TRANSLATING NEW GENRES BETWEEN SLOVENE AND ENGLISH: AN ANALYTICAL FRAMEWORK

David LimonDepartment of Translation, Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana

Aškerčeva 2, 1000 Ljubljana, SloveniaE-mail: limon@siol.net

Abstract: Due to processes of internationalisation and European integration, countries such as

Slovenia are having to accommodate many new textual genres, which are either introduced via

translation, or written in Slovene for later translation into English. This paper presents an analytical

framework developed with this situation in mind and describes how it was applied to a particular

translation of a political progress report. The aim was to support the development of a more

systematic approach to the production and translation of such texts. The model draws upon

discourse analysis, genre analysis and contrastive functional rhetoric, and is compatible with

functional approaches to translation. The top-down analysis begins with discussion of the

background to the report and its writing, the participants in the translation process, the training and

support provided, and the translation strategies employed. We then go on to consider the broader

linguistic and cultural background, including the relevant genre conventions. The more detailed

analysis of text profile, coherence, cohesion, information structure and register features is

summarised. The emphasis throughout is on the task facing the reader and whether the

communicative purpose of the text is being achieved.

Key words: context of situation, context of culture, discourse community, genre conventions,

communicative purpose, translation strategy

INTRODUCTION

Slovenia has to rely on translation into English in its dealings with international bodies of

which it is a member or a candidate country. For socio-historic reasons, many of the genres

involved in the process of communication with these organisations are new to the Slovene

environment and there is a clear need for a systematic approach to the production and

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translation of such texts. An example of the kind of text under consideration is the annual

report submitted over recent years by Slovenia to the European Commission in Brussels,

summarising the progress made towards meeting EU membership requirements and

indicating what remains to be accomplished. Translated texts of this kind have more than

an informative function: they are intermediaries that help to establish a two-way dialogue

between Slovenia as an applicant (now an 'acceding country') and the EU Commission as

‘gatekeeper’. As such, their communicative effectiveness is of great importance, as is the

impression they create. However, current translation strategies produce target texts that are

too heavily influenced by the source text and language, with the result that reader

expectations with regard to cultural, textual and genre conventions are probably not being

met.

The compiling of the report in its current format began only in 1999; prior to that, officials

in the relevant ministries and government bodies had little experience of this kind of

writing and the relevant genre conventions were not available to guide them. The

translators responsible for producing the English version are native Slovene speakers

translating into a foreign language, who also have little experience of the genre concerned.

The support provided to the translators focuses primarily on the production of glossaries of

frequently translated lexical items or ‘terminology’, and standardisation in the naming of

institutions and legislation. In late 1999 and early 2000, some of the translators involved

also attended short seminars on translating into English, which dealt with a wide range of

genres including letters, speeches, memos, responses to requests for information or

clarification, and reports. An initial reading of samples of translations into English showed

that these were insufficiently distanced from the original, being heavily influenced by

Slovene word order, syntax and common lexical patterns, as well as by the stylistic features

of the original and its cultural assumptions. Further observations were that they were

frequently inconsistent in terms of register and seemed to make unnecessary demands on

the reader. In discussion, translators themselves expressed strong reservations about the

quality of the English translations they produced and frequently pointed, in mitigation, to

what they considered to be unclear and ‘badly written’ originals, as well as the immense

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time and other pressures under which they had to work. Further analysis and discussion of

the translations pointed to the need for the development of clearer strategies for translating

texts from Slovene into English and for the revision of the resulting translations. It also

underlined the need for translation training in relevant genre conventions, as well as

possible training for the writers of the original texts.

THE FRAMEWORK – GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS

To look into this issue further, an analytical framework was developed, drawing upon a

number of fields – in particular discourse analysis, genre analysis and contrastive rhetoric.

The resulting approach to translation analysis is based on the functional comparison of texts

across languages; this is linked to a functional approach to translation, which looks at the

purpose of the target text and examines how successfully it has been realised through the

translation process. The model is an eclectic and flexible one that is not tied to any

particular linguistic model. It takes a top-down approach, starting with text in its situational

and cultural context, including the rhetorical traditions and genre conventions associated

with the two languages involved. It deals with contextualised meaning, considering

individual items only in terms of their function within the text: translator decisions, even at

word or phrase level, involve (albeit subconsciously) consideration of the wider context;

moreover, text strategies precede the syntactic formation of individual sentences – we do

not produce a sentence then give it 'textual fit' it after it is already there. The model focuses

on communicative rather than systemic factors and deals with text in context or socially-

situated language use. This means considering factors such as: setting, participants

(producer and receiver), roles (communicative and social), goals, social knowledge, norms

and values, and institutional or organisational constraints upon communication. The model

analyses the role played by translation within a very specific process of social interaction at

a particular point in history. It assesses language use in terms of markedness, which relates

to reader expectations, and deals with text as process as well as product, i.e. how it is

interpreted by the translator and by the final reader to construct a meaningful textual world.

Its point of departure is acceptability, rather than adequacy in relation to the source text (cf.

Toury 1995). Finally, at the practical level, it looks for similarity rather than identity, as

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relativist notions are more suited to translation (cf. Chesterman 1998a: 39ff), and aims only

for explanatory adequacy – no translation analysis can be truly exhaustive, if for no other

reason than that the target system is in a constant state of flux.

