Introduction to Translation Studies Translation Practice and Contrastive Grammar

Main texts

• M. Ulrych, Translating Texts. From Theory to Practice, pp. 21-114

• C. Taylor, Language to Language, pp. 48-64

Source TextSource Language TextST

Target TextTarget Language TextTT

“Translation is an incredibly broad notion, which can be understood in many different ways”Mark Shuttleworth, Dictionary of Translation Studies (1997)

Translation is the rendering of a Source Language text into a Target Language text. But translation is not a merely automatic substitution of linguistic structures.

Some definitions

• Traducere: trans (al di là) + ducere (portare)

• Translation is the transfer of a meaning, a semantic core from one linguistic code to another

•Prego•Ciao•Pronto?•You know the truth•He delivered the punch•Ha il senso della realtà•A gentle slope•Of gentle birth•Antonio è arrivato•È arrivato Antonio!•È successa una disgrazia.

• Pronto?• Pronto. Parla Mary,

potrei parlare con Susan

• Pronto?• Si, cara• Allora andiamo

• Hello? • Hello, this is Mary,

could I speak to Susan please?

• Are you ready?• Yes, I am• Right, then let’s go

• Potrebbe passarmi quel libro per favore?

• Prego?• Vorrei leggere quel

libro• Prego• Grazie• Prego

• Could you give me that book please?

• Sorry?• I would like to read

that book• Here you are• Thank you• You’re welcome

• Prego?

• Vorrei comprare un libro

• Prego, dopo di lei

• Can I help you?

• I’d like to buy a book

• After you

•Non hanno un bel niente •Niente affatto•La goccia che fa traboccare il vaso•Mi piace il tiramisù•Il rosso dell’uovo•A buon mercato•Buon Natale e buon anno•He went (andò, andava, è andato)•Egli andava (he went, he would go, he used

to go, he was going)

Language

Use Structure

Context and culture(situation)(register)

Communicative Functions

PhonologyGraphology

LexiconGrammar

StyleLinguistic Variations

Ewe Turn: sheep stop the traffic in Madrid

Pecore in fuga bloccano il traffico di Madrid

Could breaking news be starting to break us instead?

E se le ultime notizie fossero davvero le ultime?

Ewe Turn – U Turn

To break: distruggere, fare a pezzi

Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

“The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew,The furrow followed free;We were the first that ever burstInto that silent sea.”

Soffiava il buon vento, volava la bianca spumaseguiva libera la scia;I primi fummo che irrompemmoIn quel tacito mare.

La ballata del vecchio marinaio (trad. T. Tommaso Pisanti)

It is dangerous to lean out Vietato sporgersi

Valone, 20 aprile 1917

Un’altra notte,In quest’oscuroColle mani GelateDistinguo Il mio visoMi vedoAbbandonato nell’infinito

Ungaretti

In this darkWith frozen handsI make outMy face

I see myselfAdrift in infinite space

Traduzione di Peter Creagh

In this darkWith handsFrozenI make outMy faceI see myselfabandoned in the infinite

Traduzione di Charles Tomlison

There was another problem to be solved: how to protect bank deposits from the risk of disappearing into thin air as a result of the overwhelming losses which were threatening to bring down the three main banks.

C’era anche un altro problema da risolvere: come proteggere i depositi bancari dal rischio di dissolversi nell’aria in seguito alle perdite schiaccianti che minacciavano le tre banche principali.

Restava inoltre scoperto il problema della salvaguardia dei depositi bancari esposti al rischio di volatilizzarsi a fronte della gran massa di perdite che ormai schiacciava i tre principali Istituti di credito.

Translation Studies

In his article On Linguistic Aspects of Translation (1959) Roman Jakobson distinguishes three kinds of translation

Intralingual translation: rewording (riformulazione) (an interpretation of verbal signs by means of other signs in the same language)

Interlingual translation: translation proper (an interpretation of verbal signs by means of some other language)

Intersemiotic translation: transmutation (an interpretation of verbal signs by means of non verbal signs) (parola-immagine)

Translation Studies refer to what Jakobson defines INTERLINGUAL TranslationTranslation Studies date back to the 1970s.

