Some perspectives on translation In Chapter 1 we had a glimpse of how complex translation is. This complexity comes about not only because of the problems of pinning down the meaning of an original text, but because of the need to restate that meaning in another text. Different perspectives on translation have focused attention on different aspects of that process and these differences are what the present chapter is concerned with. Focus on the original text ¥ In this approach, particular attention is paid to the original text as an example of how a particular language works, with a view to noting how it contrasts with the language into which it is to be translated. Translation from this point of view is related to contrastive linguistics. There are, however, some crucial differ- ences, While contrastive linguists are interested in equivalences of linguistic categories within and across languages, transla- tion scholars focus on equivalence in texts, in the actual use of the languages and their component parts in communicative situations. The relevant question for translation is how far the meaning of a text produced in language A can be expressed in a text in language B. Translation does, however, draw on the findings of contrast- ive linguistics: many translation problems can be described on the basis of differences across linguistic systems. For instance, descriptions of how concepts such as time are encoded in differ- ent tense systems can inform translation strategies used for deal- ing with descriptions of events in another language. Contrastive SOME PERSPECTIVES ON TRANSLATION TS16 linguistics becomes even more relevant when it extends its scope to deal not only with linguistic forms but with the way they are typically used in different languages to organize information, perform communicative acts, or express attitude, How far lan- guages do and do not correspond in general across these differ- ent levels obviously gives crucial guidance to the translator when it comes to establishing correspondences across particular texts in different languages. Some approaches to language description are more relevant to translation than others. Formal approaches as exemplified by generative or cognitive grammar are generally not very useful for translation because they are primarily concerned with the encoded or semantic meaning as exemplified by sentences; lan- guage use, however, consists of texts not sentences, and texts are not just strings of sentences. So how one interprets a text involves more than just deciphering its constituent sentences— though deciphering the sentence may be a starting point. In other words, while these formal models of linguistic description have their relevance for translation, it is limited. More promising for translation are functional theories of lan- guage. These give priority to language use in social communi- cative situations and examine how language, situation, and culture hang together. Particularly influential for translation is Hallidayan functional linguistics with its emphasis on a system- atic connection between linguistic forms and their. functions. For Halliday, linguistic forms are the semantic encodings of the social functions that a language has evolved to serve. Hallidayan systemic-functional grammar adds an extra dimension to semantic meaning—and so, one might argue, provides more insights for the translator. It is not just sentences as formal objects, but as messages, as exchanges, as representations, that are being focused on. But these functions are still semantic and accounted for within the sentence. They do not account for the way language functions pragmatically in texts. Texts, however, of primary importance in translation, are located in contexts, and can then be seen in terms of conventions of use or register. We will deal with the important concept of register in greater detail in Chapter 3. So far we have been considering the relevance to translation of a focus on the text using linguistically informed analyses. SURVEYPerhaps the most notable examples of text-oriented approaches to translation are those of Catford and Nida. Both are concerned with making the source and target texts as closely equivalent in meaning as possible—though for different reasons, and with dif- ferent theoretical backgrounds. An important feature of J.C. Catford’s early classic A Linguistic Theory of Translation is its view of meaning: mean- ing is not assumed to be ‘transferred’ from an original to its translation; rather it can only be replaced, so that it functions in a comparable way in its new contextual and textual environ- ment. This insight is crucial for translation in that it implies a view of meaning as being inextricably enmeshed in the context of use of a linguistic unit. It is then only through a referral of lin- guistic units to their context of situation that meaning replace- ment becomes possible. And translation can occur because both original texts and translation texts can be relatable to function- ally relevant features of the sociocultural situation enveloping the texts. While the idea of transference suggests that there is meaning contained within the original text which is taken out and given a different verbal expression, replacement suggests that the meaning is a function of the relationship between text and context, and so can only be replaced by in some way repli- cating the relationship. Catford makes a crucial distinction between formal corres- pondence and textual equivalence in translation. Formal cor- respondence is a matter of the language system (langue), textual equivalence a