TRANSLATION Lecture 1
SOME DATES IN THE HISTORY OF TRANSLATION • • • 3000 BC, Ancient Egypt: interpreters were employed to help in carrying on trade with the neighbouring country of Nubia. 1900 BC, Babylon: there appeared partial translations of the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh into Southwest Asian languages and the first known bilingual (Sumerian-Akkadian) dictionary. 1800 BC, Assyria: there existed a board of translators headed by chief translator. 356 -323 BC: in the armies of Alexander the Great, the Emperor of Macedonia, interpreters were distinguished by badges with the logo of a parrot. 280 BC: the history of European translation started with the translation of some excerpts of the Holy Scriptures (Святого Писання) from Hebrew into Ancient Greek. It was a literal, word-forword translation. 106 -43 BC: Roman Empire: Cicero translated into Latin the speeches of the most eloquent Greek orators and introduced the principles of sense-to-sense translation, which he theoretically grounded for translations of secular works: he maintained that the main aim of translators was to convey the sense and the style of the source text and not the meaning of separate words and their placement in the text being translated. Late 10 th – early 11 th century, Kyivan Rus’: regular and uninterrupted translation activity started and continued for some 250 years. According to Nestor the Chronicler, the Great Prince of Kyivan Rus’ Yaroslav the Wise “gathered together in 1037 in the St. Sophia’s Cathedral many translators (писарі) to translate books from Greek into the Old Slavonic language”. Mid-18 th century: consequent to the Industrial Revolution, there appeared dedicated schools and professional associations for some translation specialties. 1940 s: first attempts were made to automate translation (machine translation) or to mechanically aid the human translator (computer-assisted translation).
Three important functions of translation (P. Newmark): 1) Translation has always been instrumental in transmitting culture. E. g. , up to the 19 th century European culture was drawing heavily on Latin and Greek translations. 2) Translation is a force for progress. E. g. , translations of scientific publications have always provided the impetus for new research, inventions and discoveries. 3) As a means of communication, translation is used in a variety of text formats, from poetry and plays to articles, contracts, treaties, laws, notices, instructions, advertisements, publicity, reports, correspondence. Its volume has increased with the use of the mass media, the increase in the number of independent countries, and the growing recognition of the importance of linguistic minorities in all the countries of the world. “From Translation all science had its offspring. ” Giordano Bruno
WHAT IS LANGUAGE? • “…language is a CODE used for the communication of meaning. ” (Bell: 8) • Alternatively we can say that language is 1) a formal structure (a code) and 2) a communication system. • The process of language communication involves sending a message by a message sender to a message recipient – the sender encodes his mental message into the code of a particular language and the recipient decodes it using the same code (language). • Сommunication can be monolingual or bilingual. The latter kind of communication begets the demand for translation.
Some definitions of translation • • • “Translation is the expression in another language (or target language – TL) of what has been expressed in another, source language – SL, preserving semantic and stylistic equivalences. ”(J. Dubois et al. Dictionnaire de linguistique. Larousse, 1973) «Переводом называется процесс преобразования речевого произведения на одном языке в речевое произведение на другом языке при сохранении неизменного плана содержания, то есть значения» (Бархударов Л. С. Язык и перевод. Вопросы общей и частной теории перевода. М. : 1975). «Перевод – это вид языкового посредничества, который всецело ориентирован на иноязычный оригинал. Перевод рассматривается как иноязычная форма существования сообщения, содержащегося в оригинале. Межъязыковая коммуникация, осуществляемая через посредство перевода, в наибольшей степени воспроизводит процесс непосредственного речевого общения, при котором коммуниканты пользуются одним и тем же языком» (Комиссаров В. Н. Теория перевода. М. : 1990). «As a means of interlingual communication, translation is a transfer of meaning across cultures» ( Бурак А. Л. "Введение в практику письменного перевода с русского языка на английский", М. : 2002). «Перевод - важное вспомогательное средство, которое обеспечивает выполнение языком его функция общения, когда люди выражают свои мысли на разных языках. Таким образом, справедливо трактовать перевод как акт межъязыковой коммуникации» (А. Д. Швейцер «Теория перевода: статус, проблемы, аспекты» . М. : 1988). «Перевод - это передача смысла того, что сказано (написано) на одном языке, средствами другого языка» (В. С. Слепович. "Курс перевода". Минск: 2002)
V. N. KOMISSAROV’S DEFINITION OF TRANSLATION • Translation is a means of interlingual communication that makes it possible an exchange of information between the users of different languages by producing in TL a text which has an identical communicative value with the source (or original) text (ST). This target text (TT, that is the translation) is not fully identical with ST as to its form or content due to the limitations imposed by the formal and semantic differences between SL and TL. Nevertheless the users of TT identify it, to all intents and purposes, with ST – functionally, structurally and semantically.