1972 James S. Holmes, “The Name and Nature of Translation Studies” during the Third Conference of Applied Linguistics (in Copenhagen) used the expression “Translation Studies” to define a new area of analysis that is not simply a part of linguistics.

1978 André Lefevere proposed that the name Translation Studies should be adopted for the discipline that concerns itself with the problems raised by the production and description of translations

Language

Use Structure

Context and culture(situation)(register)

Communicative Functions

PhonologyGraphology

LexiconGrammarGrammar

StyleLinguistic Variations

Translation:

From Theory to Practice

The translatability of a text depends on many aspects.

1. It depends on the degree to which the source text is embedded in its own culture. The more culture-bound a text is, the more difficult it is to translate. The less culture bound a text is, the less it needs to be adapted to suit the TL readership. We should speak of a sliding scale of translatability, largely depending on the degree to which a text is embedded in SL culture.

2. The translatability of a text is deeply connected with the communicative function of the text. Promotional leaflets, business letters and poetry are meaningful examples of different degrees of translatability.

Translation Strategies (Malone)

In 1988 Malone introduces a list of nine translation strategies, that is nine different procedures adopted by translations in order to cope with the lexical and syntactical differences between Source Language and Target Language

Approfondimento: C. Taylor, Language to Language, pp. 48-64.

1. Equation

Spaghetti, Lasagna, Pizza (however the absolute

equivalence of these terms must be questioned, as they

are used outside their home context)

One of the most well-known traps associated with the word-

for word equation if that of false friends, where the

meanings of deceptively similar terms do not match

across languages (Actual/attuale; editor/editore)

Some lexical items have a particularly high frequency in

Italian (much higher than their English equivalents)

(ex. Realtà) reality: the English lexical item has too high a

level of abstraction

L’arte come imitazione della realtà/Art as imitation of nature

La realtà è dura/Life is hard

La sua malattia è una realtà/Her illness is genuine

Progetti che diventano realtà/plans which are realised

Spesso la realtà ci sfugge/Often we don’t see things as they

really are

Ha il senso della realtà /He is realistic

Bisogna tenere il senso della realtà locale/We must keep local

needs in mind

La realtà economica/the economic situation

Examples that deviate from equation

The Holy Bible (La Sacra Bibbia) (not The Sacred Bible) (not La Santa Bibbia)

2. Substitution(the antithesis of equation: the translation has little or no

morpho-syntactic or semantic relation to the source text.

Ex. The Italian subjunctive replaced by an English infinitive

Farò in modo che si convinca a venire

I’ll try to get her to come

The straw that broke the camel’s back

La goccia che fa traboccare il vaso

3. Divergence: The strategy of choosing one possible solution from a

potential range of alternatives

Creampanna

Cremaglass

vetro

bicchiere

Se dovesse succedere

Were it to happen

If it were to happen

should it happen

If it should happen

• She saw a beautiful dress in the window

• She opened the window

• She lowered the window

Non ho niente da dire

Niente male

Niente scherzi

Non hanno un bel niente

NIENTE

I have nothing to say

Not bad

No messing about!

They have nothing at all

4. Convergence

Commercialista

Contabile

RagioniereAccountant

Tu

Lei

Voi

You

5. Amplification

• Swansea is the birthplace of Dylan Thomas

•Swasea è il luogo natale del famoso scrittore e poeta Dylan Thomas

6. Reduction

Carta geografica

Map

7. Diffusion

• A source text item or utterance is expanded without adding any extra layer of meaning

Cheap A buon mercato

Weatherwise Per quanto riguarda il tempo

The nineteen century sex role system

La divisione dei ruoli in base al sesso nel XIX secolo

8. Condensation

• A source text item or utterance is contracted without omitting any layer of meaning

To look at guardare

To fall in love innamorarsi

To run after inseguire

9. Reordering

• It occurs when various procedures are introduced to the syntactic units into the most familiar patterns of the target language

Black and white Bianco e nero

Non è ancora giunto il tempo

The time has not yet come

È successauna disgrazia

Something terrible has happened

HIGH PRESSURE

• Pressione alta: high blood pressure

• Alta pressione: in the meteorological sense

The very small percentage of works trnaslated by us compared to the total number of works imported per year is clear from these lists.

