In other words a coursebook on translation by mona baker

2001c8c5coverv05b.jpg
In Other Words

In Other Words is the defi nitive coursebook for students studying translation. Assuming no knowledge of foreign languages, it offers both a practical and theo- retical guide to translation studies, and provides an important foundation for training professional translators.

Drawing on modern linguistic theory, this best-selling text provides a solid base to inform and guide the many key decisions trainee translators have to make. Each chapter offers an explanation of key concepts, identifi es potential sources of trans- lation diffi culties related to those concepts, and illustrates various strategies for resolving these diffi culties. Authentic examples of translated texts from a wide variety of languages are examined, and practical exercises and further reading are included at the end of each chapter.

The second edition has been fully revised to refl ect recent developments in the fi eld and new features include:

● A new chapter that addresses issues of ethics and ideology, in response to increased pressures on translators and interpreters to demonstrate accounta- bility and awareness of the social impact of their decisions.

● Examples and exercises from new genres such as audiovisual translation, scientifi c translation, oral interpreting, website translation, and news/media translation.

● New project-driven exercises designed to support MA dissertation work. ● Updated references and further reading. ● A companion website featuring further examples and tasks.

Written by Mona Baker, a leading international fi gure in the fi eld, this key text is the essential coursebook for any student of translation studies.

Mona Baker is Professor of Translation Studies at the University of Manchester, UK. She is co-founder and editorial director of St. Jerome Publishing which specializes in translation studies. She is also co-Vice President of the International Association of Translation and Intercultural Studies (IATIS).

In Other Words A coursebook on translation Second edition

Mona Baker

First published 1992 by Routledge

This edition published 2011 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

© 1992, 2011 Mona Baker

The right of Mona Baker to be identifi ed as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Baker, Mona. In other words : a coursebook on translation / Mona Baker. – [2nd ed.]. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Translating and interpreting. I. Title. P306.B25 2011 418'.02–dc22 2010031445

ISBN: 978-0-415-46753-7 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-415-46754-4 (pbk) ISBN: 978-0-203-83292-9 (ebk)

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2011.

To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.

ISBN 0-203-83292-2 Master e-book ISBN

To Ken

Contents

List of fi gures xi

List of tables xii

Preface to the second edition xiii

Preface to the fi rst edition xv

Acknowledgements xvii

1 Introduction 1

1.1 About the organization of this book 4 1.2 Examples, back-translations and the languages of illustration 6 Suggestions for further reading 8 Note 8

2 Equivalence at word level 9

2.1 The word in different languages 9 2.1.1 What is a word? 9 2.1.2 Is there a one-to-one relationship between word and meaning? 10 2.1.3 Introducing morphemes 10

2.2 Lexical meaning 11 2.2.1 Propositional vs expressive meaning 11 2.2.2 Presupposed meaning 12 2.2.3 Evoked meaning 13

2.3 The problem of non-equivalence 15 2.3.1 Semantic fi elds and lexical sets – the segmentation of

experience 16 2.3.2 Non-equivalence at word level and some common strategies

for dealing with it 18 Exercises 44 Suggestions for further reading 47 Notes 49

viii IN OTHER WORDS

3 Equivalence above word level 51

3.1 Collocation 52 3.1.1 Collocational range and collocational markedness 54 3.1.2 Collocation and register 56 3.1.3 Collocational meaning 57 3.1.4 Some collocation-related pitfalls and problems in translation 58

3.2 Idioms and fi xed expressions 67 3.2.1 Idioms, fi xed expressions and the direction of translation 68 3.2.2 The interpretation of idioms 69 3.2.3 The translation of idioms: diffi culties 71 3.2.4 The translation of idioms: strategies 75

Exercises 86 Suggestions for further reading 90 Notes 91

4 Grammatical equivalence 92

4.1 Grammatical vs lexical categories 93 4.2 The diversity of grammatical categories across languages 95

4.2.1 Number 96 4.2.2 Gender 99 4.2.3 Person 104 4.2.4 Tense and aspect 108 4.2.5 Voice 112

4.3 A brief note on word order 120 4.4 Introducing text 121

4.4.1 Text vs non-text 121 4.4.2 Features of text organization 123

Exercises 124 Suggestions for further reading 127 Notes 129

5 Textual equivalence: thematic and information structures 131

5.1 A Hallidayan overview of information fl ow 133 5.1.1 Thematic structure: theme and rheme 133 5.1.2 Information structure: given and new 156

