Techniques of translation as means of meaning conveyance in intercultural

3.2 Techniques of translation as means of meaning conveyance in intercultural communication

A necessary step for the aim of carrying out analyses in Chapter 4, is now the presentation of definitions and examples of the most often used translation techniques. The richest source of them seems Vinay and Darbelnet (1958), Newmark (1988), Malone (1988), Baker (1992), Delisle (1999) and Kwieciński (2001), to whom we will refer, repeating their definitions and examples. Even if we are not expecting to find examples of the use of any particular technique characterized here, they are necessary to be mentioned as a theoretical potential of translations.

Vinay and Darbelnet proposed seven methods or procedures for a start, although according to the authors, they are numerous (Vinay and Darbelnet 1958: 46-57). The procedures are called: borrowing, calque. literal translation, transposition, modulation, equivalence, adaptation. Vinay and Darbelnet divide translation into two types – direct and oblique, which is adequate to the most general classification into literal and free translation.

These two types of translation are also the initial decisions of a translator, applied in advance to the entire text, and thus should be considered strategies being essential when some overall attitude to translation is undertaken or assessed.

When it comes to techniques, or procedures they are applied whenever a phenomenon named by Vinay and Darbelnet lacunae (gaps) occurs in the TL – a problem to express the target meaning directly comes out, e.g. if there is a need to find an equivalent for a concept which does not exist in the TL, a name for a new technological process etc. (Vinay and Darbelnet 1958: 10; 1958/1995: 129).

The authors claim that borrowings are the words directly transferred from one language to another without, or with minor changes and are introduced into the TT in order to

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add „the flavour of the SL culture” – as in the case of ‘tequila’, ‘tortillas’, or if in the TL an appropriate equivalent does not exist (Vinay and Darbelnet 1958/1995: 129)

The authors claim that in the case of older, well-established borrowings we no longer speak of the borrowed words, but rather naturalisations, as they are so widely used in the TL lexicon, e.g. ‘menu’, ‘déjà vu’, ‘rendez-vous’ etc.

A calque, also called loan translation, is a special kind of borrowing via which a SL expression is translated into TL literally, element by element, e.g. ‘fin de semaine’ - ‘week-end’. It might be applied to word phrases, names of organisations etc., also sentences, e.g. ‘Le mariage est une association à cinquante—cinquante.’ - ‘Matrimony is a fifty–fifty association.’ Calques borrow structures and meanings of SL expressions, or idioms, whereas borrowings - only lexical layer (Vinay and Darbelnet 1958: 6; 1958/1995: 129).

Literal or word-for-word translation is a direct transfer of the SL text into the TL, according to its lexical and grammatical rules, as in a pair of sentences: ‘He works in the house now’ and ‘Il travaile dans la maison maintenant’ (Vinay and Darbelnet 1958/1995:

130). Literal, or close translation, may concern single words, phrases e.g. ‘un beau jardin’ -

‘a beautiful garden’, ‘fair un discours’ - ‘make a speech’, or a simple or complex sentence, such as ‘When that was done’ - ‘Quand cela fut fait’, or ‘The man was in the street’ -

‘L’homme était dans la rue’. As Vinay and Darbelnet claim: “It is most common when translating between two languages of the same family (e.g. between French and Italian), and even more so when they also share the same culture” (Vinay and Darbelnet 1958/1995: 130).

The three procedures described above – a borrowing, calque, literal translation, represent the category of direct translation. If the translator thinks there are no ways to render meanings by the use of them, the oblique methods come at hand. The cases in which the translator must avoid using direct translation procedures and refer to the oblique ones take place when the direct TL equivalents:

- give an inadequate meaning, - have no meaning,

- are structurally impossible, - do not exist,

- they do exist, but their register is different (Vinay and Darbelnet 1958/1995: 131).

One of such oblique procedures is transposition. This is a procedure in which the translator replaces one class of words with another, without changing the meaning of the whole message. It consists in the change of grammatical category (Vinay and Darbelnet 1958:

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16), e.g. instead of stating: ‘Il a annoncé qu’il reviendrait’ the structure ‘Il a annoncé son retour’ might be used, in which a verbal structure is changed into a nominal one. The first of the expressions will be referred to as base expression, the second – as transposed expression.

There are two different types of transposition:

- obligatory,

- and optional (Vinay and Darbelnet 1958/1995: 132), depending on the objectively existing linguistic conditions.

The next procedure of the oblique translation is modulation. It is a variation of the SL form of the message obtained through a change of a viewpoint, perspective, or a category of thought, e.g. by changing a double negation into a positive sentence, an abstract concept into concrete, a cause into effect etc.In this kind of procedure a literal translation might exist but it is unsuitable, unidiomatic or awkward in the TL. Within this technique we distinguish between free or optional modulations , e.g. ‘It is not difficult to show’ translated as ‘Il est facile de demontré’, and those that are fixed or obligatory, the example of which would be the change from ‘The time when’ into Le moment où’ (Vinay, Darbelnet 1958: 11; 1958/1995:

133).

