6567555 topics in translation studies

Topics in Translation Studies

Yo-In SongDongguk University, Seoul

Preface

This volume on some of the central issues in Translation Studies was conceived shortly after the publication of my earlier work, Translation: Theory and Practice (1975). The latter was used in graduate courses and seminars at a number of institutions and was found, to my surprise, to be generally useful by instructors and students alike. All the same, however, it was pointed out to me that it contained more "leaks" than a book of that nature warranted. Thus my overriding concern has been to do something about those "leaks" and to rectify the insufficiencies so far noted. To what extent I have succeeded in this endeavor is not for me to judge. I leave it up to my colleagues and critics who will take this work to pieces.

I wish to acknowledge my indebtedness to the Korean Traders Scholarship Foundation, the Songgok Academic and Cultural Foun-dation, the Ministry of Education, and Dongguk University for assistance extended to me in the form of research grants over the past decade or so. My gratitude also goes to the publishers of Language(Ene), Translation (renamed The Translator) (Penyek, Penyekka), KoreaJournal, Dongguk,Journal, and English Teaching for making space available for earlier versions of the various chapters of this book in one format or another. I also wish to thank President Tae-Geun Park of Han Shin Publishing Company for undertaking the publication of this book.

I must confess that I have no way of doing justice to the many helpful suggestions and encouraging remarks that I have received from my colleagues and students here and abroad individually or collectively. I thank them all for their spirit of scholarly camaraderie

and candor. None of these remarks are intended, of course, to gloss

over inadequacies that may be noted in this volume. Needless to say, I am the only one to be held accountable.

10 Yo-In Song

SeoulSeptember 1984

Table of Contents

Preface Vil

Chapter 1. Introduction1.1. Purpose and Scope 11.2. Terms Clarified 4

Chapter 2. Weltanschauung and Translation2.1. Introductory 72.2. Linguistic Relativity 8 2.3. Universals, Weltanschauung, and

Translation Theory 202.4. Concluding Remarks 38

Chapter 3. Sprachgefühl and Translation3.1. Sprachgefühl Defined 413.2. The Cultivation of Sprachgefühl 433.3. Sprachgefühl Dynamics and Translation 503.4. A Post-Chomskyan Task 60

Chapter 4. The Translatable Core Structure4.1. Preliminary Studies 634.2. The Core Structure Traced 644.3. Concluding Remarks 71

Chapter 5. The Transeme5.1. Introductory 735.2. The Transeme Delineated 745.3. Concluding Remarks 80

Chapter 6. Literary Translation6.1. Computer vs. Human Translation 836.2. The Translator's Bilingual Competence85

6.3. Some Syntactic and Semantic Problems 91

6.4. Paraphrase and Circumlocution 98

6.5. Concluding Remarks • 100

Chapter 7. Linguistics and Literature7.1. Introductory 103 7.2. The American Scene 104 7.3. The European Scene 109 7.4. The Korean Scene 112 7.5. Concluding Remarks 114

Glossary 116 Bibliography 127 Index 137 The Table of Romanization 147

Chapter 1

Introduction

1.1. Purpose and Scope

The purpose of this book is twofold: to present an updated version of my work on some of the central issues in the study of translation and to augment my earlier work (Song 1975), a modest venture undertaken to describe the process of cross-lingual transfer on a more or less rigorous basis. I call it a venture because an element of risk was a foregone conclusion at a time when writing about as "diffuse" a topic as translation was felt to be passé in the vortext of the so-called Chomskyan revolution in linguistics.

Now that there are signs that Chomsky is being trimmed to his proper size -he has never professed to be a linguistic panacea, after all-and that one even hears about an impending post-Chomskyan era, it becomes imperative that the discipline of translation be put in its proper perspective. There is no doubt that some of the Chomskyan tenets were a welcome relief to a student of translation who had been groping in the dark for that unique property which enabled us to translate across language boundaries. The idea of a finite system of

abstract rules generating an infinite number of surface structures and that of a universal base underlying all languages were a breakthrough of no mean significance to the discipline.'

'Chomsky (1965) and Chomsky (1972) contain insights that have lasting implications for the discipline of translation. More recently, articles like Nunberg (1979). Stump (1981), and Kayne (1981) cover areas of inquiry that may materially contribute to translation studies.

1

2 Topics in Translation Studies

Hence I had wasted no time in applying some of those ideas to my own (Song 1975: Chapter 2). I do not for a moment doubt the value of Chomsky's contribution to general linguistic theory and, by extension, to the study of translation. The time I had spent in trying to grasp the essence of his theory had by no means been wasted. Nevertheless, for all the debt we owe to Chomsky for providing deeper insights into the nature of language, it must be frankly admitted that translation has unresolved fundamental issues that a mere school of linguistics cannot even begin to unravel. For translation is a discipline propped up by a broad spectrum of the humanities ranging from ethnography to literary history.2

Translation is inconceivable without a commonality of world views and experience across ethno-linguistic borders. Thus any attempt at in-depth analysis of the process of cross-lingual transfer is bound to fail if it ignores the implications of Weltanschauung. Regrettably, however, I had given short shrift to the topic in 1975. Hence the conception of the second chapter in this volume.

Another elusive phenomenon iii natural language is what can adequately be conveyed by yet another German word, Sprachgefühl, an aspect of language that has somehow been overlooked in the vast literature of modern linguistics. At the time of my earlier publication (Song 1975) I touched upon the topic in a sporadic manner under such loose terms as "tone" and "flavor." It is not clear whether the formulation of a systematic structure ofSprachgefühl is feasible or practicable. But an attempt is made inChapter 3 to look into the matter with some degree of descriptiverigor. Yet I must confess in all candor that what I have to say in thechapter stands guilty of somehow failing to see the woods for the

'Works like Catford (1965) may lead one to conclude that translation is a branch' of applied linguistics, whereas studies like Steiner (1975) point to the need to establish it as a domain of literary

criticism. Neither position seems completely tenable, however.

Introduction 3

trees, innocuous as some of my findings may no doubt appear.'Until the mid-1970s I had gone no further than positing the

translatable core structure as the basic unit of translation. Working along Nida's line of reasoning (Nida 1969), I had been content to merely posit the tertiary structure without explicating its nature and characteristics in any appreciable detail. This has since been felt to be no negligible lacuna, one that had to be grappled with sooner or later. What appear as Chapter 4 and 5 are results of my work to make up for that great missing link. My argument for the establishment of "the pragmantactic prime" as the basic unit of translation, subsequently elaborated and renamed "the transeme," is a challenging one. But I am confident that at least a configuration of one of the most crucial issues in the study of translation has been presented in a more tangible form than has been attempted so far.'

The penultimate chapter is a linguistic overview of literary translation written with the non-specialist in mind. Thus it makes no pretense to exhaustiveness of coverage or systematicity of description. Some essential assumptions and positions are examined in the light of non-too-rigorous linguistic scholarship. Neverthess, the chapter raises some stimulating questions for research in addition to providing some practicable suggestions for solution to some of the intractable problems of literary translation. There is less theory in this chapter than elsewhere partly because the writing of the chapter antedated that of all others by a good number of years even though it appears comparatively late in this volume.

Finally, Chapter 7 is devoted to surveying the field of linguistics as it interacts with literature and vice versa. Admittedly a large order for a book of this scope to tackle, the relationship between linguistics

3As of this writing, I know of no rigorous formulation of any principles regarding the operation of

Sprachgefühl that has been published in the field of translation.

*The term "transeme" was adopted in response to some of my colleagues' less than enthusiastic endorsement of its cumbersome predecessor "pragmantactic prime."


and literature is here summarized in such a way that a student of translation would be able to gain some insights that mal benefit him in his own exploration. Some of the salient features of the major schools of linguistico-literary scholarship based in the various regions of the world are presented in a simplified format. The chapter is written relatively free of specialized terminology for the benefit of the lay reader.

Since the book is addressed to the specialist as well as the beginner in the study of translation, a word of caution is in order. The lay reader would do well to begin by reading the last chapter

first. He may then proceed to Chapter 6, Chapter 3, and Chapter 2, in that order. The remaining chapters, Chapters 4 and 5, are more susceptible of controversy than others and therefore may be delayed to the last because they presuppose a reasonable grounding in linguistic and other related disciplines. It is to be noted that Chapter 5 should be read after Chapter 4. Since the terminology used in this volume carries meanings different from that used in general linguistics and other related disciplines, it is recommended that the Glossary at the end of the book be consulted whenever clarification is needed.'