GOALS OF THE MODEL

Analyse the context of situation

To understand the meaning of any text, including a translation, we need to consider both

the context of situation in which it occurs and the broader context of culture within which it

functions. Thus we have to look not simply at the completed translation but at the whole

process by which the translation was produced, the reader's interaction with it and the

context within which that interaction takes place. We start our analysis by describing the

translators and their linguistic and experiential background, the institutional environment in

which they operate, the strategies they employ, and the translation and revision procedures

involved in the translation process.

Analyse the context of culture

In order to understand the context of culture, we look first at the two languages involved in

the translation process – one of which, Slovene, is a 'smaller' language, while the other,

English, is a global one – as well as the rhetorical and textual conventions associated with

these languages. The special factors relating to the dominance of Anglo-Saxon cultural

values within many fields of communication and the use of English as one of the main

working languages within the European Union are also discussed.

Analyse in terms of genre

Genre is text defined in terms of social purpose. Genres are structured texts that unfold in a

particular way in order to achieve identifiable communicative purposes. Genre analysis sets

out to explain socio-cultural, institutional and organisational constraints upon

communication, as well as to identify conventionalised regularities in communicative

events (bearing in mind that such regularities are likely to vary between different languages

and cultures). For the analysis we are carrying out, which involves an assessment of how

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well the translated text functions in comparison with similar texts within the target culture,

the concept of genre is more useful than that of text type (defined in terms of predominant

rhetorical purpose, e.g. instruction, exposition or argumentation) or register, which

represents the more general linguistic choices that are made in order to realise genres. Thus

we compare the translated text we are analysing with a 'control text', or parallel text

matched for genre, as well as with the source text; this comparison extends to sub-genres

identified within the text. In doing so, we try to identify the conventions by which the

reader – in particular, an expert member of the discourse community – is likely to accept

the translated text as an exponent of the genre.

Identify communicative purpose

Central to any genre analysis is the identification of the communicative purpose or the goal

of the text, as this constitutes the rationale for the genre. As such, it is crucial to any

evaluation of whether translation purpose is achieved. It is important also because it helps

determine the structure of the discourse and constrains both the content and how that

content is expressed.

Account for ideational, interpersonal and textual meaning

Text is about more than communicating information. Any textual analysis needs to take

into account the three strands of potential meaning that underlie language use: the

ideational, interpersonal and textual functions (cf. Halliday 1970: 143). In order to achieve

this, we borrow partly from the model of Contrastive Functional Rhetoric presented by

Chesterman (1998a) and partly from the methods of genre analysis as described by Swales

(1990) and Bhatia (1993). Of the 'text specifiers' relating to the ideational aspects of

messages described in the former we are most concerned with profile (Chesterman op.cit.

170ff), or the way in which ideas proceed through the text and the general structure of its

meaning. To analyse this profile to a greater degree of delicacy, we compare the surface

ordering of the text with its underlying rhetorical structure, describing the degree of fit

between them. In relation to interpersonal meaning, we rely on the generic concept of

communicative purpose, as well as the register variables, particularly tenor (cf. Halliday

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and Hasan 1976: 23). Finally, as far as textual meaning is concerned, we look at different

aspects of coherence as described in Chesterman's (op.cit. 183ff) functional model. This

involves metatextual features – such as previewing, summarizing and signposting, which

we discuss under the heading of rhetorical structure and text ordering – as well as the

surface realisations of coherence, which we deal with under the heading of cohesion. It also

involves informational coherence or 'informativity', which we analyse in terms of

information structure – in particular, conformity with unmarked given-new patterns (cf.

Halliday 1967: 211 and 1994: 140; also Fries 1994: 233-234) – and intertextual coherence,

the implicit aspects of which we deal with in terms of degree of conformity to genre

conventions, while explicit intertextual references are noted when allusions are made to

related texts.

Analyse text-centred features

The key to understanding both the process of translation and to judging its product is to see

the meaning of the text as negotiated between producer and receiver (Hatim and Mason

1990: 64-65). Texts are not passively received: the reader is actively and creatively engaged

in a hermeneutic process drawing upon not only language and culture, but also experience

and perception (Stolze 2001). The meaning or function of a text is not inherent in the

linguistic signs of which it is composed, but rather a text is made meaningful by and for its

receiver (Nord 1997: 31). The model deals with the coherence of the text in terms of how

easy it is for the reader to process at particular junctures; the involvement of extra cognitive

cost at any point in the text is likely to relate back to the text's conformity to genre

conventions. There is a contrast here between cohesion, which is objective, and coherence,

which is subjective, so that judgements concerning it may vary from reader to reader (Hoey

1991). The most relevant definition for our purposes is that coherence is "a covert potential

meaning relationship among parts of a text, made overt by the reader or listener through

processes of interpretation" (Blum-Kulka's 1986).?? In order to maintain coherence, the

translator needs to strike a balance between what is effective, i.e. achieves the

communicative goal, and what is efficient, i.e. places fewest demands on user resources (cf.

Beaugrande and Dressler 1981: 11). The translator also needs to be aware that tolerances

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and preferences with regard to coherence differ between languages and genres. However,

discussion of whether a text coheres or makes sense is hard to separate from analysis of the

surface features that signal the underlying connections between parts of the text, i.e.

cohesive features, and the way that information is distributed through the text, i.e. its

information structure. Although we discuss coherence, cohesion and information structure

separately, they clearly interact with and are mutually dependent on each other. Finally, to

hang together, texts need to display consistency of register: coherence of meaning is

dependent not only on content, but on selection from the semantic resources of the

language, which is the subject of the final stage of analysis within the model.

