foregrounded and repeated in the translation.
The second type of key-word is the word or phrase that typifies the writer rather than the particular text. Some of these words go into a ready one-to-one translation into English, and get their connotational significance from repetition and context which can more or less be reproduced by the translator.
For key-words, translators have to assess their texts critically; they have to decide which lexical units are central, and have the more important function, and which are peripheral, so that the relative gains and losses in a translation may correspond to their assessment.
There is no advantage in making generalizations about the translation of serious novels. The obvious problems: the relative importance of the SL culture and the author’s moral purpose to the reader—it may be exemplified in the translation of proper names; of the SL conventions and the author’s idiolect; the translation of dialect; the distinction between personal style, literary convention of period and/or movement; and the norms of the SL—these problems have to be settled for each text.
Drama
(p172)The main purpose of translating a play is normally to have it performed successfully. Therefore a translator of drama inevitably has to bear the potential spectator in mind though, here again, the better written and more significant the text, the fewer compromises he can make in favor of the reader. Further, he works under certain constraints: unlike the translator of fiction, he cannot gloss, explain puns or ambiguities or cultural references, nor transcribe words for the sake of local color: his text is dramatic, with emphasis on verbs, rather than descriptive and explanatory. Michael Meyer, in a little noticed article in Twentieth Century Studies, quoting T.Rattigan, states that the spoken word is five times as potent as the written word—what a novelist would say in 30 lines, the playwright must say in five. The arithmetic is faulty and so, I believe, is the sentiment, but it shows that a translation of a play must be concise—it must not be an over-translation.
Meyer makes a distinction between dramatic text and sub-text, the literal meaning and the ‘real point’: i.e. what is implied but not said, the meaning between the lines. He believes that if a person is questioned on a subject about which he has complex feelings, he will reply evasively. Ibsen’s characters say one thing and mean another. The translator must word the sentences in such a way that this, the sub-text, is equally clear in English.
Finally a translator of drama in particular must translate into the modern target language if he wants his characters to ‘live’, bearing in mind that the modern language covers a span of , say, 70 years, and that if one character speaks in a bookish or old-fashioned way in the original, written 500 years ago, he must speak in an equally bookish and old-fashioned way in the translation, but as he would today, therefore with a corresponding time-gap—differences of register, social class, education, temperament in particular must be preserved between one character and another. Thus the dialogue remains dramatic, and though the translator cannot forget the potential spectators, he does not make concessions to them. Given the emphasis on linguistic form, and the subtlety of the SL, his version is inevitably inferior but also simpler and a kind of one-sided introduction to the original.
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Whilst a great play may be translated for the reading public’s enjoyment and for scholarly study as well as for performance on stage, the translator should always assume the latter as his main purpose—there should be no difference between an acting and a reading version—and he should look after readers and scholars only in his notes. Nevertheless, he should where possible amplify cultural metaphors, allusions, proper names, in the text itself, rather than replace the allusion with the sense.
When a play is transferred from the SL to the TL culture it is usually no longer a translation, but an adaptation.
Chapter 17 Translation Criticism
Introduction
(p184)Translation criticism is an essential link between translation theory and its practice; it is also an enjoyable and instructive exercise, particularly if you are criticizing someone else’s translation or, even better, two or more translations of the same text. You soon become aware not only of the large ‘taste area’, but that a text may be differently translated, depending on the preferred method of the translator.
There are various aspects of translation criticism: you can assess the translation by its standard of referential and pragmatic accuracy, but if this is inappropriate and rather futile, because there is so much to ‘correct’, you can consider why the translator has apparently transposed or changed the mood so drastically.
I think there are absolute values of accuracy and economy as well as relative values but these absolute values must be continually reconsidered and rediscussed in various cultural contexts; they cannot be taken for granted. Up to now, translation has mainly followed the prevailing and sometimes the countervailing ideology of the time: thus classicism (balance, noble expression, Pope), romanticism (richness of folk language, local color, Tieck, Schlegel), art for art’s sake (re-creation, Dowson), scientific realism (transference, James Strachey) all to some extent find their reflection in translation. The challenge in translation criticism is to state your own principles categorically, but at the same time to elucidate the translator’s principle, and even the principles he is reacting against (or following). In this sense, good translation criticism is historical, dialectical, Marxist.
