TUTTO il materiale per l’orale di inglese 1 con prof Spinelli (dettagli in descrizione), Appunti di Lingua Inglese

Scarica TUTTO il materiale per l’orale di inglese 1 con prof Spinelli (dettagli in descrizione) e più Appunti in PDF di Lingua Inglese solo su Docsity! 1 Primo semestre What is Linguistics? Linguistics is the scientific study of language, and its focus is the systematic investigation of the properties of particular languages as well as the characteristics of language in general. It encompasses not only the study of sound, grammar and meaning, but also the history of language families, how languages are acquired by children and adults, and how language use is processed in the mind and how it is connected to race and gender. Linguistics complements a diverse range of other disciplines such as anthropology, philosophy, psychology, sociology, biology, computer science, health sciences, education and literature. Linguistics is concerned with both the cognitive and the social aspects of language. It is considered both a scientific field and an academic discipline Language: Is a system of communication consisting of sounds, words, and grammar and used by people living in a particular country. When a message changes its way of expression there is a process of decodification. Human verbal language is the best-known and most famous, but there are many others: Programming language, Music language, Body language etc. There are also non-human languages: bees and dolphins, for example, have their language. In order to understand what is the language, it’s necessary to know what is NOT a language. 1) language and tongue are not the same thing. The language is not a synonym of tongue because the tongue is a result of the language. 2) the language does not depend on its way of transmission because it can be verbal, written or visual. 3) The language could be human or animal, verbal or non verbal. The tongue is a type of verbal language. LANGUAGE IS A PARTICULAR SIGN SYSTEM WHICH IS HISTORICALLY DETERMINED AND USED BY A GROUP OF PEOPLE TO COMMUNICATE WITH ONE ANOTHER - Historically determined = a language evolves following historical developments. Just as humanity has evolved, language has evolved, diversifying into various verbal languages. More precisely, historical events influence/affect/shape languages, stimulating or hindering/impeding their development, but above all determining their boundaries. - USED BY A GROUP OF PEOPLE: A society is an organised group of individuals speaking a given language to interact and establish social relationships. Therefore, language is social: it develops and evolves along with society, not only through history. - ‘’LANGUAGE IS A PARTICULAR SIGN SYSTEM’’: a specific group of people use a given kind of CODE (system of signs) in order to communicate with one another. 2 SEMIOTICS: also called semiology, the study of signs and sign-using behavior. It was defined by one of its founders, Ferdinand de Saussure, as the study of “the life of signs within society.” Semiotics studies signs, their production, transmission and interpretation, or the ways in which something is communicated and means something or even how a symbolic object is produced. It studies how a sign enables the interpreter to understand its content. A sign is "something that stands in place of something else, to someone in some way". A sign can express contents. Signs of the same type form a CODE = a conventional/arbitrary/artificial system of signs. There are elementary and complex codes: this depends on how many signs make up a code and how they can combine with each other and/or be interpreted. CODIFICATION = When the form of a message (alt = stop) is transformed into another form (red traffic light).When the receiver interprets that message, DECODIFICATION takes place. Based on the analogy of the term 'to conduct', TRANSLATE means to turn a communicative act into another language, different from the original one: a written or oral text, or even a part of it, a sentence or a single word. This means that translating is a process of coding and decoding a communicative act. First chapter The origins of modern linguistics can be found in antiquity: Plato talked about linguistic related questions, becoming the precursor of modern linguistics. In his works there are the initial traces of what will then be the theory of conventionality and arbitrarily of linguistic signs. Also the presocratics focused on the relationship between language and reality. Socrates refused total arbitrariness of language, while Aristotle supported this idea and imagined the language as an instrument of thought. For the linguistics studies, work of Latin grammars was also important. Between the 16th and 17th centuries, the social, religious and political events that brought a major usage of vulgar, became the beginning of intense works of linguistics. The relationship with the East increased and so people were in contact with a big number of different languages. Between 1700 and 1800 the foundations of effective compared linguistics were laid. There was the application of Darwinian theories in the linguistic field (parenthood between languages) and the search for a common origin of languages. In the 20th century linguistics really developed and was devided into a bunch of different disciplines: - Phonetics: it studies the phones, the physical characteristic of linguistic sounds made by human organs, so it’s the study of how speech sounds are produced and perceived. ** - Phonology: it studies the phonemes, analyses the relationship between sounds and meanings, so it’s the study of sound patterns and changes - Orthography: study of letters and their usage - Morphology: study of words’ structure - Syntax: study of phrase’s meaning 5 Structuralism and post structuralism made some notions problematic, such as reality, culture and translation. For example, there is the notion of ‘’the author’s death’’ of Roland Barthes: the idea that the author that writes loses his identity. The text started to be seen as the destruction of the authority and the truth of writing as an element owned by the reader. The structuralism anticipated the central role that the reader will have in the intellectual discussions afterwards. Some structuralists: - Levi Strauss: symbolic systems can be seen as natural languages - Michel Foucault: uses structuralist methods in the study of history - Jacques Lacan: idea that the person’s ego exists when another person addresses the individual. Language gives to individuals an identity and in language there is the meaning of the human being. Structuralism’s aim was to unmask the coercive use of language by various systems throughout history. It can be defined as a theory of reading that tries to clarify the process to give meanings to linguistic acts. Roman Jakobson: Jakobson is an important figure for the linguistics studies that analysed phonetics, phonologic, grammar, linguistic aspects of translation. He recognised that in every linguistic act many elements are involved: - message: the set of information that the sender conveys to the receiver. - Issuer: the one who send the message, the originator of the message or the information source selects the desired message - Receiver: the one to whom the message is addressed. - Contact: the 'way', the medium through which communication takes place. - Code: the system of signs by which the message is formulated and then understood - Context: the situation in which the message is set and is a set of facts, ideas, and words to which it is necessary to refer for a correct understanding of the message The ADDRESSER sends a MESSAGE to the ADDRESSEE. To be operative the message requires a CONTEXT referred to, either verbal or capable of being verbalized; a CODE fully, or at least partially, common to the addresser and addressee; and a CONTACT, a physical channel and psychological connection between the addresser and the addressee, enabling both of them to enter and stay in communication. Every component has a function. Giving emphasis to the role of the receiver of the message, it’s possible to understand the structure that enables meanings: meanings are the consequences of specific historical, social and cultural conventions, and the way in which we interpret the world depends on the language we have. The individual loses value and is able to commit linguistic acts only because there are conventional systems. Third chapter Sociolinguistic studies the link between language and the society in which it is used: it’s important because language is realised in social life. 6 The notion of context becomes fundamental. If we think about discourse as the language in use it implies the notion of context. It is possible to distinguish three types of context: linguistic, historical-cultural and situational. - linguistic context: the set of words that form the message and provide the exact meaning; - situational context: the set of conditions in which communication takes place; - historical/cultural context: the set of information relating to the political, social, and cultural reality in which the message was produced and to which it must be referred so that it can be fully understood. The cultural context can be defined as the cultural background that lies behind every text and that determines its meaning. It corresponds to each socially determined aspect of human life. But what is culture? Edward Barnett Tylor said that culture is the complex system of meanings and behaviours that defines the way of life of a particular group or society. It includes beliefs, values, knowledge, art, morals, laws, customs, language and dress. In every society, culture defines what is perceived as good and bad, right and wrong. Culture helps hold society together, gives people a sense of belonging and instructs them on how to behave and what to think in particular situations. Giuliana Garzone said that culture can both be: - the set of visible aspects of a nation or of a community known as shared knowledges - The set of invisible aspects as the beliefs and the values E. T. Hall distinguished between high culture, external to the individual and that refers to a set of knowledge which one could learn, and low culture, internal to the individual and the one you can acquire. He also decides culture into - Technical culture: science communication - Formal culture: way of doing things accepted in a community - Informal culture: behaviors towards certain actions Situational context Language is clearly influenced by numerous socio-cultural aspects: the general meaning of a text must be understood at the pragmatic level, i.e. taking into account not only the intentions of the sender of the message but also such essential variables as the participants in the communicative act or the subject matter. The situational context could thus be defined as the extra-textual context of a text that includes both linguistic and situational clues, precisely identifying the communicative environment in which the message itself is embedded. In order to correctly identify the situational context it is therefore necessary to consider a number of variables: actors, message form, content, surroundings, medium, purpose, effect, tone, genre and norms of interaction. J. R. Firth talked about different components of the situational context like the participants , the verbal and non verbal actions, the relevant events, the Consequences of the verbal actions. 