Analyse user-centred features

The intended meaning of a text emerges only when pragmatic factors are taken into

account, i.e. who is saying what to whom and for what purpose. However, discourse

analysis does not separate such user-centred features from the text-centred features just

discussed. The textual category of situationality covers the circumstances of the interaction,

including socio-cultural factors, and whether the text is relevant to this situation of

occurrence. This can be analysed in part by seeing how text users interact with register

variables such as field, mode and tenor. A useful distinction when assessing communicative

purpose is that between 'situation monitoring', i.e. when the main function of a text is to

provide a relatively unmediated account of the situation model, and 'situation management',

i.e. when the main purpose is to steer the situation towards the text producer's goals. This

category is best described in terms of dominances rather than either-or terms (Beaugrande

and Dressler 1981: 163ff). The category of intentionality relates to the writer's goals,

realised both globally and locally within the text, with varying degrees of explicitness,

which the translator seeks to convey to target readers in a manner appropriate to the context

of situation. One such global goal is to make the text acceptable to a particular discourse

community so that the text receiver accepts that the text has some relevance or use in terms

of acquiring information or taking action (i.e. the category of acceptability). These

categories enter into our analysis when we talk about communicative purpose and about

how the text matches up in terms of genre conventions, which in turn impacts on ease of

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processing. In a similar way, the category of intertextuality, which is key to the translator's

work, is constantly present in the analysis due to comparison with the control text and

reference to reader expectations when assessing ease of processing. Finally, as already

noted, informativity of content, or the degree of givenness and certainty in the text, is

analysed under the heading of information structure.

STEPS IN THE ANALYSIS

Translation description can focus on three fundamental aspects of the translation and its

environment: the intralinguistic profile of the translation compared to a non-translated text

of the same genre in the target culture; the interlinguistic profile of the translated text in

relation to its source text; and the extralinguistic relations between the translation, the

situation in which it is produced and the socio-cultural context in which it is embedded

(Chesterman 1998b: 204). The analysis we carried out considers all three of these aspects,

placing more emphasis on the intralinguistic than the interlinguistic, but starting with

extralinguistic factors. The analysis comprises 9 main steps, as follows:

1. Describe the translation context and translator profile

2. Analyse the broader linguistic and cultural background

3. Identify communicative purpose

4. Identify relevant genre conventions

5. Compare text ordering with underlying rhetorical structure

6. Assess coherence of message and ease of processing

7. Analyse in terms of cohesion

8. Analyse in terms of information structure

9. Describe representative register and discourse features

In the present paper, we shall concentrate on the first four steps, as the remainder involve

detailed textual analysis and comparison.

THE CORPUS

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The model was applied to one of the annual progress reports submitted by Slovenia as an

applicant country, the NPAA Report 2000, which is the English translation of the text

Državni program za prevzem pravnega reda EU – Poročilo 2000. The NPAA Report is

described by the Slovene Government as "the central document in the whole of the

integration process of the Republic of Slovenia into the EU" (NPAA Report May 1999, p.6)

and is regarded in Brussels as a document "of paramount importance" in establishing the

final position of the Commission with regard to the progress made by Slovenia over the

previous twelve-month period (personal communication from the Head of the EC

Translation Service, 6.12.2001). The report contains four main chapters, on political

criteria, economic criteria, the capacity to adopt the acquis and administrative capacity.

For purposes of genre comparison, we referred to the 2000 Regular Report from the

Commission on Slovenia’s Progress Towards Accession (hereafter Regular Report), which

was written in English and which could be said to represent a response to the report

submitted by Slovenia. It was not possible to obtain a control text in the form of a progress

report from an applicant country written in English, because all of the reports submitted are

translations. Many of those involved in the drafting of the Regular Reports in English are

non-native speakers, but an English translator is involved in the production of the final

version. In any case, we can assume that these reports represent genre models, as they are

produced by expert members of a particular discourse community – i.e. representatives of

the EU's bureaucratic structures. The first such report was submitted by the Commission to

the Council in October 1998 and they have since been produced on an annual basis. The

purpose of the reports is to review "the progress of each Central and Eastern European

applicant State towards accession in the light of the Copenhagen criteria, in particular the

rate at which it is adopting the Union acquis" (2000 Regular Report, p.5). The reports

represent the basis on which the Council takes decisions relating to accession negotiations.

Although the NPAA Report and the Regular Report share the same basic structure and

belong to the same genre (the political progress report), they differ subtly in terms of

communicative purpose. This is because of the different status and communicative role of

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the (institutional) writers of the two texts – in the one case an applicant and in the other a

participant in the screening process. At the level of register, we might expect differences

particularly in terms functional tenor – specifically, to what extent the writer is involved in

informing, persuading, evaluating or exhorting. Thus, when making comparisons between

the two, we need to ask to what extent the differences can be ascribed to the differing

functions of the texts and to what extent they are due to the fact that one of them is a

translation.

CONTEXT OF SITUATION

The character of the translator, his/her cultural environment and knowledge base are an

important part of translation evaluation (cf. Wilss 1999: 146); it is also important to

understand the institutional constraints affecting the translator's work (Koskinen 2000).

According to information obtained from the body responsible, the Government Office for

European Affairs (SVEZ), the translation of the NPAA Report in 2000 involved 24 in-

house and freelance translators, none of whom were native speakers of English. Unlike the

document published in May 1999 (which, by comparison, involved 18 individual

translators and 2 translation agencies), the translated text was not subject to language

revision, due to time pressures and the unavailability of appropriately qualified personnel.

Moreover, the process of compiling and translating the report was not subject to any overall

co-ordination.

