English Language and Translation LMI (modulo B), Appunti di Lingua Inglese

Scarica English Language and Translation LMI (modulo B) e più Appunti in PDF di Lingua Inglese solo su Docsity! 16/02 Another language another world The process of translation is not just a recodification of meaning from one code (language) to another. This is just the surface interpretation of translation, but it is not so simple. There is a deep, inherent, implicit relationship between language and the way of representing the world. Certain words carry meanings, or associations of meaning, which are not there in their denotation and etymology. An example are swearwords, which have to do with body parts and refer to people (no direct relationship). We use words irrespective of what is their literal, dictionary meaning. Scholars say that “anyone learning another language … embarks on a voyage of discovery, during which perceptions are altered, unquestioned assumptions about culture and identity are challenged” (Bassnett). Language doesn’t necessarily denote things, but it can be used to activate perceptions. Certain words are used in certain contexts, and the meaning they acquire is the one related to the context, irrespective of their literal meaning. Furthermore, you have to change your way of thinking in order to translate. Some meanings in a language may not be there in another language. “The appropriation of a foreign means of signification (like the English language) does not leave it ‘untouched’: in acquiring bits and pieces of information we transform it (usually through reduction) in such a way that we can use it in the process of acquisition, our world-view changes due to the contrasting influences of the foreign language and culture” (Kramer). There are possible problems in dealing with translation automatically (i.e., Google Translate). In this case, you use L2 words (symbols) with the concept or meaning that they have in your own language (L1) to refer to a specific referent. Symbols L2 → Concepts L1 > Referent However, the referent is usually typical of another culture. The L2 words taxi, tea, or the idea of being late can be used with the meaning that they have in Italian. In this case, we would have the L1 concept: simply an aromatic beverage; for special occasions. The referents: something to drink during breaks (“they drink tea like we drink coffee”); rarely used means of transport; being late meaning little respect of others. The referents are different, and this is why the translation is not the same thing. As competent translators, we have to select a word that has the exact same meaning, which is very hard, especially because often there is no correspondence or equivalence. It is important to learn using L2 words with L2 concepts. In this way, we modify our worldview. Symbols L2 → Concepts L2 > Referent L2 words: tea, taxi, being late. L2 concepts: habit, ritual, tradition (in the UK); alternative to car or buses; flexibility, few time constraints. Referents: offered to show solidarity or make people feel at home (teatime, tea rooms); common means of transport; different way of handling time Language (L1≠L2): phraseological tendencies (Sinclair) Phraseological tendencies are partly conventional and traditional. We tend to use these expressions in specific contexts when there are some implications or meaning associations. These words come with a semantic load that is not in their dictionary meaning, and they may represent possible problems when translating. a. Collocation: word → word Some words occur together and are very frequently associated. They are sequencies or clusters of words, and some of these forms have become kind of idiomatic (i.e., safe and sound, you know what I mean, public opinion, high hopes, break a record, etc.). Our brain processes the meanings of these words as if they were just one. b. Colligation: word → grammatical category. A word presupposes a following word belonging to a specific grammatical category (i.e., if/when ≠ will; wait + for; contribute to + -ing; never/always + perfect tenses; negation + any ≠ some/no; not only + inversion, etc.). c. Semantic preference: word → word with specific semantic features. Examples are large + number(s)/amounts/quantities (noun for quantities); absolutely + maximizers (extraordinary/disgusting, NOT nice); lack of + positive or neutral terms. d. Semantic prosody: word → specific connotation (evaluation, expectation). Examples are absolutely + openly positive or negative (NOT neutral); lack of + negative; perfectly + positive; happen + negative (accidents, etc.). Relation between words → concepts (consequences on interpretation of reality) Another possible problem in translation is the different way of conceptualizing things in different cultures. Example: The L2 word if/when (hypotheses) corresponds to the L2 concept “hypotheses”, and NOT “future time” (future is real, hypotheses are not). In Italian, we use it for future time as well, as in “lo faro quando avrò tempo (different from L2 “I’ll do that when I have time”). The phraseological principle (Sinclair). • The idiom principle (or phraseological): Speakers make use of preconstructed multi-word combinations. We don’t just select words and organize them into sentences, but we take and use chunks of language because we know that they function in some contexts. • Open choice principle: Speakers have the possibility to select, among the options that they have, the one they consider being the most appropriate to the meaning they want to convey. Sinclair realized that native speakers privilege the idiom principle, that is the default principle. 17/02 Translation Studies There is a whole field of research, that started off in a way that was not homogeneous and coherent. At first, scholars were not aware they were contributing to the studies on translation. They talked about translation, but they thought they were just providing pieces of advice for whoever wanted to translate. This discipline was organized and systematized only in the 1950s, when the term “Translation Studies” has been introduced. Newmark identified the stages within translation studies: o Salience, that refers to those things and phenomena that are so common and frequently encountered that we take them for granted, so that we don’t even feel the need to lexicalize them. Within certain text types there are some things that are taken for granted (i.e., just by looking at the pages, we can understand if a text is a novel, even without reading it). Certain features are so salient that we can easily recognize the text type or genre, even if we have no idea of the content. 4. Ethical/aesthetic stage This stage is central if we approach translation from the point of view of literature. When you use moral judgements, you are already making judgements about what you are translating. In our society, we feel legitimated to make things less offensive as possible to readers. This implies that you have the power to understand things that are problematic, and you even have the power to censor some parts or change someone else’s words to make them fit modern readers. An important idea is that of the invisibility of the translator. No reader should be able to detect that a text has been translated. The notion of interference has always been considered problematic in translation, but with this approach, they changed the label into intervention (however, it is the same thing). Why “aesthetic”? The idea is that there is place for surprising intuitive solutions in the translation. The translator can embellish certain things or, vice versa, he/she can translate something by using the worst possibilities just because the text has been written by someone he/she doesn’t like. Untranslatability (Catford) Catford distinguishes linguistic and cultural untranslatability. A text is impactful on a specific culture because of the way content is presented, or because of the type of context presented. We might have problems in translation because of linguistic elements, but also because of cultural elements. Linguistic elements are, for example, phraseological preferences for which we don’t have a correspondent form in our language. Untranslatability can also depend on the culture-based ways we have to make sense of the external reality. Cultures have different ways of perceiving the same things, or they configure reality in different ways. We always make sense of reality because it is a natural instinct. There are almost innate criteria that we use in order to make sense of reality: • Deletion: Lack of awareness of something we don’t have words or concepts for (i.e. colpo d’aria, corrente d’aria, maglia della salute, etc.). Something may not be available in some cultures because they don’t have the words to codify these phenomena. In other cases, the phenomena are there, but they are not perceived as relevant (i.e., empowerment). • Distortion (or creation): 1) Making something fit the models or criteria we are familiar with. 2) Mistaking something for something different (causality for co-occurrence, equality/full equivalence for similarity, evaluation/emotion as observation). Examples: modern life makes me sad (is bad); this cure is all natural (is good, but diseases are also natural); the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. • Generalization: Single, decontextualized things are taken and made symbols for general phenomena. We take a member to stand for a category, ignoring context and idiosyncrasies, and in some cases using stereotypes to fill informative gaps (i.e., white people are racist; police are brutal; the poor are victims). All cultural problems in translation are based on these filters. This is the reason why culture 1 and culture 2 may not always be mutually transparent even when they use the same language (UK- US). 