The Book Is Structured in Five Parts, Dedicated To

A Companion to Translation

The book is structured in five parts, dedicated to:

 fundamental elements

1  the perception of the (proto-)text by the translator

 the production of the (meta-)text by the translator

 the tools for the translator

 the reception of a translation by the receiving culture.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. About Translation

2 1.1 The International Standard for Translation

Foreign Language Learning and Translation

Reading, Writing and Translation

Translation as Communication

Language, Culture and Translation

Translatability

Translation Criteria

Translation Process

Translator’s Competence

Translation Studies

II. Textual Perception

2.1 Intuition, Experience and Generalization

2.2 Collection of Information

2.3 Textual Analysis

2.4 Assimilation and Manipulation

III. Textual Production

3.1 Text Production and Reproduction

3.2 Translation Units

3.3 Fidelity Versus Adaptation

3.4 Equivalence

3.5 Literal & Free Translation

3.6 Peculiarities in translation

3.7 Translator’s Notes

3 3.8 Style and Translation

3.9 The Issue of Realia

3.10 Translation Loss

IV. Translator’s Resources

I. About Translation

1.1 The International Standard ISO 2384

4 The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) is a worldwide organization which deals with the development of standardization for the presentation of services and documents in order to uniform the criteria with which they are produced in all fields. Standardization encourages international exchanges because internationally recognized standards among partners and associates provide precise parameters when exchanging information or documents. The ISO, based in Geneva, is a federation of national standards institutes, which, other than contributing to the definition of international standards, helps to develop any specific national versions. As far as translations are concerned, Great Britain and the United States relate to 2384 ISO published in 1977, and approved by twenty-four countries. The title of this standard is Documentation - Presentation of translations and it essentially deals with two problems: i)In what measure can a translation be considered a substitute to the original document ii)In what measure must it be possible to identify the original document In order to learn practical translation techniques, we think it necessary to start off by explaining the definitions and the official standards that regulate the work of the translator, mostly because, when exploring translations in everyday use, we are often surprised at what we find: these standards are frequently disregarded, mainly because the person in charge of publishing the translation may, as a matter of fact, not be familiar with them at all. However it is important to say that the standard that is about to be illustrated will not be the only direction in which this course is going: the indications given are not always restricting and are not always valid for all translations. The 2384 ISO standard is valid for the complete, partial, or abridged translation of documents but it is not valid for the translation of abstracts, i.e. the short summaries that sometimes appear as an introduction to articles and that are written in the most popular languages worldwide, such as English or French. Clause four of this standard lists the essential and complementary (compulsory and noncompulsory) elements in translations, distinguishing four different kinds of publications: books, periodicals, articles, and patents. 1)BOOKS

As far as translated books or separately issued publications are concerned, it is essential to specify the following: ◆Full name of the author/s of the original text, specifying his/her/their role: whether it is an individual author or a corporate one (firm or company for example), chief editor, scientific editor; ◆Title of the text which has been translated or the translation of the original title;

5 ◆Kind of translation which has been made: if complete, partial or abridged (in the latter two cases it is necessary to specify exactly what has been translated and what has been omitted); ◆Organization responsible for the translation, name of the translator or translators and of the chief editor, or of the scientific editor, or publisher of the translation; ◆Publisher, place, and date. For unpublished translations, address of persons responsible for the translation; ◆International Standard Book Number (ISBN); this number is attributed to every non-periodical publication and contains information on the publishing country, the publisher and the title. ◆Details on the exclusive copyrights of the translation It is on the other hand complementary to specify: ◆Language of the translation ◆Translation of the title of the series or collection As far as the information regarding the original document is concerned, it is essential to specify: ◆Title in the original language; ◆Place and date of publication in the original language; ◆Number of the edition (first, second, etc.); ◆Publisher; ◆Original language; ◆ISBN. It is complementary to specify the title of the series or collection and the number of the original document of the series. The 2384 ISO Standard contemplates an eventuality that rarely occurs: that is, that the translation is not a direct one (from Arabic into the target language for example), but that it goes through a third intermediate language (from Arabic into French and then from French into the target language as was the case for many years for the well known text A Thousand and One Nights. For this reason, in many countries we are still used to calling the main character Shéhérazade as in French and not Shahrazàd as in Arabic). In the case of an intermediate translation it is essential to specify: ◆Title; ◆Date and place of publication; ◆Number of the edition; ◆Intermediate language; ◆ISBN number.

2)PERIODICALS

By periodical we mean any publication, which is subject to any kind of recurrence.

6 The essential elements of information related to the translation of a periodical are: · Title in the language of the translation; · Type of translation which has been made: if complete, partial or abridged (in the latter two cases it is necessary to specify what has been translated and what has been omitted); · Organization responsible for the translation: person, company, editor or publisher; · Date of publication and specification of the volume translated, number, part translated, and pagination; · Publisher; · Key title (established by the ISDS, International Serials Data Systems) and the ISSN, International Standard Serial Number, the ISBN equivalent for periodicals

It is complementary to specify: · Language of the translation; · Place and date of publication of the translation; · Information as to how to obtain the translation (identification number, date, price).

As regards the original version of the document, it is on the other hand essential to specify: · Title of the periodical in its original language; · Date of publication, specification of the volume, issue and part translated and other bibliographical elements (if different from those in the translation); · Language of the original document; · After the pagination of the translation the pagination of the original document in brackets; · Key title and ISSN number.

It is complementary to specify the place of publication, but on the other hand it is necessary to do so, if it is considered essential in order to identify the periodical.

CONTRIBUTIONS or ARTICLES

When a book is made up of miscellaneous texts by different authors, each text is called a «contribution», while an «article» is a contribution which appears on a periodical.

When the translation of an article is published, it is essential to point out some important elements:

7 · Full name of author/s specifying their role: whether it is an individual or corporate author (firm or company for example) chief editor, scientific editor; · Translation of the title of the article; · Type of translation: complete, partial or abridged (in the latter two cases it is necessary to specify which parts have been translated and which have been omitted); · Organization responsible for the translation, full name of the translator/s, of the chief editor, scientific editor or publisher of the translation; · Information as to how to obtain the translation (identification number, date, price).

It is on the other hand complementary to specify: · Language of the translation; · Place and date of the translation; · If the translation has not been taken from periodicals, it is necessary to specify the type of document/s it has been taken from; · It is necessary to specify if the translation is a preprint.

It is always essential to specify certain elements relating to the original when the translation of a contribution or an article is published: · Title of the article in the original language; · Title of the periodical in the original language; · Year of publication, number of the volume, issue, part, pagination and any bibliographic details; · ISSN or ISBN.

It is on the other hand complementary to specify the place and date of the original document, although it is necessary to do so in order to identify the periodical.

PATENTS and SIMILAR DOCUMENTS

When the translation of a patent is published, it is essential to specify certain elements of the translation: · Type of document; · Country of publication; · Identification number; · Names of the potential applicants or grantees, individuals or corporate; · Translation of the title.

There are also certain other elements of the original that must be specified: · Title of the document; · Language of the original document.

8 It is complementary to specify: · Number, date, and country of the applicant; · Number and date of filing (registration); · Number and date of publication; · Date of patent; · Language of translation; · Date of publication of the translation.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

International Organization for Standardization (ISO), Documentation - Presentation of translations, Genève, © 1977. http://www.iso.ch http://www.unicei.it 2 - The International Standard ISO 2384 - Part Two Having completed the part of standard 2384 concerning the essential elements in translations, the rest of the standard is mostly about presentation.

RESPECTING THE STRUCTURE OF THE ORIGINAL

Paragraphs, their numbering if present (the standard in this clause obviously refers to technical texts and/or contracts etc.) and subdivisions of the original text into clauses must be respected.

Any differences in content between the original document and the translation must be mentioned, specifying whether the differences are omissions, corrections, abridgements or additions to parts of the text, to the index or to the bibliography.

NOTES AND BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES

If the titles of the works or articles are translated, it is necessary for the title in the original language to follow in brackets. The notes and translator's comments can be given either at the foot of the page or appended at the end of the text, accompanied by the words «Translator's Note» or a sentence to that effect in the language of the translation.

As far as bibliography is concerned, each country has drawn up rules regulating the way in which it must be compiled. These rules will be examined further on in the course.

9 FORMULAE, EQUATIONS, SYMBOLS, UNITS

Formulae, equations, symbols and units are preferably not translated. Any modification should be mentioned in a translator's note.

If the units are converted, the value of the original units should be given in brackets.

FIGURES, LEGENDS, TITLES of FIGURES and TABLES

It is preferable to present figures and tables exactly in the same position in which they appear in the original text. If for any technical reason the figure has to be moved, a reference should be given at the appropriate place in the text.

Titles, legends or other matter should be translated in full.

If figures or tables are reproduced directly from the original, it is necessary to translate any text or notes that go with them.

TRANSLITERATION

When the translation is in a different script (alphabet) from the original text, names of authors and non-translated words should be transliterated in compliance with the appropriate International standard regarding that country. For example, the international standard ISO 233 for Arabic, standard ISO 9 for the Cyrillic alphabet and ISO 259 for the Hebrew alphabet. We will be dealing with transliteration tables further on in the course. Standards for transliteration are necessary in order to create a correspondence between the signs/symbols from one language to another. Transcription on the other hand, is limited to reproducing the pronunciation commonly used, in a comprehensible way for the speaker of the translated language.

NAMES and SYMBOLS of ORGANIZATIONS

When the organization has only one official name, it is possible to translate the name and put it in brackets the first time it appears in a text. As far as bibliographical references are concerned, the names of the organizations are to be given in the original language. The names of organizations should be given without any form of translation, unless these organizations have official names in different languages (for example The European Union or the World Health Organization).

ABBREVIATIONS

The international standards ISO 4 and 832 establish a set of rules as regards abbreviations. We will discuss these rules further on in the course. The international

10 standard ISO 2384 states that, if abbreviations are used in the text, their equivalents in the language of the translation should be given. If there is no equivalent, the abbreviation should be fully explained at its first occurrence. The international standards ISO 4 and 832 establish a set of rules as regards abbreviations. We will discuss these rules further on in the course. The international standard ISO 2384 states that, if abbreviations are used in the text, their equivalents in the language of the translation should be given. If there is no equivalent, the abbreviation should be fully explained at its first occurrence.

TERMINOLOGY

In certain translations specific terminology belonging to a particular subject or profession is used. In these cases, it is necessary for the translator to choose the appropriate homologous in the language of the translation. However, if new terminology related to innovative concepts is used, it is recommended that the original term should follow the translation of such terms in brackets.

IDENTIFICATION of AUTHORS

Honorific titles such as «Member of the Academy of Sciences» must be translated; the expressions relative to the author's part in the preparation of a document (such as the chief editor, new edition by...) must also always be translated. The identification of the professional status or qualification of an author, such as jr. for Junior, or sr. for Senior, or Prof. for Professor, must be given in the in the original language unless sanctioned by usage, in which case they must be translated.

RETRANSLATION

As we have already said in the unit concerning the essential and complementary elements in a translation, in the case of a retranslation it is essential to refer to the intermediate translation and to the original publication.

GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES

Some geographical names have versions in different languages (London, Londres, Londra, Londen, for example) while others do not have used versions: in this case they must not be translated but left in their original language. In bibliographical references, geographical names are to be given in the original language or transliterated.

DATES

The date of the original publication must be shown in the translation. If the original publication uses a different calendar (for example the Julian calendar, the Jewish calendar, the Arabic or Japanese calendars),the corresponding year in the calendar of the culture of the translation must be given.

11 TRANSLATION of PERIODICALS

With the exception of very few cases, most of all related to multilingual publications, the title of periodicals must be kept in their original language and not translated. The translation is possible only if authorized by the publisher.

In the translation it is also essential to show the volume, issue and corresponding parts of the original issue. The year of publication of the original must appear before the year of publication of the translation. The pagination of the translation must be followed by the pagination of the original.

NAME OF THE TRANSLATOR

One of the essential elements in identifying a translation is by always showing the name of the translator, (in compliance with the advice given by the International Federation of Translators and Recommendation n. 5 adopted by UNESCO) unless the translation is a patent or a similar document.

AUTHORITY TO PUBLISH TRANSLATIONS

The heading of the translation should carry the reference to the original document, and a statement authorizing the publication with or without exclusive rights of the translation.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

3 - Learning a foreign language versus Learning translation

Only after having studied one or more foreign languages can one begin to study translation.

It is in fact necessary to have higher education qualifications or a university degree in order to be admitted to any translation course at university level. In both cases, when one sets out to learn the art of translation, one has already studied languages for some years.

12 It is therefore necessary for the aspiring translator to have a clear idea of certain fundamental differences between learning a foreign language and learning translation.

When studying a foreign language, one is exposed to the usual techniques used for teaching the language: translation along with dictation, listening comprehension, conversation and grammar exercises. It is not up to us to say what we think of this use of translation nor is it the object of this course. What we want to establish is that translating in order to learn a foreign language is very different from translating in order to produce a text, which is what one is supposed to learn when studying translation at university level.

When teaching a language, the text is often created specifically for that purpose or adapted so that students encounter certain difficulties and not others, and that the difficulties the student encounters are at the same level as his knowledge of the foreign language.

The texts used are often the same and correcting becomes mechanical because the teacher already knows what mistakes to look for. There may be various translating solutions for one same sentence, but they all have to satisfy one requirement: the teacher must be sure that the student has acquired certain notions and has understood the meaning and the syntax of the sentence.

J. Delisle, one of the most eminent scholars in translation studies, has made this particular point, the transition from the study of a language to the study of translation, very clear.

[...] Scholastic translation has little in common with professional translation. They do not have the same finalities; the former is totally integrated with a method for acquiring a language whilst the latter is a communicative process. Scholastic translation by definition precedes professional translation. Consequently the methodology of the learning process must be conceived with professional translation in mind and not scholastic translation. To link up different concepts, in order to reformulate a message following communication imperatives is not the same thing as assimilating a foreign language or the culture which forms its habitat [...] ¹.

¹ Delisle, pp. 45-6.

The role of translation when teaching a language is that of providing the students with specific entries in the dictionary and the most common syntactical structures, so that they can create models applicable to different sentences.

13 For example this sentence was taken from an English textbook:

We're tired. We've been studying since 2 o'clock.

It is obvious the authors of the book invented that sentence in order to show how to describe an action, which began in the past and has not finished yet. It is also rather obvious that this sentence is not really plausible except in a language- learning context . It is rather improbable for a native speaker to use this kind of sentence.

When teaching translation, first of all it is important to say that the text is in no way artificial, which is to say that the text has not been invented to cope with a particular language difficulty, it is a "real" text created spontaneously by a speaker or a writer. This has various implications.

First of all, the sentence previously given in English does not present any interpretative difficulties. The various translations can be marked "right" or "wrong", and this is exactly the role of the teacher, who will then decide the language level reached by the learner.

· In statements made spontaneously by mother-tongue speakers and removed from their context (the situation in which these sentences are pronounced) and from the co-text (the words immediately before and after the sentence) the interpretation may be difficult or ambiguous. For example, in the sentence

Is he gonna make it?

Isolated from its context and its co-text, it is very difficult to give just one univocal interpretation. The real meaning can be inferred only by taking certain fundamental elements, which are missing in this sentence, into consideration. This kind of sentence would never occur in a textbook for learning English as a foreign language, but it might very well occur in a translation.

For this reason, an important part of this course will be devoted to interpretation, and interpretative possibilities and ambiguities which are intrinsic in a text and the way they are dealt with.

· Another difference between a scholastic text and an authentic one, is in the tools that can be used for translating.

In a scholastic text, the main tool used is a bilingual dictionary. In fact, very often the books themselves are complete with a bilingual dictionary in the appendix, with the additional convenience of it already having been decided exactly what

14 vocabulary the student needs to know. These same words are then written at the back of the book with their translation, not the only possible translation but the translation necessary to complete that exercise the way the author of the book had intended.

In other words, in order to teach a language, a system of exercises and texts is created first conforming to certain limits (which rules, which vocabulary) and then a dictionary is created to satisfy the needs of this system.

exercise

textbook author textbook dictionary

student

As you can see from the diagram above, it is a closed system, a self-referential system, inside which everything tallies, and it is always possible to evaluate the level of language learned. But, because it is a closed system it doesn't necessarily have anything in common with a more open and wider linguistic system which is the linguistic universe a translator has to face.

In the fourth part of this course we will face the problem of the translator's tools, and we will examine in particular the limits and the unsuitability of a bilingual dictionary.

· A third difference between a scholastic text and an authentic text is the reason for the translation. The students translating for their language teacher must produce a result which shows the language level. The sentence produced with this function is not usually evaluated for its linguistic value but as proof of having learned certain rules and vocabulary. Therefore if the translation of the above sentence into French were

Nous sommes fatigues. Nous étudions depuis deux heures.

I think the teacher could consider himself satisfied with the results of his student. On the other hand, if the sentence is examined closely, certain characteristics are evident.

· It is a sentence no mother tongue speaker would use out

15 of a language course context.

· A translator has to ask himself who the receiver of the sentence is, its reader, and model the sentence in order to make it plausible and natural, as if spoken by a Frenchman (notwithstanding that the original itself was plausible, as if a native speaker has said it).

· A translator has to worry about the register whilst

the student deals only with artificial language which has an artificial register, anonymous like a textbook.

In other words, a language student produces a sentence to be evaluated, while a translator produces a text which is then used, either because read or because listened to. And in order to use this text in the most proper way, and in the most suitable way for the reader and for the context, it is necessary to examine the standards that regulate communication, which we will do, in the following parts of the course.

This does not mean that the translator cannot be judged or evaluated by the reader, and even by critics.

Moreover, the translator is sometimes induced to choose to translate in a more flowing style rather than stick to the authentic philological structure. And often, because of this, they can go off route. It would be better if any criticisms made by critics were done so, only after having read the original other than having read the result. Only the translation of a flowing text must be flowing. But we will come back to this.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Delisle, J. L'analyse du discours comme méthode de traduction. Initiation à la traduction française de textes pragmatiques anglais. Ottawa, Éditions de l'Université d'Ottawa, 1984.

4 - Affectivity and Learning

Learning in general, and learning a foreign language in particular, is tied to the affective context in which it occurs. A child learns his mother's language or the language of the people closest, by associating the necessity to satisfy primary needs with certain sounds, and the concrete satisfaction of these needs by using the corresponding sounds. Learning the so-called "mother tongue" (or mother tongues in the case of bilingual families) occurs through unconscious associations and is detached from any rational

16 control. Given that the needs of an infant are, for the most part, tied to the satisfaction of physiological needs and that the world is explored "by mouth", the first words learnt are usually associated with the mother and with the satisfaction of the following needs: din dins, mummy, milky, dummy, pooh-poohs.

This does not mean that until he can produce a sound that is functional in a relationship of emotional significance with an object or with a situation, that a child is not able to think of that same object or situation. "Thought has a wider extension than verbal language and can be interpreted from a functional point of view as the coordination of actions with the anticipated possible achievement of the final result in mind." 1.

Admittedly, in other words, there is a sub-verbal thought, which precedes verbal language and is also much more elaborate: both for adults and children, the verbal expression of a thought is always an attempt to synthesize, which necessarily leaves remnants of things unsaid.

Specific studies on autistic children, who were therefore isolated from the rest of the world because they hadn't developed their communicative function, have shown the connection between the absence (physical or psychological) of a permanent figure in charge of their care in those first vital months and the developing of autism. The ability to communicate develops primarily, within what we will call, out of convenience, the mother- child relationship, although it is not necessary for the mother to actually take part, surrogate figures can substitute her. 2.

1 Massucco Costa e Fonzi, pp. 13. 2 Bettelheim 1950, 1967. It is increasingly feasible that autism is caused by various problems. There is evidence, for example, that there might be a genetic influence. There is also evidence that there might be a virus behind the origins of autism. It is also more likely to produce an autistic child if the future mother were exposed to rubella (commonly known as German measles) during the first three months of pregnancy. Pollution and the Cytomegalavirus could also cause autism. See Edeson, S.M. at http://www.autism.org

As the interests of the child evolve and are not just limited to the introduction/expulsion of food/feces, its ability to communicate and think also evolves. Words can be learnt in playful situations or in any socializing context, in either case the stimuli coming from the outside world are of fundamental importance in order to bring about the affective (emotional) ' situation, to which a particular sound is related, in a first and approximate correspondence between sound-meaning and significant-signified..

At this point the infant tries to reproduce the sound to which he wants to connect to, with his body (phonation organ), and when he is successful, he realizes that the emission of that particular sound produces foreseeable consequences in the outer world: he is laying

17 the foundations for effective verbal communication..

In this kind of situation, linguistic learning is "spontaneous", not voluntary or through a rational decision. These facts lead us to the first two conclusions:

· learning the mother tongue (or the mother tongues) is an unconscious procedure and there is no rational control;

· what is learnt is tied to an affective (emotional) relationship of significance between the child and the person or object or action intended by the use of that particular word or locution.

In the following phases of growth and development of the child, when the ability to think about abstract concepts develops, these same concepts are acquired in a similar way, given that the external environment is well-supplied in intellectual and affective stimuli. Without these stimuli and figures to imitate or with whom the child can establish a relationship, the linguistic ability does not develop at all. It demonstrated by a real fact that occurred in 1793 and described by Truffaut in the film Savage boy 3.

This does not mean, as we have already said, that a person who is unable to speak is also impaired in his ability to elaborate mentally. "The capacity to elaborate ideas mentally, which a child is unable to express verbally, but which he condenses in evaluations and imaginative and dynamic schemes recognizable in the future evidence of adults, is demonstrated by a collection of hundreds of protocols, where adults evoke infantile syncretic experiences related to good and bad" 4.

3 Truffaut 1969. 4 Massucco Costa e Fonzi, pp. 32.

The memories of an adult, of his life as a child, are extremely personal and vary from person to person, but in general the further back one goes, the fewer the memories. The adult at this point, has acquired a mother tongue (more rarely two), and he both speaks and writes it automatically. In the same way he uses other forms of automatism, such as walking, eating pedaling, or driving. The fact that he does these activities does not imply that the subject must recognize inside himself the actual moment or situation in which he learnt how to do these things; on the contrary, in many cases these memories have been cancelled by time, and the action is completed without knowing when, where, with whom or how the action was learnt.

This "forgetfulness" has to do with the way the brain works orientated on a principle of economy: think how tiring it would be if we had to concentrate every time we ate something, on all the single movements necessary to actually chew and then send it down. If whilst pedaling we ask ourselves what we are precisely doing to keep in

18 balance, and we try to be conscious of each action, the breakage of this automatism caused by its unveiling could have damaging effects, determining the loss of balance which had been reached "automatically"

Similarly, when we speak or write, we do it automatically, spontaneously, until the moment in which a specific experience forces us to ask ourselves what we know, how we know it and if it is correct for us to speak and write in a certain way.

The influence between verbal language and sub-verbal language is not univocal but reciprocal. "Verbal language, interprets and integrates sub-verbal language, and at the same time uses a more mediated and articulated interpretation of reality and a more precise and powerful regulation of knowledge and of voluntary actions. 5. In other words, verbal language serves as a logic structure within which thoughts, images, and nonverbal emotions can be organized.

Given that this degree of evolution in a child is usually reached within the first two years, and that memories of when we were two are very scarce o even nonexistent, it is fairly obvious that an adult who does not work in an environment where the use of a language is necessary (and therefore metalinguistic thought) is and will be totally unaware of all these mechanisms.

As children grow up, they use sub-verbal language less and less and they tend to count more on words. To prove the intelligibility of sub-verbal language there are some families where the elder brother is able to translate the noises and movements of the younger brother: "In the group relationship between children belonging to the same family, the rapid interpretation and translation into intelligible verbal terms, of a sub-verbal way of communicating of younger brothers, and of their often difficult to understand way of verbalizing, shows the slowness and the gradualness of the transition from one type of communication to another[_] infantile jargon [_] can be translated" 6.

5 Massucco Costa e Fonzi, pp. 36. 6 Massucco Costa e Fonzi, pp. 39.

This last sentence introduces the topic of interpretation and translation and will acquire different meanings in the following parts of the course. For now we have dealt with the unconscious roots of the awareness of the mother tongue. In the following lessons we will deal with the question of linguistic self-awareness and of the languages learnt.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bettelheim, B. Love Is Not Enough; The Treatment Of Emotionally Disturbed Children. Glencoe, Ill., Free Press, 1950.

19 Bettelheim, B. The Empty Fortress; Infantile Autism And The Birth Of The Self. New York, Free Press, 1967.

Massucco Costa, A. - Fonzi, A. Psicologia del linguaggio, Torino, Boringhieri, 1967.

Truffaut, F. Savage Boy [L'enfant sauvage], France, 1969.

5 - Foreign Languages and Linguistic Awareness

We saw in the previous unit how the process of learning one's mother tongue develops from the sub-verbal language to verbal language in a mostly unconscious way. The first experience of linguistic awareness - awareness of one's own linguistic proficiency - is at school, when one starts studying the grammar of one's own language (until then taken for granted and considered a natural phenomenon that did not require questioning in any way) and one faces the learning of one or more foreign languages.

Subjects used to speaking one language during childhood and facing foreign languages at school age experience "multilingualism". Subjects who have learnt more than one language from birth on the other hand experience "plurilingualism"1.

The Self - i.e. the individual conscious of his identity and of his relationship with the environment - and personality are greatly influenced by language. Even if "it is often the Unconscious rather than the conscious Ego which depends on linguistic experience"2 , there is a very strong and univocal relationship between the Ego and language. It would be, therefore, plausible to argue that, when a plurilingual experience occurs, there are two Egos (and then a split personality, schizoid tendencies).

Researchers have investigated the possibility of psychic disorders tied to plurilingualism, but the results point in a completely different direction

['] even if there is a double personality in a coordinated (i.e. a perfect) bilingual person, such duplicity does not imply a pathological split personality, but, on the contrary, it implies that that person will have a certain depth and understanding of different worlds and has acquired a strong defense mechanism too3.

20 The need that often plurilingual individuals have (and in certain cases multilingual people, as well) to switch from one code (language) to another, the so-called code switching, is a positive and fruitful mechanism, and "it is significant of a fundamental unity of the internal structure and dynamics of the personality of an individual"4.

There is therefore no dangerous presence of more than one Ego, but, on the contrary, a sort of meta-Ego, "that controls and synthesizes the various verbal and communication behaviors corresponding to different linguistic codes"5. The plurilingual individual has a more complex and receptive psychic structure.

Studies carried out on plurilingual children have shown that code switching implies an early knowledge - although it may be incomplete - of the varieties of the languages. From the moment in which a language is no longer a spontaneously used instrument, but becomes an object of meditation, i.e. when language is used to describe a language, we are talking about "metalanguage". In the case of plurilingual children, we can, therefore, talk about "metalinguistic conscience"6.

The subject plurilingual since childhood generally reaches a higher degree of meta-cognitive and meta-linguistic development than monolingual subjects7.

The main difference between learning one's mother tongue during childhood and the scholastic learning of foreign languages (or the detailed and rational study of one's mother tongue) is only determined by the degree of awareness.

During the cognitive stage, a person learning a foreign language is engaged in a conscious mental activity with the objective of finding a meaning in language [']. The inner processes that go on during these stages may be the explanation of the conscious effort experienced during learning in different linguistic contexts8.

If, before, the infant had learnt to connect sounds and concepts, sounds and affects, the subject learning a foreign language is provided with linguistic awareness:

The human speaker/listener is conscious of his Self as a communicating agent. Linguistic competence is nothing else but total self-perception and total self-control ['] it should be clearly stressed that linguistic awareness has nothing to do with self-centeredness or narcissism9,

21 and this is because, being an instrument for communicating with the rest of the world, it is at the same time an awareness centered on one's self and on others.

When a multilingual individual learns a language at school, he is in fact living a metalinguistic experience: nothing is any longer spontaneous or automatic, nearly everything is subject to rules explicitly explained and to be learnt in a rational way. Even in this case, the affective component is very important: the relationship with the teacher, the environment in which the language is taught can determine in a substantial way the student's attitude towards the learning of a foreign language. The best results are obtained when there is a strong and positive relationship with the teacher (a sort of didactic transference) or with whoever one is learning the language from, or when there is a strong tie (aesthetic, ideological, affective) with the culture or the countries in which the language is spoken.

The personal, socio-cultural, linguistic, attitudes - as cognitive-affective sets - can be related ['] to the position or reaction of the receiver. A message is first of all a stimulus, and a response, conditioned by the affective tones and by its content ['] Feeling and emotions are rarely absent from verbal forms, even if at times that may seem entirely untrue ['] the sounds of a language can carry symbolic values or emotional memories [']10.

According to the most recent studies in cognitive psychology, we store information in a short-term memory (also called operative memory) or in a long-term memory. For example, linguistic information is elaborated in four phases: selection, acquisition, construction of new inner connections and integration of the new information with the old information in the long-term memory.

This is why language courses advertising the rapid learning of a foreign language with a large number of vocabulary and linguistic structures puzzle us. Often when memorization is very rapid, but occurs in an emotionally sterile environment, the relationship with what has been learnt is so weak, that it is confusing and just does not have time to be deposited in the long-term memory. As T. S. Eliot says in The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock:

In a minute there is time For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse11.

With all due exceptions, the faster the learning process occurs and the less the situation in which it occurs has any emotional or affective significance (or it is an emotionally negative experience), and therefore the less the learning process is stable.

22 The linguistic-communicative competence in two languages/cultures becomes an invaluable asset only if the whole human personality is complete in its performative, cognitive and in-depth conscious dimensions, and is therefore involved in controlling the two communication systems12.

WWhen a language becomes part of one's identity, code switching can become both an adaptive and expressive modality. Switching code becomes a psychological choice that comes from the deepest Ego of the speaker. This has been demonstrated, in studies conducted on mother-tongue Spanish populations implanted in English-speaking countries13.

It is possible to find this kind of code switching also in prose fiction. There are poets who switch codes in one poem, as in this case:

Quienes Somos

it's so strange in here

todo lo que pasa

is so strange

y nadie puede entender

que lo que pas aquì

isn't any different

de lo que pasa allá

where everybody is trying

to get out

move into a better place

al lugar where he can hide

where we don't have to know

quienes somos

strange people of the sun

lost in our awareness

23 of where we are

and where we want to be

and wondering why

it's so strange in here 14

To take possession of a foreign language is, as we have seen, a deep and involving experience, and at the same time, for those who are not born plurilingual, it can be an opportunity to become aware of one's own language proficiency. In the following units we will deal with the mental processes related to reading, writing and, finally, to translation.

Bibliographical references:

ELIOT T.S. Collected Poems 1909-1962, London Faber and Faber, 1975. 1st ed. 1963. ISBN 0-571-10548-3

ORTIZ VÁSQUEZ P. Quienes Somos, in The Bilingual Review/La Revista Bilingüe, n. 2, 1975, p. 293-294.

POPLACK S. Sometimes I'll start a sentence in Spanish y termino in Español: toward a typology of code-switching, in Linguistics, n. 18, 1980, p. 581-618.

TITONE R. On the Bilingual Person, Ottawa-New York, Legas Publications, 1995.

1 Titone, p.48-49. 2 Titone, p. 37. 3 Titone, p. 42. 4 Titone, p. 43. 5 Titone, p. 88. 6 Titone, p. 88. 7 Titone, p. 186. 8 Titone, p. 21. 9 Titone, p. 28. 10 Titone, p. 28. 11 Eliot 975, p.14. 12 Titone, p. 177. 13 Poplack 1980. 14 Ortiz Vásquez 1975, p.193-294.

6 - Reading - Part one

When a person reads, his brain deals with many tasks in such rapid sequences that all seems to happen simultaneously. The eye examines (from left to right as far as many Western languages are concerned, but also from right to left or from top to bottom) a series of graphic signs (graphemes) in succession, which give life to syllables, words, sentences, paragraphs, sections, chapters, and texts.

24 In the first phase, in which a person reads the first letter, he immediately compares it with a whole repertoire of letters (the Latin alphabet, in the case of the English language), until he recognizes it and then goes on to decipher the next grapheme. All this happens without the reader being aware of the process.

The same goes for listening, where the sounds are first transformed into phonemes (minimum phonetic units with no meaning of their own but which take part in the signification), then into syllables and so on, until the deciphering of a sensible message is completed. Unlike reading, in which the words are separated by a graphic distance (a non-written space), when listening it is necessary to be able to distinguish where a word finishes and where the next word begins, considering that, when speaking, words are not always separated by distinct silent pauses.

Once the reader has completed the decoding of the first word, he mentally reconstructs the pronunciation of the whole word, which is not always the sum of all the single graphemes in succession. (For example the let's take the letter 's' in the word 'pleasure', in the word "silent" and in the word "shut"). Therefore it is necessary to assess the options and dismiss the inappropriate ones. Vice versa, the listener often mentally reconstructs the way a word is written, which does not always have a one-to-one correspondence with the way it is pronounced.