The traditional assumption within translation theory has been that translators work into

their first language, which is typically seen as “the only way you can translate naturally,

accurately and with maximum effectiveness” (Newmark 1988: 3); this conviction has no

doubt been perpetuated by the high value placed on the translation norms of fluency and

naturalness, particularly with regard to literary translation, so entrenched in the Anglo-

Saxon cultural sphere (cf. Venuti 1995). However, in recent years this insistence on

translation into the first language has come under increasing scrutiny, particularly in

relation to certain language pairs and certain genres (see, for instance, the papers in

Grosman et al eds. (2000)). For practical reasons, in many parts of the world a great deal of

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translation takes place from the first language into a foreign language – most frequently

English. This is not only the case in smaller nations with less widely known languages,

such as Slovenia (where only a handful of members of the professional translator's

association are native speakers of English), but also in countries as widely different as

Spain, Japan and Australia, where for a variety of reasons there are insufficient translators

from the right background available (cf. Campbell 1998: 22ff). As long as there is

asymmetry between languages, with some having more de facto status than others, this

situation is likely to persist. Moreover, with regard to certain kinds of discourse, such as

scientific and technical texts, it can be argued that accuracy is more important than felicity

of style and that a thorough grounding in the subject matter, supported by close familiarity

with such texts in the TL, is more important to the translator than native-speaker

competence in the TL. In any case, both bilingual and translation competence are matters of

degree, and in the situation we are discussing, the translator's textual competence may well

be the most crucial factor.

The current reality is that native speakers of English able to translate from Slovene are

simply not available to cope with the volume of Slovene-English specialist translation now

required and the situation is unlikely to change in the very near future. One way of

ameliorating the influence of the SL on the TL texts produced by non-native speakers of the

TL is to employ native-speaker language revisers or rewriters. This is a strategy employed

by some translation agencies, companies and government bodies in Slovenia, but does not

seem to be applied consistently; furthermore, the level of knowledge of Slovene among

those carrying out revision work, many of whom are short-term employees with no formal

knowledge of the language, is extremely varied, as is the level of expertise in relation to the

target language. One result of this is that revision focuses largely on surface detail, which

may ensure that the translated text is largely free from obvious grammatical error, but does

not guarantee either accuracy, for which the translator has to be responsible, or

communicative effectiveness.

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A good example is the original NPAA Report, from 1999, which was revised by a visiting

expert from Brussels (an Adviser on Enlargement from the European Commission

Translation Service), who admitted that his knowledge of the source language was limited.

The revision notes subsequently provided to assist future translations into English consist

of 19 points, which focus entirely on lexico-grammatical features and punctuation (e.g. use

of prepositions, articles, hyphenation) – the one more general point being the avoidance of

American English. Thus the only translation evaluation carried out in relation to this

ongoing translation project merely identified a small number of surface errors and failed to

assess the text in terms of genre or even register. This misses the important point that

translations free of lexico-grammatical errors can still be communicatively ineffective.

Mastering new genres and styles of discourse in a target language is not just part of the

translator's general competence in the language, it is something that has to be learned. If

native-speaker revisers cannot be relied upon to provide textual acceptability, then the

translators themselves should be provided with training in the area where text meets context

– i.e. in genre conventions and/or text-type conventions defined in terms of rhetorical

purpose. However, such training is not yet available and the support provided to

government translators tends to focus on terminological issues and lexical standardisation

through the use of translation software. Moreover, there seems to be a lack of any clear

guidance for the writers of the different parts of the original report, who are located in

many different ministries. As far as I was able to establish, the overall structure of the

NPAA Report was based on the list of negotiating chapters drawn up in Brussels, but no

detailed guidance was offered on issues such as content, form, length and layout. Similarly,

the approach taken to the writing and compilation of the report seems to have been an ad

hoc one: the purpose or goal of the report and the strategy to be used was not set down

anywhere and the writers did not receive any prior functional training in report writing.

A close reading of a range of texts translated from Slovene into English for SVEZ by both

in-house and freelance translators would seem to indicate that too much emphasis is placed

on faithfulness or adherence to the SL text, while insufficient emphasis is placed on the

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communicative purpose of the TL text. What we frequently encounter is unwanted formal

interference brought about by the manipulation of source-text structures at the expense of

intended meaning. The largest part of the work carried out by SVEZ translators is the

translation of EU legislation from English into Slovene; in doing this, translators adhere as

closely as possible to the wording of the original, producing a fairly literal rendering of the

English text which is stylistically and rhetorically marked when compared to original

Slovene legislative texts. The reason for this is the nature of the texts involved and the

strategy deemed appropriate: because of the status of texts such as laws, supplementing

regulations, directives and decisions, a strategy based on "prudence" and "capitulation"

rather than "risk-taking" and "persistence" (cf. Campbell 1998: 104) is preferred. The fact

that such translations are passed on for detailed legal revision must also contribute to the

tendency to stay at the level of surface-level similarity. What then seems to happen is that

translators employ the same strategy when translating others kinds of texts from Slovene

into English – partly, perhaps, because they feel less confident translating into English. But

different genres place different demands on translators and one cannot assume that an

approach used when translating legal texts is going to be appropriate to the translation of a

progress report. With regard to the latter, we need to ask what matters most – faithfulness to

the SL reporting style or the function of the report within the target environment.