7 Hymes identified: - participants: include the speaker and the audience. - Form of the message - Message content - Environment - Means of communication - Communication goals - Effects - Tone - Genre: kind of speech act - Norms of the interaction In the 1980s, Juliane House developed a model for analysing context in translation, identifying a number of dimensions that seemed particularly useful for comparing the source text and the target text. House thus identified a series of: - dimensions specific to the user of the language, such as the social class and the geographical origin - Dimensions of language use, such as means of communication and social relationship House said that is necessary to - Understand the linguistic register that characterizes the source text - Describe the genre of the source text - Make a statement of function. When the same thing is done with the target text, the two models must be compared to find mismatches: - overtly erroneous errors: mismatches based on the denotative aspect of the language or inadequacies related to the target system - Covertly erroneous errors: mismatches provoked by a wrong interpretation of the relationship with genre, registry and context. Thus the translation can be: - Overt: a translation that does not claim to be original; therefore, the target reader realises that he or she is confronted with a text for which he or she was not intended as the 'ideal reader.' - Covert: a translation that becomes original in the target culture Linguistic register: The definition of context is related not only to the issuer of the message but also to the receiver. If context is the what, where and to whom of the linguistic expression, the register is the how, that is the way by which authors of a message express themselves. Three variables condition the register: - the field: topic of the discourse. Depending on the activity we can talk about technical registry, scientific registry… - The tenor: the relationships between the participants. Depending on the tenor we can talk about formal, informal and neutral registry. - The mode: the way by which the language is used. From this point of view we can talk about a particular genre. 10 - The poetic function: focuses on "the message for its own sake" (the code itself, and how it is used) and is the operative function in poetry as well as slogans. - The emotive function: relates to the sender and it helps us to interpret the subject’s feelings, desires and moods. The purely emotive stratum in language is presented by the interjections. - The conative function: engages the receiver directly and is best illustrated by vocatives and imperatives. The text has to be fully and immediately comprehensible to the reader - The phatic function: is language for the sake of interaction and is therefore associated with the Contact/Channel factor. The Phatic Function can be observed in greetings and messages primarily serving to establish, to prolong, or to discontinue communication, to check whether the channel works, to attract the attention of the interlocutor or to confirm his continued attention - The metalingual (alternatively called "metalinguistic" or "reflexive") function: is the use of language (what Jakobson calls "Code") to discuss or describe itself. Texts are often characterised by multifunctionality M. K. A. HALLIDAY, a British linguist, teacher, and proponent of neo-Firthian theory, viewed language basically as a social phenomenon. According to Halliday (1970), language is a form of social interaction, more precisely a system of signs and symbols used for communicative purposes. He therefore identifies three major functions (macro-functions): ideational, textual and interpersonal. - Ideational: serves as expression of content in language, articulating our mental experiences and representations of the world. - Interpersonal: serves to establish and maintain social relations, how individuals act and interact with each other and how personality, attitudes and values are expressed. - Textual: provides for making links with features of the text with elements of context of situation, enabling interlocutors to construct a coherent text. The Co-Text The widest notion of the linguistic environment is the ‘’Co-text’’. It consists of all those words that surround a particular word or passage within a text and provide context and help 11 determine the meaning of that text or utterance. Co-text refers to the language immediately surrounding the item in question which tells us its meaning. Instead context refers to the social setting in which language occurs, it’s the non-verbal environment in which a word is used. - CONTEXT: the circumstances, the environment, the background or settings that determine, specify, or clarify the meaning of an event or other occurrence. The circumstances that form the setting for an event, statement, or idea, and in terms of which it can be fully understood. - CO-TEXT refers to the textual elements surrounding a message, which occur before and/or after a word, phrase, or even a longer utterance or text. The co-text helps understand the meaning of the word, phrase, utterance etc. TEXT TEXTUALIZATION TEXTUALITY The concept of 'text' is ambiguous and characterised by 'duplicity': it can be identified as both a concrete and an abstract reality. The text is considered both an empirical object (subject to be analysed) and an abstract object (constructed by analysis). The concept of 'text' also presupposes two other concepts: - from a generative point of view, it implies a process by which something becomes a text (textualisation); - from an interpretative point of view, it implies a process through which something can be interpreted as a text (textuality). M. A. K. Halliday and Ruqaiya Hasan define textuality through “cohesion” and “coherence.” Cohesion is a necessary condition of textuality because it enables the text to be perceived as a whole. But to be interpreted as a whole, the elements composing the text need to be coherent with each other, so the concepts are linked together by a clear and logical relationship. Different type of cohesion: - grammatical: the most simple relations are represented by reference and conjoining. - Lexical Giving coherence to a text means - adhering to the topic to be dealt with and from which one must never deviate; - avoiding contradictions or ambiguities; - being ordered in logical and temporal succession; - not to jump too much from one topic to another; - not be dispersive: no superfluous information, no losing the thread of the discourse; - present uniformity of style and linguistic register. Giving cohesion to the text means, first of all, respecting the grammatical and syntactical relationships between the various parts. This requires: - the concordance of gender and number; - the correct use of verb forms (tenses, modes and person); - correct linking of sentence elements (subject, verbal predicate, complements); - correctly linking main and subordinate sentences; 12 - learning to use connectives (pronouns, conjunctions and adverbs) to emphasise logical steps in reasoning. Good cohesion is achieved through the following five main methods: - repeated words/ideas - reference words: words which are used to refer to something which is mentioned elsewhere in the text, usually in a preceding sentence. - transition signals: also called cohesive devices or linking words, are words or phrases which show the relationship between ideas. - substitution: using one or more words to replace for one or more words used earlier in the text - Ellipsis: leaving out one or more words, because the meaning is clear from the context. Ellipsis is something called substitution by zero, since essentially one or more words are substituted with no word taking their place. Two other ways through which cohesion is achieved within a text: shell nouns and thematic development. Shell nouns are abstract nouns which summarise the meaning of preceding or succeeding information. This summarising helps to generate cohesion. Cohesion can also be achieved by thematic development. The term theme refers to the first element of a sentence or clause. The development of the theme in the rest of the sentence is called the rheme. THEME: the point of departure/starting point: what the clause is going to be about RHEME: what comes after the theme – new information about the point of departure (theme) Coherence can be improved by using an outline before writing, to check that the ideas are logical and well organised. Asking a peer to check the writing to see if it makes sense is another way to help improve coherence in your writing. 7 standards of textuality by Robert De Beaugrande & W. Dressler - Cohesion - Coherence - Intentionality: the text's function must reflect the author's goal; - Acceptability: the receiver must be willing to participate in the discourse; - Informativity: concerns the ability of the text to provide new knowledge; - Contextuality/situationality: the connection that the text has with a specific communicative situation; - Intertextuality: the connection the text has with other texts; Depending on the purpose the author of the text intends to achieve, we can have very different types of text. The main ones are: - The descriptive text: personal reports in narrative texts or objective descriptions in scientific texts; - The informative text: used to give orders, information or advice; - The expository text: refers to cognitive processes of the individual. Its purpose is to inform: textbooks, encyclopaedias, articles, etc. - The expressive text - The persuasive text 15 Sofronio Eusebio Girolamo, also known as Jerome of Stridon, was a Christian priest, confessor, theologian, and historian; he is commonly known as Saint Jerome. St Jerome translated both the Old and New Testaments from Hebrew into Latin. He claimed to have translated SENSE BY SENSE and not WORD BY WORD. THE MIDDLE AGES was a period characterised by intense translation activity, mainly due to the following: - the widespread use of the many different vernacular languages. - the influence of Oriental languages and cultures on the Mediterranean populace. Escuela de Traductores de Toledo The first center for the study and practice of translation was founded in Toledo, a veritable school in which translation was considered and studied as a tool for practical purposes: spreading knowledge by transporting it into languages more common and vulgar than Latin. The Toledo School of Translators was a group of academics who collaborated in Toledo during the 12th and 13th centuries to translate many scientific and philosophical writings from the Judeo-Islamic tradition from Classical Arabic into Latin. In the 13th century, under King Alfonso X of Castile, the translators switched from using Latin as the target language to Old Spanish. As a result, the first standard of the Spanish language was established, leading to the eventual development of two varieties, one from Toledo and one from Seville. HUMANISM AND RENAISSANCE: Leonardo Bruni, the first modern historian. An Italian humanist, historian and statesman, often recognized as the most important humanist historian of the early Renaissance. Bruni wrote one of the first theoretical essays on translation, De interpretatione recta, in which he was the first to use the verb TRADUCERE with today's meaning of 'to translate’. Moreover, here he sets out four fundamental rules to be followed when translating to achieve an effective result: 1. a good understanding of the source text before translating 2. excellent language skills: both in the source and target languages. 3. the translation must follow a logical thread 4. the translation must display stylistic elegance. Étienne Dolet A French scholar, translator and printer. Dolet was a controversial figure throughout his life. His early attacks against the Inquisition, the city council and other authorities in Toulouse, and his later publications in Lyon on theological subjects, led the French Inquisition considered him guilty of heresy, strangled and burned with his books Dolet identified five principles for effective translation in his 'La manière de bien traduire d'une langue en autre’: 1. The translator must perfectly understand the source text and its meaning. Only then can he proceed with a free translation and deviate from the original text. 2. The translator must know the source language and the target language ideally. And also his culture. 16 3. The translator must avoid a word-for-word translation, especially if ambiguous and ineffective. 4. The translator must always follow the principles of cohesion and coherence. 