23/02 Translation When we use the term “translation” we mean written translation (of written texts). This is significant because written texts are different from oral ones: they are semantically and syntactically self- standing and contextually relevant. It is a process of writing, rewriting, and processing of words. The words of a written text are not random but are all relevant. Oral texts are made sense of on situational/contextual grounds, and so some parts of information are omitted, because they are understandable through the context. Written and oral texts are very different, and so is their translation. A written translation implies that you know it is going to be read. Whereas oral translation is part of the domain of interpreting, a completely different universe compared to translation, because it follows different strategies and mainly focuses on the meaning, and you need a solid competence in both languages. Here, we will focus on written translation. It is important to know that translation can refer to: o The process: Transferring a written text from a source language to a target language. o The product: The translated text (in the target language). o The complex: It includes both the process and the product. It is even more relevant to focus on Jakobson’s distinction: • Intralingual translation: The same meaning is expressed in two different ways. The same meaning expressed within a linguist framework is expressed in another form in the same linguistic system. It consists in rewording, rephrasing, paraphrasing, summarizing (i.e., going from a descriptive to an example level, or going from the explanation to the example). • Interlingual translation: Translation in the proper sense of the form. It is the recodification of a text from one language to another language. • Intersemiotic translation: You transfer a meaning from one semiotizing means (words) to another (images/sounds). An example is turning a book into a movie or memes. The idea at basis of Jakobson’s distinction is that when you codify meaning the first time and repeat it a second time, that second time is always a case of re-codification. A general definition of translation is “the process/product of transfer between two different written languages, involving the translation changing an original written text (ST) in the original verbal language (SL) into a written text (TT) in a different verbal language (TL). Problematizing translation ▪ Fatto! → Done! Focus on the process; it works 99% of the time. Other acceptable possibilities are: “done it”, “did it”, “I’ve done it”. Here, the focus is on the product that is, on the completed action. ▪ A little bird told me → un uccellino mi ha detto che… It is perceived as a frozen metaphor with a correspondent in the other language. ▪ To shout at the top of your lungs → urlare a squarciagola. There is no literal correspondence between the two languages. If I want to keep the word “lungs” I can translate “gridare a pieni polmoni” but it would be wrong, because this expression is not used in Italian. Sometimes, however, the text might require keeping a certain word. ▪ They made a monkey of him → lo hanno preso in giro. In Italian you cannot say “hanno fatto una scimmia di lui”: you would never get to the meaning the expression has in English. But even by using the Italian translation, you lose the impact of the original. In conclusion, when translating, there are plenty of things to take into account. Sense-for-sense is often seen as the preferred way to translate something. However, you always need to be sure that the sense of the original is the one you have in mind. It is related to your own interpretation, because you interpret the meaning. In some cases, this is not a problem, because the text can be transparent, but this is not always the case. Therefore, sense-for-sense is not necessarily always to prefer. 24/02 Historical perspective The distinction between sense-for-sense and word-for-word translation. was lexicalized. The first who actually mentioned it was Cicero, in Roman times. He said: I didn’t translate them as an interpreter, but as an orator, keeping the same ideas and forms, or the figures of thought, but in a language which conforms to our usage. His translation is justified on the basis of rhetoric, because he says he had to rewrite things to make them appealing to his own culture. Back then, the process of writing and reading was totally different from what it is today. Translations were used because they were provided together with the original text. However, they could already understand the meaning of original text. They just wanted to be stimulated in terms of emotions and impact, and so they needed a text that emphasized these cognitive aspects rather than purely informative aspects. Cicero was an orator and philosopher; therefore, he translated as an orator rather than a scribe. The novelty of Cicero was: ▪ not replacing each word of the ST with the closest equivalent in the TL (common practice, because Romans would read the translated text side by side with the original/Greek). ▪ introducing the distinction between literal and free translation. Horace (Ars Poetica): ▪ importance of producing an aesthetically pleasing and creative text in the TL. You need to create a text that is pleasing, stimulating, and engaging as the original. This is the reason why we translate texts. During Middle Age, we have important texts that were not specifically written for translation. An important figure is St. Jerome, who mentions these two ways of translating in his text (De optimo genere interpretandi). His text presupposes that these alternatives were available, and that he privileged one over the other. He claimed to prefer sense-for-sense, his style of translating. Readers He was criticised with the charge that the German allein implied that the individual’s belief is sufficient for salvation, whereas deeds are redundant. He justifies this choice correspond to “pure clear German”, where allein in such constructions would be used for emphasis. These are two different ways of looking at the same sentence, and they bring about two drastically different ways of interpreting it. In Latin faith is superior to deeds, but in German faith is different from deeds. To make the language sound as pure and clear as possible, there are some justifications on a linguistic basis. However, we tend to select formulations which are natural to us, and this might bring about major consequences. Luther follows St Jerome in rejecting a word-for-word translation, that would not convey the same meaning of the ST and would sometimes be incomprehensible In France, French scholars tried to establish some systematisation of translation. One of them was Etienne Dolet (The way of translating well from one language into another, 1540). He established five principles in order of importance. The translator: ▪ Must perfectly understand the sense and material of the original author, although he should feel free to clarify obscurities. It is important to understand the material (i.e., poem, essay, etc.), because on the basis of it, you are going to use different parameters for your translation. This seems to support sense-for-sense, because once you get the sense, then you are free to clarify obscurities. According to this principle (not general, but specific), you make your own interpretation on the basis of the material, and only then you can dare clarifying obscurities. ▪ Should have a perfect knowledge of both SL and TL, so as not to lessen the majesty of the language. Even if what you are doing seems to privilege the sense, you also need to take into consideration the impact, power, and value that the language had in the original text (i.e., in a poem it is higher than in a contract, etc.). Your translation has to respect the majesty of the language in that type of text. ▪ Should avoid word-for-word renderings. ▪ Should avoid Latinate expressions and unusual forms. Latinate were considered as the best possible option, because everyone was kind of familiar with Latin languages or Latin in general, rather than Germanic languages. It was a matter of language transparency, rather than prestige. ▪ Should assemble and liaise words eloquently to avoid clumsiness. This pertains not just the meaning and word-choice, but the aesthetic quality of the whole sentence or text. These should not appear as being clumsy: you should not be aware of the fact that you are reading a translation in your own language. Major concern is towards sense, but also on an eloquent and natural TL. There is a general concern on the language because the TL should be self-standing and functional. It should sound