Functional Model of Translation - Essay Example

While the functional model for translation provided by House (1977,1997) is mainly based on Hallidayan systematic-functional theory, it also draws eclectically on Prague school ideas (functional style and functional sentence perspective, foregrounding etc.) speech act theory, pragmatics, discourse analysis and corpus based distinctions between spoken and written language. The original model also adapted Crystal and Davy's (1969) register based schema for contrastive stylistic analysis. One of the basic concepts underpinning the model is "translation equivalence". This concept also underpins our everyday understanding of translation i.e. "normal", non-linguistically trained persons think of translation as a text which is some sort of "reproduction" of a text originally produced in another language, with the "reproduction" being of comparable value. Over and above its role as a concept constitutive of translation, "equivalence" is also a fundamental notion for translation criticism. Translations must be conceived as texts, which are doubly bound: on the one hand to its source text and on the other hand to the (potential) recipient's communicative conditions. This double linkage nature is the basis of the so-called "equivalence relation". One of the aims of a theory of translation quality assessment is then to specify and operationalize the equivalence relation by differentiating between a numbers of frameworks of equivalence. For example, extra-linguistic circumstances, connotative and aesthetic values, audience design and last but not least textual and language norms of usage that have emerged from empirical investigations of parallel texts, contrastive rhetoric and contrastive pragmatic and discourse analyses. The notion of equivalence is the conceptual basis of translation and, to quote Catford, "the central problem of translation-practice is that of finding TL (Target Language) equivalents. A central task of translation theory is therefore that of defining the nature and conditions of translation equivalence" (1965:21). However, the concept of equivalence is also the basis of translation criticism, it is the fundamental criterion of translation quality. Equivalence is a relative concept, and has nothing to do with identity. "Absolute equivalence" would be a contradictio in adiecto. Equivalence is a relative concept in several aspects. It is determined by the socio-historical conditions in which the translation act is embedded, and by the range of often-irreconcilable linguistic and contextual factors, among them at least the following; Source and target languages with their specific structural constraints, the extra-linguistic world, and the way it is "cut up" by the two languages resulting in different representation of reality, the original reflecting particular linguistic and stylistic source language and culture; structural features of the original; target language receptor's expectation norms; the translator's comprehension and interpretation of the original and his "creativity"; the translator's explicit and/or implicit theory of translation; translation traditions in the target culture; interpretation of the original by its author. Given these different types of equivalence in translation, it is clear that - true to the nature of translation as a decision process (Levy 1967) - it is necessary for the translator to make choices, i.e., the translator must set up a hierarchy of demands on equivalence which he wants to follow. It is also clear that the many recent polemical attacks against using the concept of "equivalence" in translation theory, because of its imputed vicinity imputed vicinity to "identity" and formal linguistic equivalence, are quite unfounded. Views of equivalence as simply based on formal, syntactic, and lexical similarities alone have been criticized for a long time- not at least because it has long been recognized that any two linguistic items in two different languages are multiply ambiguous. Further, purely formal definitions of equivalence have long been revealed as deficient in that they cannot explain appropriate use in communicative performance. This is why functional, pragmatic equivalences has been a concept accepted in contrastive linguistics for a long time, and it is this type of equivalence which is most relevant for translation. It is consequently used in the functional-pragmatic model where it is related to the preservation of "meaning" across to different languages and cultures. Three aspects of that "meaning" are particularly important for translation: a semantic, a pragmatic and textual aspect, and translation is viewed as the replacement of a text in the source language by a semantically and pragmatically equivalent text in the target language. An adequate translation is thus a pragmatically and semantically equivalent one. As a first requirement for this equivalence, it is posited that a translation text has a function equivalent to that of its original. The use of the concept of "function" presupposes that there are elements in a text which, given appropriate tools, can reveal that text's function. The use of the concept of function is here not to be equated with "functions of language"- different language functions clearly always co-exists inside any text, and a simple equation of language function with textual function /textual type is overtly simplistic. Rather a text's function- consisting of an ideational and an interpersonal functional component- is defined pragmatically as the application or use of the text in a particular context of situation, the basic idea being that "text" and "context of situation" are not viewed as separate entities, rather the context of situation in which the text unfolds "is encapsulated in the text through a systematic relationship between the social environment on the one hand and the functional organization of the language on the other" (Halliday 1989). This means that the text must be referred to the particular situation enveloping