5. The translator should avoid unusual words such as Latinisms. Linguistic elegance is indeed appreciated as a translation must be pleasing to the receiver of the text, but comprehensibility must always be favoured. Luther - the monk who split Europe in two Martin Luther was of humble origins, the son of farmers. After becoming an Augustinian monk, he began theological studies and became a professor in Wittenberg in 1513. Luther soon clashed with the church authorities here. In 1517, Luther posted 95 theses on the door of a church in Wittenberg against corruption in the church and against the trade in indulgences that was very fashionable at the time. Luther rebelled and thus started a religious and political revolution that split the church - and Europe - in two. Luther was also the main architect of the modern German language. He translated the Bible into German and thus contributed to its wide dissemination among the people. The problem was that hundreds of countries fractured Germany, where multiple languages and dialects were spoken. Luther, therefore, created a new language anchored in the dialect of central Germany and enriched with elements of other dialects and popular languages. This new language was understandable in all parts of Germany: a book was distributed nationwide for the first time. The same thing that Dante did for the Italian language, Luther did for the German language: he standardised the German dialects by conjugating them into one common language with nationwide dissemination. Today's German language has changed a lot since Luther's time - and continues to change. Luther added a commentary to his translation of the New and Old Testaments, explaining that he had opted for the right midpoint between free and literal translation. Free translation where he strayed so far from the source text in order to best render the final effect. Yet in many cases he found himself respecting the original text by translating it word-for-word. In the half of the 20th century, Lawrence Venuti, an American translator, professor and translation scholar, introduced the concepts of 'domestication' and 'foreignization'. Venuti defines Luther's strategy as the translation strategy of domestication > A translation approach that seeks to minimise differences between the source and target text in order to make the product familiar and recognisable to receivers. The 17th And 18th centuries Les belles infidëles" and the extreme domestication. Around the 17th and 18th centuries, in France and England, Les belles infideles were born, which dominated the world of translation (especially into french) during the 18th century. Les belles infideles were extremely free translations that aimed to produce target texts that were pleasant to read and listen to. In order to achieve an elegant style, as close to the target language as possible, various aspects of the original text were modified, completely altering the references and form of the source text 17 Among the various proponents of this style of translation are François de Malherbe and Nicolas Perrot D'Ablancourt. According to them, they serve to enable those unfamiliar with the culture of the time to understand the text, and the translator is thus also encouraged to become an adapter: D'Ablancourt is one of the leading figures associated with LES BELLES INFIDELES who translated classical texts, completely distorting them according the era's criteria, often resorting to omissions and 'improvements’. These were not merely translations; they were actual camouflages, masks, and disguises of the original works. John Dryden John Dryden was an English poet, literary critic, translator and playwright who became England's first "Poet Laureate" in 1668. Dryden's theory of translation is well known. He divides translations into three kinds: metaphrase, paraphrase, and imitation. - Meta-phrases: literal translation, word for word - Paraphrase: The sense of the original text is preserved, but the style is adapted - Imitation: the translator is free to change the words and sense of the original Thus, Dryden anticipates a translation approach oriented towards the target text, language and culture, emphasizing the need to always consider the target audience's culture. In doing so, he anticipates the concept of DYNAMIC EQUIVALENCE introduced in the 20th century by Eugene Nida. This implies that the proto-text (the source text) and the meta-text (the target text) must be linked by the same relationship and function. Alexander Pope Alexander Pope was an English poet considered one of the greatest of the 18th century. Between 1730-32 Pope composed his most ambitious poem: 'An Essay on Man’. Pope had been fascinated by Homer since childhood. His translation of the Iliad appeared between 1715 and 1720, and was congratulated by Samuel Johnson as 'a work which no generation or nation can hope to equal’. Encouraged by the success of his translation of the Iliad, Pope also translated the Odyssey. In 1715, he wrote in the preface to Homer's Iliad that a literal translation cannot do justice to a good original and that a translator must only take the liberties necessary to reproduce the spirit and poetic style of the original. Romanticism During romanticism encounters with foreign cultures and literature led to an intensification and proliferation of translation activity, hence theoretical reflections on translation practice. Two main ways of seeing the translation: - translation as a category of thought, and the translator as a creative genius in his own right, enriching the literature and the language into which he is translating. - Translation as a mechanical activity whereby a text or an author is made known With Goethe the translating process was divided into - Domestication: the source text is absorbed into the target text and culture - Estrangement: the translator is erased and adapts his culture to the target language and culture - Ideal synthesis: a translation that respect the source text but create an independent text in the target culture 20 - offer a description of the translation in the terms of a process - establish the general principles based on which the translation can be explained. Consequently, the discipline is interested in describing existing translations, the functions performed by translation in different socio-cultural situations, or even the mental processes involved during translation practice. In Nergaard’s opinion, three different phases brought to the settlement of this discipline: - phase of the translation science, between 1950s and 1960s: preference for a semantic translation and realisation of a translation oriented towards the source text. - Phase of the theory of translation, between 1970s and 1980s: translators focused on the literary text. Here Eugene Nida develops the notion of ‘’dynamic equivalence’’ and the translators focus on finding the factors that determine a translation. - Phase of the translation studies: focus on the culture so there is a cultural turn. The structuralist and post-structuralist notion, that says that the language is a central element in the creation of reality, has a big impact for the translators and gives them big powers: translation is now considered a necessary and powerful tool used to exchange information, opinions and facts of every discipline. As Mary Snell-Hornby said, we will always need translators and they will be fundamental to creating the global society. When we started talking about translation studies, the equivalence between target and source text became a relative theme, since each text can be translated in infinite different ways. GAINS AND LOSSES IN TRANSLATION Translating expressions that are clearly linked to the culture of a language is the actual significant challenge for translators (proverbs, idioms, etc.). The translator needs to have a solid background in the source culture in order to be able to fully understand and translate all those culture-bound filters that are used in a text. These filters exist in every linguistic dimension and stem from the cultural and literary conventions of a specific historical period and geographical location. Translators should consider this to avoid imposing their culture on the target receiver. This imposition/mistake is a case of 'CULTURAL TRANSPLANTATION’: the text is almost rewritten from a typical perspective of the target culture, resulting in an adaptation rather than an actual translation. An adaptation can be: - Local: there are problems linked to certain parts of the source text - Global: there are external factors that require a more extensive review The major triggers for the strategy of adaptation: - A BREAKDOWN BETWEEN THE TWO LANGUAGES: When a term in the source language has no direct equivalent in the target language; - A CULTURAL OR SITUATIONAL INADEQUACY: Sometimes, the cultural or situational context in one culture may not occur in another. - A GENDER CHANGE, which may consist of a change in the form of language: Books for adults > children's books. 21 - RUPTURE OF THE COMMUNICATIVE PROCESS: if a particular way of speaking is considered old-fashioned because it belongs to a specific historical period, it is replaced by a more modern one. Some strategies for adaptation are: - Transcription of the source text with a literal translation. Here there could be calques and cultural borrowing (a word is taken from the source language to express a concept or referent that does not exist in the target culture) - Omissions - Expansion with notes or glossaries - Exoticisms - Updates of the language - Creation, to preserve the global meaning If adaptation and cultural transplantation represent one extreme of transposition, at the other extreme, exoticism and calques can be found: grammatical and cultural features of the source text are constantly imported into the translated text with minimal adaptation to the morphosyntactic system of the target language. Two major intermediates: cultural borrowing & communicative translation. Communicative translation is a practice in which the translator aims to transfer the same content and message from the source text to the target text. Communicative translation could thus be defined as the creation in the target text of a situation equivalent to that presented in the source text. TRANSLATION STRATEGIES AND PROCEDURES - FREE TRANSLATION ("adaptation") prefers the rendering of: not only the form of the source text but also and above all its meaning and function, often moving far away from the source text. - IDIOMATIC TRANSLATION: the realisation of a target text that conforms to the target language's usages, taking into account the socio-cultural context, norms and expectations; - LITERAL TRANSLATION : the realisation of a translation that conforms to the source text while taking into account the target text's linguistic features. It is, therefore, an estrangement strategy, which often uses lexical borrowings and syntactic calques. - WORD FOR WORD TRANSLATION: those literal translations in which all elements of the source text are transposed into the target text without even changing the order in which they appear in the context. Venuti found 2 macro-categories: - Direct translation: - Oblique translation DIRECT TRANSLATION - Borrowing is usually used in terms of new technical or unknown concepts to overcome a gap. 22 - Calque: a language borrows an expression from another, but the translator translates each element word for word. - Literal translation directly transfers the source text into the grammatical and idiomatically appropriate target text. OBLIQUE TRANSLATION - Transposition involves replacing one word class with another class without changing the message. There are two types of transposition: obligatory and optional transposition. Obligatory transposition occurs when the target language has no other choices because of the language system. - Modulation is a change in the POV, generally adopted for non-linguistic reasons. It is mainly used to stress the meaning, affect coherence, or find a more natural form in the TL. - Equivalence is when using an entirely different structure with a different meaning from that of the source language text because considered appropriate. - Adaptation: the translator has to create a new situation that can be considered equivalent. In 'The Science of Linguistics in the Art of Translation', Joseph Malone identifies 9 general translation procedures plus a final re-ordering strategy, i.e. nine different ways to deal with the differences between Source Language (SL) and Target Language (TL) at structural and lexical level. 