History of translation theory susan bassnett summary

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*Linguistics

Daniela Ene and Marian Panainte

Beyond Language in Translation Theory: Translation and Nonverbal Communication

Abstract In this paper, we aim at investigating the connection between the act of translation and nonverbal

communication. By exporting methodological approaches and models from the field of nonverbal communication, we show how paralanguage and kinesics are connected with the act of translation, their varying implications for the source and target cultures in translated texts. The challenges of nonverbal systems in the texts of source cultures undergo considerable changes in target cultures, so that the act of translations is not just a linguistic exercise, but an intercultural one, as well.

Keywords: translation, nonverbal communication, interdiscipline, paralanguage, kinesics, source and target culture

Since the twentieth century, the translation

theory has constantly expanded by utilizing the norms of other disciplines such as linguistics, semiotics, anthropology, sociology, psychology. Definitions, ideas and concepts have been created, commented upon, contradicted, expanded in permanently renewable models, creating shifts in the translation theory paradigms. Writers, translators, linguists have portrayed the phenomenon in numerous definitions and analyses, often opposing each other, changing perspectives according to new developments. From our own research on the definitions and points of view in the theory of translation, we concluded that there are two major paradigms in which we can frame the phenomenon of translation: the linguistic paradigm, based on equivalence, textual functionality and the relation between languages and the cultural paradigm with a broader view that takes into account the subjectivity of the author, the complex and fascinating outcome of the human experience, the specificity of the context. The scholars’ prescriptive or descriptive norms have been the result of the research orientation of particular periods of time, according to the development of different fields.

In the 60s the discourse on translation was approached from a linguistic perspective, focusing on words and meanings, and then, on functional ad textual views. But the more contemporary aspects could not ignore the cultural marks of the source and target text, as the anthropological discoveries and the existing cultural studies have recently been the basics for a new vision in the translation theory, stating that the text from the source language must be rendered comprehensibly in an adequate cultural frame for the members of a different linguistic area. The sociological and psychological investigations mark the translation theory by expressing nonlinquistic views on the translation process in which researchers attempt to provide a scientific framework for the act of creation and intuition.

The definitions in the cultural paradigm enrich the theory of translation by improving the perspective: translation is not only a process of language transfer, but a process of communication in a social and cultural context. Wilhelm von Humboldt (1787-1835) is the first one to make the vital connection between language and culture, language and human behavior. For the

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philosopher, language is a dynamic process, an activity (enérgeia), and not a static inventory of elements perceived as products of the activity (ergon). Hence, language becomes an illustration of culture, as much as an expression of the individuality of the speaker, who perceives the world through language. Eco states that a successful translation cannot be viewed as a word for word equivalence, as the translator does not translate a text on the basis of the dictionary, but rather on the basis of the whole history of two literatures. Therefore translating is not only connected with linguistic competence, but with intertextual, psychological, and narrative competence. Thus, the translator is forced at all times to go beyond linguistic competence to the cultural spectrum. Consequently, translations do not constitute a comparison between two languages but the interpretation of two texts in two different languages. (Eco 2001: 14)

Beginning with the emancipation from linguistics and the cultural turn in translation studies, scholars questioned the disciplinary profile of translation as it became quite obvious that it emerged as an independent discipline. In 1988, Snell-Hornby presented a model of Translation Studies as an integrated discipline within a prototypological framework covering all kinds of translation, from literary to technical (Snell-Hornby, 1988: 35).M. Snell-Hornby asserts that translation begins with a text-in-situation as an integral part of the cultural background; translating a text means to consider its cultural specificity and to take into account the distance between the cultural marks of the source text and the ones belonging to the receptors of another language. For Snell-Hornby, the concept of culture as the totality of knowledge, competences and perceptions is fundamental in the process of translation. (Snell-Hornby 1988: 41-42).

In 1990, André Lefevere and Susan Bassnettalso moved theory beyond linguistic studies to examine the way culture effects translation. In the essay, The Translation Turn in Cultural Studies, Bassnett recalls “we co-wrote the introductory essay to the volume, intending it as a kind of manifesto of what we saw as a major change of emphasis in translation studies” (Bassnett&Lefevere 1998 2000: 123). Susan Bassnett, together with Lefevere, redefined translation as “a verbal text within the network of literary and extra- literary signs in both the source and target cultures” and perceived the text of translation to be “inter-temporal” and “intercultural” (Bassnett& Lefevere 1998, 2000: xi,135).

Even if the majority of translation studies focused on text in source and target language, a moment of liberation from the concept of text occurred

in the cultural turn of translation theory and there were some researchers who took the translation field beyond language. Although everybody agrees that we cannot exclude source and target texts from the translation process, we acknowledge that intercultural communication is not only verbal. This perspective does not mean we dispense with language, but we redefine text as a “communicative occurrence”, in relation with nonverbal communication.

