Proper Names in Translation: a Relevance-Theoretic Analysis
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PROPER NAMES IN TRANSLATION: A RELEVANCE-THEORETIC ANALYSIS Értekezés a doktori (Ph.D.) fokozat megszerzése érdekében Az angol nyelvészet tudományában Írta: Vermes Albert Péter okleveles matematika-angol szakos középiskolai tanár, valamint általános és alkalmazott nyelvész Készült a Debreceni Egyetem Szinkrón és diakrón nyelvészet doktori programja (Angol nyelvészet alprogramja) keretében Témavezető: Dr. Komlósi László Imre A doktori szigorlati bizottság: elnök: Dr. Laczkó Tibor tagok: Dr. Andor József Dr. Pelyvás Péter A doktori szigorlat időpontja: 1999. december 3. Az értekezés bírálói: Dr. Heltai Pál Dr. Hollósy Béla A bírálóbizottság: elnök: Dr. Hunyadi László tagok: Dr. Bársony Olga Dr. Heltai Pál Dr. Hollósy Béla Dr. Martsa Sándor Az értekezés védésének időpontja: 2002. május 17. Debrecen 2001 Table of contents Acknowledgements............................................. v Abstract.................................................... vi Összefoglaló.............................................. viii Chapter One: Introduction.................................... 1 1.1. The purpose of the study .............................. 1 1.2. The preliminaries ..................................... 2 1.2.1. Tarnóczi (1966) .................................... 3 1.2.2. J. Soltész (1967) .................................. 4 1.2.3. Elman (1986) ....................................... 6 1.2.4. Newmark (1988) ..................................... 6 1.2.5. Schultze (1991) .................................... 7 1.2.6. Heltai and Pinczés (1993) .......................... 8 1.2.7. Klaudy (1994) ...................................... 9 1.2.8. Tellinger (1996) .................................. 11 1.3. The main issues of contention ........................ 11 1.4. The structure of this study .......................... 14 Chapter Two: Approaches to Translation...................... 16 2.1. General questions .................................... 16 2.1.1. The (im)possibility of translation: translation, language and culture ..................................... 16 2.1.2. Translation quality assessment .................... 20 2.1.3. Translation theory ................................ 22 2.1.3.1. What is translation? .......................... 23 2.1.3.2. How does translation happen? .................. 24 2.2. Equivalence-based approaches ......................... 28 2.2.1. Equivalence ....................................... 28 2.2.2. Normative approaches .............................. 30 2.2.3. Descriptive approaches ............................ 34 2.2.4. Problems with the notion of equivalence ........... 36 2.3. Communicative-functional approaches .................. 39 2.3.1. Polysystem theory ................................. 40 2.3.2. Skopos theory ..................................... 42 ii 2.3.3. The theory of translatorial action ................ 43 2.3.4. Problems with the communicative-functional approaches ......................................................... 44 2.4. Conclusions .......................................... 45 Chapter Three: Mind and Communication....................... 47 3.1. The translator’s mind ................................ 47 3.1.1. The case of a linguistic savant ................... 47 3.1.2. Smith and Tsimpli’s theory of the mind ............ 48 3.1.3. Translation ....................................... 52 3.2. Communication: basic definitions ..................... 53 3.3. Coded communication and ostensive-inferential communication ............................................. 58 3.3.1. Coded communication ............................... 58 3.3.2. Ostensive-inferential communication ............... 60 3.3.2.1. Ostension ..................................... 61 3.3.2.2. Inference ..................................... 63 3.3.2.3. Relevance ..................................... 66 3.3.2.4. Context ....................................... 68 3.4. Linguistic communication ............................. 70 3.4.1. Language and inferential communication ............ 70 3.4.2. Descriptive and interpretive language use ......... 72 Chapter Four: Translation as Interpretation................. 76 4.1. Translation as interpretation: a first approximation . 76 4.2. Interpretation ....................................... 77 4.3. Translation as interlingual interpretive use ......... 80 4.3.1. Direct and indirect translation ................... 84 4.3.2. Conditions and corollaries of direct translation .. 86 4.4. Conclusions .......................................... 87 Chapter Five: Proper Names and Translation.................. 90 5.0. Introduction and outline ............................. 90 5.1. What is a proper name? ............................... 