Equivalence, according to Vinay’a and Darbelnet, consists in construing two totally different texts within structural and stylistic means to represent two identical situations. The differences are of syntagmatic nature and affect the whole information. As a result, most cases of equivalence are based on the use of idioms, clichés, proverbs, nominal or adjectival phrases, etc. Proverbs make good examples of equivalences, like in the case of e.g.: ‘Il pleut à seaux/des cordes’ with its English version ‘It is raining cats and dogs’, or ‘Like a bull in a china shop’ translated as ‘Comme un chien dans un jeu de quilles’ in French. (Vinay and Darbelnet 1958/1995: 134).

The last of the seven procedures introduced by Vinay and Darbelnet is adaptation. The authors refer to it as “an extreme limit of translation”, applied when the situation described in the SL is unknown in the TL culture. In such cases the translator has to create a new situation within the translation that may be regarded as equivalent (Vinay and Darbelnet 1958: 4-5).

Adaptation can be referred to as a special case of equivalence then – a situational equivalence.

Adaptation influences not only syntax but the way messages evolve. According to the authors of this classification of techniques, adaptations are typical means in the translation of book and film titles e.g.: ‘Trois hommes et un couffin’ rendered as ‘Three men and a baby’ (a film

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title), or ‘Le grand Meaulnes’ having its English version ‘The Wanderer’ (a book title) (Vinay and Darbelnet 1958/1995: 135).

The authors claim that these seven procedures are applied on three levels of expression to a different degree: lexical, syntactic and a message plane (Vinay and Darbelnet 1958/1995:

136).

There are also other techniques, elicited based on other scholars’ classifications. The target of this dissertation, which is proving the existence of manipulative practices in translations in the communist Poland due to the censorship apparatus control, makes us draw up a list of defined procedures with examples for the aim of facilitating the reference to them needed in Chapter 4. Our intention is to include in the subsequent list first of all the most commonly used techniques, but with special dedication to the ones incorporating elements of deliberate modification that we expect to relate to the character of the analytical corpus we have gathered. The list of commonly utilized techniques, unavoidable in the majority of translations, should comprise (the procedures mentioned above also included):

- WORD-FOR-WORD TRANSLATION (CLOSE TRANSLATION) – characterized above;

- LITERAL TRANSLATION (CLOSE TRANSLATION), also included in the above description;

- THROUGH-TRANSLATION (CALQUE, LOAN TRANSLATION), described above, or as Delisle claims - the transfer of a SL word or expression into the TT using a literal translation of its component elements, e.g. ‘skyscraper’ - ‘gratte-ciel’ (Delisle 1999: 16), or ‘compliments de la saison’ - ‘compliments of the season’, ‘marriage de convenance’ - ‘marriage of convenience’ (Newmark 1988: 84);

- TRANSFERENCE, (BORROWING) (loan word, transcription; transliteration), as mentioned above – consistent in transferring a SL word to a TL, either in the situation of the lack of a lexicalized correspondence, or for stylistic or rhetorical reasons, e.g.

‘noblesse oblige’, proper names, names of people (except the Pope and royals),names of magazines and newspapers, e.g. “The Times”, titles of untranslated literary works, films, names of companies and institutions with no recognised translations, street names, addresses, etc. (Newmark 1988: 81);

- NATURALISTATION (DIRECT TRANSFER), being adaptation of a SL word first to the normal pronunciation, then - morphology of the TL, e.g. in French –

‘thatchérisme’ (Newmark 1988: 82);

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- NOMINALIZATION (or deverbalization), which is marked by the use of verb-related information through verbal nouns;

The procedures giving a translator an opportunity to manipulate would be mostly:

- MODULATION, as indicated in the connection with Vinay and Darbelnet classification, understood as variation through change of viewpoint, perspective, and very often category of thought, e.g. ‘Il n’a pas hésité’ - ‘He acted at once’;

- EQUIVALENCE, as defined above - substitution of a TL statement for a SL statement which accounts for the same situation, even though there is no formal or semantic correspondence, but being different from modulation in that it belongs to the semantic level, not to the lexical level; it is an extreme case of modulation, e.g. ‘the story so far’ - ‘Résumé des chapitres précédents’ (Vinay and Darbelnet 1958: 8-9);

- ADAPTATION, CULTURAL EQUIVALENT (Newmark 1988: 82-83), characterized in the classification of Vinay and Darbelnet so far;

- DESCRIPTIVE EQUIVALENT (FUNCTIONAL EQUIVALENT), aimed at neutralising or generalising a SL cultural word by using a description, e.g. ‘Samurai’ -

‘Japanese aristocracy from the eleventh to the nineteenth century’ (Newmark 1988:

83-84);