matter of the realization of that system (parole). Formal correspondence between items in the original and in the translation exists whenever a category in the target language has approximately the same position in its system of langue as the corresponding category in the source language. For instance, the coordinate conjunctions ‘and’ in English and und in German function in basically similar ways in the two languages; a transla- tor can therefore easily translate English ‘and’ into German und, and can reach textual equivalence. But there are many other cases where the translator has to routinely engage inso-called translation Shifts, These will involve departures from formal correspondence in the process of going from one language to another using shifts from grammar to lexis and vice versa. For example, translations SOME PERSPECTIVES ON TRANSLATION18 of English verbal aspects into German commonly involve shifts from grammar to lexis. For instance, ‘He was hanging up his coat when the bell rang’ would be rendered as Er hing gerade seinen Mantel auf, als es klingelte, where the aspectual form is expressed by the German lexical item gerade. The second classic attempt to develop a separate linguistic approach to translation is Eugene Nida’s sociolinguistic theory of translation. Nida’s interest in translation stems from Bible translation, in which he had been personally involved for a long time. In Nida’s view, translation is first and foremost directed towards its recipients. He therefore takes account of the differ- ences between source text and target text recipients in terms of their expectation norms and their knowledge of the world. Nida sees translation as basically an adaptation of an original (the Bible) to widely. differing linguistic-cultural conventions. Such an adaptation is always necessary: only when a translation is adapted to the needs of the new recipients can it have the intended effect (a missionizing one in the case of the Bible). But despite the necessity to adapt the original message to the immensely vary- ing needs of different addressees, the sacred ‘truth’ of the bibli- cal message in the original text remains important and must be maintained. In order to resolve this dilemma, Nida identifies two different yardsticks for translation, which he calls formal equiva- lence and dynamic equivalence. The former implies a formal orien- tation such that the message in the receptor language is to match as closely as possible the corresponding linguistic forms in the source language, and the latter refers to complete target language ‘naturalness’. This is not unlike Catford’s distinction between formal correspondence and textual equivalence. The method of translation suggested by Nida is a proced- ure developed on the basis of transformational-generative grammar in its early form. Translation is assumed to consist of three phases: analysis, transfer, and reconstruction. For the purpose of translation, the concept of transformation is reconceptualized as ‘paraphrase’. Sentences available in their surface structure are analysed by the translator to yield (via paraphrasing) underlying or ‘kernel sentences’, which are then transferred into similar target language structures that are in turn restructured into a target text. For example, the SURVEY- sentence: ‘John preached a baptism of repentance for the for- giveness of sins’ can be broken down into the following five basic kernels: John preached [ohn baptizes the people] > [The people repent] > [God forgives [The people sin]}]]. In other words, the message as given in language A is first ana- lysed in terms of the grammatical relationships and the meanings of words and their combinations; secondly, this analysed mater- ial is transferred in the mind of the translator from language A to language B; and thirdly, the transferred material is restructured in order to make the message fully acceptable in the receptor language B. To sum up, the focus on the original text in translation is different from contrastive analysis: If it considers texts at all, contrastive analysis uses texts primarily to exemplify abstract categories of the language system. Whereas contrastive analysis uses information from the system to throw light on the texts and looks at what particular parts of the language system mean semantically, translation is about what people mean by the lan- guage pragmatically. In the context of translation, a focus on the (original) text means analysing it, and systematically linking its forms and functions in order to reveal the original author’s motivated choices. The aim is to enable the translator to make his or her own choices. Focus on the process of interpretation By focusing on the source text as described above, there is an implication that meaning is contained within the language itself. But if there is a focus on the process of interpreting a text, attention shifts from the text itself to a process involving a human being, a reader and his or her cognitive and emotive activity. That is to say, there is a shift from the semantics of the text to the pragmatics of text interpretation. The essential idea here is that when readers understand a text, they bring to SOME PERSPECTIVES ON TRANSLATION 1920 it their subjective understanding, their personal background, and their contextual knowledge, and they actively and entirely make sense of the text. In opposition to Nida’s idea of making the Bible reader-friendly but at the same time never losing sight of the Biblical text and its core meaning, adherents focusing exclusively on the process of understanding the original text deny that