exactly like the original text sounded for its original audience. These are possible steps leading to that effect. Dolet is not always considered in Translation Studies, but this is one of the first attempts at using the same principles we might use today in translation. In Britain, Abraham Cowley introduced the idea of imitation. John Dryden was not a linguist but a man of letters. Being a literary person rather than professional of translation, he approaches the translation of texts from a specific and kind of biased perspective. However, he introduced three ways of translating, that were the ways of translating back then. He distinguishes translation into three categories: • Metaphrase: word for word, line by line (literal versions, like those used by Ben Jonson, one of the major poets of the time). He considers Jonson as being a verbal copier. • Paraphrase: translation with latitude, where the author is kept in view by the translator, so as never to be lost, but his words are not so strictly followed as his sense (sense-for-sense). • Imitation: extreme case of sense-for-sense, because you substitute yourself to the original author. It forsakes both words and sense but aims at recreating a certain impact (adaptation), where ST is used as a pattern to write as he (translator) supposes the author would have done, had he lived in our age and in our country. The translator is more visible but does the greatest wrong to the memory and reputation of the dead (original author). It is pure interpretation, speculation on the basis of which you carry out your translation. We are not sure it is exactly a translation of a text. Today, this would be understood as adaptation. When Dryden gets to translate Ovid, he uses paraphrase and metaphrase, but when he translates Virgil (Aeneid) he selects the approach of imitation. All these theories considered the text to be translated as if all texts were the same, but texts are not all the same: ▪ Epistles: prose, informative, utilitarian function (word-for-word + sense-for-sense). You want to inform the interlocutor of something. ▪ Aeneid (poem): verse, poetic function (style, organicity; therefore adaptation/imitation). The aim is not to inform people (no informative function), and so you can use imitation. The type of emotive impact on your audience, however, must be transferred. Tytler introduced three general laws in order of comparative importance: ▪ The translation should give a complete transcript of the ideas/sense of the original work (faithfulness of content, sense-for-sense). He/she should have a perfect knowledge of the original and be competent in the subject, conveying the meaning and the sense of the author in a faithful way. ▪ Style and manner of the writing should be of the same character with that of the original (faithfulness of form, word-for-word). The translator should identify the true character of the style of the original author and have the ability to recreate it in the TL. ▪ The translation should have all the ease of the original composition (organicity and fluency over artificiality). According to him, this is the most difficult task. He systematized this last element (the ease), introducing this novelty to refer to the avoidance of clumsiness. The ease is what influences a good translation. Imitation should be avoided, since it loses the ease and spirit of the original. The first two laws represent the two different opinions about translation: faithfulness of content and of form (word-for-word and sense-for-sense). However, Tytler ranks his three laws in order of importance. Such hierarchical categorization gains force in more modern translation theory. In Germany (German Romanticism), Friedrich Schleiermacher (On the different methods of translating, 1813) looked at same problem (translation) from a totally different angle. It is a different approach than that based on the distinction between literal and free. According to him, there are two types of translation that correspond to two types of texts. Some texts would automatically presuppose a specific different way of being translated. The translation can be produced by: ▪ Dolmetscher (interpreter), who translates commercial and utilitarian texts (transfer of locution/denotation). The semantic content is dominant or predominant in the source language already. This has also been classified as the process of domestification. The focus is not on the content itself, but on the content to be understood by the audience. Interpretation is usually carried out in operative contexts. ▪ Übersetzer (translator), who translates scholarly and artistic texts, whose value does not just reside in the information but rather in the way information is presented. Besides the informative function, there is another dimension that is as important as this: the aesthetic one. They need to be somehow impactful. The text and its translation are based on illocution/perlocution and connotation/collocation. These texts are impactful and recognizable as important not because of their content but because of the way their content is presented. This is the process of foreignization. You don’t want the audience to perceive literary texts as being natural, because these types of texts are not natural and should not be perceived as such. They are impactful precisely because they are not expected, and so they even have to sound kind of alienating. 9/03 According to Schleiermacher, the question is how to bring the ST writer and the TT reader together. He moves beyond the issues of word-for-word and sense-for-sense translation and thinks there are two paths for the ‘true’ translator: “Either the translator moves the reader toward him, or he moves the writer toward him”. We do have a text that has been produced in a specific culture, and which needs to be translated for a very specific audience. So, the idea of sense-for-sense and word-for- word, in this case, is not relevant at all, because that is something grounded on the text, but Schleiermacher shifts the focus from the text to the recipient. On the basis of the fact that the readership may have different expectations, the translations are going to be different: • Dolmetscher: moving the writer and the meaning (ST) towards the reader (domestication: making a text domestic, suitable to the public), to make it appealing and palatable to the reader. You change things in the original text, so that the meaning is clearly understood and processed by the audience. • Ubersetzer: moving the reader towards the writer and the meaning (foreignization). In the case of artistic/literary texts, you don’t want to instruct the readers. You translate it because you think that text may be relevant also for your culture, but that specific object clearly has to come from another culture. You want the reader to be surprised by that particular way of using the language and articulating meaning, like the original readers. You want to produce something that is going to be perceived as foreign, coming from another culture. His preferred strategy is to move the reader towards the writer, which does not entail writing as the author would have done had he written in German. Instead, his method is to give the reader the impression he would have received as a German reading the work in the original language. To achieve this, he must adopt an alienating, foreignizing method of translation, which emphasizes the value of the foreign. The TT can be faithful to the sense of the ST and import foreign concepts and culture into German. Schleiermacher gets to this type of conclusion because of the context he was living in. The only types of texts that were considered to be worth translating were scholarly and artistic texts (literature, philosophy, etc.). The priority was conferred to this type of texts, which were meant to be impactful. resort to the expression that is clear. You want to make the ST understandable. This pushes you to privilege forms that are easy to process rather than ambiguous ones. • Expansion: additions, etc. In some cases, when you have to translate a term that in the original language has a denotation or associative meaning which is not explicitated, we need to add something. This is often the case when we have to translate the possessive into Italian, because his and her and suo and sua don’t have the same meaning. In Italian, they are related to the possessed object, not to the gender of the one who possesses it. If you need the reader to know whether it is about a man or a woman, then you need to specify it (i.e., her dog > il cane della ragazza). You add a word because it is necessary for the meaning of the original text to be rendered in another language. • Ennoblement: the tendency to improve the original (when alternatives are available). If you have two words, the tendency is to select the one that sounds better, even if it doesn’t really correspond to the original. You select the best possible option that you have. In some cases (rarely), we can even have the opposite, that is, ennoblement but in negative terms. When you have two words, you choose the one that is negatively marked, in order to give a negative impression of someone. • Impoverishment (somehow related to clarification): o Qualitative: lack of ‘iconic’ or stylistic richness. Your style, that is, the aesthetic dimension of your text is going to lose something, not necessarily because you decide it on purpose or it is done by accident, but simply because as a translator you are not an artist. o Quantitative: reduction of lexical variation. The original text tends to contain a larger variety of lexical items, whereas the translation tends to resort to less variation. The tendency is to resort to the word that is the closest to the meaning of the one you are translating. • Destruction: in some cases, you are forced to carry out a sort of ‘destruction’, there is no other way around. It is not related to one’s competence of the language, but your language often does not give you the possibility to fill the sets of linguistics and pragmatic expectations the way they should be filled. We can have destruction of: o Rhythms (not necessarily in poetry). o Underlying networks of signification (internal links, associations, connotations, etc.). The associations of meaning are very much relevant. These could be evaluative or attitudinal terms, and you perceive things in a positive or negative light depending on the word that is used (mom vs. mother). In translation, you may lose these things because you may use words with totally different connotations. o Linguistic patternings (due to rationalization, clarification, etc.): the TT tends to be more homogeneous than the ST (in terms of word choice, punctuation, etc.). The materiality of the paragraph, that is, the way in which you construct it, is going to be different with respect from the original text. o Vernacular networks or exoticization (i.e., local dialects). Within a text, you might have characters using a specific variety of the language, a dialect but even a different register or style. Exoticization is not considered to be a major loss, but through it you are disrupting the specific flavour the original text had, that your translation does not have. o Expressions and idioms (idiomaticity). These don’t often correspond. At a higher level of abstraction, you disrupt the idiomaticity or naturalness/naturality of the language. • Effacement of the superimposition of languages (i.e., different languages coexisting in ST): we might have completely different language within the same text, including dialects, which are not neutrally transparent (i.e., Scottish and English: even though they are perceived as two possible varieties of the same language, they are not transparent). In translation, one of them is going to be lost. Universals in translation These are the features which typically occur in TTs, rather than STs, irrespective of the language that is involved. The most notable ones are explicitation, disambiguation (to reduce ambiguity, that in the ST can be disambiguated by culture or language-specific elements; TTs tend to be longer than STs), simplification, normalization or conventionalization, reduction or removal of repetition. We are forced to deal with these phenomena when we translate a text. They make translators resort to a language that is similar to the one we use in our everyday life, but that is almost exclusively found in written texts in general. It is not the way people in our culture would speak. The boy and the girl arrived together. His attire was baggy, in non-compliance with the place’s dress code, whereas hers was very affluent. → Il ragazzo e la ragazza arrivarono insieme. Lui indossava abiti oversize, non in linea col dress code del posto, mentre lei vestiva in modo ricercato. The Skopos (aim or purpose) of the translation is going to help you out on the basis of the reading public, and on the basis of what will be considered as the relevant features of the text. 17/03 Skopos Texts are cultural products, which are produced to be appealing in one specific culture, and that is also the reason why they are translated. We want to make the translation relevant to our culture. The process is problematic, because the codification of meaning is always going to be influenced by the fact that there are conventions, models of coherence and frames of reference as far as content is concerned. There are some ideas that are relevant to us and our culture because we have been exposed to those things. Other conventions are related to the form through which we express contents. These are all results of textual and narratological conventions. We don’t perceive them, but they are used in texts produced in a given culture. When we translate a text from one culture to another, we might do it for a variety of purposes (i.e., it is relevant, content wise, in your culture; it is useful to introduce new forms; it is useful to expose your audience to novelties in terms of forms, structure, etc.). In order to know if the translation is ‘perfect’, we have to know why it is carried out. The purposes of translations can be different. If you are translating a contract from the Middle Ages, in order to show how they wrote contracts back then, you will use criteria that are not used to translate literary texts. You know what you are doing. You don’t select what you translate and don’t translate what you want in the way you want. You are always guided, biased or influenced by commissioners. In order to evaluate what we are doing, while we are doing it, we need to know what the purpose of our translation is, so that we can then decide the orientation of our translation. The instruction criteria, guiding the operation of interlinguistic translation can be organized on the basis of two levels: o Intralinguistic (internal to the language): semantic, lexical, grammatical, stylistic features. o Extralinguistic: situation, subject field, time, place (of consumption), receiver (you have it always in mind, and it is yourself, your own image), sender and ‘affective implications’ (humour, irony, emotion, etc.). Extralinguistic factors An articulation of the extralinguistic factors is the polysystem theory (by Even-Zohar). o Every text (ST) is produced in a (literary) system (influenced by institutions, brockers, exerting control, repertoires such as rules, models and standards, producers-consumers, market, and they are products and are recognized as such). o The TT should change the value of these elements. Even in the translated text we have brockers, readers, repertoires which are typical of our culture, and we have to make that text fit the parameters which are typical of our culture. In fact, TTs are translated for another (literary) system (on demand of institutions, on the basis of repertoires, producers- consumers, market, products). Skopos theory (Vermeer, Reiss) The translation methods and strategies to produce a functionally adequate result are determined by the purpose (skopos) of the translation. Skopos is the Greek word for ‘aim’ or purpose and was introduced into translation theory in the 1970s by Vermeer. The major work on skopos theory is Reiss and Vermeer’s Towards a General Theory of Translational Action (2013). The idea of faithfulness presupposes the original text is the authority. The concept of equivalence does this, but it also presupposes that you cannot come up with a text which is exactly the same. The idea of equivalence has been substituted by the idea of adequacy, which doesn’t necessarily hinge on the authority of the text but deals with the perception that the community has of the text, the appeal, which is something that readers perceive. It has to do with the effectiveness of the text. A TT must be fit for purpose (functionally adequate). Therefore, knowing why a ST is to be translated and what the function of the TT will be is crucial for the translator. The main ideas at the basis of the Skopos theory are the following ones: 1) A Translatum (TT) is determined by its skopos. 2) A TT is an offer of information in a target culture and TL concerning an (original) offer of information in a source culture and SL (i.e., the translator as a medium of intercultural communication). You are transferring something that was effective and meant for a specific culture, and you have to make that product fit the expectations of your target culture. This rule relates the ST and TT to their function in their respective linguistic and cultural contexts. The translator is the key player in a process of intercultural communication and production of the TT. o Power distance: acceptance of unequal power distribution. The idea of having a leader or a hierarchy is natural, non-problematic in some cultures (high power-distance), but it is outrageous in other cultures (low power-distance). o Individualism vs. collectivism: some cultures favour the idea of the individual (notion or value of privacy) vs. others favour the idea of being a community member, where it is the community that matters. o Uncertainty avoidance: fear of uncertain/unknown situations (need for rules) vs. new things are welcomed as kind of stimuli to push you forward. Some cultures tend to privilege what is new in respect to what is old. o Masculinity vs. femininity: gender distinction vs. gender overlap. There are cultures in which there is a gap between the father figure and the mother figure, in the sense that some things are typical for one or the other (gender roles, with males being active and strong, and females being passive and sensitive). In other cultures, there is not such a great gap (close-minded vs. open minded). Feminine cultures are those which would accept compromises and negotiations. o Long- vs. short-term orientation: thinking about the future (rewards, with the idea of sacrifice) vs. living in the present (today collects the past, heritage, tradition, and so it is the moment to enjoy). The typical image is that of the ant as long-term oriented, whereas the grasshopper as short-term oriented. o Indulgence: acceptance of deviance and criticism. Indulgence is explicitly carried out, unlike the other parameters. If we want to translate a text from one culture to another there are some adjustments to be made in relation to these elements. You can appreciate a text because these parameters are the same in the source culture and in your own culture (target). 