5.2 The Prague School position on information fl ow: functional sentence perspective 170 5.2.1 Linear arrangement and thematic status in FSP 173 5.2.2 Linear arrangement and marked structures in FSP 174

CONTENTS ix

5.2.3 The tension between word order and communicative function: a problem in translation? 175

5.2.4 Suggested strategies for minimizing linear dislocation 176 Exercises 181 Suggestions for further reading 186 Notes 187

6 Textual equivalence: cohesion 190

6.1 Reference 190 6.2 Substitution and ellipsis 196 6.3 Conjunction 200 6.4 Lexical cohesion 210 Exercises 223 Suggestions for further reading 227 Notes 228

7 Pragmatic equivalence 230

7.1 Coherence 230 7.1.1 Coherence vs cohesion 230 7.1.2 Is coherence a feature of text or situation? 231

7.2 Coherence and processes of interpretation: implicature 234 7.3 Coherence, implicature and translation strategies 239

7.3.1 The conventional meanings of words and structures and the identity of references 240

7.3.2 The Co-operative Principle and its maxims 244 7.3.3 The context, linguistic or otherwise, of the utterance 249 7.3.4 Other items of background knowledge 255 7.3.5 The availability of all relevant items falling under the

previous headings 259 Exercises 263 Suggestions for further reading 270 Notes 271

8 Beyond equivalence: ethics and morality 274

8.1 Ethics and morality 275 8.2 Professionalism, codes of ethics and the law 283 8.3 The ethical implications of linguistic choices 286 8.4 Concluding remarks 290 Exercises 290 Suggestions for further reading 296 Notes 298

x IN OTHER WORDS

Glossary 300

References 305

Name index 323

Language index 327

Subject index 329

Figures

Figure 1, Chapter 2 Panel from Tronchet’s Jean-Claude Tergal and its Italian translation, Domenico Tergazzi 32

Figure 2, Chapter 2 Lipton Yellow Label tea packet for Arab market 44 Figure 3, Chapter 2 Trados advertisement 45 Figure 4, Chapter 2 Screen shot from Sizism Awareness Campaign

video 46 Figure 5, Chapter 3 Title of article in New Scientist 74 Figure 6, Chapter 3 Original version of Manchester Museum of

Science and Industry leafl et 79 Figure 7, Chapter 3 French translation of Manchester Museum of

Science and Industry leafl et 80 Figure 8, Chapter 3 Italian translation of Manchester Museum of

Science and Industry leafl et 80 Figure 9, Chapter 3 Spanish translation of Manchester Museum of

Science and Industry leafl et 80 Figure 10, Chapter 3 German translation of Manchester Museum of

Science and Industry leafl et 80 Figure 11, Chapter 3 Japanese translation of Manchester Museum of

Science and Industry leafl et 81 Figure 12, Chapter 3 Original version of Wedgwood leafl et 84 Figure 13, Chapter 3 Japanese translation of Wedgwood leafl et 85 Figure 14, Chapter 6 Caption of article in Wonderlust Guide to

Jordan 2010 87 Figure 15, Chapter 6 ‘Not Beyond Compare’, National Geographic

Magazine, 1 March 2010, p. 26 215 Figure 16, Chapter 6 Homepage of Katha 226 Figure 17, Chapter 6 Sub-page of Katha web site 227

Tables

Table 1, Chapter 3 Unpredictability of collocational patterning 53 Table 2, Chapter 6 Recurrence and collocational cohesion

