Transcript INTRODUCTION TO TRANSLATION STUDIES Power Point 9 31 October 2007

Faculdade de Letras da Universidade do Porto
Línguas e Literaturas Modernas
INTRODUCTION TO
TRANSLATION STUDIES
Power Point 9
31 October 2007
Cont. Ass.: Midterm test on 14 Nov.
Material to be reviewed for the test
From Introducing Translation Studies:
Chapter 1 to 4 (special emphasis on what
was covered in class).
Excerpts from Roman Jakobson
(1959/2000); James Holmes
(1988/2000); Eugene Nida (1964 and
1969); Vinay and Darbelnet (1958/1995)
(photocopies);
From Becoming a Translator:
Chapters 1, 2 and 3.
TASK 1
Read the following dialogue
and imagine a situation in
which it could take place.
Then translate it by adapting
your approach to the
communication situation you
chose.
‘Well!’ the young man said.
‘Well!’ she said.
‘Well, here we are,’ he said.
‘Here we are,’ she said, ‘aren’t we?’
‘I should say we were,’ he said,
‘eeyop! Here we are.’
‘Well!’ she said.
‘Well!’ he said, ‘well.’
Dorothy Parker, quoted in Dodds 1985: 187
TASK 2
Imagine a communication situation for the following text
and then translate it into your first language.
Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled
peppers.
Did Peter Piper pick a peck of pickled
peppers?
If Peter Piper picked a peck of
pickled peppers,
where's the peck of pickled peppers
Peter Piper picked?
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/8136/tonguetwisters.html
TASK 3: Do you agree?
Nida proposed to translate the phrase
‘Lamb of God’ with the phrase ‘Seal of
God’ for an Eskimo audience.
Shakespeare’s sonnet ‘Shall I compare
thee to a summer’s day’ cannot be
semantically translated into a language
where summers are unpleasant.
Bassnett 1991: 23
Newmark’s Semantic
and Communicative Translation
Bissiger Hund
Communicative T
Chien méchant
Beware of the dog
Cuidado com o cão
Attenti al cane
Semantic T
Bad/Savage Dog
Dog that bites
Semantic translation remains within the
original cultural (...). One basic difference
between the two methods is that where
there is a conflict, the communicative
must emphasize the ‘force’ rather than the
content of the message. Thus for ‘Bissiger
Hund’ or ‘Chien méchant’, the
communicative translation ‘Beware of the
Dog!’ is mandatory; the semantic
translations (‘dog that bites’, ‘savage dog’)
would be more informative but less
effective.
Newmark 1981
???????????????
Do you agree with Newmark
that the communicative
approach in the above
example is mandatory?
Why/Why not?
Criticisms levelled at Newmark
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Overabundance of terminology to define
translation approaches (confusing)
Too prescriptive
Too impressionistic in his commentaries on
Ts (pre-linguistic era of TS)
Overemphasis on word/sentence level
HOWEVER
His books have been widely used in
translator education.
Übersetzungswissenschaft
Nida’s science of translation was
especially influential in Germany.
Late 1960s -1970s-1980s
BRD (West Germany)
Wolfram Wills
(Uni. des Saarlandes, Saarbrücken)
DDR (East Germany)
Otto Kade, Albrecht Neubert, Gert Jäger
Leipzig School:T of literature
1. Interlinear / gloss T by native
speakers of SL.
2. TL writer re-writes / produces a
text completely acceptable in
the TC. (from English: Albrecht
Neubert)
Eastern Germany: Leipzig School
First centre of
Übersetzungswissenschaft,
where the
concept of EQUIVALENCE
flourished.
Snell-Hornby 1995: 20
Kade, 1968: technical/special
language translation
4 types of equivalence (unit or word level):
Totale Äquivalenz (1=1) (standardized
termininology)
 Fakultative Äquivalenz (1=N)
(e.g.DE:Spannung; EN: voltage, tension,
suspense, stress, pressure)
 Approximative Äquivalenz (1 to part-of-one
correspondence) (e.g. DE:Himmel;
EN:heaven/sky)
 Null-Äquivalenz (1=0) (culture-bound
terms)