At this point the reader and listener have decoded the visual and auditory form of the first word. This is compared to a whole repertoire of visual and/or auditory forms which are present in the brain, until one or more correspondences are found (when there is more than one sound correspondence it is called "homophony", when there is more than one graphic correspondence it is called "homography"; it is also necessary to take into consideration all the imperfect but possible correspondences due to mistakes in pronunciation, unclear writing, sound disturbances, miswritten words or typographical errors).

This repertoire of auditory and visual structures is what differentiates one language from another, one code from another. And it is this very difference that explains why it is said that the relationship between significant (sound or sign) and signified is arbitrary. If that weren't the case, all natural codes would be identical in their relationship of signification. To locate the matching means to refer to a precise linguistic system.

['] decoding the source-text linguistic signs with reference to the language system (i.e. determining the semantic relationships between the words and utterances of the text) 1.

25 For people who know more than one language, or at least recognize the graphic signs or sounds of more than one language, it's necessary to operate a code selection before choosing the possible right matches. This also occurs when in the same sentence there is a word from a different code, which necessarily has different spelling and pronunciation rules (for example: "She's examining the curricula").

In a first phase, locating words doesn't mean locating their possible meanings, but only the mental reproduction of the word itself.

A word can be substituted by its representation or mnestic image, as it happens with any other object 2.

Some scholars have confused this stage with the internal thought phase, which, as we'll see, is completely different.

In authors from the past we always find the sign "equal to" between the reproduction of words from the memory and internal language. But in fact they are two different processes that should be differentiated 3.

That is to say, one thing is thinking of a word, and another thing is thinking of its meanings. When reading takes place without internal or external disturbances, nonetheless, the passage from the process of mental reproduction to the research for possible meanings is very fast.

The speed of this process (or, more appropriate, of the succession of these processes) does not depend just on the familiarity acquired of each single letter and word (which is more relevant when someone learns a foreign language) but, above all, on the familiarity with the most frequent graphic/phonetic structures. In fact, an expert reader will not be reading all the letters of all the words of all the sentences, but will pick up a tiny portion that is necessary to make sense of the unit in his mind, on the basis of his encyclopedic competence.

The perception and selection of the auditory or graphic matches, in its turn, is based on the co-text and on the context in which the word occurs: in this case corrections based on the encyclopedic experience of the reader may occur too. If, for example, in a cookery book the word 'astronomy' is encountered, the experience of the reader will mentally tend to correct the word into 'gastronomy', whose occurrence being much more probable in that context.

This operation can also be called: 'defining the conceptual content of an utterance by drawing on the referential context in which it is embedded [']' 4.

26 Reading is an active mental process, in which the reader is engaged in reconstructing the author's intent. The signs drawn on paper (and the sounds that make up oral messages) induce an active mind to think about possible alternatives in order to re-construct the contents of the message.

While reading, at one end we have an original text (as in inter-linguistic translation, main subject of this course) but, at the other end of the process, there's no text, just a set of hypotheses and guesses about the possible meanings and intentions of the author.

During the analysis stage, the translator reads/listens to the source text, drawing on background, encyclopedic knowledge ' including specialist domain knowledge and knowledge of text convention ' to comprehend features contained in the text 5.

The words from the source text enter our mind and produce a global effect which is not a set of words, i.e. it's not a metatext, as it happens in interlinguistic translation, but a set of entities, that, however hardly specifiable, are mental and not verbal. This means that in our mind there must be a sort of internal code, (or sub-verbal code, as we have said in the previous units) which, on the basis of our perceptive experience, subdivides and classifies possible perceptions.

We have a process here ['] that goes from the outside to the inside, a process in which language [rech´] volatilizes into thought [mysl´]. Hence the structure of this language and all its manifold differences with the structure of external language 6.

Vygotskij has conducted research on children, who in certain stages of their development tend to use an 'egocentric' language (according to Piaget), meaning that it is a language the child uses essentially addressing to himself. According to Vygotskij, to study the egocentric language of children is important because it is the embryo of the adults' inner language. And he writes:

['] the language addressed to oneself cannot find at all its true expression in the structure of external language, which is, by its own nature, completely different; the form of this language, which is extremely peculiar because of its structure ['], must necessarily have its own particular form of expression, since its phasic aspect ceases to coincide with the phasic aspect of external language 7.

In the following unit we will have a closer look at what this means exactly.

27 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES:

BELL R. T. Psycholinguistic/cognitive approaches. In Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies. London-New York, Routledge, 1998, p. 185-190. ISBN 0-415-09380-5

DELISLE J. Translation. An Interpretive Approach. Ottawa, Ottawa University Press, 1988.

VYGOTSKIJ L. S. Myshlenie i rech´. Psihologicheskie issledovanija. Moskvà- Leningrad, Gosudarstvennoe social´no-èkonomicheskoe izdatel´stvo, 1934.

1 Delisle 1988. 2 Vygotskij 1990, p. 344. 3 Vygotskij 1990, p.345. 4 Delisle 1988. 5 Bell 1990, p.187. 6 Vygotskij 1990, p.347. 7 Vygotskij 1990, p.354.

7 - Reading - part two

In the previous unit, we said that, in our mind, there has to be a sort of inner code, or subverbal code that, based on our perceptive experience, classifies possible perceptions (including perceptions of words) and subdivides them into cognitive types (CT) that are not words, but not entirely defined mental entities. Eco (1997) uses as an example the Aztecs and the horse: this animal, before the Spanish landing, was unknown to them, therefore alien to any cognitive types of their cultural heritage.

Nevertheless, where was, to an Aztec, the concept of horse, since he did not have it before the Spanish landing? Of course, after seeing some horses, the Aztecs must have created a morphological pattern not so different from a 3D model, and it is on this basis that we should infer the consistency of their perceptive acts. When I talk about CT, however, I do not mean just a sort of image, a set of morphological tracts or motorial features [...] That is to say, we can state that the CT of the horse from the beginning possessed a multimedia character 1.

At first, the cognitive type is something absolutely independent from the name of the object, or even the possibility to name it; it is something that only the person who has perceived the object in question can cause himself to recognize what he has perceived; therefore it is catalogued in a sort of inner subjective, idiomorphical code.

It was not necessary to name the object-horse to recognize it, in the same way

28 as I can eventually feel a sensation inside me that is unpleasant, though indefinable, and understand just that it is the same I felt the day before 2.

In other words that we need to name something just if (and when) we behave as social animals and want, or have to, communicate with others. In contrast, in the autistic relation between my ego and itself, in order to reason about concepts or objects, I do not need any external language: neither the natural code made of words, nor other, artificial, codes. I nonetheless do need what Eco calls "cognitive type" (and Vygotskij "inner language") in order to identify a sensation or an object and classify them mentally so as to make more and more complex and differentiated the structure of my perceptive-cognitive apparatus.

When we read a text or listen to a speech, as we held before, "we compare tokens to a type"3 and this process occurs at two levels, twice in a row.

In a first phase, we put side by side the graphic/auditory token to a graphic/auditory type that is part of our repertoire of signs, of phonemes, or, more often, of recurring graphemic or phonemic patterns. This first phase allows us to make out the letter or word or locution or phrase ' or, whenever the given token doesn't match exactly any types found in our repertoire ' to find near matches of the tokens with the types present in the repertoire, and to choose among them the most plausible in the given context and co-text.

Moreover, simultaneously, our mind analyzes the quality and the quantity of the discrepancy between token and type, and conjecture what sense we can attribute to such discrepancy: we therefore create also a (meta-) typology of variances from the type.

If, for example, I find on paper the word "tonite" [sic] and in my repertoire I can't find this graphical pattern, but I find a near match with the word "tonight", I can infer that "tonite" may be a peculiar or local form of that word. Moreover, basing myself on previously registered deviations from the standard pattern (i.e. on my encyclopedic knowledge), I can infer that it is a word often found on signs outside restaurants and inns of a given area (because, let's suppose, I had previously met the graphical pattern "lite" and I had realized it was a local way of writing "light". From that experience, I had got to the standard deviance that, in my mind, matches the way of writing in a given geographical area).

During the second phase, when we already have hold of the relation graphic token-graphic type, we have to enact a second token-type comparison in order to identify, based on the graphic type, the cognitive type evoked by the given graphic type. In other words, we have to pass from the

29 phase when we "think of a word"4 to the phase in which we think about every meaning evoked by that word.

The images evoked in one's mind by a given word do not match perfectly the ones evoked by that same word in the mind of any other speaker of that same natural code. The first limitation of inter-subjective communication lies therefore just in this rough match between the mental images corresponding to "horse" in the writer/speaker and the mental images linked to "horse" in the reader/listener. This happens because the subjective experiences (and the subjective images) linked to "horse" for the transmitter and for the receiver are not the same.

The first loss produced in the act of verbal communication ' in the case of reading ' is caused by the subjectivity of the sign-sense match, due to the different individual experiences, to the idiomorphic nature of the relation of affective signification characterizing every speaker even within one natural code.

«This requires processing at the syntactic, semantic and pragmatic levels [...]» 5.

The mental processing of the read verbal material is of a syntactical nature when we try to reconstruct the possible structure of the sentence, i.e. the relations among its elements. In contrast, it is of a semantic nature when it identifies the relevant areas within the semantic field of any single word or sentence; and it is of a pragmatic nature when it deals with the logical match of the possible meanings to the general context and to the verbal co-text.

Moreover, the text is analyzed in two ways:

[...] micro- and macro-analysis of the actual text: monitoring for cohesion and coherence, and checking for coherence between the actual text and the potential text-type of which it is a token realization [...] 6.

Microanalysis has the purpose of verifying text cohesion and inner cohesion of the single units of text among them. Macro-analysis is aimed at controlling coherence and cohesion between the created text and the category, the model to which the text refers. For example, if the text is an instruction booklet for a household appliance, or a story for a newspaper, often there are models for such types of text to which we frequently ' consciously or unconsciously ' adhere.

The decoding of a message in the mind of the reader is a sort of compromise between these two kinds of analysis, because the bottom-up

30 analysis, one semantic unit at a time, doesn't ever turn out the same results as the top-down analysis of the text as an entity that has its own coherent structure.

There is, in other words, a trade-off between the micro-/bottom-up analysis of the text at clause level and the macro-/top-down analysis of text as an entity 7.

As we can see, the reading of a natural code is not an aseptical or passive process of assimilation of universally definite concepts as it happens in a mathematical equation. Reading involves in itself cognitive differences and, consequently, interpretive differences. Even while we are reading, and the object of our perception are words and not things, we are led by cognitive types that help us catalogue the experience of possible writings, both in graphic and in semantic terms, in order to increase our perceptive-cognitive apparatus as readers, to speed up our decoding processes, to sharpen our critical capacity. The reader

may try to understand the meanings emanating from the text, or abandon himself to bizarre associations and free developments. I speak in terms of polarities, because no reading can prevent imagination to run free [...] 8.

The difference between a reader and a critic is negligible: the reader trying to understand has the same attitude as the critic, who is a systematic, methodical, self-aware reader. While reading

it is inescapable to compare two systems, the text system and the reader system; the critic action is substantially made up of such comparisons. 9

In the next unit, we will deal with mental processes linked to writing.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES:

BELL R. T. Psycholinguistic/cognitive approaches. In Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies. London, Routledge, 1998, p. 185-190. ISBN 0-415- 09380-5.

ECO U. Kant e l'ornitorinco. Milano, Bompiani, 1997. ISBN 88-452-2868-1. English translation: Kant and the Platypus: Essays on Language and Cognition; translated from the Italian by Alastair McEwen, New York, Harcourt Brace, 2000.

SEGRE C. Avviamento all'analisi del testo letterario. Torino, Einaudi, 1985. ISBN 88-06-58735-8. English translation: Introduction to the Analysis of the

31 Literary Text, with the collaboration of Tomaso Kemeny; translated from the Italian by John Meddemmen, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1988. ISBN 0253331064.

VYGOTSKY L. S. Myshlenie i rech´. Psihologicheskie issledovanija. Moskvà- Leningrad, Gosudarstvennoe social´no-èkonomicheskoe izdatel´stvo, 1934. English translation: Thought and Language; translated from the Russian and edited by Alex Kozulin, Cambridge (Massachusetts), MIT Press, 1986.

1 Eco 1997, p. 109. 2 Eco 1997, p. 111. 3 Eco 1997, p. 113. 4 We think of its sound, its shape on the paper, but we stop there, we don't go on decoding; it's something we all have experienced trying to read while our mind was busy with other thoughts: so we read the words as sounds, as graphic patterns, without getting any sense from them. "[...] the inner language has to be considered not as a language without sound, but as a very peculiar verbal function with an original structure and particular functioning modes which, just because it works in a totally different way from external language, in passing from one plane to the other one is connected with it in a dynamic, indissoluble way" (Vygotsky 1934). 5 Bell 1990, p. 187. 6 Bell 1990, p. 187. 7 Bell 1990, p. 187. 8 Segre 1985, p. 10-11. 9 Segre 1985, p. 11.

8 - Writing as a mental process

We said in the previous units that reading is a sort of translation from verbal language into mental material or, if we prefer, from outer verbal language into inner nonverbal language. The individual reads, and perceives what he reads, drawing interpretations and inferences about the possible intentions of the author of the message. (In a different part of the course, we will define our concept of "author".) We talked about cognitive types as entities helping the individual to categorize past experiences in order to organize present and future perception.

If what is perceived is not made of words, the perception need not necessarily pass through the verbalization process: the individual is able to perceive and to categorize his sensations even without translating them into words. This fact does not preclude his recognizing the perceived object in case of reoccurrence.

32 The first and most important feature of inner language is its very peculiar syntax. [...] This peculiarity is shown in the apparent fragmentation, discontinuity, and contraction of the inner language as compared to the outer one 1.

[There is] a definitely peculiar tendency to reduce sentences and phrases; the predicate and the parts of the sentence linked to it are preserved, while the subject and the words linked to it are omitted. Such prevalence of predicates in the inner language syntax becomes apparent [...] with strict consistency [...] so that in the end, resorting to the interpolation method, we should suppose that the main syntactic form of the inner language is pure and absolute prevalence of predicates 2.

"Putting into words" ' translation into an outer code, common to other speakers ' is uniquely crucial to the social life of the individual, in order to share the content of one's cognitive and perceptive acts.

We said also that the signifier/signified relation is an arbitrary one. This fact is proved by the differences among natural languages: between the perception of an object-horse and the production of either the sound "horse" or the graphic characters h o r s e there is no necessary relation. For a Frenchman the same object is "cheval", for an Italian "cavallo" and so on.

We also stressed that a signifier's semantic field is not the same for two individuals, because everyone links 'consciously or unconsciously 'definite subjective experiences to each signifier. For this reason, a signifier evokes different memories, feelings, and images in every individual. It is therefore all the more unlikely that the semantic field of "horse" completely matches the semantic field of "cheval", "cavallo" etc.

In other words, every natural language (and every idiolect, i.e. the use of language peculiar to every "individual, his language or personal 'style', disregarding the group or community where the individual belongs»3) categorizes human knowledge in a different way. Language is, therefore, not only a means to communicate with other members of our species; it is also a system to categorize perceptions, ideas, images, and emotions.

In our minds, two parallel, overlapping categorizing systems seem to be at work, one independent from the other. The cognitive type system, acting only at a personal and inner level; and the verbal categorizing system, also useful for outer communication, although in a partial and imperfect way.

Let us take dreams as an example. Freud, in The Interpretation of Dreams, has analyzed the main features of the mechanisms leading to the formation of

33 dreams 4. Dreams are not made of words; they emerge from a nonverbal space within us.

Thought processes and affects are represented in dreams in a visual and (less frequently) auditory form. Other modes of sensory experience ' touch, smell, taste, and kinesthetic sensation ' also appear in dreams. [...] Two other elements of the dream work are plastic and symbolic representation, that is, the transformation of thoughts into sensory symbols and images; and secondary elaboration, the linking together of the separate images and elements of the dream into a relatively coherent story or action. Sometimes secondary elaboration or revision does not occur and the dream is recalled as a disjointed, incoherent, or bizarre series of images or phrases. 5

When we recall a dream soon after awaking, such memories, regardless of their vividness, are made of nonverbal material. If such material is stored as it is (in nonverbal form), it follows the same fate as every other memory: it is eroded with time more or less rapidly, depending on the circumstances.

We get a completely different result if we try to write down the content of the dream or to describe it to somebody: a genuine translation is required. Images, sounds, and other feelings have to be translated into words. When we put a dream into words, we are frequently unsatisfied with our translation. The text we can produce omits some feelings and images that are not describable in words and mental facts that, if verbalized, lose expressiveness.

A dream can sometimes leave us such strong feelings, that for many hours we cannot shake its influence, even if with our rational mind we are aware that what we dreamed has not happened in the outer world, just inside us, in our mental imaginary world. Very seldom we can share the strength of such feelings. It is easier for individuals who can express themselves through nonverbal languages, such as representational arts, music, body expression, or even through poetry, in which words and sounds are equally expressive.

What is more, our diurnal, rational mind cannot understand the logic of some passages in dreams. If I was on a mountaintop, how is it possible that, without any journey, I eventually found myself lying on my carpet at home? For this reason, when we use "secondary elaboration", our role as chroniclers forces us ' unconsciously sometimes ' to adjust, modify, and/or review our verbal version of the dream so as to give the story cohesion, a plot, which can be completely remote from the original dream material.

[[...] inner language, due to its psychological nature, is a particular formation, a particular kind of verbal activity, with extremely specific features; it has a very complex relationship with other kinds of verbal activity. [...] Inner

34 language is a process or transformation of thought [mysl´] into words; it is their materialization and objectification 6.

If, on one hand, such materialization is incomplete and produces a loss, on the other hand it can be a precious tool to increase control over our mind. From Freud on, many therapies for the treatment of different kinds of neuroses are based on the use of words: the patient tries to translate into words feelings, anxieties, dreams, mental associations, and the therapist encourages such objectifying process, such materializing process for its liberating values. Before verbalization, many inner links among different thoughts, images, and feelings appear to be inexistent ' like temporarily inactivated hypertextual links. After verbalization they become apparent, and, in some cases, their acknowledgment can untie inner knots, release tensions, resolve mental short circuits that can be the basis of neurotic symptoms, giving the patient a sense of release and providing him, at the same time, an increased insight.

Writing ' translation of inner nonverbal language into outer verbal language ' is an activity that, being a phase of the same translation process involved in professional interlingual transfer, has moreover much in common with intersemiotic translation. The presence, as a replacement for an original text, of what Vygotsky calls "inner language" and Eco calls "cognitive types", and the fact that outer verbal language is not only a means of expression but also a tool to categorize experience has many implications. Such implications relate to the writer's mind, the reason behind the writing, and the projective receiver of the written text which may be a real person (in the case of correspondence) or a hypothetic, implied receiver, a model of reader (as in the case of books).

We can also take into consideration the case of writing as an attempt at self-therapy, of solitary meditation, without any postulated receiver. For some, this, only, is authentic writing. Anna Maria Ortese wrote:

Writing is looking for tranquility, and sometimes to find it. It is to go back home. The same goes for reading. People that truly write or read ' i.e. just for themselves ' go back home; they feel good. People who never write or read, or do so just to obey an order, for practical reasons, are always out of their home, even if they have many a home. They are poor, and they make life poorer 7.

Gianni Celati, referring to a short story by Marco Belpoliti, La linea evapora nel piano [The line evaporates into the plane], admires the geometric metaphor of writing as a linear activity whose product can proliferate acquiring a further dimension.

35 ['] the idea of the line that evaporates sublimating into the plane, letting people think at geometry in a more creative way, moreover makes people think that writing is exactly a line producing a plane. Here we see the daydreaming of the intellect expand (their master being Italo Calvino) 8.

In the following units, we will examine the repercussions on the translation process of all these ways of intending "writing".

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES:

AMERICAN PSYCHOANALYTIC ASSOCIATION Psychoanalytic Terms and Concepts, ed. B. E. Moore and B. D. Fine, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1990, ISBN 0-300-04701-0.

CELATI G., ed., Narratori delle riserve. Milano, Feltrinelli, 1992. ISBN 88-07- 01439-4.

FREUD S. Die Traumdeutung. Leipzig, Franz Deuticke, 1900.

FREUD S. The Interpretation of Dreams, in Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, ed. J. Strachey, London, Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psycho-Analysis, 1953-1974, vol. 4 and 5.

LAING R. D. Knots. New York, Pantheon Books, 1970. ISBN 0-394-43211-8.

MARCHESE, A. Dizionario di retorica e di stilistica. Milano, Mondadori, 1991. ISBN 88-04-14664-8.

1 Vygotsky 1990, p. 363. 2 Vygotsky 1990, p. 365. 3 Marchese 1991, p. 140. 4 Freud 1900. 5 American Psychoanalytic Association 1990, p. 57. 6 Vygotsky 1990, p. 346-347. 7 "Scrivere è cercare la calma, e qualche volta trovarla. È tornare a casa. Lo stesso che leggere. Chi scrive e legge realmente, cioè solo per sé, rientra a casa; sta bene. Chi non scrive o non legge mai, o solo su comando ' per ragioni pratiche ' è sempre fuori casa, anche se ne ha molte. È un povero, e rende la vita più povera". Celati 1992, p. 11. 8 "Ma questa idea della linea che evapora sublimandosi nel piano, mentre fa pensare alla geometria in modo più immaginativo del solito, fa anche venire in mente che la scrittura è appunto una linea che produce un piano. Ecco come si espandono i trasognamenti

36 dell'intelletto (maestro Italo Calvino)". Celati 1992, p. 22.

9 - Translation as a mental process

In the previous three units, we focused mainly on two mental activities ' reading and writing ' that are part of the translation process, and we tried to describe some of their phases and the applicable implications with reference to mental functioning. We observed that ' even within the framework of one code, that is to say without shifting to another language ' we have to accomplish more than one translation process, involving nonverbal processing. Moreover, we observed that there is an intermediate stage during which words, or word combinations, are translated into an idiosyncratic mental nonverbal language that is understandable (and hence translatable into words) only by the individual accomplishing such effort in her mind.

Such analytic exam was necessary in order to identify the single mental processes involved in the mentioned activities; we know, however, that such activities are actually carried out in a minor span. During this mental work, there is a constant focusing shift between microanalysis and microanalysis, between micro-expression and macro-expression, i.e. a constant comparison between the meaning of the single utterances and the meaning of the text as a whole. Or, on a larger scale, a constant comparison between the sense of a single text and the comprehensive sense of the corpus that, consciously or unconsciously, forms the "intertext". In this context, "intertext" should be understood as the complex of intertextual links in which a text is located, with, or without, the authors acknowledgement.

After said analytic exam, we must bear in mind that the mental processing of verbal data undergoes many simultaneous, interdependent, and holistic processes1. In order to describe the mental process occurring while translating, it is necessary to temporarily put aside the individual mechanisms of the microactivities and analyze the translation process in the whole, with a systemic approach.

An important translation-studies researcher, James S. Holmes, has proposed a mental approach to translation processes, the so-called «mapping theory». He presents a synthesis of his approach in this paragraph:

I have suggested that actually the translation process is a multi-level process; while we are translating sentences, we have a map of the original text in our minds and at the same time, a map of the kind of text we want to produce in the target language. Even as we translate serially, we have this structural concept so that each sentence in our translation is determined not only by the

37 sentence in the original but by the two maps of the original text and of the translated text which we are carrying along as we translate2.

The translation process should, therefore, be considered a complex system in which understanding, processing, and projection of the translated text are interdependent portions of one structure. We can therefore put forward, as does Hönig, the existence of a sort of "central processing unit" supervising the coordination of the different mental processes (those connected to reading, interpretation, and writing) and at the same time projecting a map of the text to be.

Let us follow Hönig's passages. The original, in order to be translated, is "moved out" of its natural context and projected onto the translator's mental reality. The translator does not work on the original text, consequently, but on its mental projection. There are two kinds of processing, the controlled workspace, and the uncontrolled workspace. In the uncontrolled workspace, the first understanding of the text takes place, consisting of the application of frames and schemes, an assortment of semantic patterns based on the perceptive experience of the translator. Such semantic schemes are not very different, from a conceptual point of view, from the cognitive types we dealt with in the unit about the reading process.

As it happens in reading (it is possible to read fractions of words or sentences and construct the unread parts), using the semantic schemes our minds tend to postulate the affinity of the utterances in the original to utterances already read or heard and assimilated.

Semantic schemes are long-term memory structures reflecting the reader's expectations, her meaning conjectures, and in part are already oriented towards a translated text that ' although existing only within the translator's mind ' is taking shape in her mental map.

Translation micro-strategies are composed of the interaction between the original text, the hypotheses on the translated text and the uncontrolled workspace. For the experienced professional a nearly automated process can become more conscious owing to the translation-oriented analysis of the text.

Researchers postulated the existence of an uncontrolled workspace using a thinking aloud protocol. Some translators were asked to say aloud what they were doing or thinking to do while they were intent in their work. Mental processes described by these protocols are those that are called "controlled workspace". Uncontrolled workspace contains, in contrast, mental activities different from those described in thinking aloud protocols. In the controlled workspace, mental processing is conscious: the translator knows that given

38 mechanisms take place but, at the same time, she is usually unaware of them because she performs them automatically.

A translator using only the uncontrolled workspace does not have any comprehensive strategy, which takes into consideration the translated text as a whole. Such a hypothetical translator is guided only by her linguistic reflexes originating from her perception of the original text. If one wants to achieve a complete translation competence, it is necessary to adopt a rational macro- textual strategy as well.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES:

HOLMES J. S. Translated! Papers on Literary Translation and Translation Studies. Amsterdam, Rodopi, 1988. ISBN 90-6203-739-9.

HÖNIG H. G. Holmes' "Mapping Theory" and the Landscape of Mental Translation Processes, in Leuven-Zwart and Naaijkens (ed.) Translations Studies: The State of the Art. Proceedings of the first James S. Holmes Symposium on Translation Studies, Amsterdam, Rodopi, 1991. ISBN 90- 5183-257-5, p. 77-89.

1 Hönig 1991, p. 78. 2 Holmes 1988, p. 96.

10 - Verbal communication - Part 1

We have dealt quite thoroughly with the mental aspects of the reading, writing, and translating processes. Now, we will examine some less individual aspects of the exchange (translation) of information, to see what actually happens when language involves many people in communication. In order to do that, we will draw especially on the writings of Roman JAkobsón, a great Russian scientist who - driven by an interdisciplinary attitude - made fundamental contributions to an impressive number of fields, such as linguistics, semiotics, theory of literature, translation studies.

Back in 1958, in his essay Closing Statements: Linguistics and Poetics - which is still mostly up-to-date after more than forty years - JAkobsón examined the six main elements that characterize communication and their related functions.

39 The addresser is the person who sends out the message, addressing an addressee, within the framework of a given context. The two following tables are taken from one of JAkobsón's texts:

Factors of verbal communication:1

CONTEXT

ADDRESSER ------> MESSAGE ------> ADDRESSEE

CONTACT

CODE

Fundamental functions of verbal communication2:

REFERENTIAL

EMOTIVE ------> POETIC ------> CONATIVE

PHATIC

METALINGUAL

The referential function

The context is extremely important. In most cases, decontextualized utterances become meaningless or, at any rate, very ambiguous. This is basically due to the fact that communication is very efficient and tends not to make explicit - hence to take for granted - some aspects of the message that are considered to be implied (i.e. context-bound). If, on a bus, a ticket collector says "Your ticket, please", it would sound rather redundant to explain what ticket he is referring to: the context makes it clear.

If, for example, we come across the utterance

Is it safe? out of context, the utterance is ambiguous, polysemic; it can imply an impersonal or personal construction and refer to an indefinite number of things/people. That is exactly what experiences Babe, the main character of William Goldman's Marathon Man, when another character places him under interrogation to force him to confess something he does not know. His torturer keeps on asking him "Is it safe?", and Babe gives him any possible answer, attaching any possible meaning to the question, making every effort to put an

40 end to that torment. And the torturer seems to deliberately avail himself of the ambiguity of that question, on the one hand to be able to repeat incessantly the same, insisting sentence and, on the other, to ask - through a single sentence - a polysemic question, appealing to the tortured man's possible reticence.

Through this example, we can see very clearly what is the referential function that JAkobsón talks about, as well as the importance of the context of the utterance.

In addition, in the ad language, the ambiguity of a decontextualized utterance can be useful, thanks to its inherent polysemy and interpretive ambiguity. Many advertising slogans are based on this principle.

The emotional function

The addresser-based function is called emotional or expressive. It is that part of the message which supplies information about the person who is sending the message, about the "first person" of the communicative situation. JAkobsón cites, as a typical example of emotional function, the interjections, which - according to the scholar - are not elements of the sentence, but complete sentences. "Pooh", "upsidaisy", "tut-tut" are actually complete expressions, which can be uttered separately and give a clear idea of the addresser's mood. "A man, using expressive features to indicate his angry or ironic attitude, conveys ostensible information [...]"3.

The intonation of the message can be another form through which the emotional function manifests itself. JAkobsón tells about one sentence that an actor uttered fifty times in order to convey fifty different situations, which the audience unmistakably deciphered. Hence, the emotional function is extremely important to point the message in the right direction too.

The conative function

Still within the framework of the fundamental group, we will now deal with the conative function, namely the one that refers to the addressee. The addressee, the "second person" of the situation, may be implicit, but may sometimes be emphasized, which occurs especially in the vocative and in the imperative. In the vocative, this happens because the addressee is invoked ("Listen, oh Lord!"), in the imperative because he is given an order ("Get out of my way!").

The term "conative" originates from the Latin verb conari, "to tempt", and it means "persuasive". Actually, both the orders of the imperative and the

41 invocations of the vocative have the purpose of persuading the addressee to do something.

In the next units, we will examine the remaining three functions of the verbal communication.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES:

JAkobsón R. Language in Literature. Ed. Krystyna Pomorska and Stephen Rudy. Cambridge (Massachusetts), Belknap Press, 1987. ISBN 0-674-5128-3.

1 JAkobsón 1987, p. 66. 2 JAkobsón 1987, p. 71. 3 JAkobsón 1987, p. 67.

11 - Verbal communication - part two

In the previous unit, we introduced, in their outline, the mechanisms of verbal communication according to JAkobsón. In order to pinpoint the fundamental triad of this diagram of the communication system, we concentrated on three elements only - addresser, context, and addressee. One of the reasons is that - as we have seen - the referential function plays a vital role in completing the sense of the utterance. In an utterance, we never take such care as to specify every detail: we take for granted many aspects of the context, otherwise the communication would be very inefficient. The emotional and conative functions are crucial too: the former because of the role that the addresser plays in communication, the latter owing to the position of the message towards the addressee when the communication takes place.

The basic approaches to the construction of utterances

In order to continue our analysis of verbal communication, we need to consider the two main aspects of sentence building from a mental point of view.

Experiments carried out on subjects suffering from aphasia showed that the two cerebral hemispheres, the right one and the left one, govern two different functions. The left hemisphere presides over the paradigmatic selection of words, while the right hemisphere presides over their syntagmatic combination 1. Here is what that means, in simple terms:

42 Let us imagine the following panel as representing a slot machine. Suppose that, by pulling its (fictional) lever, we spin its parallel vertical wheels showing on their facets different words or blanks, until they stop - forming a combination of words. Our slot machine, though, even allows us to see all the words on the facets not appearing in the central window, the one showing the utterance starting with "Giampaolo".

Alfredo loves Gertrude Who touches [the] pasta? Yesterday he ran out of red wine Giampaolo runs [the] coffee company Now I will go to buy the paper To learn requires an effort you give [did] to Matilda? What

First, let us have a look at the table horizontally, starting from the first line. The mind of the addresser who wants to express a concept begins, say, by looking for the subject of the action: he carries out a selective process, until he gets to the word "Alfredo", which satisfies his need of communication at that moment. In order to go on building his sentence, he has now to face a syntactical problem: after the word "Alfredo", what kinds of words are likely to follow according to the grammar rules of the English language? By raising this question, he carries out a combinational process. There are many different possibilities, but it is more likely that, after the subject, a verb will turn up. At this point, the addresser mentally reviews all the verbs he knows (selective process), singles out the one he considers fit (to love), and properly conjugates it. To get to Gertrude, he must carry out another combinational process (which prevents him from saying, for example, "Alfredo loves although") and a selective one, until he gets to "Gertrude".

