Memes of Translation

Neslihan Kansu-Yetkiner

ETI 301

Survival Machines for Memes

• A meme is] a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation.

• Examples of memes are tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or building arches. Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leaping from body to body via sperm or eggs, so memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation. If a scientist hears, or reads about, a good idea, he passes it on to his colleagues and students. He mentions it in his articles and lectures. If the idea catches on, it can be said to propagate itself, spreading from brain to brain. (1976: 206; p. 192 in the 1989 edition)

• Memes, then, are everything you have learned by imitating other people — habits, jokes, ideas, songs... Memes spread like genes, they replicate, often with mutation. Examples are languages, religions, ideologies, scientific theories.

• In Memes of Translation (1997) Chesterman suggests that there are also supermemes in this meme-pool — these are particularly dominant memes that keep coming up allover the place, often in slightly different forms. They are extremely persistent: in fact, they just won’t go away!

•

• The source-target meme

• The equivalence meme

• The unranslatability meme

• The free vs. literal meme

• The all-writing-is-translating meme

The source-target meme

– This supermeme is the idea that translation is directional going form somewhere to somewhere.

– -Cognitive linguistics talks about a ‘path schema’ mentioning translation moving along this path.

– When an object moves from A to B, it is no longer at A. However, translation does not eliminate the presence of A. Texts in a (source lang.) do not move, they spread, they replicate.

» A —> B (transfer)• But: A —> A + A’ (additive)

Equivalence

A = A’ (equative)

The notion of equivalence states that two different entities are identical in some respect.

Sl and TL are “the same”.

Sameness???

Various subtypes of equivalence

• Nida (1964)

• -Dynamic equivalence (aiming at the same effect)

• Formal equivalence (aiming at same form and meaning)

•

• Still waters run deep

• He jumped out of the frying pan into the fire.

• You can't teach an old dog new tricks• All that glitters isn't gold

• Functional, sylistic, semantic, formal or grammatical and textual equivalence (Koller 1979, Retsker 1993).

• The word sameness is replaced by “matching (Holmes 1988) and “family resemblance (Wittgenstein 1953, Toury 1980).

• Is equivalence pragmatically attainable?

• Some cultural terms, culture-bound connotations, (magic, unlucky, kısmet, inşallah etc) are slippery ground for equivalence.

Untranslatability

• Equivalence by defeinition is perfect. But perfection in practice is un attainable.

• Translation is an utopian task (Ortega y Gasset 1937).

• Poetry by definition is untranslatable (Jakonbson)

• Poetry is what gets lost in translation by Robert Frost

• Nem varsa şu mahzende,

• Yatağım,

• Yastığım

• Nem varsa şu mahzende

• Nem varsa

• Nemli filan değil, düpedüz ıslak.

• Can Yücel (1993:79)

• All my worldly goods are• in this cell• my bed• my pillow• all my belongings are in this cell• all my posessions• they' re not just damp• Translated by Feyyaz Kayacan Fergar(1993:78)

• Translation of holly books?

• Katz’s effability principle?

• Any proposition can be expressed by some sentence in any language.-Propositional meaning

• What about utterance meaning?

• Langue (Lang.as system)----------Parole (Language use)

• Translation can be achieved to some extent not entirely.

Sevmek

• Annemi sevdin mi?

• Filmi sevdin mi?

• Yemeği sevdin mi?

• Çocuğu sevdin mi?

• Sen Ali’yi sevdin mi?

• AÇILMAK????

Açılmak• Köşe başında yeni bir dükkan açıldı.• Sabah çok kötüydüm sonra açıldım.• Ali ilkokulda kötü bir öğrenciydi,lisede

açıldı.• Ali’nin evlendikten sonra tepesi açıldı.• Çocuklar yüzerek epey açıldı.• Zeynep lisede tesettürlüydü sonra

açıldı.

• Kaynanamla kaynatamı akşam yemeğe çağırdım.

-Dickenson’un şiirlerini beğeniyor musun?

Bazılarını

Free vs. Literal

• Literal: word for word translation, so ungrammatical; the closest possible grammatical translation.