Through informal interviews with some of those involved and a written question

administered to 40 translators, I endeavoured to establish what strategy the translators saw

themselves as using. The application of the principles of legal translating is probably not a

conscious process and was mentioned by only one translator. In answer to the written

question In what circumstances do you tend to stay close to the original when translating?

the most frequently selected responses (respondents chose one or more options, or offered

their own) were: when the text deals with an unfamiliar topic (75%) and when the original

is difficult to understand or unclear (72.5%); a half also took this approach when the text

was seen to be an 'important' one and slightly less than half (45%) when they had been

criticised in the past for not 'sticking to the original' (usually by the original author).

Slovene translators of specialist texts into English, especially where those texts have high

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status, find it 'safer' to adhere closely to the principles of lexical equivalence and surface-

level similarity. The degree of mediation, i.e. the extent to which translators intervene in the

transfer process, is very low with regard to EU texts; there is also no translator 'visibility' in

the form of a preface, commentary or footnotes. The translators are also invisible in another

sense: contact between them and other participants in the communication process is

extremely limited. The notion of the translator as an expert in cultural mediation (cf. Katan

1999; also Wilss 1999) has not gained any real currency within the Slovene administration

and translators are rarely asked to comment on the generic or textual appropriateness of SL

texts written specifically for translation into English – nor do most translators seem willing

to adopt a more interventionist strategy based on a knowledge of differences in textual and

genre conventions.

The problems we have described in this section are by no means restricted to the Slovene

environment. Koskinen (2000) describes how translation of EU legal texts into Finnish has

produced a new legal rhetoric, very different from that traditionally present in Finnish

legislation. She also points out how the literal mode of translation has gained a wide

currency, even beyond the field of legal texts, i.e. in areas where the translator presumably

has much more leeway for mediation or adaptation. One possible explanation offered is that

translating institutions tend to prefer a translation ethics of sameness that is not too

unsettling to existing norms (cf. Venuti 1998: 82). As is the case in Slovenia, the strategic

choices made by Finnish translators are not made on the basis of written guidelines but are

the result of assimilation into the prevailing 'climate' of the institution as well as the model

represented by previous translations. The collective nature of EU translating (i.e. the

number of translators that may be involved in the translation of a single text, which reflects

the way texts are written) and the level of intertextual allusion and reference involved (texts

frequently quote at length from other versions or texts) mean that individual translators are

unlikely to deviate radically from the general trend. A further constraining factor is the

"intertextual network" within which frequent redrafting and revising of both originals and

translations takes place: texts and their translations are collective products, which means

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that responsibility for the relationship between them is also collective and thus "seems to lie

on no-one's shoulders" (Koskinen op.cit. 60).

LINGUISTIC AND CULTURAL CONTEXT

For small nations such as Slovenia there is an urgent need to communicate internationally

without being stigmatised for what Connor (1996: 47) refers to as "poor linguistic

manners". When a powerful TL such as English, which enjoys cultural hegemony and

prestige compared to Slovene, is involved one would expect motivated interventions by

translators (cf. Venuti 1995). Similarly, one might expect to find different strategies being

employed with regard to translation into and from more peripheral cultures (cf. Bassnett

1993: 142ff). When translating from English into Slovene, it does seem to be the case that

in many fields (academic and scientific writing, as well as computing, telecommunications

and marketing texts are obvious examples) Anglo-Saxon cultural values are widely seen as

universal or neutral: no cultural filter is employed, but rather rhetorical patterns and register

values are imported directly into Slovene, influencing a wide range of genres. And, as we

have already seen, when translating EU legal texts from English the same holds true.

However, in the case of the text we are analysing the opposite seems to be the case, i.e.

Slovene textual features are transferred into the target text in English. This is probably

because of the translation strategy employed, which we have already discussed, and also

because the translators involved are translating out of their mother tongue, which clearly

has a strong influence on what they produce in the (foreign) target language.

At this point it would be helpful to see what general differences can be said to prevail

between written discourse in Slovene and English; in the absence of relevant contrastive

studies, the claims made here are necessarily tentative ones. In comparison to English,

which is generally seen as 'writer responsible', Slovene could generally be characterised as

'reader responsible' – in other words, responsibility for effective communicative is seen to

lie primarily with the reader (cf. Hinds 1987). Thus, for instance, English texts tend to be

marked with clear transition statements, while transition devices are likely to be more

subtle in Slovene and demand more of the reader. Similarly, while English is generally

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perceived as having 'addressee orientation' (cf. Katan 1999: 194), distinguished by low

information load (i.e. the speed at which information is introduced), reader friendliness,

simplicity and clarity, Slovene has more features of 'author orientation', such as high

information load, authority, explicit rhetorical skills and rich style. Another distinction that

could be made is that Slovene discursive writing relies more on 'knowledge telling', i.e.

retrieval from memory, than 'knowledge transforming' (cf. Grabe and Kaplan 1996: 124).

The greater tolerance for digression, recapitulation and repetition and the preference for

content over form that Clyne (1987) identified in German academic prose compared to

English also seems to be true of Slovene – not surprising, when one considers how much

influence the German educational and linguistic model has had on Slovenia over the

centuries. Indeed, much of what Čmejrková and Daneš (1997) say with regard to the

influence of 'Teutonic' style on Czech academic writing would also be applicable to the

Slovene context.