1.2. Terms Clarified

I have so far deliberately shunned the use of terms like "Translation Theory," "the Science of Translation," "Translatology," and "Translatory (or Translational) Linguistics," all of which have been adopted by various theoreticians.' The discipline of translation as an art has a long history dating from the sixteenth century (Dolet 1540). But it is unclear exactly when the term "Translation Theory" was adopted. It is doubtful that the

'The Glossary is an enlarged version of that in Song (1975).sOne might add Jakobson's intralingual translation, interlingual translation, and intersemiotic translation (lakobson 1960), but here and elsewhere translation is conceived as interlingual translation unless otherwise qualified.

Introduction

origin of the term could even be traced. It seems that the term "Translation Theory" is accepted by more people than in the case of its competitors. All the other terms are relatively new in that their first use can be traced with some accuracy. For the purposes of this volume I have taken the liberty of using Translation Theory, Translation Studies, and Translatology interchangeably.

The term "Science of Translation" is apt to be confusing in' that the process of translation per se might be construed as a science. What the term means is that translation can be subjected to scientific scrutiny even though it is an artistic process. The term "Translatology" has the effect of rendering the discipline more systematic and rigorous-sounding because of the suffix "-ology."' The term "Translatory (or Translational) Linguistics" in effect subordinates translation to linguistics much as Mathematical Linguistics does to Mathematics. Hence the most unassuming, catholic, broad-based term "Translation Studies" has been chosen for the title of this book.

x

'Curiously enough, no one seems to have proposed the equally scientific-sounding suffix "-ics" to make it "Translatics."

Chapter 2 '

Weltanschauung and Translation

2.1. Introductory

An explanatorily adequate theory of translation must take into account the implications of Weltanschauung' as it affects the process of cross-lingual communication. It appears, however, that only a few translation theorists thus far have seriously concerned themselves with this problem. Mounin (1963) and Bassnett-McGuire (1980) are perhaps the only works that have full chapters devoted to the task. Nida (1964) contains very useful observations on some essential aspects of the problem under diverse headings. Nida (1975a, b) provide additional semantico-ethnographical data bearing on the problem. Elsewhere it seems that the topic of Weltanschauung is either given short shrift or shelved completely. This is because a majority of translation theorists have been more or less preoccupied with the stylistico-esthetic dimension of translation. But it is obvious that they owe it to themselves to balance it out by paying due attention to problems of Weltanschauung as well.

A proper treatment of Weltanschauung necessarily involves a review and reappraisal of the Linguistic Relativity hypothesis' ultimately traceable to Johann Georg Hamann (1762) and Johann Gottfried Herder (1772) and propounded by Wilhelm von Humboldt

'The English equivalent "world view" will also be used interchangeably throughout this study.

2The alternative designation "the linguistic Weltanschauung hypothesis" and the more popular term

"the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis" will also be used interchangeably hereafter.

•' 8 Topics in Translation Studies

(1836), Edward Sapir (1921, 1924, 1929, 1931), Benjamin Lee Whorf (1940a, 1940b, 1942), Jost Trier (1932), Johann Leo Weisgerber (1949), and others.' It must be noted at the outset that translation has often been cited as empirical evidence for the existence of a commonality of world views across ethnolinguistic boundaries. The circularity of this position is only too apparent. We may argue that translation is possible because there are universals of Weltanschauung across ethnolinguistic borders.

If we were to subscribe to the extreme form of linguistic relativity, we would have to negate a priori the possibility of translation in toto. On the other hand, an espousal of the universalist position would extricate translation from such ubiquitous pitfalls as distorting the message of the original and producing effects unintended by theoriginal author. It appears that we must somehow settle for thehappy medium if the ubiquity and relative success of the heterotelicactivity of translation are to be accounted for in any convincing

manner.It will be the aim of this study to examine some implications of

Weltanschauung in translation theory as a whole and especially as it affects the process of translation between such genetically distant

languages as English and Korean.

2.2. Linguistic Relativity

2.2.1. OVERVIEW. Wilhelm von Humboldt was probably the most articulate proponent in the nineteenth century of what is now known as the Linguistic Relativity hypothesis. He held that each separate language, even the most despised dialect, should be looked upon as an organic whole, different from all the rest and expressing the individuality of the people speaking it, something characteristic

3See Basilius (1952), Brown (1970), and Penn (1972) for overviews of the Humboldtian conception of linguistic

relativity. We should probably add to the list Charles Bally, Marcel Granet, Claude Levi-Strauss, Jean Piaget, Alf

Sommerfelt, and Ludwig Wittgenstein.

Weltanschauung and Translation ` 9

of each nation's psyche and indicating the peculiar way in which

that nation attempts to realize the ideal of speech (Humboldt 1836:92ff). In the twentieth century Sapir and Whorf have been the most influential advocates of linguistic Weltanschauung, winning for it the popular designation "the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis."

Sapir's view of linguistic relativity is three-pronged, covering conceptualization, Weltanschauung and perception. He stated that language powerfully conditions all our thinking about social problems and processes; that the "real world" is to a large extent unconsciously built up on the language habits of the group; and that we see and hear and otherwise experience very largely as we do because the language habits of our community predispose certain choices of interpretation (Sapir 1929).' Sapir's hypothesis was further elaborated by Whorf. He wrote that we dissect nature along lines laid down by our native languages and that the categories and types that we isolate from the world of phenomena we do not find there because they stare every observer in the face; on the contrary, the world is presented in a kaleidoscopic flux of impressions which has to be organized by our minds-and this means largely by the linguistic systems in our minds. Whorf then pointed out that we cut nature up, organize it into concepts, and ascribe significances as we do, largely because we are parties to an agreement to organize it in this way-an agreement that holds throughout our speech community and is codified in the patterns of our language (Whorf 1940a).

Whorfs linguistic relativity "principle" was an outcome of his extensive work principally on the grammatical structure of Hopi. He stated that the principle meant, in informal terms, that users of markedly different grammars are pointed by their grammars toward different types of observations and different evaluations of

*An earlier version of the hypothesis is to be found in Sapir (1921:221): "Languages are invisible garments that drape themselves about our spirit and give a predetermined form to all its symbolic expression."


externally similar acts of observation, and hence are not equivalentas observers but must arrive at somewhat different views of the world (Whorf 1940b). The grammar of each language was regarded not merely as a reproducing instrument for voicing ideas but rather as being itself "the shaper of ideas" (Whorf 1940a). Calling Hopi a ° timeless language,' Whorf noted that various grand generalizations ` of the Western world, such as time, velocity, and matter, are not essential to the construction of a consistent picture of the universe, adding that categories derived from other kinds of experience take over the rulership of the cosmology and seem to function just as well (Whorf 1940a).

By far the strongest claim with regard to linguistic relativity, from the standpoint of translation theory, is to be found in Whorf s statement that a change in language can transform our appreciation of the Cosmos (italics added) (Whorf 1942). Such a view of Whorf s is really an echo of Sapir's postulation published about two decades earlier. According to Sapir, to pass from one language to another is psychologically parallel to passing from one geometrical system of reference to another. The environing world referred to would be the same for either language and so would be the world of points. But the formal method of approach to the expressed item of experience, as to the given point of space, would be so different that the resulting feeling of orientation could be the same neither in the two languages nor in the two frames of reference. Entirely distinct, or at least measurably distinct, formal adjustments would have to be made and these differences should have their psychological correlates (Sapir 1924). ,.

The central idea of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is that language should be regarded not merely as a means of communication but also, and more significantly in terms of translation theory, as a way of defining experience for its speakers. Thus meanings are said to be

5 Whorf took special note of the fact that the Hopi would say, "I left on the fifth day, instead of, "I stayed five

days" (Whorf 1940a).

Weltanschauung and Translation 11

"not so much discovered in experience as imposed upon it, because of the tyrannical hold that linguistic form has upon our orientation in the world" (Sapir 1931). This view, in turn, is a latter-day reflection of the position of Humboldt for whom "the difference between languages derives less from differences in sounds and signs than from differences of world view" (Cassirer 1933). The theme is given yet stronger support by Weisgerber who writes that as an intermediate psychic realm, language is clearly distinct from the area of "objective meanings, particularly of the world of objects, but rather embodies the result of an intellectual remolding of this world" (Weisgerber 1949:13).