92 5.2. Do proper names have senses? ......................... 95 5.3. The meaning of a proper name ........................ 100 5.4. Classification and identification of proper names ... 105 iii 5.5. Problems in translating proper names ................ 107 5.6. Operations for the translator ....................... 112 5.7. Conclusions ......................................... 117 Chapter Six: Proper names in translation. Two case studies. 119 6.1. Case Study 1 ........................................ 119 6.1.1. The hypothesis ................................... 120 6.1.2. Materials and method ............................. 120 6.1.3. Results and discussion ........................... 122 6.1.3.1. Implications of the numerical results ........ 122 6.1.3.2. Discussion of the transferred items .......... 123 6.1.3.3. Discussion of the modified items ............. 125 6.1.3.4. Frequency of use of the four operations with the various classes of names and explanations ............. 130 6.2. Case Study 2 ........................................ 132 6.3. Conclusions ......................................... 136 Chapter Seven: Conclusions................................. 139 7.1. The main results of the study ....................... 139 7.2. Some thoughts on questions of education ............. 142 Appendix 1................................................. 144 Appendix 2................................................. 154 References................................................. 160 Primary Sources............................................ 168 iv Acknowledgements I wish to express my gratitude to all those who have helped me in preparing this dissertation, professionally or otherwise. I am especially thankful for the help that I received from my supervisor, László Imre Komlósi. I would also like to thank Olga Bársony, Pál Heltai, Péter Pelyvás and Csaba Czeglédi for reading my various papers and the first version of the dissertation and for offering helpful comments and suggestions. I also feel indebted to all the people, friends and family, who for years patiently tolerated my preoccupation with this work and encouraged me to continue. But first and foremost, I cannot be grateful enough, for everything, to my parents, to whom this dissertation is dedicated. v Abstract The primary thesis of the dissertation is that, contrary to popular views, the translation of proper names is a non- trivial question, closely related to the problem of the meaning of the proper name. The aim of this study is to show what happens to proper names in the process of translation, particularly from English into Hungarian, and to systematise and, within the frames of a suitable theory, explain the phenomena in question. After a presentation in Chapter One of a selection of the literature on the translation of proper names, followed by a discussion of the main points of the research, Chapter Two offers a detailed overview of the major issues in translation and, through analysing the shortcomings of the various traditional approaches, comes to offer support for the claim that translation is best studied within the frames of a general theory of communication. Chapter Three, in turn, introduces the general cognitive and communicative theoretical framework, mainly on the basis of Anderson (1992) and Sperber and Wilson (1986), in which it becomes possible to explain translation not as an isolated phenomenon but as a special form of communication. Chapter Four proceeds to present, based on Gutt (1991), how translation can be characterised within this general framework as an interpretive form of communication. With the theoretical foundations laid, Chapter Five takes up again the specific issue of how proper names behave in translation. First it examines questions of definition, identification, and meaning. It then moves on to consider what problems proper names pose in translation and proposes a set of translation operations, explained in relevance-theoretic terms. vi The case studies presented in Chapter Six attempt to prove that proper names, like any other expression, behave in a more or less predictable way in translation and that this behaviour can be related not so much with which traditional class the name belongs to as with what it contributes to the communication in the particular context. Chapter Seven sums up the major findings of the study and briefly discusses some implications of the results concerning translator education and the use of translation in teacher training. vii Összefoglaló Az értekezés alapvető állítása az, hogy a például Vendler (1975) által megfogalmazott nézettel szemben a tulajdonnevek fordítása egy nem-triviális kérdés, amely szorosan összefügg a tulajdonnév jelentésének problémájával. A dolgozat célja, hogy bemutassa, mi történik a tulajdonnevekkel a fordítás folyamatában,