(p185)Translation criticism is an essential component in a translation course: firstly, because it painlessly improves your competence as a translator; secondly, because it expands your knowledge and understanding of your own and the foreign language, as well as perhaps of the topic; thirdly, because, in presenting you with options, it will help you to sort out your ideas about translation. As an academic discipline, translation criticism ought to be the keystone of any course in comparative literature, or literature in translation, and a component of any professional translation course with the appropriate text-type as an exercise for criticism and discussion.
A translation may be evaluated by various authorities: (a) the reviser employed by the firm or the translation company; (b) the head of section or of the company; (c) the client; (d) the professional critic of a translation the teacher marking one; and (e) finally by the readership of the published work. Ironically, as Nabokov pointed out, many reviewers of translated books neither know the original work nor the foreign language, and judge a translation on its smoothness, easy flow, readability and absence of interference, which are often false standards. Why should a translation
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not sometimes read like one, when the reader knows that is what it is? Here, however, I am assuming that the evaluation, whether in the form of a critique the translation. What is required at the present time is a reconsideration of many of the translation that have most influence indigenous cultures, of the kind that has been signally performed by Bruno Bettelheim in his criticism of the authorized English version of Freud’s work.
Plan of criticism (p186)
I think any comprehensive criticism of a translation has to cover five topics: (1) a brief analysis of the SL text stressing its intention and its functional aspects; (2) the translator’s interpretation of the SL text’s purpose, his translation method and the translation’s likely readership; (3) a selective but representative detailed comparison of the translation with the original; (4) an evaluation of the translation—(a) in the translator’s term, (b) in the critic’s terms; (5) where appropriate, an assessment of the likely place of the translation in the target language culture or discipline.
Text analysis (p186)
In your analysis of the SL text, you may include a statement of the author’s purpose, that is, the attitude he takes towards the topic; characterization of the readership; an indication of its category and type…
I suggest you do not discuss the author’s life, other works, or general background, unless they are referred to in the text—they may help you to understand the text, but they are not likely to affect how you appreciate or assess the translation
The translator’s purpose (p186)
…see the text from the point of view of this translator… You may decide that the translator has misinterpreted the author by omitting certain sections of the text… The translator may have decided to deliberately antiquate the narrative and/or the dialogue of his version…Normally all translations are under-translation, less particularized than the original, notably in its descriptive passages rather than its dramatic, and in its mental rather than its physical passages; you have to establish whether the translator has attempted to counteract by over-translating, resulting usually in a text somewhat longer than the original.
Comparing the translation with the original (p187)
…consider how the translator has solved the particular problems of the SL text.
…this section of your critique should consist of a discussion of translation problems and not quick recipes for a ‘correct’ or a better translation.
…this section is the heart of the critique; normally it has to be selective since, in principle, any passage that diverges from literal translation in grammar, lexis or ‘marked’ word order constitutes a problem, offers choices, requires you to justify your preferred solution.
The evaluation of the translation (p188)
You assess the referential and pragmatic accuracy of the translation by the translator’s standards. If the translation is not a clear version of the original, you consider first whether the essential ‘invariant’ element of the text which consists usually of its facts or its ideas is adequately represented. However, if the purpose of the text is to sell something, to persuade, to prohibit, to
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express feeling through the facts and the ideas, to please or to instruct, then this purpose is the keystone of the invariance, which changes from text to text; and this is why any general theory of translation invariance is futile, and I am at least little sceptical about making a rule of Tytler’s ‘the complete transcript of the ideas of the original work precedes style and manner of writing’ or Nida’s ‘form is secondary to content’ given that the keystone of invariance may be expressed as much through words of quality as through words of object and action.