That written discourse in every language bears markings of cultural specificity at many

levels, and that this has to be taken into account in writing instruction that aims to equip

students with communicative, strategic, sociocultural and discoursal competence is

recognised by the Council of Europe's Common European Framework (2001) for language

learning, teaching and assessment. In the light of this, it is instructive to compare the

secondary school programmes for Slovene and English drawn up by the Slovene Ministry

of Education and Sport.1 The stress within the Slovene language syllabus is on creative

writing and the interpretation of literary texts, rather than the teaching of functional writing

and text types such as exposition and argument; moreover, there is a relative disregard for

text composing strategies, audience-awareness and text organisation. The lack of functional

writing instruction at secondary level and beyond means that Slovene students who later go

on to fill administrative posts are unlikely to have had any training which would help them

write the kind of texts we are analysing in this study.

1 http://www.mszs.si/slo/solstvo/ss/programi/gimnazija/programi.htm

16

So far, we have referred to the Anglo-Saxon cultural sphere, but we are concerned more

specifically in this study with English as a medium of communication between EU

institutions on the one hand, and member states and applicants on the other. The English

used within the EU is widely seen as a separate variant of the language with its own

distinguishing features, popularly known as Eurospeak but also referred to as Eurolect

(Goffin 1994). The process leading to the development of this variant is one of "interlingual

assimilation" (Wilss 1999: 106ff). arising from a multilingual administrative environment

in which texts are produced by groups of authors with different native languages. In the

popular imagination and the media, Eurospeak has become synonymous with the worst

kind of bureaucratese; EU institutions have responded by taking steps to improve the

accessibility of the texts they produce, as well as their own image. Resolutions have been

passed calling for guidelines for the quality of drafting of Community legislation and on the

use of clear language, culminating in a declaration on this issue within the Treaty of

Amsterdam. At the same time, some of those working within the institutions have initiated

a campaign against ‘Eurofog’ or 'brouillard linguistique', offering guidelines on clear

writing both for those involved in drafting texts in English and those translating. The Fight

the FOG booklet2 offers advice in the following key areas: putting the reader first (in

particular, members of the general public); preferring verbalisation to nominalisation,

concrete terms to abstract ones, and the active to the passive voice; putting given

information at the start of the sentence and new or complex information at the end; and the

benefits of keeping documents short and simple. One clear message of the campaign is that

there are inherent dangers in trying to say too much in too abstract a fashion: "English is a

notoriously blunt language. Too much abstract language (FOG) may make your reader

suspect that something real and unpalatable is being wrapped up in verbiage" (p.4). The

writers of this document draw a distinction between "Eurospeak", with which they would

like to refer to useful language coined for EU concepts that have no exact parallel at

national level (e.g. subsidiarity, convergence, cohesion), and "Eurojargon", which we might

describe as the specific lexis used by the discourse community made up of EU insiders.

2 http://europa.eu.int/comm/sdt/en/ftfog/index.htm

17

In talking about the context of culture, we have so far begged the question as to whether

this notion can legitimately be used in relation to a multinational (and multilingual)

organisation such as the EU. The concept of translation as intercultural communication has

traditionally been associated with communication across linguistic and national or ethnic

boundaries, which of course is not the situation with regard to the EU institutions. A

frequently quoted definition of culture is that given by Goodenough (1964: 36), who

defines it in terms of acceptability: "a society’s culture consists of whatever it is one has to

know or believe in order to operate in a manner acceptable to its members, and do so in any

role that they accept for any one of themselves”. This definition is reminiscent of the notion

of 'discourse community' within genre analysis. Swales (1990: 58) defines a genre as a class

of communicative events sharing a set of communicative purposes that are recognised by

the expert members of the parent discourse community, thereby constituting the rationale

for the genre. Discourse communities are 'sociorhetorical networks' that form in order to be

able to work towards a common sets of rhetorical goals. The language activities of such

communities are driven by communicative purpose and its primary determinants are

functional – aimed at particular objectives. The six defining characteristics of a discourse

community set out by Swales (op.cit. 24-27) could all be said to apply, in communicative

terms, to the European institutions as a collective body: the community has a broadly

agreed set of common public goals (written or tacit) and mechanisms for

intercommunication among its members (meetings, reports, etc.); it uses participatory

mechanisms primarily to provide information; it utilises one or more genres in the

communicative furtherance of its aims and has acquired some specific lexis (terminology,

acronyms, etc.); finally, there is a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of

relevant content and discoursal expertise. Thus, the EU institutions can at least be referred

to as a discourse community, or a secondary culture. We can also talk about a 'Euro-

rhetoric' that has come about through the interaction of the different linguistic communities

within the context of the EU (cf. Tirkkonen-Condit 2001: 262).

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Koskinen (2001: 295) draws a useful distinction between two types of EU translation:

intracultural, which takes place within the 'a-national culture' of the EU institutions, and

intercultural, which entails communication between the national cultures of the member

states and the EU culture. The latter category can be further subdivided into inter-

administrative, involving the Commission and national authorities, NGOs or special interest

groups, and 'public', for direct communication between the Commission and the general

public. Although at the time of writing Slovenia is still not a member state, we can

legitimately place the text we are dealing with in the category of intercultural inter-

administrative translation as just defined; we are thus also referring to context of culture,

albeit in a slightly adapted form.

COMMUNICATIVE PURPOSE

Although the analysed text and the control text belong to the same genre, we can expect

them to differ in terms of communicative purpose, due to the different status and

communicative role of their (institutional) authors. They have certain general features in

common: multiple authorship, with authors unidentified (formally institutional);

institutional addressee; third person 'angle' (cf. Chesterman 1998a: 170); reference to the

same time frame (12 months); overall content determined by the same institution (European

Commission, as evaluator of the reports); a focus on action taken – legislation adopted,

international conventions ratified and other measures implemented – with the result that a

limited range of action verbs is used; and a shared structure.