Slot machines do not have combinatorial capabilities. Or rather, they randomly combine what is shown on bordering wheel facets, without asking syntactical or constructional questions. Were they humans, one could say that they suffer from right-hemisphere aphasia, or contiguity disorder. Indeed, our imaginary slot machine may bring forth incomprehensible expressions, such as "To learn touches to Matilda an effort" or "Now to learn loves coffee an effort". In other words, the slot machine has a paradigmatic capability (by simply

43 pulling its lever, we can review the whole range of possibilities), but not a syntagmatic one (indeed, it combines words randomly).

Conversely, subjects suffering from left hemisphere aphasia do not have any paradigmatic capability: in other words, they are not able to refer to the range of possibilities.

As JAkobsón ingeniously understood by reworking concepts that had already been partially identified by de Saussure, all linguistic acts are based on combination and selection capabilities.

As for the combination (syntagmatic, horizontal, metonymic axis), a word is in relation to the next one by contiguity. In the sentence "Giampaolo runs the coffee company", between "Giampaolo" and "runs" there is no similarity, just contiguity, and the two words are combinable. The same goes for "runs" and "the coffee" and for "the coffee" and "company".

As for the selection (paradigmatic, vertical, metaphorical axis), a word is in relation to the others (above and below, in our model) by similarity.

A metonymy is a figure of speech built on the contiguity relation between literal and figurative term. For instance, "He earns his living by the sweat of his brow" substitutes "He earns his living by the work that causes his brow to sweat". As we can see, it is a syntagmatic relation (subtraction).

On the other hand, a metaphor is a simile that does not express the terms of comparison. "Golden hair" is a metaphor that originates from the implicit comparison between the color of the hair and the color of gold, a paradigmatic 2 operation.

These concepts are indispensable for dealing with the three other functions of verbal communication, which we will examine in the next unit.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES:

JAKOBSÓN R. Brain and Language. Cerebral Hemispheres and Linguistic Structure in Mutual Light. Columbus (Ohio), Slavica, 1980. ISBN 0- 89357-068-0.

44 MARCHESE, A. Dizionario di retorica e di stilistica. Milano, Mondadori, 1991. ISBN 88-04-14664-8.

1 JAkobsón 1980. 2 Marchese 1991, p. 186, 187, 190, 191.

12 - Verbal communication - part three

In this unit, we will examine the other three elements of the communication system along with their three functions:

a. message (poetic function) b. contact (phatic function) c. code (metalinguistic function).

Factors of verbal communication 1:

CONTEXT ADDRESSER ------MESSAGE ------ADDRESSEE CONTACT CODE

Fundamental functions of the verbal communication 2:

REFERENTIAL EMOTIVE ------POETIC ------CONATIVE PHATIC METALINGUAL

Poetic function

In the previous unit, we affirmed that an utterance is built by selection (syntagmatic axis) and combination (syntagmatic axis). Well, JAkobsón states that «The poetic function projects the principle of equivalence from the axis of selection into the axis of combination» 3. In simpler words, we can say that, in poetry, the principles of syntactical construction - rules that prevent certain types of contiguousness - are sometimes ignored, and syntagmatic construction (verse composition) occurs by referring to the paradigmatic repertoire. Here is an example. Although it is in Italian, it should be clear

45 that its importance is in the sound of word and word combinations, not in their denotative meaning:

Chi mai grida in Crimea dai crinali violacei? Quale ardente chimera incrimina la pace?

Lacrime di Crimea! La chimera dilegua oltre le creste cremisi col grido della tregua. 4

"Le creste cremisi" is an example in which two words, in this case "creste" and "cremisi", are close on the paradigmatic axis (they both begin with accented "cre"), while they are not a common combination on the syntagmatic axis. The repetition of the string "cri", and its absence when the reader is induced to expect it ("chimera", with the "r" sound in a different position so that the quick reader is induced to read again "Crimea" instead of "Chimera", or "crinali", which is easier to read as "crimali") is one of many points of this poetic texture that flows on its own, without any syntagmatic concern. Poetic discourse is based on collocation, meter, paronomasia, displacement, and actual or feigned parallelism. If one tries to translate this passage into prose, or into English, one realizes at once what is not always apparent. It can be, therefore, inferred that the poetic function is based on the message, which becomes important as such, almost regardless of the other six elements of the communication. It is important to keep in mind that the poetic function can be found even in a prose text. In this case, the poetic function is not the dominant, but it can be found under the layers of the other (more important) functions. Here is an example taken right from the JAkobsón's text we are dealing with. ['] in metalanguage the sequence is used to build an equation, whereas in poetry the equation is used to build a sequence 5. We can see that the two phrases, separated by "whereas", have a parallel construction, and are characterized by the chiastic exchange of "sequence" and "equation". Parallelism and chiasmus are peculiar to the poetic function, even in an essay - where the poetic value is definitely of secondary importance.

The phatic function

Some messages are not relevant to the MESSAGE in the center of the table above: their main aim is to maintain the contact with the addressee. Good examples could be

46 sentences like "Hello?" or "Can you hear me?" (speaking by phone) or, again, sentences that aim at prolonging a contact, a conversation. In an elevator, for instance, the contact with other people is an end in itself and its function is that of avoiding some embarrassing minutes of silence: the sentence "It's a nice day, isn't it?", disguised as a question, is merely a way of making some kind of conversation. An answer like "Yes, but yesterday it was less windy" actually means ("Yes, I am ready to keep a contact with you, provided that, in our relationship, we will limit ourselves to formal exchanges"). In fact, the term "phatic" originates from the Greek term phatikós, which means "statement, utterance". Before learning to speak - according to JAkobsón - the infants learn the phatic function: when they understand that, by pronouncing a syllable or a vowel, there's someone who responds to them, who tries to get in touch with them, by replying, by making interpretations in a loud voice, by exchanging glances (eye contact), they are induced to make certain sounds in order to establish a contact (preverbal communication).

The metalinguistic function

When language is used to talk about language itself (code), the communication is metalinguistic. A good example would be: "What are you saying? Are you speaking in English or what?". The same occurs when language is used to explain the meaning of a word. This is called autonymy, i.e. a word that refers not to its signified but to itself, to the signifier. By "metalinguistic function", we mean an utterance in which the addressee gives or ask for information about the code. The reader is not supposed to know the meaning of "metalinguistic function", which is explained in our example. It is apparent that the locution above cannot refer to its signified, because the latter is supposed to be unknown to the reader. In other words, autonymy is a sort of "short circuit" of the usual signifier-signified relationship. The signified is mentioned, but not to trigger possible associations with likely meanings: the signifier is temporarily "off", "deactivated"; it is only a sound or a sign that do not refer to anything, because we are talking about its cross-references, its links.

Bibliographical references

JAkobsón R. Language in Literature. Ed. by Krystyna Pomorska and Stephen Rudy. Cambridge (Massachusetts), Belknap Press, 1987.

JAkobsón R. Linguistics and poetics. In Language in Literature. Ed. by K. Pomorska and S. Rudy, p. 62-94. Cambridge (Massachusetts), Harvard University Press, 1987. ISBN 0-674-51028-3.

Scialoja T. La mela di Amleto.

47 Milano, Garzanti, 1984.

1 JAkobsón 1987, p. 66. Jakobsón 1966, p. 185. 2 JAkobsón 1987, p. 71. Jakobsón 1966, p. 191. 3 JAkobsón 1987, p. 71. 4 Scialoja 1984, p. 107. 5 JAkobsón 1987, p. 71.

13 - JAkobsón and translation - part one

Among JAkobsón's works, an essay written in 1959 stands out for its importance in the framework of general, fundamental reflections on translation problems. On Linguistic Aspects of Translation, seven pages in all, includes what more than 40 years later is still a precious source of reflections for researchers of the nature of the translation process. Before analyzing the question in a more detailed way, a warning is appropriate: the reader should not be misled by the title of JAkobsón's essay, particularly by the adjective "linguistic". JAkobsón has a broad conception of "linguistics", far beyond the traditional limits of this discipline. Our purpose here is to read passages of JAkobsón's essay together and comment on it, dwelling on some ideas that are of great help in thinking about translation problems. The essay is not devoted to translation as an action, but to the importance of translation in semiotic studies, to translation as a concept. Here comes one of the first and most important concepts:

No one can understand the word "cheese" unless he has a nonlinguistic acquaintance with cheese

These are Bertrand Russell's words, quoted by JAkobsón. Russell, in fact, holds that words as such are not capable to convey meanings that do not have roots in a direct subjective experience of what is meant. This statement is controversial for a translator, because to accept it would mean to state that - for a subject unfamiliar to a given culture - it is impossible to figure out words referring to concepts or objects typical of the source culture and alien to his own. JAkobsón questions such a statement affirming that the solution could be an intralingual translation, i.e. in this case, to explain that "cheese" means «food made of pressed curds» 1. For a subject belonging to a culture where cheese does not exist it is, therefore, enough to know what "curds" are to get an idea about the possible meanings of "cheese". The signification process often works in this way. When we are told that the Jews fleeing from Egypt during their long journey through the desert ate "manna", we, readers of the Bible, even though we never could taste manna, can get an idea of what manna could be: a different idea for each of us, that however has a common share. From his argument, JAkobsón draws a very important conclusion:

48 The meaning [...] of any word or phrase whatsoever is definitely [...] a semiotic fact 2.

It therefore does not make any sense to assign a meaning (signatum) to the object and not to the sign (signum): nobody has ever felt the smell - or the taste - of the meaning of "cheese" or "apple". A signatum may exist only if a signum exists too. Someone tasting Gorgonzola or Emmenthal cheese without verbal coding is not able to infer the meaning of the word "cheese" because, in order to explain the meaning of an unknown word, a series of linguistic signs is necessary. The meaning of a word - if we remain in the verbal context - is nothing but its translation into a series of other words: and in this passage we notice the importance of translation, intended in a broader sense, for communication in general, and for intercultural communication in particular. Without translation, it would be impossible to get someone to understand objects that are not part of his culture. In JAkobsón's opinion, there are three ways of interpreting a verbal sign:

1. Intralingual translation or rewording is an interpretation of verbal signs by means of other signs of the same language. 2. Interlingual translation or translation proper is an interpretation of verbal signs by means of some other language. 3. Intersemiotic translation or transmutation is an interpretation of verbal signs by means of signs of nonverbal sign systems. 3

In the aforementioned examples related to the word "cheese", there was an attempt to make an intralingual translation, i.e. to explain with a periphrasis, a circumlocution, without recurring to another language, the meaning of "cheese". The point, in other words, is to find words that are nearly synonyms. "Yet synonymy, as a rule, is not complete equivalence" 4, warns us JAkobsón. The translation into other words of the meaning of an utterance is always the result of an interpretation; therefore, it can - and does - vary according to the subjects who perform it. From this fact we can infer the variety of the possible translations in interlingual translation too.

All cognitive experience and its classification is conveyable in any existing language. Whenever there is a deficiency, terminology can be qualified and amplified by loanwords or loan translations, by neologisms or semantic shifts, and, finally, by circumlocutions 5.

Of course, a universal, empirical, and repeatable method of determining when such deficiencies do occur, whether and how - among the ways pointed out by JAkobsón - cultural intermediaries (translators, for example) should play an active role in their decoding does not exist. In other words, it is impossible to refer to a single method to deal with the problem of loss in translation. For instance, the Northeast Siberian Chukchees refer to the "screw" as a "rotating nail", to the "steel" as a "hard iron", to the "tin" as a "thin iron" and to the "chalk" as a "writing soap" 6

49 However, as every technical or literary translator knows very well, it is not always enough to say the right thing; very often it is essential to say it in the right way too. To this point, we will go back many times, in particular in the third part of this course.

Bibliographical references

JAkobsón R. Language in Literature Ed. by Krystyna Pomorska e Stephen Rudy, Cambridge (Massachusetts), Belknap Press, 1987.

JAkobsón R. On Linguistic Aspects of Translation, in Language in Literature, a c. di Krystyna Pomorska e Stephen Rudy, Cambridge (Massachusetts), Harvard University Press, 1987, p. 428-435. ISBN 0-674-51028-3.

1 JAkobsón 1987, p. 428. JAkobsón 1987, p. 429. 2 JAkobsón 1987, p. 428. 3 JAkobsón 1987, p. 429. 4 JAkobsón 1987, p. 429. 5 JAkobsón 1987, p. 431. 6 JAkobsón 1987, p. 431.

14 - JAkobsón and translation - part two

When dealing with interlingual translation - the most recognizable, superficial, apparent activity of a professional translator - we face the problem of the inexistent equivalence. Since seldom, if ever, in two languages we find two words covering the same semantic field 1, it is more common trying to translate not single code units, but complete messages.

The translator recodes and transmits a message received from another source 2.

JAkobsón's example refers to the Russian sentence "prinesi syru i tvorogu" 3 that, in a literal translation, would sound as: "bring cheese and cottage cheese". The reiteration of the word "cheese" makes even superficially clear that the concept of "cottage cheese" is comprised within the wider semantic category "cheese": that's the reason why the sentence sounds absurd, redundant. Cottage cheese is one of the many varieties of cheese, while tvoróg is not one of the many varieties of syr. The communication problem derives from the fact that the Russian word "syr" is connected to fermented cheese only. In a technical text, having a purely denotative nature, it is possible to deal with such difference in semantic fields acknowledging that and translating, if necessary, "syr" as "fermented cheese" instead of simply "cheese". On the contrary, in a more connotative text it is more difficult to translate expressions like this one, in which the obstacle consists

50 in the cultural - rather than linguistic - difference. Not always, in such cases, explicitation (in this case adding the word "fermented") will do as a pragmatic or functional equivalent 4. While in the past, in order to deal with translation problems, we often had to turn to linguistics, in a sense JAkobsón reverses the approach.

No linguistic specimen may be interpreted by the science of language without a translation of its signs into other signs of the same system or into signs of another systems 5.

This means that linguistic research has to turn to translation - intralingual, interlingual, or intersemiotic translation. There is no possibility to study language without dealing with its interpretation, i.e. with its possible "translations". We can therefore state that linguistics is centered on semiotics and on translation intended in a broad sense. In this way, JAkobsón proposes a conceptual revolution comparable to the shift from the Ptolemaic view to the Copernican conception. Translation studies 6, seen this way, are no longer a marginal subfield of linguistics; they become the Sun around which language science orbits. Unlike artificial languages, in which it is possible to draw neat borders between the meanings of different utterances, in JAkobsón's opinion the main question in linguistics is equivalence in difference. We are not going to deny that verbal communication is at least in part possible but, in the meantime, we have to acknowledge that verbal communication normally produces a loss, and there are no two persons totally sharing the link between sign, sense, and mental image (interpretant, in Peirce's vocabulary). Consequently, linguistic work is based on the notion of translatability, on the possibility to transmit verbal communication from one individual to another, and from one person's mind to the utterance that person processes in order to communicate the message to the outer world. Such work is based on phenomena described in the previous units. Since between mental imagery and its verbal expression there is a reciprocal influence, there is still a theoretical difference caused by a different formulation of apparently identical facts.

Facts are unlike to speakers whose language background provides for unlike formulation of them 7

These are words of the famous linguist Whorf, quoted in JAkobsón's essay. If we adhere rigidly to this assumption, we must admit that any kind of translation is impossible. In this case, linguistic expression is not conceived as a function of mental contents; it is viewed as a mold shaping mental contents. Such statements, emphasizing expressive, perceptive, and cognitive peculiarities of every individual, cannot help discovering shared knowledge, which would be useful dealing with translation, with bilateral understanding. Fortunately, linguistic and metalinguistic abilities are always copresent, which is very useful for understanding each other.

51 An ability to speak a given language implies an ability to talk about this language. Such a metalinguistic operation permits revision and redefinition of the vocabulary used 8.

Any speaker, for this reason, is able to make statements about what he is trying to express and, if necessary, to adjust vocabulary - his own or the other speakers' one - in order to make communication possible.

Bibliographical references

JAkobsón R. Language in Literature, Ed. Krystyna Pomorska and Stephen Rudy. Cambridge (Massachusetts), Belknap Press, 1987.

TOROP P. La traduzione totale [Total Translation]. Ed. B. Osimo. Modena, Guaraldi Logos, 2000. ISBN 88-8049-195-4. Original edition Total´nyj perevod. Tartu, Tartu University Press, 1995. ISBN 9985-56-122-8.

WHORF B. L. Language, Thought, and Reality. Selected Writings, edited by John B. Carroll. Preface by Stuart Chase, Cambridge (Massachusetts), Technology Press of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1956.

1 In the previous units, we showed that this is impossible even within one language, and that often one word has not entirely the same meaning for two speakers. 2 JAkobsón 1987, p. 430. 3 "Bring cheese and cottage cheese". 4 For a more detailed study on the different conceptions of "equivalence", see the second part of this course. 5 JAkobsón 1987, p. 430. 6 In this instance, we use "translation" in a very broad sense, the same meant by Peeter Torop with "total translation" (Torop 2000). In the next units, we will go back on Torop's views about translation. 7 Worf 1956, p. 235. 8 JAkobsón 1987, p. 431.

15 - JAkobsón and translation - part three

An important aspect of translation problems has to do with the effect of the existence/nonexistence of grammatical categories on translation and its possible outcome. At first view, "to walk in the park is pleasant" and "a walk in the park is pleasant" are very similar utterances; someone could even say "equivalent" expressions. JAkobsón holds that this aspect, the change in grammatical category - for example the use of a name instead of a verb or an adjective - has many consequences. In two

52 essays, "Poetry of grammar and grammar of poetry" 1 and "Grammatical parallelism and its Russian facet" 2, JAkobsón emphasizes the structural importance of the grammatical categories in the text, especially in the literary text. Using a verb instead of a name is not the same; it has consequences in the expressive sphere. In the quoted essay on translation, the problems deriving from translations between languages with different grammatical categories are properly stressed.

It is more difficult to remain faithful to the original when we translate into a language provided with a certain grammatical category from a language lacking such a category 3.

A frequent problem for the translator from English is the use of the simple past. Sometimes, from the co-text, it is impossible to understand whether a perfective or imperfective value should be attributed to the verb, if the action is finished and definite or, on the contrary, is repeated and unfinished; it is therefore difficult to decide what tenses to use in the target language. Another tricky situation is caused by the fact that, for someone writing in English, it is not necessary even to decide if a simple past verb should be interpreted as a perfective or imperfective action. The possibility of the English language to express a "not well defined past" is an expressive tool that other language don't have, because it allows English authors not to define - to leave ambiguous - what the grammatical category doesn't imply.

"Languages differ essentially in what they must convey and not in what they can convey. Each verb of a given language imperatively raises a set of specific yes-or-no questions, as for instance: is the narrated event conceived with or without reference to its completion? is the narrated event presented as prior to the speech event or not? Naturally the attention of native speakers and listeners will be constantly focused on such items as are compulsory in their verbal code" 4.

When a text is translated into a language in which such ambiguity is not guaranteed by the grammatical categories, the translator is forced to make an interpretation that the author had not made, is forced to make a choice and to prefer a vision that suppresses the potential for other perspectives. JAkobsón proposes very interesting examples. The point is to translate into Russian the sentence "I hired a worker". The Russian translator must make two decisions the English speaker has not foreseen; first, deciding whether the verb "hired" has a perfective or imperfective aspect, which, as a consequence, produces a choice between "nanjal" and "nanimal"; the second concerns the gender of the worker, which produces a choice between "rabotnika" and "rabotnicu". On the other hand, from the Russian text, we will not be able to understand whether it is "a worker" or "the worker", i.e. whether it is an indefinite person or a person we have already heard of. In this case, the determinative article takes on an anaphoric value. This ambiguity of the Russian text is due to the absence of the article as grammatical category

53 in the Russian language. What we said about the use of grammatical categories is mostly referring to a less than rational use of language. When language is employed in a rational way, the grammatical model is far less important, because what we experience is closely linked to a continuous interpretive and decoding action - a translation work. It is therefore inconceivable that rational data could be untranslatable, because in this case we would imply that we are not able to understand the rational experience itself. What can be untranslatable is experience "in jest, in dreams, in magic, briefly, in what one would call everyday verbal mythology, and in poetry above all" 5, where grammatical categories have an enormous semantic significance. JAkobsón's essay in the end quotes the Italian epigram in rhyme:

Traduttore, traditore 6.

In the history of translation studies, the quantity of trivial observations on the subject is so vast, that once again we are astonished to observe how JAkobsón can make on this basis deep, original reflections that have many important scientific consequences. First, the question of translating this epigram into English is considered: If we were to translate it "the translator is a betrayer", we would deprive it of all its paronomastic value. (Paronomasia consists in juxtaposing two words with a similar sound, or of one word being the anagram of the other.) We could be tempted, therefore, to take on a more rational point of view and to make the aphorism explicit, to answer the questions:

translator of what messages? betrayer of what values?7

With JAkobsón's levity and elegance, the reader is thus invited to understand the characteristics of the following parts of this course, whose aim is to do away with many translations studies clichés. Betrayer of what values? And, consequently, what do we mean by "fidelity"? No translator, we think (and no lover) would be openly proud of his "infidelity". To state that translations should be "faithful to the original" has the same value of the sentence "We should behave well. We should not behave naughtily". The soldiers of the French captain J. de Chabannes - monsieur de La Palice, who died during the battle of Pavia (1525) - who remembered him with verses like "Fifteen minutes before his death / he was still alive", if compared to some translation "scientists", are just beginners. Obviously, we must be faithful, but this is indefinite - JAkobsón tells us between the lines - if we do not state what we have to be faithful to. Translator of what messages? This question encourages us to investigate the complex nature of translation, its multifaceted nature and, consequently, the relative nature of the question. We have to define exactly from the beginning the terms of our discourse if we want to do serious scientific work. In this course, we will draw often on Peeter Torop's works. He is chief of the Department of Semiotics of the Tartu University, in Estonia, and scientific and academic heir of the great scientist JUrij Lotman. Torop's conception of "total translation" will help us greatly in trying to answer JAkobsón's questions.

54 Bibliographical references

JAKOBSÓN R. Language in Literature, a c. di Krystyna Pomorska e Stephen Rudy, Cambridge (Massachusetts), Belknap Press, 1987.

1 Poèzija grammatiki i grammatika poèzii, 1960. 2 Grammatical Parallelism and Its Russian Facet, 1966. 3 Jakobsón 1987, p. 432. 4 Jakobsón 1987, p. 433. 5 Jakobsón 1987, p. 433. 6 Jakobsón 1987, p. 435. 7 Jakobsón 1987, p. 435.

16 - Translation studies - part one

In the previous units, we saw how many processes are involved in the everyday activity we refer to as "translation", and how wide the continuum is of concepts we refer to as "translation": within this wider concept, interlingual translation is but one of its many expressions. Many people say that (interlingual) translation is one of the oldest activities in the world. The Bible is a good example of translation: in fact its oldest versions contain words in Aramaic, parts in Hebrew and, in what is often called the "New Testament", parts in Greek. In spite of that, until the 1980s there was no specific discipline dealing with translation and/or its problems. One could suppose that, just because translation has always existed, for centuries it simply went unobserved, as an element of the cultural landscape to be taken for granted, and, even though, from Cicero's day on, a number of writings were dedicated to that subject, nobody felt or expressed the need to create a specific discipline. On the other hand, many arts or sciences have dealt with translation in a more or less marginal way, from rhetoric to narratology to linguistics. Until recently, however, nobody thought that the landscape could be turned upside down, that a Ptolemaic revolution could be made, in order to place interlingual translation, which has always been in the position of a transitory and an unauthorized satellite of the other sciences holding a stronger position. Translation can be qualified as a system having the broader concept of (total) translation at its center, and the various types of translation in satellite positions: textual, metatextual, intratextual, extratestual translation. How this relatively new science is called? It has so many names that we need the help of translators in order to understand each other. English-speaking researchers call it "translation studies" or, familiarly, TS. In this way, they have coined a locution untranslatable into nearly any other language, untranslatable, at least, without creating an important loss. The main problem comes with the word "studies", which in languages other than English is not always translatable simply using the plural of a word translating "study". However, a science called "translation studies" is undoubtedly a scientific endeavor related to translation.

55 Frenchmen use the term traductologie. Berman wrote in 1985:

The awareness of translation experiences, as distinct from all objectifying knowledge not within its framework (as dealt with by linguistics, compared literature, poetics) is what I call traductologie 1.

Some translation researchers and some translators, including those translating from French, think that "traductologie" is a swearword, not meaning literally that it is obscene, alluding instead to its disagreeable aesthetic taste. Not every translation researcher would be glad to print "traductologist" on her business card, even if we cannot deny that the construction of this word follows widely accepted criteria. Germans prefer another solution. Maybe at a first glance you could think it is a rather long word: they call this discipline Übersetzungwissenschaft, that is to say "translation science", stressing in a still stronger way that they believe in the scientific character of their endeavor, which is obviously welcome. Russians, offer another alternative, with a similar process of word composition, speak about perevodovédenie, which however does not mean exactly "translation science", because "science" - and "discipline" - is usually expressed by the word nauka. Védenie is something between competence and awareness. It has an old Indo-European root: in Sanskrit, we find the word vida, meaning "knowledge". Russians are lucky, because with the suffix -védenie they solve many terminology problems: literaturovédenie, for example, means "literary theory", "narratology", and many other similar disciplines. In Italy many terms are used: traduttologia, scienza della traduzione, teoria e storia della traduzione, an old and obsolete denomination implying a nonexisting distinction between translation theory and practice, recalling linguistics applied to translation problems. In this course, we will use both the terms: "translation studies" and "translation science". A Tartu University scholar, Peeter Torop, who inherited JUrij Lotman's place as a chief of the local Semiotics Department, in 1995 wrote a book entitled Total´nyj perevod [Total Translation], which is soon to be printed in English by the Guaraldi Logos publishers 2. We share Torop's general approach to the question of translation research. Let us explain what Torop means by "total", an adjective that might induce awe owing to its absolute value. In Torop's opinion, translation should be total for two reasons. First, by "translation" we mean not only interlingual translation, but metatextual, intratextual, intertextual, and extratextual translation as well. (We will see in the following units what we mean by these definitions.) We feel that the total approach to overall translation problems has a greater chance of obtaining scientific results because translation - as a process - is the same in all these instances. Differences concern only the initial product and the final result, which may or may not be texts. That is why the overall translation process is the core of our studies. The second reason to consider translation in a total sense is that, even if we value the various contributions made to translation studies ante litteram, or before the existence of this science, we wish to pursue the "search for a comprehensive methodology" 3, the

56 creation of a translation science that can plunge its roots in previous studies. In doing so, we face an apparently insuperable obstacle: every science has its own terminology and, often, every author has idiosyncratic preferences for single words. The result is that two essays may deal with the same subject even if their superficial contents are very different one from another, and the subjects themselves are nominated in different ways: a sort of pre-translation-science Babel. We share the hope with Torop that the translation researchers will first translate the results of translation studies into one metalanguage, and then translate the different analysis methods into one unifying methodology. In other words, translation researchers should first methodologically translate the results of translation studies into a single language, so that we can use this basis to do research in a scientifically homogeneous context, preventing the risk of being misunderstood by colleagues and translators.

Bibliographical references

BERMAN A. et al. Les tours de Babel. Essais sur la traduction. Essays by Antoine Berman, Gérard Granel, Annick Jaulin, Georges Mailhos, Henry Meschonnic, Mosé, Friedrich Schleiermacher. Mauzevin, Trans-Europ-Repress, 1985. ISBN 2-905670-17-7.

TOROP P. La traduzione totale. Ed. by B. Osimo. Modena, Guaraldi Logos, 2000. ISBN 88-8049-195-4. Original edition in Russian: Total´nyj perevod. Tartu, Tartu Ülikooli Kirjastus [Tartu University Press], 1995. ISBN 9985-56-122-8.

1 Berman 1985, p. 38. 2 The Italian edition was published in November 2000 (ISBN 88-8049-195-4). The English edition should be printed by 2001. 3 Torop 2000, p. 24.

17 - Translation studies - part two

We have seen in the previous unit that Torop distinguishes various kinds of translations. Let us examine them one at a time.

Textual translation: this is the core of translation studies, also because it is the kind of translation activity about which we have the widest literature. It is, moreover, what more traditionally is referred to as "translation". By "textual translation", we mean a process by which a text is transformed into another text. This term does not make a distinction between interlingual and intralingual translation. The textual paraphrase of a text, for example, is a kind of textual translation, even if the two texts - prototext and paraphrase - are composed with the same code.

57 The "prototext" is what is sometimes referred to as "original", or "source text". The word is formed by the prefix proto-, deriving from the Greek word prôtos, meaning "first", a meaning that can be used both to mean "first in time" and "first in space". Using the same word-formation principle, what sometimes is called "translated text" or "target text" - that is to say the result of textual translation - can be called "metatext". The prefix meta-, from the Greek word metá, meaning "after" (and also "with" and "for"), can refer to a shift, a continuum, a transfer, or also to posteriority, additionality. We must stress the difference between two meanings of the word "metatext", both of them relevant to translation studies: first, "result of a textual translation process", the second one is "metatextual translation process" (see further details in the next paragraph). Being the most visible, textual translation is the kind of translation with a wider literature. When we talk about the other types of translation, we still have the model of textual translation in mind: that is the reason why the general methodology of translation science, even when meant in a "total" sense, should be based on textual translation. Textual translation studies are often based on literary texts. This fact should not fool translators or future translators, especially those working with nonliterary texts: one should not think that an analysis of a literary text is meaningful only for a literary text or, worse yet, only for that single literary text. This would be in contrast to one of the two main principles of total translation: the center of translation studies is the translation process, whose core is common to all types of translation and, therefore, to all kinds of interlingual, textual translations.

By "metatextual translation", we mean a process transferring a text not into another text, but into a culture: in other words, the metatext is the overall image a text creates of itself in a given culture. The overall image of a text in a culture is determined by the text itself and by what in that culture is said about that text. A hint at a text, made publicly by someone, in a written or oral form; a quotation; a critical essay; an item in an encyclopedia referring to that text or author; an afterword to a text or the critical apparatus to an edition, and so on: all that contributes to create the overall image of a text in a culture. If metatextual translation is intralingual, then the metatext consists of the aforementioned elements only; if it is interlingual, then among the metatextual elements there also can be the translated text that, as we have just seen, can be called "metatext" even by itself. Actually, it is a part of the whole metatext of an interlingual translation. Sometimes, as Torop stresses, textual and metatextual translations are simultaneous, contextual operations: they go together:

When the translator or the publisher himself prepares the preface, commentary, illustrations, glossaries, and so on to a translated text, it is possible a translation being textual and metatextual at the same time 1.

In some cases, the interlingual translation is written by a translator, the preface by another author and the critical apparatus by a third person. The metatext is then a collective endeavor, not always coordinated and coherent.

58 Intertextual translation. In our world, no text rises in autonomy, outside a context. This is increasingly true when we face the faster and capillary circulation of information that, on one hand, tends to globalize culture but, on the other hand, makes easier the interchange between cultures and promotes development beyond differences. The great Russian semiotician JUrij Lotman (1922-1993) in 1984 published an essay on this topic called "The semiosphere". The cultural universe is compared to a body, on the model of Vernadsky's concept of biosphere 2. This body may have more psychological than biological features, but it has the characteristics of a system:

[...] the modern world semiosphere that, having grown wider and wider through centuries, has now a universal character, includes signals from satellites and poets' verses and animal cries. [...] The dynamic development of semiosphere elements (of substructures) tends toward specification and increases, therefore, the inner variety of the whole 3.

We feel reassured, in a time when there are people who are afraid that the internet will standardize local cultures, tastes and traditions:

[...] the process of reciprocal information and inclusion in a general cultural world not only nears different cultures, but emphasizes their differences too. By entering in a general cultural world, a culture begins in fact to cultivate more intensely its originality. [...] An isolated culture is always "for itself", "natural", and "ruled by customary laws". As soon as it becomes a part of a wider system, it gets to know an outer point of view about itself, and discovers its own specificity 4.

We can see the similarity between this argument and what we said in unit 5 referring to linguistic self-consciousness. One's own way of verbal expression appears to be "natural" as soon as we do not observe it from outside, we do not begin to make questions about its mechanisms, and we do not acquire a core of metalinguistic self-consciousness. These considerations of semiotic and psychological character suggest a systemic approach to the problem of intercultural influences. The literary critic Harold Bloom, theorizing on cultural influences in literature, synthesizes systemic approach and Freudian psychoanalysis. He finds in the cultural system a mechanism in which the author of a text is in the position of a son trying desperately to emerge with an identity of his own despite the cultural domination of his "fathers", his literary precursors. We can easily notice that said vision is strongly influenced by the Freudian concept of Oedipal complex: the emerging identity of an author is considered a metaphor of the definition of a son's identity, taking for granted the existence of a conscious or unconscious conflict with his father. In the case of cultural influences, every precursor is a potential father, more or less "encumbering" according to his importance in a given culture. In Bloom's opinion, the text becomes

59 a psychic battlefield upon which authentic forces struggle for the only victory worth winning, the divinating triumph over oblivion 5.