1. Equivalence (equation) This strategy suggests a form of automatic equivalence. The most obvious cases of equation are: borrowings and calques (single words that are 'taken' from the source language and adapted to the target language, such as in the Italian expressions 'dribblare', 'cross' and so on). This translation procedure refers to the fact that if there are no other issues of connotation or ideological charge, a term should be translated with its direct equivalent. When using this strategy, translators must pay special attention to false friends and false cognates. False and partial cognates are the most well-known traps associated with this equation. False cognates are words that look alike in two languages but have different meanings. Partial cognates, by contrast, are words that look alike in two different languages but are equivalent only in certain situations. Equivalence comprises loan words, calques, and word-for-word equations. Loanwords are mainly culture-specific items (baseball, lasagna) and neologisms (software). Calques are foreign words adapted to the target language's morpho-phonological structure (i.e., dribble, cross, Bravo!). 2. Substitution (the antithesis of the equivalence strategy) when there is no direct equivalent, one has to resort to the element's substitution. In this case, the translation bears no similarity to the source text either from a morpho-syntactic or semantic perspective. It concerns all those occasions when translators must replace an expression from the source text with one from a completely different target 25 text from its source text. Its purpose should be considered 'as distinct and clearly differentiated from the task of the poet/author'. Skopos theory foregrounds the importance of textual functions but it gives too much attention to the most linguistic nature of the source text (i.e., how to translate certain micro-linguistic features of the source text into the target text). Skopos Theory tends to ignore that: - The target text can retain only some of the original functions - The target text may also take on different functions from the original one. Furthermore, it needs to take into account the cultural complexity of the translation process. SPECIALISED LANGUAGE AND TRANSLATION Specialized language is the language used in a specific field or relevant to and characteristic of an industry. Specialized language is also intended to mean one that differs from the general language by specialized expressions and specific terminology. Specialised Languages are characterized by particular lexical features and morpho-syntactic tendencies that also become essential for translation purposes. The aim of the translator is thus to create a target text that adapts to the characteristics of the genre in the target language, yet retains the meanings conveyed by the source text, in this case typified by great precision. Just as there are specialised languages, there are specialised texts, which can be characterised by different specialisation levels determined by contextual factors such as the sender and the receiver and the type of relationship between them. Features of special languages - Exactitude, simplicity and clarity - Objectivity - Abstractness - Generalisation - Density of information - Brevity or laconism - Emotional neutrality - Unambiguousness - Logic consistency - Use of defined technical terms, symbols and figures Three main criteria - economy - Precision - Appropriateness Secondo semestre ON LINGUISTIC ASPECTS OF TRANSLATION: JAKOBSON 26 According to Bertrand Russell, "no one can understand the word 'cheese' unless he has a nonlinguistic acquaintance with cheese." But if we follow this fundamental precept then we are obliged to state that no one can understand the word "cheese" unless he has an acquaintance with the meaning assigned to this word in the lexical code of English. But for example we never consumed ambrosia or nectar and have only a linguistic acquaintance with these words, nonetheless, we understand them and know in what contexts they may be used. The meaning of any linguistic sign is its translation into some further, alternative sign, especially a sign "in which it is more fully developed". For example the term "Bachelor" may be converted into a more explicit designation, "unmarried man," whenever higher explicitness is required. We distinguish three ways of interpreting a verbal sign: it may be translated into other signs of the same language, into another language, or into another, nonverbal system of symbols. These three kinds of translation are to be differently labeled: - Intralinguistic translation or rewording: the translator interprets linguistic signs of a language by using different signs of the same language - Interlinguistic translation or translation proper: the translator interprets linguistic signs of a language by using signs of a different language - Intersemiotic translation or transmutation: the translator interprets the signs of a language by using non linguistic signs. The intralingual translation of a word uses either another word or resorts to a circumlocution. Frequently translation from one language into another substitutes messages in one language not for separate code-units but for entire messages in some other language. Such a translation is a reported speech; the translator recodes and transmits a message received from another source. Thus translation involves two equivalent messages in two different codes: equivalence in difference is the cardinal problem of language. Any sign is translatable into a sign in which it appears to us more fully developed and precise. All cognitive experience and its classification is conveyable in any existing language. Whenever there is deficiency, terminology may be qualified and amplified by loanwords or loan-translations, neologisms or semantic shifts, and finally, by circumlocutions. No lack of grammatical device in the language translated into makes impossible a literal translation of the entire conceptual information contained in the original. If some grammatical category is absent in a given language, its meaning may be translated into this language by lexical means. It is more difficult to remain faithful to the original when we translate into a language provided with a certain grammatical category from a language devoid of such a category. When translating the English sentence "She has brothers" into a language which discriminates dual and plural, we are compelled either to make our own choice between two statements "She has two brothers"/"She has more than two" or to leave the decision to the listener and say: "She has either two or more than two brothers." Again in translating from a language without grammatical number into English one is obliged to select one of the two possibilities - "brother" or "brothers" or to confront the receiver of this message with a two-choice situation: "She has either one or more than one brother. 27 Example: Dubliners, Joyce ‘’she sat at the window watching the evening invade the avenue. Her head was leaned against the window curtains, and in her nostrils was the odour of dusty cretonne. She was tired.’’ Difficulties: - the subjective pronoun is always expressed in English language, not in Italian - The possessive adjective is always expressed in English while in Italian is not strictly necessary Without the forced use of subjective pronouns and possessive adjectives, translation is not literally but is more fluent: the translator has to always make some choices. Languages differ essentially in what they must convey and not in what they may convey. Each verb of a given language imperatively raises a set of specific yes-or-no questions. Linguistics and poetics Poetics deals with the question, "What makes a verbal message a work of art?" The main subject of poetics is the differentia specifica of verbal art in relation to other arts and in relation to other kinds of verbal behavior, poetics is entitled to the leading place in literary studies. Poetics deals with problems of verbal structure. So since linguistics is the global science of verbal structure, poetics may be regarded as an integral part of linguistics. However many devices studied by poetics are not confined to verbal art because many poetic features belong not only to the science of language but to the whole theory of signs, that is, to general semiotics. The question of relations between the word and the world concerns not only verbal art but actually all kinds of discourse. Linguistics is likely to explore all possible problems of relations between discourse and the "universe of discourse": what of this universe is verbalized by a given discourse and how it is verbalized. Sometimes we hear that poetics in contradistinction to linguistics, is concerned with evaluation. This separation of the two fields from each other is based on an erroneous interpretation of the contrast between the structure of poetry and other types of verbal structure: the latter are said to be opposed by their "casual" designless nature to the "noncasual" purposeful character of poetic language. In point of fact, any verbal behavior is goal-directed, but the aims are different. Insistence on keeping poetics apart from linguistics is warranted only when the field of linguistics appears to be illicitly restricted, for example, when the sentence is viewed by some linguists as the highest analyzable construction, or when the scope of linguistics is confined to grammar alone or uniquely to nonsemantic questions of external form or to the inventory of denotative devices with no reference to free variations. No doubt, for any speech community, for any speaker, there exists a unity of language, but this over-all code represents a system of interconnected subcodes; every language encompasses several concurrent patterns, each characterized by different functions. Language must be investigated in all the variety of its functions. Translation, rewriting and the manipulation of literary fame 30 you’re writing a novel what you are doing is expressing yourself. Whereas when you translate you’re not expressing yourself, you’re performing a technical stunt. The translator’s invisibility is thus a weird self-annihilation, a way of conceiving and practicing translation that undoubtedly reinforces its marginal status in British and American cultures. The translator’s shadowy existence in British and American cultures is further registered in the ambiguous and unfavorable legal status of translation, both in copyright law and in actual contractual arrangements. British and American law defines translation as an “adaptation” or “derivative work” based on an “original work of authorship,” whose copyright is vested in the “author.” The translator is thus subordinated to the author, who decisively controls the publication of the translation during the term of the copyright for the “original” text. Yet since authorship here is defined as the creation of a form or medium of expression, British and American law permits translations to be copyrighted in the translator’s name, recognizing that the translator uses another language for the foreign text and therefore can be understood as creating an original work. In copyright law, the translator is and is not an author. General trends can be detected over the course of several decades, and they reveal publishers excluding the translator from any rights in the translation. Standard British contracts require the translator to make an out-and-out assignment of the copyright to the publisher. In the United States, the most common contractual definition of the translated text has not been “original work of authorship,” but “work made for hire,” a category in American copyright law whereby “the employer or person for whom the work was prepared is considered the author [...] and, unless the parties have expressly agreed otherwise in a written instrument signed by them, owns all the rights comprised in the copyright”. Contracts that require translators to assign the copyright, or that define translations as works made for hire, are exploitative in the division of earnings. Such translations are compensated by a flat fee per thousand words of the translating language, regardless of the potential income from the sale of books and subsidiary rights Insofar as the effect of transparency effaces the work of translation, it contributes to the cultural marginality and economic exploitation that English-language translators have long suffered, their status as seldom recognized, poorly paid writers whose work nonetheless remains indispensable because of the global domination of British and American cultures. The violence of translation Translation is a process by which the chain of signifiers that constitutes the foreign text is replaced by a chain of signifiers in the translating language which the translator provides on the strength of an interpretation. Meaning