texts have such independent core meanings. The text is thus not regarded as having a life of its own, but can only be brought to life by the process of interpretation. It starts to live in the act of text interpretation. In ‘receiving’ an original text, the translator engages in a cyclical learning process—from the text to the interpretation to the text and back again. This cycle finally leads to a so-called ‘melting of horizons’ between the translating person and the text. From this point of view, translation involves understanding the original text by ‘appropriating’ its meaning. In the act of under- standing, the text gradually loses its ‘foreignness’. The translator builds up an individual mental representation of its meaning, which is then reformulated in the act of rendering it into another text. Reformulation is not different in kind from any other text production—only different in degree. The reconstitution of ‘the meaning’ of a text to fit another language and context is not central here. Rather it is the type of representation of the text in the translator’s mind, arising in the act of understanding the ori- ginal, which counts in translation. The translator, as the one who understands the source text and then formulates it as the target text, is at the centre of all acts of translation. It is thus not a mat- ter of finding the sense contained in a text and then adjusting it to suit a receptor (as suggested by Nida), but of making sense of a text by interpretation. We are dealing here more with invention than discovery of what is already there in the text. The focus on the individual translator’s process of inter- preting a text remains problematic not only because the cen- tral notion of what is meant by understanding is never clearly defined, but also because it is altogether too one-sided in its focus on this initial process in the translation cycle. Clearly, translation must involve understanding the original text, but it also, and equally importantly, involves the motivated making of a new text. SURVEY litesFocus on variable interpretations: cultural, ideological, literary Whereas the focus on an individual’s interpretation hinges on the idea that the conditions of the reception of a text by an indi- vidual determine how the text is understood and translated, it is also possible to focus on variable interpretations of a text. These are conditioned by cultural factors, and they depend on cultural presuppositions. The fundamental idea here is that there is no reality independ- ent of how human beings perceive it through their culturally tinted glasses. Consequently, it is the way texts are perceived that is real and not the texts themselves. From this point of view, it becomes possible to think of an original text as being dependent on its translation rather than the other way round, and as having existence only through its translated versions. Such a perspec- tive challenges the traditional view of a text having some sort of stable meaning authorized by its producer. While the denial of any such stability of meaning is of course compatible with the focus on the process of individual interpretation, an emphasis on externally conditioned variable interpretations sees the role of the translator not so much as a free individual but as a social being acculturated into a particular community. Translation is essentially a matter of variable interpretation of a text and the author’s creative role in text-making is undermined; the transla- tot is licensed to manipulate the original for purposes of experi- menting with norms of usage and commenting on the original, rather than translating it in the usual sense of the word. Indeed, from this perspective, translators are encouraged to modify the original, opening up new avenues for ‘difference’ and postpon- ing indefinitely any possibility that the ‘meaning’ of the original text be grasped in any conclusive way. The irrelevance and remaking of the original The most provocative formulation of this view is that the transla- tor actually creates the original text. This is in line with ‘decon- structing’ both the notions of authorship and the authority of the original. The original text is thought to be continuously SOME PERSPECTIVES ON TRANSLATION 2122, ‘rewritten’ with each new translation (each, new ‘reading’) recon- structing the original. The question arises, however, as to how far this licence should run: does a translator really have the right to engage in such ‘creative rewriting’, especially. in cases where both author and text have an established standing in the source culture? Has not a translator an ethical responsibility to both? And if the original text is irrelevant, why, one may ask, doesn’t the translator write his or her own text to start with? One answer to this last question is that although a translation may seek to hide the presence of the original, it can nevertheless serve to ensure its survival to make it ‘live on’ and ‘live beyond the means of the original author’, just as a mother lives on through her child. It is this function of enabling texts to acquire a sort of ‘afterlife’, it is argued, which gives a translation its true value. In other words, the translator gives life to the original by giving it a cultural relevance it would not otherwise have. But the privileged position of the author as meaning-maker can not only be questioned but also challenged as an imposition of authority. This authority, it can be argued, needs to be unmasked as causing unequal power relations. English, for example, with its global reach, can be seen as an ‘imperialist’ language and