it and for this a way must be found for breaking down the broad notion of "context of situation" into manageable parts, i.e., particular features of the context of situation or "situational dimensions. Inside systematic- functionalists linguistics, may deferent systems have been suggested featuring situational dimensions as abstract components of the context of situation, as e.g. Crystal and Davy's (1969) scheme which was, in fact the system adopted and adapted as the basis for the original eclectic model of translation quality assessment by House (1977,1981). The original assessment model used three dimensions characterizing the text's author according to her/his temporal, geographical and social provenance and five dimensions of language use elaborating, for instance, on the text's topic and social activity and on the interaction of, and relationship between, author and recipients in terms of social role relationship, social attitude, degree of participant involvement and morality. The operation of the model involved initially an analysis of the original according to this set of situational dimensions for which linguistic correlates are established. The linguistic correlates of the situational dimensions are the means with which the textual function is released. i.e., the textual function is the result of a linguistic- pragmatic analysis along the dimensions with each dimension contributing to the two functional components, the ideational and the interpersonal, in characteristic fashion. Opening up the text with these dimensions yields a specific textual profile, which characterizes its function, which is then taken as the individual textual norm against which the translation is measured. The degree to which the textual profile and function of the translation (as derived from an analogous analysis) match the profile and function of the original is the degree to which the translation is adequate in quality. The set of situational dimensions is thus a kind of "tertium comparaitonis", with the model enabling a detailed linguistic - textual analysis by distinguishing for each individual dimension lexicon, syntactic and textual means of releasing certain features of the context of situation. In evaluating the relative match between original and translation, a distinction is made between "dimensional mismatches" And "Non-dimensional mismatches". Dimensional mismatches are pragmatic errors that have to do with language use; non-dimensional mismatches are mismatches in the denotative meanings of original and translation elements and breaches of the target language system at various levels. The final qualitative judgment of the translation consists then of a listing of both types of errors and of a statement of the relative match of the two functional components. House (1981, 1997) proposes a model based on pragmatic theories of language use; this model provides for the analysis of the linguistic-situational particularities of source and target texts, a comparison of the two texts and the resultant assessment of their relative match. The basic requirement for equivalence of original and translation in this model is that the translation should have a function (consisting of an ideational and an interpersonal functional component, in the Hallidayan sense), which is equivalent to that of the original. The translation should also employ equivalent pragmatic means for achieving that function. The operation of the model involves initially an analysis of the original according to a set of situational dimensions, for which linguistic correlates are established. The resulting textual profile of the original characterizes its function, which is then taken as the norm against which the translation is measured; the degree to which the textual profile and function of the translation (as derived from an analogous analysis) match the profile and function of the original is the degree to which the translation is adequate in quality. In evaluating the relative match between original and translation, a distinction is made between dimensional mismatches and non-dimensional mismatches. Dimensional mismatches are pragmatic errors that have to do with language users and language use; non-dimensional mismatches are mismatches in the denotative meanings of original and translation elements and breaches of the target language system at various levels. The final qualitative judgment of the translation consists then of both types of errors and of a statement of the relative match of the two functional components. The model has been developed based on contrastive German-English discourse analyses (House 1997). Empirical work with the model has resulted in a distinction between two basic types of translation, overt translation and covert translation. An overt translation is required whenever the source text is heavily dependent on the source culture and has independent status within it; a convert translation is required when neither condition holds, i.e. when the source text is not source culture specific. Functional equivalence is only possible in covert translation, which is more difficult than overt translation because differences in the cultural presuppositions of the source and the target language communities may require the translator to apply a cultural filter, i.e. a set of cross-cultural dimensions along which members of the two cultures differ in socio-cultural predispositions and communicative preferences. This also makes evaluation difficult because it involves assessing the quality of the cultural filters introduced in translation. Insights into what goes on in translators' heads can be used both to supplement translation evaluation and to validate hypotheses about the cross-cultural dimensions that characterize cultural filters. Such introspective studies of the translational process are potentially useful in that translators indicate how and why they choose certain options or translational strategies, thus making the decision path in the process of translation more transparent while