Koller: Einführung in die
Übersetzungswissenschaft, 1979
Koller:
Heidelberg (Germany)
Bergen (Norway)
He distinguishes between
CORRESPONDENCE
and
EQUIVALENCE
CORRESPONDENCE

Field: contrastive linguistics
(comparing and contrasting 2
language SYSTEMS; langue:
foreign language competence)
(e.g., false friends, lexical,
syntactic and morphological
interference)
EQUIVALENCE (E)
It refers to equivalent items in
specific ST-TT pairs and contexts
(parole: compentence in translation)
(Munday, 46-47)
5 types of E:
 Denotative
 Connotative
 Text-normative
 Pragmatic
 Formal
(denotativ)
(konnotativ)
(textnormative)
(pragmatisch)
(formal)
DENOTATIVE EQUIVALENCE
also called ‘content invariance’
It refers to the extralinguistic
content of a text (denotative
meaning).
CONNOTATIVE EQUIVALENCE
also called ‘stylistic equivalence’
It refers to lexical choices
(register/level of formality,
social usage, geographical
usage, emotion, etc.)
(connotative meaning).
TEXT-NORMATIVE
EQUIVALENCE
It is related to the conventions
governing a specific type of text, so
different texts are governed by
different norms.
(Cf. Katarina Reiss, Textypologie; main
difference and advance: her approach is at
text level, not at word and sentence level.
Munday, Chapter 5)
(Kade had talked about general
Textgattungen in 1968)
PRAGMATIC EQUIVALENCE
also called ‘communicative
equivalence’
It focusses on the receiver of
the message/text.
FORMAL EQUIVALENCE
also called ‘expressive equivalence’
It is related to the aesthetics of the
text, focussing on individual stylistic
features of the ST such as puns,
metaphors, etc.
TRANSLATIONALLY RELEVANT
TEXT ANALYSIS

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Koller proposes the following
checklist for translators when doing
their text analysis:
Language function
Content characteristics
Language-stylistic characteristics
Formal-aesthetic characteristics
Pragmatic characteristics
EQUIVALENCE:
TERTIUM COMPARATIONIS
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The concept of equivalence is central in
linguistically oriented schools of
translation theory (seen as a branch of
Applied Linguistics).
The debate shifts from the diad ‘literal
vs free’ T to an interlingual element
termed equivalence but never fully
explained which becomes the tertium
comparationis.
This can be seen in Nida (1964/1969),
Catford (1965), Kade (1968), Koller
(1979), Wills (1980)
Äquivalenzdiscussion
According to Mary Snell-Hornby, in West
Germany this debate “reached its climax
during the 1970s, although (. . .) little was
added that was new or original. Koller’s
five equivalence types, for example, as
presented in 1979, represent little more
than a reshuffling of other equivalence
types.”
Snell-Hornby 1995: 20-21
Around 1980s
1981 – In Approaches to Translation
Newmark wrote:
“Other subjects, such as the unit of
translation, translation equivalence
(. . .) I regard as dead ducks —
either too theoretical or too
arbitrary.”
Snell-Hornby 1995:21
1980s
It became clear that ‘equivalence’ and
‘Äquivalenz’ were not the same
concept.
Equivalence: too vague, similarity??
Äquivalenz: static, rigorously scientific
constant.
Snell-Hornby 1995:21
1980s: Mary Snell-Hornby, Hönig
and Kussmaul, Holz-Mänttäri
The concept of equivalence is unsuitable for
translation studies.
The term equivalence, apart from being
immprecise and ill-defined (…) presents an
illusion of symmetry between languages
which hardly exists beyond the level of
vague approximations and which distorts
the basic problems of translation.
Snell-Hornby: 22
BUT:
Equivalence is still
alive and kicking!