24/03 Variables II: audience age Each text has a specific role within a culture, but besides culture, which is general, it is the idea of the reader that is interesting. We don’t have one reader, but we have an extended group of potential readers (the market) that we need to ascertain in the stage of the translation brief. We decide the type of audience that we have in mind. We translate texts because the audience has some needs: they want pieces of information; they want to be entertained by the text, etc. But this need varies on the basis of the age and education of the readership. Some studies have been conducted on the type of sensitivity that people at a certain age might have in relation to some ideas, meanings, values and notions. According to Erikson, we can distinguish between eight stages (Stage Theory): Infancy (0-1 year); early childhood (1-3); play age (3-6); school age (6-12); adolescence (12-19); early adulthood (20- 25); adulthood (26-64); old age (65-death). This is a specific formalization of the various ages, which was the basis for another model: the model of Egan (2005). According to age, we perceive certain things as being important, and we also develop expectations which are going to help us interpret certain meanings. Egan’s theory is relevant to translation, even if it may not be neurologically accurate. It can be a tool for facilitating our understanding what is legitimate and what is, instead, problematic when translating a text for specific age stages: • Mythic understanding (typical of primary school years: 0 – 14): especially in the early stages, the brain functions on the basis of binary opposites. You make sense of something new on the basis of something that you already know. Meanings which are expressed in terms of opposition are easily processable (i.e., good-evil; happy-sad; tiny-huge, etc.). Children always have someone who is entirely good and someone who is entirely bad, and when this is not the case, they don’t know how to interpret it. There is no distinction or boundaries between reality and imagination, what is unreal or surreal. Their way of perceiving reality is based on strong emotional contrasts (i.e., complete love or complete hate, etc.). Usually, they would appreciate and understand if stories have a simple structure, where you have a possible problem and a solution, which doesn’t necessarily need to be something close to reality, but it can involve magic, without it being a problem. • Romantic understanding (adolescence: teenagers up to 18/19): it is like the first stage but filtered through some moments of logic or cognition. There are still qualities which are easily identifiable, but they are not always necessarily presented as being opposites (i.e., we know that the idea of love is not unproblematic, because it brings with it also the idea of jealousy). We have ideal qualities (love, courage, genius, creativity, etc.), which are more articulated than in the previous stage. Stories usually resort to some of these values and qualities. These texts are also marked by the presence of roles (positive), like heroes, who are carriers of those qualities. There is also something here that substitutes the idea of imagination, even if it is similar to it: a mystery. It is something that appears not to have sense, and we need to find an explanation to it. It is an informative gap that, by the end of the story, is usually filled. • Philosophic understanding (pre-university): it is the stage of rationalization. We represent content in a way that is rationally processable, easy to be cognitively processed. There is a system we resort to in order to simplify the understanding of given contents (i.e., symbols when taking notes, like arrows). You have a natural preference for text, stories or meanings which can make sense because they reflect some parameters, structures of meaning, models of coherence. You appreciate a text because either it reflects that model of coherence, or because it diverges from it, but you are aware of that. The structure confers value to the text, not the content. When you read those texts, it is the idea of recognizing the structure (or its violation) that intrigues you the most. There is an interest in theory, systematization and logic, metacognition. The story is something, the text (structure) is something else: you are capable of pattern detection, and of ordering knowledge into schemata (complex stories). These are also the parameters on the basis of which you adhere to certain ideological orientations. We tend to justify things which are negative if they are part of a positive general framework or structure. • Ironic understanding (adult mind): it is based on a form of disillusionment, or the awareness of the fact that conflicting ways of interpreting the same thing might both be right. You know that, even if there is a privileged way, there are going to be things which won’t function in that way, but that is okay. Awareness of various layers of understanding and openness to self- contradiction. This also applies to stories and texts. These things predetermine not only the appreciation for the text, but also the expectations the audience might have when reading it. If I have to translate a complex text with an adult audience in mind (ironic understanding stage), I won’t try to disambiguate things so as to make it appealing to the public, because that type of public can appreciate those inconsistencies or idiosyncrasies. ST analysis This stage cannot be bypassed. This is what you do when you have to translate any type of text. You need to know/be familiar with, or at least focus on such factors as: o Subject matter o The content (the specific referents within the domain of the text, including connotation and cohesion). o Presuppositions (real world factors presumed to be known to the participants). All texts, because they are cultural products, would exclude elements which are easily accessible or retrievable by readers. o Composition (how the text is organized in terms of macrostructure and microstructure: chapters, sections, subsections, etc. are they organized in terms of content, of function, of something else?). o Non-verbal elements, such as illustrations or pictures, italics, capital letters, and so on. Visually speaking, these are impactful and may also have a specific meaning. o Lexis: dialect, register, specific terminology. You have to recognize the fact that they are there, and then you can decide what to do with them in your own translation. o Sentence structure (i.e., English favours parataxis and Italian favours hypotaxis). o Suprasegmental features: stress, rhythm and stylistic punctuation. On the basis of these, the translator decides the translation type or style (source-culture vs. target- culture oriented). 27/03 Coherence: intertextual and textual The main goal, when we have to translate a text, is keeping coherence. There are two different interpretations of the meaning of ‘coherence’ (two forms of coherence): o Fidelity rule: It has to do with intertextual coherence between ST information and, first, the ST’s interpretation by the translator, and then, between ST and TT. If you translate a text written by an author you adore, then you are going to embellish your translation (through word choice, etc.). The idea that your interpretation should correspond to the information of the original text is something we have to keep in mind, because our interpretation will easily bias us and our translation. It could be a filter through which we carry out our translation. o Coherence (t.c.) rule: The TT should be coherent or relevant for TT receivers, their circumstances and knowledge (the TT may differ according to skopos, audience, context, etc.). The translation has been commissioned for it to be relevant in a given culture (target culture). An example are legal contracts in Italian, that are written in a way that is not transparent for us, and so we need someone else to tell us what they are about. But in English, the majority of contracts are written as a set of instructions, and they are much The main problems in the translation of this text are the following: • The pun in the title. Our language doesn’t allow us to keep the same pun. We can keep Topshop and add something, juxtapose it. • Thumper is not the name of the rabbit, but it corresponds to the Italian Tamburino in Bambi. If we use Tamburino it is going to resonate with the audience. But if we don’t manage to translate it, we can just leave it out. • The last sentence functions like a punchline and should be very effective, intriguing and entertaining. We have to find something that is impactful in our language. 