(adapted from Mason 1994/2010:88) 222

Preface to the second edition

This second edition of In Other Words comes at a time of increased visibility for translators and interpreters. We only need to look at the extent of reporting on trans- lation and interpreting in the media to appreciate how visible the profession and the activity have become. News of translation and interpreting now pervades our lives: whether it is the lack of qualifi ed court interpreters in a remote part of Australia or Canada, or the fate of translators and interpreters in zones of military confl ict; the launching of a national initiative to encourage translation in one region or another, or the decision by the Turkish government to reinterpret Islam through a new trans- lation of the Prophet’s sayings; the impending decision by the European Commission to limit the translation of patents to three languages, or the release of a feminist translation of the Bible. Every aspect of our social and political life is now heavily mediated by translators and interpreters, hence their increased visibility. Translation and interpreting are also now fi rmly part of the professional and academic land- scape, with practically every country in the world boasting at least one association that represents the interests of the profession and numerous universities offering full-blown undergraduate and postgraduate programmes in the fi eld. Technological advances in the past two decades have further had a major impact on the profession, resolving old challenges and raising new ones. I have tried to take stock of at least some of these developments in the choice of additional examples and exercises in this new edition. A new chapter on ethics attempts to respond to increased pres- sures on translators and interpreters to demonstrate accountability and awareness of the tremendous social and political impact of their decisions.

Since the publication of the fi rst edition of In Other Words, fortune has continued to favour me with exceptionally gifted and supportive colleagues, students and family whose input into this new edition must be acknowledged. I am grateful to my niece, Hanan Rihan, for support in preparing the text for publication. Colleagues, students and former students at the School of Languages, Linguistics and Cultures, University of Manchester, helped me check the analysis of various examples and key in text that I could not type myself. Luis Pérez-González and James St. André helped with Spanish, French and Chinese examples and Morven Beaton-Thome with German examples. Jonathan Bunt provided extensive support with Japanese, Zhao Wenjing with Chinese, and Sofi a Malamatidou with Greek.

xiv IN OTHER WORDS

I am particularly grateful to Moira Inghilleri, Julie Boéri and Sofi a Garcia for their extremely helpful, critical comments on the new chapter on ethics, and to Monika Bednarek and her students at the University of Sydney for critical feedback on several chapters. From Routledge, Russell George, Sophie Jacques, Nadia Seemungal, Anna Callander and Lizzie Clifford have been extremely supportive. Their help is much appreciated.

John Sinclair’s departure in 2007 left a considerable vacuum in the lives of those who were fortunate enough to know him and benefi t from his immense expe- rience. This new edition of In Other Words remains as indebted to his teachings as the fi rst one.

Mona Baker June 2010

Preface to the fi rst edition

The idea of this book initially grew out of discussions with a number of colleagues, in particular with Dr Kirsten Malmkjaer, formerly of the University of Birmingham and currently at the Centre of English as an International Language, Cambridge. It has been considerably refi ned during the course of last year through discussions with postgraduate students at the University of Birmingham and students at the Brass- house Centre and Birmingham Polytechnic.

I am exceptionally lucky to have been able to draw on the outstanding expertise of a number of colleagues, both at the University of Birmingham and at COBUILD, a lexical project run jointly by the University of Birmingham and Collins Publishers. From COBUILD, Stephen Bullon, Alex Collier and Gwyneth Fox provided initial help with Russian, German and Italian texts respectively. From the Shakespeare Institute, Katsuhiko Nogami helped with Japanese and Shen Lin with Chinese texts. From the School of Modern Languages, James Mullen (Russian), Bill Dodd (German), Paula Chicken (French) and Elena Tognini-Bonelli (Italian) helped me work my way through various texts and took the time to explain the structural and stylistic nuances of each language. From the School of English, Tony Dudley-Evans and Sonia Zyngier helped with Brazilian Portuguese and Wu Zu Min with Chinese. Tim Johns read and commented on Chapter 5 (‘Thematic and information structures’) and kindly allowed me to use much of his own data and report some of his fi ndings on the subject.

Chinese and Japanese texts required additional help to analyse; this was compe- tently provided by Ming Xie (Chinese) and Haruko Uryu (Japanese), both at the University of Cambridge. Lanna Castellano of the Institute of Translation and Inter- preting read a substantial part of the draft manuscript and her encouraging comments were timely and well appreciated.