Thus, in terms of institutional focus, there is little difference between the reports, other than

the level of detail (the NPAA Report consists of 269 pages or 96975 words; the Regular

Report of 101 pages or 43417 words). However, the communicative purpose of the two

texts does differ because of the role relationships involved: the author of the NPAA Report,

as an applicant, is mainly involved in informing, while the author of the Regular Report, as

an evaluator, is more involved in evaluating, notwithstanding the strong expository

element. A further point is that, in generic terms, the author of the Regular Report is

already an expert member of the discourse community, while it is not clear how far the

19

author of the Slovene text has been initiated into that community. Beyond that, we might

also say that the NPAA Report is persuasive, in that it seeks to present the information

provided in the best possible light, and mitigatory, when it tries to explain or justify failures

to meet targets, while the Regular Report is also hortatory, in that it makes

recommendations and sets goals (with varying degrees of obligation). The stated purpose of

both texts is to provide an ‘objective’ assessment of progress made and action taken within

the reporting period, but the report from Brussels displays a degree of overt situation

management (cf. Beaugrande and Dressler 1981: 169) in that the evaluator is systematically

applying the same criteria to 12 applicant countries (and thus 12 reports) and making

recommendations accordingly, the overt function of the Slovene report is situation

monitoring, with any management of the situation taking place covertly, i.e. subtly trying to

steer the addressee towards the text producer's goals. Hatim (2001: 178) points out that

texts vary along a continuum from detached and non-evaluative to involved and highly

evaluative. Another way of looking at this is the distinction between participant and

spectator: the author of the Slovene report remains a participant in the events described and

invites the reader to become one also.

Although reporting may be seen as a detached genre, the exposition that takes place within

it (either temporal or conceptual) will have differing degrees of detachment according to

rhetorical purpose, leading at times to significant shifts in function. The result of this will

be text type hybridisation, with a move away from the predominant focus (cf. Hatim 1997:

42; also Werlich 1976) to a subsidiary one: for example, in the NPAA Report towards

argumentation (i.e. where mitigatory circumstances are being cited) or in the Regular

Report towards instruction (i.e. where future action is recommended or prescribed). To

conclude: the main goal or communicative purpose of the two texts (and that which shapes

them as examples of the genre) is exposition, with persuasion and mitigation as the

subsidiary goals of the Slovene report, and evaluation and exhortation as subsidiary goals

of the report from Brussels.

GENRE CONVENTIONS

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Writing is an attempt to communicate with the reader; the writer has intentions and a

purpose, as well as information to convey. Texts have a hierarchical structure that differs

due to the purpose, audience, status, author, information load and genre (Grabe and Kaplan

1996: 54ff). Beyond surface form, the text is organised by the writer's relation to it, by the

reader's assumed knowledge and by the subject matter. The information structure guides the

reader as to the writer's intent, showing what is presupposed and what thematic information

is highlighted. This structure is constrained by text ordering and by how rapidly and from

what perspective the author wants to present information: too much or too little information

can affect the text's coherence, making it difficult for the reader to process. It can also lead

to inferences being made by the reader that were not anticipated by the writer. In order to

write successfully, the writer needs to be familiar with rhetorical patterns in a language,

composing conventions, inter-sentential syntax, coherence creating patterns, writing

conventions, audience expectations and subject knowledge (Grabe and Kaplan op.cit.

171ff).

According to a guide in English on report writing (Gravett 1998: 27), the main ingredients

of a good report are that it is "user-friendly, written for its intended audience and achieves

the author's purpose". The writer needs a strong awareness of the reader's needs

(determined largely by experience and by feedback) in order to produce a report with a low

"cognitive cost", i.e. one that is easy to process and thus more likely to achieve its goals

(Gravett op.cit. 13). User-friendliness is achieved through: systematic organisation and

layout; clarity of expression and lack of verbosity; and clear development, with each point

leading naturally on to the next and with intentions clearly signposted (Gravett op.cit. 14).

The writer thus needs a clear set of objectives and a clear plan of writing – although there is

a heuristic element in all writing, less skilled writers generate content during composition

without sufficient attention to goals. As Grabe and Kaplan (op.cit. 116) put it: "good writers

have a richer sense of what they want to do when they write, and have a fully developed

image of the rhetorical problem". We tried to determine whether the writer and translator of

the NPAA Report had this defined sense of purpose, a sufficient audience knowledge, a

21

clear rhetorical perspective and an adequate control of genre conventions as we analysed

the original report and its translation.

DETAILED ANALYSIS (IN BRIEF)

Text profile

The next step in the analysis involves comparison of the underlying rhetorical structure of

the text with its surface ordering or organisation in order to determine the degree of fit

between them. This helps determine whether the message is being clearly communicated or

whether unnecessary demands are being made on the reader. The structure of the control

text is a frequent point of comparison during this process. Two representative chapters were

analysed in detail, followed by three sub-genres – introduction, evaluation and conclusion.

During this stage of the analysis, we evaluated the extent to which the lack of fit between

the rhetorical and surface organisational structures could be ascribed to the original writing

process and how much it was due to the translation process. We found that issues connected

to the way in which the text is ordered and how this relates to the underlying rhetorical

structure can be addressed to some extent through the translation process. However, less

localised problems – such as those concerning the structure of the sections relating to the

negotiating chapters and the information they contain – can only be dealt with through

liaison between the translator, as an expert in intercultural communication, and the author,

in an interactive process of review and amendment.