13/04 Polysystem (Evan-Zohar, 1997) This theory is connected to the Skopus theory. It has to do with the question “why do we translate a text?”. We need to make sense of some things with respect to the content of the translation, that is, with respect to where, from where, and to where we are translating the text. Some texts are written in a given culture, but how come they are published, promoted, disseminated? And why/how they become part of the standard? There is something that favours a certain type of literature rather than others, and there are some reasons why we select certain texts to translate them in our culture, and some reasons why we think that they are relevant to our culture. All these things are going to influence the Skopus of the translation. In order to make sense of this, Evan-Zohar came up with the polysystem theory. It is not primarily meant to tell us how to translate a text, but it is meant to give us the reasons to understand why certain texts are to be translated. He modelled his theory on the basis of Jakobson’s metafunction but applied to translation (not communication). A text is a cultural artefact. The polysytem theory allows us to understand what texts are. They are not just something made up by or through words. They can be considered as cultural objects, something that is relevant on the basis of given cultures. A text in itself has hardly any type of value but becomes relevant because a specific culture has a specific room for it to make sense. A text can be relevant and be recognized in a given culture, on the basis of: o Intralinguistic (internal, linguistic) peculiarities: semantic, lexical, grammatical, stylistic features. These direct you to the most effective way to interpret the text. If you flip through the pages of a book, you can understand what type of book it is, the intended audience, etc. Some commonalities allow us to recognize a text even before the content. o Extralinguistic (text-external, cultural) peculiarities: situation, subject field, time, place, receiver, sender, affective implications (humour, irony, emotion, etc.). A text is always about something that is relevant to a given community. These allow us to recognize something as a text, as worth processing and relevant because it contains some meaning that is worthwhile for you to know. If you see a Japanese poem and recognize it as such, you don’t just discard them as being meaningless, but you try to understand things, and that is because you recognize them as being poems with specific features. When producing a text, it is relevant to understand what goes in in a culture. The theory wants to explain what we mean by “relevance” when producing cultural products. People write because there is something culturally relevant to talk about. This theory is meant to provide tools to approach culture in an operative way. When we communicate, we talk about something that is accessible to the audience, so what we say is connected to something already available in your culture (not new, but recognizable). The theory is based on a relational model: a text belongs to a system as far as it is relevant in a given culture: - Related, pertinent, aligned (in economic/adaptive terms). You recognize a way of organizing meaning that is common, frequent, salient within a given culture. - Fruitful: contributing to establishing and fostering meanings (in energetic terms). Evan-Zohan elaborated on Jakobson’s model (which was a complexification of how communication is organized). At the time, it was easy to understand communication as speaker-message-receiver. The listener, in our mind, is just the copycat of the speaker: someone who has the same attitude, expectations, knowledge as the speaker, and so he/she expected to understand the meaning. But this is the simplified version. We can change the roles to make sense of culture: texts are produced by producers, not by speakers (just people using the language), and so we have the product which is the text in the general sense (anything with a meaning). There is the consumer, who deciphers its meaning. Even-Zohar introduced another aspect which is relevant to translation: repertoire(s). These correspond to the code/channel in Jakobson’s model: when you want to communicate certain things, you need to use certain tools which are recognized as ways and structures through which meanings can be conveyed (i.e., a black square is a repertoire). Then, there are institutions, related to the political domain and the centres of power. These contribute to the diffusion of different ideas: they promote certain meanings and leave out others because in good faith they believe that some are positive, and others are negative. They can block the circulation of some meanings for ideological beliefs. They influence the market, which is the set of potential consumers of a given product. Institutions have in mind an ideal reader, the potential consumer of what is being produced, and so the market corresponds to the idea of who could use a certain text. 17/04 The repertoires are the most important element of all: in order for a text to be appealing to a given market, it needs to resort to available repertoires. The repertoire allows the text to be relevant by adapting to a certain form. Repertories are models of coherence that influence expectations, they work on two levels: - expectations of the text (cognitive structures) - structures (discursive formats). In terms of content, repertories have to resonate within a culture, and they do so through “dialogistic” frames to interpret/make sense of reality (ideas, narratives, conventions…) in ways that are shared, facilitating: - Understanding/representation, through: o Omission: taking things for granted, assertiveness over evidence, ignoring/censoring what creates cognitive dissonance (i.e., non-white racism). Omission is a filter that we use when perceiving reality (i.e., look out the window and see buildings but not the sky), but it is also the mechanism that works when you take things for granted (i.e., people with two arms and two legs are taken for granted, but you notice when a person is missing one) or when you see something that does not correspond to your expectations. That creates cognitive dissonance (out of your expectations). Another form of omission is assertiveness (saying something), because when you assert something, you automatically cancel everything that is not in line with your assertion. When some things are deleted or not perceived as relevant in a given culture, this can create problems because it might not be the same in another culture. An example of omission is the fact that when we hear the term “racism” we instantly think of white people discriminating non-white people (domination from people in power towards people who are not in power), but this is not the case, because if you say that only white people are racist, this is a form of discrimination. Another example is considering global warming as a typical phenomenon of our age, which is not. In the Middle Ages, temperatures were much higher than today (omission). o Distortion: it is related to the fact we have some models to make sense and talk about reality. Since we know that these models are valid, we try to force them onto reality, we try to make reality fit the models in order to understand. So, we read experience: - in the light of models (i.e., some women do not believe in feminism, and to make sense of these women who do not align to a certain model, we may resort to female misogyny: if they are not feminists, they are clearly against women, according to our model of coherence). - bend dissonance (what does not correspond to the model, i.e., female misogyny) to fit available models (women who are not feminists are a consequence of patriarchy; in this way, we make sense of women who do not correspond to the model). - organize episodic evidence (i.e., single and unrelated elements) into trends (a single episode as part of a paradigm that you have in mind). - infer logic/causality for co-occurrence (x before y). In western culture, if something makes sense in logic terms, it is valid. Therefore, when we are in front of a co- occurrence, since the second episode occurs after the first one, we automatically think it is a consequence of the first episode (i.e., I bought new shoes and then fell down the stairs: the second episode is interpreted as a consequence of the first one, even if it is not really so). - distinguish between typical and atypical (what doesn’t fit the model is an exception). If something is an exception of a model, it is an exception of something that we consider important. In our culture, we believe that an exception confirms a rule, instead of doubting the rule (a single event is less important than the pattern). o Generalization: we take a single event as symbolizing a larger phenomenon (i.e., If I fell once after wearing new shoes, I have to avoid