I owe a special debt to three people in particular: Helen Liebeck, Philip King and Michael Hoey. Helen Liebeck and Philip King are polyglots; both kindly spent many hours helping me with a variety of languages and both read and commented on Chapters 2, 3 and 4. Philip King also provided the Greek examples and helped with the analysis of several texts.

Michael Hoey is an outstanding text linguist. In spite of his many commitments, he managed to fi nd the time to read through the last three chapters and to provide detailed comments on each of them. His help has been invaluable. It is indeed a

xvi IN OTHER WORDS

privilege to work with so distinguished a scholar who is also extremely generous with his time and expertise.

Last but not least, I must acknowledge a personal debt to John Sinclair. John has taught me, often during informal chats, most of what I know about language, and his own work has always been a source of inspiration. But I am grateful, above all, for his friendship and continued support.

Mona Baker May 1991

Acknowledgements

The author and publishers wish to thank the following for permission to reproduce the quotations and illustrations appearing in this book:

Autoworld at the Patrick Collection, 180 Lifford Lane, Kings Norton, Birmingham. Reproduced with permission.

Brintons press release, reproduced with permission. Euralex (European Association for Lexicography), PO Box 1017, Copenhagen,

Denmark for extracts from conference circular. Reproduced with permission. Stephen W. Hawking, Bantam Press, Space Time Publications and World House

Inc. for permission to reproduce extracts from A Brief History of Time (1988) by Stephen W. Hawking. © (UK and Commonwealth) Space Time Publications; © (USA) Bantam Books, a division of Bantam Doubleday, Dell Publishing Group, Inc.; © 1988 (Japan) World House Inc. All rights reserved.

Το χρονικό του Χρόνου (Από τη Μεγάλη Εκρηξη έως τις μαύρες τρύπες) (1988) Translated from English by Konstantinos Harakas, Katoptro Publications. Repro- duced with permission.

Extracts from Autumn of Fury: The Assassination of Sadat © 1983 Mohammed Heikal. Reprinted by permission of André Deutsch Ltd.

John Le Carré and Hodder & Stoughton for extracts from The Russia House (1989).

Lipton Export Limited, Stanbridge Road, Leighton Buzzard, Beds. Lonrho plc (now Lonmin plc) for extracts from A Hero from Zero. The Minority Rights Group, 379 Brixton Road, London, for Lebanon, Minority Rights

Group Report by David McDowall, London 1983. Morgan Matroc – This extract was taken in 1986 from Morgan Matroc which is now

Morgan Technical Ceramics. Museum of Science and Industry promotional leafl et (Manchester), shot reproduced

in six languages: English, French, Italian, Spanish, German, Japanese. Repro- duced with permission.

National Geographic Magazine, 1 March 2010, page 26. Article in New Internationalist (January/February 2010, special issue on population

growth), authored by Vanessa Baird. Reprinted by kind permission of New Inter- nationalist. Copyright New Internationalist www.newint.org

xviii IN OTHER WORDS

Picture of the title of an article from New Scientist, 5 February 2000, p. 41. Repro- duced with permission.

The Project for the New American Century Statement of Principles, www.newamer- icancentury.org/statementofprinciples.htm (last accessed 21 March 2010).

Trados advertisement, reproduced with permission from SDL Plc www.sdl.com Panel from Didier Vasseur Tronchet’s comic series Jean-Claude Tergal. French

original (Tronchet, Jean-Claude Tergal, Tome 3, 1993, p. 40). Italian translation (Tronchet, Domenico Tergazzi, 1992, p. 36). Reproduced with permission.

Reprinted from The UNESCO Courier, April 1990, ¿Tiene la historia un destino? Miguel León-Portilla. www.unesco.org/courier

Wedgwood promotional leafl et, shot in English and Japanese. Shot of title and header of an article from the Wonderlust Guide to Jordan, 2010, p.

22. Reproduced with permission. World Wide Fund for Nature, CH-1196 Gland, Switzerland. © WWF (panda.org).

Some rights reserved. Screen shot from Youtube video. www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOxbi53J5SU

Reproduced with permission.