The perspective of perceiving translation through the instruments of nonverbal communication was introduced by Fernando Poyatos, a Canadian of Spanish descent lecturing in Nonverbal Communication Studies in the Departments of Anthropology, Psychology, and Sociology at the University of New Brunswick. Poyatos’s original and quite unexpected approaches on translation studies were extensively rendered and commented upon by Snell-Hornby, who, as we previously said, postulated that the translation field has become an independent and at the same time, integrated discipline with various and subtle connections with other linguistic, social and cultural fields (Snell-Hornby 2006: 41-42).

Nonverbal communication in Poyatos’swork is defined as:

“the emissions of signs by all the nonlexical, artifactual and environmental sensible sign systems contained in a culture, whether individually or in mutual costructuration, and whether or not those emissions constitute behavior or generate personal interaction”(Poyatos, 1997: 1).

Nonverbal communication is based on paralanguage (qualities of voice such as timbre, resonance, loudness, tempo, pitch, intonation range, syllabic duration and rhythm) and kinesics(body movements, posture, gestures, facial expression) (Poyatos 1997a: 42–43).

Poyatos mentioned that his own studies on nonverbal communication emerged from interdisciplinary approaches and he outlines with much detail that various aspects of nonverbal communication can be related to language, culture and literature. In his interdisciplinary interpretations, he refers to literary translations and he makes the connection between the process of translation and nonverbal communication, emphasizing that the nonverbal systems undergo profound changes through translations and that is why

“translators need to become extremely sensitive to all that happens or does not happen as they translate a text, for it is well known that translation is not only an interlinguistic exercise, but an intercultural one as well.” (Poyatos 1997a: 17–18)

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The reader of a literary text is often fascinated not only by the story, but also by a complex network of personal and environmental elements and this means

“not only the speaking face and body and total appearance of the characters, which include their explicit or implicit between-the-lines paralanguage and kinesics, but the eloquent quasi paralinguistic sounds of people and environment, and their silences and stillness, all knitted together and first funnelled into just a visual medium, the printed page, to be late rmultisensorially amplified by the reader through a sort of sign counter metamorphosis.” (Poyatos 1997a: 17–18)

We will focus on the relationship between nonverbal communication and translating literary texts, stating that, in order to analyze the effects of a translated narrative text on the readers of another culture, we should consider three major conditioning factors which Poyatos identifies as being neglected, but extremely important: the book with the physical peculiarities of a particular edition by a particular publisher, the specific environment with different characteristics, perceived consciously or unconsciously (lightning, temperature, the presence of nature might interfere with the fictional world), and the reader with his specific perceptions of the fictional context. Beyond these peculiar characteristics that one should keep in mind when thinking about what happens to an original text when it is perceived by the readers a of a translated version, other difficulties in translating literary texts vary from the reader’s analysis of acharacter through the description of facial expression and gestures, the illustration of paralanguage and kinesic behavior in the text, with their effects for the source and target cultures, to the varying expressive richness inherent in the languages of source and target text.

Poyatos asserts that the speech is “a triple audio visual structure” made up of words, paralanguage and kinesics and its main instrument for transmission is the face, accompanied by hand movements and the movements or the still positions of the rest of the body. We perceive these facial and static consciously or unconsciously and we assign to them words or word- like utterances with specific personal and cultural characteristics. In this context, a translator should bear in mind “the acoustic similarities and differences between the words in the original text and those in their target language, for the more sensitive readers will utter them to themselves and therefore hear and see those faces” (Poyatos 1993 : 23).

The challenges a translator has to face become obvious when dealing with societies and cultures which appear “exotic” for a European or “Western” reader. (Vermeer’s frequently cited example is the lack of such

a basic word as “Thank you” in Indian languages, because in Indian cultures thanks are “shown” in a gesture). In Poyatos’ volume, RieHasada presents issues of Japanese cultural ethos expressed in nonverbal behavior and concludes that nonverbal communication is more important for the Japanese than for example, the English people(Poyatos1997: 87). Different interpretations are attributed to similar behavior and also, kinesicbehavior differ in the two cultures. Hasada presents a case in which the Japanese and the English people have different attitudes towards eye-contact. It seems that the English people have a strong social norm against staring, but they use eye- contact in order to show “politeness” to the other person. Hasadaalso illustrates that the Americans feel uneasy when Japanese avoid eye-contact, while the Japanese feel uneasy when someone’s eyes are fixed on them, this being in conflict with the Japanese custom of ‘bowing’, where one lowers the head so that the eyes cannot meet (Poyatos 1997: 87–88). Hasada provides other examples for the varying interpretations of paralanguage, such as the symbolism smiling and laughter. In Japan laughter has the potential of hurting other people’s feelings, and what strikes us is the fact that only children may laugh freely. The ‘smiling’ face is considerably appreciated, whereby the Japanese smile (for Westerners often “inscrutable” can often actually mask negative feelings or signalize a request for a favor (Poyatos 1997: 94–96). In analyzing Hasada’s works Snell-Hornby asserts that “the differing associations evoked by the semantic field smile and the matching items in Japanese would be a basic problem in translation” (Snell-Hornby2006 : 80), which definitely is an opinion we value.