is a plural and contingent relation, not an unchanging unified essence, and therefore a translation cannot be judged according to mathematics-based concepts of semantic equivalence or one-to-one correspondence. The notion of “linguistic error” is subject to variation, since mistranslations, especially in literary texts, can be not only intelligible but significant in the receiving culture. The viability of a translation is established by its relationship to the cultural and social conditions under which it is produced and read. 31 This relationship points to the violence that resides in the very purpose and activity of translation: the reconstitution of the foreign text in accordance with values, beliefs, and representations that preexist it in the translating language and culture, always configured in hierarchies of dominance and marginality, always determining the production, circulation, and reception of texts. If by the term violence we mean “damage” or “abuse,” then its use is descriptive: a translator is forced not only to eliminate aspects of the signifying chain that constitutes the foreign text, but also to dismantle and disarrange that chain in accordance with the structural differences between languages, so that both the foreign text and its relations to other texts in the foreign culture never remain intact after the translation process. The violence wreaked by translation is partly inevitable, inherent in the translation process, partly potential, emerging at any point in the production and reception of the translated text, varying with specific cultural and social formations at different historical moments. An act of linguistic infidelity becomes an act of cultural and textual fidelity. The translator puts the target reader in the same situations as the original one. Only by being literally unfaithful can the translator succeed in being truly faithful to the source text. There is not a rule to say how and why a translation is faithful. For example, U. Eco says that the translation must be faithful to the intention of the source text. But the criteria changes from time to time and from text to text. For Eugene Nida, accuracy in translation depends on generating an equivalent effect in the receiving culture: “the receptors of a translation should comprehend the translated text to such an extent that they can understand how the original receptors must have understood the original text”. The equivalence can be relative and dynamic, since the texts can be made more or less equivalent. The relativity of the concept of equivalence is linked to the individual choices of the translator and to the social and cultural environment. Equivalence becomes a job tool and not an absolute concept. The so-called cultural turn in translation studies back in the early 1990s ensured that translation would henceforth be seen not as an isolated activity but as an act directly linked to the world in which translators work. Lawrence Venuti elaborated a dichotomy originally formulated by the German scholar Friedrich Schleiermacher in 1813, who suggested that translators are faced with the choice of either taking the reader back to the text or bringing that text across to the readers. So there are two strategies of translation: - domestication: an ethnocentric reduction of the foreign text to dominant cultural values in the target language (illusionistic effect of transparency). Translation is a forcible replacement off the linguistic and cultural difference of the foreign text with a text that will be intelligible to the target reader: signs of the text’s original foreignness are erased. - Foreignization: an ethno deviant pressure on those values to register the linguistic and cultural difference of the foreign text. It aims to let the reader understand he’s reading a translation, something different from his culture: features of the source text and its context are reproduced with the result that the final product might seem strange and unfamiliar. 32 The translator must make author and reader meet: - Or the translator leave the author in peace and bring the reader to him, with a foreignization - Or move the author towards the reader, with a domestication. Domestication, in recent years, is seen as undesirable because it is a practice that appropriates the other. Yet such appropriation is essential in news translation, where the objective is to bring a message to the target audience in a clear, concise and totally comprehensible way. The concept of foreignizing can be productively applied to translating in any language and culture. In some cases, foreignizing translation can be useful in enriching the minority language and culture while submitting them to ongoing interrogation. Foreignization can alter the ways that translations are read and produced because it assumes a concept of human subjectivity that is very different from the humanist assumptions underlying domestication. Neither the foreign writer nor the translator is conceived as the transcendental origin of the text: it is expected to be expressing an idea in transparent language to a reader from a different culture. In some translations, the discontinuities are readily apparent, unintentionally disturbing the fluency of the language, revealing the inscription of the receiving culture; other translations bear prefaces that announce the translator’s strategy and alert the reader to the presence of noticeable stylistic peculiarities. The emphasis is on humanistic translation, literary in the broadest sense, as opposed to technical translation. This emphasis is not due to the fact that humanistic translators today are any more invisible or exploited than their technical counterparts, who are not permitted to sign or copyright their work, let alone receive royalties. Rather, humanistic translation is emphasized because it has long set the standard applied in technical translation, and it has traditionally been the field where innovative theories and practices emerge. The choice of whether to domesticate or foreignize a foreign text has been allowed only to translators of literary and scholarly texts, not to translators of technical materials. Technical translation is fundamentally constrained by the exigencies of communication. Umberto Eco: Mouse or rat? Translation as negotiation In translation proper there is an implicit law, that is, the ethical obligation to respect what the author has written. It has been said that translation is a disguised indirect discourse ('The author so and so said in his/her language so and so'). Obviously, to establish exactly what 'the author said' is an interesting problem not only from a semantic point of view but also in terms of jurisprudence. Negotiation is a process by virtue of which, in order to get something each party renounces something else and at the end everybody feels satisfied since one cannot have everything. A translation is possible if the translator gives up on perfection. Translation is one of the main forms of interpretation. The challenge of a translator is to accept that something can be lost and compensated with something else: It’s not 35 news is reported from a particular angle because news is a representation of the world in language and it is not a value-free reflection of facts. A translator working with texts that have already been published has to make adjustments in terms of stylistic conventions to accommodate the very different expectations of a new set of readers and there are strong ideological implications. Where the picture becomes more complex, however, is where there is no published written text that is to be translated for republication. Instead, there may be a mass of material assembled in different ways and from different sources. Once a story is sent round the world, it is translated into other languages for local use. It may therefore have gone through several different translations before it reaches its destination, being reshaped at every stage in accordance with linguistic and stylistic constraints. Claire Tsai states that TV news translators are given the freedom to restructure and reorganise messages under the one condition that the target texts should always be congruent with the source texts in meanings, nuances and facts. In many respects news translation is more similar to interpreting than to translation, if we take translation to mean the rendering of a text written in one language into another. The interpreter, like the news translator works in real time, has to synthesize material very rapidly and may not have a clearly definable single source. An interpreter may also be operating within and across several languages. So, for example, if a conference is being held in English at which many of the speakers have diverse language backgrounds and the event is being interpreted into a language in which none of them are competent, this could be seen as a parallel to the case where a journalist has to make sense of something that has gone through several languages, being reshaped each time. However we look at it, what is going on is not a straight binary transfer. One major link between news translation and interpreting is the requirement of both to domesticate the foreign for a target audience. Just as an interpreter will reshape material in such a way as to ensure maximum clarity for an audience, regardless of the structures of the original, so too will a journalist tailor material for a specific set of readers. Globalization Globalization has been defined as ‘the widening, deepening and speeding up of worldwide interconnectedness in all aspects of contemporary social life’ and is notably not a new phenomenon, but was already present in the world religions and empires of antiquity. Moreover, globalizing tendencies are inherent in the development of capitalism, which functions through its geographical expansion, and the nineteenth century was a major period for the development of global connections. What is new about the present phase of globalization is the intensification of global interconnectedness and the heightening of global consciousness. Mobility results in heightened contact between people coming from different countries and thus generates the need for translation between different cultural and linguistic contexts. 36 In fact, people need to be informed about social and political events happening in other parts of the world. There is emphasis on instant communication that generates the need for real time translation. The asymmetries of globalization and the current inequalities in the production of knowledge and information are mirrored in translation. For Lawrence Venuti the dominance of Anglo-American culture is expressed in the low number of books that are translated into English and in the form in which they are translated according to the values of the target culture and thus following a domesticating strategy based upon fluidity and transparency. Domesticating translations minimize cultural and linguistic differences under the appearance of transparency; they ‘invisibly inscribe foreign texts with English language values and provide readers with the narcissistic experience of recognizing their own culture in a cultural other’. More generally, transparency and invisibility also characterize the role of translation in globalization. It is therefore necessary to extend Venuti’s analysis to elucidate what invisibility means on a global scale. First, the conception of instantaneous communication, of the unimpeded transmission of information flows, implies translation’s invisibility and, at the same time, places new demands on translation. The need for instantaneous communication in real time generates the need for simultaneous real-time translation, in which the human factor in translation is finally eliminated. Global English dominance is expressed, on the one hand, in the sheer volume of English-language information in circulation. On the other hand, translation, which makes it possible for people to have access to information in their own language, contributes to the global dominance of Anglo-American culture, as we have seen above for the case of book translations, which account for only the smallest part of the volume of translation, the bulk of which is in commercial translation, politics and administration and in the mass media. Globalization has caused an exponential increase of translation. The global