It is to be noted that resemblances between the lexically oriented European and the syntactically based American approaches extend beyond generalities to specific details, but there is one exception. It has to do with the sphere of value judgments whereby European writers in general take a view of primitive mentality similar to that espoused once but later rejected by Lévy-Bruhl (1912). In other words, the world perspective stated to be revealed shows the primitive at an early prelogical stage of development." In the United States, however, an equality of valuation is maintained, and the scale, if anything, tends to weigh in favor of the primitive (Greenberg 1954, 1963).

2.2.2. DETRACTORS. As vocal and articulate were the exponents of the principle of linguistic Weltanschauung, there have been equally vocal and articulate detractors who took issue with the philosophical or linguistic basis for such views. L.S. Feuer, a social philosopher, rejected the Whorfian hypothesis on the grounds that all men in the struggle for survival have common problems which result in a "common, universal, scientific mode of thinking which manages to express itself in all languages," and pointed out that on

"Hill (1952) effectively exploded the myth on "prelogical mentality" attributed to the scarcity of generic terms on the part of a primitive people.


a priori grounds one would not expect cultures speaking different languages to have different ways of perceiving space, time, causation, and other fundamental elements of the physical world, because a correct perception of these elements is necessary to survival (Feuer 1953).

The anti-relativistic view of Marcel Mauss, a psychologist, even antedates Whorf. He wrote that on the one hand, the categories of collective thought are not necessarily expressed in the categories of language and, on the other hand, those which are expressed by language are not necessarily those which are the most conscious or most important. Mauss cited the case of Chinese or Polynesian 1

where the division of labor and other forms of discrimination between the sexes are the severest and yet no distinctions are made in the linguistic structure. He concluded that language is but one of the means of expression of collective thought and not the adequate expression of that thought itself (Mauss 1923).

The idea that linguistic structures or categories can influence our modes of thinking in some significant way is an attractive one, but it could easily represent too much of an extrapolation from available data as in the case of Whorf. As Carroll (1955:46) noted, two lines of analysis must be followed in putting the linguistic Weltanschauung problem to the test. First, more information must be secured on a variety of linguistic structures, especially regarding the manner in which various languages express different kinds of abstract relations, i.e., causality, quantity, quality, space and time. Second, experiments on the Weltanschauung problem must be designed in such a way as to control the effect of individual differences and of cultural differences which must be incidentally correlated with linguistic differences.

An extremely relativistic view could lead to the hypothesis that linguistic categories actually influence what the user of a language can perceive-to the extent that he can perceive some things and

cannot perceive others. This would be tantamount to declaring that the native speaker of English is incapable of perceiving the


difference, say, between "hot soup (ttukewun soup-well heated soup)" and "hot soup (maywun soup - peppery hot soup)" because he uses the same adjective for two different perceptual categories. But the truth of the matter is that his actual sensations differ very little from those of a Korean who does not apply the term "ttukewun (hot)" to pepper.' It is possible that the native speaker of English may perceive more readily a relation between the sensation of heat and that of peppery taste. But this does not prove that his general perceptual capacities are significantly different from those of a Korean.

2.2.3. WEAK RELATIVITY. It would be more appropriate to entertain a more conservative or weakened view of linguistic relativity. Thus linguistic structure may predispose the individual to pay attention to some things more than others or to perceive things in one mode rather than in others (Carroll 1955:46). This is another way of saying that languages differ from each other in the way they assign or section semantic spaces or domains. As a result, we are confronted with the problem of cross-linguistic as well as crosscultural opacities (Song 1975:55-66). But this does not alter the fact that different world views and logics can be expressed in the same language, as was demonstrated by Whorf himself when he used English to describe the varying ways in which Hopi, Nootka, and other language systems describe experience.

As Carroll (1955:47) pointed out, aside from the differences arising from culture and technology, contrary to the popularly held misconception, anything that can be said in one language can be said in any other language, and there is no guarantee that our thought habits would be improved by the use of an "advanced" or "different" language. If it were otherwise, a Korean might be

'In one of my experiments in which a bowl of chilled Korean soup containing the usual amount of pepper was offered

to a native speaker of English, his immediate response was, "It's too hot for me." The Yale Romanization is used

for the Korean data throughout this study.


branded an illogical thinker because his language forces him to be one what with its "multiple subjects" and with its optional device of subject deletion. The native speaker of English would fare no better in view of the blatant pattern holes or systematic gaps it exhibits in its syntactic structure (Song 1975:24-25)s.

Declaring that there had been as yet no convincing demonstrations

that languages impose different philosophical orientations, Carroll wrote that his best guess was that the effects of language structure on thinking would be found to be limited and localized, and that it was unlikely that speakers of different languages have, by virtue of the languages they speak, different world views or different degrees of capacity to solve certain problems (Carroll 1964). The lack of grammatical gender in Korean, for instance, proves not that the Koreans share a different world view but that they are not required by their language to pay attention to the trichotomy of sex (i.e., "he," "she," "it"). Other things being equal, there is no reason to believe that a Korean experiences any greater difficulty than an American or Briton does in proving the Pythagorean theorem, for example.

The superabundance of concrete and particular terms in a number of less well-known languages is often cited to "prove" that the speakers of those languages are suffering from faulty powers of generalization. 9 Here again, no reliable evidence has yet -been presented to support the thesis that lexical categorization ipso facto has anything to do with mental capacity and Weltanschauung. Whether a language is deficient in generic terms or abundant in

81t is a commonplace that two bilingual participants in a conversation seldom experience radical changes

in their logics or thinking processes as they continually switch from one language to the other or even

respond in one language to questions framed in the other.9The case of "rice" can be cited. Korean has "mo" ("rice seedling"), "pye" ("rice plant"; "oryza sativa"),

"pye" ("unhulled rice"), "ssal" ("hulled rice"), "chapssal" ("glutinous rice"), "moypssal" ("non-glutinous

rice"), "mikok" ("rice grains"), "pap" ("steamed rice"), etc., but no superordinate term for "rice."


specific ones may be dictated by dire necessity, by the influence of climate and environment (Ullmann 1964:214). The Hopi call "insect," "airplane," and "aviator" all by the same word and feel no difficulty about it just as the Koreans can get along perfectly well with only one word ("nwun") for "snow" -something that would be impossible for an American in the former case and for an Eskimo inthe latter. 10

As Ullmann (1964:241) noted, it is probably an exaggeration to say that certain things cannot be expressed at all in a given idiom. Hockett was probably nearer the truth when he said that "languages differ not so much as to what can be said in them, but rather as to what it is relatively easy to say" (Hockett 1954:122). Warning us against the danger of exaggerating the positive side of the Linguistic Relativity hypothesis, Ullmann wrote that "it is probably more correct to say that our words predispose us in favor of certain lines of thought than they actually predetermine our thinking," though he conceded that "the suggestive power of language is so strong or so insidious that few speakers, if any, will be able to resis it" (Ullmann 1964:241).

Ullmann's interpretation coincides with what Slobin (1971:122) calls the weak form of the Linguistic Relativity hypothesis. Whereas the strong form, i.e., the unadulterated Whorfian version, holds that language predetermines thought and behavior patterns and that language is a sort of mold for thought and philosophy, the weak form postulates that certain aspects of language can predispose people to think or act in one way rather than another, but that there is no rigid determinism, and one is not fully a prisoner of one's language; hence it is just a guide to thought and other sorts of behavior (Slobin 1971:122). Needless to say, translation could hardly justify itself if we were confronted with nothing but the

""Necessity dictates, however, that Koreans resort to a variety of compounds to denote various kinds of snow

such as "huyn-nwun" ("white snow"), "hampaknwun" ("fluffy snow"), "ssalak•nwun" ("granular snow"), and

"kalu-nwun" ("powdery snow").


strong form of linguistic Weltanschauung. Slobin favors the weak form in regard to the lexical level based on his belief that any concept can somehow be encoded in any language, though with ease in some, and by complex circumlocutions in others. (Slobin 1971:125)".

Conceding that the problems of studying global relationships between a linguistic system and an entire world view are obviously beyond our grasp, Slobin points out that the fate of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis at the present time is an interesting one in view of the fact that people are at present more concerned with linguistic and cultural universals than with linguistic and cultural relativity (Slobin 1971:130-33).