In another chapter in the book edited by Poyatos, Yau Shun-chiu analyzes the corporal behavior represented in literary idioms. Before discussing Yau Shun-chiu’s ideas, we will emphasize a few important aspects in the theory of idiom translation. Idioms are generally considered a problem in translation, given the difficulty of finding conceptual correspondences from one language to another, and the impossibility of transferring their entire meaning in a foreign language by means of equivalent structures. As we have shown in other studies which will soon be published, in order to translate idioms from source to target language the translator must be familiar with the fundamental problems of phraseological theory, be able to highlight the phraseological meaning, discover their purpose and display in translation, their functions and expressive style.

The translator must provide a particular attention to units containing words that express the

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concrete realities of a culture (names with ethnographic, historical character, etc.). The translator, although he may find semantic equivalences for certain types of idioms, cannot always use the same types of lexemes, as idioms contain toponyms and historical names for each cultural area. The most important factors to be taken into account in identifying and finding equivalence for idioms could be: the exact meaning of the expression the ethnic specificity and the connotation in that particular language, the style, the overall context, the grammatical structure, the pragmatic intention of the author, the traditional form used in that language. As one can notice, applying all these factors in translation is a difficult thing to achieve, because one cannot always find equivalent terms to reflect the functional and stylistic characteristics of the original expression and not any type of idiom matches the text as a whole and the intention of the author.

In going back to Yau Shun-chiu’sstudy, we acknowledge the idea that many gestures are vividly and explicitly present in written idiomatic expressions, although the Chinese people do not have an active repertoire of gestures as the Latin people. He presents historical reasons for the scarcity of gestures and he shows that, for example, the long sleeves covering the hands up to the fingertips prevented the gestural expressions, but not the body movements (Poyatos1997: 73). Most of the Chinese gestural idioms do not have equivalents in English and are culturally coded: yaoerduo means whispering and can be translated literally as “biting the ear”; pi xiaoroubuxiao means a sardonic smile and literally is translated through “only the skin smiles, but not the flesh”; min zuierxiao means covering the mouth when laughing or smiling and in a literal translation it can be rendered through “cover mouth and smile”(Poyatos1997: 70).

In commenting upon the translation of Chinese paralanguage, Snell- Hornby found in An Encyclopaedia of Translation, Chinese-English, English-Chinese (Chan and Pollard 1995), an intriguing entry by David Pollard, who discusses the topic of Chinese “body language” and presents it as a highly problematic issue in translation. Snell-Hornby shows that:

Pollard categorizes the difficulties as arising from three sources:

“firstly, a specificallyChinese view of body functions; secondly, expressions and gestures specifically Chinese or with different significance from Western ones; and finally descriptions of physical reactions which Western authors normally do not discern. The suggested strategies range from bald

translation and omission to elaboration or glossing, and it is clear, as Pollard concludes, that body language may give rise to “headaches rather than pleasure” (Snell-Hornby2006: 81).

Similar problems may appear between cultures that seem more related such as the European cultures. Snell-Hornby refers to the example of English and German where it seems that paralinguistic and kinesic behavior may vary widely, and the perception and evaluation of such behavior may be lexicalized quite differently, leading to considerable difficulty for the translator (Snell-Hornby 2006 : 82).

We do not contradict Snell-Hornby’s assertions, but in our previous studies we found a series of idioms common to English and Romanian languages. The idioms are generated by the same factors of logical and psychological nature, or borrowed from common sources, cutting their way into language, most often through similar channels. These idioms,at the beginning, were free constructions of words with an objective communicative function and they involved gestures, facial expressions and body movements. Gradually, as a consequence of a merging process of the component meanings, they cut their way into the common language, thus becoming idioms. For these category of idiomatic expressions, the translator can easily find an equivalence in the target language (sometimes, a literal translation is available): a-şi băga nasul în – to poke one’s nose into, a întoarce şi celălalt obraz – to turn the other cheek, a avea mâinile curate – to have clean hands, ask for a woman’s hand- a cere mana unei femei. On the other hand, there is a series of idioms specific to the Romanian language or to the English one (that is “indigenous”) and the translator has to faceimportant variations when translating and to find the most eloquent idiomatic correspondances: a face cu ochiul – to cock one’s eye, a face fețe fețe – to change color,a tresări ca o pasăre speriată – to give a start like a frightened sparrow.

As we can see, there are situations in which the explicit descriptions of gestures in idiomatic contexts do not raise many problems, but there is a larger category of less explicit idioms or descriptions which do not easily disclose their cultural meaning. The culturally coded kinesics and paralanguage of literary texts represent stumbling blocks for the serious translators and the interactive nonverbal communication in literature may become puzzling and frustrating for the readers of the target languages, if the translator misinterprets the culture specific displays and functions of nonverbal behaviors. Through their traditions and historical paths, different cultures of humanity have specific order of values and very

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particular vision of themselves and of their relation with others. That is why what goes beyond language represents a challenge in the literary translation and

these challenges should be discussed not only by linguists or translators, but also by interdisciplinary scholars.

References

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