Every author, in Bloom's vision, is annoyed realizing that what he writes is not completely original, that he writes also as a reaction to his precursors - in the same way as a son is annoyed to behave in reaction to his father's personality, instead of following his own desires and aspirations. For this reason the author tends to deny this kind of influence or, as one says in psychoanalysis, to repress the debt. Repression, like any other psychic mechanism intended to create a false perception of reality in order to make it acceptable, causes - as a side effect - the impossibility to interpret the precursors' works in a conscious way. Bloom's work is centered on this kind of interpretation, which is neither lucid nor aware, and becomes a misinterpretation: every work is thus the misinterpretation of a parent work, and every reading is actually a misreading of what was written by the precursor.

Bibliographical references

BLOOM H. Poetry and Repression: Revisionism from Blake to Stevens. New Haven, Yale University Press, 1976

LOTMAN JU. Lekcii po struktural´noj poètike. In JU. M. Lotman i tartusko-moskovskaja somioticheskaja shkola. Moskvà, Gnozis, 1994, p. 10-263. ISBN 5-7333-0486-3.

LOTMAN JU. O semiosfere [Sulla semiosfera], in Töid märgisüsteemide alalt/Trudy po znakovym sistemam/Sign Systems Studies, volume 17, Tartu, 1984. ISSN 1406-4243.

TOROP P. La traduzione totale. Ed. by B. Osimo. Modena, Guaraldi-Logos, 2000. ISBN 88-8049-195-4. Or. ed. Total´nyj perevod. Tartu, Tartu Ülikooli Kirjastus [Tartu University Press], 1995. ISBN 9985-56-122-8.

VERNADSKIJ V. I. Biosfera [The Biosphere], Moskvà, 1967.

1 Torop 2000, p. 31. 2 Vernadskij 1967. 3 Lotman 1985, p. 69. 4 Lotman 1985, p. 76. 5 Bloom 1976, p. 2.

18 - Translation studies - part three

In the previous unit, speaking about intertextual translation, we were led to widen the object of our analysis to the whole semiosphere, to the whole cultural universe, the environment in which cultural influences interact.

60 As we said, there are no texts rising from nowhere, independently of the context, from outside the semiosphere system. Consequently, when an author writes a text, a part of what she writes is a product of outer influences, while another part is a product of her own personal contemplation. The author's creativity, however, is not shown only in the part of the work deriving from her personal creation, but also in her ability to choose and synthesize what others have written or said. When an author assimilates material - in an explicit or implicit, conscious or unconscious way -coming from others' texts, she makes an intertextual translation, and the assimilated material is called intertext 1. At this stage of our exposition, we are not yet interested in defining whether the other's material is originally written or pronounced in the same code as the metatext or in another. For the moment, we need only define whether it is a quotation and, if so, if it is an explicit or implicit one. If, on the other hand, it is an allusion, we need to know how difficult it is for the reader to understand it. Otherwise, the author can also unwillingly echo elements she has absorbed from the semiosphere system. Torop makes an important point here: «The author and the translator and the reader all have a textual memory» 2. This synthesizing comment has many repercussions on the act of practical translation. This means that, beyond the author's memory, allowing her to insert other's texts in her text, the translator must - if she wants to do a good job - realize the presence of the other's text and make it recognizable to the reader of the metatext. If, for example, an author "quotes" a passage by someone else without using quotation marks or other graphic devices to indicate the beginning and end points of the quotations, it is very important for the translator to catch the citation and convey it to the reader of the metatext. In every single case the translator must decide how to do that, for instance whether within or outside of the translated text. It is also very important to remember that the reader has a textual memory, because that determines the possibility to grasp the presence of other's text (intertext) within the declared author's text. Whenever the reader's textual memory or her encyclopedic ability are insufficient to grasp said intertextual links, the damage is limited to the fruition of this reader and of those who are going to receive information about that text from her. On the other hand, when the reader is the translator - i.e. when the translator's textual memory (or competence) is insufficient - the problem is more complex, because the risk is to be unable to convey in the metatext the mark of other's language (of other's word, in Bakhtinian terms). Such missing links have repercussions not only on one single reader, but on all possible metatext readers.

As to intratextual translation, all that was said about intertextual translation is true, with the exception that, in some way, we have to deal with "inner quotations", of links of the author to herself, from a passage of her work to an other one: it is, therefore, the interweaving of the author's poetics. While the intertext has the semiosphere as a reference system, "intratext" refers to the microsystem of the author's text.

Extratextual translation concerns the intersemiotic translation described by JAkobson.

61 In it, the original material - prototext - is generally verbal text, while metatext is made, for example, of visual images, still, or moving as in film. It can also work the other way round, with a prototext made of music, images and so on, and a verbal metatext.

Every art's language has its own articulation; its composing elements can be completely different. At the same time, however, natural language can be used as a language to describe all of them (metalanguage). Art criticism is actually a description of visual and linguistic art works by means of the natural language 3.

In every art, expressive devices are different, and each art provides expressive capabilities that the other arts may not possess. In cinema, it is the director's creativity that allows her to choose and combine the expressive capabilities available and may be missing in other kinds of codes. Torop gives us a very interesting example of creativity in the choice of cinematographic devices:

[...] in Buñuel's last film That Obscure Object of Desire, where the aged man's incapacity to understand a young woman (later his wife) is rendered - in the psychological space - using two distinct actresses for the role of the same character. In the topographic chronotope, therefore, the lines of the plot see the hero meet two women, that in the psychological chronotope is one concrete and well defined woman in each scene, while in the metaphysical chronotope they are a mysterious and unappreciated woman 4.

In literature, this kind of artistic device would be unfeasible, because what in the film is rendered by an image (the viewer suddenly sees another actress on the screen, but he realizes that she represents the same character as the other), in terms of natural language that would be rendered very clumsily owing to the lengthy and difficult verbal explanation. The writer would need an additional artistic device. Such reflections have important consequences when we must translate a written text into a film, because the equivalence principle is far from being present, and we must work instead on the different expressive potential of all the codes involved. The analysis of this kind of problems falls within the framework of the analysis of translation in a broad sense, of total translation.

What we said about the various kinds of translation suggests that a solely linguistic approach to translation studies in inadequate in itself because it "doesn't cover the whole range of translation problems" 5. The methodological contribution of semiotics is necessary because semiotic metalanguage is more open, on one hand, to the different codes or sign systems, and, on the other hand, to the cultural aspects of the translation reception 6. The core of translation studies must be a universal model of the translation process applicable to all of the various kinds of translation we have talked about. And, on the

62 basis of this model, we must try to describe, without any evaluative purpose, how the translation process works. This because "a science that has as a purpose to describe translation as a process should not be prescriptive, it should be theoretical" 7.

Bibliographical references

EVEN-ZOHAR I. Polysystem Studies. Poetics Today, 11, n. 1, 1990.

GORLÉE, D. L. Semiotics and the problem of translation with special reference to the semiotics of Charles S. Peirce. Amsterdam, Rodopi, 1994.

REVZIN I., ROZENCVEJG V. Osnovy obshchego i mashinnogo perevoda [The bases of general and automatic translation], Moskvà, 1964.

TOROP P. La traduzione totale. Ed. by B. Osimo. Modena, Guaraldi Logos, 2000. ISBN 88-8049-195-4. Or. ed. Total´nyj perevod. Tartu, Tartu Ülikooli Kirjastus [Tartu University Press], 1995. ISBN 9985-56-122-8.

TOURY G. In Search of a Theory of Translation, Tel Aviv University, The Porter Institute for Poetics and Semiotics, 1980.

1 Torop 2000, p. 223-304. 2 Torop 2000, p. 31. 3 Torop 2000, p. 316. 4 Torop 2000, p. 326. 5 Torop 2000, p. 188. 6 Gorlée 1993; Even-Zohar 1990; Toury 1980. 7 Revzin, Rozencvejg 1964, p. 21.

19 - The translation process - part one

As we said at the end of the previous unit, the unifying element of any translation-science research must be the understanding and description of the translation process that is shared by all the types of translations we have described. Some researchers tend to distinguish neatly between:

 product-analysis approaches, that concentrate on the translated text or metatext, and

 process-analysis approaches, that concentrate on the process through which from the prototext the metatext is obtained.

63 According to one of the more important translation scientists, James S. Holmes (1924- 1986), who laid the foundations for the new translation-studies discipline, this distinction is nearly impossible at a practical level and does not provide many results:

True, it is very useful to make a distinction between the product-oriented study of translations and the process-oriented study of translating. But this distinction cannot leave to scholar leave to ignore the self-evident fact that the one is the result of the other, and that the nature of the product cannot be understood without a comprehension of the nature of the process 1.

When we say that we want to pay much attention to the translation process in translation science, we have better view of it in a broad sense, i.e. not as something complementary to the translation product. The translation process is viewed as an interrelation between the original and the translated text. The translator reading the text she is about to translate does so projecting the potential metatexts into a virtual space within which the new text begins to take shape, first in terms of mental material (processing of material as perceived by the translator), then in terms of concrete insertion of such material in a rigid and conventional structure: the future metatext code (the language of the translated text). The human mind takes into exam - a very quick but not always thoroughly conscious way - the various potential possibilities to project the prototext into the metatext language and - with a procedure of choice that has much in common with the games theory 2 - opts for the optimal solution among the prefigured ones. This selection work is made more complicated by the awareness that often choices made have chain of consequences. To opt for one translating word instead of another precludes some semantic potentials while stressing other possible meanings, creates new intratextual and intertextual links while erasing other possible links. Every temporary choice should be weighed in view of the whole text, and there is never a "final" choice because the evolution of the prototext in relation to the global text is limitless. The text, as we saw, is a complex entity composed, among other things, of a system of intertextual and intratextual links. One of the aspects which the translator's attention should particularly focus upon is the distinction between standard and marked elements: the neutral/specific nature of an element is to be considered in the light of the cultural context (intertextual links) and of the single author's poetologic context (intratextual links). It is to be viewed in relation to the verbal units immediately preceding and following (co- text) the examined word.

The reader of a poem or the viewer of a painting has a vivid awareness of two orders: the traditional canon and the artistic novelty as a deviation from that canon. It is precisely against the background of the tradition that innovation is conceived. The Formalist studies brought to light that

64 this simultaneous preservation of tradition and breaking away from tradition form the essence of every new work of art 3.

Since there is never a real sign-sign equivalence on the linguistic plane or on the cultural plane, in her projective activity the translator is biased toward certain aspects of the prototext and pays less attention to other elements that she considers of secondary importance. At the basis of the translation activity there is "the choice of the element you consider foremost in the translated production" 4; in other words, the text is to be analyzed with criteria that should be as much objective as possible in order to isolate an element, a dominant, forming the main entity around which the identification of the whole text is built:

The dominant may be defined as the focusing component of a work of art: it rules, determines, and transforms the remaining components. It is the dominant which guarantees the integrity of the structure 5.

Not only literary works can undergo such analysis that determines translation choices: every text has its own dominant. What distinguishes a literary work is, in some cases, the aesthetic function of the dominant:

[...] a poetic work is defined as a verbal message whose aesthetic function is its dominant 6.

In the translation process, the dominant of a text must not be identified depending on the literary/non-literary nature of the prototext. Even if this aspect may appear fundamental in the analysis of the text apart from the translation, in the real translation process we need to concentrate on the complex interweaving of the relations between the role of the prototext in the source culture and language and the role of the metatext in the target culture and language 7. The theoretical model of the translation process, the core of translation science, should describe the various possibilities in the transfer of the dominant, i.e. the various theoretical possibilities to translate 8.

Bibliographical references

BRJUSOV V. Fialki v tigele [Violets in the crucible], in Sobranie sochinenij v semi tomah [Selected works in seven books], vol. 6, Moskvà 1975.

GORLÉE D. L. Semiotics and the Problem of Translation with Special Reference to the Semiotic of Charles S. Peirce. Alblasserdam, Offsetdrukkerij Kanters, 1993.

HOLMES J. S. Translated! Papers on Literary Translation and Translation Studies. Amsterdam, Rodopi, 1988. ISBN 90-6203-739-9.

65 TOROP P. La traduzione totale. Ed. by B. Osimo. Modena, Guaraldi Logos, 2000. ISBN 88-8049-195-4. Or. ed. Total´nyj perevod. Tartu, Tartu Ülikooli Kirjastus [Tartu University Press], 1995. ISBN 9985-56-122-8.

1 Holmes 1988, p. 81. 2 Gorlée 1993. 3 JAkobsón 1987, p. 46. 4 Brjusov 1975, p. 106. 5 JAkobsón 1987, p. 41. 6 JAkobsón 1987, p. 43. 7 Torop 2000, p.197. 8 Torop 2000, p.197.

20 - The translation process - part two

The translation process is characterized by an analysis stage and a synthesis stage. During analysis, the translator refers to the prototext in order to understand it as fully as possible. The synthesis stage is the one in which the prototext is projected onto the reader, better, onto the idea that the translator forms of who will be the standard reader of the metatext.

[...] the text postulates the reader's cooperation as a condition for its actualization. Or, better, we can say that a text is a product whose interpretive fate must be part of its generation mechanism: to generate a text means to enact a strategy enclosing the prediction of the other's moves - as, by the way, it happens in every strategy 1.

In other words, Eco tells us that, when we create a text (Eco does not speak about translation, but his points holds for us too) we foresee the reader's moves. We postulate, therefore, the existence of a Model Reader:

The Model Reader is a set of conditions of happiness, textually established, that must be satisfied for a text to be fully actualized in its potential contents 2.

This means that the translator, elaborating her translation strategy, projects the prototext onto her Model Reader, onto a type of reader that she infers from the relation between prototext and target culture. Noone of the real readers, or empirical readers, can therefore coincide completely with the Model Reader. And what Eco tells us is that is that, the more the empirical reader X is different from the postulated model, the less complete will be the actualization of the potential contents of the text, i.e. the less complete the text fruition or understanding will be. This is what happens during the synthesis stage of the translation process. As we will see better in the following parts of this course, we do not approve of or share in the opposition between "free" and "literal" translation be-cause we do not think that

66 either of these two types of translation can be defined with scientific criteria. Much more interesting is, in our opinion, to concentrate on the dominant of the translation: the translation process can be centered on the analysis phase; in this case, the dominant of the translation is focused on the author of the prototext, and on the translator. The translation process can also be centered on the synthesis stage; in this case the translation dominant will be the focus on the Model Reader of the metatext 3. Of course, the dominant of the prototext and the dominant of the metatext may not always coincide. The two polarities toward which the translation process may be oriented are what Toury calls adequacy principle and acceptability principle. Adequacy is the measure of the adherence of the metatext to the prototext, from the translator's point of view, also considering her deontological principles. Acceptability is, on the other hand, seen in relation to the culture receiving the metatext, the target culture. An exaggeratedly "adequate" translation can be unacceptable, i.e. there may not be any concrete expressions of its Model Reader. This somewhat abstract argument needs some concrete examples if we do not want to loose the thread of what we are saying. One of the most translated books in the world, probably the most translated, is the Bible. The translations made before Martin Luther tend mostly toward the "adequacy" pole, for a very simple reason. The Bible is a sacred text for Jews, Christians and Muslims alike. For this reason, the translators attributed a very high value not only to its contents, but to its form as well: to its sounds, even to the form of its signs; for this reason they tried to produce a version as close to the letter of the original as possible. Martin Luther realized that the German translation of the Bible was incomprehensible to most German speaking believers, and that this fact was causing a gap between the Church and its flock. Therefore, he proposed a more understandable version:

I wanted to speak German and not Latin or Greek, because I had the purpose of speaking German in my translation. [...] One should not ask the letters of the Latin language how one should speak in German, as these asses do; one should ask that of the mother in her home, of the kids in the street, of the common man in the marketplace, and one should watch each mouth to know how they speak and then translate consequently. Then they will understand and realize that we are speaking with them in German 4.

The Roman Catholic Church considered this operation sacrilegious, and was one of the causes of Luther's excommunication. This is how the Lutheran or Protestant religion began. Afterwards, however, the Roman Catholic Church also changed its position and proposed increasingly understandable texts to its believers in a form increasingly close to the "acceptability" pole. The Bible, however, is being translated even today, and sometimes the translations are very different from the most widespread versions, so different that some consider them too far from the "adequacy" principles. Here are some passages from Exodus in the King James version (left column) and in Young's literal version (right column):

67 1 Now these are the names of the children 1 And these [are] the names of the sons of Israel, which came into Egypt; every of Israel who are coming into Egypt man and his household came with Jacob. with Jacob; a man and his household 2 Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah, have they come; 3 Issachar, Zebulun, and Benjamin, 2 Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah, 4 Dan, and Naphtali, Gad, and Asher. 3 Issachar, Zebulun, and Benjamin, 5 And all the souls that came out of the 4 Dan, and Naphtali, Gad, and Asher. loins of Jacob were seventy souls: for 5 And all the persons coming out of the Joseph was in Egypt already. thigh of Jacob are seventy persons; as 6 And Joseph died, and all his brethren, and to Joseph, he was in Egypt. all that generation. 6 And Joseph dieth, and all his brethren, 7 And the children of Israel were fruitful, and all that generation; and increased abundantly, and multiplied, 7 and the sons of Israel have been and waxed exceeding mighty; and the land fruitful, and they teem, and multiply, was filled with them 5. and are very very mighty, and the land is filled with them 6.

As you can see, Young's version is closer to "adequacy", to the point that some phrases contain no verb (indicated in square brackets), and sometimes phrases are difficult to understand from a grammatical point of view. With this example of the concrete difference between the acceptability principle and the "adequacy" principle, we hope to ease the comprehension of the ideological choices translators and publishers make that have so much influence on the form of translated text.

Bibliographical references

ECO U. Lector in fabula. La cooperazione interpretativa nei testi narrativi. Milano, Bompiani, 1991. ISBN 88-452-1221-1.English edition: The role of the reader: explorations in the semiotics of texts. Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1979

LUTHER M. Sendbrief vom Dolmetschen, 1530.

TOURY G. In Search of a Theory of Translation, Tel Aviv, The Porter Insistute for Poetics and Semiotics, 1980.

1 Eco 1991, p. 54. Author's emphasis. 2 Eco 1991, p. 62. Author's emphasis. 3 Torop 2000, p. 200 - 201. 4 Martin Luther 1530, p. 106.

68 5 The Bible Gateway http://bible.gospelcom.net/ 6 The Bible Gateway http://bible.gospelcom.net/

21 - The translation process - part three

Having examined the consequences of a practical nature in the difference between an adequacy-oriented approach and an acceptability-oriented approach, we are aware of the fact that - pointing to the main ideological dichotomy at the basis of any translation - we have stressed the most self-evident and important distinction. Nevertheless, we are still far from providing a full description of the criteria through which it is possible to define a general model of the translation process. The Danish researcher L. Hjelmslev 1 proposed the distinction, within a text, between, on one hand, form and substance of the content and, on the other hand, the form and substance of expression. In this way, the text is divided into two planes (expression and content), each of which is divided into two parts (form and substance), producing the following quadripartition:

the content substance is, in a sense, objective, and does not vary from one language to another, but points to inherent qualities. For example, colors can be described as a certain range of visible frequencies. What in English is called "green" is, for most English- speaking people, related to a given combination of impressions linked to the perception of wavelengths comprised between 5000 and 5700 angstrom. Therefore, if we superficially think of the translatability of the English concept of "green", we might think that it is easy to transpose it into another language;

the content form: in English, the word "green" points to the content substance we just described. Hjelmslev observes that the content form varies from one language to another. This means that we do not have a perfect match between the semantic fields of similar content forms in different languages. Hjelmslev provides as example the mismatching of the names of colors spanning from green to brown in the English and in the Welsh languages 2:

gwyrdd glas green blue gray llwyd brown

69 Among other examples of mismatching between content form and content substance in different languages are the English words "abortion" and "miscarriage", that in some languages are identified by a single indistinctive word (for example, "aborto" in Italian, "avortement" in French). On the contrary, the content form of English word "hair" in many other languages matches two different words, one indicating the head hair, the other denoting the body hair (for example, in Italian "capello" and "pelo", in French "cheveu" and "poil");

expression substance is the graphic and phonic expression of the content. If an utterance is a graphic expression substance, it has corresponding phonic expression form. Hjelmslev uses as an example the toponym "Berlin" (expression substance), which is translated into different expression forms, depending on the fact if it is pronounced (and then actualized) in German, English, Danish, or Japanese . If, on the other hand, an utterance is a phonic expression substance, it has its graphic expression form. To illustrate, Hjelmslev uses the example of the sound /got/, which corresponds to different expression forms and content substances according to the different languages. The pronunciation of got is the graphic form of the expression that, in English, matches the content substance "past form of to get"; but it also corresponds to the pronunciation of Gott, the graphic form of the German content substance "God"; and it is the same as the pronunciation of godt, the graphic form of the expression matching the Danish content substance of "well";

expression form is the way in which the expression substance is actualized, i.e. the way in which a graphic form is pronounced or a phonic form is written.

Hjelmslev's distinction between expression plan and content plan is carried on in translation studies by Torop, who postulates that the expression plane (substance and form) of the prototext is

recoded - through the means of the other language and the other culture - into the expression plan of the translated text, while the content plan is transposed into the content plan of the translated text 4.

By recoding, we mean a linguistic, formal, style process, while transposition is a process that, as regards literary texts, implies the understanding of the poetic model, of the content structure of the text. The two processes are not, however, independent one of the other. They are interrelated on the methodological plane. When discussing translation problems, however, it is better to consider them separately in order to better understand their different functions within the context of the translation process. Recalling what we have covered in the previous unit, and the distinction between the analysis and synthesis stages, Torop makes use of a model that results from the intersection of the distinction between phases (analysis/synthesis) and the distinction between processes (recoding/transposition). From these two pairs of elements, Torop

70 gets a quadripartition of the potential actualizations of the translation process. Before exposing a taxonomy of the various kinds of translation, Torop states his general definition of "adequate translation": it is a translation in which transposition and recoding go through the analysis and synthesis stages, preserving the peculiar interrelations between expression and content plans of a given text in the process. In other words, the dominant of the original is preserved. However, there are many ways to preserve the peculiar interrelations between expression and content plans (to preserve the dominant of the prototext). Depending on the means the translator chooses, she may produce various translations that can be equally "adequate" . "Adequate" translations are further subdivided by Torop into "dominant-centered" [dominant-nye], and "autonomous", i.e. having the purpose of transmitting only one of the plans of the prototext. For example, an autonomous translation could be the prose translation of a poem 6. Summing the quadripartition analysis/synthesis and transposition/recoding and the dichotomy dominant-centered/autonomous, Torop produces the following eight-part model 7.

adequate translation recoding transposition analysis synthesis analysis synthesis autonomous dominant-centered autonomous dominant-centered autonomous dominant-centered autonomous dominant-centered macro-style precision micro-style quotation theme description expression freedom

In the next unit we will examine in detail this model.

Bibliographical references

HJELMSLEV L. I fondamenti della teoria del linguaggio. A cura di Giulio C. Lepschy. Torino, Einaudi, 1975. Or. ed. Omkring Sprogteoriens Grundlæggelse, København, Festskrift udg. af Københavns Universitet, 1943. English translation: Prolegomena to a Theory of Language, ed. by F. J. Whitfield, University of Wisconsin, 1961.

1 Hjelmslev 1975. 2 Hjelmslev 1975, p. 58. 3 Hjelmslev 1975, p. 61. 4 Torop 2000, p. 200. 5 Torop 2000, p. 200 6 Torop 2000, p. 56. 7 Torop 2000, p. 204.

71 22 - The translation process - part four

At the end of the unit twenty-one, we saw the Torop model with eight types of adequate translations, a model that we provide again here in a lightly different form, adding the numbers corresponding to the descriptions of every type. Torop has preferred to use a poetic text for his examples. However, if we keep in mind what we said about the concept of total translation (see the unit sixteen), it is obvious that, as the translation model must have a universal character, the use of a poetic text as a sample should not create an obstacle.

adequate translation recoding transposition analysis synthesis analysis synthesis

autonomous dominant autonomous dominant autonomous dominant autonomous dominant

macro-style precision micro-style quotation theme description expression freedom

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

The first division concerns recoding and transposition, which, we want to recall, distinguishes the transfer of the expression plane (recoding) and the transfer of the content plane (transposition). In this unit, we will deal with recoding translation, while in the next one we will examine the four types of transposing translation.

Analysis is the part of the translation process that addresses the original (or prototext), while synthesis is the projection of the prototext onto the (potential) metatext (or translated text). If we focus on dominant-oriented analytic recoding, we get what Torop defines

1. macro-stylistic translation. In this type of translation, the dominant is the expression plane of the prototext, on which the construction of the metatext content plane is also based. In the metatext, we observe a compliant preservation of the meter, of the rhymes, of the strophes (if it is a poem), and of every other formal structure.

It is called "macro-stylistic" because while it preserves, reproduces, or reconstructs the stylistic features of the original, it does not focus on single elements, aiming instead to globally reproduce the general style features of the prototext. For example, in this category fall the translations of poems in rhyme that preserve the meter of the original but, of course, have a semantic content which is different from the original. As Nabókov writes in the preface to his famous translation into English of Pushkin's Evgénij Onégin,

To reproduce the rhymes and yet translate the entire poem literally is mathematically impossible 1.

72 If the translator chooses an autonomous analytic recoding - "autonomous" in the sense that the dominant of the prototext becomes the absolute dominant of the metatext, obscuring every other subdominant - we get what is called

2. exact translation. Unlike the preceding type, the prototext expression plane dominates to the point that nothing else is left in the metatext. Some researchers call this type "interlinear translation".

The prototext style and syntax form completely swallow the metatext, upsetting the phrase construction rules of the receiving language and bending them to conform to the rules of the original language. The result of this translation can hardly be considered a text. It is an only an aid to gain access to the original. The most widespread use of this kind of translation is the publication of poetry with parallel-translated "text" presented near the original version. This is unreadable as such, useful only as an "explication note" to the prototext. Passing from analytic recoding to synthetic recoding - i.e. a translation based on the expression plane, but aimed at synthesis, in other words at the product of the translation work, which consequently is also the projection of the text onto a hypothetical, potential reader conjectured by the translator - we meet the first type of translation based on the prototext dominant:

3. micro-stylistic translation. The main purpose of this type of translation is to recreate the individual expressive devices of the author. Under this category fall the exoticizing translations (preservation of the realia [cultural words] which remind the reader the cultural distance of the prototext); the localizing translations (modification of the realia and their substitution by similar cultural words of the receiving culture, so as to obliterate the cultural distance of the prototext); and the tropic translations (reproduction of the single rhetoric figures of the prototext).

This type of translation is called "micro-stylistic" because the translation strategy is not based on the reproduction of the whole formal style of the prototext, but on the reproduction of the single style features, paying careful attention to their potential reception by the metatext Model Reader. Our last type of recoding is called autonomous synthetic recoding, in which the prototext dominant becomes absolute, in the metatext, obscuring all other elements (subdominants and secondary elements). Torop calls it

4. quotation translation. In this type of translation, the aim to formally reproduce the expression plane is considered so important that only formal limitations (grammar and syntax) prevent the translator to "copy" the original: lexical precision is the absolute dominant.

The difference between exact translation and quotation translation rests mainly in the fact

73 that the former is interlinear, it does not respect any syntax rules of the receiving language, while the quotation translation is lexically exact, but respects the formal limitations imposed by the receiving language. This is the reason why exact translation is considered analytical (prototext-oriented), while quotation translation is synthetic (it gives a relatively higher priority to readability). Sometimes this kind of translation is called "literal", but we think that this term is too vague and ambiguous to be used in the context of a scientific taxonomy. We will make this point in the third part of this course. Until now, we have examined the four types of recoding translation. In the next unit, we will see the other four types of adequate translation, belonging to the transposing- translation group.

Bibliographical references

NABÓKOV V. Foreword. In Eugene Onegin, by Aleksandr Pushkin, edited by Vladimir Nabókov, 4 vol., Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1975. ISBN 0-691-01905-3.

23 - The translation process - part five

We reproduce again Torop's eight-part model here in a lightly altered form, with the addition of numbers corresponding to the descriptions of each type. The first distinction is between recoding and transposition, which, we remind the readers, distinguishes the expression plane transfer (recoding) from the content plane transfer (transposition). In this unit we will deal with transposing translation, while in the previous one we described the four types of recoding translation.

adequate translation

recoding transposition

analysis synthesis analysis synthesis autonomous dominant autonomous dominant autonomous dominant autonomous dominant macro-style precision micro-style quotation theme description expression freedom

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

74 This group consists of those translations in which the content is considered so important, that the translator puts it foremost, even over form when necessary. The first type we are going to consider is the dominant-oriented analytic transposition, which Torop defines

5. thematic translation. The expression plane (see unit 21) in this case is subject to the content plane. Form is sacrificed in the name of comprehensive content. The translator chooses this procedure in order to facilitate the reception of the content by the reader.

Nevertheless, we must pay attention to the fact that it is easier for the reader to access the prototext content, but the reader will be deprived of the chance of seeing what was its form like. We, therefore, should not generalize affirming that this type of translation is "closer to the reader". It is a facilitated, simplified version, for which reason it does not contain all the formal characteristics of the prototext. An understanding of the semantic content is best achieved using simpler forms. If, for example, the original is a poem with a well-defined meter, rhythm, and rhyme scheme, one possible thematic translation is the use of vers libre, in which every formal structure of the prototext disappears.

To continue with Torop's model, we find the autonomous analytic transposition, i.e. an analytic transposition in which the dominant (the content, in this case) is emphasized in an absolute way, to the point that it totally obscures form. It is called

6. descriptive translation. Like all autonomous translation types, the prevalence of the dominant is pushed to the extreme, and the possibility of translating the entire text is rationally refused. One might think that this kind of translation is seldom seen, but, contrarily, in some cultures it is the most common.

This type of translation is exemplified by the transposition of a poetic text (in verse) into a prose metatext. The attitude we found even in the thematic translation (passing from the rhyme to vers libre) is taken to the farthest limit, and the passage is taken from verse to prose.

Let us now examine the dominant-oriented synthetic transposition, in which the focus is moved from the prototext (analysis) to the metatext (synthesis), even if the transposition dominant (i.e. the content plane) is rendered in relative terms, and the other planes are seen underneath. That is the so-called

7. expressive (or receptive) translation. This type of translation is realized when, in

75 the translator's intentions, the metatext dominant coincides with the metatext expressiveness. The translator postulates the standard reaction of the prototext Model Reader and, having this hypothetical reaction in mind, she produces a text that, at least in theory, has the purpose of eliciting the same kind of reaction in the metatext Model Reader. The theory behind this approach is called "dynamic equivalence"; it was predominantly originated by Eugène Nida1.

Let us finally examine the last type of translation: the autonomous synthetic transposition, which is a type of free interpretation of the prototext content in a form arbitrarily chosen by the translator. It is called

8. free translation and, among those examined in Torop's model, is that which produces a text that differs most from the prototext. It is not a real "translation" as we commonly use the word; we could call it a remake, as are those that are commonly described as "liberally drawn from'", or "liberally inspired to'".

An example of autonomous synthetic transposition is perhaps Johnston's 1977 version of Eugene Onégin, Pushkin's novel in verse, particularly if compared to the more exact 1964 version by Vladimir Nabókov:

If only Lensky'd known the burning If he had known what wound wound that had seared my Tanya's hear! burned my Tatiana's heart

If Tanya'd had the chance of learning If Tatiana had been aware, that Lensky and Eugene, apart, if she could have known would settle, on the morrow morning, that Lenski and Eugene tomorrow for which of them the tomb was were to compete for the tomb's shelter, yawning, perhaps her love could in the end ah, possibly her love have reunited friend to friend! might have conjoined the friends again!

But, even by accident, her passion But even by chance that passion was undiscovered to that day. no one had yet discovered.

Onegin had no word to say; Onegin about everything was silent;

Tatyana pined in secret fashion: Tatiana pined away in secret; of the whole world, her nurse alone, alone the nurse might have known - if not slow-witted, might have known 2. but then she was slow-witted 3.

76 Here is the prototext transliterated: "Kogda b on znal, kakaja rana / Moej Tat ´jany serdce zhgla! / Kogda by vedala Tat´jana, / Kogda by znat´ ona mogla, / CHto zavtra Lenskij I Evgenij / Zasporjat o mogil´noj seni; / Ah, mozhet byt´, eë ljubov´ / Druzej soedinila vnov´! / No ètoy strasti I sluchajno / eshchë nikto ne otkry-val. / Onegin obo vsëm molchal; / Tat´jana iznyvala tajno; / Odna by nanja znat´ mogla, / Da nedogadliva byla". Ricapitolando, abbiamo esaminato otto tipi teorici di attualizzazione del modello di processo traduttivo, distinti sulla base di tre criteri fondamentali: As anyone can see, even without knowing Russian, the content of the right- column version is quite different from the left-column one. The translator's poetic intent is evident, and the result is a rhyme poem with a different content and different formal characteristics from the prototext.