Do we really know how we translate or what we translate? … Are we to accept ‘naked ideas’ as the means of crossing from one language to another? … Translators know they cross over but do not know by what sort of bridge. They often re-cross by a different bridge to check up again. Sometimes they fall over the parapet into limbo.

(Firth 1957:197)

Translation is a point of contact between peoples, and since it is rare that two peoples have the same access to power, the translator is in a privileged position as mediator, to make explicit the differences between cultures, expose injustices or contribute to diversity in the world.

(Gill and Guzmán 2010:126)

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Writing my own novels has always required a huge effort of organisation and imagination; but, sentence by sentence, translation is intellectually more taxing.

(Parks 2010)

Professionals in every walk of life form associations and institutes of various kinds to provide practising members with a forum to discuss and set standards for the profession as a whole, to set examinations, assess competence and lay codes of conduct. The standards set by a given profession may well be extremely high, but this does not necessarily guarantee recognition by those outside the profession. Notwithstanding the length and breadth of one’s experience, recognition, in our increasingly qualifi cation-conscious society, comes mostly with proof of some kind of formal education. Every respectable profession (or every profession which wants to be recognized as such) therefore attempts to provide its members with systematic training in the fi eld.

There are two main types of training that a profession can provide for its members: vocational training and academic training. Vocational courses provide training in practical skills but do not include a strong theoretical component. A good example would be a course in plumbing or typing. At the end of a typing course, a student is able to type accurately and at speed and has a piece of paper to prove it. But that is the end of the story; what the student acquires is a purely practical skill which is recognized by society as ‘skilled work’ but is not generally elevated to the level of a profession. Like vocational courses, most academic courses set out to teach students how to do a particular job such as curing certain types of illness, building bridges or writing computer programs. But they do more than that: an academic course always includes a strong theoretical component. The value of this theoretical component is that it encourages students to refl ect on what they do, how they do it and why they do it in one way rather than another. This last exercise, exploring the advantages and disadvantages of various ways of doing things, is itself impossible to perform unless one has a thorough and intimate knowledge of the objects and tools of one’s work. A doctor cannot decide whether it is better to follow one course of treatment rather than another without understanding such things as how the human body works, what side effects a given medicine may have, what is available to counteract these effects and so on.

2 IN OTHER WORDS

Theoretical training does not necessarily guarantee success in all instances. Things still go wrong occasionally because, in medicine for example, the reaction of the human body and the infl uence of other factors such as stress will never be totally predictable. But the value of a theoretical understanding of, say, the human appa- ratus and such things as the nature and make-up of various drugs is that (a) it mini- mizes the risks involved on any given occasion and prepares the student for dealing with the unpredictable, (b) it gives the practising doctor a certain degree of confi - dence which comes from knowing that his or her decisions are calculated on the basis of concrete knowledge rather than ‘hunches’ or ‘intuition’ and (c) it provides the basis on which further developments in the fi eld may be achieved because it represents a formalized pool of knowledge which is shared and can be explored and extended by the professional community as a whole, not just locally but across the world. Needless to say, this type of theoretical knowledge is itself of no value unless it is fi rmly grounded in practical experience.

Throughout its long history, translation has never really enjoyed the kind of recognition and respect that other professions such as medicine and engineering have enjoyed. Translators have constantly complained that translation is underesti- mated as a profession. In summing up the fi rst conference held by the Institute of Translation and Interpreting in Britain, Professor Bellos (reported by Nick Rosenthal) stated that ‘The main impetus and concern of this fi rst ITI Conference was the unjustly low status in professional terms of the translator. An appropriate theme, since it was one of the main reasons for the formation of the ITI’ (Bellos 1987:163). Today, more than two decades later, the novelist and translator Tim Parks still has to remind us that at least ‘for a few minutes every year we really must acknowledge that translators are important’ (Parks 2010). There is no doubt that the low status accorded to translation as a profession is ‘unjust’, but one has to admit that this is not just the fault of the general public. The translation community itself has tradi- tionally been guilty of underestimating not so much the value as the complexity of the translation process and hence the need for formal professional training in the fi eld, though this situation is thankfully changing quite rapidly. Since the fi rst edition of this book was published, in 1992, numerous training programmes have been set up for translators and interpreters across the world. Translation has become a highly attractive career for young people with a love for languages and for engaging with other cultures, as well as a growing area of research. Those entering the profession now have to demonstrate that they can refl ect on what they do, that they have invested in acquiring not only the vocational but also the intellectual skills required to undertake such a complex and highly consequential task, one that has a major impact on the lives of the many people who rely on them as mediators.