translation quality assessment is obviously and necessarily product-based, such process-oriented work is important as it can shed light onto the mysterious cause-and -effect chain in translation behavior. Future work on translation quality assessment needs to develop beyond subjective, one sided or dogmatic judgments by positioning inter-subjectively verifiable evaluative criteria based on large-scale empirical studies. Large corpora of translations from and into many different languages must be analyzed in order to formulate hypotheses about why, how and to what degree one translation is better than other. Unlike Brown and Levinson's 'face-saving' approach, Juliane House treats both universal and varying aspects of politeness. In discussing politeness equivalence, she distinguishes overt from cover translation. The former, co activating the original frame and discourse world, tends to be appropriate when the original is source culture linked, has independent status in the source language community and operates like a quotation. In the covert mode, the translator seeks an equivalent speech event without co-activating the original discourse world, no easy task when working between languages such as Germen and English, which use politeness very differently. Starting from Brown and Levinson's notion of politeness, Basil Hatim studies text politeness within socio-textual practice, which subsumes expressions of attitude, upholding genre conventions and maintaining rhetorical purposes through actual texts. He suggests that a translator's unjustified intervention may produce undue 'domestication' of a text, rather than respecting its 'foreignness'. Using varied examples, he detects a tendency in Western translators to impose order (connectors etc.) on seemingly chaotic texts and shows that it may be risky to tamper with the politeness of, rather than merely in, source texts. The mechanisms available to signal the distinction between theme or information already known to readers and rheme or new information vary from language to language. Frank Knowles shows how inflection, rather than word order, largely fulfills this function in Russian. A translator then has to decide how to convey the theme-rheme structure of an original text using whatever means the target language can offer. A 'good fit' requires replication of the original theme-rheme structure, communicative value, message, and thrust, while respecting the target language's grammar and style. Yet, just as willingness to risk deviance may mark a good writer, so also it may mark a good translator. Presuppositions, as background assumptions built into utterance and allowing them to make sense, require that a reader or translator be able to link such utterance to their context. Using mostly French and Germen examples, Peter Fawcett points to collocation, or the probability that words will co-occur, and connotation, or secondary meaning, as posing special difficulties for translation, forcing the translator to decide whether, or to what extent, the target audience may need hints as to what is pre-supposed rather than explicitly conveyed in the original. A translator must should re-cerate the original message using a deictic perspective appropriate to the target language and avoiding undue influence of the original patterns. Bill Richardson argues, using Spanish and English texts, that seeking equivalent pragmatic effect when the context and participants of the original situation are no longer present involves constructing a new text with its own world- view and its own relations with other sets of worlds. On a more detailed level, Palma Zlateva chooses pragmatic substitution and reference to show how non-coincidence across languages on such a specific point may make translational equivalence difficult to achieve. Analyzing the non-structural use of deictic pro-forms (English this/that, Russian eto, Bulgarian takova) to avoid explicitness or lengthy explanation, as in 'she slapped him in the face a good hard one', she finds no sharp boundary between pragmatic reference/substitution, which is a universal feature of language communication, and structural substitution which she ascribe to the analytic nature of English and (to some extend) Bulgarian, in contrast with Russian. Ian Mason asks what a translator should do when faced with suppressed discourse connectives as an interactive feature in a counter-argumentive source text. Since the markets argumentative opposition ('of course.',' true') are unexpressed, should the reader be left to infer what the relationship is between the different parts of the text by means of a Grecian-type implicature or should this be spelled out in the translation Using English translations from French, he discusses the informative markednesss and politeness, which motivates such an ellipsis and concludes that explication should not be undertaken automatically. Hedges, as devices, which increase or decrease fuzziness are much used in political texts in order to lessen a politician's commitments to the truth of a proposition or to mitigate possible negative effects on an audience. Adopting Pinkal's for - point classification, Christina Schaffner concentrates on 'specifying hedges' ('real', 'true', 'proper'), which attenuate indeterminateness. Asking whether a reader will be able to identify their pragmatic function e.g. the implication that on opponent is being criticized, she examines Germen and English translations in which they have been deleted, added, or changed. In comparing a passage from Racine's Andromaque (1667) with three English versions, Ian Higgins demonstrates how certain linguistic features, notably word order, caesura, rhyme and mute e heard as a schwa, contribute to the illocutionary force of the written /spoken text. Since the original verse has major illocutionary potential part of the translator's task is to ensure that this is realized also in the translation and ways must be found to stimulate its effects in readers of English a language which thematises and emphasizes