Political Speech and Oratorical Parameters in Translation

Gilles Quentel

Uniwersytet Gdański

gillesquentel@free.fr

published in „Języki Spcjalistyczne” nr.6 , 2006, pp.241-249. ISBN: 83-918599-7-5 – ISSN:

1730-4261

Abstract: The aim of this paper is to analyze the importance of some rhythmical features in the

political speech, and their part in the translation process. It outlines these rhythmical and

oratorical specificities, and concludes with the prevalence of rhythm on meaning in translation.

The paper’s point of departure is the rhetorical concept of elocutio, and leans on modern

linguistic tools like metrical phonology.

I- The Political Speech and its Problematic in Translation Theory

According to the well-known five categories of rhetoric, elocutio is the art of composing with

sounds and rhythms, of giving a shape to the discourse. The notion of shape will be further

examined in this paper in its relation with the phonetic structuring of the political speech, but at

present we will focus on the phonetic aspect of the concept. Elocutio is, according to Molinié

(1992 :127) :

la partie centrale de la rhétorique : à vue sommaire, tout ce qui se voit, ou plutôt ce qui s’entend,

dans la manifestation du discours, relève pratiquement de l’élocution.

The political speech, which has been practiced since Antiquity, offers a specificity which it

shares at a very high grade with poetry: the care of the phonetic properties of language. Therefore,

the translation of political speeches is subjected to particular phonetic constraints that we will

examine more accurately. The prominence of elocutio on all the other discursive parameters is all

the more important since the inventio is mostly stereotyped in this category of discourse.

Politicians are expected to say approximately what they will say in official circumstances and

according to the ideological stream they belong to. The point is that the surprises are rare from a

semantic point of view, precisely because the political speech is semantically stereotyped.

It offers then the occasion to reconsider the importance of meaning in translation since the

translator has here a free hand to slightly distort the original meaning in order to give to the target

text a stronger impact.

II- The Oratory Stress

Phonetics plays a very important part in the process of translating political speeches, but in a

quite different way than in poetry, even if analogies are to be considered. And according to the

classical rhetoric’s precepts, phonetics is an important part of elocution:

figurae elocutionis includes the simplest figures of speech concerning single words, both as

regards phonetics (Di Bari. Gouthier: 2002)

These analogies lie mainly in the field of assonances and alliterations, and it can be pointed out

that the phenomenon is noticeable in all forms of literary translation. The recurrence of phonemes

allows the author to give his work a recognizable phonetic pattern in order to allow the reader or

the listener to structure mentally the work in question. It is to be pointed out that readers need

several types of acoustic tokens, not only phonemics, to understand a text at the first shot. By this

way, the meaning itself will be supported and the message will be more understandable:

phonemic inconsistency leads to confusion in the perception of the text: especially when it is read

by a speaker. A translation which would neglect this fact would then be less readable, as we can

notice in this translation of the famous speech uttered by De Gaulle in Bayeux, June the 16th 1944:

Ex 1:

it was here that events delivered their decisive justification for the efforts of those who had never

given in, and around whom the national instinct had rallied and French power reformed itself,

from June 18, 1940 onwards.

The reasons why this translation sounds that confuse are numerous, but it seems that the obvious

lack of any form of alliteration or assonances is one of them. De Gaulle himself was highly

literate in oratorical writing, and didn’t forget to insert phonemic recurrences in his speech, as we

can state by reading the original speech. The fact is noticeable in most of his speeches, and more

generally in most of the great politicians’ speeches.

C'est ici que l'effort de ceux qui n'avaient jamais cédé et autour desquels s'étaient, à partir du 18

juin 1940, rassemblé l'instinct national et reformée la puissance française tira des événements sa

décisive justification.

The need for inserting phonemic recurrences can eventually lead to distortion of meaning, and

most translators usually put this constraint in practice. The distortion cannot be very significant

because, in any case, the political speeches are semantically stereotyped: De Gaulle says here

what he is expected to say in that occasion, as most politicians would do in a similar context, or

as they would do in all forms of stereotyped contexts (i.e. in this case, the liberation of their

country). Then, the possibility to change some words (the operation resulting in the same general

meaning but with more intensity in the target text) in order to respect some phonemic constraints

is to be considered. This translation suffers the consequences of a source-oriented strategy, which

respects the original meaning at word level with a lower impact as a result.