In the past, talented translators who had no systematic formal training in trans- lation but who nevertheless achieved a high level of competence through long and varied experience tended to think that the translation community as a whole could achieve their own high standards in the same way:

INTRODUCTION 3

Our profession is based on knowledge and experience. It has the longest apprenticeship of any profession. Not until thirty do you start to be useful as a translator, not until fi fty do you start to be in your prime.

The fi rst stage of the career pyramid – the apprenticeship stage – is the time we devote to investing in ourselves by acquiring knowledge and expe- rience of life. Let me propose a life path: grandparents of different nation- alities, a good school education in which you learn to read, write, spell, construe and love your own language. Then roam the world, make friends, see life. Go back to education, but to take a technical or commercial degree, not a language degree. Spend the rest of your twenties and your early thirties in the countries whose languages you speak, working in industry or commerce but not directly in languages. Never marry into your own nationality. Have your children. Then back to a postgraduate trans- lation course. A staff job as a translator, and then go freelance. By which time you are forty and ready to begin.

(Lanna Castellano 1988:133)

Lanna’s recommended career path no doubt worked for many people in the past. Her own case proves that it did: she is a widely respected fi rst-class translator. The question is whether it was ever feasible for most aspiring translators to pursue this career path and whether this approach is or was right for the profession as a whole, bearing in mind that it stresses, at least for the fi rst thirty or forty years of one’s career, life experience rather than formal academic training. One obvious problem with this career path is that it takes so long to acquire the skills you need as a trans- lator that your career is almost over before it begins.

Lanna Castellano has never been opposed to formal academic training; on the contrary, she has always encouraged it and recognized its value to the profession. But I have met professional translators in the past, and still come across some very occasionally today, who actually argue strongly against formal academic training because, they suggest, translation is an art which requires aptitude, practice and general knowledge – nothing more. The ability to translate is a gift, they say: you either have it or you do not, and theory (almost a dirty word in some translation circles) is therefore irrelevant to the work of a translator. To take the analogy with medicine a step further: if we accept this line of thinking we will never be seen as anything but witch doctors and faith healers. And while it may well suit some indi- viduals to think that they can heal people because they have magic powers or a special relationship with God, rather than because they have a thorough and conscious understanding of drugs and of the human body, the fact remains that witch doctory and faith healing are not recognized professions and that medicine is.

Most translators and interpreters prefer to think of their work as a profession and would like to see others treat them as professionals rather than as skilled or semiskilled workers. But to achieve this, they need to develop an ability to stand back and refl ect on what they do and how they do it. Like doctors and engineers,

4 IN OTHER WORDS

they have to prove to themselves as well as others that they are in control of what they do; that they do not just translate or interpret well because they have a ‘fl air’ for it, but rather because, like other professionals, they have made a conscious effort to understand various aspects of their work.

Unlike medicine and engineering, translation studies is a relatively young disci- pline in academic terms, though it is increasingly featuring as a subject of study in its own right in many parts of the world. Like any young discipline, it needs to draw on the fi ndings and theories of numerous related disciplines in order to develop and formalize its own methods – from linguistics to literary theory, from sociology to cognitive science. This is not surprising, given that almost every aspect of life in general and of the interaction between speech communities in particular can be considered relevant to translation, a discipline which has to concern itself with how meaning is generated within and between various groups of people in various cultural settings, and with what impact on society. For translation to gain more recognition as a profession, translators cannot resort to a mixture of intuition and experience to think through and justify the decisions they have to make but must constantly look to developments in neighbouring disciplines to appreciate the varied, complex dimensions of their work. Among the many skills they need to acquire through training is the skill to understand and refl ect on the raw material with which they work: to appreciate what language is and how it comes to function for its users.