After considering whether the translation is successful in its own terms, you evaluate it by your own standards of referential and pragmatic accuracy. You have to avoid criticizing the translator for ignoring translation principles that were not established nor even imagined when he was translating. The main question here is the quality and extent of the semantic deficit in the translation, and whether it is inevitable or due to the translator’s deficiencies. Further, you assess the translation also as a piece of writing, independently of its original: if this is an ‘anonymous’ non-individual text, informative or persuasive, you expect it to be written in a natural manner—neat, elegant and agreeable. If the text is personal an authoritative, you have to assess how well the translator has captured the idiolect of the original, no matter whether it is clichéd, natural or innovative.
The translation’s future (p189)
This is the translation critic’s attempt to ‘place’ the translation in its unfamiliar surroundings.
Marking a translation (p189)
A good translation fulfils its intention; in an informative text, it conveys the facts acceptably; in a vocative text, its success is measurable, at least in theory, and therefore the effectiveness of an advertising agency translator can be shown by results; in an authoritative or an expressive text, form is almost as important as content, there is often a tension between the expressive and the aesthetic functions of language and therefore a merely ‘adequate’ translation may be useful to explain what the text is about, but a good translation has to be ‘distinguished’ and the translator exceptionally sensitive…
Chapter 18 Shorter Items
Words and context
(p193)I am not suggesting you translate isolated words. You translate words that are more or less linguistically, referentially, culturally and subjectively influenced in their meaning, words conditioned by a certain linguistic, referential, cultural and personal context. The linguistic context may be limited to a collocation (90% of the time, it is no more than that); or it may be as large as a sentence in the case of an extended metaphor or a proverb.
Secondly is the referential context. This relates to the topic of the text.
Thirdly, there is the culture context, words related to ways of thinking and behaving within a particular language community, and words which may be cultural or universal denoting a specific material cultural object.
Lastly, there is the individual context, the idiolect of the writer, the fact that we all use some word and collocations in a way peculiar to ourselves.
(p194)All words are more or less context-bound in their meanings.
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Further most words for common objects and actions are hardly contextually bound if they are ‘unmarked
The translation of dialect (p195)
If dialect appears metalingually, i.e. as an example of language, you normally transferred it, translate it into neutral language, and clarify the reasons why it is cited.
However, when dialect appears in fiction or drama, the problem is different…As a translator, your main job is to decide on the functions of the dialect. Usually, this will be: (a) to show slang use of language; (b) to stress social class contrasts; and more rarely (c) to indicate local cultural features…For the English translator, the most important thing is the ability to use and possibly neologise phrasal verbs and nouns.
The translation of eponyms and acronyms (p199)
I define an ‘eponym’ as any word that is identical with or derived from a proper name which gives it a related sense. This definition is operational, and does not tally with the definitions in trhe standard dictionaries, which differ surprisingly…I propose to divide eponyms into three categories, those derived from persons, objects and places.
(p199)Persons: in the first category, eponyms denoting objects usually derive from their inventors or discoverers; in translation, the main difficulty is that they may have an alternative name, the authenticity of the discoverer may be implicitly disputed, or more commonly, replaced by a technical term. In this category, there is a tendency for eponyms to be gradually replaced by descriptive terms.
The main problem in translating eponyms derived from persons in whether the transferred word will be understood.
(p200)Objects
Geographical names: geographical terms are used as eponyms when they have obvious connotations.
Acronyms: normally, you should not recreate your own acronyms, except for this purpose. Secondly, there are many ‘cultural’ reasons why the acronym may or may not be worth transferring, but where the function is more important than the description.
When and how to improve a text
(p204) I begin by reminding you that you have no right to improve an authoritative text, however wayward, clichéd, quirky, jargonized, tautologous, innovative, unnatural its language may be; you have to pursue the same style, making slight concessions for the different stylistic norms of the target language, but assuming on the whole that the personality of the author is more important than any norms of language. Possibly you make more concessions to the readership when translating nonliterary texts than creative writing, since a readership is being specifically addressed. In authoritative texts I assume you make any type of comment only in a separate, signed note.
However, here I am discussing ‘anonymous’ texts: these are mainly informative (but also vocative) texts, where your first loyalty is to the truth or the facts of the matter, and where you assume the
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