The relationship between a language and the real world needs to be properly assessed. The categories language provides for us are arbitrary in that "the conceptual boundaries often vary from language to language in a way that defies principled explanation" (Leech 1981:26). This in turn presupposes the arbitrariness of . language with respect to experienced reality. Thus languages have a tendency to "impose structure upon the real world by treating some distinctions as crucial, and ignoring others" (Leech 1981:26). Furthermore, the way a language classifies experience is clearly man-centered. A "weed" may be called a "flower" or vice versa, depending on whether it is found inside or outside the garden, the motivation being supplied by cultural norms than by externalreality. 12

The relativistic view of the cognitive structure of languages implies that differences will be striking between the world view of a native speaker of English and that of a native speaker of Korean in

"See Jakobson (1953:234-35) for an even stronger view.

""Rain" may be an unpleasant phenomenon for people in an urban area, but a most welcome event for those in a farming community. See Sanches and Blount (1975) and Hymes (1964:167-70) for discussions of the relationship between ethnographical and cultural categories and language. Park (1979) contains a large number of data manifesting Korean and American cultural norms.


which not only classifications of natural phenomena, but abstract relations such as those of space and time are represented in a very different manner. Leech notes that an extreme version of the view that each language forces us into its peculiar mental straitjacket cannot be sustained in view of the fact that it is possible to translate from one language to another (Leech 1981:27). Besides, a language may have alternative conceptualizations of the same phenomenon. In Korean, for instance, a "fifteen-day stretch of time" may be called "polum," "pantal" ("half month"), or "yeltassay" ("fifteen days"), plus the Chinese derivative "sip-o-il" ("fifteen days"). As Jespersen (1924:54) noted, the outside world, as reflected in the human mind, is extremely complex so that men cannot always be expected to settle for the simplest or the most precise way of denoting the myriads of phenomena and the manifold relations between them that call for communication.

2.2.4. A PSYCHOLINGUISTIC VIEW. One of the most penetrating criticisms aimed at Whorf comes from Osgood (1963:317-18). First of all, Osgood notes, Whorfs approach is anecdotal, lacking the customary controls of scientific experimentation, and his examples must stand as hypothesis-setting rather than hypothesistesting demonstrations. Second, the anecdotes usually hinge on literal translation from an Indian language into English, i.e., Standard Average European, with comments then being made upon the strangeness of the world view apparently expressed. This would be tantamount to concluding, by a reverse logic, that contemporary English speakers must think of each night's sleep as a religious ,-xperience, because each morning's meal serves to "break a fast."" Third, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is clearly psycholinguistic in nature, yet Whorf used a mainly linguistic approach to the

The same logic would conclude that Koreans must be always hungry, for they greet each other by asking whether the other party has eaten a meal. See Song (1976) for a discussion in an East West cultural frame.


problem, rarely making any independent observations on the cognitive processes of language users. To claim that Apache speakers must perceive "rain" differently from the way English speakers do because their way of talking about it is different ("water, or springs, whiteness moves downward"), and that they infer how they perceive solely from how they talk is completely

tautological (Osgood 1963:318).

2.2.5. A BIOLOGICAL VIEW. The study of the biological foundations of language conducted by Lenneberg (1967) is particularly revealing in its appraisal of linguistic relativity. Lenneberg (1967:365-370) reports that cognitive processes studied so far are largely independent of peculiarities of any natural language and, in fact, that cognition can develop to a certain extent even in the absence of knowledge of any language. He notes that until rigorous proof is submitted to the contrary, it is more reasonable to assume that all natural languages are of equal complexity and versatility and the choice of this assumption detracts much from the relativity theory.

Asserting that man's cognition functions within biologically given limits, Lenneberg points out that differences in semantics are not necessarily signs of obligatory differences in thought processes as assumed by relativists. He states that the modes of conceptualization that happen to be tagged by a given language need not, and apparently do not, exert restrictions upon an individual's freedom of conceptualizing. Thus Lenneberg appears to allow only the weak form of the relativity hypothesis when he says that the semantic structure of a given language only has "a mildly biasing effect" upon cognition under special circumstances and that limitations of vocabulary may be largely overcome by the creative use of descriptive words (Lenneberg 1967:329-372).

Relativists often cite the case of a wide variety of terms for "snow" that the Eskimos use. But the fact that English speakers do not have different names for several kinds of snow does not prove that they


are unable to see the differences. A man may be perfectly able to distinguish two situations and still not care to do anything about it. The Eskimos and the Americans may or may not see the world differently. It would appear that the fact that American skiers can identify a wide variety of snow proves that they can see the differences. The world view in this regard can be said to differ little between the two. As Brown and Lenneberg (1954) pointed out, it is possible that in the history of a culture the peculiar features of the language and thought of a people probably develop together.

2.2.6. LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT. An interesting sidelight is thrown on the relationship between language and thought by Vygotsky (1962). According to Vygotsky, thought is a simultaneous bundle of conceptualizations and the transition from it to speech is no easy matter, for speech has to be lineally ordered. Comparing thought to "a cloud shedding a shower of words" (1962:150),

Vygotsky points out that speech is not a mirror-like reflection of thought. Thought undergoes numerous changes on its way to becoming speech. Thought does not coincide either with words or with the meanings of words in which it is expressed, yet the way from "thought to words leads through meaning" (1962:150). If we follow Vygotsky's line of reasoning, the linguistic Weltanschauung hypothesis must have a hard time justifying itself. As Furth (1961) remarked, language experience may increase the efficiency of concept formation in a certain situation, but it is not a prerequisite for the development of the basic capacity to abstract and generalize(cf. Henle 1965:18). All in all, it must be admitted that linguistic relativity in its radical form remains, by its own axioms, not only incapable of proof but incapable of being described (Wallace 1961)".

14 Another favorite source of anti-relativistic ammunition is the case of peoples sharing essentially the same

cultural background but speaking genetically unrelated languages such as the Danes and the Finns.


2.2.7. PRO-RELATIVISTIC STUDIES. All these detractors notwithstanding, a number of studies have also been made to support certain aspects of the Whorfian hypothesis. Cawte and Kiloh (1967) is an attempt to test the influence of language (or lexicon, to be exact) on concept formation. Fisher (1966) is a more or less impressionistic study on the influence of syntax on personality. Brown (1958) ascribes semantic property to parts of speech which purportedly affect our thought processes. Carroll and Casagrande (1958) touch upon the influence of language on perception. Niyekawa-Howard (1968) is a report on how a certain grammatical device affects perception and nonverbal behavior." Lantz and Stefflre (1964) is a study on the influence of language (or communication accuracy, to be specific) on cognition. Finally, Cheun (1971), the only study of its kind ever undertaken in Korea, reports how language affects perception and memory. It must be noted, however, that none of these studies has produced conclusive evidence to support the basic tenet of the linguistic Weltanschauung hypothesis in toto.

2.3. Universals, Weltanschauung and Translation Theory

2.3.1. UNIVERSALS AND TRANSLATION. As noted in Section 2 above, neither the radical version nor the complete denial of linguistic relativity can be sustained with valid and reliable evidence. If anything, we might have to admit that linguistic relativity is itself a relative phenomenon, discernible in certain cross-lingual channels but partially or totally missing in others. If it

were otherwise, the heterotelic activity of translation would be rendered either completely inoperative or totally problem-free. Wherever translation proceeds smoothly and efficiently we may infer that the effects of relativity in that particular cross-lingual

15It reports that using the Japanese passive voice tends to make the Japanese negatively oriented.


channel are, other things being equal, relatively negligible. On the -other hand, wherever intractabilities obstruct the cross-lingual channel we may assume that the principle of linguistic

Weltanschauung is more or less active. 16 Translation is a thriving

human activity because there are far

more features which are similar across ethnolinguistic boundaries than those that are different. 71 he fact that tue 150-odd-member United Nations can effectively stage debates and vote-castings on some crucial international issues by means of translation into and from its six official languages bespeaks the existence of cultural and linguistic universals and the remarkable similarity of Weltanschauung that all participants share. Also, despite the seemingly insurmountable difficulties attributable to cultural andlinguistic opacities, works of literary art are often rendered into other languages by competent hands, winning not only sympathetic readerships worldwide but also the coveted Nobel prize. Thus we may assume, albeit tautologically, that translation is possible, no matter how genetically distant the languages involved may be, fundamentally because people everywhere draw on a common core of experience and Weltanschauung.

