Translation and Relevance

Cognition and Context

Ernst-August Gutt

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317640899
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Lingue e linguistica
• Subtopic: Linguistica

From the outset, this book has evoked strong responses. Its central claim is that given a comprehensive theory of inferential communication, there is no need for a special theory of translation. This has been praised by some as "wise and right" (Dell Hymes) and condemned by others as "astonishing, not to say perverse" (Kirsten Malmkjaer).

Gutt's call to move from semiotics to an inferential paradigm of communication remains a challenge for many. The debate continues and so does the demand for the book, resulting in this second edition. There is a 'Postscript' entitled 'A decade later', where the author addresses peer criticism, especially from those involved in the movement of 'translation studies', and attempts to bring out more clearly the unique mandate of translation. New perspectives, such as authenticity, are also introduced. Marginal notes, some tongue-in-cheek, liven up the discussion and new references ensure its currency.

1. The State of the Art – Some Critical Observations

It is becoming commonplace for works on translation theory to acknowledge that there is a vast body of literature on translation, offering a wealth of observations and views on the subject.¹ Almost equally commonly this acknowledgement is followed by some sort of a caveat – expressed with varying degrees of candour – to the effect that the volume of the literature is not necessarily indicative of the degree of understanding reached. Steiner (1975:238) expressed this in the following words:

Despite this rich history, and despite the calibre of those who have written about the art and theory of translation, the number of original, significant ideas in the subject remains very meagre.

Discontent seems to focus in particular on the lack of a comprehensive approach to translation that is both systematic and theoretically sound. For example, back in the sixties Levý observed:

Only a part of the literature on the problem of translation moves on the theoretical plane. Until today most studies and book publications, especially on literary translation, have not gone beyond the limits of empirical deliberations or essayistic aphorisms. (Levý 1969:13, translation my own)

By the end of the 1970s, the situation seemed to have changed little, because Kelly introduces his history of translation theory and practice with the recognition that “a comprehensive theory of translation has proved elusive” (1979:1).

And so it has continued into the 1980s; in Bassnett-McGuire’s view, “the systematic study of translation is still in swaddling bands” (1980:1); drawing an analogy to literary studies, Wilss (1982:11) sees the literature on translation as amounting to a “mass of uncoordinated statements”:

Slightly modifying the phrase used by Bertold Brecht to describe literary scholarship as ‘a mass of opinions’, it could be said that the many views expressed on translation in the past centuries amount to a mass of uncoordinated statements; some very significant contributions were made, but these never coalesced into a coherent, agreed upon, intersubjectively valid theory of translation.

More recently still, Bell (1986) has addressed this issue in a paper with the significant title ‘Why translation theory is in a mess and what we can do about it’.

Many different explanations have been proposed for this disappointing situation. One is that translation theorists were preoccupied for too long with debating unfruitful issues, such as whether translation should be literal or free, or whether translation is possible or not. Another suggestion is that the understanding of translation has remained inadequate because it has never been studied in its own right, but merely as a subdomain of some other subject, such as literature or foreign language teaching. Some scholars have suggested the simple, if radical, explanation that translation simply is not open to scientific investigation because it is an art or a skill. By contrast, still others have suggested that our scientific understanding of translation is so poor because it really has not been studied in a proper scientific manner.

This last suggestion is perhaps the most important in that it poses a positive challenge, which has already resulted in new research initiatives on translation.

A New Initiative

Hofmann (1980) introduces his study of the problem of redundancy in translation as a response to this challenge:

The choice of research topic was determined by the recognition that attempts to formulate a comprehensive theory had to fail because of insufficient basic research into the most important invariants and variables of literary translation. … The most urgent task is … to describe the nature of those factors operative in the process of translation, to identify them precisely, as far as possible, and to formalize them for application. (1980:1, translation my own)

Such empirical studies pay particular attention to matters of method, and this is indeed seen as one of the distinguishing marks of modern approaches to translation:

What distinguishes the modern science of translation from previous considerations of translation theory is its interest in knowledge of methodology and its keener awareness of the problems involved. (Wilss 1982:53)

As Wilss goes on to say, this interest in sound scientific methodology has led to a multidisciplinary view of translation science:

Its [modern science of translation, E-AG] efforts to establish a clear idea of its field of study … have meant that in addition to linguistic points of view, aspects associated with the science of communication, with psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, textlinguistics, speech act theory, philosophy of action (Handlungstheorie), the study of literature, and – last but not least – with teaching, have taken on relevance for the science of translation. (1982:53)

Schulte observes that although the interdisciplinary nature of translation had been noted for some time, it “has received very little attention during the last decade” (1987:2). Yet this aspect is seen as very important:

Translators do not engage in the mere transplantation of words; … their interpretive acts deal with the exploration of situations that are constituted by an intense interaction of linguistic, psychological, anthropological, and cultural phenomena. (1987:2)

So it seems that we have entered a new era of empirical, multidisciplinary research on translation:

We believe strongly that the time is ripe – indeed, long overdue – for a wholehearted commitment by linguists (broadly defined), other human scientists, practicing translators, language teachers and translator-trainers in a multidisciplinary approach to the description and explanation of translation; as both process and product. (Bell 1986:7)