dominance of English has been accompanied by a growing demand for translation, as people’s own language continues to be the preferred language for access into informational goods. From the middle of the nineteenth century, the telegraph radically altered the way in which news was produced. The individual items of modern newspapers became no longer selected on the basis of spatial proximity but following newly emerging journalistic criteria of news relevance. This also implied that only the most recent events were newsworthy, and that increasing competition to break news started to take place. The infrastructure for the production of global news was established during the second half of the nineteenth century, when the use of the telegraph became widespread and major news agencies for news gathering and distribution emerged and expanded their worldwide connections. Global news agencies gather, process and transmit news to subscribing institutions around the world. News agencies are not only the global organizations with the biggest infrastructure for news gathering, but also their very significant function in news processing and transmission is to be fully understood. News agencies are in many cases the first to 37 approach and describe new realities, creating ways of addressing them and introducing new vocabulary to represent them. As new agencies are the sources for the written press, radio and television, news translators are the first to have to solve the problems associated with the assimilation of new realities in a certain culture. News agencies produce raw information, but also more elaborate pieces of ready-to-print news reports, analysis and comment, which subscribing news organizations can freely reproduce, fully or in part, introducing any alterations or rewriting they consider necessary, without even acknowledging the source. News processing also includes significant amounts of translation, which is fully integrated in the production of news. So news agencies are effectively vast translating organizations with the technology and skills required for the production of fast and accurate translations, and offer a variety of linguistic products tailored to meet the needs of the biggest news markets and to facilitate global news circulation. News agencies have not only spread the Western media model and the news values of impartiality, objectivity and neutrality across the globe, but have also shaped the news content by the imposition of what is considered newsworthy, which areas are given priority, from what angle are events portrayed, or by the provision of journalistic products to their subscribers. For Boyd-Barrett, the study of news agencies confirms that globalization is Westernization: ‘News agencies contribute to the homogenization of global culture in form and in source, while greatly multiplying the texts available within these standardized discourses’. Others have emphasized the primacy of Anglo-American ideologies in the field of global news. While all media organizations are influenced by the dominance of the major news agencies, which shape the field of global news in important ways, their direct dependency on them for news sources significantly varies. More powerful news organizations, especially in rich countries, usually have the necessary resources to maintain international correspondents and to send reporters abroad, and thus possess their own sources of information. Less powerful institutions, especially media organizations in poorer countries, are more dependent on the news provided by the news agencies. Thus, the international section of Third World newspapers is typically constituted, almost exclusively, of agency reports. History of news agency Modern journalism developed in the middle of the nineteenth century with a exponential proliferation of the written press and of the number of readers, as the newspaper became the first mass cultural medium of modernity. The year 1836, which was when Émile Girardin created La Presse, is generally highlighted as signaling its birth. However, La Presse can be considered more like a precursor, because the mass readership that is another structural characteristic of the modern journalistic field could not be reached until after the creation of Le Petit Journal in 1863, which became the greatest emblem of the popular press. Le Petit Journal found its content in the everyday life of the streets of Paris and thrived from the enormous popularity of the roman-feuilleton and the fait-divers. 40 • do not use unnecessary words and keep vocabulary simple • Context is of primary importance: the note must contain all necessary information so that readers do not need to fall back on other sources in order to understand it fully. An AFP editor stated ‘’what i want is that translated information can be read on its own, that the reader does not need to have recourse to a newspaper, a dictionary or the internet in order to understand it.’’ • speed and accuracy. Speed should not undermine the production of accurate news: to translate means to translate fast, well and accurately. It is always necessary to correct inadequate or mistaken information in order to maintain credibility as sources of information. News agencies have a dual structure: 1. They mobilise foreign correspondents or global journalists worldwide (they tend to be British in the case of Reuters and French in the case of AFP). They produce news reports in the domestic language of the global agency (English in Reuters, french in afp) 2. They employ local journalists in the offices that agencies maintain worldwide. They write news reports in their own language and translate news reports from the other wires so as to make them available to the local market. E.g. Reuters’ bureau in Madrid employs Spanish journalists (local) who write original reports in Spanish and translate English reports for the Spanish market and international journalists who produce English language reports about Spain for the English newswire. The main objective of news translation is the fast transmission of information in a clear way so that it can be communicated effectively to readers. Journalistic factors related to time, space and genre are as important as the linguistic and cultural aspects involved in the process of interlingual transfer. 1. The main objective of news translators is to transmit information. 2. News translators translate for a mass audience. Consequently, a clear and direct language needs to be used. 3. News translators translate for a specific geographical, temporal and cultural context. Their job is also conditioned by the medium in which they work. 4. News translators are subject to important limitations of time and space. 5. News translators are usually ‘backtranslators’ and proofreaders. The most frequent modifications to which the source text can be subjected in news translation are: - Change of title and lead: often substituted for new ones so as to better suit the needs of the target reader or the requirements of the target publication. - Elimination of unnecessary information: information can become redundant either because it is already known by the target readers or because it becomes too detailed and specific - Addition of important background information: when the target readers change it becomes necessary to add background information that will not necessarily be known in the new context. - Change in the order of paragraphs: the relevance of the information in a new context and the style of the publication might make it necessary to alter the order of paragraphs. 41 - Summarizing information: this method is often used to fit the source text into the space available and to reduce lengthy paragraphs The effect of this kind of intervention on the source text is to make its translated version more like an original, new text, specifically suited to the needs of the publication in which it appears and the readers to which it is targeted. In the case of a news translator, and specifically of a translator who works in a news agency, what is characteristic is that faithfulness to the original text is subordinated to faithfulness to the narrated facts, which on some occasions and whenever there exists a clear justification allows for the introduction of alterations of meaning, which are intolerable to a translator specialized in other fields; that is to say, it obliges the translator to combine his translating task with the task of a journalistic editor. Journalistic texts can be divided into: - Informative genres (the news report, containing factual descriptions of events) - Interpretative genres (such as reportage, in which information is selected, interpreted and narrated by the journalist) - Argumentative genres (the author’s style prevails, such as the opinion article or the column) One possible criterion for establishing a typology of texts is to identify the rhetorical functions or strategies the author of the source text has used to achieve the desired effect. A text is generally made up of a sequence of rhetorical functions, but one predominant rhetorical function should be identified and this is called dominant contextual focus. While informative genres typically offer the maximum space for intervention and alteration of the original text, the translation of argumentative genres, which is close to literary translation, implies a much smaller space for alteration and a high degree of subordination to the author’s style. News agencies produce mostly texts of the first type, informative genres (narration of fact devoid of subjective commentary). Two fundamental principles regulate the production of agency news: 1. Speed –> there is a strict time limit for writing 2. Hierarchy (the degree of importance of information) A basic tool of agency work which is ideally suited to the fundamental principles of speed and hierarchy is the method of the inverted pyramid, in which the elements of the story are written up in declining order of importance, so that essential information comes first and is developed in subsequent paragraphs, which add background and secondary information. Strict rules are applied also to the style, which is kept simple and clear. - Conciseness in order to maximise informative content: sentences and paragraphs must be short and economical; - The use of active rather than passive verbs is preferred; - The presence of adjectives is limited. These stylistic rules respond to the traditional values of objectivity and neutrality. The format is very important in the English language press: the different fonts, colours and letter sizes help to distinguish: 42 - major headlines from minor headlines - Leads (opening sentences of a brief composition, or the first paragraph or two of a longer article) from the various other sub-headings - All the various headlines from the main text The format is important in terms of the pragmatic presentation of information: using the visual metaphor of an inverted pyramid, the most important items of information in any newspaper report are presented first, in the various headlines and in the opening sentence. It could be argued that news translation is doubly invisible, not just because of the need to adopt a domesticating strategy that values fluency and hides its very intervention, but also because of the fact that translation has been successfully integrated within journalism. It is very difficult to conceptualize a difference between editors from translation and from journalistic backgrounds because, in order to work as news translators, translators have in fact to become journalists. They must select, edit and prioritize texts and information following prevailing journalistic criteria to ensure maximum impact. What characterizes a journalist who translates news is often a background in news production, a previous experience as reporter. The fact that part of the journalist’s job is to investigate and add new data when needed, which is vital in translating news for different audiences, is seen to distinguish it from the translator, who is viewed as a more passive conveyer of information which is already there. Journalists also often explicitly point at their first-hand experience of news reporting in different contexts as being a valuable asset when translating news, not just because of better knowledge of the kind of texts to be translated and the realities described, but also because they have a more sympathetic attitude towards the producer, and often consult with the person who has originally written the news. Translation implies not only editing of texts, but a further task of transformation to ensure that information is especially designed to suit the needs of new audiences. This involves a significant amount of reorganizing and rewriting of information according to a new hierarchy that reflects the needs and priorities of the target clients and the region to which it is destined. Agencies are often obliged to negotiate or change the terms used to offer an initial interpretation of events. Agency manuals contain long lists of proper names and other potentially rare or problematic terms. Some words have emotional resonance, or their definitions are highly debatable, or are vague, so should be used with special care in the interests of neutrality and accuracy. An IPS translator-editor describes her role as follows: ‘’we decide which notes to translate into English and we translate them for the English-speaking market, thinking of this market, of this audience. We add context, re-edit, reorganise the note, we give it a new title. … it rarely is a direct translation, just as it comes … we combine notes if there are two or three about a subject when we do it need three notes in English on that subject.’’ Editing translated texts is a common practice among journalists, especially in AFP, where all translations must always be seen by a second pair of eyes. The way journalists evaluate and edit translations also indicates the most relevant translating strategies and values at news agencies. Initially, the quality of a translation can be assessed without having recourse to the 45 Another device used in specialized discourse to create terms drawn from general language is the metaphorisation: referring new concepts to pre-existing items known to the interlocutor, avoiding lengthy conceptual explanations. The avantages are transparency and conciseness. 4. Indebtedness to other specialised languages A lot of terms are borrowed from other fields: this is a result of the wide range of sectors that make up the field of tourism. Some field are - economics: payments and commercial transactions - Geography: tourist destinations - History of art: terms for the description of monuments and sight - Cuisine and craftsmanship - Transport 5. Emphatic language: Generally specialised discourse is characterised by the lack of emotive connotation: the tone is neutral when the informative purpose prevails. However, when the pragmatic purpose is persuasive, the lexis used is emphatic and evaluative, highlighting the positive features of the places described and the services offered (in tour operators’ brochures and other advertising materials) Syntactic features of the language of tourism 1. Expressive conciseness: Compact syntactic structure, in order to obtain shorter and clear expressions. Avoiding relative clauses, which are replaced by lexemes obtained by means of prefixes and suffixes. 2. Pre modification: While many languages (such as Italian) rely on left-to-right construction, English can easily employ right-to-left construction, which shortens sentences and makes the noun phrase especially dense. A distinctive aspect of the right-to-left pattern is nominal adjectivation, i.e. the use of a noun to specify another with an adjectival function. Examples taken from the language of tourism can be Tour operator / study holiday / package holiday / airline ticket. Very often, compounds consisting of two short nouns soon merge into a single term after a certain period of use; at first the two nouns are hyphenated and subsequently they become one word (e.g. airline, railcard, timetable, travelcard). Although not an exclusive option of specialized languages, this feature occurs more frequently and generally produces longer compounds in specific fields. Textual features of the language of tourism. 1. Text genres: One of the phenomena that most distinguishes specialised discourse is compliance with the norms governing the construction of its different text genres. There is a link between the type of specialised text and its rhetorical and linguistic features - tourist guides: description of places; practical information - Travel articles in specialised journals or general magazines: they are more subjective; give information 46 - Brochures and advertising material: they want to attract the holidaymaker/traveller in order to sell tourist products - Professional correspondence: between agencies or between an agency and its costumers, so there’s a higher level of specialisation. E.g. Business letters: formulated verb patterns and international structures - Itineraries. 2. Textual organisation The textual genres commonly used in tourism discourse are highly codified: texts consist of standardised sections. For example, a typical itinerary : title, location, how to reach it, climate, accommodation options, cuisine, artistic features, entertainment facilities, events. The spread of tourism at a global level has favored the use of English all over the world, not only in places where this language is spoken as a native tongue, but also in other nations where it acts as a lingua franca. This diffusion of English has greatly influenced the other languages, which have borrowed several terms from it. FRANCESCONI: ENGLISH FOR TOURISM PROMOTION When addressing tourism, definitional problems arise not only because of the different ways tourism has been practised throughout the decades and throughout the globe, but also because this phenomenon is the object of various theoretical perspectives and pragmatic approaches carrying specific semantic implications. The chambers dictionary of etymology: the etymology of the word suggests the notion of tour, a circular movement. Tourists go around, avoiding straightforward routes because they travel for entertainment (the focus is on the modality and purpose of travel). The Cambridge advanced learners’ dictionary: tourism is the business of providing services to tourists on holiday. It suggests the existence of a supply of goods and a corresponding demand for services (economic approach). The oxford advanced dictionary online: the business activity connected with providing accommodation, services and entertainment for people who are visiting a place for pleasure These definitions neglect the relational dimension of tourism, which should be taken into account: every tourist practise is based on the perception of and the approach to the space visited, the people encountered and their lifestyle and culture -> how tourists perceive otherness or alterity. Tourism studies were born in the 60s and 70s. A trans disciplinary approach is necessary in studying tourism: • sociology, anthropology, ethnography: tourism is seen as a social phenomenon. Attention is paid to the impacts of tourism development on the culture, environment, society 47 and economy of communities in international, domestic and local settings. In fact, tourism and tourist styles are not only emblematic of many features of contemporary social change, such as mobility, restlessness, the search for authenticity and escape, but they are increasingly central to economic restructuring, globalisation, the sociology of consumption and the aestheticisation of everyday life. Moreover the cultural implications of the relationship between hosts and guests are important. • literature: Tourism and literature influence each other • Economics: tourism as the largest industry of the world because the economy of all countries is deeply affected by tourist dynamics. The tourism industry provides governments with hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenues • History: some scholars claim that the roots of modern tourism are in the grand tour. The sons of European aristocracy at the end of the 17th century and of the upper middle class in the late 18th century used to travel throughout Europe visiting cultural centres, including Italian cities (Venice, Padua, Florence and Rome). These people were supposed to have an intellectual growth. In the mid 60s tourism achieved an international dimension and became a mass phenomenon thanks to socioeconomic factors, improvements in the transport system, availability of leisure time… • Geography: there’s a remarkable dis homogeneity in the location of tourists areas Tourism promotion texts Even in an age of increasing globalisation - tourist brochures and other advertising texts are culture bound; their impact varies with the reader, his or her age, background, origin and mentality. A tourism text cannot be approached without an understanding of cultural differences and the difficulties these can create. Brochures are an integral part of the target culture and depend on its expectations and norms. The contact between tourists and locals is characterised by an asymmetrical relationship in terms of social status between the participants in the situation: the tourist language is the dominating one. While in usual situations the foreigner tries to learn the local language, in tourist talk locals talk up to higher status tourists in the tourists’ language (the tourists’ first language or a lingua franca). The language of tourism is deemed as a set of words and phrases showing a high degree of frequency and specify in the context of tourist comunication. Tourism is a specialised field and its language is a specialised language. There’s a strong statistical tendency in tourists to speak metaphorically, to avoid speaking directly. 50 Guidebooks Guidebooks should not be considered promotional material, since they are meant to be reference material, with an informational purpose rather than a conative function. Guidebooks are the least persuasive and the most univocal of the representation modes of tourist discourse. ‘’Their discourse is characterized by the total absence of immediate feedback. In fact, they cannot be considered as an offer tout court, because the reader/consumer has already made his/her choice’’ Guidebooks are used when tourists have already arrived at their destination or immediately before their arrival. This is why the function of a guidebook is mainly referential or informational. There are guidebooks that represent must-sees and specialised guidebooks that deal with different activities or food and drink. Guidebooks are both cultural and practical: A. The place under consideration is introduced by one or more sections providing a varying amount of information on the geography, history, art, culture and nature of the area. B. The cultural overview is generally followed by a few pages containing practical information, with recommendations for restaurants and hotels and tips about practical matters such as postage, transport, currency. Practical information is plain and simple in style, but interesting in unveiling cross-cultural differences. The language is objective, nevertheless, the language and style of some guidebooks is comparable to that of promotional brochures Guidebooks may differ in register and style: some provide a more subjective portrait of destinations, while others tend to state facts in a more detached way. Tourist guidebooks allow us to observe the dynamics of cross-cultural representation: difference between the homeland country and the destination. The idea of the intended public is fundamental in a tourism text because it does not simply address an anonymous customer, they tend to create the image of an ideal target. That’s why most text contain references to senses, describing sights, tastes, smells and textures. Guidebooks have a leading function because travelers read them with an inquiring attitude and receive protective answers. Some guidebooks give instruction and advice on what to see and provide a subjective description. Guidebooks have a maternal function: the tourist as a child and receives the guidance of the writer. When the writer uses the first person narration, he takes on the role of guide through a journey (in space, but also in culture). The author’s voice takes on a pedagogical value: the author becomes a teacher who instructs the reader and tells him what is appropriate and what is not. The language of tourism is a form of language of social control. It is performed not only through instructions and advice, but also through the subjective description of the destination and its culture. 