As transformational linguists would have it, language is basically an innate or genetically inherited capability, which all human beings are "programmed" from birth to develop (Chomsky 1972; Lenneberg 1967; Leech 1981:27). This entails adoption of the universal base hypothesis that languages share the same basic conceptual framework (Ross 1970:260-61). As Nida (1975b: 150ff.) has postulated, there is a universal set of semantic classes, i.e., entities, events, abstracts and relationals which underlie all conceptualizations." On a less deep level, another universal set of

16A distinction is made here between intractabilities due to cross-linguistic or crosscultural opacities and those attributable to effects of linguistic relativity.

17Cf. Katz (1966:10-11). It must be noted that Nida worked out and employed these basic classes before the development of generative-transformational grammar and, especially generative semantics which recognizes certain deep-level transformations.


semantic categories may be postulated such as animate/inanimate, human/nonhuman, and concrete/abstract, from which each language draws its own subset of categories (Leech 1981:27). Languages differ because the choice from this subset and the obligatory combinations in which they are expressed differ.

One of the most noteworthy studies ever made in favor of the universalist position has to do with the color terminology. Working in an area regarded as a happy hunting-ground for relativist semántics,18 B. Berlin and P. Kay studied almost a hundred different languages and reported that the primary color terminology is explicable in terms of a set of exactly eleven universal color categories, which may or may not be all present in a given language (Berlin and Kay 1969). The eleven color terms and their Korean equivalents are shown in Figure 1.

'purple' ca-sayk'

pink,

'white' `green' psaykun'hong

'huyn' < 'red' < `nok-sayk' < 'blue' < `brown'`black' :red' 'phulun' `kal-sayk' `orange'

' yellow' 'oleynci

`kemun' 'nolan' sayk'

'gray' 'hoy-sayk'

Figure 1. The Berlin-Kay Universal Color Categories

The arrows between the blocks indicate "conditional universality": for any color categories (X) and (Y), (X) (Y) means that if a language contains Y it must also contain X. The first, third,

"Cf. Conklin (1955), "... the structure of a lexical set may affect color perception."


and the last blocks contain alternative categories. Thus in the purely native color terminology of Korean, the equivalents are found for each category up to "blue" ("huyn-white," "kemun-black," "ppalkan-red," "nolan-yellow," and "phulun-blue") except for "green" which

must be expressed by the Chinese derivative "noksayk." None of the four categories in the final block has its native Korean equivalent, even though all of them can be expressed adequately by using the Chinese derivatives as shown. The term "orange" (the fruit) has become a loanword all by itself in Korean: "orange(oleynci) -sayk- orange- color."

Berlin and Kay claim not only the precise number and order of universal color categories but also a fixed sequence of historical stages through which a language must pass as its basic vocabulary increases. All this claim, as far as the Korean language is concerned, proves startlingly true. The fact that Koreans do not distinguish between "blue" and "green" in some instances ("phulun san-blue mountain" vs. "phulun hanul-blue sky") does not prove that they cannot perceive the difference between them, but that they do not feel it necessary to distinguish them in this case. Accordingly, the native word for "green" had not existed until the Chinese derivative "nok-sayk" came to be adopted. Even after that, however, the cooccurrence relation of the two elements, such as in the combination "phulun san," has been so strong as to resist new combinations like "nok-sayk san" or "nok-san." In other instances where new terms have had to be coined such as "green belt," the combination "nok citay" was adopted quite unobtrusively.

Another area often exploited in support of the relativity hypothesis is the kinship terminology. Cross-cultural opacities in kinship semantics have been documented by Goodenough (1956, 1965, 1970), Lounsbury (1964, 1969) and others. But no matter how complex it may be to match equivalences between the kinship terminologies of different languages, the data for each language can be expressed in terms of the basic family relationships of the nuclear family, namely "father," "mother," "brother," "sister," "daughter,"


"son," "husband," and "wife." For instance, the term "komopu" in Korean can be rendered as "father's sister's husband" in English if the context requires something more precise than "uncle." A favorite word game in Korea involving the kinship terminology begins with such questions as, "This is my mother's husband's father's tomb. Whose tomb is it?"

The fact that a core of terminology can be used to account for most kinship relationships suggests a universal or language-neutral conceptualization of basic kinship relations even though anthropologists may disagree as to the precise significance of these universal categories,19 and even though the exact cultural interpretation of the categories may vary from language to language (Leech 1981:236). Granted that there is such a fundamental question as to whether the term "kinship" itself refers to anything that can be

characterized in a culturally neutral way .20 An assumption of weak universals, however, will enable us to see a common basis in obviously similar conceptualizations of kinships that occur in diverse environments geographically as well as linguistically.

2.3.2. WEAK UNIVERSALS. The weak universalist position recognizes characteristics belonging to a universal set from which each language takes a subset. Hence there is an overlap between the weak universalist position and weak relativist position. Unless this gray area is recognized and taken into consideration, it will be difficult to justify the basis upon which translation theory can be formulated. The fact that no rigorous formulation of translation theory was attempted during the period more or less dominated by

19Also to be noted are the two philosophical interpretations of the very nature of universals. One is the

conceptualist belief that universals are mental entities and the other the in re form of realism which maintains that they inhere in objects and are apprehended by the mind. See Holloway (1951:16-43) for elaborations.

EoGoodenough (1970:4-38) reports a number of exceptional cultures in South India in which the nuclear family of parents and children has no place.

Weltanschauung and Translation S5

relativistically oriented linguists attests to this.Translation theory has become a particularly engaging topic after the

age of generative transformational grammar set in, making it fashionable to look for universal features underlying a multiplicity of surface phenomena not only in linguistic structures but also in a variety of other cultural areas. Characteristics that are common to every language, needless to say, constitute the strong variety of substantive universals (Chomsky 1965:27-30). For translation theory, however, their existence is significant only to the extent that they coexist with the weak variety of substantive universals and, by extension, the weak form of linguistic relativity. For simplicity's sake, the weak substantive universals may be called "the emic elements" and the strong substantive universals "the etic elements."

2.3.3. CROSS-LINGUAL COMMUNICABILITY. Neither the eticnor the emic elements occur in any predictable or ordered pattern. Their existence or absence may make a significant difference in some cases while none in others. The emic elements can be exaggerated as a limiting factor in cross-lingual communication. If we were to accept this view, we might just as well conclude that absolute communication is impossible not only cross-lingually but also monolingually or interpersonally. For no two persons have precisely the same background and hence all differ in their use of even the same language code, and no two persons employ the same symbols in exactly the same type of arrangements. But the truth is that a relatively high degree of mutual

intelligibility characterizes human communication not only within a single language, but also between members of different speech communities.

Nida (1964:53ff.) cites four factors that are responsible for monolingual as well as cross-lingual intelligibility. First, he cites the similarity of mental processes of all peoples. The myth of prelogical mentality of primitive peoples having been exploded, it is reasonable to believe that there are no significant ways in which the mental processes of different peoples are appreciably distinct. Of


course, the world views of peoples, as reflected in certain aspects of hierarchical structuring, may differ; but fundamentally the thoughtprocesses must be essentially the same, regardless of race or culture. Even the capacity for generalization appears to be very similar between peoples of widely different cultural backgrounds."

The second factor cited by Nida is the similarity of somatic reactions of all peoples. Certain automatic responses are held to be universal such as blushing and high blood pressure in response to anger. The reasons for blushing and anger may differ from culture to culture, but the form of the somatic response is remarkably similar. Certain other semi-automatic somatic responses such as laughing, smiling, and grimacing (in anger or pain) are almost universal, but they may also undergo certain cultural conditioning. Thus a smile in Korean culture may signify hostility while a laughter may reveal sadness in some Central American culture. Nida (1964:55) stresses the point that even though a people may not have exactly the same types of somatic experiences as occur in other languages, they can nevertheless readily conceive of the underlying types of somatic expressions which make such expressionsmeaningful.

The third factor listed by Nida is the similarity of the range of cultural experience. He states that even though specific behavior within any one area of life may differ, the range of common human experience is sufficiently similar to provide a basis for mutual understanding. The similarities that unite mankind as a cultural "species" are much greater than the differences that separate. The fourth and last factor cited by Nida is man's capacity for adjustment to the behavioral patterns of others. He writes that it would seem that we possess a kind of grid which we can employ to reinterpret experience in terms of some other conceptual framework, provided,

21Nida is uniquely qualified to make this statement in view of the scale and magnitude of the research on Bible translation problems involving over a thousand languages that he has been conducting over the past decades.


of course, that there is a measure of willingness to do so and a degree of good will inherent in the activity.