We have examined the eight theoretical types of actualization of Torop's translation process model. The types are differentiated based on three fundamental criteria:

 recoding/transposition, i.e. the distinction between expression plane translation (recoding) emphasizing formal elements, and content plane translation (transposition).  analysis/synthesis, i.e. the distinction between the part of the translation process centered upon the readings/interpretations of the prototext by the translator (analysis) and the projection of the potential text toward its actualization in the metatext (synthesis).  dominant/autonomous: it is perhaps the most difficult distinction, because the word "autonomous" could induce one to think of something very remote from the prototext. Actually, the dominant-oriented translation accounts - as in JAkobsón's original view - even with all its hierarchy of subdominants, while the type Torop calls "autonomous" is an exasperation of the "dominant" concept: the dominant is elevated to the totalization dimension of governing the entirety of the text, which is manipulated at will in order to amplify that dominant element.

Bibliographical references NIDA E. A., TABER C. The Theory and Practice of Translation. Leiden 1969. PUSHKIN A. Eugene Onegin. A novel in verse. Edited by Vladimir Nabókov, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1990 (first edition: 1964), ISBN 0-691- 01905-3. PUSHKIN A. Eugene Onegin. translated by Charles Johnston with an introduction by John Bayley, London, Penguin, 1977, ISBN 0-14-044394-0.

1 Nida, Taber 1969, p. 23. 2 Pushkin 1979, p. 163. 3 Pushkin 1990, p. 235.

77 Part Two Perception

1 - Perception, reading, analysis, interpretation

«Of course, the ideal position for readingis something you can never find» 1.

While we are translating, we do not think of our activity as being divided into phases. After doing our first translations, many automatic mechanisms come into play that allow us to translate more quickly; at the same time, we are less and less conscious of our activity. In order to think about the translation process and to describe it, our essential task consists of analyzing its phases, even if we are aware of the fact that they do not always coincide with perceptibly different or distinguishable moments. If we want to describe a process that often is beyond the translator's own consciousness, we are forced to divide the process into different phases that, in the everyday practice of translation, can reveal the inter-twining, almost entangling, of these phases into one another. The first phase of the translation process consists of reading the text. The reading act, first, falls under the competence of psychology, because it concerns our perceptive system. Reading, like translation, is, for the most part, an unconscious process. If it were conscious, we would be forced to consume much more time in the act. Most mental processes involved in the reading act are automatic and unconscious. Owing to such a nature - common and secret in the same time - in our opinion it is important to analyze the reading process as precisely as possible. The works of some perception psychologists will be helpful to widen our knowledge of this first phase of the translation process. Simply reading a text is, in itself, an act of translation. When we read, we do not store the words we have read in our minds as happens with data entered by keyboard or scanner into a computer. After reading, we do not have the photographic or auditory recording in our minds of the text read. We have a set of impressions there, instead. We remember a few words or sentences precisely, while all the remaining text is translated from the verbal language into a language belonging to another sign system, one still mostly unknown: the mental language. The first act in translating the translator must carry out is an intersemiotic, not interlingual activity. The words are transformed into mental material. It is a process opposite to narration of a dream by the dreamer. A dream is made of images, impressions, odors, flavors, but seldom of words, or numbers. It is what it is nowadays trendy to call a multimedia work, but it is conspicuously, deeply, and intrinsically so. Psychoanalysis is the science dealing mainly with

78 this kind of translation - from mental to verbal, from verbal to mental - and with the pertaining types of translation loss. We will draw from this discipline in order to better understand what occurs in our first translation: reading. This is an aspect of translation that concerns all readers, not only translators. Even the first reading of a text, or a reading by someone who does not have the same tools available to a critic, the so called "ingenuous reading", involves a critical act. Reading - when perception is completed - is characterized by a sudden and unaware effort to guess or sense, on the basis of all one has read, and in consideration of the portion of the text read, how the remainder could develop. And reading is an attempt to find a place for that text in a cultural context. This is the so called abduction: the reader makes successive inferences on what will be written, and, step by step, arrives at a confirmation, a refutation, or a missing confirmation of his inferences, allowing him to make further different inferences, adjusting his projection. Reading is a first unwitting interpretation, because what is read does not fall onto a tabula rasa, but on a fertile terrain, rich with experiences, ideas, and temporary attempts at understanding. A very subjective terrain, that gives forth subjective interpretations only a part of which may be shared. This fact itself implies some problems for the reading translator. However a translator tries to read a text with the intent of embodying the point of view of the most generic reader, she, as a human being, has many limitations and remains an individual, with individual tastes, idiosyncrasies, preferences, dislikes. The translator cannot deny her personality just because her reading is not solely for personal interest but as a prelude to the use of the text by a wider group of readers. Denial, as a defense, is elementary and useless, sometimes dangerous. It is much more sensible to take into account the subjective nature of reading acts, translators included. Reading is the first of a series of processes that transform the metatext into a subjective, fallible interpretation of the rototext. Semiotics and language philosophy will often be very helpful for us to understand the complex nature of reading and its interpretive aspects. Some say that the literary critic is a particularly keen reader who has critical tools and is well able to use them. The translator, too, is - or should be - a particularly keen reader equipped with critical tools. Linguistics, literary studies, humanistic computer science are among the disciplines that help us understand how it is possible to critically analyze a text to be translated in order to go beyond the "ingenuous reading", too superficial for a translator to allow herself. We will see what the hermeneutic circle is - the interpretation system - in an untranslated text, and what an important position the translator has when hermeneutics is applied to a translated text. The reading of the text to be translated, or prototext, is the first place where the translator can make a slip. The translator is an anomalous reader because she is no longer able to read a potential prototext without thinking - more or less willingly - how she will be

79 able to project that text onto the target culture and language, without thinking at its potential metatexts. This way of reading deforms the interpreting act of reading because it is neither an ingenuous reading, as we have defined it before, nor a "standard" critical reading. It is a reading in which much attention is devoted to the prototext dominant, in which one wonders if it can coincide with the potential metatext dominant. One reflects on the potential impact of the text on the receiving culture and begins to carry out translation-purpose analysis, a very particular critical analysis. In this stage, the semiotics translation tools are very useful. In the next unit, we will commence with reading as perceptive act.

Bibliographical references

CALVINO I. If on a Winter's Night a Traveller, translated by William Weaver, London, Vintage, 1998, ISBN 0-7493-9923-6.

1 Calvino 1998, p. 3.

2 - Scanning and collection of information from the environment

«We cannot live or thinkexcept in fragments of time each of which goes off along its own trajectoryand immediately disappears» 1.

The first act of reading is connected to the perception of the text, something similar, from some points of view, to the perception of an object. The difference, one could argue, lies in the fact that the perception of a physical table is more immediate than that of the word "table", for example. In the former case, the perceived object is not interpreted, but simply assimilated, because an object is what it is; in the latter case, on the contrary, to the word "table" can be linked, in each of us, different mental materials, different interpretants, consequently the perception of a word is an interpretive act. But in semiotics a table is a sign as well, not simply an object: the perception of a given table by a given person produces an interpretive chain of mental events, there is an analogous perception of the word "table". Also to the table, as an object, and to its image, are linked meanings of cultural and subjective types, as happens with verbal signs. The table is a sign then, though a nonverbal sign: it belongs to another code or, better, to many other codes, and it has a different meaning according to the cultural background in which it is inserted.

80 Or - we might express the same notion in other terms - we could also say that when we perceive objects, or persons, we read. Calvino writes:

Ludmilla, now you are being read. Your body is being subjected to a systematic reading, through channels of tactile information, visual, olfactory, and not without some intervention of the taste buds. Hearing also has its role, alert to your gasps and your trills [...] and all the signs that are on the frontier between you and usage and habits and memory and prehistory and fashion, all codes, all the poor alphabets by which one human being believes at certain moments that he is reading [...] 2.

The perception of any object - in the broad sense of the word - is just an inference we make, completing sensorial data with our knowledge and expectations. We will take a closer look at the question of text perception starting from generic perception, particularly from an activity called scanning, which interests us as a tool for the collection of surrounding information. We are used to connecting the verb "scan" to the electronic scanner, but in its other, perceptive meaning, the verb was used for many years before the existence of scanning devices. The two notions share many common points: we scan our environment and receive perceptions about objects and about words. But the scanner connected to our PC also works this way - although it is much less specialized - and, if you wish, it can recognize characters as well as it reproduces images. Scanning activity consists in observing parts of a sequence in succession, i.e. not simultaneously. As J. J. Gibson states in The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems, even in the case of non-verbal signs a person is nonetheless looking for a meaning:

[...] the human individual can visually scan a picture for its design, but what he is generally in search of is meaning. The esthete may practice discrimination and enjoy the structure of a painting or the composition of music, but this is a sort of perceptual luxury 3.

In fact, man looks for a meaning in the objects that surround him, and this is the main function of perception, from a pragmatic point of view. The "perceptual luxury", or perceptual hypersensitivity, of the esthete, of the literary critic, of the translator will be the subject of other parts of the course, when dealing with the question of the interpretation of literary texts. Now we are interested in pure perception. Perception is characterized by economicity and efficiency as are the other functions that have been selected on the basis of the Darwinian principle of the survival of the fittest over the course of

81 biological history. When we read, apparently we get a series of successive optical stimuli, not a simultaneous view: such is the ingenuous sensation we get when, more generally, we look around the world 4. Since the minimal meaningful result of having read is to get a whole view (of a word or of an utterance), and not a mere succession of graphic signs, intuitively one could infer the existence of a sort of buffer memory or short-term memory allowing to create a sort of mental synchronic "picture" of the single perceptions dispersed along time. Not an absurd hypothesis: many perception psychologists thought this way before 1966. But some experiments reported by Gibson lean toward thinking of perception as spanning both kinds of order, spatial and temporal; through it, one can single out not only little fragments, but complete invariant elements. The initial perception provides an approximate distinction between "same" and "different". Perceived sequences already contain the whole scene, so that it is not necessary to use notions such as buffer memory or short-term memory - like they did before Gibson - because the sequences are converted within the perception of the whole (word, utterance, text, in our case) 5. We can, in fact, perceive a written utterance, recognize it, even if we have never seen it in the given graphic form, or even if the utterance is not complete, if there is a coffee stain on the page or printing is not perfect. This is because the whole of our retino-neuro-muscular system is attuned on invariant information and can perceive it, thanks to the locomotion of sense organs (i.e., in our case, above all to the repeated movements of the eye), which determines an overlapping stimulation. In other words, we perceive the same objects more than once - the same words or sentences - because our eye runs up and down, right and left, without our being aware of these "replays", until we get a perceptual view we consider complete and satisfying. If perception were a series of successive stimuli, as the theory before Gibson went, we would perceive the words or sentences more than once that our eye scans repeatedly, but this is not true. Simple perception already provides us with the complete view of the utterance, without having to explain it with a buffer memory made of engrams or mnemonic traces. The memory notion has a role, though, not as far as single perceptual acts are concerned, but in perception repeated over time. The invariants an individual can make out on a first encounter are more approximate than the invariants she can isolate after repeated readings:

[...] an observer learns with practice to isolate more subtle invariants during transformation and to establish more exactly the permanent features of an array 6.

82 This leads us to say that the perceptual system distinguishes the known objects from new objects. Thanks to memory, the individual can create a diachronic series of the perceptions of objects (or utterances) that are apparently the same and, after a while, learn to make subtler, more refined distinctions. In the next unit, we will face these problems, passing from the question of scanning of our environs to the question of information collection.

Bibliographical references

CALVINO I. If on a Winter's Night a Traveller, translated by William Weaver, London, Vintage, 1998, ISBN 0-7493-9923-6.

GIBSON J. J. The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems, Westport (Connecticut), Greenwood Press, 1983, ISBN 0-313-23961-4. First edition: 1966.

1 Calvino 1998, p. 8. 2 Calvino 1998, p. 155. 3 Gibson 1983, p. 250. 4 Gibson 1983, p. 251. 5 Gibson 1983, p. 262. 6 Gibson 1983, p. 265.

3 - Collection of information

«"[...] the current that brings the sentences to [..]stop for a moment before being absorbed by thecircuits of her mind [...]» 1.

At the end of the previous unit, we touched on the subject of the honing of perception, allowing, with practice, to detect finer and finer details. More than that, with practice it is possible to improve the duration, complexity, and depth of concentration on the perceptual act. Gibson's examples concern a production engineer who can oversee a long sequence of mechanical operations, or a pilot who can keep track of all the information provided by his various instruments. Without a great stretch of the imagination, we can fancy what such refinement of perceptual abilities can mean when applied to translation activities. Obviously, the great concentration ability of a simultaneous interpreter comes easily to mind - many operations, not only those of a perceptual nature, to be carried out within an extremely short time span. Or that of a translator who is reading and, at the same time, has to keep track of all the inner and outer balances the utterance has in connection with the whole text: numerous synthesis and analysis operations carried out without

83 the same pressure of the time limitations imposed on an interpreter, but which force her to focus on the structure as a whole and not on individual perceptual.

The spatial relations in an array, and the temporal relations in a sequence, permit the information to be taken in progressively larger and longer units or "chunks". One can finally grasp the simultaneous composition of a whole panel of instruments or a panorama, and apprehend the successive composition of a whole production line or a whole symphony 2.

Refinement of perceptual ability does not necessarily impose an active a role for memory. As it is possible to think without recalling, it is also possible to learn without remembering. Just as sensations are occasional and incidental symptoms of perceiving, "conscious remembering is an occasional and incidental symptom of learning" 3. Given that Gibson uses the adjective "conscious", we are lead to think that, when he writes that these operations do not impose the use of memory, the American psychologist refers only to conscious memory. We could reformulate some of his further statements this way: it is possible to think without using conscious memories, taking for granted the automatic and unknowing use of associations and memories. The same can be said about recognition: as we can recognize a person we know we have already met and not know who is she or where we met, it is, therefore, possible to recognize a word without remembering anything else about it. This is another argument suggesting the disconnection of learning and conscious memory. Let us now see how Gibson's theory of information collection explains the effect of language on perception, a subject of still greater interest to many translators. Unlike previous theories that consider language a sort of code for labeling the reality perceived (drawing the conclusion that words, with their semantic limitations, limit perceptual capabilities confining the blurred perceptions to restricted coded definitions), Gibson postulates that language can have predication capabilities as well. It is not accidental that language is built with grammar, not only with vocabulary or, to say it in JAkobsonian terms, that it has syntagmatic association capabilities, beyond paradigmatic combination capabilities. The endless combinability of words, despite the (supposed) finiteness of each word, greatly increases the predication capabilities and, consequently, the expressive and interpretive potential. Gibson's conclusion is that

Selection is inevitable. But this does not imply that the verbal fixing of information distorts the perception of the world 4.

84 Having perceived an object, the observer goes on and detects what Gibson calls affordances. Let us read in his own words about what he means by this term, coined by Gibson himself, then used by many researchers and spread all over the world exclusively in its English version.

I have coined this word as a substitute for values, a term which carries an old burden of philosophical meaning. I mean simply what things furnish, for good or ill. What they afford the observer, after all, depends on their properties 5.

With a polemic attitude toward the psychology based exclusively on laboratory experiments, and perhaps, also toward perceptual limitations postulated by the Gestalt school, Gibson sees the environmental, contextual aspect of perception in a new light. In a Darwinian perspective, according to which we must continuously adapt ourselves to our environment, we grasp the affordance of each object; in the case of an object or of a word, we do not limit ourselves to the fixed, denoted meaning, which would set insurmountable limits to perception, we also perceive the connotative, contextual, environmental meaning. If observer and observed environment are not abstract entities but are part of one context, this implies the impossibility of any kind of objective, detached observation "from without", in the same way as a fixed, cold, unrepeatable reading is impossible. The observer is part of the environment surrounding her as well as the text she is reading, so that each reading, each textual perception is, at the same time, a self-analysis 6. In turn, from this consideration derives the notion that each act of reading, in which one reads the text and at the same time, oneself, is a more or less subjective interpretation. A notion we will return to repeatedly during this second part of the translation course dedicated to the perception of the text by the translator. In the following units, we will touch upon the relationships between language and thought.

Bibliographical references

CALVINO I. If on a Winter's Night a Traveller, translated by William Weaver, London, Vintage, 1998, ISBN 0-7493-9923-6.

GIBSON J. J. The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems, Westport (Connecticut), Greenwood Press, 1983, ISBN 0-313-23961-4. Prima edizione: 1966.

85 LOSTIA M. Modelli della mente, modelli della persona. Le due anime della psicologia, Firenze, Giunti, 1994. ISBN 88-09-20556-1.

1 Calvino 1998, p. 169. 2 Gibson 1983, p. 270. 3 Gibson 1983, p. 277. 4 Gibson 1983, p. 282. 5 Gibson 1983, p. 285. 6 Lostia 1994, p. 179.

4 - Reading and concept formation

«If you think about it, reading is a necessarily individual act, far more than writing» 1.

In the previous units we dealt with the subject of perception, of word perception in particular. An object, like a word, evokes something in our mind. But while what is evoked in our mind by an object is completely arbitrary and subjective - for example one could run away in awe at the sight of an innocuous comb - words have a meaning, at least in part, that is codified and valid for a limited number of people. The Soviet researcher Vygotsky (of whom we have already seen something in the first part) has studied concept formation in man and its relation to the learning of words. In Vygotsky's opinion, the role played by words is fundamental: first we learn the relation between an object, a situation or a single action and a word. Up to this point we haven't learnt a concept, just a relation between a circumscribed situation and a circumscribed sound/graphic sign. In an experiment by Saharov, a partner of Vygotsky, subjects are presented with elements of different shapes, sizes and colors, the so-called "experimental blocks", behind which some meaningless strings of characters are traced. The task consists of establishing conceptual links between shapes, sizes, colors and "new words". Here are Vygotsky's conclusions:

The formation of the concept is followed by its transfer to other objects: the subject is induced to use the new terms in talking about objects other than the experimental blocks, and to define their meaning in a generalized fashion 2.

Generalization occurs by way of a sort of perception -> word -> perception -> word -> perception and so on chain (i.e. analysis -> synthesis -> analysis -> synthesis and so on) through which new perceptions induce the formulation of new words to describe them, which induces the systematization of perception so that it will be possible, given a finite number of words, to express infinite

86 perceptions, since two identical perceptions do not exist. Word becomes a means for the formation of concepts 3. Vygotsky has studied such processes in teenagers, but, in fact, this chain of analysis and synthesis and adjustment of the sense attributed to words, followed and preceded by new visions of reality is endless. When we read, we feed such a spiral. We therefore can easily understand why two readings, even if accomplished in different times by the same person on the same text, are never identical, as we will see better in the units dedicated to the relation between reading and interpretation. As far as concept formation is concerned, a reiteration of the distinction made in the first part of the course about linguistic awareness is in order. To be able to elaborate a concept, it is necessary for an individual to be consciously aware of the knowledge she has gained.

[...] consciousness and control appear only at a late stage in the development of a function, after it has been used and practiced unconsciously and spontaneously [...] We use the term nonconscious to distinguish what is not yet conscious from the Freudian "unconscious" resulting from repression, which is a late development, an effect of a relatively high differentiation of consciousness 4.

A child learning the connection between the word "apple" and the set of the fruits identifiable by that word, or a single fruit belonging in that set, knows "what an apple is", but does not know she knows what an apple is: she has no self-reflective awareness and, consequently, she is not able to conceptualize. In other words, we pass from the "spontaneous concepts" described by Piaget 5 to conscious concepts. The difference between the learning of spontaneous concepts, like "apple" for example, and the learning of "scientific" concepts, like "exploitation", for example, lies in the fact that

[...] the development of the child's spontaneous concepts proceed upward, and the development of his scientific concepts downward [...]. The inception of a spontaneous concept can usually be traced to a face-to-face meeting with a concrete situation, while a scientific concept involves from the first a "mediated" attitude 6 toward its object 7.

A further demonstration of the affinity between such "conceptual" awareness, and the linguistic awareness we have dealt with in the first part of this course, is Vygotsky's statement that

The influence of scientific concepts on the mental development of the

87 child is analogous to the effect of learning a foreign language, a process which is conscious and deliberate from the start. In one's native language, the primitive aspects of speech are acquired before the more complex ones. The latter presuppose some awareness of phonetic, grammatical, and syntactic forms. With a foreign language, the higher forms develop before spontaneous, fluent speech 8.

In terms of reading, this means that an individual can face texts with concrete concepts until a given age, which is approximately placed in the preadolescent period. Then he acquires the awareness of this knowledge, and learns texts that even contain abstract meanings. As intellectual development goes on, abstraction capabilities become finer and finer. And meanings, both abstract and concrete, evolve. In the next unit we will continue our path among words, thoughts, and reading, in order to see the consequences of such evolution on reading and translation.

Bibliographical references

CALVINO I. If on a Winter's Night a Traveller, translated by William Weaver, London, Vintage, 1998, ISBN 0-7493-9923-6.

VYGOTSKIJ L.S. Thought and Language. Edited by Eugenia Hanfmann and Gertrude Vakar. Cambridge (Massachusetts), MIT Press, 1965. First edition: Myshlenie I rech´. Psihologicheskie issledovanija. Moskvà-Leningrad, Gosudarstvennoe social´no-èkonomicheskoe izdatel´stvo, 1934.

1 Calvino 1979, p. 176. 2 Vygotskij 1965, p. 57. 3 Vygotskij, p. 59. 4 Vygotskij, p. 90-91. 5 Jean Piaget (1896-1980), known psychologist. 6 As opposed to immediate, direct attitude of the child to the object. 7 Vygotskij 1965, p. 108. 8 Vygotskij 1965, p. 109.

5 - Reading and concept evolution

«The romantic fascination produced in the pure state by the first sentences of the first chapter of many novels is soon lost in the continuation of the story» 1.

88 The most suggestive aspect of Vygotsky's perspective for those of us interested in the study of the word per-ception with reading, as the first act of interlingual translation process, is that which regards the evolution of the perception of meaning. We said that the meaning of a word is a consequence of the generalization of a concept, of the synthesis of many perceptive experiences: it is, therefore, an act of thought. Thoughts, words, and meanings are tightly interwoven, and it is probably more interesting to study them as a single system rather than try to isolate components and maniacally demark their limitations.

But from the point of view of psychology, the meaning of every word is a generalization or a concept. And since generalizations and concepts are undeniably acts of thought, we may regard meaning as a phenomenon of thinking. It does not follow, however, that meaning formally belongs in two different spheres of psychic life. Word meaning is a phenomenon of thought only in so far as thought is embodied in speech, and of speech only in so far as speech is connected with thought and illumined by it 2.

As we have already said, there cannot be elaboration of concepts without language and there can be no language without an intense thought activity. But the fruit of such intellectual activity is never fully mature, never truly results as conclusive. Just owing to this back-and-forth play between analysis and synthesis, between perception and generalization, meaning is an ever- evolving process. In the early 1930s (Vygotsky died at 38 in 1934) his strong intuition would have already brought up the problem of all semantic theories - and of all translation studies theories ante litteram - based on the notion of static word meaning and of 'linguistic equivalence' between signifiers, in a field that has enormous importance for the debate on translation. But Vygotsky's book, published posthumously in 1934, was banned in 1936 (and 'rehabilitated' in 1936 with Khrushchev and the thaw) because it contradicted Materialistic Reductionism and mentalism typical of psychological research in the Stalin era 3. Consequently, for twenty years Vygotsky's thought circulated among Soviet researchers, but only in a semi-clandestine way, and reached the West only in the 1960s. The meanings of words are dynamic formations changing with the individual's development and with the various ways in which his thought functions. The relation between thought and word is not a thing but a process during which changes can be considered "as development in the functional sense" 4. To illustrate the dynamic relation between thought, word, and meaning it is important to distinguish inner speech (or "endophasy"), directed toward ourselves, and outer speech, the one normally referred to as "language",

89 useful for keeping us in touch with others of our kind. Actually, the two types of language - given the functional difference - have different structures, and are two versions of the same kind of translation: outer language is translation of thoughts into words, while inner language, in Vygotsky's opinion at least, is a translation of words into thought 5. Even if it is now conceivable with the latest research, the hypothesis of inner speech does not necessarily encompass a translation into verbal speech - a language between self and self not using words but only mental sense units - Vygotsky's notion is nonetheless interesting because the translation of words into thought is exactly what comprises the act of reading. Inner speech is characterized by extreme synthesis, because there is a single 'interlocutor', and can therefore take as a 'given' the entire context in which an utterance is made. This is partly true for outer oral language too, where the contingent situation shared by the interlocutors allowing an ample 'taking for granted'. For example, if I am in my car still parked by the curb, and another driver pulls up alongside and asks me "Going out?" nothing else is needed to understand that he is asking if the parking space will now be available. In written language, on the contrary, communication lacks many meaningful features: intonation, timbre, environmental context, so the reader may interpret anything not specified by the author in a far freer way. As Vygotsky acutely states, "The evolution from the draft to the final copy reflects our mental process" 6: and when reading we follow a reverse path. While translating a text into mental language, we have to turn meaning into sense. Paulhan, quoted by Vygotsky, defines sense as "the sum of all psychological events aroused in our consciousness by the word" 7. Meaning - in this view - is just one of the zones of sense, the most stable and precise. A word acquires its sense from the context in which it appears; in a different context, its sense is altered. In the next units we will turn away from the more psychological aspects of literature to start to ponder what "meaning" can mean.

Bibliographical references

CALVINO I. If on a Winter's Night a Traveller, translated by William Weaver, London, Vintage, 1998, ISBN 0-7493-9923-6.

90 1 Calvino 1998, p. 177. 2 Vygotskij 1965, p. 120. 3 Bruner, in Vygotskij 1965 p. vi. 4 Vygotskij 1965, p. 130. 5 Vygotskij 1965, p. 131. 6 Vygotskij 1965, p. 144. 7 Vygotskij 1965, p. 146.

6 - The meaning of meaning

"[...] the unsullied pleasure of reading ends, or at least is transformed into something else, which is not what I want" 1.

Now that we have examined some pioneering studies on perception and evolution of meaning, we will see how two British researchers, Ogden and Richards, in an essay constantly reprinted since 1923, revealingly entitled The Meaning of Meaning, tried to systematize knowledge and strategies of study of meaning in an interdisciplinary perspective. Ogden was educated as linguist, Richards as literary critic, and they both show an inclination toward a global, rather than sectional, view of semantics problems, which sometimes brings them to a semiotic approach, sometimes to a psychological perspective. The fundamental approach, owing much to Peirce, as we will see later, defines the three factors playing a role in any uttering: mental processes, symbol (or sign, word, signifier, etc) and referent (or object, reality given, the outer element one refers to). The point in question is how the three entities are related. Between thought and symbol there is a symbolization relation, between thought and object a reference relation, while between symbol and object, according to Ogden and Richards, there is no direct relation (note that, actually, these two poles are united by a series of dots rather than a line in the drawing), just an implied relationship. The sign-object relation is mediated by the subjective, idiomorphic mind of the person who codes the utterance (writes, speaks) or decodes it (reads, listens). It is, therefore, variable, individual, inconstant, indirect.

91 The meaning triangle2

Let us start with an overview of what the researchers of meaning have meant by "meaning" over different historical periods and according to the different personal and scientific points of views. In the book, sixteen different definitions are examined. Let us see the most important, in our revision, which has the purpose of not using terms that could produce confusion and unifying similar categories.

1. Meaning is magic, i.e. appears as something intrinsically, magically associated to the word expressing it (the series of dots at the basis of the triangle, according to this view, would be a strong line, while the two oblique sides would be missing). It is "the magical theory of the name as part of the thing, the theory of an inherent connection between symbols and references. This legacy leads in practice to the search for the meaning of words"3. It is obviously a superstition, a mystic, metaphysical view, even if much widespread in many historical periods. Even the etymological study (on an intuitive base) was founded on this view of the magical form of the word. 2. Meaning consists of the words comprising the entry in the dictionary. That is the illusion of translation students in their first years of study when they look up words, full of hope, in the bilingual dictionary. The compiler of the dictionary has interpreted reality his way and, trying to be concise due also to space limits (the space devoted to an entry by the publisher or editor of the dictionary), has described with a few words an alleged and generic "meaning". The most serious logical deficiency in this perspective lies in the fact that the words used to describe the other words are, in turn, described by words, with a long chain of definitions that, at best, are coherent only within themselves (but often this sort of self-referential consistency is lacking too). Dictionary entries coincide more or less with Good Use. According to the definitions given in the next unit, there seems to be a great deal of potential intersubjective difference of sign interpretation, since the interpretation depends heavily on the individual's mental processes. But there is a convention of Good Use (note the uppercase by Ogden and Richards: it refers to the conventional, social, customary nature of the adjective "good"4). 3. Meaning is what one wants to express, what he means in the carrying out of a linguistic act. It

92 is based on the illusion that the senderand the receiver have the same intention. "The meaning of any sentence is what the speaker intends to be understood from it by the listener" 5. It is a fuzzy definition because it does not explain what one means by "to be understood", which can be "to be referred to", "to be responded with", "to be felt toward referent", "to be felt toward speaker", "to be supposed that the speaker is referring to", " to be supposed that the speaker is desiring". Because we are dealing with will, there is a fundamental ambiguity regarding the possible - probable - difference in psychic context between sender and receiver. "Given the psychological context to which a sign belongs, the reference made in the interpretation of the sign is also fixed. But it is possible for the same sign (or for signs with very similar characters) to belong in different psychological contexts"6, in which case the "volitional" reference is not communicable. 4. Meaning is the place of something within a system: the meaning of a word is grasped in relation to its surroundings, i.e. taking into account its context and co-text. 5. Meaning consists of the practical or theoretical consequences of a word on our future experience: the former concern Pragmatism, the latter logics.

Ogden and Richards, as we will see in the next unit, go on to identify some aspects of meaning that have a close relation with a more subjective, psychic view of semiosis.

Bibliographical references

CALVINO I. If on a Winter's Night a Traveller, translated by William Weaver, London, Vintage, 1998, ISBN 0-7493-9923-6.

OGDEN C. K. e RICHARDS I. A. The Meaning of Meaning. A Study of the Influence of Language upon Thought and of the Science of Symbolism. London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1960 [first edition 1923].

1 Calvino 1979, p. 93. 2 Ogden e Richards 1960, p. 11. 3 Ogden e Richards 1960, p. 243-244. 4 In another part of the book, we read: "This peculiar ethical use of 'good' is, we suggest, a purely emotive use. When so used the word stands for nothing whatever, and has no symbolic function. Thus, when we use it in the sentence, 'This is good,' we merely refer to this, and the addition of 'is good' makes no difference whatever to out reference" (p. 125). The reader is thus warned as to the value the adjective can have in the book. 5 Ogden e Richards 1960, p. 193. 6 Ogden e Richards 1960, p. 195.

7 - Meaning and psyche

93 "it's the book in itself that arouses your curiosity; in fact, on sober reflection, you prefer it this way, confronting something and not quite knowing yet what it is" 1.

Let us now see some possible conceptions of meaning that involve directly the individual's psyche , the subjective vision of reality.

1. Meaning is the emotion aroused by a word. Some words are very difficult to define because they have, for the most part, an emotional connotation: for example, the words "love", "God", "liberty" "leave a trail of affective meaning. We may quite properly speak of the emotional connotation of such words as the funded meaning of previous emotional reactions and the affective abstracts which constitute the psychical correlates of this meaning as the survivals of former judgment-feelings" 2. 2. ... what is related to a sign in reality: for example, smoke and fire. In like manner psychoanalysts speak of the meaning of dreams, introducing the notion of "unconscious desire". In this way they substitute the cause for the meaning. The meaning of a dream is the (supposed) cause that has determined it, i.e. the unconscious desire. For the psychoanalysts, as for all natural scientists - Ogden and Richards argue - "the causal sign-relations are those which have the greatest interest" 3. 3. ...the mnemic effect/s of a stimulus. In this view, reference is a consequence of adaptation to a psychic context, and "the meaning of A is that to which the mental process interpreting A adapts itself. This is the most important sense in which words have meaning". These effects are introspective judgments, i.e. interpretations of a given type, sometimes nonverbal judgments, "obscure feelings accompanying the reference". Sometimes we can express such feelings with words, but that is not always the case: sometimes words are not appropriate for the reference they must symbolize. In this view, we could define a communication act as the use of symbols to originate referential acts in the receiver that are similar to those representing the symbols intended by the sender 4.