Linguistics is a discipline which studies language both in its own right and as a tool for generating meanings. It should therefore have a great deal to offer to trans- lation studies; it can certainly offer translators and interpreters valuable insights into the nature and function of language. This is particularly true of modern linguistics, which no longer restricts itself to the study of language per se but embraces such sub-disciplines as textlinguistics (the study of text as a communicative event rather than as a shapeless string of words and structures) and pragmatics (the study of language in use rather than language as an abstract system). This book attempts to explore some areas in which modern linguistic theory can provide a basis for training translators and can inform and guide the decisions they have to make in the course of performing their work.

1.1 ABOUT THE ORGANIZATION OF THIS BOOK

The organization of this book is largely hierarchical and is based on a straight- forward principle: it starts at the simplest possible level and grows in complexity by widening its focus in each chapter. Chapter 2, ‘Equivalence at word level’, initially adopts a naive building-block approach and explores the ‘meaning’ of single words and expressions. In Chapter 3, ‘Equivalence above word level’, the scope of reference is widened a little by looking at combinations of words and phrases: what happens when words start combining with other words to form convention- alized or semi-conventionalized stretches of language. Chapter 4, ‘Grammatical equivalence’, deals with grammatical categories such as number and gender. Chapters 5 and 6 cover part of what might be loosely termed the textual level of

INTRODUCTION 5

language. Chapter 5 deals with the role played by word order in structuring messages at text level and Chapter 6 discusses cohesion: grammatical and lexical relationships which provide links between various parts of a text. Chapter 7, ‘Prag- matic equivalence’, looks at how texts are used in communicative situations that involve variables such as writers, readers and cultural context. Chapter 8, ‘Beyond equivalence: ethics and morality’, is new. I have added it to this second edition in order to encourage students to refl ect on the wider implications of their decisions and the impact of their mediation on others. Again, like any other profession that strives to be taken seriously, translators and interpreters have to engage refl ec- tively with the ethical implications of their work and demonstrate that they are responsible professionals and citizens of society.

To return to the bulk of this book, namely Chapters 2 to 7, it is important to point out that the division of language into seemingly self-contained areas such as words, grammar and text is artifi cial and open to question. For one thing, the areas are not discrete: it is virtually impossible to say where the concerns of one area end and those of another begin. Moreover, decisions taken at, say, the level of the word or grammatical category during the course of translation are infl uenced by the perceived function and purpose of both the original text and the translation and have implica- tions for the discourse as a whole. But artifi cial as it is, the division of language into discrete areas is useful for the purposes of analysis and, provided we are aware that it is adopted merely as a measure of convenience, it can help to pinpoint potential areas of diffi culty in translation and interpreting.

Like the division of language into discrete areas, the term equivalence is adopted in this book for the sake of convenience – because most translators are used to it rather than because it has any theoretical status. It is used here with the proviso that although equivalence can usually be obtained to some extent, it is infl uenced by a variety of linguistic and cultural factors and is therefore always relative. Kenny (2009) offers an excellent overview of the notion of equivalence and the various ways in which it has been approached in the literature.

The organization followed in this book is a bottom-up rather than a top-down one: it starts with simple words and phrases rather than with the text as situated in its context of culture. This may seem somewhat at odds with current thinking in linguistic and translation studies. Snell-Hornby (1988:69) suggests that ‘textual analysis, which is an essential preliminary to translation, should proceed from the “top down”, from the macro to the micro level, from text to sign’, and Hatim and Mason’s model of the translation process (1990, 1997) also adopts a top-down approach, taking such things as text-type and context as starting points for discussing translation problems and strategies. The top-down approach is the more valid one theoretically, but for those who are not trained linguists it can be diffi cult to follow: there is too much to take in all at once. Moreover, an excessive emphasis on ‘text’ and ‘context’ runs the risk of obscuring the fact that although ‘a text is a semantic unit, not a grammatical one … meanings are realized through wordings; and without a theory of wordings … there is no way of making explicit one’s interpretation of the meaning of a text’ (Halliday 1985:xvii). In other words, text is a meaning unit, not a