Phonemic recurrences have a particular part to play within the scope of political speech owing to

the oratorical stress. Oratorical stress is almost unknown by theoreticians because it is not

metrical and fairly subjective in its use. It is well-admitted that this stress falls generally on the

first consonant of a word chosen by the speaker in the course of a sentence or a phrase

[Mazaleyrat]. Most of the words concerned by the oratorical stresses are substantives and verbs.

As a result, the more the first consonant of a word has a “plosive” intensity (i.e. is pronounced by

a sudden blocking and releasing of the air stream through the pharynx) the more the oratorical

stress will be perceptible. However, the use of this stress should be ungenerous in order to not

drown its effect, or to avoid any bombastic tone. That could be the reason why De Gaulle uses

more words beginning with fricatives than with plosives (e.g. [s] in this excerpt) to allow himself

the use of more oratory stresses. The excerpt below shows where he used it (in bold) in another

passage of the same speech:

Ex 2:

L'État légitime, parce qu'il reposait sur l'intérêt et le sentiment de la nation ; l'État dont la

souveraineté réelle avait été transportée du côté de la guerre, de la liberté et de la victoire,

tandis que la servitude n'en conservait que l'apparence ; l'État sauvegardé dans ses droits, sa

dignité, son autorité, au milieu des vicissitudes du dénuement et de l'intrigue ; l'État préservé des

ingérences de l'étranger

The respect of this oratorical stress can be very important for the translator if the speech has to be

uttered again in the target language : this is often the case during the meetings where politicians

of different mother tongues are taking part (currently during the international meetings, at the

European Commission or at NATO for example), and where they can hear through headphones

the translation of the speech uttered at the same moment in front of them, speech which has in

most cases been written a few days before the meeting and sent to the translators. It can be then

difficult to deal with this stress, especially because the translator has very little time to complete

his task (generally a few hours), and because politicians make changes till the last minute.

De Gaulle attached great importance to this stress, as we can notice by hearing most of his

speeches, and politicians generally do. Then it seems obvious that the translator should respect

this phonemic constraint according to the specificities of the target language, which can again

lead to distortion of meaning. But meaning is not all, especially when political speech is

concerned: it can be stated that elocutio prevails over inventio . This fact seems to have been

taken into consideration (consciously or not) by the translator as we can state here, by avoiding

both plosives and soft sounds like glides and vocals at the beginning of words (which occur

frequently in English contrary to French):

The legitimate State - because rooted in the interests and the sentiment of the nation ; the State

whose true sovereignty had been transported to the side of war, of freedom, of victory, while

serfdom retained but Statehood's outward appearance ; the State whose rights, dignity, and

authority had been upheld in the midst of vicissitudes, barrenness and intrigue ; the State

preserved from foreign interference ; the State capable of restoring around itself the unity of the

nation and the empire

III- Metrical Constraints

Rhythm cannot be reduced to metrical contingencies: assonances and alliterations are nothing

else than phonemic rhythms even if the syntactic rhythm is also to be considered (see next

chapters): but the metrical rhythm is of a central matter here too: no politician can allows himself

to ignore this; hence no translator either. A metrically inconsistent sentence which gives the

listener the impression that it ends too early or too late, that something else will be said but

nothing comes, is to be avoided in all cases.

Besides the classical metrical tools that can be used to measure the gaps or the equilibrium in a

sentence by counting syllables, modern phonetics has developed more accurate formalisms to

investigate the metrical patterns of a sentence, among them metrical phonology. A sentence can

be rhythmically analyzed by organizing into a hierarchy all its stresses according to their intensity

by elaborating a metrical tree. Then, specific stress diagrams permit to spot euphonies or stress

clashes (“grid clashes”).

To illustrate the idea, we will just use the classical syllables counting with the following example.

The text here is quite old and written in a language remote from English or French, but is

interesting to examine since the first brilliant known political speeches were written in this

language (i.e. old greek). The first lines of Aeschylus’ Seven against Thebes consist are a speech

uttered by Eteocles to the citizens of Thebes that he rules. The specificity of ancient Indo-

European languages is the intensive use of declensions (as it can be found nowadays in Slavic

languages) which permits the insertion of elaborated metaphors which are extremely difficult to

translate in a more synthetic language as French or English.