Ogden and Richards then find more senses to the word "meaning": what the user of a symbol believes himself to be referring to, what the interpreter of a symbol refers to, what the interpreter of a symbol believes himself to be referring to, that to which the interpreter of a symbol believes the user to be referring. In all these latter cases the psychic activity of both the sender and the receiver plays an important role. The intended meaning of a thing does not always coincide with the receiver's intention to decode. And, on the other hand, sometimes the interpretation of an utterance is based on the sender's (sometimes fallacious) predictions. In psychology such activity is called "projection". In a way, an attempt to understand the other's intentions is necessary in order to communicate but if, in so doing, our own intention interferes with such

94 attempt, overshadowing the other's supposed intention, the result is a sort of short circuit in the communication.

Having taken an overview of the possible meanings of "meaning" in the different definitions revised in the previous unit, let us now see how Ogden and Richards present their "context theory of interpretation", i.e. a view of the semiotic act of assimilation of a verbal text 5. The preliminary phase to the understanding of words is that devoted to sensory discrimination, or sensory recognition. By discriminating among sounds and graphic signs we are interpreting an initial sign. To be able to use words, a conscious or unconscious distinction of a sound or image is necessary.

Usually the discrimination is unconscious, our use of words being habitual; it can, however, become conscious, as in learning a foreign tongue 6.

Another distinction is made between scientific prose and poetry: in the former case we can ignore the sensorial features of words, while in poetry we must pay conscious attention, even if that hampers further interpretations. In a way, the fact that poetry has a different aspect on paper from prose, the fact that an important part of the page remains blank is a sensory clue to alert that the attention due to these words is not normal, but comprises their sound as well. To follow the track of purely acoustical perception can however be misleading. In poetry, words are not just sounds. To decode them it is necessary to pay attention both to the meaning of their sound and to the meaning of their symbols.

Bibliographical references

CALVINO I. If on a Winter's Night a Traveller, translated by William Weaver, London, Vintage, 1998, ISBN 0-7493-9923-6.

OGDEN C. K. e RICHARDS I. A. The Meaning of Meaning. A Study of the Influence of Language upon Thought and of the Science of Symbolism. London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1960 [first edition 1923].

1 Calvino 1979, p. 9. 2 Urban, quoted in Ogden and Richards 1960, p. 199. 3 Ogden e Richards 1960, p. 200. 4 Ogden e Richards 1960, p. 205-206. 5 To specify "verbal" is not redundant because in semiotics every object, not only verbal objects, is viewed as a text. 6 Ogden e Richards 1960, p. 209-210. See also the first part of the course, unit 5.

95 8 - The context theory of interpretation

"Relax. Concentrate. Dispel every other thought. Let the world around you fade"1.

In the previous unit, we have seen some aspects of semiosis strictly connected to a psychic, subjective vision. Let us now take a look at Ogden and Richards' context theory of interpretation. After sensory recognition and the distinction between prose text and poetry text, the initial sign is identified with a word, a change occurring thanks to the new psychological context of the sign. While recognizing a sound, or a shape, as such, involves a context consisting of similar, previously experienced sound and visual sensations, recognizing a sign "as a word requires that it form a context with further experiences2" other than sounds or graphemes. For this to occur, we must learn to associate a sign to experiences. This kind of association occurs in our minds, often in an unconscious way, even before we have learned to speak. Without realizing it, we learn to classify the occurrence of a given word as a sign, linked to a reaction similar to those elicited by the associated experiences. In this case, too, interpretation is unconscious, provided that no difficulties arise, because then the perceptual automatism can get stuck and conscious interpreting procedures come into play. In a sense we could say that the fewer difficulties we face in understanding words, the less we are conscious of the processes we use in order to do so, and the less equipped we are to address a deviant exposure to words (in the case of spoken language a pronunciation different from that we are used to, in the case of written language a spelling that varies from the one we are used to; in both cases, abnormal syntactic uses, i.e. unusually constructed sentences, with reference to what each of us considers the standard construction). Once a sound is identified as a word, its importance as a sound is not placed in the background. Some phonic (tone, volume, speed, timbre, intonation, musicality) and graphic features (type-face/handwriting, spacing, dimension, layout, graphics) become part of the message content and, as much as two encounters with the same word can prove to be different, they must share that common character necessary to identify them as occurrences of the same word. Only thanks to this shared part the two words have a similar psychic context and hence can be perceived in a similar way. Such psychic contextualization occurs, particularly in the first, simpler stages, in an unconscious way. "Difficulty or failure at any level of interpretation leads in most cases to the re-emergence of the lower levels into consciousness"3, and to a preoccupation with such usually automatic

96 mechanisms, distracting from the interpretation of the message at a pragmatic, functional, outer level. When is the case of more complex utterances, of more developed languages, new questions arise. The example chosen by Ogden and Richards is that of the expression "my relatives", an abstract notion because it implies something more than having known single subjects and having learnt their names. The acquaintance with single relatives does not necessarily imply any knowledge of the degree of consanguinity, nor can it be taken for granted the kind of relation usually existing in a given culture between two relatives in the different possible cases. The notion is, therefore, the result of different groupings of experiences; such difference is what causes the common elements to be evident by contrast.

This process of selection and elimination is always at work in the acquisition of a vocabulary and the development of thought. It is rare for words to be formed into contexts with non-symbolic experience directly, for as a rule they are learnt only through other words4.

We learn to use our language as we learn the language itself; it is not a simple matter of acquiring synonyms or alternative expressions, but to learn the nuances of many senses and particular connotations created by the context, such activity of identification of affinities and differences is endless. Such activity continually refines our abstraction capabilities, teaches us to use metaphors, "the primitive symbolization of abstraction". Metaphor is described as the application of a single verbal expression to a group of objects that are different but share something. The use of metaphor is not considered from the stylistic, but from the cognitive point of view: it helps the identification of a similar relation in another group. For all practical purposes, metaphor is seen as a signification relation that appropriates the context of another relation. When we speak of "a sea of troubles", we are concerned just with a part of the sea, while other parts are discarded. If we are nor able to think at the sea as an abstract entity, we cannot understand what the expression "a sea of troubles" can mean. The abstraction capability necessary to get to the metaphor is just the same, in the two British researchers' opinion, as that necessary to put an adjective near a noun, or to use prepositions or verbs. And the metaphorical aspects of a great part of language prove that, the higher the level of education of an individual, more words acquire a context through other words. The down side of such sophisticated acquisition of meanings lies in the fact that meanings, built on such abstract references, are bound to muddle our minds more often.

Bibliographical references

97 CALVINO I. If on a Winter's Night a Traveller, translated by William Weaver, London, Vintage, 1998, ISBN 0-7493-9923-6.

OGDEN C. K. e RICHARDS I. A. The Meaning of Meaning. A Study of the Influence of Language upon Thought and of the Science of Symbolism. London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1960 [first edition 1923].

1 Calvino 1998, p. 3. 2 A general term here used to cover sensations, images, feelings, etc., and perhaps unconscious modifications of our mental state. [authors' note] 3 Ogden e Richards 1960, p. 211. 4 Ogden e Richards 1960, p. 213.

9 - The world created by words

"I am becoming convinced that the world wants to tell me something, send me messages, signals." 1.

Benjamin Lee Whorf has studied many languages that are not part of the Indo-European group, nor are among the few non-Indo-European languages with which Western civilization is in touch very often, like Turkish or Finnish or Estonian or Hungarian. This research gave him the opportunity to understand that both linguistic expression and content of thought are highly influenced by the language in which they are expressed, that there is no universally unique psychic thought a priori, that it can find different means of expressions in different languages and different subjects. One of the languages studied by Whorf is Hopi, an American Indian language spoken by natives in Arizona. As we are become accustomed to seeing in this course, the contact with a different culture (or language) is especially important to be able to recognize the characteristics of one's own. Characteristics that, because they are self evident and have always existed in out lives, we tend to take for granted, seriously hampering our ability to understand the world. We have the impression that the subdivision of the world into concepts and the attribution of words to concepts is 'natural', or more often still we don't wonder whether it is natural or not.

We cut nature up, organize it into concepts, and ascribe significances as we do, largely because we are parties to an agreement to organize it in this way-an agreement that holds throughout our speech community and is codified in the patterns of our language. The agreement is, of course, an implicit and unstated one, BUT ITS TERMS ARE ABSOLUTELY OBLIGATORY2.

98 The point is that we subscribe to this agreement without any awareness of it until we must face a different linguistic and/or cultural reality, but we are not able to say anything if we do not adhere to the cataloguing of reality data provided by the agreement itself. Consequently, we have the illusion of being free to describe nature with the utmost impartiality, while the way in which we interpret it is strongly biased by the language in which we customarily express our view of the world. Maybe the only moments of free interpretation of reality go back to our early experiences with preverbal thought. Whorf also holds that the same stimulation from the outer world does not lead to identical representations by two observers. The two representations can only be similar, provided that their linguistic education is similar or can be in some way calibrated. One of the reasons why this principle of perceptual relativity is not immediately self evident is to be found in the fact that almost all languages we encounter are Indo-European 'dialects' and often, particularly as far as scientific terminology is concerned, have a solid common base in the Latin and Greek languages. As we will soon see, a comparison with some languages that have a totally different origin is all we need to realize how much we take for granted without realizing it. Let us begin with the main grammatical categories: nouns and verbs. From the first years of school we are brought to understand the existence of nouns and verbs and the differences between them and, even if one never takes a deeper look into linguistics, this fundamental distinction remains a given, taken for granted, all the rest of his days. But nature itself is not so demanding to obligate the use of classes like "noun" or "verb" in order to be described. In the Hopi language, for example, events are classified according to their duration, and all short events can only be expressed in verbs: lightning, wave, flame, meteor, smoke puff, pulsation. Longer events are, on the other hand, considered nouns. Whorf writes then about the Vancouver Island language, Nootka, where they have just one 'grammatical category', one word class to describe all types of events. Even from the point of view of the semantic spectrum the differences are great. In Hopi a single word is used to mean insect, airplane and aviator, and this fact does not pose a problem for the Pueblo people speaking it. In our view this semantic spectrum is too wide, but the same observation about our languages are made by the Eskimo referring to the word "snow". We are forced, in their view, to express so many phenomena with this word, falling snow, snow on the ground, snow packed hard like ice, slushy snow, wind- driven flying snow:

99 To an Eskimo, this all-inclusive word would be almost unthinkable; he would say that falling snow, slushy snow, and so on, are sensuously and operationally different, different t things to contend with3.

However, Aztecs go farther in the opposite direction, because they have one word to mean "ice", "cold", and "snow". These and other different linguistic classifications of the world phenomena have, in Whorf's opinion, a direct influence on the way in which we seek and notice subtleties in nature itself. To us, to Eskimos and to Aztecs the same natural phenomenon can have three different meanings, we look at the world and its phenomena through different distorting lenses. In Hopi for example, where grammatical tenses as we know them do not exist, they have a notion of psychic tense; they can express expectation, generalization, reported event. We see that from this figure, taken from Whorf's book:

As you can see, many English utterances match one Hopi utterance and vice versa. When thinking about such diversity, we realize that the world that we take for granted in our everyday life is really just one of the possible interpretations of the same world. Culture (and language as an instrument of culture) molds our way of viewing the world and it is important, especially for a translator, to reckon with such differences between cultures and never take anything for granted, doing her utmost to offer the reader, through her translated texts, as wide a window as possible onto the other cultures of the

100 universe.

Bibliographical references

CALVINO I. If on a Winter's Night a Traveller, translated by William Weaver, London, Vin-tage, 1998, ISBN 0-7493-9923-6.

WHORF B. L. Language, Thought, and Reality. Selected Writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf. Cambridge (Massachusetts), The M.I.T. Press, 1967 (1956).

1 Calvino 1979, p. 53. 2 Whorf 1967, p. 213-214. 3 Whorf 1967, p. 216.

10 - Reading and ambiguity resolution

"This volume's pages are uncut: a first obstacle opposing your impatience."1.

When a reader comes in contact with a text, she faces an arduous task: to decode it. One of the main obstacles is the fact that texts are full of ambiguities of a semantic and syntactic character. A "semantic ambiguity" occurs when one word covers many different meanings. Some of these meanings, usually the denotative ones, are partially indicated in dictionaries under the corresponding word entry. Other meanings, mainly those of a connotative character, are traceable to the (environmental) context in which the utterance occurs and to the (verbal) co-text into which a word is collocated. We cannot emphasize enough that connotative meanings are extremely instable, and that denotative meanings of a word in a natural code are always different from the meanings of any other word, either when they belong to the same natural code, or to another natural code. Recently the American researcher Trueswell has published an essay based on experiments carried out on readers in which he tries to explain how syntactic and semantic ambiguities are solved during the act of reading. Some of the examples on which the experiments were carried out are based on the completion of incomplete utterances.

1) Henry forgot Lila... a) ... at her office. (direct object interpretation) b) ... was almost always right. (sentence complement interpretation)2

When faced with ambiguities like the one in the first utterance, experiments indicate that readers tend to resolve ambiguities. In the quoted example most

101 readers opted for the a) interpretation. A theory of sentence processing has been created that emphasizes the integrative nature of interpretation: ambiguities are resolved, having considered a wide range of sources of information, on the basis of restraints that prevent different interpretations. In as much as a polysemic word has some meanings that are dominant when compared to others, i.e. meanings that are considered more probable a priori without a context, so ambiguous words can have dominant and/or subordinate syntactic structures. From the experiments carried out by Trueswell and by authors quoted in his essay emerges the fact that a structure is or is not dominant changes from one instance to another, from one word to another. And, we add, probably it varies from one culture to another too, even if we remain within the same natural code, and from one speaker to another. According to such theory, the so-called "lexicalist" theory of sentence, the availability of many alternative syntactic structures to a reader depends on how often that reader "has encountered the word in each syntactic context. In addition, semantic/contextual information can come into play quite rapidly to help resolve possible ambiguities"3. These two kinds of restraints - how frequent the experience with a syntactic structure has been and the presence of the semantic and co-textual information - do not occur in sequence, but simultaneously, in a reciprocal interaction. This was controlled based on the presupposition that, when one of the limiting factors contradicts with the other, the time required to resolve the ambiguity increases. To test this hypothesis, the time to decode the left co-text of an ambiguous word (i.e. the words that, in alphabets in which you read from left to right, are read before an ambiguous word) was measured in comparison with the time necessary to decode words forming the right co-text (following words). Long decoding times are matched by supposed conflicts between the two kinds of restraint (frequency of syntactic pattern and semantic-co-textual aspects). In order to know the odds that a given syntactic pattern or a given semantic value will be used within a given speaker's community, textual corpora were used containing millions and millions of 'real' utterances, i.e. pronounced or written by speakers and not created by researchers. And it was noted on the basis of experiments that when readers come across the clue that lets them think of a very probable structure that, however, develops in an unexpected way, they take much more time in the process of resolving the ambiguity. All these results explain why machine translation is so unsuccessful. Our brain, while solving ambiguities within an utterance, addresses not only our grammatical knowledge, not only our lexical knowledge, but statistics, as well - of an undoubtedly unconscious character - of the frequencies at which given lexical and grammatical structures have occurred in our experience. Since, however, large textual corpora have a greater and more reliable

102 storage capacity than our brains, presently the greatest power possible to carry out a translation job is obtained by combining the flexible human intelligence with (manual, not automatic) consultation of existing corpora. In the fourth part of this course textual corpora, and many other tools necessary to translators, make up the most important subjects discussed.

Bibliographical references

CALVINO I. If on a Winter's Night a Traveller, translated by William Weaver, London, Vintage, 1998, ISBN 0-7493-9923-6.

TRUESWELL J. C. The organization and use of the lexicon for language comprehension, in Perception, Cognition, and Language. Essays in Honor of Henry and Lila Gleitman. Cambridge (Massachusetts), The M.I.T. Press, 2000. ISBN 0-262-12228-6.

1 Calvino 1998, p. 53. 2 Trueswell 2000, p. 327. 3 Trueswell 2000, p. 331-332.

11 - Interpretation of psychoanalysis and psychoanalysis of interpretation

"Torn between the necessity to interject glosses on multiple meanings of the text..." 1.

Psychoanalysis has the peculiarity of being considered, according to different points of view, a science born in a humanistic field or a humanistic discipline conceived in a scientific context. A fate non very different from that often dealt to the science of translation, even because hermeneutics, from the Greek hermeneuien, to interpret, "the science of interpretation"2, is sometimes considered an opponent to science:

A modern debate, with terminological confusion of its own, rages as to whether Freud, despite his intentions, developed a clinical theory that was hermeneutic rather than scientific3

Freud, although educated as a physician, had a wide humanistic culture that induced him to express many concepts with a figurative and evocative language, that gives an idea of modesty and tentativeness, of being concrete or temporary but never absolute. As to that, as Mahony also emphasizes, the Vienna physician would have agreed with the fundamental methodological tenet of modern science, enunciated by Popper, that "Every

103 scientific tenet must remain tentative forever"4. As we have seen in previous units, according to Whorf, the mother tongue structure has an important influence on the individual's way of viewing the world and life. Without going overboard, we can state that the language used, although it does not completely exclude the expression of some concepts, can't help but favor some expressive modes. In Mahony's opinion, Freud's breeding in a German-speaking environment positively influenced the development of psychoanalytical theory, fostering its peculiar expression, shunning sterile scientific style5. The translator of the official English version of Freud's works, James Strachey, seems to have overlapped to Freudian view and its expression an ideology more typical of the British psychoanalysis of Jones, tending to 'science-ize' the metaphorical and evocative form of Freudian concepts. One of the first examples Mahony shows us is the translation of the title Neue Folge der Vorlesungen zur Einführung in die Psychoanalyse, translated by Strachey as New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, while, more literally, it could be rendered as "new series of lectures toward introducing psychoanalysis". As you can see, Freud's style is more flexible, offering us varied possibilities, is less absolute, more "tentative" as Popper says. Another example, a well-known quotation from Freud that was the calling card of the whole Lacanian movement, is the sentence:

Wo Es war, soll Ich werden which Strachey translated in this way:

Where id was, ego shall be.

One of the fundamental features of this sentence is its dynamic sense, its view implying a gradual evolution of the individual, sense conveyed by the verb werden that can be translated as "become". The sentence then takes on a rather different sense:

Where id was, ego shall become.

The individual's evolution is a gradual transformation of one's unconscious material into conscious material, or, in other words, man is progressively less and less driven by unconscious drives, desires, mas-tering them more and more consciously. Effectively Strachey's version does not convey the idea of gradualism implied in Freudian utterance. Another rather striking case of ideological deformation regards libido, which in German is characterized by Klebrigkeit, translated by Strachey as adhesiveness, while the German word suggests a strong idea of "stickiness"

104 rather than "adhesiveness". Individuals striving to transfer libidinal investment toward the therapist have, in Freud's view, a sticky libido, which gives a much more precise idea of the negative connotation of such condition. The most paradoxical aspect of such constant interpretive deformation of the Freudian text by the British translator consists in the fact that it is exerted precisely on a discipline that can be rightfully enclosed among the hermeneutical sciences. The great intuition that stands at the basis of talk- based psychotherapy is the fact that the translation of mental material into verbal material is not a series of equivalences but, as in all translation processes, adds and simultaneously removes something from the original. The analyst's work is often concentrated precisely on the 'translation loss' of such expressive work of the patient. Or, in the case of the interpretation of dreams - that will be analyzed in the next unit - psychoanalyst must do an actual translation from dream material into words. The process by which the therapist gets to know the patient is comparable to the therapist's learning of a code. If all the dreams of all dreamers 'spoke' the same language maybe a dictionary or a handbook for dream interpretation would be enough to decode them. But every individual has his own idiomorphic way of dreaming - and to unconsciously codify - and the therapist must be able to understand such code in order to be able to translate it. The translator runs the constant risk of working like Strachey did - we are not interested at the moment in deciding how much of his interpretation was induced by conscious ideology and how much by unconscious deformation - manipulating the text according to her views, when different from the author's.

If ... the translator is not fully aware of the important yet sometimes subtle differences - professional, political, and social - between his views and those of the person translated, various ideological distortions are bound to creep into the secondary text. The more complex the source text is, the more the translator should be self-aware of his own different positions and their contaminatory potential6.

This consideration, in our view valid for any translator, holds for any reader too because, as we have seen, reading itself is a translation process. Going back to the scientific/hermeneutic diatribe, and taking a view of translation studies as a science, maybe the best way to construct a scientific foundation to such undoubtedly hermeneutical discipline consists in seeking to give a scientific base to the art of interpretation, preventing the unconscious to play tricks on the interpreter. Eventually we will return to the methodological similarities between translator and psychoanalyst later in the course. Now we have the pleasure to close this

105 unit with a last quotation taken from Mahony's profound essay, intertwining the motives behind translation, betrayal, and psychoanalysis with poetic irony:

The siren call of the inexhaustible unconscious lures every psychoanalyst, monolingual or not, into being both translator and traitor7.

Bibliographical references

CALVINO I. If on a Winter's Night a Traveller, translated by William Weaver, London, Vintage, 1998, ISBN 0-7493-9923-6.

MAHONY P. Hermeneutics and ideology: on translating Freud, in Meta. Journal des traductuers. Translators's Journal. Montréal, Les Presses de l'Université de Montréal, 1994, vol. 39, n. 2, p. 316-324. ISSN 0026-0452. ISBN 2-7606-2456-0.

POPPER K. The Logic of Scientific Discovery, New York, Harper & Row, 1965.

WEBSTER'S NEW WORLD DICTIONARY ed. by D. B. Guralnik. Cleveland (Ohio), Collins, 1979. ISBN 0-529-05324-1.

1 Calvino 1979, p. 68. 2 Webster's, p. 656. 3 Mahony 1994, p. 319. 4 Popper, 1965, p. 280. 5 Mahony 1994, p. 317. 6 Mahony, 1994, p. 321-322. 7 Mahony 1994, p. 322.

12 - Dream reading

"he could write without the anguish of having his own act become concrete in some material object" 1.

In the previous unit we have seen how important the role of the reader's unconscious is as to the possible interpretations and the role of interpretive deformation in the history of psychoanalysis itself. The points in common between the reading of a text and psychoanalysis are numerous, particularly if you have a broad concept of "text" as in the case of total translation. In this sense, the essay by Carol Schreier Rupprecht2 devoted to the interrelations of translation and dream processing offers us a valuable contribution. Such interrelations, that in the essay are viewed as potential contributions for the evolution of the dream theory, in our case, can be considered in a complementary way: the dream theory has a strong potential as a contribution to understanding the mechanisms of translation, of reading

106 in particular. Let us start with Freud's argument that

Ein Traum ist in der Regel unübersetzbar in andere Sprachen und ein Buch wie das vorliegende, meinte ich, darum auch3.

That is to say

It is impossible as a rule to translate a dream into a foreign language and this is equally true, I fancy, of a book such as the present one.

As you can see, if we want to read it in these terms, in a sense, Freud himself is the first to lay the basis for the total translation view with this extended metaphor of a dream as a text. The dream is one of many types of text, its interpretation is one of many kinds of translation and, to be precise, it is a multiple translation. First the dreamer - dealing with often fragmentary memories of images, sounds, sometimes conversations in many languages sometimes invented, scenes occurring without any evident logic, smells, tactile sensations - has to translate into words this material belonging to another code in order to be able to express it, tell it, transcribe it or report it to the psychoanalyst: a real intersemiotic translation. Secondly the psychoanalyst must translate the material reported by the dreamer and reconstruct the dream thoughts, i.e. the mental material the dreamer has translated into words in order to be able to tell it. Freud affirms that the dream thoughts and the dream's content present themselves as two versions of the same subject in two different languages. The content (patient's telling) is a sort of transcription (Übertragung) of the dream thoughts in another expressive mode. Comparing prototext and metatext, the translator (psychoanalyst) must understand characters and syntactic laws of the dream, with an abductive process4 . What in textology is considered as the author's strategy, that the translator- critic tries to unveil starting from the text (result), here is the strategy of the manipulation of unconscious thoughts (latent content), that the translator- psychoanalyst tries to unveil starting from the manifest content of the dream (result). According to Freudian theory, the unconscious uses a sort of 'incomprehensible translation' to express repressed mental material - as it is inconvenient for Ego functioning - in the shape of symptomatic acts, dreams, inexplicable behaviors. The metatext of such incomprehensible translation is called "manifest content" and the psychoanalyst's aim is to back-translate it into "latent content". Outside of the limited patient-psychoanalyst dynamics,

107 we can say that anyone attempting to understand one's own dream using an interpretive key founded on the existence of the unconscious and of its dream expression finds herself in the same position as the critic-reader of a translation trying to understand, from the result (metatext), what translation strategy was adopted, without the possibility - granted to the critic of the verbal translation - to compare the metatext to the prototext: a real abductive process. Persons desiring to learn to interpret dreams are polyglot translators facing a text aware of their ignorance of the code both in lexical and in syntactical terms. It is maybe comparable to someone wanting to listen to the dialogue of two unknown persons randomly encountered whose code must be adducted in order to make sense of their dialogue's content. Another interesting similarity between dream interpretation and translation lies in the distinction between the primary and secondary processes. In dream theory, the primary process is the translation of the prototext into words, while the secondary process transforms the words - metatext of the previous operation - into a new prototext, and its aim is to produce a second metatext that, more than being made of words, has a textual coherence and cohesion. Let us see with some examples what that means. Here is a dream exposed according to the primary process standards:

Lavatories cleaning sponsor. Deletion graffiti out of spaces. Educational software. Scatology decrease.

Here is a translation into secondary process standards:

A sponsor was found for public lavatories that were always dirty. The sponsor, a cooperative distribution company, provides for their cleaning, and also installed bulletin boards for graffiti. A sign warns that graffiti written out of the appropriate spaces will be deleted. An electronic display gives detailed information, and the users can ask for specific information through an interactive online software, about sex, sexual illnesses prevention, and about the use of lavatories without damages for other users or cleaners. Social psychology studies have concluded that, if the space for graffiti and for scatological expressions is institutionalized, transgression is lacking and as a consequence there is a lesser need for scatological expression and the artistic quality of graffiti improves.

Secondary process intervenes to fill gaps in the syntax in the primary text's understandability. There is a close kinship between primary process and adequacy, and between secondary process and acceptability. The former element has the goal of changing the message code, the latter to make it

108 usable. In the latter the risk is though that the readability of the text in some cases corrupts its coincidence with the prototext (dream). In other words, the textual cohesion that in the metatext derives from secondary processing is not always matched by textual cohesion in the prototext. Sometimes such cohesion is produced by an exaggerate mediation effort by the translator (or by the dreamer describing her dream), inducing to add material and to change the prototext so as to make it more readable. The extension of total translation to the mind/verbal expression, dream/interpretation dialectics, although not foreseen in the original formulation of the theory of total translation, in our opinion is both coherent with the spirit of such theory and productive on the plane of reciprocal enrichment of psychological theory and translation studies, in particular, the theory of reading.

Bibliographical references

CALVINO I. If on a Winter's Night a Traveller, translated by William Weaver, London, Vintage, 1998, ISBN 0-7493-9923-6.

FREUD S.Die Traumdeutung, Leipzig, Deuticke,1900.

RUPPRECHT C. S. Deaming and the impossible art of translation, in Dreaming, Association for the Study of Dreams, vol. 9, n. 1, 1999.

1 Calvino 1998, p. 178. 2 Schreier Rupprecht, 1999. 3 Freud 1900, p. 104. 4 Su questo torneremo nelle prossime unità.

13 - Deduction and induction

"To conceal your embarrassment, you stand up and lean out of the window, still holding the volume in your hand"1.

In the previous units of this part of the course, devoted to the first phase of translation - reading - we have faced some of the psychological and psychoanalytical aspects of decoding and interpretation. In order to go on with our exam of the problems of reading, we must now partially withdraw from the psychological sphere and try to understand what happens at a logical level when we face a text, what are the reasoning we face to work out meanings out of the text. In order to do that, we will conspicuously draw on the science of the action of signs, semiotics. The word "semiotics" is derived from "semiosis", from the Greek semeiosis, "action of signs". The modern term was coined by the great

109 thinker from the U.S. Peirce (1839-1914) and, although simultaneously another researcher, Swiss, Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1914), was creating "semiology" - a term by which semiotics, or at least linguistic semiotics, is better known in Europe -, the two men had never heard of the existence of the other. This is, above all, caused by the fact that, even if with the benefit of hindsight he can be considered a fundamental element in the history of human thought, Peirce never found a permanent job in any American university, and earned his living sometimes by temporary jobs often beneath his standing, stealing time from his precious studies. That did not prevent him from leaving roughly a hundred thousand written pages, of which only a small part has been published so far. Let us examine the main kinds of logic characterizing any cognitive act with which we try to understand something. The simplest and the safest is deduction, an analytical reasoning, proceeding from the general to the particular. Let us look at Aristotle's example: starting from a major premise, a rule including many cases,

A "all men are mortal", a minor one is pronounced - a rule meant as a subset to the major premise:

B "Socrates is a man".

The consequence derived from that, the conclusion, is that

C "Socrates is mortal".

This kind of logic has the characteristic of not being risky at all: if you are certain of the validity of A and B, you can be sure that C is true as well. The problem with deduction is, if anything, another one: although useful when applying general rules to individual cases, it is not at all creative because it does not add anything new to what is already known. Peirce illustrated deduction with the example, now famous, of the bean bag:

Rule All the beans from this bag are white. Case These beans are from this bag. Result These beans are white2.

Wishing to try a more creative logic, one can observe what happens modifying the order of the elements in deduction. Induction is, in some respects, the opposite of deduction, because the premises from which it begins are the minor ones so that the logic proceeds from the particular to the general. It is a synthetic logic:

110 A "The pencil falls".

The observation of a specific case, undoubtedly true, a fact known to anyone who has ever dropped a pencil. In induction there are many other minor premises, for example:

B "The book falls", very easily verifiable,

C "The man falls".

To arrive at the conclusion, however, and state the general rule 'on the basis of' these particular cases, a logical leap is necessary in order to state:

D "All bodies fall".

This logic, based on the empirical world and not solely on the laws of logics, because it starts from the practical observation of objective phenomena, is creative, because D is much more than the sum of A, B, and C. The minus side is that we do not have any certainty that D is true. So, if induction is useful logic for stating hypotheses on rules not yet clearly focused, on the other hand it is useful only to create hypotheses, not convictions as in the case of deduction. Peirce, in this case too, uses the bag of beans example:

Case These beans are from this bag. Result These beans are white. Rule All the beans from this bag are white3.

When we read and must understand the meanings of a text, which of these logics do we draw on? To choose deduction, we need a text that comes complete with the general rules for understanding it, a highly unlikely occurrence. In order to choose induction, we would need a text stating, right from the beginning, a specific rule governing its function, but this doesn't happen either. Semiosis - signification - our understanding of the text - do not follow a deductive or inductive logic. Semiosis develops like scientific research, and is not satisfied only with an analytical logic (deduction) or a synthetic (induction): the former, in Peirce's opinion, "proves that something must be", the latter "shows that something actually is operative"4. The logic that in Peirce's opinion operates in the moment when we extract meaning from a text is abduction: "Abduction merely suggests that something may be"5. Returning to the bag of beans example, abduction works like this:

111 Rule All the beans from this bag are white. Result These beans are white. Case These beans are from this bag6.

The hypothesis at the basis of the final part of the reasoning is a case, not a rule; to be precise it is the hypothesis of a case. That the beans are from that particular bag is a working hypothesis, one that must be repeatedly checked throughout the course of the research. In the following units we will see the repercussions of such logic on the semiotic act.

Bibliographical references

CALVINO I. If on a Winter's Night a Traveller, translated by William Weaver, London, Vintage, 1998, ISBN 0-7493-9923-6.

GORLÉE D. L. Semiotics and the Proble of Translation. With Special Reference to the Semiotics of Charles S. Peirce. Amsterdam, Rodopi, 1994. ISBN 90-5183-642-2.

PEIRCE C. S. Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, a c. di Charles Hartshorne, Paul Weiss e Arthur W. Burks, 8 vol., Cambridge (Massachusetts), Harvard University Press, 1931-1966.

1 Calvino 1998, p. 242. 2 Peirce, vol. 2, p. 623. 3 Peirce, vol. 2, p. 623. 4 Peirce, vol. 5, p. 171. 5 Peirce, vol. 5, p. 171. 6 Peirce, vol. 2, p. 623.