Da questi elenchi apparirà evidentissima la minima percentuale delle opere da noi tradotte in confronto al totale annuo delle opere importate.

The hands which, on the 25 th of April 1953 picked the apple from the Biblical tree of knowledge belonged to a rather eccentic English physicist.

A cogliere la mela del biblico albero della conoscenza furono, il 25 aprile 1953, le mani di un bizzarro fisico inglese

Language

Use Structure

Context and culture(situation)(register)

Communicative Functions

PhonologyGraphology

LexiconGrammarGrammar

StyleLinguistic Variations

Language USElanguage functions

• Ex. “Nice weather, isn’t it?”: two people at the bus stop. The main purpose is to socialise, to create a common ground for conversation and not to make a statement about the weather.

• Standard phrases should be translated with standard equivalents in the TL, they should not be translated literally.

• La lingua è un modo di agire sociale. Attraverso i nostri atti linguistici che si concatenano in un testo (scritto, verbale…) e si attualizzano pragmaticamente, siamo in grado non solo di veicolare dei messaggi, ma di influenzare i comportamenti degli altri con richieste, domande, proposte, avvertimenti. Non sempre i meccanismi dell’azione linguistica sono diretti ed espliciti.

• Ex. “Chiuda quella finestra!” in una sala d’attesa ad uno sconosciuto: ordine efficace nel contenuto linguistico ma del tutto infelice dal punto di vista pragmatico, perché scortese.

• “Le dispiacerebbe chiudere quella finestra?” “Potrebbe chiudere per cortesia”: un atto linguistico strutturato a livello del discorso come una frase interrogativa, in realtà non è una domanda, una richiesta di informazione, ma di un servizio.

• People use language in order to achieve different aims. Apart from conveying meaning, all utterances have some communicative force. Under the surface structure of what is being said there is the underlying force.

• The overall meaning of an utterance largely depends on the addresser’s intentions, and on the underlying communicative force

• The translator must understand the overall communicative force of the utterances of the ST in order to convey it appropriately in the TT.

• A: Linguistic Functions• Austin, How to Do Things with Words (1962)• Functions• THE LOCUTION: the literal meaning of an

utterance, the formal meaning of the words• THE ILLOCUTION: the communicative force

(the act that is performed by it: warning, request, etc.)

• THE PERLOCUTION: the effect on the hearer or reader

• Atto locutorio: Un atto linguistico si definisce locutorio in quanto chi lo produce compie un’azione intenzionale fonica o grafica implicante l’uso di certe informazioni.

• Atto illocutorio: ogni enunciato che ha come scopo di modificare la situazione degli interlocutori. (ogni atto linguistico che consiste in un’asserzione, una domanda, un ordine, una proposta…) Ex. “Io pometto…”, “Perchè…?” “Ti ordino…” “mi congratulo…”

• Atto perlocutorio: si esaminano le conseguenze dell’atto linguistico sul destinatario (paura, desiderio, dolore, ansia…)

B : communicative functions

• Elements of an act of verbal communication

Jakobson (1960): communicative scheme

Communicative functions

Although texts are generally multifunctional, one function generally predominates

Addresser Message Addressee

Contact

Context

Code

Expressive Poetic Conative Phatic Referential Metalingual

Relationship between communicative functions and text types (1)

Emotive functionLiterary texts

autobiographies

letters

Technical reports

textbooks

Scientific articles

advertising

Political propaganda

Charity appeals

referential function

conative function

Relationship between communicative functions and text types (2)

Poetic function

Poetry

songs

Nursery rhymes

Greetings

condolences

Good wishes

grammar

dictionary

phatic function

metalingual function

• C: Rhetoric functions

• Once the translator has determined what is the predominant language function of a ST, he has to establish what rhetorical strategies the author of the ST has used to achieve the desired effect

• Ex. In a vocative text, persuation may be achieved by narrating, describing, arguing…

• Once the predominant language function has been established, the translator’s next task will be to determine what rhetorical function the author has used to achieve the desired effect.

Language

Use Structure

Context and culture(situation)(register)

Communicative Functions

PhonologyGraphology

LexiconGrammar

StyleLinguistic Variations