translations from English into other (‘colonized’ and ‘dom- inated’) languages can be viewed as increasing the ‘hegemony’ of the English language. We have here a shift in emphasis from the cultural to the political, and we are moving from interpretations by individuals or sociocultural instigations to open intervention, that is, translation motivated by an external cause or by a critical approach to existing societal states. Apart from resisting the influence of global ‘hegemonic’ English by pushing towards increased translations into (not from) English to increase awareness of other cultures and languages, translators are asked to make deliberate changes in viewpoints and expressions in texts whenever they are confronted with an imperialist or ‘Orientalist’ view. An example would be to resist glorifying Columbus in a text about South America or depicting Arabs as exotic, cruel, sensual, and potentially threatening—in short, as terrorist beings. Furthermore, in this view, translators are urged to make vis- ible the hidden processes of selecting certain texts for translation SURVEYwhile leaving out others; they are encouraged to use their own translations to ‘strike back’ against hegemonic powers. They are also incited to ‘devour’ the original, making it innocuous by ‘cannibalizing’ it. Cannibalistic views of translation thus also relativize the concept of the ‘original’, dismantling it as a sign of unequal power. In so doing, they also throw the entire notion of translation into question. . In adopting a ‘resistant translation strategy’, translators are urged to reveal the foreign original in the translated text rather than attempt to conceal it. For example, in a text on the benefits of the invasion of a country by a foreign power, where the source and its ideological stance are deliberately left out, the translator should make the source official. When a translation reads fluently, it appears not to have been translated at all. But fluency in a translation text also annihi- lates differences between source and target communities, and it renders the translator invisible. If, however, translators want to successfully fight their own ‘invisibility’, they must make their translations ‘visible’ as sites of linguistic and cultural difference and deliberate re-constitutions of new texts that deviate from their originals. The right of a translator to assert different cultural values informs a view of translation that emphasizes the role of gen- der and the necessity for ‘gender awareness’ in translation; the role of women translators has been influential in this and in the way women are represented in translations. Feminist transla- tion scholars demand an openly feminist stance and a deliberate transformation of original texts in the interests of feminist ideol- ogy and their celebration of difference. Taken together, the message for translators in these ‘post- modern’ views is also sometimes that they should emancipate themselves from their traditional position of being ‘servants’ to the original text and its author. They are given the freedom to go beyond what is conventionally seen as translating and cre- ate new and different texts, often motivated by socio-political agendas. The idea that the translated text has its own independent significance is also sometimes seen as particularly relevant to the translation of literature. Here, too, the original text is then SOME PERSPECTIVES ON TRANSLATION 23thought to matter very little. It is the way translations relate to the target language literature which is of overriding importance. The crucial consideration here is how translated texts fit into and affect the target literary system. What is relevant is not only how texts are translated but why they were selected for translation in the first place, how they are received, and how they compare with existing texts in the target literature. The focus shifts from the original text and the intentions that led to its production to the conditions of reception, and to the significance that a trans- lated version might have in a different culture. In this view of translation, the translator is thought to be strongly influenced by the conventions or ‘norms’ of text produc- tion and reception in the target culture. The concept of a norm is in fact the key concept for coming to grips with the socially and culturally conditioned network of relations between different translation texts in the target culture and also between transla- tors, their critics, and readers. One can arrive at such translation norms by a comparative examination of several translations of one and the same original text undertaken in different periods by different translators. This comparison can reveal the different norms of translation at different times, bringing out the often unconscious rules that influence a translator’s decision processes. Translation norms are seen as part, of the entire complex system of the target culture, for which the term polysystem has been coined. A polysystem refers to the entire network of lit- erary and extra-literary systems within a society. All kinds of writing within a given culture, from its central canonical texts to the most marginal, to ‘imported’ translated texts can be situ- ated therein. System-internal comparisons may reveal whether and how translated texts adopt certain conventions as a result of their relation to other texts in the target language system. The term ‘poly’ indicates this complexity and interconnectedness of texts, norms, and relations. Also of particular interest is the innovative influence transla- tions as ‘cultural imports’ can have