6 IN OTHER WORDS

form unit, but meaning is realized through form and without understanding the meanings of individual forms one cannot interpret the meaning of the text as a whole. Translating words and phrases out of context is certainly a futile exercise, but it is equally unhelpful to expect a student to appreciate translation decisions made at the level of text without a reasonable understanding of how the lower levels, the indi- vidual words, phrases and grammatical structures, control and shape the overall meaning of the text. Both the top-down and the bottom-up approaches are therefore valid in their own way; I have opted for the latter for pedagogical reasons – because it is much easier to follow for those who have had no previous training in linguistics.

1.2 EXAMPLES, BACK-TRANSLATIONS AND THE LANGUAGES OF ILLUSTRATION

In each chapter, an attempt is made to identify potential sources of translation diffi - culties related to the linguistic area under discussion and possible strategies for resolving these diffi culties. The strategies are not preconceived, nor are they suggested as ideal solutions; they are identifi ed by analysing authentic examples of translated texts in a variety of languages and presented as ‘actual’ strategies used rather than the ‘correct’ strategies to use. The examples are quoted and discussed, sometimes at length, to illustrate the various strategies identifi ed and to explore the potential pros and cons of each strategy. Although the discussion is occasionally critical of certain translations, fi nding fault with published translations is never the object of the exercise. It is in fact virtually impossible, except in extreme cases, to draw a line between what counts as a good translation and what counts as a bad one. Every translation has points of strength and points of weakness, and every translation is open to improvement.

The source language of most examples is English. This is because in both literary and non-literary translation today, English is probably the most widely translated language in the world. And since it also happens to be the language in which this book is written, I feel justifi ed in assuming that all readers will have an adequate command of it. Much as I would have liked to include examples of and exercises on translation into English, I have had to accept that it is not possible to write a general coursebook on translation unless the source language is kept constant. With a few exceptions, the direction of translation is therefore assumed to be from English into a variety of target languages. However, readers – particularly teachers of translation – are invited to adapt the examples and exercises to suit their individual purposes. Once a given topic is discussed and understood, alternative texts can be easily found in other languages to replace the examples and exercises in which English is treated as the source language.

The target languages exemplifi ed are by no means all European. They include major non-European languages such as Arabic, Japanese and Chinese. The emphasis on non-European languages, I hope, no longer seems unusual, although it did when the fi rst edition of this book appeared, in 1992. Since then, much has been done by scholars such as Diriker (2004), Hung and Wakabayashi (2005),

INTRODUCTION 7

Hermans (2006), Cockerill (2006), Cheung (2006, 2009), Gentzler (2008), Bandia (2008), Curran (2008), Wakabayashi and Kothari (2009) and Selim (2009), among others, to counterbalance the traditional preoccupation with European languages in translation studies. Many more translators as well as teachers and scholars of trans- lation now appreciate that there is life – and indeed translation – outside Europe, and that professional non-European translators use a range of strategies that are at least as interesting and as useful as those used by European translators. The reception of the fi rst edition of this book over the past two decades has confi rmed that it is instructive for translators of any linguistic background to explore diffi culties of trans- lation in non-European languages, given that the structure of those languages and their cultural settings raise important issues that could otherwise be easily over- looked in discussions of language and translation.

The majority of readers will not be familiar with all the languages illustrated in this book, but they should still be able to follow the discussion of individual examples by using the back-translations provided. Back-translation, as used in this book, involves taking a text (original or translated) which is written in a language with which the reader is assumed to be unfamiliar and translating it as literally as possible1 into English – how literally depends on the point being illus- trated, whether it is morphological, syntactic or lexical for instance. I use the term back-translation because, since the source language is often English, this involves translating the target text back into the source language from which it was origi- nally translated. A back-translation can give some insight into aspects of the structure, if not the meaning of the original, but it is never the same as the original. The use of back-translation is a necessary compromise; it is theoretically unsound and far from ideal, but then we do not live in an ideal world – very few of us speak eight or nine languages – and theoretical criteria cease to be relevant when they become an obstacle to fruitful discussion.