Ex 3: Καδμου πολιται, χρη λεγειν τα καιρια οστις φυλασσει πρα γος ε ν πρυμνη πολεως οι ακα

νωμω ν, βλεφαρα μη κοιμω ν υπνω http://www.perseus.org/cgi-

bin/ptext?doc=Perseus%3atext%3a1999%2e04%2e0016&query=commline%3d%23575

The translator can deal with two strategies to translate this harangue: whether a word-to-word

translation in order to respect the poetic tone used by Aeschylus, or a more target-oriented one

which would reproduce the force of Eteocles’ speech to the crowd. In our perspective, the best

choice is undoubtedly the second one since the point is to respect the elocutio above all. A

translation of the first type is for example the one made by H.W.Smyth in English:

Men of Cadmus's city, he who guards from the stern the concerns of the State and guides its helm

with eyes untouched by sleep must speak to the point.

To say the least, this translation is not the most readable we can imagine, but it respects with a

great accuracy the meaning of the source text. However, it deprives it of all its persuasion’s

strength. An equivalent in French could be:

Citoyens de Cadmos, il doit parler aux bons moments celui qui veille aux affaires de l’Etat depuis

la proue de la cité, qui guide son casque les paupières non alourdies par le sommeil.

This translation is even more accurate than the English one quoted above, and perhaps even less

readable. Besides the fact that the metaphors used here are much elaborated, the metrical

inconsistency of the sentence deprives the translation of all strength: it is precisely the part of

metrical rhythm to bear the meaning in a way that it can have a greater impact on the listeners.

The detailed metrical account is here (for the four phrases): 6 + 8 + 10 + 8 | 5 + 7 + 4. It is

possible to speculate about the place where fidelity to the source text lies when using such

translation strategies, but we will now try to modify the rhythmical structure without changing

the words (it is still a source-oriented translation then):

Citoyens de Cadmos, il doit parler aux bons moments || celui qui veille aux affaires de l’Etat |

depuis la proue de la cité, || qui guide son casque | les paupières non alourdies de sommeil.

(6 + 8) + (10 + 8) + (5 + 10)

The metrical pattern is less inconsistent, but still poor, and it seems difficult to get any better

result by using the exact words. There’s then an obvious need to stand aloof from the exact

meaning of the source text at a word level, and to carry out some modification. The result could

be for example:

Citoyens de Cadmos ! Celui qui veille sur les intérêts de l’Etat | du haut de la cité, || qui dirige

son casque | sans céder au sommeil, || celui-là doit savoir parler à point nommé !

(12 + 6) + (6 + 6) + 12

Here the metrical equilibrium is reached, without any important alteration of the original meaning

which remains the same but not at a word level (e.g. the word οίαξ – accusative οιακα :helm – is

almost impossible to use in the translation for the metaphor it creates is too complex and prevent

the translator from reaching the equilibrium).

Obviously, the translator is not always aware that he will make such a modification in order to

metrically re-equilibrate the sentence: but after his first literal offspring, he will probably

reconsider the sentence. Furthermore, this process seems to come into play in the translation of

literature too.

IV- The Concept of Undertow

The translator Philippe Bouquet was probably the first to mention the concept of undertow

(ressac) in relation with translation: the idea is based on the length of the sentences into a text

and on the lengths of the clauses and phrases into a sentence. The concept is quite new, but it

seems that there is a link between the relative lengths of clauses and sentences in a text that could

be ruled systematically, and that a translator can whether respect (if it exists in the original) or

create. The political speech is perhaps the most obvious case where such phenomenon can be

plotted, and I would like to investigate Bouquet’s idea further.

Let us consider for example the famous Gettysburg Address uttered by Abraham Lincoln the 19th

of November 1863:

Ex 4:

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived

and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come

to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that

that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

This excerpt is composed of four sentences:

- the first sentence is composed of 3 clauses or 7 phrases

- the second sentence is composed of 1 sentence or 3 phrases

- the third sentence is composed of 3 clauses or or 9 phrases

- the fourth sentence is composed of 2 clauses or 3 phrases (possibly 2, depending on how

we count the phrases).