The emic elements, i.e., the differences in the way in which experience is categorized, show up mainly in the semantic structure of a language. For one thing, lexical abundance or complexity reveals either the focus of the culture as a whole or the concentration of attention by people of a distinctive subculture (e.g., specialists such as electronic engineers, physicians, or existential philosophers). Languages differ most from one another as one ascends the lexical hierarchical structure (Nida 1964:79). In the lower levels terms tend to match more closely the perceptually distinguishable objects of the culture, whereas in the higher levels distinctions reflect conceptually based classifications of phenomena, so that interlingual differences tend to be greater in the latter. 22

2.3.4 WELTANSCHAUUNG AND LEXICAL HIERARCHY. What particularly concerns us here is the relationship between a people's Weltanschauung and the hierarchical structuring of their lexicon. Nida (1964:81ff.) declares that the hierarchical structuring of related symbols is an extremely important index to a people's world view, for it is by language that people indicate their classifications of experience. The classifications reflected in the hierarchical substitution of words are even more revealing of a people's world view than are the categories embedded in the morphological structures. Categories like mode, tense, person, aspect, number, and gender often reflect "ossified" structures which, though actually reflecting meaningful distinctions at an earlier stage in the language, are no longer responsive to change or indicative of living contrasts. He goes on to say that there is no doubt that the hierarchical structure of superordinate and subordinate

==For instance, one of the most commonplace but conceptually based terms in English, "idea," has to go through contextual determination in Korean to be rendered as "uykyen," "saang," "kaynyem," and so on.

28 Topics in Translation Studies ,

relationships is a far more active and precise picture of some of the contemporary ways in which people view their world. He adds that hierarchical structuring does not, however, cover all types of vocabulary. For most relationals, a high percentage of abstracts, and a number of entity words (e.g., kinship terms), hierarchical analysis is relatively useless.

All this does not mean that the semantic structure is a perfect

mirror of a people's Weltanschauung or that we can discover the entirety of a people's world view by merely examining the semantic structure of their language. Nevertheless, as Nida (1975b:178) noted, since the structural relationships of semantic units reflect a classification of experience and are subject to change as beliefs and attitudes toward the symbols and the corresponding referents change, we should rely on the semantic structure as providing significant clues to a people's orientation toward life. It is in the semantic structure that we find the manner in which experience tends to be classified by successive orders of increasingly more generic terms. For example, the Korean term "ca-ta" ("to sleep") appears to be more generic than its English equivalent: in Korean not only animate beings but also inanimate beings "sleep," e.g., "the wind is sleeping, " "the watch is sleeping, " "the playing card is sleeping," and so on.

The more penetrating discussion of Weltanschauung in the context of different cultures, however, should be based on the notion of universals of language and of the anthropological as well as cultural universals which underlie the semantic structure of each language. Although the interest in universals has been appreciably heightened in recent years following the more fashionable generative view of language, the actual work of searching for the universal data, i.e., the etic elements, has not been so productive. From the standpoint of translation theory, if there are universals their existence should be established by a purely empirical inquiry without preconception of any sort save that of verifying their existence. The confirmation of universals would appear to be a


marginal task for linguistic theory, but it could be a central one for translation theory which tries to investigate why and how people communicate from one language to another in spite of all that has been said on the radical heterogeneity of diverse linguistic systems (Mounin 1963:96).

2.3.5. IMPLICATIONS FOR TRANSLATION THEORY. The relationship between universals and Weltanschauung and their implications for translation theory can be explored by examining the following four dimensions: the C osmogonic -ecological Dimension, the Bio-physiological Dimension, the Psycho-physical Dimension, and the Socio-cultural Dimension. 23

2.3.5.1. The Cosmogonic-ecological Dimension. Since all humans inhabit the same planet, the notions of cosmogony and ecology should be common to all languages. Thus we may include roughly the following elements under the category of cosmogonic-ecological universals: cold, heat, rain, wind, earth, sun, moon, star, sky, flora and fauna, minerals, planetary divisions of time such as day and

night, time or parts of day, month, solar and lunar years, cycle of vegetation, and meteorological or climatic change. Different cultures may entertain different mythological, superstitious or folkloristic notions about some or all of these elements. Some of them may be identified with supernatural deities. But this does not invalidate the existence of these universals wherever humans inhabit. In both English and Korean the sun is a fertile source of myths, superstitions, and folk tales. The Koreans even personify and accord an honorific status to it by calling it "hay-nim" ("the sun, the honorable person"). Yet they are no different from English speakers in perceiving that "the sun rises and sets."

"The quadripartite dimensions are an expansion cum elaboration of the tripartite dimensions of Aginsky and Aginaky (1948), namely cosmogonic, biological, and physiological dimensions.


2.3.5.2. The Bio-physiological Dimension. The bio-physiologicaldimension is a necessary corollary of the fundamental similarity inthe biological evolution of mankind and in the conditions of life on our planet. It covers six bio-physiological functions: nourishment, drinking, respiration, sleep, excretion, and procreation." Certain semantic fields are directly related to the perception of the world, independently of any conceptual organization. The sensory perceptions, which may be visual, auditory, olfactory, gustatory and tactile, belong to this category. Anatomical characteristics, physiological cycles, and diagnostic terms or terms describing physical symptoms may constitute a substratum of the set. Likewise, somatic responses to temperature changes, sexual stimuli, hunger, thirst, and so on constitute an additional substratum.

In English as well as in Korean "love" is a sentiment associated with the "heart, ''25 but its equivalent in Karre, a language of French Equatorial Africa, is the "liver"; that in Conob, a Mayan language of Guatemala, is the "abdomen"; and that in Marshallese, spoken in the South Pacific, is the "throat" (Nida 1975b: 176). These are culturally conditioned features that diverge from the substrata. Similarly, the relatively abundant diagnostic and gustatory terms in Korean vis-à-vis English may be regarded as culturally conditioned divergences. But, again, this does not invalidate the fundamental similarity of somatic responses across racial, ethnic or national borders. An American who tastes kimchi for the first time, for example, can usually convey his gustatory experience in one fashion or another, such as, "It tastes like sauerkraut." Finally, the biophysiological process of birth, aging and death constitute another important substratum. Here English and Korean are remarkably alike in cutting up the human's aging process into

infancy, boyhood,

24The function of procreation encompasses principally sexual acts and subordinately conception and

parturition.

25Thus a jilted lover suffers from "heartache" ("kasum aphu-ta") whether he is a native speaker of

Korean or English. See Lyons (1981:220-242) for a discussion of"worlds within worlds."


youth, adulthood, and old age.

2.3.5.3. The Psycho-physical Dimension. The psycho-physical dimension is more complex than the foregoing because a marked degree of conceptualization comes into the picture. It includes spatio-temporal designations, numerals, color terms, metaphors and other figures of speech, and other concepts related primarily to psychology and the physical world. The fact that the Korean people use one set of spatio-temporal measures and the Americans another does not prove that the former cannot understand the spatiotemporal units used by the latter or vice versa. The Korean unit of distance "li" can be rendered metrically as "four kilometers" while the American "mile" can be conceived of as "1.6 kilometers." That this presents no serious problem was well demonstrated during the Korean War in which the Korean and American troops staged countless successful joint operations, using the metric system. Whereas the English language may have the special term "fortnight" for "two weeks," the Koreans have the separate term "polum" for "fifteen days." But no serious problem arises in rendering "fortnight" as "icwu-il" ("two weeks") or in translating "polum" as "half month" or "fifteen days."

The case of the numerals needs some further comment. Boas (1911:59-73) declared that there is no proof that the lack of the use of numerals is in any way connected with the inability to form the concept of higher numbers. 26 The culturally conditioned divergences in the use of numerals normally involve sets of numbers like "dozen," "score," and "teen" (as in "teenager"). Here again, no serious difficulty arises in ordinary circumstances by rendering "teenager" as "sip-tay" in Korean. The Korean term, to be sure, covers all ages from "ten" to "nineteen." If there is a context in

"The figure "ninety-nine" is the highest that the modern native Korean language can handle, but the

use of Chinese derivatives enables its speakers to cope with astronomical figures like "trillion" ("có')

quite effortlessly. See Greenberg (1978:249-295) for universals in numeral systems.


which the addition of three years makes a crucial difference, the translation can be rendered as something like "sipsam-se isang-uy sip-tay" ("youth in the thirteen to nineteen year age group"). Likewise, a quarter of an hour rendered as "sip-o-pun" ("fifteen minutes") and "three quarters of an hour" as "sa-sip-o-pun" can hardly inconvenience any native speaker of Korean. The Korean term "han phaswu" given as "a five-day period" and the English term "four score and seven years" rendered as "phalsipchil-nyen" can be considered the closest natural equivalents.