stairs every time I have new shoes, otherwise I will fall). These are the filters through which we understand reality. - Classifying and recognizing ideas and their association. There are some terms which are used to classify reality through models (i.e., “this is an example of sexism”, “this is an example of global warming”). For example: o What is a literary vs cultural product (comics/humorous texts are not literary?) o What is violence (aggression or anything offensive?) text to make sense are worded out, and it is almost impossible to misinterpret it (in translations, you may also add footnotes to explain things to readers). Public written texts can be further distinguished between: » fictional texts (aesthetic function). Art is meant primarily to sound and look good, to be perceived as either pleasing or displeasing, but as something that provokes an emotive and affective reaction, which is the main purpose of fictional texts (literature, including poems and dramas). You don’t want to enlarge the competences of your readers, but the aim is to produce an emotive response. » non-fictional texts (operative, utilitarian function). While we need to be taught about fictional texts in order to understand them, we don’t need to be taught about non- fictional texts, because we use them every single day and assimilate them naturally. Literature is the best possible representation of a given culture, but it is just a small part of written texts But for non-fictional texts, we don’t have the meta-discursive ability to recognize what they are and the names of their typical features. We can organize them on the basis of their macro-function. ➢ Referential: ideation is predominant. There is some content that you need to get through, so the meaning is relevant to the extratextual reality. ➢ Persuasive: you want pieces of information to be taken as compelling to your interlocutor. There is an interpersonal function, because you want them to accept, or be convinced by what you write. ➢ Normative: they are meant to present some rules, regulations, or codify some things you need to do or that you are not supposed to do. They tend to be of the text-normative type. In these cases, since you are addressing people that you don’t know, one of the possible reasons affecting the way you write is that you need to create a textual personal image of yourself. This biases the way you use language. 24/04 The realization of the macro-functions (referential, persuasive, normative) varies on the basis of the ideal, targeted audience. Your writing might be guided by a goal (i.e., to inform your interlocutor), but the way you carry out this act will depend on the type of information your interlocutor already possesses about certain things. The audience that you have in mind is going to determine the type of language and text that you are producing. We can distinguish between writing to: - Experts. The writer is always configured as an expert, because he/she is giving pieces of information, but the audience can be of experts as well. - Novices. They are not experts in a given domain, but they are preparing to reach the status of experts. - Laymen. These are not experts and don’t even want to become experts. They are simply curious; some contents elicit their curiosity, and therefore they want to be informed about specific things. o Referential texts » to experts: informative texts (i.e., I don’t have to prove anything to them/use some persuasive strategy, because they already know me) » to novices: the texts contain relevant information, but that needs to be first balanced with respect to the competence of the audience. They also need to contain some sort of extra-information that your interlocutor is expected to acquire knowledge of. The texts are educational, textbooks/resource books. There is also a clarifying purpose: the language should be transparent, and you should add some comments about what is meant by a given concept. » to laymen: you simplify and banalize things for them to understand. This is the case of popularization and media discourse. o Persuasive texts » to experts: argumentative texts, academic discourse. Argumentation is when you use logic when presenting your information, in order to prove that your point is valid. Since these experts don’t know me, I want to convince them that my point of view is valid (I have to be convincing). » to novices: promotional texts. The material needs to be informative and true, but at the same time appealing. Examples are tourism leaflets, which shouldn’t be boring. The text needs to have some form of quality that is going to be integrated into the relevant information. » to laymen: advertising (typical case), where the information is incredibly limited and, in most cases, false. The fact of being true is less important than being appealing. o Normative texts » to experts: laws, statutes, etc. We need lawyers or attorneys because they are experts, and they manage to interpret those things which have been written specifically for them, with them in mind. As a consequence, their translation also needs experts in this domain. » to novices: institutional discourse and contracts, which are meant for someone who has a certain degree of competence and are meant to extend his/her competence. » to laymen: signs (no verbal language), signals, and instructions, because normative texts are meant to let you know what you can or cannot do, but they have to be simplified for laymen to understand them. Other theories were used in order to show that there are plenty of features for the classification of texts. One of these classifications comes from literature and was introduced by Ezra Pound (1927). The three main characteristics that he identified as being typical of certain texts can be applied to all kinds of texts, not just literary ones (primarily in poetry, but also in spoken language and prose). The salience of a text could be found at three different levels: o Logopoeia: it depends on the literal or the most frequently associated meaning of a text, which is clearly and relatively unambiguously worded out. Predominance is to logos. This depends upon the audience’s recognition of words they have previously heard or read, the knowledge of rhetorical usage, or the reading experience of a text (i.e., repertoires: novels, news, instructions, etc.) o Melopoeia: it corresponds to hinging on rhythm and sound to direct/influence meaning (typical of traditional poetry, rhyming). The appeal of the text doesn’t stem from the meaning of words but is related to the external quality of the words (sound or associated meaning of given words). The sense of a text stems from the way we use language. o Phanopoeia: it applies almost exclusively to poems and, in some cases, specific literary texts, which are meant not to just tell us a given story, but to convey an impression through some images that sound like quotations/references from/to other texts. It corresponds to hinging on the evocative imagery that can create a flash of understanding. Examples are Alice in Wonderland and Wasteland, but also haiku, modernist poetry, etc. They are texts which aren’t meant to present a linear story (chronologically), but the opposite. Even though there is a clear chronological line, they may be full of parentheses. Text types and metafunctions Another model is this theory by Jakobson. Since he discussed communication, and not literature like Pound, this is a linguistic model (not literary). He considered metafunction as being central to communication. In communication, we have the context (referent), a sender → a message → and a receiver, a channel (written, oral), and a code (language style register). According to Jackobson, texts can have salience at one of those metafunctional level, and on the basis of this, he introduced this classification. Focus can be on: - Context (referential function) - Sender (expressive function) → Message (poetic) → Receiver (conative) - Channel (phatic function) - Code (metalinguistic function) On the basis of the focus, we have different text types: • referent: denotative, cognitive, representative, informative texts (essays, texbooks etc.) • sender or enunciator: expressive texts (within these, we have literary texts) • receiver or enunciatee: appellative, imperative, directive texts (instructions, contracts, etc.). You want the receiver to perform some action. • channel: relational or contact texts (checks, i.e., instructions before a test, ‘can you hear me?’, etc.). this is also the case of greetings, because their first purpose is to let people know that we are available for social relationship with him/her. The same thing goes when we answer the phone and the first thing we say is pronto. • code: metadiscursive or metasemiotic texts (texts about texts). • message: aesthetic or rhetorical texts (poems and text-normative texts). Modern theories about text type and genre Trosborg (1997) created a classification of texts according to purpose: o communicative functions: » inform (focus is on the content) » express an attitude (sender) » Oblique translation → domestication (TT-oriented, when literal translation is not/hardly possible). You simplify the original text, to make it readable for your audience. Nonfictional