• Barhudarov (1993) “the smaller the unit of translation the more literal the result, and the larger the unit, the freer the result.

• Alice who is waiting for me in the front garden with a letter in her hand is my student.

• Alice ki bekliyor benim için ön bahçede bir mektupla elinle benim öğrencimdir.

• Ön bahçede elinde bir mektupla beni bekleyen Alice öğrencimdir.

All writing is translating

•Translation is a form of writing that happens to be rewriting.

• Learning to speak means learning to translate meanings into words.

• So no texts are original, they are the derivative of other texts. (i.e. Writers do not create their own texts but borrow and combine elements).

• Meaning is negotiated during communication process. Hence the notion of appropriateness is repleced by an objective truth.

Equivalence and Equivalence Fffect by J. Munday

• semiotic approach to language ('there is no signatum without signum' (1959:232) - three kinds of translation:

– Intralingual (within one language, i.e. rewording or paraphrase)  

– Interlingual (between two languages)   

– Intersemiotic (between sign systems)

• interlingual translation (use of synonyms in order to get the ST message across):

– i.e.: in interlingual translations there is no full equivalence between code units

• “There is ordinarily no full equivalence between the code/units.

• Consider the word cheese in Turkish , in German and in French. 

– 'translation involves two equivalent messages in two different codes'

– from a grammatical point of view languages may differ from one another to a greater or lesser degree, but this does not mean that a translation cannot be possible, in other words, that the translator may face the problem of not finding a translation equivalent

– 'whenever there is deficiency, terminology may be qualified and amplified by: loanwords or loan-translations, neologisms or semantic shifts, and circumlocutions'

Nida and “the science of translating”

• Why is this book/attempt important? 

• The nature of meaning (The influence of semantics)

• ---Linguistic meaning

• --Referential meaning (denotative meaning))

• --Emotive meaning (connotative meaning)

Chomsky (Influence of syntax)

• Nida’s three-stage system of translation

Formal vs. Dynamic Equivalence

• Dynamic equivalence (also known as functional equivalence) attempts to convey the thought expressed in a source text (if necessary, at the expense of literalness, original word order, the source text's grammatical voice, etc.), while formal equivalence attempts to render the text word-for-word (if necessary, at the expense of natural expression in the target language). The two approaches represent emphasis, respectively, on readability and on literal fidelity to the source text.

1

Newmark’s Semantic vs. Communicative Translation

• Nida's 'receptor'-oriented approach is 'illusory': • The gap between SLT and TLT will always remain a permanent problem in both

TR theory and practice • How can the gap be narrowed?:

– SEMANTIC vs COMMUNICATIVE translation • ... attempts to produce on its readers an effect as close as possible to

that obtained on the readers of the original. (cf. Nida's dynamic eq.) • ... attempts to render, as closely as the semantic and syntactic

structures of the second language allow, the exact contextual meaning of the original.

• See table 3.1

Koller’s diachotomy• Correspondence: ('langue', 'competence':

– within CA of two language systems

– formal similarities and differences

– PROBLEMS:

– false friends, signs of lexical, morphological & syntactic interference

• Equivalence: ('parole', 'performance':

– equivalent items in specific ST-TT pairs and contexts

– Competence in the foreign language:

– Knowledge of (formal) correspondences

– Competence in transaltion:

– knowledge / ability in equivalences

• However: ? What exactly has to be EQUIVALENT?!!

•   

Koller (1979)• . DENOTATIVE

– - extralinguistic content, 'content invariance' • CONNOTATIVE

– lexical choices (e.g. in near synonyms), – 'stylistic equivalence'

• TEXT-FORMATIVE – related to text types, (cf. K. Reiss)

• PRAGMATIC – 'communicative equivalence' – oriented to the receiver of the text message – Nida's 'dynamic equivalence'

• FORMAL – related to the form and aesthetics of the text – stylistic features – 'expressive equivalence'

•  

Koller - Checklist

• language function

• content characteristics

• language-stylistic characteristics

• formal aesthetic characteristics

• pragmatic characteristics

• (see Text Linguistics, Types of texts – Koller, Reiss, Nord)

 

• Case studies…