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TRANSLATION THEORY

COURSE III

If the author uses a turn of phrase and it is not ungrammatical it must be translated as such.

A text can have some variables (linguistic norms of the source language) :

the semantic sense of each word and of each sentence

the communicative value

its place in time and space

information about the participants involved in its production and reception.

All of the above can vary within some parameters:

the message in the text

the purpose for which the text was issued (informing, persuading, flattering etc)

the type of communication (setting the text into its historic context)

the place of communication (physical location of the speech event in the text)

- the medium of communication or the mode of discourse(channels selected to carry

the signal: in speech vs in writing verbal vs non-verbal)

- the manner of delivery or the tenor of discourse

- the domain of discourse (the sphere of human activity that the discourse is used for!in)

It is of much help if a translator "nows the writer#s social bac"ground, his style (for written

translations), the data and participants involved in the translation (especially for oral translations),

the indicators of the physical, temporal and social bac"ground of the user (dialect, sociolect, idiolect

and register).

A problem with translation appears when trying to relate some sociological variables with

linguistic forms.

Sociolinguistic variables Linguistic forms

$articipants tenor lexis

%he setting mode syntax

$urposes domain

%here are no universally accepted rules or principles according to which one should

translate.In translation theory it is important to "now the ho(the process)and the hat (the

product) & translation is a mental process, therefore the translator should have "nowledge of

psychological studies.

'ognitive science deals with perception, information processing and memory eually. iven

that the process involves two languages the process should draw on linguistics.

$sycholinguistics & examines the process in the mind

*ociolinguistics & places the source-language text and the target-language text in

their cultural context

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Translator

All communicators are translators. (eorge *teiner - After Babel, thoery of translation &

chapter Understanding as translation) -paraphrasing is also translating

All receivers essentially behave the same way. %hey receive a signal (in speech or in

writing) which contains messages encoded in a communication system which is or is not identicalto their own.

!ac"#version $ from the mother tongue into a foreign language

Translation $ from a foreign language into the mother tongue

+hen the communicator ta"es turn as a receiver he has to encode a different message than

the one he received.

nly half way is the act of translation euatable to the one of understanding.

%he translator re-encodes in another language the message he has received and transmits it

differently to a group of receivers.

%hey convert anamorphos ideas into a concept which he organies into a semanticproposition. (semantic "nole%ge)

$roposition mapping the proposition onto the clause-generating system of a language

(s&ntactic "nole%ge)

'lauses utterances!text use of rhetorical "nole%ge

clauses - written, grammatical construct, have semantic sense

utterances!text & spo"en, act of speech, have!has communicative value

Act of speech:

locutionary & mear communication

illocutionary & illicits a reaction from the receiver

perlocutionary & speech act about a speech act

/unctions of the language:

communicative (locutionary)

phatic (illocutionary)

poetic (illocutionary)

metalinguistic (perlocutionary)

conative (perlocutionary)

0ormal communicators have only the three types of "nowledge previously mentioned(semantic, syntactic and rhetorical). /or the translator there are at least two languages involved and

two cultures. In addition to the types of "nowledge that a common communicator has a translator

should have at least two more types:

a 'roce%ural "nole%ge (series of techniues by which the act of translation should

be performed in the best forms)

a factual "nole%ge (the similarities and the differences between the two languages

& contrastive synopsis)