge) apparently submitto violence in order to outlive it.
The content of the story points to the subject mattersuggested in the title: measures (i.e. «non-measures», in anironic meaning) against violence, and determines the composition of the text.It is a frame text embedding a parable. The frame does not appear again at theend of the story because the readers are supposed to draw their ownconclusions. The narration consists of two parts which are formally linked bythe cataphoric element following story.
The subject matter and the content have a strong influence onlexis. In the first part the word violence is mentioned four times,twice as an abstract and twice as an allegory (indicated by the capital letterin the English translation). In the second part the word violence is notmentioned, but the concept is paraphrased in different forms. The document signedby those who held sway over the city states that the «agent» is arepresentative of violence, which is supported by the story (things belong tohim, he demands, gives orders, and his behaviour in Mr. Egge’s houseshows his superior position). The isotopy of serving (belong to, serve,servant, obey and Mr. Egge’s activities: covered him, shooed away, watchedover him) characterize the contrasting semantic field.