Coherence

The sixth step focuses on coherence, which we define in terms of reader interpretation and

ease of processing. Analysis here involves other aspects of the text such as cohesion and

information structure, metatextual features, text content, writer strategy and level of

information, as well as surface features such as paragraph organisation and the detailed

lexico-grammatical choices made by the writer and translator. We concluded that coherence

is dependent on a multiplicity of inter-related factors. These include the order in which

information is presented to the reader and the way in which that information is divided up,

22

as well as genre conventions such as clear development and signposting (the latter

including the use of topic sentences), clarity of expression, and lack of verbosity. In a

number of cases, the lack or omission of a cohesive link, the reliance on lexical cohesion in

the form of repetition, or unclear anaphoric reference, place unnecessary demands on the

reader. Finally, marked information structure patterns subvert reasonable reader

expectations. Thus the quality of reader-friendliness can be said to be distributed at all

levels of the text and cannot easily be separated out from other characteristics. The

following two steps in the analysis are concerned with aspects of the text closely linked its

coherence: cohesion, which might be described as the surface manifestation of the

underlying relations within the text, and information structure, or the way that information

flows or is distributed through the text.

Cohesion

Following a general discussion of cohesion in English and Slovene, we analysed how

lexical and grammatical cohesive features had been dealt with: in the former category most

attention was devoted to repetition, in the latter to conjunction and reference. The kind of

questions we dealt with were: whether the transfer of cohesive features from the ST to the

TT resulted in marked language use; whether there had been any loss of cohesion during

the translation process; and how the translator can compensate for the differences between

the SL and TL with regard to cohesive preferences. Our findings can be summarised as

follows: cohesion is most frequently achieved in the translated text through lexical means,

particularly repetition and the use of semantically-related terms. In a number of cases,

lexical cohesive features have been omitted by the translator, but not replaced by elements

of grammatical cohesion. Notwithstanding this, the level of repetition in the translation is

highly marked. At the same time, reader expectations are often not met, due to the

infrequent use of reference words, particularly determiners, and the low level of

conjunction; processing of the text is also made more difficult by the lack of cohesive links

between paragraphs, especially where enumeration is the mode of presentation.

Information structure

23

The strategic differences between English and Slovene word order were then noted and the

principles of information structure discussed in terms of given-new patterns, rising

information load and the principle of end-weight (cf. Biber et al 1999: 896ff). A wide range

of examples from across the text were then discussed, identifying instances of marked word

order in the TT that were unmotivated by communicative factors and violations of the

principles mentioned above. The conclusion we arrived at is that the translator's work had

not been sufficiently informed by an awareness of the different ways that information

structure is handled in the two languages. The approach taken in the translation is

unsystematic: sometimes, the original word order is retained, on occasion through the use

of the passive, with the result that the reader is presented with a marked but

communicatively unmotivated new-given pattern; in other instances the original word order

is dis-preferred, even though its use would have made processing of the text much easier.

Register features

Finally, we analysed a number of register and discourse features characteristic of the text.

The focus of this stage of the analysis was on how the author realised the subsidiary

communicative purpose of persuasion and whether the translator's work had supported or

undermined the achievement of this aim. We looked first at three techniques used in order

to persuade the reader that progress had been made: the accumulation of detail with regard

to action taken; the selection of adjectives and quantifiers to modify nouns; and the frequent

use of collocations involving the noun 'Europe' and the derived adjective. We then

discussed the marked use of the passive voice in the translation, the effect of the translator's

individual lexical choices on the tenor of the text and, briefly, the text's modality. This took

the analysis to a sufficient degree of delicacy for our purposes, so that we could then turn to

a general discussion of the results of our analysis and draw our research conclusions.

CONCLUSIONS

The analytical framework outlined here told us a great deal about the translator strategy

involved in the production of a particular text in a particular context, but it could also be

applied to any number of relevant translation situations. The analysis underlined the need

24

for translator training in the area where text meets context: i.e. in genre conventions and/or

text-type conventions defined in terms of rhetorical purpose. It also pointed to the need for

contrastive rhetorical research into the different textual norms and rhetorical preferences

between the two cultures, considering, for example: writer vs reader responsibility;

differences with regard to information load, reader friendliness, simplicity and clarity;

varying tolerances for digression, recapitulation and repetition; and so on. The translator's

textual competence should come into play from the start: the first steps are to identify the

main communicative purpose of the target text, as well as any subsidiary goals, and the

relevant genre conventions. These conventions are derived not only from parallel texts, but

also from relevant manuals or writing guides from the target environment on the genre in

question.

Comparing text ordering with underlying rhetorical structure in order to establish text

profile pointed in this instance to two main findings. First, that the translated text seemed to

employ far more moves than necessary to cover a topic, whereas the control text was

characterised by close fit, with approximately one rhetorical move per paragraph. Second,

the translation had insufficient metatextual elements, such as signposting, previewing and

transition statements. With regard to coherence, the translated text was judged to be less

user-friendly, while in cohesive terms it showed a preference for lexical cohesion and a

high tolerance for repetition; the control text, by contrast, made much more use of

grammatical devices, particularly reference and conjunction (and this, in turn, affects and is

affected by the general metatextual features of the text). As far as information structure is

concerned, the different distribution of given and new information proved to be the decisive

factor, and again had to be judged primarily in terms of reader expectations. Finally, with

regard to register and discourse features, the cumulative effect of the translator's individual

choices have to be considered in terms of whether they make the achievement of the overall

communicative purpose of the text more or less likely.

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