Reservations

The risk of (multidisciplinary) disintegration

Yet, positive as this sounds, reservations have increasingly been expressed, not only by those who believe that translation falls outside the domain of scientific investigation, but by those advocating such investigation. Thus Wilss concedes that “there are serious difficulties involved in designing a paradigm for the science of translation which would withstand the test of the theory of science and which would be capable of furnishing verifiable results” (1982:65). Crucially, he sees the root of the problem as lying in the multidisciplinary expansion itself:

The ensuing problems of objectification can be explained primarily by pointing out that translation cannot be termed a purely ‘linguistic operation’ …, but rather must be thought of as a psycholinguistic, sociolinguistic and pragmalinguistic process … which lends itself to an exhaustive scientific depiction only with the greatest difficulty. (Wilss 1982:65)

Thus one problem seems to be that the multidisciplinary approach to translation brings with it a serious threat to the very aim for which it has been demanded: that of developing a science of translation.

De Waard and Nida (1986:185) express the problem diplomatically as follows:

Translation is also a science in the broad sense of the term, for it is an activity which may be systematically described and related meaningfully to various disciplines. In the strict sense of the word, however, translating is not a science but a technology, for it is built upon a number of scientific disciplines, including psychology, linguistics, communication theory, anthropology, and semiotics.

Thus one of the main problems with the scientific investigation of translation seems to lie in the fact that not only linguistic factors, but many other factors need to be taken into account. Since these factors belong to a variety of different areas of life, there is a question whether a comprehensive account of translation in the form of a coherent and homogeneous theory can ever be achieved.

The problem of determining the domain of the theory

A second major problem concerns the question of what a general science of translation is to be about, that is, what its domain should be. The obvious answer is that it should be about translation – but the problem is that it is not clear a priori what translation itself is. Krings (1986) comments that the notion of translation is used to refer to a variety of rather different phenomena such as:

intralingual vs interlingual translation, translation of isolated words or sentences (e.g. in foreign language teaching) vs translation of whole authentic texts, translation vs interpretation (consecutive vs simultaneous interpretation), translation as process vs translation as product of that process, translation from one language to another vs translation from a natural language into another system of signs (e.g. Morse code), translation vs transliteration (translation into another writing system, for example from Cyrillic to Roman script), human vs machine translation, translating from (the foreign language) vs translating into (the foreign language), translation vs free paraphrase or imitation (1986:5, translation my own).²

There have been three major lines of approach to this issue. One has relied on shared intuitions about the domain of the theory without any attempt at defining it in any systematic way. Historically this has perhaps been the line taken most often. The second approach is for the translation theorist to delimit the domain by definition. Thus, having listed a number of definitions of translation, Krings points out that one of their functions is “to establish a consensus as to what translation is taken to be, or more importantly what it is taken not to be” (1986:4, translation my own). The third approach is a culture-oriented one: translation will be what a culture takes it to be.

The obvious weakness of the first approach is that it does not lay a very good foundation for an explicit science. The second approach has been criticized as being potentially normative: by defining what translation is, it implicitly sets a norm, excluding from consideration all phenomena that do not meet the criteria of the definition. Thus van den Broeck (1980:83) states:

Much of the theorizing about translation, in our time as well as in the past, has however largely neglected this relativistic point of view. Most of the definitions given are prescriptive rather than descriptive; they serve as norms for translation practice – or rather, for a certain kind of practice – and fail to account for the description of existing translations, in as far as they pay no regard to norms operative in areas and times other than those for which they were designed.

One reaction to this has been the formation of the ‘Descriptive Translation Studies’ approach to translation, which claims to have achieved, among other things, “a considerable widening of the horizon, since any and all phenomena relating to translation, in the broadest sense, become objects of study” (Hermans 1985:7).³ The way this is achieved, according to the proponents of this view, is by taking the third, culture-oriented approach. This approach starts with a corpus of target language texts suspected to be translations, and tries discover “the overall CONCEPT OF TRANSLATION underlying the corpus” (Toury 1985:20, capitals as in original). A crucial step in this process is that of setting up the corpus, because it will determine the domain of the investigation, and hence also its results. Toury himself raises this question:

How … are translations to be distinguished from non-translations within the target culture, if such a distinction is to serve as a basis for the establishment of corpora, appropriate for study within DTS [Descriptive Translation Studies, E-AG]? (1985:19)

He replies:

The answer is that, if one does not wish to make too many assumptions which may prove difficult or impossible to maintain in the face of the empirical data, one really has no foolproof criterion for making such a distinction a priori. The only feasible path to take seems to be to proceed from the assumption that, for the purpose of a descriptive study, a ‘translation’ will be taken to be any target-language utterance which is presented or regarded as such within the target culture, on whatever grounds … (1985:19f.)

What are such grounds on which a target-language utterance may be regarded as a translation? Toury suggests a number of possibilities, “ranging from its explicit presentation as one, through the identification in it of t...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface to 1st Edition
• Preface to 2nd Edition
• Acknowledgements
• 1 The State of the Art — Some Critical Observations
• 2 A Relevance-Theoretic Approach
• 3 Covert Translation
• 4 Translating the Meaning of the Original
• 5 Translation as Interlingual Interpretive Use
• 6 Translating What was Expressed
• 7 A Unified Account of Translation
• postscript
• General Bibliography
• Index