TRANSLATION AS AN INTERLINGUAL COMMUNICATIVE ACT Translation as an interlingual communicative act includes 2 stages: (1) communication between the ST sender and the translator, (2) communication between the translator and the TT receptor. ST Sender → Translator → TT Receptor The functions of the translator: In Stage 1, acting as a SL receptor, the translator analyzes the original message (ST). In Stage 2, after extracting the information contained in ST, the translator acts as a TT sender, producing an equivalent message in TL and redirecting it to the TL receptor.
LINGUISTIC AND EXTRALINGUISTIC ASPECTS OF TRANSLATION • Тhe information conveyed by linguistic signs alone, i. e. the messages overtly expressed in the text, would not be sufficient for adequate translation. Еffective translation is impossible without an adequate knowledge of the speech act situation and the situation described in the text. • The phrase “Two on the aisle” would hardly make much sense unless it is known that the conversation takes place at a box-office speech act situation (“ Два места ближе к проходу” ). • The phrase “ Поворотом рычага установить момент поступления воздуха в цилиндр” was translated “Turn the handle until the air comes into the cylinder” because the translator was familiar with the situation described in ST.
WHAT MAKES TRANSLATION POSSIBLE? “Basically, replacement of ST by TT of the same communicative value is possible because both texts are produced in human speech governed by the same rules and implying the same relationships between language, reality and the human mind. All languages are means of communication, each language is used to externalize and shape human thinking, all language units are meaningful entities related to non-linguistic realities, all speech units convey information to the communicants. ” V. Komissarov
CAN ANYTHING BE TRANSLATED? • • • Historically, the social issues may well pre-date the linguistic ones, and be rooted in the belief that sacred texts containing arcane truths must not be profаned by explicating, disseminating or translating them (BIBLE, JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN; QUR’ĀN). In the Christian world, translatability was taken for granted: the Bible was overwhelmingly read and subsequently exported in translation, so ‘truth’ could be expressed in any language and therefore it exists independently of language. Debates about translatability consider translation as integral interlingual representation involving texts of comparable length. When translation is taken in the broadest sense as the condition that enables communication in the first place, translatability tends to be accepted more readily. Full translatability, in the sense of an integral reproduction of a text’s full signification, may be possible only in the case of artificial formal languages. Complete untranslatability would imply the impossibility of communication. Linguistically speaking, the different approaches to the question of translatability derive from fundamentally opposing views of the nature of language and meaning (universalist versus monadist). The former affirm the possibility of translation, the latter either deny it or regard translation as highly problematical.
TRANSLATABILITY: arguments for • The universalist view considers the differences between languages to be surface phenomena only. In principle, translatability is guaranteed by biological factors and cultural considerations. All human brains are wired in the same way. We all inhabit the same physical world, hence there is a common core of human experience. • In the universalist perspective, language is typically seen as comprising two layers, a surface and a deep structure. Ideas and meaning are generated at the deeper layer and can be represented by a variety of surface linguistic structures. • Form is material and perceptible, and varies from language to language, while meaning is invisible and can be extrapolated from the form that carries it. Тranslation transfers meanings by substituting one carrier (form) for another. • Different languages may package meaning differently, but ultimately all languages are able to convey all possible meanings. • “All cognitive experience and its classification is conveyable in any existing language. • Languages differ essentially in what they must convey and not in what they may convey”. R. Jacobson
UNTRANSLATABILITY: arguments for • • • Тhe monadist case may be summed up as follows. In their different grammatical and lexical structures, individual languages embody and therefore impose different conceptualizations of the world. The structural asymmetries between languages prevent conceptual mapping from one language to another due to the lack of analogues and the absence of a language-independent mapping tool. The French linguist Emile Benveniste (1958): the supposedly universal logical categories of the ancient Greeks were based on features of their language. The consequence is that different languages may give rise to incommens∫urable logics. Languages are embedded in the cultural environment of which they are a constitutive part. This reciprocity between language and culture and the asymmetries between different lifeworlds, which are also language-worlds, make translation impossible. The monadist view was articulated by the German Romantics, notably Johann Gottfried Herder, Wilhelm von Humboldt and Friedrich Schleiermacher, and taken up in the twentieth century by Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf (hence the ‘Sapir–Whorf hypothesis’). For Herder, all cross-cultural comparison was problematic because each culture, and its language, had to be assessed on its own terms. Von Humboldt presented untranslatability as a challenge to be taken up. Schleiermacher too asked whether translation was not a foolish undertaking, and outlined it as a task as unending as that of understanding. J. Herder W. von Humboldt F. Schleiermacher
