CENTRAL ISSUES – SUSAN BASSNETT

LANGUAGE AND CULTURE

 Although translation has a central core if linguistic activity, it belongs most properly to
semiotics, the science that studies sign system or structures, sig process and sign
functions.
 Translation involves the transfer of ‘meaning’ contained in one set of language signs into
another set of language signs through competent use of the dictionary and grammar
and it involves a whole set of extra-linguistic criteria also.
 EDWARD SAPIR  language is a guide to social reality and human beings are at mercy
of the language that has become the medium of expression for their society. Experience
is largely determined by the language habits of the community, and each separate
structure represents a separate reality.
o “No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as representing
the same social reality. The worlds in which different societies live are distinct
worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attached”
 LOTMAN literature and are as secondary modelling system. “No language can exist
unless it is steeped in the context of culture; and no culture can exist which does not
have at its centre, the structure of natural language.”

TYPES OF TRANSLATION

 JAKOBSON  distinguishes three kinds of translation:

o Intralingual or rewording  interpretation of verbal signs by means of other
signs in the same language.
o Interlingual or translation proper  interpretation of verbal signs by means of
some other language.
o Intersemiotic or transmutation  interpretation of verbal signs by means of
signs of nonverbal sign systems.
 The central problem in all types is that while messages may serve as adequate
interpretations of code units or messaged, there is ordinarily no full equivalence trough
translation. Apparent synonymy does not yield equivalence.
 Complete equivalence in the sense of synonymy or sameness cannot take place in any
of these categories  Jakobson declares that all poetic art is untranslatable. Only
creative transposition is achievable.
 GEORGES MOUNIN  translation as a series of operations of which the starting point
and the end product are significations that function within a given culture.

DECODING AND RECODING

 The translator operates criteria that trascend the purely linguistic and a process of
decoing and recoding takes place.
 NIDA  his model of translation process involves the analysis of the SL text, the transfer
and the restructuring in the TL.
 Where there is a rich set of semiotic relationships, a word can be used in punning and
word-play, a form of humour that operates by confusing or mixing the various meanings.
 The translator, then, must be concerned with the particular use of the word in the
sentence itself, in the sentence in its structural relation to other sentences, and in the
overall textual and cultural context of the sentence.
 FIRTH  ‘meaning’ as a complex of relations of various kinds between the component
terms of a context of situation.
 When a phrase is directly linked to the SL social behavioural patterns, the translator has
to contend with the problem of the non-existence of a similar convention in the TL
culture.
 He hast to take the question of interpretation into account in addition to the problem
of selecting a TL phrase which will have roughly similar meaning. In determining what
to use in the TL, the translator must:
o Accept the untranslatability of the SL phrase in the TL on the linguistic level.
o Accept the lack of a similar cultural convention in the TL.
o Consider the range of TL phrases available, having regard to the presentation of
class, status, age, sex of the speaker, relationship to the listeners and the
context in the SL.
o Consider the significance of the phrase in its particular context.
o Replace in the TL the invariant core of the SL phrase in its two referential
systems.
 LEVÝ  the translator has the responsibility of finding a solution to the most daunting
of problems, and the functional view must be adopted without regar not only to
meaning but also to style and form.

PROBLEMS OF EQUIVALENCE

 DAGUT  Since a metaphor is by definition a new piece of performance, it can clearly