The case of color terms has been well presented by Berlin and Kay (1969) above. There is no need for futher elaboration here. Suffice it to say that the problem of the color category is not an intractable one even though its gradations may range from 7.5 million to 10 million (Conklin 1955).

Metaphor is perhaps a more vivid reflection of the world view expressed in the discourse, the way a given work of literary art in general reflects reality (cf. Uitti 1969:161). Of particular interest to the translation theorist are anthropomorphic metaphors, parallel metaphors and metonymies. These are of outstanding value since the associations on which they are based seem to be deeply rooted in human experience and largely independent of culture and environment. Giambattista Vico, the eighteenth century Italian philosopher, gave the following account of anthropocentrism: "In all languages the majority of expressions referring to inanimate objects are formed by transfers from the human body and its parts, from human senses and human passion.... Ignorant man makes himself the yardstick of the universe" (Ullmann 1963:241).

Both English and Korean rely on anthropomorphic metaphors to a great extent. Table 1 is a preliminary survey of anthropomorphic metaphors in both languages utilizing the names of twelve human body parts .2' The figures, which have been rounded off to the

27 This survery is by no means exhaustive as it is based primarily on desk dictionaries. Tentative as the results may be,

they nevertheless reveal useful data for translation theory.


nearest five or ten to facilitate comparison, represent the number of metaphorical idioms in actual use today.

Body Parts English Koreanheart-kasum 100 10 head-meli 50 10 face-elkwul 40 10 eye-nwun 30 50 nose-kho 20 40

ear-kwuy 20 40 mouth-ip 20 40 arm-phal 20 5 leg-tali 50 5 hand-son 50 40 foot-pal 20 30 shoulder-ekkay 20 5

Totals 440 285

Table 1. Anthropomorphic Metaphors

English relies heavily on "heart," "head," "leg," "hand," and "face" while Korean utilizes "eye," "nose," "ear," "mouth," "hand," and "foot" very frequently. "Hand" is the only body part that figures prominently in both languages. It is tempting to characterize the English anthropomorphic metaphors as reflecting something of a dynamic and conceptually oriented world view on the part of the Anglo-American peoples, and to describe Koreans as entertaining a more or less static and perceptually oriented world view. Such characterizations, however, run the risk of being branded "impressionistic generalizations." The fact that the AngloAmericans have almost ten times as many "heart" metaphors as the Koreans do does not prove that they care about or are preoccupied with the "heart" as much. What is noteworthy is that the salient


features of most anthropomorphic metaphors are nearly always transparent cross -lingually.28 For instance, "the eye of a needle" rendered as "panul nwun" rather than the idiomatic "panul kwuy" ("the ear of a needle") may strike the Korean reader as being "outlandish" but by no means is it opaque .29

Parallel metaphors in both English and Korean have nearly the same characteristics as the anthropomorphic metaphors. Parallelism may obtain in some cases but may be missing in others. Thus in English one can "grasp" a door knob as well as "grasp" the meaning of a passage, whereas in Korean one can "grasp" ("puth cap-ta") the door knob but must "comprehend" (kkaytas-ta") the meaning of the passage. But to say "kul-uy ttus-ul puth-chap-ta" ("grasp the meaning of a passage") is none too opaque, either. It merely sounds awkward or exotic or both. Similarly, in the case of metonymic associations, lack of parallelism may be encountered from time to time, such as "tongue" signifying "language" but "hye" ("tongue") having no such metonymic counterpart. On the other hand, for phrases like "to run short of hands" a perfect parallelism exists: "son-i mocila-ta."

Both English and Korean share concrete-to-abstract metaphors

like "to throw light on" ("palkhye-cwu-ta"), sense impression-to-abstract experiences like "warm reception" ("ttattushan yengcep"), and synesthesia like "cold voice" ("chakewun moksoli") (touch-to-sound) and "loud color" ("yolan-han pichkal") (sound-to-sight). All of these are transparent metaphors which pose relatively minor problems in translation. Their existence, however, should never be slighted in the formulation of a translation theory.

"Some exceptions, of course, do crop up, such as "to foot the bill" and "pal neluta" ("broad-footed, i.e.,

"well-connected socially)."

E9Transparency will not be affected whether the Kekchi Indians of Guatemala call it "the face of the

needle," the Lahu of Southeast Asia and the Piros of Peru speak of "the nostril of the needle," the Haka

Chins of Burma call it "the mouth of theneedle," or the Amuzgos of Mexico refer to it as "the hole of the needle." (Nida b: 124)


2.3.5.4. The Socio-cultural Dimension. The final element of the series, the socio-cultural dimension, is undoubtedly the most susceptible of cultural conditioning. Included in this category are kinships, familial systems, taboos, customs, manners, mores, value systems, social structures and institutions, and all other phenomena that are related to the self-other orientation of a people. Most of the so-called cultural opacities belong to this dimension as do most of the intractabilities which are traceable to institutional idiosyncrasies involving technology, religion, education, government and so on. Much could be made of the apparent gaps that exist between the ways Koreans and Anglo-Americans classify their experience related to all these phenomena. Fundamentally, however, they contain so many universal features which outweigh the thin layer of emic elements that it is impracticable to adopt the approach whereby translatability is seriously questioned in toto.

No matter how complex the manner in which the Koreans may classify their kinships may be, it bears a fundamental similarity to the way the Anglo-Americans categorize their kinships in that both use the identical nuclear family structure to begin with. The Koreans may be particular about the relative age of family members," e.g., among siblings, while the Americans may be conscious of their sex. Both nations have essentially patrilineal family structures, even though the status of men in the Korean family may not be identical with that in the American counterpart. Although ancestor worship may be practiced by the Koreans to a degree hardly known in the Anglo-American culture, it is not a negligible element in the latter, either. Thus "sengmyo" may connote something more than just "visiting one's ancestral tombs," but it does not invalidate the translatability of the Korean ritual.

Verbal taboos in both English and Korean-speaking cultures are

"This is no doubt due to the Koreans' vertical social stratification which extends beyond their family

structure. See Halliday (1978:211-235) and Hymes (1972:55•7l ; 1974:3-66) for excellent treatments of

these and other related issues.


essentially alike in that they fall under three categories, namely fear-inspired taboos concerning God or Heaven, the dead, the evil spirits, and certain animals; delicacy-inspired taboos related to illness, death, physical and mental deficiency, stealing and killing; and decency or propriety-inspired taboos regarding sex, certain body parts and functions, and swear-words (cf. Ullmann 1963:245). Among the emic elements are scatological terms which are not taboos in all but the most elegant contexts in Korean and the expletive "hell" ("ciok") which is not a taboo in any Korean context. But in both languages "hell" is identified with heat. In the case of scatology in English the non-four-letter terms are, of course, free of offensive connotations. The non-monosyllabic terms denoting the human sexual organs or functions in English are, like most of their counterparts in Korean, no taboos.

In other areas, the unmentionability of the personal names of certain kins on the part of younger, lower-generation, or female relatives in Korean culture is perhaps one of the more noteworthy emic elements. Likewise, the facility with which most American adults go about first-naming their business colleagues, acquaintances, relatives and others is unmatched by the Koreans. In most of the corresponding situations the Korean context would require either the addressee's last name or his title. For most Korean adults, first-naming outside the circle of their boyhood friends or classmates seldom occurs even where a remarkable degree of intimacy exists."