It shows quite well an alternation of long and short sentences. Alternation is the first step: an

undertow is a superposition of two different movements as its natural equivalent. If we now count

the number of words per clause in each sentence, the result will be as follows:

- first sentence: 9 + 12 + 3

- second sentence: 10

- third sentence: 10 + 12 + 5

- fourth sentence: 6 + 5

Then, each sentence ends with the shortest clause in all cases. If we consider again the examples

2 and 3 , we can notice the same phenomenon: alternation short/long sentences + the shortest

clause at the end of the sentence. That’s obviously not the absolute rule since more complex

patterns of undertow can be plotted in political speeches (the good ones), but it is perhaps the

easiest to detect. The fact is that here the equilibrium is to be avoided: disruption is the very rule,

but with consistency between disruptions.

This is a constraint more for the translator of political speeches who tries to respect the elocutio,

and it is not the easiest to respect since he has to reconcile infidelity at a word or syntactic level

(see previous chapters) with fidelity at word-flow level.

V- The Incantatory Sentence

This fact is well-known, politicians use and abuse it (poets as well): the repetition of phrases or

words in order to create an incantatory effect, as it can be seen in examples 2 (recurrence of

“l’état”) and 4 (recurrence of “we” + verb). In most cases, this special type of anaphora is easy to

translate, but difficult configurations can occur, as in this excerpt from the Gettysburg Address:

Ex 5: The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget

what they did here.

When translated into French, the repetition of “here” doesn’t produce the same effect as in

English, and it is necessary to change it if we want to preserve this anaphora. The word change

will also require a change of syntax:

Le monde ne retiendra que peu, ni ne se souviendra de ce qui aura été dit en ces lieux, mais il ne

pourra jamais oublier ce qu’en ces lieux mêmes ils auront fait.

Another specific rhetorical figure related to repetition of word, the antanaclasis which consists of

the repetition of a word with two different meanings is at the edge of the untranslatable: here

Cicero plays with the ambiguity of the word religio in his Pro Domo:

Ex 6: ut amplissimi et clarissimi cives rem publicam bene gerendo religiones, religiones

sapienter interpretando rem publicam conservarent anadiplose

[so that they might preserve the republic as] the most honourable and eminent of the citizens, by

governing it well, and as priests by wisely interpreting the requirements of religion.

The translator dodged the problem by using two different translations of the word, since there is

no equivalent in English.

VI - Conclusion

According to Peter Hesselmann, elocutio is the Kunst der überzeugenden und ästhetisch

befriedigenden sprachlichen Formulierung (Hesselmann 1992). This aesthetic aspect of

translation has been often neglected, not by the translators but by the theoreticians who directed

their analysis towards the problematic of meaning. The translation of political speeches shows

not only that the search for the absolute equivalent is vain, as we can state e.g. by reading the

translation in English of De Gaulle’s speech at Bayeux, and that the acoustic aspects described

above are a prominent feature of the translation process, if not the most prominent. The very

concept of fidelity in translation seems then quite limited in its current acceptation and in

contradiction with the classical rhetoric’s’ precepts: even the inventio is not only meaning, and

there is no form/meaning duality in the oratory art.

Bibliography :

Molinié Georges. (1992). Dictionnaire de rhétorique. Paris. Hachette.

Di Bari M. – Gouthier D. (2002). Tropes, Science and Communication, JDCOM March 2th

2002 Trieste.

Hesselmann Peter (1992). Rhetorische Grundbegriffe. Brackert, Helmut/Jörn Stückrath (ed.):

Literaturwissenschaft. Ein Grundkurs. Reinbek: Rowohlt.

Hogg R, McCully C-B. (1987). Metrical Phonology. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press.

Klinkenberg Jean-Marie. Précis de sémiotique générale. Paris. De Boeck & Larcier 1996

Mazaleyrat, Jean. (1990). Eléments de métrique française. Paris. Armand Colin.

Works quoted :

Aeschylus : Seven against Thebes . Edited and translated in English by Herbert Weir Smyth.

The Perseus Project : www.perseus.org

Cicero: De Domo Sua ad Pontifices Oratio. Edited by Albert Clark. The Perseus Project:

www.perseus.org

Charles De Gaulle’s speech at Bayeux and English translation (author unknown):

www.charles-de-gaulle.org (12/03/05)

Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg (The Gettysburg Address). Abraham Lincoln Online.

http://showcase.netins.net/web/creative/lincoln.html (12/03/05)