DOUBTING TRANSLATABILITY (CONTINUED) • • • The monadist view claims that, due to the asymmetries between languages and cultures and the organic link between language and culture, translation understood as a linear discourse replicating another discourse with regard to both length and meaning is not possible. Approximate renditions can be achieved, or explanatory paraphrase; texts may also be translatable up to a point or in certain limited respects. Untranslatability, then, mostly appears in relative form. There always remains an untranslatable rest, for instance in the shape of connotation, nuance or poetic quality. Untranslatability is subdivided into two kinds, linguistic and cultural. For J. C. Catford (1965), linguistic untranslatability occurs in cases where ambiguity or polysemy (шуба) is functionally relevant in a text , cultural untranslatability when situational features that are referred to in an original (sauna, igloo) are absent in the culture of the translating language. А prohibition against translating certain texts can be regarded as untranslatability: the QUR’ĀN is institutionally untranslatable. Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf is untranslatable because the copyright holder, the German State of Bavaria, routinely refuses permission. Conversely, a language may be deemed incapable of accommodating certain concepts, e. g. religious terms should not be rendered into native languages but are to be used by the natives in Latin to avoid contamination by pagan beliefs. In the 20 th century, Jacques Derrida cast untranslatability as both a critical asset and a positive challenge, inviting and daring the translator to tackle the impossible. The more untranslatable a text, the more insistently it begs and demands to be translated. Conversely, a wholly translatable text would not be worth translating.
ROMAN JACOBSON ABOUT TRANSLATABILITY AND UNTRANSLATABILITY • • • All cognitive experience and its classification is conveyable in any existing language. Whenever there is deficiency, terminology may be qualified and amplified by loan-words or loan-translations, neologisms or semantic shifts, and finally, by circumlocution. Thus in the newborn literary language of the Northeast Siberian Chukchees, “screw” is rendered as “rotating nail, ” “steel” as “hard iron, ” “tin” as “thin iron, ” “chalk” as “writing soap, ” “watch” as “hammering heart. ” Even seemingly contradictory circumlocutions, like “electrical horse-car” (трамвай), or “flying steamship”, the Koryak term for the airplane, simply designate the electrical analogue of the horse-car and the flying analogue of the steamer and do not impede communication. No lack of grammatical device in the language translated into makes impossible a literal translation of the entire conceptual information. If some grammatical category is absent in a given language, its meaning may be translated into this language by lexical means. ” It is more difficult to remain faithful to the original when we translate into a language provided with a certain grammatical category from a language devoid of such a category. When translating the English sentence “She has brothers” into a language which discriminates dual and plural, we are compelled either to make our own choice between two statements “She has two brothers”—“She has more than two” or to leave the decision to the listener and say: “She has either two or more than two brothers. ”
ROMAN JACOBSON ABOUT TRANSLATABILITY AND UNTRANSLATABILITY (continued) • • In order to translate accurately the English sentence “I hired a worker, ” a Russian needs supplementary information, whether this action was completed or not and whether the worker was a man or a woman, because he must make his choice between a verb of completive or noncompletive aspect or / and between a masculine and feminine noun. The category of grammatical gender: ways of personifying or metaphorically interpreting inanimate nouns are prompted by their gender. My Sister Life, the title of a book of poems by Boris Pasternak, is quite natural in Russian, where “life” is feminine , but was enough to reduce to despair the Czech poet Josef Hora in his attempt to translate this title, since in Czech this noun is masculine život. In poetry, syntactic and morphological categories, roots, and affixes, phonemes and their components carry their own autonomous signification. Phonemic similarity is sensed as semantic relationship. The pun (paronomasia), reigns over poetic art, and whether its rule is absolute or limited, poetry by definition is untranslatable. If we were to translate into English the traditional formula Traduttore, traditore as “the translator is a betrayer, ” we would deprive the Italian rhyming epigram of all its paronomastic value.