have no existing equivalence in the TL, what is unique can have no counterpart. The
translator’s competence is of help to him only in the negative sense of telling him that
any ‘equivalence’ in this case cannot be ‘found’ but will have to be ‘created’. But is this
translation or mere reproduction?
 This distinction does not take into account the view that sees translation as semiotic
transformation.
 POPOVIC  in his definition of translation equivalence, he distinguishes four types:
o LINGUSITIC EQUIVALENCE  where there is homogeneity on the linguistic level
of both SL and TL texts (word for word translation.)
o PARADIGMATIC EQUIVALENCE  equivalence of the elements of a
paradigmatic expressive axis (elements of grammar.)
o STYLISTIC (TRANSLATIONAL) EQUIVALENCE  functional equivalence of
elements in both original and translation at an expressive identity with an
invariant of identical meaning.
o TEXTUAL (SYNTAGMATIC) EQUIVALENCE  equivalence of the syntagmatic
structuring of a text (equivalence of form and shape.)
 Translation involves more than replacement of lexical and grammatical items between
languages and, as can be seen in the translation of idioms and metaphors, the process
may involve discarding the basic linguistic elements of the SL text so as to achieve
Popovic’s goal of ‘expressive identity’ between the SL and the TL texts.
  NEUBERT  distinguishes between the study of translation as a process and as a
product. The missing link between both components of a complete theory of
translations appears to be the theory of equivalence relations that can be conceived for
both the dynamic and the static model.
 NIDA  distinguishes two types of equivalence
o FORMAL  focuses attention on message itself in both form and content. In
such a translation one is concerned with such correspondences as poetry to
poetry, sentence to sentence, and concept to concept. This is ‘gloss translation’
which aims at allowing the reader to understand as much as possible of the SL
context.
o DYNAMIC  based on the principle of equivalent effect, the relationship
between receiver and message should aim at being the same as that between
the original receivers and the SL message.
 If a dozen translators tackle the same poem, they will produce a dozen different
versions. And yet somewhere in those doze versions there will be what Popovic called
the ‘invariant core’ of the original poem, which is represented by the stable, basic, and
constant semantic elements in the text, whose experience can be proved by
experimental semantic condensation.
 Transformations, or variants, are those changes which do not modify the core of
meaning but influence the expressive form.
 The invariant can be defined as that which exists in common between all existing
translations of a single work. It is part of the dynamic relationship.
 NEUBERT  from the point of view of a theory of texts, translation equivalence must
be considered a semiotic category comprising syntactic, semantic and pragmatic
component. These component arranged in a hierarchical relationship where semantic
equivalence takes priority over syntactic equivalence and pragmatic equivalence
conditions and modifies both the other elements.
 Equivalence results from the relation between signs themselves, the relationship
between signs and what they stand for and the relationship between signs, what they
stand for and those who use them.
 The question of defining equivalence is being pursued by two lines of development in
Translation Studies:
o The first one lays emphasis on the special problem of semantics and on the
transfer of semantic content from SL to TL.
o With the second one, which explores equivalence of literary text, the work of
the Russian Formalists and the Prague Linguists, together with more recent
development in DA, have broadened the problem of equivalence in its
application to the translation of such texts.
 Equivalence in translation should not be approached as a search of sameness because
it cannot even exist between two TL versions of the same text, let alone between the
SL and TL version.

LOSS AND GAIN

 Sameness cannot exist between two languages, and that gives rise to the question of
loss and gain in the translation process.
  Too much time was spent on discussing what is lost in translation, while ignoring what
can also be gained, for the translator can at times clarify the SL text as a direct
consequence of the translation process.
 NIDA  rich source of what is lost in translation especially when it comes to difficulties
encountered by the translator when faced with terms or concepts in the SL that do not
exist in the TL.

UNTRASLATABILITY

 CATFORD  distinguishes two types of translatability:

o LINGUSITIC  it occurs when there is no lexical or syntactical substitute in the
TL for an SL term. It is due to differences in the SL and the TL.
o CULTURAL  it is due to an absence in the TL culture of a relevant situational
feature for the SL text.
 He fails to take into account two significant factors, and this seems to typify the problem
of and overly narrow approach to the question of untranslatability. According to
Lawendowski he is ‘divorced from reality’
 MOUNIN  too much attention has been paid to the problem of untranslatability at the
expense of solving the actual problems in translation. He acknowledged the benefits
that advances in linguistics have brought to Translation Studies and that it is thanks to
this that we can accept that:
o Personal experience in its uniqueness is untranslatable.
o In theory, the base units of any two languages are not always comparable.
o Communication is possible when account is taken of the respective situations of
speaker and hearer, or author and translator.
 He believes that linguistics demonstrate that translation is a dialectic process that can
be accomplished with certain success.
 LEVÝ  stresses the intuitive element in translating: “actual translation work is
pragmatic, the translator resolves for that one of the possible solutions which promises
a maximum of effect with a minimum of effort.”

SCIENCE OR ‘SECONDARY ACTIVITY’?

 Translation theory  its purpose is to research an understanding of the process

undertaken in the act of translation, and not only to provide a set of norms for effecting
the perfect translation.
 Literary criticism  it does not seek to provide a set of instructions for producing the
ultimate poem or novel, but rather to understand the internal and external structures
operating within and around a work of art.
 The pragmatic dimension of translation cannot be categorized, any more than the
‘inspiration’ of a text can be defined and prescribed.
 As a consequence of accepting this, any debate about the existence of a science of
translation is out of date: there already exists, with TS, a serious discipline investigating
the process of translation.
 The myth of translation as a secondary activity with all the associations of lower status
implied in that assessment can be dispelled once the extent of the pragmatic element
of translation is accepted.
 OCTAVIO PAZ  “Every text is unique and, at the same time, it is the translation of
another text. No text is entirely the original because language itself, in its essence, is
already a translation: firstly, of the non-verbal world and secondly, since every sign and
every phrase is the translation of another sign and another phrase. However, this
argument could be turned around without losing any of its validity: all texts are original
because every translation is distinctive. Every translation, up to a certain point, is an
invention and as such it constitutes a unique text.