14 - Semiosis

"'You can foresee all possible situations,' Bernadette says. And how could I have managed otherwise, I would like to say to her [...]."1

We have indicated the form of reasoning theorized by Peirce as the most precious for the progress and creativity of scientific thought. We will return often to abduction; for the time being we must expand on another Peircean triad, which is fundamental to understand how the signification process, the basis of the act of reading, occurs, the first step in an interlingual translation. In Europe we are used to thinking in Structuralist terms, and to reason on signification speaking of signifier and signified, following in Saussure's wake. Saussure has explained that there are many signifier/signified pairs connected in an arbitrary relation. By "signifier" (signifiant) Saussure means the sound emitted by a speaker in order to indicate something (for example, the pronunciation of a word), while by "signified" (signifié) he means the

112 concept the signifier refers to. The signified/signifier relation is arbitrary, which explains why languages (natural codes) differ from one another. If, rather, such relation were a necessity, we would have a single global language, i.e. we would be in a pre-Babel situation. Such relation is called "signification" (signification). This theory - at the basis of semiology and Structuralism - explains the difference between natural codes, but it implies consistency in the signification relation among speakers of the same code. Moreover, the Saussurian theory is founded on natural codes, on what are normally called "languages". Research conducted by Structuralist scientists on other extra-verbal sign systems have the verbal code as a starting point. Even if linguistics is one of many sign systems considered by semiology, it is considered as the reference system for all others. Let us see how semiosis is considered according the sign/object/interpretant triad devised by Peirce.

Semiosis (signification process) Peirce A sign Anything perceivable: word, symptom, signal, dream, letter, sentence. A sign stands for an object, refers to the object. Without it, it is impossible to know the object. B object What the sign refers to. It can perceptible or imaginable. It determines the sign. It exists apart from the sign. C interpretant Sign, thought interpreting a previous sign. Any new interpretant throws more light on the object.

113 The sign is anything that can be known, anything (re)cognizable. But in order for a potential sign to act as a sign, it has to be related to an object, to be interpreted and to produce an interpretant in the implied subject's mind. This interpretive process is called "semiosis". Here is a graphic representation:

The semiosis triangle according to Peirce

Compared with Saussurian binomial, we notice that Peircean view leaves room for individual interpretation. The interpretant is a subjective thought that, for the implied subject and for her only, refers on one hand to an object, on the other hand to a sign that is at times used to refer to that object. That implies that the arbitrariness in Saussurian signification has in Peirce a subjective dimension which is not arbitrary. For each of us, the relation between a sign and an object has a definite sense, is linked to affects, memories, experiences that have to do with such semiosis. Through Peirce semiosis gains an affective dimension which, although subjective, for the subject is not arbitrary at all. For Peirce, a sign is anything, not necessarily a written or pronounced word, as it is for Saussure. In Peircean semiotics it is not linguistics extending itself in order to comprehend other types of codes; it is semiotics that studies all sign systems, including linguistic systems as well. That is very important because it gives dynamics to semiosis. The interpretant - the thought interpreting a sign - can in turn become a sign, and abductively generate other objects and other interpretants, which allows, as we shall see, unlimited semiosis. An object exists independent of a sign, but it is cognizable only through a sign. On the contrary, a sign is such only if it is interpreted as a sign. One of the most frequent misunderstandings in the acquisition of the "interpretant" notion is to consider it "a person interpreting". In order to avoid such confusion, it is advisable to remind that the word "interpretant" is a sort of abbreviation for "interpretant sign". So we shouldn't mistake an interpretant with an interpreter. Semiosis is sign interpretation,

an action, or influence, which is, or involves, a cooperation of three subjects, such as a sign, its object, and its interpretant, this tri-relative

114 influence not being in any way resolvable into action between pairs2. quoting Peirce. We shall see how this view of semiosis is helpful while dealing with reading and, more generally, translation.

Bibliographical references

CALVINO I. If on a Winter's Night a Traveller, translated by William Weaver, London, Vintage, 1998, ISBN 0-7493-9923-6.

GORLÉE D. L. Semiotics and the Problem of Translation. With Special Reference to the Semiotics of Charles S. Peirce.Amsterdam, Rodopi, 1994. ISBN 90-5183-642-2.

PEIRCE C. S. Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, ed by Charles Hartshorne, Paul Weiss, and Arthur W. Burks, 8 vol., Cambridge (Massachusetts), Harvard University Press, 1931-1966.

1 Calvino 1998, p. 112. 2 Peirce, vol. 5, p. 484.

15 - Reading and game theory

"Opening a path for yourself, with a sword's blade, in the barrier of pages becomes linked with the thought of how much the word contains and conceals: you cut your way through your reading as if through a dense forest"1.

Reading a text is a semiotic act: the reader gains meaning from that text. Given that semiosis is an interpretive act, as we have seen, reading is a succession of interpretations and reinterpretations in the light of what the text says about itself (intratextual links), of what the text says of the world (extratextual links), of what the text says about other texts (intertextual links). Every time the reader finds a new sign before her, she has to undertake a process of decision-making, often forcing her to predominantly trust one sense to the detriment of other senses, which then determines a chain of consequences for the interpretation of the signs that follow, and on the interpretation of the whole of the text. In this view, reading is a process having something in common with games of skill or of strategy that have a set of rules that do not impose a

115 predetermined behavior on the player, leaving room for individual creativity and ability2. Another common feature shared by reading and games of strategy is the fact that, in both activities, the final result in unknown, which creates an atmosphere of anticipation that makes the path leading to the end seductive. In a game like chess, the moves are not random, the decisions are made s ystematically, although personal preferences remain a component of their selection. As a consequence, even within the framework of a very firm decision making activity, there is (semiotic) space for risk taking, for bet placing, for creative inference

because the understanding and use of signs is never a matter of recognition of a stable equivalence, but always a matter of guessing, or creative inferring3.

Reading proceeds step by step, one choice after another, and adjustments are made at pace that permits the reader to follow along, for example, the presence of an intertextual link, which makes her suspect that other passages of the text already read were supposed to be related to that same link as well. Or, more simply, the reader notices the recurrence of a word or expression which, in a given passage of the book, explicitly manifests a certain gravity and a precise meaning, while until that point it was enveloped in the thickest interpretive mystery. The reader now has to backtrack - with her mind or her body - to all the previous occurrences of that word or expression in order to check the effect of their co-textualization with the benefit of hindsight, i.e. in the light of the interpretation that was only possible to arrive at after the "illumination". At the end of a reading, the interpretive path arrives at a result/conclusion. Even the (temporary) result is related to the whole of the reader's knowledge. Every reading exerts an influence on the reader's worldview, but in the meantime the reader's worldview exerts an influence on the results of her reading that she may consider unsatisfying, which can induce her to begin the reading/game anew. According to Peirce, a rule is an interpretive habit based on a conscious resolution the interpreter makes to act in a certain way4. Reading can be conceived as a language game for one player - the reader - who, by trial and error, confronts a succession of interpretive hypotheses. When the hypotheses are accepted, she goes on, while when she finds flaws in them, she goes back and starts again. Decisions regarding single lexical problems (semantic field of a word, activation or suppression of senses, "narcosis" of meanings and emphasis on other meanings) intertwine with the decisions regarding global problems of textual interpretation. The inferential movement, besides proceeding from one

116 word to the next, from one sentence to the next, endlessly oscillates from micro-interpretation to macro-interpretation. The overall interpretation of the text is compared to the interpretation of its single fragments because textual coherence demands a correspondence between the two levels. While the rules of the game are fixed, the strategies to play it are dynamic. Reading, meant as a game, consists also in continually challenging the interpretive rules in the light of the new findings. The hermeneutic circle in which the reader makes inferences on the text and checks them against the ongoing text describes what Eco defines "unlimited semiosis". This is not the place to enter into details on the consequences interlingual translation has on the hermeneutic circle, but we can sense by intuition that the translator is in a very delicate situation: her interpretation blocks some interpretive possibilities, opens others that were unforeseen by the prototext author, and sets interpretations that, the author intended to have temporary and dynamic. If reading can be compared to a never-ending and always open game, the reading of a translated text is also a game, played with other rules and on another text. If it is explicitly a translated text, the reader knows that someone has played the game for her and is telling her something about the game.

Bibliographical references

CALVINO I. If on a Winter's Night a Traveller, translated by William Weaver, London, Vintage, 1998, ISBN 0-7493-9923-6.

GORLÉE D. L. Semiotics and the Problem of Translation. With Special Reference to the Semiotics of Charles S. Peirce.Amsterdam, Rodopi, 1994. ISBN 90-5183-642-2.

PEIRCE C. S. Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, ed by Charles Hartshorne, Paul Weiss, and Arthur W. Burks, 8 vol., Cambridge (Massachusetts), Harvard University Press, 1931-1966.

1 Calvino 1998, p. 42. 2 Gorlée 1994, p. 71. 3 Gorlée 1994, p. 73. 4 Gorlée 1994, p. 84.

16 - Wittgenstein and meaning

"Many feelings distress you as you leaf through these letters"1.

We have seen some aspects of Saussurean and Peircean thought in the preceding units that, although contemporaries, did not get to know each other.

117 Another language researcher and philosopher, the Austrian, Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951), devised a theory of signification, it seems, independent of the writings of his two precursors. These are not quoted by Wittgenstein, even though we must say that his Philosophical Investigations, his last work, published posthumously in 1953, is written in the form of elaboration of thoughts, without a bibliography of any kind. The philosopher expresses his meditations, relying upon logical thought and not on explicit references to other authors. Since Philosophical Investigations is almost entirely devoted to the question of language and of meaning, we cannot overlook it when dealing with the semiosis of reading. We know how complex the interaction of ideas in the semiosphere can be, and we think it is important to try to synthesize the ideas of the most important thinkers on language and compare them, whenever possible, using a common metalanguage that the original works do not have2. We will start touching upon the topics that concern us most closely. Wittgenstein reflects on the nature of words, affirms that to say that every word means something is the same as saying nothing at all. Words have different functions, as diverse as the functions different tools may have; and there are similarities between the two cases compared3. While trying to understand how a word could be understood, the Austrian philosopher distinguishes words used to signify something from words used to signify words themselves. Here is the example he gives:

[...] when I say to someone: "Pronounce the word 'the'", you will count the second "the" as part of the sentence. Yet it has a [different] role, it is a sample of what the other is meant to say4.

Such distinction is very important, even though it is often overlooked in practice. In the quoted example, the first "the" is inserted into the utterance as a 'normal' word, as object language, i.e. it has the function of completing the utterance so that it can generate a semiotic act along the sign-interpretant- object path. But the case of the second "the" is very different, which is written in quotes exactly to demonstrate that it is not used to trigger a normal semiotic act, but a metalinguistic act, a simple sign-sign reference. We have already talked about that in the first part of the course: it is called autonimy, a word formed by the prefix "auto-" and by the Greek root "ónoma", meaning "name". As a matter of fact it is a word that names itself, that refers to itself, transgressing all signification rules we have come across up to this point. And quotes, the delimiters of autonimy, have the precise aim of delimiting the portion of text that does not have a meaning in reference to the world, but has a meaning in reference to signs themselves. So, going on to the practical aspect of the question, it is important that the instances of autonimy are

118 indicated by delimiters. Of course, this rule is in force in every language; it is, therefore, also a universally valid the principle that, when we find an instance of autonimy without delimiters in a text to be interlingually translated, we don't have to add them, because it can be a mark of the author's style. This is not true for purely denotative texts (for example a handbook of instructions), where missing delimiters can be attributable to a simple oversight. Another important intuition concerns reading, above all the reading aloud of a written sentence, which is compared to a vocal execution (singing) from a musical score. Wittgenstein speaks of the difference between exact matching of score and singing and lack of correspondence between written text and "'meaning' (thinking) the sentence"5. From that we understand how much room this view of language leaves to individual interpretation, to what Peirce would call "interpretant". Another very important notion is that of "language-game", a term by which he calls the various types of language, to stress that speaking a language is part of an activity, it is a form of life. Here are some examples of language- game:

Giving orders, and obeying them- Describing the appearance of an object, or giving its measurements- Constructing an object from a description (a drawing)- Reporting an event- Speculating about an event- Forming and testing a hypothesis- Presenting the results of an experiment in tables and diagrams- Making up a story; and reading it- Play-acting- Singing catches- Guessing riddles- Making a joke; telling it- Solving a problem in practical arithmetic- Translating from one language into another- Asking, thanking, cursing, greeting, praying6.

As we see, translation is included among the language-games. But how does one proceed in order to attribute meaning to words? One of the procedures defined as not valid is the one of definition by antithesis. He makes the examples of the adjectives "red" and "modest", both impossible to be defined as the contrary of their negation: "not red" and "not modest"7. Natural languages, differently from the artificial ones like mathematics, are anisomorphic. This means that there is no one-to-one correspondence between meanings and words. Consequently, even notions as "synonym" or "opposite" are rather out of place in a natural language. The network of the

119 potential match is too complicated to give the possibility what the antonym of a word is, especially if one does not specify from which point of view it should be the antonym. Saying that "modest" is the contrary of what is not modest, Wittgenstein stresses, is not necessarily wrong, but it is, at least, ambiguous. A fundamental warning that, however, we do not find when we look a word up in the synonyms and antonyms. To learn a meaning is compared to the learning of a game, particularly chess. There can be at least two procedures: in the former case, someone explains the rules of the game to the person who wants to learn, and later there is a practical experience. In the latter case, someone observes games of chess not knowing any of the rules and, on the basis of past experiences with other similar games and of her observations, she reconstructs the rules. We think that the latter case is very close to the abductive process as described by Peirce, in which one has to reconstruct a case (the sense of a move) based on hypotheses of rules and results. To close this initial overview of Wittgenstein's thought on meaning, we quote one of the first, fundamental conclusions at which he arrived:

For a large class of cases-though not for all-in which we employ the word "meaning" it can be defined thus: the meaning of a word is its use in the language8.

This statement makes one think that the denotative meaning that we find easily in a dictionary can be applicable to the little group of remaining cases. In every other case, the meaning is defined by use, and the translator, the reader, as a meaning hunter, must concentrate herself more on the acts of parole in a Saussurean sense than on denotative, codified, fixed meaning available, as we were saying, in a dictionary.

Bibliographical references

CALVINO I. If on a Winter's Night a Traveller, translated by William Weaver, London, Vintage, 1998, ISBN 0-7493-9923-6.

GORLÉE D. L. Semiotics and the Problem of Translation. With Special Reference to the Semiotics of Charles S. Peirce.Amsterdam, Rodopi, 1994. ISBN 90-5183-642-2.

TOROP P. La traduzione totale - Total´nyj perevod, edited by Bruno Osimo, Modena, Guaraldi Logos, 2000. ISBN88-8049-195-4.

120 WITTGENSTEIN L. Philosophische Untersuchungen Philosophical Investigations, translated by G. E. M. Anscombe, second edition, Oxford, Blackwell, 1958. ISBN 0-631-20569-1.

1 Calvino 1979, p.125. 2 Gorlée 1994, p. 87. Torop 2000, p. 21-23. 1994, p. 71. 3 Wittgenstein 1958, p. 6. 4 Wittgenstein 1958, p. 7. 5 Wittgenstein 1958, p. 11. 6 Wittgenstein 1958, p. 11-12. 7 Wittgenstein 1958, p. 14. 8 Wittgenstein 1958, p. 20.

17 - Wittgenstein and meaning - second part

"Are you reading or daydreaming? Do the effusions of a graphomane have such power over you?"1.

The meaning of a word is thus its use in language. In essence, regarding a word, one can get information looking in dictionaries or grammar books, books containing norms and instructions. But not the meaning, or at least not all the meaning, that is enclosed in the use (Gebrauch) of a word. This means that, according to Wittgenstein, the meaning of a word is not solely verbal, linguistic, it has some added components that manifest themselves in practical application, in use. Part of the meaning of a word lies in the meaning that it can produce in combination with other words, within a text. The meaning of a word in a text must be considered in a systemic view in which the text system contains many words in interaction, whose meaning is partially determined by their meaning as attested to in the code, in the dictionary, and partially determined by the interactions with the other elements in the text. In its turn, a text has a meaning of its own, it makes sense as an element of the macro-textual system of which it is part, and so on until we arrive at the level of the semiosphere. The use of the word is, moreover, a subjective choice with psychic implications. The speaker's choice of words - a choice possible from among the countless forms in which the same thought can be expressed - is indicative of a deep content, sometimes linked to unconscious associations, or to conscious but idiosyncratic associations typical of a given person and not always dividable or explainable.

121 speech act. The suprasegmental dimension suggested by Wittgenstein adds an affective moment to the word, analogous to the one that it acquires through co-textualization and all kinds of markedness of the speech, repetition included. (Repetition - classical expressive device forbidden by the mysterious rules of "good writing" and "good translating", maybe understandable only as an attempt to standardize, homogenize expressive modes, textual creativity - is a way to make the sense of a word or a text resonate in a different way. The rush to use synonyms in order to avoid repetitions - both in interlingual translation and in intersemiotic translation from the mental to the verbal, i.e. in writing or oral verbal expression, is also an escape from the sense, meant in this wider and deeper meaning.) Wittgenstein views communication as an intersemiotic translation activity between mental images and affects and words. It is a translation activity, as much as interlingual translation, characterized by anisomorphism, i.e. by the absence of a reciprocal bilateral matching. A feeling translated into words and then back translated into a feeling does not produce the same "prototext" (feeling) from which the process started. This is one of the reasons why semiosis can be considered unlimited.

Let us imagine a table (something like a dictionary) that exists only in our imagination. A dictionary can be used to justify the translation of a word X by a word Y. But are we also to call it a justification if such a table is to be looked up only in the imagination?3.

Such justification can only be individual, subjective. In other words, it is possible that the consultation of a "mental dictionary" gives rise to correct interpretants (also because it would be very difficult to conceive an incorrect interpretant) but interpretants, by definition, are subjective and not fully shareable, not completely translatable into signs. In another passage of the Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein, having quoted the childhood memories of a man named Ballard, comments:

Are you sure-one would like to ask-that this is the correct translation of your wordless thought into words? [...] These recollections are a queer memory phenomenon,-and I do not know what conclusions one can draw from them about the past of the man who recounts them4.

But this is not very important to one who is trying to analyze not a biography, but the functional comprehension of a text. The question is not the matching of a text with a not well defined "reality", but the functioning of an inner idiosyncratic code consisting of interpretants and the possibility to translate it

122 into words. Not only: Wittgenstein also postulates the existence of a more primitive and deep form of thought in a dialectical relation to the thought translatable into words.

[...] so we often think as if our thinking were founded on a thought- schema: as if we were translating from a more primitive mode of thought into ours5.

The expression of our thoughts, in other words their intersemiotic translation, corresponds to a subjective code that does however vary in time and space. Some ways of expression are different from those used in other moments or situations:

In saying "When I heard this word, it meant' to me" one refers to a point of time and to a way of using the word. [...] And the expression "I was then going to say'" refers to a point of time and to an action. I speak of the essential references of the utterance in order to distinguish them from the peculiarities of the expression we use. The references that are essential to an utterance are the ones which would make us translate some otherwise alien form of expression into this, our customary form .6.

It is clear that these definitions of mental meaning in Wittgenstein match very well with the notion of "interpretant" in Peirce and allow us to go on in our overview of reading and perception of the text remaining aware that - apart from the terminological difference between Wittgenstein and Peirce - we can rely on some shared notions that, until the eventual falsification, we can accept and use.

Bibliographical references

CALVINO I. If on a Winter's Night a Traveller, translated by William Weaver, London, Vintage, 1998, ISBN 0-7493-9923-6.

GORLÉE D. L. Semiotics and the Problem of Translation. With Special Reference to the Semiotics of Charles S. Peirce.Amsterdam, Rodopi, 1994. ISBN 90-5183-642-2.

TOROP P. La traduzione totale - Total´nyj perevod, edited by Bruno Osimo, Modena, Guaraldi Logos, 2000. ISBN88-8049-195-4.

WITTGENSTEIN L. The Blue and Brown Books, edited by Rush Rees, Oxford, Blackwell, 1958.

123 WITTGENSTEIN L. Philosophische Untersuchungen Philosophical Investigations, translated by G. E. M. Anscombe, second edition, Oxford, Blackwell, 1958. ISBN 0-631-20569-1.

1 Calvino 1998, p.125. 2 Wittgenstein 1958, p. 125. 3 "Denken wir uns eine Tabelle, die nur in unserer Vorstellung existiert; etwa ein Wörterbuch. Mittels eines Wörterbuchs kann man die Übersetzung eines Wortes X durch ein Wort Y rechfertigen. Sollen wir es aber auch eine Rechfertigung nennen, wenn diese Tabelle nur in der Vorstellung nachgeschlagen wird?" Wittgenstein 1958, p. 93. 4 "Bist du sicher, daß dies die richtige Übersetzung deiner wortlosen Gedanken in Worte ist? [...] Diese Erinnerungen sind ein seltsames Gedächtnisphänomen - und ich weiß nicht, welche Schlüsse auf die Vergangenheit des Erzählers man aus ihnen ziehen kann!" Wittgenstein 1958, p. 109-110. 5 "[...] so denken wir oft, als läge unserm Denken ein Denkschema zu Grunde; als übersetzen wir aus einer primitiveren Denkweise in die unsre" Wittgenstein 1958, p. 156. 6 "Mit seinen Worten "Als ich das Wort hörte, bedeutete es für mich..." bezieht er sich auf einen Zeitpunkt und auf eine Art der Wortverwendung. [...] Und der Ausdruck "Ich wollte damals sagen..." bezieht sich auf einen Zeitpunkt und auf eine Handlung. Ich rede von den Wesentlichen Bezügen der Äußerung, um sie von andern Besonderheiten unseres Ausdrucks abzulösen. Und wesentlich sind der Äußerung die Bezüge, die uns veranlassen würden, ein im übrigen uns fremde Art des Ausdrucks in diese bei uns gebräuchliche Form zu übersetzen". Wittgenstein 1958, p. 175.

18 - Peirce and the translation of meaning

"You make an effort to read what is written on the spine of the bindings, though you know it is useless, because for you the binding is indecipherable"1.

The term "translation" was often used by Peirce, who employed it referring not to interlingual translation, but to the extraction of meaning from things. When we say that to Peirce the "interpretant" (or "interpretant sign" is that mental sign, that thought, that representation, serving as a mediating tool between sign and object, we use the term coined by Peirce. "interpretant". Sometimes students who study Peirce's thought get confused between the concept of "interpretant" and the concept of "interpreter": the latter referring to a person, the one who interprets, a human being who is making a semiotic act. The

124 former is, instead, a mental sign. It is, so to speak, the mental translation of an object, a sort of subjective key to the perception of a word or object.

Everything may be comprehended or more strictly translated by something: that is has something which is capable of such a determination as to stand for something through this thing; somewhat as the pollen-grain of a flower stands to the ovule which it penetrates for the plant from which it came since it transmits the pe-culiarities of the latter. In somewhat the same sense, though not to the same degree, everything is a medium between something and something2.

Peirce's mode of expression is not very clear, which may be one of the reasons why his thought, nearly a century after his death, is still studied relatively little. We are interested here above all in noting that the mental representation of something (in Peirce's simile, the representation of the pollen-grain to the plant) is a sort of mental translation. In other words, the interpretant is also a "translatant" and, in some scholars' opinion, it could be legitimately called by either term without difference. To repeat the notion in our terms of the global approach to translation studies, the perception of something (object or sign) translates the perceived thing into a mental representation, or interpretant. Every following perception/translation/interpretation is a recognition, and thus new interpretation and clarification of the mental representation.

We are capable of understanding representations only by having conceptions or mental representations, which represent the given representation as a representation3.

A mental representation (interpretant) is such only on condition that it also implies the awareness of being a representation. There exists, thus, a level of repre-sentation and a level of meta-representation, i.e. a level of signs and a level of meta-signs. Meaning is built through a less and less uncertain process of truth seeking4, progressing from perception to conception to meta- conception:

Consider what effects, which might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object5.

When we read, every word evokes a series of associations within us, with such a rapidity that we often do not realize it. This process translates the read signs into interpretants or, if we prefer, into translatants6, being an intersemiotic translation from the verbal into the mental. In this way human

125 thought progresses and evolves, through a series of translations. Until when such evolution occurs within a subject, translations have interpretant signs both as a prototext and as a metatext, and are then intralingual translations (in this case meaning by "language" the mental subjective language, her "machine code", to use a computerbased metaphor). When the evolution of thought passes from one person to another, interpretants need to be translated into words (and in this way communicated outside the individual) and then single receivers must retranslate them into interpretant signs. A double intersemiotic translation occurs.

But a sign is not a sign unless it translates itself into another sign in which it is more fully developed. Thought requires achievement for its own development, and without this development it is nothing. Thought must live and grow in incessant new and higher translations, or it proves itself not to be genuine thought7.

Each of these thought translations is a step higher than the last, and it is not therefore a so-called "faithful" translation, but an enrichment of the previous sign. A sign is a body, whose interpretation is the soul. Every sign must have an interpretant, otherwise it is not a sign.

A sign must have an interpretation or signification or, as I call it, an interpretant. This interpretant, this significations simply a metempsychosis into another body; a translation into another language. This new version of the thought received in turn an interpretation, and its interpretant gets itself interpreted, and so on, until an interpretant appears which is no longer of the nature of a sign8.

Translation - the very process characterizing reading and, in the following phases, the evolution of the material read - is a fundamental link of semiosis, or sign translation. Some maintain that semiosis is unlimited. Peirce maintains, on the other hand, that the ultimate aim of translation is to reveal the ultimate signification of the sign9. Since, however, he doesn't tell us if it is possible or how to arrive at this "ultimate" result, Peirce leads us to believe that, contrarily, there is always room for further translation-interpretation- reading and his statement lends itself to be interpreted even as a convoluted way to say that semiosis, reading, translation never end, that it is always possible to enrich an interpretation with new elements.

Bibliographical references

CALVINO I. If on a Winter's Night a Traveller, ranslated by William Weaver, London, Vintage, 1998, ISBN 0-7493-9923-6.

126 GORLÉE D. L. Semiotics and the Problem of Translation. With Special Reference to the Semiotics of Charles S. Peirce. Amsterdam, Rodopi, 1994. ISBN 90-5183-642-2.

PEIRCE C. S. Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, edited by Charles Hartshorne, Paul Weiss and Arthur W. Burks, 8 vol., Cambridge (Massachusetts), Belknap, 1931-1966.

PEIRCE C. S. Writings of Charles S. Peirce: A Chronological Edition, edited by Max Fisch, Edward C. Moore, Christian J. W. Kloesel et al, Bloomington (Indiana), Indiana University Press, 1982.

1 Calvino 1998 p.242. 2 Peirce, Writings, vol. 1, p. 333. Our emphasis 3 Peirce, Writings, vol. 1, p. 323. Traduzione nostra. 4 Gorlée, p. 119. 5 Peirce, Writings, vol. 3, p. 266. Traduzione nostra. 6 Savan, quoted in Gorlée, p. 120. 7 Peirce, Collected Papers, vol. 5, p. 594. Our emphasis. 8 Peirce, quoted in Gorlée, p. 126. Traduzione nostra. 9 Peirce, quoted in Gorlée, p. 127.

19 - The role of the reader

"You have not read about thirty pages and you're becoming caught up in the story"1.

"The very existence of texts that can not only be freely interpreted but also cooperatively generated by the addressee (the 'original' text constituting a flexible type of which many tokens can be legitimately realized) [...]"2. This is how The Role of the Reader by Umberto Eco opens. It is a very dense incipit, interesting for the many statements that are made and the others taken for granted, that are implied. Let us try to analyze them one at a time, seeking out their implications for the reader-translator. Up to now, we have spoken of reading as an intersemiotic translation process, having a verbal text as a prototext and a mental text as a metatext. When Eco states that the reader is able to generate texts - by her interpretive cooperation - it is obvious that the notion of "text" is far decentralized from the concept that envisions it as a consistent set of signs printed on paper or emitted in the air. Interpretive cooperation is part of the text and the text is not complete without taking into account if, when and how it is interpreted. Parenthetically, Eco then implicitly uses the translation metaphor when he

127 speaks of the original and its actualizations, or tokens. Reading is a translation process for Eco too, who sees the prototext as a type and its interpretations or sense-making readings as actualizations of that type. If the meaning of the text is complete only when the text is read, it is clear that a well-rounded writer tries to prefigure the model of her reader. In this way, she imagines what can be the model of actualization of her text. Otherwise, the sense of her text is trusted to the casual meeting of her text with any empirical reader. By "empirical reader" we mean a given concrete reader reading a text, one of the many concrete actualizations of the abstract notion of "reader". "Model reader" is instead the one that, apart from the author, is able to interpret a text in a similar way to the author who generated it.

The author has thus to foresee a model of the possible reader (hereafter Model Reader) supposedly able to deal interpretatively with the expressions in the same way as the author deals generatively with them3.

Here's the tricky part: this point is not applicable only to literary texts, as superficially one could be led to believe. The choice of the model of reader is implicitly made by choosing the language in which the text is coded, in what style and with what register, and with what degree of specialization. For example, the text by Eco we have quoted from many times foresees a model of reader much more specialized (a researcher in semiotics, for example) than this translation course, addressing a much wider public.

[...] a fictional narrative text encompasses most of the problems posited by other types of text. In a fictional narrative text, one can find examples of conversational texts (questions, orders, descriptions, and so on) as well as instances of every kind of speech act4.

Some texts are interpreted according to the author's prediction, while others are decoded in cultural contexts completely different from the ones that have been foreseen. Some authors foresee decoding under different conditions from those postulated by their own coding strategy, while others do not consider such eventuality, however frequent it may be. Eco proposes differentiating authors according to this criterion.

Those texts that obsessively aim at arousing a precise response on the part of more or less precise empirical readers [...] are in fact open to any possible 'aberrant' decoding. A text so immoderately 'open' to every possible interpretation will be called a closed one5.

128 In other words, a closed text foresees only one form of decoding. All those not foreseen are not 'legitimate', from the author's point of view. If only the reader refers to cultural conventions different from the ones stiffly implied, decoding produces results that are completely different from those conceived by the author's strategy. In the quoted sentence, Eco says that closed texts are the most 'open': it is a play on words of course, a little provocation. The stiffer a set of rules is, the greater the possibility to transgress. By analogy, the narrower a narrative strategy, the more probabilities there are to encounter unforeseen decoding, which actually renders these texts extremely open. Vice versa when the author can conceive a sufficiently flexible model of reader within the strategy with which she produces the text to match a high number of empirical readers, this amounts to saying that the openness of a text is an intrinsic, genetic trait of that text. Consequently, the field of legitimate decoding is much wider and, in the same time, the limit of aberrant decoding is much more rigid. In this case, the text is however much more closed to decoding not foreseen by the flexible textual strategy.

Bibliographical references

CALVINO I. If on a Winter's Night a Traveller, translated by William Weaver, London, Vintage, 1998, ISBN 0-7493-9923-6.

ECO U. The Role of the Reader. Explorations in the Semiotics of Texts, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1995, ISBN 0-253-20318-X.

1 Calvino 1998 p.25. 2 Eco 1995, p. 3. 3 Eco 1995, p. 7. 4 Eco 1995, p. 12. 5 Eco 1995, p. 8.

20 - Peirce, Eco, and unlimited semiosis

"[...] reading means stripping herself of every purpose, every foregone conclusion, to be ready to catch a voice that makes itself heard when you least expect it"1.

"A sign, or representamen, is something which stands to somebody for something in some respect or capacity. It addresses somebody, that is, creates in the mind of that person an equivalent sign, or perhaps a more developed sign. That sign which it creates I call the interpretant of the first sign. The sign stands for something, its object. It stands for that object, not in all respects, but in reference to a sort of idea, which I have sometimes called

129 the ground of the representation"2. In this way Peirce explains the relationships existing between the three poles in the triad of semiosis. Eco, in The Role of the Reader, has devoted a chapter to explaining how in this and in other phrases from Peirce one can find the foundation of unlimited semiosis and openness of the text, of which we have often spoken in the previous units. First of all we must try to understand what is meaning is for Peirce. From the quoted sentence we can infer that one object, depending on the point of view under which it is considered - according to the ground on which the consideration lies - has different interpretants. Eco's preoccupation seems to be getting away from individual perception to get to a wider context in which it is possible to explain why two speakers usually can understand each other, at least partially, while their communicative capacity is based on subjective instances. And he states:

[...] a ground is an idea in the sense in which an idea is caught during the communicative intercourse between two interpreters3.

The interpretant is subjective, but there exists a pragmatic use of words that, taking into account the actual communicative relation between two persons, relies on that part of the interpretants that presumably can be shared. The meaning of a sign is null in itself, it only becomes something in the relation with the pragmatics of communication, it becomes something only in translation. Meaning

[...] is, in its primary acception, the translation of a sign into another system of signs4. [...] the meaning of a sign is the sign it has to be translated into5.