The misogynous element in the folklore and superstition of Korea presents an interesting case to the translator. Instances in which 11

woman" is identified with bad luck outnumber those in which she is taken for a good luck symbol at least five to one (e.g., "If you see a woman in your dream, you're out of luck." vs. "If a woman has big feet, she will be dearly loved by her husband."). But misogyny is not

g1Roughly the same thing can also be said about the use of "panmal" ("plain speech").


something that is monopolized by the Koreans, either. We come across it from time to time in Anglo-American literature, too (e.g., Bernard Shaw). Certain behavioral characteristics need to be noted at this time, such as Koreans' belching at the dinner table to indicate gustatory gratification, Americans' display of affection in public, Koreans' "inscrutable smile" concealing anguish or enmity, and

Americans' shrugging of their shoulders to indicate a variety of responses. The list can be expanded almost ad infinitum. But none of these emic features present any insurmountable problem to the translator so long as they are moderately well cushioned contextually. It has been almost fashionable for translation theorists up to now to make much of their intractability. But in point of fact their place in any explanatorily adequate theory of translation assumes only a marginal significance.

The status of cultural conditioning in both English and Korean can be glimpsed by an examination of the types of subjects used in the proverbial expressions of both. The ten most frequently featured subjects in English and Korean are shown in Table 2.'P Accidental as it may be, the fact that "dog" is the most frequently featured item in the proverbial expressions of both languages nevertheless point to a remarkable similarity in a certain area of the self-other orientation of both Koreans and Anglo-Americans. Likewise, "money" occupies the seventh most frequent place in both languages, further corroborating such a similarity. In addition to revealing something of the way in which a nation prefers to mobilize its metaphorical materials, such an inventory often serves to confirm the relative similarity of world views across ethnolinguistic borders.

"The source for English data is Smith and Heseltine (1948) and that for the Korean data is the Korean Folklore Society (1972).


FrequencyRanking English Korean

1 dog dog-kaydevil thief-totukfool offspring-casik

4 God excrement-ttongfriend mountain-sanwoman tiger-holangimoney money-ton

8 wind crow-kkamakwuy9 cat man-salam10 head water-mwul

Table 2. Proverbial Themes 2.4.

Concluding Remarks

It has been shown that the strong form of the Linguistic Relativity hypothesis" can hardly be sustained with empirical evidence. It has been argued that neither language nor thought can claim primacy over the other. The two apparently develop and intermesh simultaneously, even though conceptualization without any knowledge of language has been proved to be possible. Thus it is reasonable to conclude that linguistic relativity is itself a relative phenomenon, appearing in its weak form in some contexts but missing in others.

Translation theory is predicated on the existence of a broad range of substantive universals. The search for them may be of marginal interest to linguistic theory proper but of vital interest to translation

'-'Cf. One of the strongest popularized versions: "(Language) has as much to do with the philosophical and political conditioning of a society as geography or climate." (Cousins 1967).


theory. A people's Weltanschauung is reflected etically as well as emically in their language behavior. The fundamental commonality of the mental processes of mankind notwithstanding, certain elements inevitably occur to demonstrate that a particular way of dissecting experience is preferred by a particular people. But this does not invalidate the existence of substantive universals which underlie the cosmogonic-ecological, bio-physiological, psycho-physical, and socio-cultural dimensions of Weltanschauung across ethnolinguistic borders.

The emic features are essentially due to the divergence of cultural foci. A basically universal element may undergo cultural conditioning, consciously or unconsciously, as a necessary feature of the survival and adaptation processes on the part of mankind. It has been shown that no crucial difference exists between the cultural foci of the Koreans and those of the Anglo-Americans. The various dimensions of Weltanschauung that the former share with the latter far outnumber the apparent emic features which are opaque or intractable. But, as a matter of principle, nothing in Korean is so opaque or intractable as to defy translation into English or vice versain toto.

These implications of Weltanschauung need to be properly assessed in formulating a translation theory. A failure to acknowledge the relationship between language and thought or

conceptualization, language and perception, cultural foci of different language communities, and between all of these and the Weltanschauung across ethnolinguistic borders would result in producing a theory that could not stand the test of explanatory adequacy. It is gratifying to note that the newest trend of transformational linguistics is in some ways conducive to fulfilling that criterion vis-à-vis translation theory.

Chapter 3

Sprachgefühl and Translation

8.1. Sprachgefühl Defined

This chapter examines some implications of Sprachgefühl as a dynamic entity, especially as it relates to translation. It is admittedly a preliminary treatment, a modest one at that, of an area not adequately charted, let alone described.' The term Sprachgefühl is a loanword from German literally transferable as "language feeling." The Webster's International Dictionary (Second Edition-1939) defines it as "instinctive or habitual feeling for usage in language." The Webster's Third Edition (1961) has two definitions: 1. sensibility to conformance with or divergence from the established usage (as in form or idiom) of a language, as in "the dependable Sprachgefühl of a skilled linguist." 2. a feeling for what is linguistically effective or appropriate, as in "the Sprachgefühl of the accomplished translator." The second definition of the 1961 edition is to be preferred, but an integration of all three would be even better.

The term appears in the professional literature in Corder (1973: 280-282; 346-348), in a discussion of "mistakes of performance." Corder uses the term in the following contexts:

"The detection of stylistically inappropriate language in the case

'It appears that neither literary nor linguistic studies undertaken in an AngloAmerican milieu have seriously tackled this problem. The Prague School has done somewhat better, albeit under other labels. Nida (1978) has some valuable insights bearing on the problem.

41


of a foreign learner is still a matter of the hearer's Sprachgefühl or `personal judgment' (p. 282)."

"... the `speaking rules' of language cannot yet be described. What we cannot describe we cannot teach systematically. Thus the learning of the speaking rules is still a wholly inductive process. A native speaker can tell whether an utterance is appropriate or not; this was what we called `Sprachgefühl,' (p.348)."

It seems as though no native English word could carry the full range of the referential meaning of Sprachgefühl. To be sure, there have been innumerable instances where phrases like "a feel for the language," "stylistic sensitivity," "conversational implicature," "the ethnography of speaking," "the tone and flavor of language material," and "native speaker's intuition" have been used to denote one or more significations of Sprachgefühl.' But the term has been conspicuously sparse in the great masses of literature produced in the past decade or so despite its obvious felicity and usefulness. Fortunately, however, a nearly indentical term exists in the Korean language in the form of ekam (The Yale Romanization). Koreans use the term in a variety of situations where Sprachgefühl might be involved. Thus a correction would be made simply because the hearer's or reader's ekam rendered an item unacceptable. And yet no Korean would be able to define or describe what constituted his ekam toward any specific utterance or utterances. Corder (1973: 348) refers roughly to the same phenomenon by saying that a native speaker cannot say much about why a particular utterance is or is not appropriate.'

So much for the terminological preliminaries. The recent upsurge

'The hybrid discipline of pragmantax as espoused by neo-Chomskyans holds the best promise insofar as the study of Sprachgefühl is concerned.

sThe most frequent reaction of a native speaker toward an item that violates his Sprachgefühl is: "It just doesn't sound right to me." See Godard (1977) for a study of phone call beginnings in France and the United States bearing on cross-cultural Sprachgefühl. Song (1981) takes up the topic as an element of telephonic phatic communion.

Sprachgefühl and translation 43

of interest in communicative competence as distinct from the Chomskyan tenet of competence vs. performance is significant.4

Insofar as translation is concerned, the achievement of communicative competence by a non-native speaker may be said to be predicated on his acquisition of Sprachgefühl. A translator may be armed to the teeth with a working knowledge of the syntactic and lexical features of the target language, but woefully ill-prepared to choose the most appropriate utterance in a given situation. Why does this happen? Is internalizing a large body of language data not sufficient? What facilitates or hinders the cultivation of

Sprachgefühl? What are the implications of these and other problems for the theory and practice of translation? Not all these questions can be readily answered in a treatment of this scope. Attempts, however, will be made to answer as many of them as possible.

3.2. The Cultivation of Sprachgefühl

A Korean who has studied English for, say, more than ten years may be said to have acquired a sizable vocabulary and a repertoire of structural patterns plus some useful idioms. With rare exceptions, however, he may not be able to produce an utterance, either verbally or in writing, in a way that sounds sufficiently "smooth and appropriate" to the native speaker.' This would be true even if his utterances were immaculately grammatical and accurate. As Steiner (1975: 470) put it, in reference to some Japanese colleagues and students "whose technical proficiency in English humbles one, so much that is being said is correct, so little is right." It is intriguing to try to answer why this happens. Steiner (1975: 470) points out that

4See Hymes (1971) for a discussion of communicative competence, and Taylor and Wolfson (1978) for a pedagogical approach thereof. 5Nida and Taber (1969: 137ff.) tackles the problem as having to do with semotactic appropriateness. Sprachgefühl, however, goes beyond semotactic appropriateness, as will be shown below.

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