- COMPENSATION, taking place when some loss of meaning, sound-effect, metaphor or pragmatic effect in one part of a sentence is compensated in another part (Newmark 1988: 90), e.g. the French use of the pronoun ‘tu’ to express familiarity between two people (as opposed to formal ‘vous’) could correspond in English to the use of a first name or nickname;

- PARAPHRASE, standing for amplification or explanation of the meaning of a segment of the text by the one that has the equivalent sense (Newmark 1988: 90;

Delisle 1999: 61);

- OMISSION, used to concentrate or suppress elements in the TT;

- EXPLICITATION, used to introduce precise details into the TT for clarification;

- IMPLICITATION, being a translation procedure achieved by not explicitly stating information from the ST in the TT when it is evident from the context or the described situation and can be easily inferred by a speaker of the TL;

- NOTES, ADDITIONS, GLOSSES, namely supplying additional information in the form of footnotes, endnotes, glossaries at the end of the text, or within the text, e.g.

‘Debrecen’ - ‘the city of Debrecen, in West Hungary’;

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- TRANSLATION LABEL, defined as “a provisional translation, usually of a new institutional term, which should be made in inverted commas, which can later be discreetly withdrawn”. It could be done through literal translation, thus: ‘heritage language’ - ‘Erbschaftssprache’, ‘langue d’héritage’ (Newmark 1988: 90);

- SYNONYMY, consistent in the use of a near TL equivalent to an SL word in a context. This procedure is used with words that are not important (adjectives, adverbs of quality), when there is no clear one-to-one equivalent and literal translation is impossible, e.g. ‘Personne gentile’ > ‘kind person’, or ‘Conte piquant’ - ‘racy story’(Newmark 1988: 84) ;

- TRANSPOSITION, SHIFT (Catford), RECATEGORIZATION (Delisle), being a change in the grammar from SL to TL (singular to plural, position of an adjective, modification of the word class or part of speech), e.g. ‘Three ways to make life easier’

- ‘Trois façons de se simplifier la vie’ (SL infinitival clause - TL genitive case of a noun) (Delisle 1999: 65), or ‘d’une importance exceptionnelle’ - ‘exceptionally large’

(SL adj. + adjectival noun - TL adverb + adjective) (Newmark 1988: 85-86);

- ADDITION/DELETION, being adequate to amplification and reduction, when concerning clauses or phrases the procedures are based on an increase, or decrease of the semantic material, in contrast with explicitation/implicitation (diffusion/condensation), where a quantitative change is not accompanied by substantial semantic losses/gains (van Leuven-Zwart 1989: 168);

- RECRESCENCE (AMPLIFICATION VS. REDUCTION), in the case of an amplification - a procedure based on anticipating gaps in the knowledge of the target audience “providing the target audience with extra explicit information not required by the source audience” (Malone 1988: 41). Glossing, or compensatory amplification is a subclass of amplification. When reduction is taken into consideration, it is a case in which the source information is partially omitted from the TL (Malone 1988: 17), also in order to facilitate the process of understanding (Malone 1988: 47), or it is reduced to generalisations – e.g. using a superordinate;

- CONCENTRATION (REDUCTION), a reversed case compared with explication, e.g.

‘science linguistique’ - ‘linguistics’ (Newmark 1988: 90);

- DIFFUSION, taking place when “instances of the smooth (covert) unpacking of the semantic traits of a semantically complex SL element into a longer TL phrase” occur (Kwieciński 2001: 138). It is a procedure which can “involve structural manipulation

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of approximately the same semantic material, but the fact of promoting an implicit semantic feature to word level certainly involves changes in the saliency of the item and therefore is not semantically indifferent” (Kwieciński 2001: 143);

- CONDENSATION, reversed to diffusion, takes place when “a source element or construction corresponds to a tighter or more compact target counterpart” (Malone 1988: 59);

- RECASTING, based on modifying the order of the units in a ST to conform to the syntactic or idiomatic constraints of the TT;

- REORDERING, being a procedure obtained when “one or more target elements appear in a position different from that of the source text” (Malone 1988: 65), which is often automatic at morphological level and lower syntactic level. For higher level syntactic elements it might be used to create special translational effects, e.g. to optimize comprehension (Malone 1988: 66-67), or manipulate;

- SUBSTITUTION, is defined as a procedure which “involves selection of a TL element differing from its source counterpart in some plerematic aspect, e.g.

semantically or syntactically” (Malone 1988: 78);

- SUPERORDINATE, using a word which denotes a higher level class (Baker 1992:

26-28);

- ATTENUATION, characterized as ”a replacement, on ideological grounds, of something ‘too strong’ or in any way unacceptable, by something ‘softer’, more adequate to target pole written tradition or to what could, in theory, be expected by readers.” (Aixela 1996: 64);

The procedures described above, are not aimed to exhaust the list of ever proposed translation techniques, but to suffice for our reference to observable manipulative operations in the corpus. Even if no examples of these techniques will be found in the corpus analyses, they have to be systemized to cast light on the opportunities at hand while it comes to manipulate the meaning in this special kind of communication translation constitutes.