texts are translated following the oblique translation (or domestication), because these texts have a content that needs to be processable. Some strategies of this type of translation are the following ones, but the two scholars not only provide a classification, they also offer practical procedures to follow: o Transposition (+/- class shift): a change of one part of speech for another (i.e., noun for verb), usually when it is impossible for such (especially syntactic) structures to be rendered in your language, without changing the sense: - Obligatory (possible > impossible): change in word class or order due to syntactic or collocational specificity of SL and TL. - Optional (preferred > dispreferred). As soon as she got up can be rendered literally in French or through the transposition dès son lever (upon her rising). Oblique translation allows us freedom to select things that are structurally closer to how native speakers would speak. Transposition procedures (shifts): verb – noun, adjective – adverb, adverb – verb (il ne tardera pas à rentrer > …soon be back). o Modulation: it has to do not with the structure but with the perspective. It changes the semantics and point of view of the SL when the literal translation may be possible, correct but unsuitable, unidiomatic or awkward. It is a different way of linking similar concepts as in SL that is perceived as standard in TL. Examples are: it’s not difficult to show > il est facile de dèmontrer / shallow > poco profondo, etc. - Obligatory (i.e., the time when > le moment où) - Optional (depending on the preferred structures of the two languages). Modulation covers a wide range of phenomena, and the authors consider it as central for good translation: abstract → concrete; part → whole; part → another part (from cover to cover); cause → effect; negation of the opposite; active → passive, space → time (moment when > moment où); reversal of terms (safe and sound > sano e salvo), change of symbol or metaphor. o Equivalence (or ‘idiomatic translation’): when languages describe the same situation by different stylistic or structural means (change of denotation). It is useful for the translation of idioms or proverbs (i.e., come un elefante in una cristalleria > comme un chien dans un jeu de quills, birilli > like a bull in a china shop, or the early bird catches the worm > chi tardi arriva male alloggia). o Adaptation: changing the cultural reference when a situation in source culture doesn’t exist in target culture (i.e., references to cricket can be turned to soccer for Italy, tour de France for French, etc.). Terms that are culturally bound are adapted. The refusal to use adaptation is perfectly correct, but the translation may sound not quite right (foreignness). Examples: dear Sirs → spettabile ditta; pub → bar → cafè (French); metri > yards. They do not correspond 100%, but it is the closest possibility. The seven main translation procedures are described as operating on three levels: lexicon, syntactic structures, and message. Above word level, there are word order and thematic structure, and connectors (cohesive links, discourse markers, deixis, and punctuation marks). 8/05 Translation errors (general vs. language-based) This especially applies to specialized translation. There are possible wrong solutions we might pick when translating a text. » Aesthetic texts → meant to be cognitively or emotively enjoyed (creative purposes). When we deal with these texts, translation is going to be expected. Our choice of books to read is going to be guided by filters such as the plot/author, that function as kind of guarantees. We have some expectations, and the enjoyment of given books depends on those expectations. o Foreignization (keep the ‘foreign’): manage displacement. We expect, for example, Umberto Eco to use a certain type of writing, and we find foreignizing forms. We enjoy a text not when our expectations are respected step by step (boring), but when they are violated: this is what makes a text interesting and intriguing: another reason why foreignization has to be privileged. o Transcreation: the main point is to preserve as much as possible the original ideas, intuition or intention at the basis of the source text but align them to the target culture. This is used to manage impact (on the interlocutor), that has to be more, or less, the same (i.e., commercial of the same product for different markets, like Coca Cola). In some cultures, the associations of meaning to some concepts (i.e., villain: dressed in black) are different to ours. The image is kept, but we try to reconstruct the meaning through symbols/images which are impactful in another culture. » Referential texts → operative, utilitarian purposes. o Domestication: reality-based or action-based (informative, operative, specialized discourse). You manage meaning accessibility (text must be accessible). The author writes something on the basis that the reader might need, not like, those pieces of information. o Localization: leisure-oriented (meant to be used, i.e., videogames). You are limited by given semiotic constraints that you must respect but adjust cultural and linguistic elements. You manage product usability, because even if you have those constraints, you still need to make the text processable and usable. The content should be usable. Videogames have a series of constraints, i.e., instructions must be preserved (i.e., find a missing word in a song), but they have to be adapted to the target culture (you can change it to a song popular in Italy, and not one that is familiar to British people only). Referential texts’ most relevant features are the same that apply to specialized texts. Specialized genres/translation are different than literary/aesthetic texts. It is something else that implies totally different parameters. Specialized genres are demand-based texts, so they are meant to fill some need that the reader might have with respect to given contents (specific readers’ need, which is different than the need to attract the reader). You don’t need to find strategies to attract because the content itself attracts them. Precisely because it is focused on the content, anything else is complementary and less relevant. Instead of finding things that are original to be impactful, these texts tend to resort to the most frequent, standardized, normalized way of codifying meaning. Adaptive repertoires are maximally recognizable and require the minimal cognitive expenditure, because they are immediately understood by interlocutors. Conditions for specialized discourse: 1) Intention condition: what you want to achieve with the text is to expand knowledge about a specific domain (not the case of literature). You intend to educate them, let them know more. Make the readership as smart as you are: that is the purpose. 2) Knowledge condition: the sender/writer is always an expert, someone that knows exactly what they are writing about. 3) Code condition: the author/sender knows the specialized repertoires (adequacy condition), shows that he is competent by showing that he knows the right code to present content. Ethos of science (Merton, Marco) This is another thing which is specific of specialized texts and translations. Science and scientific approaches were based on some elements: - Universalism → it was meant to understand how things work, and to make sure that these mechanisms would apply in all types of contexts. - Communism → sharing knowledge. What you are doing is because you want to share knowledge with people who are interested in finding out more. This is something that you found and then you share this piece of information. - Disinterestedness → you have no particular interest to make a point. - Organized scepticism when approaching claims → science is incredibly open to all possible changes, revisions, implementations, etc. Superstition, the opposite, is not. Precisely for all these things, the style we find in scientific/specialized discourse is a transparent style, which is the style of an efficient text (not an effective one): - Quantity → economy (minimax principle), conciseness. - Quality → objectivity. - Relation/relevance → precision, mono-referentiality. - Manner → clarity (avoid as much as possible ambiguity), stick to appropriateness (adequacy condition, to content and context) and to expectations. These are the features of specialized discourse, which are the opposite of those we find in the literary world. According to some scholars of translation, the errors you can produce in translation can be classified in two types: violation → general / sideway translation errors. The violation of one of the maxims is a general error. Narrow-way (or language-based) translation errors are connected to the material side of language, rather than to the general approach to translation. - Language-based pragmatic, language or textual, semantic (errors). - Translation-based calque, interference (SL and TL language overlap) Pragmatic mistakes are at the highest level of abstraction because they deal with the approach to the way in which language is used, rather than with the actual use of language. Mistakes and errors are not the same thing: errors are generated by missing competence and are much more systematic.