mainly through intonation, unlike French, where Grammatical devices tend to fulfill these functions. Broadly speaking, perlocutionary effects are the thoughts, feelings, and actions that result from reading a text. Leo Hickey suggests that in some (e.g. legal) texts, clear signaling that a particular text is, infact, a translation may produce similar effects with little need to explain the realities mentioned in the original, in others (literary), little such signaling and little explanation may be necessary, while in yet others (humorous), recontextualisation, or placing the text in a totally new context, may be required in order to stimulate in a reader effects equivalent to those stimulated by the original. In English texts, the author can refer to a male or female as a person. In German or Spanish, the translator must use the marked form Verfasserin or autora, if the author is a woman. How far from the view of a book as sacrosanct is the Chinese attitude towards ching, which is usually translated, without modification, as "classic" and which is often assumed Chinese scripture. Inadequacies in the Lin-yu were routinely recognized (Henderson, 184-186); some sung and Ming scholars argued that the neo-Confucians had even improved on the ideas of Mencius (Henderson, 83). Nor were these ching considered whole and coherent, from which not a word should be deleted, nor any word added: they were indeed, collections of ancient materials, mostly oral, almost miscellaneously and indiscriminately collected: "in the Han era", Henderson reports, there was a tendency to designate all Pre-Han literature as 'ching', few other works designated as classics carried nearly as much weight" as those which later commentators deemed essential. Indeed the word ching, which refers to writing on silk and bamboo, is wrongly translated as "scripture" or even as "classic" for it is a generic label with no evaluative force. There were, in other words, ching, which we would not regard as classics, as well as ching, which are indisputable classics. In this connection, it is hard to speak meaningfully of a Chinese "canon" in the same sense as the western canon. In the west "canon" is variously defined as "rule, law, decree of the church"; "a general rule of any subject"; " A list of books of the bible accepted by the Christian Church as genuine and inspired." If we read canon in this ecclesiastical, institutional sense, there are no "canons" in the Chinese tradition: Buddhism for example, does not label certain sutras inspired and others uninspired, some genuine or others not; nor are the texts of Taoism considered "canonical" for they are in the primary resource - merely included in the Tao Tsang, the "Taoist Repository". The Buddhist classics are preserved in various compilations: one the Ta Cheng Tsang, is divided into 1,460 sections, with 4,225 books! Surely, a "canon" with thousands of titles is more like a repository than an anthology of recommended works (Eoyang, 1985). The mythology of the book, and of the bible as canonical, has persuaded translators to believe that what they are translating is a text rather than a tradition: too many translators have concentrated on creating a text when rendering an original event as they neglect the equally important task of creating an audience. For hermeneutics teaches us that meaning cannot exists without the context of a dialectical, "interactive" commentarial tradition. To merely translate the text is to do what the Talmud expressly prohibited: "Words that are in writing- you may not say them vocally, and vocal words- you may not say them in writing" (Faur, 135). (The need for these injunctions might be clearer for the Hebrew in the Torah, where only the consonants are recorded.) For the text is an inadequate rendering of what is said, it doesn't convey the logos in its original sense: it does not preserve "what is said," but only the traces and the dim recollection of what was said. In the impulse to preserve the original in translation, the view of the original as text binds as to a distorted view of meaning as fixed and inflexible. What it neglects is the chimerical nature of meaning, as well as its inherent ambivalence. In surveying the history of the theory of translation, one is forced to the conclusion that, before modern insights into the nature and structure of languages there is no theory of translation to speak of. What passes for theories are: opinions on the characteristics of individual languages the appropriateness of translating elite discourse into vulgar tongues; the native or nonnative quality of the diction in any particular version; the interminable debate on literal versus free translation. In short, what has passed for theory is focused on the pragmatics or the techniques of translation (Kelly 1979). Louis Kelly puts the case more succinctly: "Few writers have presented a universally applicable theory of translation". In the history and theory of literature translation has not been a subject of the first importance. It has figured marginally, if at all. References Catford, John C. 1965. A linguistic theory of translation, Oxford University Press, Oxford. D. Crystal and D. Davy, 1969. Investigating English Style, Longman, London. Eugene Eoyang, 1995. 'Speaking in tongues: Translating Chinese Literature. Indiana University Press.. Halliday, M.A.K. (1989) Spoken and Written Language, Oxford University Press. Henderson, John B. 1991. Scripture, Canon and commentary: A Comparison of Confucian and Western Exegesis. Princeton University Press, Princeton. House, Juliane. 1977. A model for translation Quality Assessment, Gunter Narr, Tubingen. House, Juliane. 1997. A model for translation Quality Assessment. Gunter Narr , Tubingen. Ian Higgins, 1994. A modest proposal, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Kelly, Louis. 1979. The True Interpreter: A History of Translation Theory and Practice in the West. St. Martins Press. New York Levy. J., 1967. Translation as a decision making process, Mounton , Hauge. Read More