on the literary traditions and current conventions of the target cultural system. Translations have been used through the ages as tools for developing national languages and literatures, when, for example, classical traditions helped to establish national canons, or when colonial literatures SURVEYrose to fame under the influence of translated literatures. Well known examples are the influence which the translations of Shakespeare’s works have had on German literature, and the enormous impact Luther’s translation of the Bible has had on the development of the German language. Such a view of translation necessarily directs attention to the historical development of target culture literary norms and the changeable nature of translation over time and across cultures, when texts were continually renewed in conformity with differ- ent cultural norms. For example, translations of Shakespeare into French in accordance with the conventions of the classical theatre are quite different as literary works from later German translations, which are characterized by an all-pervading roman- ticism reflecting the German Zeitgeist at the time. More recent examples are the countless ‘realistic’ translations of Shakespeare’s plays, through which we encounter Shakespeare transformed into an almost native modern playwright. Translated texts are understood as situated in their target sociocultural context, so that the study of literature is integrated with the study of the social and economic forces of history. Such an integration allows comparisons of different translations of one and the same source text across time and space. An example is the way German children’s books were translated into Hebrew before and after the Second World War, when all traces of the origins of the texts such as German names, locations, and so on were eradicated. ‘A serious drawback to this approach is that the derived ver- sion of a text may depart so radically from the original in the interests of cultural adaptability that it becomes impossible to determine whether it is actually a translation or a text that owes its existence to some other textual operation, such as paraphras- ing, summarizing, ‘actualizing’, or ‘popularizing’ an original text. While one might argue that all translation implies a certain degree of adaptation of the original, there must be some limits as to how far this can go while still claiming that the derived text is a translation. Can translation really be considered a completely relative term, dependent on the forces of history and the poly- systems of culture? We will take up this important issue again in Chapters 3 and 4. SOME PERSPECTIVES ON TRANSLATION 2526 Focus on the purpose of a translation Just as upgrading the translated text in line with a focus on target culture norms denies the integrity of the original text, so too does a focus on the purpose (or skopos) of the translated text. Here the focus is on making the translation ‘relevant’ to the recipients. Target culture norms are crucial, because it is in the target cultural environment that the translation will have to achieve its purpose. Consequently, the role of the original, and its linguistic make-up is diminished. At the same time, the position of the translator, who is in fact often referred to as a ‘co-author’, is given more status and esteem, as he or she is seen as holding the key to fulfilling the all-important purpose of functional relevance. Since the original is here reduced to the status of an ‘offer of information’, its linguistic forms and meanings lose importance as well. Again, the critical issue is whether-a text is assumed to have some kind of ‘core meaning’ independent of the meaning which the recipients of a text earmarked for a certain purpose ascribe to it. In the case of business correspondence, mail order catalogues, sales reports, tourist brochures, instructions for use, technical texts, advertisements, etc., one might well argue that they have very little core meaning worth maintaining. Such texts can easily be ‘recast’ for new audiences, particularly since they tend to focus on the recipients’ immediate actions. It is decidedly not what the author talks about in the original text, but the effect the translated text has on its recipients that matters. And this effect can often only be captured at the expense of the original’s semantic meaning. But, we may ask, does this focus on effect justify a disregard for the original text in all text types? For many literary and scien- tific texts of historical significance, it may be essential to render meaning faithfully, and they deserve a degree of autonomy from recipients. In other words, the specific properties of such texts may need to exert some control over how they are to be interpreted. Summary Given its complexity, translation can, and indeed must be approached from different perspectives—linguistic, cultural, SURVEYsocio-political, literary, purpose-oriented. Linguistic perspectives on translation, which focus on the original text, have recently widened their scope considerably—from a concern with lexical and semantic meaning to embracing functional and pragmatic views of language. Scholars who sympathize with the other more psychosocial, more ‘subjective’ perspectives on translation some- times deny the very relevance of the original text, emphasizing the importance of the relevance and effect of the target text. A focus on variable, culturally conditioned interpretations of texts, and on the purpose of a translation are the most recent, late twentieth century contributions to the field. SOME PERSPECTIVES ON TRANSLATION 27