51 Evaluative elements highlight the cultural clash or gap between the home-culture of the tourist and the foreign destination. The author is a mediator: he translates the foreign culture into the culture of the traveler. Representation of the other: • metaphors and comparisons: reduce the cultural distance, creating a bridge between two places (they compare aspects of the destination culture with aspects of the tourist's culture, or with famous places) • Stereotypes or appellative cliches: make a reassuring contact with the reader in the presence of cross-cutlrual differences. (They are labels that help identify and understand a place) • in guidebooks both positive and negative evaluations are provided, whereas in brochures a laudatory tone prevails. Sometimes the reader is discouraged from visiting a certain place or attraction. • Colloquialism and irony: colloquialism is used to convey a sense of belonging between the reader and the destination, irony to show the writer’s participation in the tourist experience (it creates a bond between the writer and the reader). Informal lexical items sometimes build an ironic tone. Irony is more prominent when the gap between the two cultures is wider. Often it has a benevolent nuance; but sometimes it can turn into satire, highlighting the contract between the superior homeland and the inferior foreign destination Pre trip promotional material: Brochures If advertisements are the first contact between a location and future tourists brochures come not much later in the tourist cycle. Sentences are simple, clear and to the point. They contain more informational text compared to advertisements. Brochure structure: • cover: it’s the first section that the tourist sees so it must capture attention and be persuasive. It shows the company name, the logo, the holiday destination: a conative function prevails so more space is devoted to pictures that aim to capture attention; • Company self-introduction: focus on expertise, qualities, set of beliefs to show reliability and safety • Contents: table of contents that lists the topics covered with reference pages • Service presentation: tailored packages, extras, discounts, pre-booked tickets for museums • Holiday options (main body): tourist destinations, accomodation options • Conclusion: term and condition, basic referential function, logistic issues such as price, insurance conditions, data protections -> anti-climax: final part is only referential, small letters because a lot of information should be condensed. The reader’s attention has already been caught. Brochures have a double soul: • they want to promote attractions • They want to inform the reader about details of the attraction When the purpose is to promote services or attraction, the language is emphatic, rich in positive evaluative terms and in references to positive quantities. 52 Promotion is communication that organizations use to pursue their marketing objectives. Four marketing strategies constitute the mix of tourism communication: advertising, sales promotion, public relations and personal selling. Advertising can be defined as a paid form of non-personal communication about a company that is transmitted to a target audience to give a reason for purchasing a product. Ads are supposed to fulfill three functions: - to give information: informative advertising - To persuade new customers to buy a product: persuasive advertising - To remind existing customers about the product: reminder advertising Most advertisements are mainly persuasive, as the etymological root of the verb suggests: ‘’advertere’’ (lat.) means: turn towards, induce a new direction. The preposition pro- recalls the motivating component of the movement in favour of something. There are 2 factors: - pull factors: emerge from the attractiveness of a destination, including beaches, recreation facilities and cultural attractions (less linked) - push factors: refer to intrinsic motivators like the desire for escape, rest and relax, health and fitness, adventure and social interaction (more linked, because tourists are motivated by their psychological needs) Advertising is less concerned with the physical level of tourist facilities, the pull factors, which emerge from the attractiveness of a destination, including beaches, recreation facilities and cultural attractions. A successful advertising campaign is more involved in investigation and simulation of tourist push factors, that is tourist psychological motivations, the interaction of tourist personality, experience, needs, motives and mood. These are intrinsic motivators: the desire to escape, rest and relaxation, prestige, health, fitness, adventure and social interaction. So advertising messages are designed paying attention not only to their rational content, but mainly to their emotional appeal. Cultural values have to do with every moment of the process of promotion. The tourist perception of the target destination is framed by rooted socio-cultural notions of what is extraordinary, worth visiting because alternative to everyday routine. Gaze on Italy The British tourist gaze on Italy is informed by the notion of extraordinariness, which is the result of discursive practices combined with historical, geographical, political and socio-cultural issues. The British tourist gaze upon Italy has been shaped by the Grand Tour, practiced by the sons of the aristocracy as a sort of a rite of passage to enter adult society. The image of Italy was the result of a simplified and emotional gaze: tourists come to Italy expecting medieval romance, eternal Mediterranean soul. 55 However, presenting the destination as a ‘home away from home’ risks associating the resort with everyday boredom. This is the reason why when brochures want to emphasise the glamorous extraordinariness of a place, or to convey the image of exclusiveness, draw on the semantic field of jewels. Treasure is a hyperonym of ‘jewel’. Gems, emeralds, sapphires, crowns, and necklaces are hyponyms. If necklaces are produced to adorn the body and can have various degrees of preciousness, crowns are very rare and inextricably linked to social and optical status and the power this represents. These metaphors carry positive connotation: they have a powerful emotive impact on the readership. They enhance the local, historical and natural heritage, highlighting: • the destination’s intrinsic value • The social distinction acquired through the holiday experience • The timeless holiday dimension. The metaphors connote the historical heritage emphasising the uniqueness of the place: local history is depicted as precious and rare. The adjectives medieval and historical underline the atemporal features of the items (eternal and timeless objects). On the other hand, to prevent the idea of cold and snobbish luxury, the expressions ‘housing’, ‘hosting’, ‘home to’ give them the impression of a warm atmosphere. The construction of a rhythm of nostalgia, based on the use of alliteration Repetition plays a crucial role in the tourist discourse because it induces a sense of security, since it relies on the pattern of recurrence that prevents tourists from facing the unknown. At the prosodic level we speak of alliteration. The patterning of sound has a powerful emotional and mnemonic effect Alliteration occurs through the repetition of initial sounds in two or more different words across sentences, clauses or phrases. ‘’The repetition of the same initial consonant sound in a string of words of a text’’. Juxtaposition may occur in adjacent words (immediate juxtaposition) or in non-adjacent words (non-immediate juxtaposition). Alliteration captures the reader’s attention and fixes the message in his mind, since it adds cohesion and rhythm to the text. Rhythm is based on recognisable recurrence, which induces a pleasant and comfortable attitude in the reader. Alliteration confers a tone of familiarity to the message. Key-adjectives: they allow the writer to enter into the reader’s mind and capture his attention. They have a connotative meaning, they boast social accessibility, recognition and pervasiveness. Along with those adjectives referring to destination features (wonderful, delicious, special ecc), we can consider the adjectives that act as push-factor, anticipating the tourist’s emotional, psychological and sensorial reaction to the holiday experience: they are active 56 participial adjectives (they end in -ing) and give a connotation of dynamism to the noun: e.g. enchanting, which anticipated the effect the visit has to the tourists They confirm the discourse of nostalgia in its dual connotation: • clinical: regenerating, relaxing, strengthening, purifying • emotional: intriguing, fascinating, stunning, overwhelming -> they intersect sensorial and psychological aspects. The memorability of the holiday experience is suggested by: impressive, lasting, memorable, unforgettable. Nostalgia is conceived as a circular process made up of three stages: 1. Attraction or pulling 2. Capture 3. Captivating ‘’Tourism, in the act of promotion … has a discourse of its own’’ The language of tourism attempts to persuade, lure, woo and seduce millions of humans beings, and, in doing so, convert them from potential into actual clients. The conversion of any person to a true and a strong wish, even the need, to become a tourist is reflected in four major sociological perspectives on tourism. Each of these perspectives can be created through language. Theoretical perspectives on tourism: a. The authenticity perspective: focuses on the search for authentic experiences so great importance is attributed to traditions, the past, and local life. Expressions: this is a typical native house; this is the very place the leader fell; this is the actual pen used to sign the law; this is the original manuscript… b. The strangerhood perspective: focuses on the desire of the modern person who wants to see things that are different from his or her own reality. A driving motivation for traveling is the search for strangeness and new experiences. A call for something new and exotic is reflected in the language of tourism, mainly in descriptions of places and people. E.g.: the qualifying adjective: untouched by civilization, remote and unspoilt, colourful, picturesque, fascinating, almost unknown… c. The play perspective: sees tourism as a play, as a game in which fun is the key. Holiday resorts compete in providing a variety of visual experiences. d. The perspective of conflict and appropriation: mostly applied to rousing in third world destinations and focus is on the contrast between societies. Advertising The linguistic choices made in ads aim to create a particular rhetoric effect 1. Tense: The temporal dimension can be realised through many linguistic elements: • tense switching (from the past to the present to the future) • The use of historic present 57 • The use of old-fashioned accents Some ads may underline how the past is superior to the present, which is unattractive. The addressee needs to escape to • a more traditional place (authenticity perspective: focus on traditions, the past, local life) • A place with slower rhythms (stranger hood perspective: desire to see different things from our reality) • a place where the past is still present (conflict perspective) On the other hand, some ads are totally future-oriented 2. Resorting to magic The magic dimension can be realised through various linguistic means - syntactical, visual but especially lexical choices: • the names of hotels and attractions (mirabilandia) • The imperative mood can be used to create the spell effect (escape, forget, change, discover) 3. Euphoria technique Adjectives are positive and glowing (extraordinary, great) and there are positive quantities (more). 4. Creating contrasts: Binary oppositions are used to reinforce the image of the location that is marketed. For example: the contrast between past and present, entertainment vs quietness (new York as the city that never sleeps vs Ireland) 5. Ego-targeting: The use of informal language and a conversational style in order to single out the reader from the crowd thus making him feel unique and privileged (e.g. direct forms of addressing the reader) Ex: we’ll save you a seat, call. All these verbal techniques satisfy the AIDA conditions, the fundamental requirement of promotional material: - capture Attention - maintain Interest - create Desire - get Action