The sign-interpretant-object triad thus does not contemplate the notion of "meaning" until the semiotic process is not actualized. Meaning is something empirical gatherable from the practical actuation of a process of signification, or, better, of many processes of signification: something similar to the result of a statistical sampling of the interpretants related to one sign. The meaning of a word, in Eco's opinion, is representable as a network of features regarding that term6. Following Peirce, unlimited semiosis is apparently a strict consequence of the semiotic theory, but it eventually takes on the form, in some of its representations, the anguished aspect of the interminability not only of the analysis of meanings, but also of the search for understanding, like in this passage:

The object of representation can be nothing but a representation of which

130 the first representation is the interpretant. But an endless series of representations, each representing the one behind it, may be conceived to have an absolute object as its limit. The meaning of a representation can be nothing but a representation. In fact, it is nothing but the representation itself conceived as stripped of irrelevant clothing. But this clothing never can be completely stripped off; it is only changed for something more diaphanous. So there is an infinite regression here. Finally, the interpretant is nothing but another representation to which the torch of truth is handled along; and as representation, it has its interpretant again. Lo, another infinite series7.

The metaphor of meaning as a naked body, that however is never possible to be seen as naked, in a striptease where the tease aspect is far more important than the strip, leaving the reader frustrated, and distraught. Every interpretation, every perception is just a link in the endless chain of an endless strip tease, however eventually transparent the clothes covering the striper become. Understandably anguished by such infernal perspective, Eco finds a solution, in the form of an energetic interpretant. In Eco's opinion essentially the interpretant produced by an object has a double nature. On one hand there is the emotional interpretant, the one we have always mentioned, the mental sign, the affect that, in the mind of each of us, constitutes the link between an object and a sign. Interpretations, within affective interpretants, have consequences remaining within the framework of interpretation and change of representations, without altering behavior in any way. "Energetic interpretant" is, on the other hand, the one producing a change of habit8. When this apparently endless series of representations of representations leaves the mental context to enter the practical one, causing a different behavior, "our way of acting within the world is either transitorily or permanently changed"9. This new attitude, this pragmatic aspect, is the final interpretant that ends the perpetual strip tease of meaning proposing a concrete result to cling to. Unlimited semiosi has produced a practical result, at least. Translating this discourse toward the practice of communication, of reading, and translation, we can state that the semiotic process has an end when the translator chooses a concrete translatant, a text to substitute for the prototext. But it would be an illusion to pretend that this is the end:

[...] the repeated action responding to a given sign becomes in its turn a new sign, the representamen of a law interpreting the former sign and giving rise to new processes of interpretation10.

In other words, the translating text sets an end to the otherwise unlimited semiosis of the prototext, but sets in motion a new chain of unlimited semiosis

131 based on new signs, new texts, new interpretations. We leave the conclusion to Eco's words:

Semiosis explains itself by itself: this continual circularity is the normal condition of signification and even allows communicational processes to use signs in order to mention things and states of the world11.

Bibliographical references

CALVINO I. If on a Winter's Night a Traveller, translated by William Weaver, London, Vintage, 1998, ISBN 0-7493-9923-6.

ECO U. Lector in fabula. La cooperazione interpretativa nei testi narrativi, Milano, Bompiani, 1981, ISBN 88-452-1221-1. First edition 1979.

ECO U. The Role of the Reader. Explorations in the Semiotics of Texts, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1995, ISBN 0-253-20318-X.

PEIRCE C. S. Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, edited by Charles Hartshorne, Paul Weiss e Arthur W. Burks, 8 vol., Cambridge (Massachusetts), Belknap, 1931-1966.

1 Calvino 1998, p. 239. 2 Peirce, vol. 2, p. 228. 3 Eco 1995, p. 183. 4 Peirce, vol. 4, p. 127. 5 Peirce, vol. 4, p. 132. 6 Eco 1995, p. 187. 7 Peirce, vol. 1, p. 339. 8 Eco 1995, p. 194. 9 Eco 1995, p. 194. 10 Eco 1995, p. 195. 11 Eco 1995, p. 198.

21 - Understanding the text

"In his arms he has a pile of galleys; he sets them down gently, as if the slightest jolt could upset the order of the printed letters"1.

In this second part of our translation course, dedicated to the first stage of the translation process - text perception by the translator - starting from this unit we will give the deserving attention to one of the main modern works on translation: After Babel by George Steiner, whose first chapter is called "Understanding as translation". George Steiner is not a semiotician, nor a psychologist, nor a linguist, even if he perhaps is all that in the same time: he is, for the most part, a literary critic. For this reason, George Steiner's metalanguage - the language he uses to speak about translation - is not the same used by the many scientists and

132 researchers whose thought we have examined, even superficially, in the previous units. In exposing some of his most interesting observations, we will, therefore, try to translate what Steiner says into the language to which the readers of this course are now accustomed, with the dictionary and the terms used up to now. Having quoted some passages by English classics, and indicated some interpretive paths of the words that make up them, Steiner comes across the problem of the close matching of culture and language. Many words found in Shakespeare, for example, exist in contemporary English too, but often their meaning in the culture that produced them is very different.

How do different cultures and historical epochs use language, how do they conventionalize or enact the manifold possible relations between word and object, between stated meaning and literal performance?2

As we can see, speaking of relations between "word and object", Steiner implicitly quotes Quine and, more generally, refers to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis according to which, for the first time, the inversion of the relation between language and culture is postulated: language is not a mere tool for expressing a content elaborated autonomously by culture; on the contrary, different linguistic structures give rise to different intellectual structures and vice versa, to the point that it is not possible to think of interpreting a text neglecting its cultural coordinates. It becomes ever more difficult to neatly distinguish form from content, and semantics - the science that studies the meaning of words and utterances - is in greater and greater difficulty. As in psychoanalysis, where the question posed is "terminable or interminable analysis?", in the search for the meaning of a text we also face an endless series of interpretations. And the more interesting a text is, regardless of its age, the easier to ascertain such interminability of the interpretation, which is exactly what keeps it interesting over time.

Explorations of semantic structure very soon raise the problem of infinite series. Wittgenstein asked where, when, and by what rationally established criterion the process of free yet potentially linked and significant association in psychoanalysis could be said to have a stop. An exercise in 'total reading' is also potentially unending3.

The conclusion that Steiner draws is that any careful reading of a text is an act of manifold interpretation that, in most cases, occurs without a conscious awareness. Like 'false friends' that in a text in a language different from the mother tongue of the reader attract her interpretive trend toward meanings close to similar-sounding words of the mother tongue of the reader - inducing her to read morbid thinking absentmindedly "morbido", and only in a second reading correcting herself and recalling that it is probably something similar to

133 "morboso" - , there are false friends even within the same language. Steiner offers some significant examples: interest and simplicity, having a meaning very different in Shakespeare from the one a contemporary reader would easily attribute them. Steiner holds that, as we have already said, language evolves with time, not only historical time, but also subjective time. Moreover, the metalinguistic assertions about language are destined to modify the very language we are talking about; our subject is therefore very plastic and difficult to catch in a moment of stasis.

The sum of linguistic events is not only increased but qualified by each new event. If they occur in temporal sequence, no two statements are perfectly identical. Though homologous, they interact. When we think about language, the object of our reflection alters in the process (thus specialized or metalanguages may have considerable influence on the vulgate). In short: so far as we experience and 'realize' them in linear progression, time and language are intimately related: they move and the arrow is never in the same place4.

Being so dynamic, a word's status carries along a part of its history. It is substantially the notion of intertextuality that Steiner never names but constantly describes. Each word or locution carries also with it the history of that word or locution, so that a full reading5 evokes not only immediately accessible meanings, but also other vague allusions. We have seen an example in Steiner's own text in the first part of this unit when we quoted the sentence about word and object and the allusion to Quine's' theory. One of the objections often addressed to such theories on the ephemeral, unstable quality of meaning is that this principle would be applicable only to literary texts, without any application for texts constituting most of the existing mass of literature. The example taken from Steiner's essay shows that even a 'dry' informative text can contain implicit intertextual links, in which case the reader - all the more reason the translator-reader - must know what is in store for her. In order to undertake such a complete reading we need many tools, on which Steiner expands in details. We will deal with that subject in the next unit.

Bibliographical references

CALVINO I. If on a Winter's Night a Traveller, translated by William Weaver, London, Vin-tage, 1998, ISBN 0-7493-9923-6.

STEINER G. After Babel. Aspects of Language and Translation. Second edition, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1992. ISBN 0-19-282874-6.

134 1 Calvino 1979, p. 98. 2 Steiner 1992, p. 7. 3 Steiner 1992, p. 8. 4 Steiner 1992, p. 18-19. 5 Steiner 1992, p. 24.

22 - Steiner and understanding as translation

"you realize that you perceived this, too, alert Reader that you are, from the first page"1.

In 1975, year of publication of the first edition of After Babel, George Steiner was among the first to use fruitfully JAkobson's extension of translation notion to intralingual translation. Both the spoken and the written word bear the signs of the time, space, and the social, community, group, or individual culture of the speaker and/or writer. At even a minimally complex level of communication, the most interesting parts of the exchanges concern not utterance in itself, but its relations to what goes unsaid but is understandable through the context in order, through interpretation, to catch the levels of markedness of each single speech act, the idiosyncratic aspects of the single utterance. Steiner emphasizes the importance of knowing and mastering the space and time coordinates to detect in the text, by process of elimination, the specific features in contrast to other space-time points and, as regards speech acts with identical space-time coordinates, the idiosyncratic features of that text. The text, on the other hand, is not complete as long as it remains unread. Its life consists in the "original repetitions" of reading and appropriation. "Repetitions" because they are comparable to new executions of the same score, actualizations of the same text while reading, interpretations of the same written conditions. "Original" because, as we saw dealing with semiosis, no two readings are exactly alike, even if simultaneous, done in the same place, within the same culture, or in succession by the same person.

Where the most thorough possible interpretation occurs, where our sensibility appropriates its object while, in this appropriation, guarding, quickening that object's autonomous life, the process is one of 'original repetition'. We re-enact, in the bounds of our own secondary but monetarily heightened, educated consciousness, the creation2.

The process is performed from within a condition of submission, of partial passivity or, better, of incomplete activity. The read and interpreted text, its identity as a text, as an entity superior to the sum of its individual parts, predominates our interpretive freedom, prevents us from abusing it. This

135 allows, in Steiner's opinion, to speak of this relationship using the metaphor of love. A good interpreter must be able to give up a part of her authorship in order to give the author her due, and must be able to keep a sense of identity despite her otherness, of a conjunction which is, in part, self obliteration, in part, exaltation of oneself in fusion with the other.

There is a strain of femininity in the great interpreter, a submission, made active by intensity of response, to the creative presence. Like the poet, the master executant or critic can say Je est un autre. [...] two principal movements of spirit conjoin: the achievement of 'inscape' (Einfühlung) is both a linguistic and emotive act. IN their use of 'speculative instruments', critic, editor, actor, and reader are on common ground3.

Steiner's use of the words "linguistic and emotive act" however seems to be in contradiction or, at least, to play down his interesting argument on the perception of the unsaid in a text. The unsaid, or unwritten, is by definition non linguistic; therefore, we think it would be better to speak about "semiotic act" in a broader sense. From George Steiner we get a confirmation of our structural approach in this course. We devoted this part of the course to reading as a translation stage, and Steiner speaks of reading as translation too. Interpretation, as we know, gives life to language beyond the time and place of the writing of the text. In a sense, when we read a written text - and, being written, it is redundant to say it is a text from the past, even if, thinking well, even texts heard belong to the past, as is self-evident from the tense of the verb, "heard" - we are "translators of language out of time"4 , being readers, editors, actors or translators. The fact that an interlingual translator uses dictionaries, glossaries, terminological repertoires, historical grammars, diachronic glossaries, argot or dialect dictionaries, textual corpora and other such instruments in order to first understand, then try to reproduce what is written in the prototext, is considered obvious. Much less obvious is that the same instruments are useful for the translation/reading of a text in the same language. Or, better, in the same natural language, since we have said that there is not a "same language" even within the same speaker. While in interlingual translation the bigger risks are represented by the so called "faux amis", words pretending to be other words, in intralingual translation we have to beware of apparent standardization, simplicity, easy understandability.

The more seemingly standardized the language [...] the more covert are indices of semantic dating5.

136 This observation is very interesting, even if it may need some explanation. Steiner takes for granted that individuating a marked element within a text is easy, when compared to finding a non marked element in a text, element that, however, over the course of time has experienced many alterations in meaning. It is a sort of intralinguistic faux amis, as happens when, for example, we read Shakespeare. Diachronic intralingual translation is a process we often accomplish without realizing it , so we don't realize the importance it has. Since remembering everything leads to madness, our mind selects memories. The story of an individual, as well as history in general, is a semantic organization of memory, and it varies depending on the kind of stylization and the kind of culture. However, art and literature depend also on "a never-ending, though very often unconscious, act of internal translation" , something not very different from the notion of "semiosphere" as we saw in Lotman. On a smaller, more everyday scale one could say the same of communications between people. Every speaker derives material from two sources: the standard way of speaking corresponding to her literacy level and her personal way of organizing words, her personal vocabulary.

The latter is inextricably a part of his subconscious, of his memories so far as they may be verbalized, and of the singular, irreducibly specific ensemble of his somatic and psychological identity. [Private language does exist, and in fact] aspects of every language-act are unique and individual. They form what linguists call an 'idiolect'8.

That's the reason why the first trace of each communication act is the peculiarity of knowledge and of the way to organize it, semiotic world or microsemiosphere of the individual. The notion of standard language, therefore, is just a fiction of statistics, it does not coincide with real individuals. One can make sociological studies on speakers, but it is still a set of cells of the semiosphere, of "aggregate of speechatoms, of finally irreducible personal meanings". Intimacy only - of love but also of hatred or any other affect - can be useful to understand the other's idiolect, to become the other's translator; therefore, the process being between two languages or within one, communication is always translation. Babel's malediction, sent by God to prevent men from understanding each other, is not the triggering cause of misunderstanding, but only the icing on the cake, an accentuation of the situation that man already had.

The affair at Babel confirmed and externalized the never-ending task of the translator-it did not initiate it9.

Bibliographical references

137 CALVINO I. If on a Winter's Night a Traveller, translated by William Weaver, London, Vin-tage, 1998, ISBN 0-7493-9923-6.

STEINER G. After Babel. Aspects of Language and Translation. Second edition, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1992. ISBN 0-19-282874-6.

1 Calvino 1998, p. 37. 2 Steiner 1992, p. 27. 3 Steiner 1992, p. 27. 4 Steiner 1992, p. 29. 5 Steiner 1992, p. 29. 6 Steiner 1992, p. 30. 7 Steiner 1992, p. 31. 8 Steiner 1992, p. 47. 9 Steiner 1992, p. 49.

23 - The reference slavery

"All these signs converge to inform us that this is a little provincial station [...]"1.

Another essay by George Steiner that is fundamental regarding reading as the first interpretive act leading to interlingual translation is Real Presences. The real presences in the title are the objects to which - it is often argued - words refer. Contrary to that common argument, Steiner believes that the reference is a real slavery. One of the first points made by Steiner concerns the definition of "interpretation", he explained it this way: to interpret means to decipher and communicate meanings, to translate between languages, cultures and performative conventions, it means to perform, to actualize material so as to give it an understandable life. Any reading of the text (past) makes it a (present) presence, i.e. it is an actualization of the text. Reading, in a way, means fixing an execution, an interpretation of the text in space and time. It is not essential to specify if a given reading is done for oneself or for a public audience. As we said - in other words - regarding semiosphere, writing is a consequence of a reflection from/on previous writings, any text is a reflection from/on previous texts

where 'reflection' signifies both a 'mirroring', however drastic the perceptual dislocation, and a 're-thinking'. It is through this internalized 're-production' of and amendment to previous representations that an artist will articulate what might appear to have been even the most spontaneous, the most realistic of his settings2.

While reading, we give the text a structure, we create divisions, classifications. While writing, on the other hand, we inescapably re-execute

138 already written texts that we interpret in a different way, in doing so we thus criticize the text that we re-write. In saying so, we take a position within the possible ideologies of the text. There are theories of interpretation that, as their starting point, have a pre-established purpose. Other theories, conversely, take their cue from a method, but they don't establish a priori the purpose they could reach. Steiner uses the cabala, a Hebrew Medieval theory, as an example for the interpretation of the universe and the Bible. The interpretive method of cabalists is very interesting, because it consists in the rereading of biblical texts in order to extract from them a different meaning each time, each one more precise. The fact that re-reading a text brings one to understand it better implies a view of the text on many levels, only one of which, the simplest, most superficial being the only one immediately accessible. But it is a doctrine preconceived to prove a given: the existence of God, the sacredness of the Bible, the magic of characters and words composing it. When, instead, Hermeneutic method is not ideologically bridled, interpretation can run free. Steiner proposes the example of the Roman Church and the heresies. The heretic was (is) anyone considered giving an interpretation of the Scriptures that did (does) not abide by Church rules.

It follows that heresy can be defined as 'un-ending re-reading' and revaluation. [...] reinterpretations and revisions, [...] new translations, even where they profess, strategically, a return to the authentic source, even where they allege that the understanding of the primary text will be made plainer and more relevant to the needs of an unstable world, generate an open-ended, disseminative hermeneutic3.

That's the reason why Luther was considered as a heretic. Any free reader is heretic. Any reader not agreeing to prove at all costs the values of an ideology, the presence of the name of God hidden in the folds of the characters of the Torah. An example of interpretive theory with a ideological slant, similar to the cabala's, is in Steiner's opinion Freudian psychoanalysis, The psychoanalytic principle of free associations is very much like the principle of individual text interpretation: the patient recounting a dream, or expressing a feeling, or recalling a memory, is asked to say what occurs to him in relation to that. In these moments, the patient shows the psychoanalyst the way to get to the uncon-scious causes of a symptom. But, Steiner argues in Wittgenstein's wake4, any moment in which the analyst interrupts the patient because she wants to point out an interpretation, or wants to ask the patient a comment, or wants to tell him that the session is over because fifty minutes have passed or because the summer break is about to begin is an arbitrary moment. Maybe the moment immediately following the interruption would have been the conclusive moment for

139 uncovering a fundamental aspect of the patient's unconscious workings? We think that such harsh criticism of psychoanalytic methods doesn't allow for the fundamental difference when comparing it with cabala ideology: even though psychoanalysis may be arbitrary in its choice of the moment of the interpretive recapitulation, it doesn't have an ideological thesis to uphold. It may have the limitation of not being a truly scientific method, because it encompasses some arbitrary decisions. On the other hand, the end of psychoanalysis can be considered reached - in the patient's arbitrary opinion - when he functions within his environment in a satisfactory way. Yes, it is an arbitrary decision, but who else should express the patient's opinion? The same goes for reading, as long as reading remains a private action within the framework of a single reader. As to the search for the meaning, Steiner holds that, similarly to what has just been said, interpretive methods can be helpful as long as they don't preestablish meanings to be uncovered. A word, a sentence always has multiple interpretations. Even the most elementary utterance has a context that allows to enlarge its meaning, in ever enlarging concentric circles.

These comprise the individual, subconsciously quickened language habits and associative field-mappings of the particular speaker or writer. They incorporate, in densities inaccessible to systematic inventory, the history of the given and of neighbouring tongues. Social, regional, temporal, professional specificities are of the utmost relevance5.

Possible meanings, in language in general, but particularly in literature, are the

exponential product of all possible sense or non-sense worlds as these are construed, imaged, tested, indwelt through the interaction of two liberties: that of the text, in movement across time, and that of the receiver6.

Consequently, the only theories that might be helpful in Steiner's opinion in reading and understanding are methodological descriptive theories, confining themselves to providing the tools for literary criticism, like semiotic theories. Validity of any temporary conclusions one may arrive at can then be controlled only one way: placing these interpretations in the common space and waiting to see what success they have with other readers.

Bibliographical references

CALVINO I. If on a Winter's Night a Traveller, translated by William Weaver, London, Vin-tage, 1998, ISBN 0-7493-9923-6.

STEINER G. After Babel. Aspects of Language and Translation. Second

140 edition, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1992. ISBN 0-19-282874-6.

STEINER G. Real Presences. Is there anything in what we say?. London, Faber & Faber, 1989. ISBN 0-571-16356-4.

1 Calvino 1998, p. 11. 2 Steiner 1989, p. 17. 3 Steiner 1989, p. 44-45. 4 Wittgenstein in his posthumously published conversations says: "This procedure of free association and so on is queer, because Freud never shows us how we know where to stop". 5 Steiner 1989, p. 82. 6 Steiner 1989, p. 83.

24 - Free interpretation

"You surely would want to know more about what she's like, but instead only a few elements surface on the written page [...]"1.

We have seen how the interpreter's focus is moved after Steiner's affirmations. The sense of a text is a consequence of the interaction of the freedom of the text evolving in time and the freedom of the reader. These two liberties take much importance away from the free will of he interpretive dogma, be it an ideological authority trying to force people to submit to definite interpretive rules - as in the case of religions - or an interpretation theory presupposing that the text has a 'genetic' meaning and that the reader can only be successful or unsuccessful in disclosing it. As to the freedom of a text to signify synchronically in a different way and to undergo a diachronic interpretive evolution, this means to take away importance to the intrinsic meaning of the single words. All theories of interpretation founded on principles like that of the intrinsic meaning of a word, of its synonyms and equivalents or alleged such, tend to trace between words and their meanings mathematical relations, equalities, equivalences, subtractions, sums, subtractions and multiplications. Such view withdraws a word, a sentence the freedom to mean something else thanks to its collocation in a different cultural context, even though unforeseen by the author. The Kabala theory presupposes a divine plan in the characters and the language of the Bible, within the framework of interpretation leading to support the view of Bible as text composed by God. But, maybe, even imagining to share the mystical thesis of the Bible as a divine creation, it could be considered as much or even more supernatural the fact that, after a few millenniums since its redaction, Bible still evokes in the reader interest and produces ever new interpretations of the sentences it contains, interpretations

141 that, in most cases, are not base on the reading in Hebrew or Aramaic, but on the reading of the translated text that, according to the Kabala, should have lost any interpretive interest because most of its magic lies in the characters it is composed of and in their combinations. As far as the reader's freedom is concerned, it is another element decentralizing the control over meaning from the author to the rest of the world, to other chronotopes. Theories and practices of interpretation/translation of texts are gradually moving from the interest for lexicon, dictionary, equivalents, to the interest for the unsaid in cultures, for the networks of meaning, for polysemy, for non-definability of the final meaning. "There is no science of sense and no theory of meaning and effect, if these high designations are to be taken seriously"2. Consequently, people teaching the art of interpreting, of translating less and less coincide with the figure of the sorcerer with meanings in his pocket, of the Master knowing the correct entry in the dictionary and the wrong one you shouldn't trust, and is more and more like a geographer of the sense illustrating the different explorable lands and inciting people not to miss any of them, not to think of ever be gone as far as to have understood everything. Steiner locates in the period 1870-19403 the cultural revolution bringing the emancipation form reference, i.e. to the liberty to mean words not as mere 'equivalents' of objects in the extra-linguistic world. In the after-Word stage other elements have an importance over other elements:

Crucial configurations and operative modes in our moral, philosophic, psychological condition, in our aesthetics, in the formative interactions between consciousness and the pre-conscious, in the relations between the economics of need and desire on the one hand and those of social constraint on the other4.

It is a stage that Steiner defines elegantly "epilogue" because etymologically it means "again the word, over the word". But who gives us the right to break the covenant until now considered valid about the two-way correspondence between word and object? First and foremost the desire to give up lying. To think that the word "rose" can be put in place of the flower is a lie, because substance has inaccessible truths and not referable to one word; to think that means to permeate language with falsity or, as Mallarmé preferred to say, of impurity5. Mallarmé goes further, provocatingly stating that the only legitimation and force of the word rose lies in the fact that it denotes "l'absence de toute rose". We are at the central point of Steiner's essay, because here we have to distinguish between "real presences" and "true absences": the passage from the phase of logos to the phase of epílogos seems to be indicating that: it was once necessary to think that each word is matched by an object in the "true"

142 world, now it is necessary to think that each word is matched only by other words that

any speech-act in reference to experience is always a 'saying in other words', [...] within the language system alone we possess liberties of construction and of deconstruction [...] in comparison, external reality, whatever that might or might not be, is little more than brute intractability and deprivation6.

There is, therefore, a network of words with disorderly and unstable relations among themselves, never of equality, never of dependence, of minority of majority. Words can be defined in approximate, incomplete, subjective way with other words, and the whole set of words tries to have some relation with the word of objects, not as much of representation, as of survival. In order to survive in the world of things, we use words. In some case we succeed in setting a convention such as to, on the basis of words, we succeed in getting to an agreement with someone as to some objects in the world. It was utilitarianism to stain the world of words reducing them to mere instruments of denotation. The emancipation of language from material world can, only, give back to words their energies of signification, that are metaphysical, i.e. go beyond physical world. Only in this way it is possible to "recuperate for human discourse the 'aura', the unlimited creativity of metaphor which is inherent in the origins of all speech"7. Psychoanalysis too, in Steiner's opinion, pushes in this direction, Oedipus complex is also a linguistic phenomenon. In psychoanalysis, the prepotent fatherly figure threatens to devour with its physical and moral power, the male son identity, to the point that the healthy development of the son should pass through a phase of (symbolic) suppression of the father, or negation of the father, for the son to succeed in believing that in the world there is room enough for himself and his creativity. In linguistic terms, the prepotent (fatherly) figure of speech threatens to devour our expressive immediacy (idiolect) produced by feelings, thought and needs. Our libido encourages us to anarchic, egotist and creative utterances, dreams and madness and their translations into art and poetry are our way of tending toward expressing our unconscious toward the outside, that outside made of stereotypes to which our revolution of 'epilogue' rebels to. Psychoanalysis reaches the causes of ambiguity of our expression explains why utterances are polysemic, because the can (must) be read on more than one level: psychoanalytic interpretation, unlike definition, translates its object into other temporary translations.

Bibliographical references

143 CALVINO I. If on a Winter's Night a Traveller, translated by William Weaver, London, Vintage, 1998, ISBN 0-7493-9923-6.

STEINER G. Real Presences. Is there anything in what we say?. London, Faber & Faber, 1989. ISBN 0-571-16356-4. 1 Calvino 1998, p. 20. 2 Steiner 1989, p. 83. 3 Steiner 1989, p. 93. 4 Steiner 1989, p. 93. 5 Steiner 1989, p. 95-96. 6 Steiner 1989, p. 97. 7 Steiner 1989, p. 98.

25 - Meaning and sense

And then, listening to someone who is translating from another language involves a fluctuation, a hesitation over the words, a margin of indecision, something vague, tentative"1.

Now that we have seen what some researchers think of reading and text perception in general, let us examine more specifically the repercussions on the individuation of the sense of a text from the translation studies point of view regarding its transposition and recoding. Aleksandr Davìdovich Shvejcer analyzed this problem by first distinguishing meaning (znachenie) from sense (smysl). Meanings as such refer to the concrete structure of the language. Meanings, in other words, derive from purely linguistic signs and are to be searched for only in the framework of the code they are part of. Since a culture's world view is expressed by its natural language also in the form of the quantity of words existing in that language and allocation of expressed sememes among the words that can express them, it doesn't make sense to look for a word meaning in a word in another language or another culture. Every word has, in this view, only a relatively exact meaning exclusively within the linguistic code of its own language. Taking this point to heart, it would be presumptuous to plan or to write a bilingual dictionary (how is it possible to describe the "exact" meaning, albeit the linguistic meaning, of a word with the words of another linguistic code?), while it would be a little less risky to make monolingual dictionaries in which, within the same code, one tries to describe the meaning of a word with other words.

From this point of view, to interpret a text means to identify the concrete designations (oboznachenija) through given meanings in the corresponding language, while translating means to find, for concrete designations already identified in the prototext, meanings in the metatext language suitable for expressing these very meanings2.

144 Shvejcer implicitly holds that, however hard it might be to find meanings of words by using words of other codes, it is possible in most cases to understand what a word means in the specific context. Maybe it is a rather optimistic vision, but we continue following his argument for the time being.

As we know, by altering the cultural context, we alter the semiotic network of reference as well, and therefore we alter - or at least we may be altering - the sense of what we say. We can therefore define the distinction between sense and designation in this way: sense is the value acquired by a designation within a specific culture. The more the two cultures - of the prototext and of the metatext - are distant from one another, the farther apart the chronotopes are that form them are, the more frequent instances of incongruity between designation and sense are, and the wider the gap between designation of linguistic meaning and cultural meaning (sense). Designation is a category of language, while sense is a category of speech, of enunciation, of text. Vygotsky said that "The meaning of a word is a power that realizes itself in live speech in the form of sense"3. Shvejcer, in his wake, says that

['] between meaning and sense there is no insurmountable barrier. Sense is the meaning of a linguistic unit actualized in a speech act4.

In interlingual translation, we nearly always need to translate not the meaning but the sense, it is therefore extremely important to bear in mind this distinction. But is it always possible to distinguish sense and meaning and, above all, remain mindful that sense is such a high entity as to remain expressible independent of its linguistic and cultural context? On that point L'vovskaja is optimistic, because she feels that one should answer "yes". For the Russian researcher linguistic meaning maintains its worth within its own code as a systemic value, while sense can survive to a different context but is expressed differently in different languages:

['] meaning is a linguistic, i.e. systemic, category, therefore meanings of single linguistic units in the different languages can be incongruent by many parameters (contents descriptions, volume and place in the system) [while sense] is a category of communication, it doesn't depend on the differences between the languages and can be expressed through different linguistic means in different languages5.

Let us try to exemplify such a difference with a text. Shvejcer proposes the example of killing, murder and manslaughter. While killing is generic and means "slaughter" without further specification, in law terms murder means "voluntary homicide" and manslaughter "unwilling homicide". The distinctive feature between murder and manslaughter is willfulness/unwillfulness of the act, but this doesn't mean that in any co-text - speech act context - is

145 necessary to specify "voluntary homicide" or "unintentional homicide". For example, in the sentence «Am I supposed to have committed a murder?», the situation described in the text up to this point neutralizes the opposition willfulness/unwillfulness, therefore a translation like: «Am I supposed to have committed a deliberate killing?» would sound very strange. There are, however, instances in which the opposition willfulness/unwillfulness is operational, and therefore the understanding of the text is possible only by taking the opposition into account. In the sentence "The Pentagon lawyers are leaning over backwards to prove that the Songmy massacre was killing, not murder», such distinction is fundamental, therefore the translator must acknowledge that too6. There are cases in which the difference between meaning and sense is rather marked, but the context (and the similarity of the two cultures as to the possibility that such contextual situations occurs) can be helpful to the translator. In the matter-of-fact situation in which someone receives a telephone call bound to get to another receiver, in the different language there are the expressions

Vy ne tuda popali You must have the wrong number Sie haben falsch gewählt Lei ha sbagliato numero

In modern cultures in which the use of the telephone is widespread, it is easy for a reader to understand what situation is similar to the one described and reinterpret it using words most probably used in the metaculture in the situation described in the protoculture. Therefore, a translation of the typical Russian response such as this one:

You have not hit there. would sound very strange. From the point of view of communication efficiency it is much better to insert the sentence "You must have the wrong number» in the text without thinking of the problems of linguistic matching of the single words. On the other hand, this argument induces us to consider meaning above and beyond the speech acts, as well as their markedness. The Russian sentence Vy ne tuda popali is not marked, i.e. it is what anyone could most probably say in a situation such as the one described. But let us imagine that the answer is on the other side marked, that, for example, someone on the phone says Who dials this number usually wants to talk to someone else. In this case, an adequate translation must account for such markedness (here

146 it is a signal to the reader to indicate that the speaker has an unusual way of speaking, leaving unsaid the reason of such strangeness) and try to reproduce it with a speech act as much marked, in a similar way if possible. We discover that the assumed uniqueness of sense is elusive, even if we rise from the linguistic code level to the semiotic codes level. What happens, as to meaning, between two linguistic codes - The impossibility of finding a "matching" word for one linguistic code in another happens - and occurs for sense as well. In two semiotic codes, there can be a huge difference in sense between two perfectly identical actions. For example, to put one's hands in one's pockets, in some cultures, for an adult male has the connotation of a rude, trivial gesture, while in other cultures it is accepted as normal social behavior. This difference occurs without considering all the contemporary cultures where they have neither trousers nor pockets, nor cultures of past times. No need to be amazed if even the simple sentence «You must have the wrong number» in some culture is perceived as a hostile or rude communication. Someone could be offended because the dialed number is called "wrong", when actually it is an ethically correct number that has the quality of not being useful to connect with another specific telephone.

Bibliographical references

CALVINO I. If on a Winter's Night a Traveller, London, Random House, 1979, ISBN 0-749-39923-6.

L'VOVSKAJA Z. D. Teoreticheskie problemy perevoda, Moskvà, Nauka, 1985.

SCVEJCER A. D. Teorija perevoda: status, problemy, aspekty, Moskvà, Nauka, 1988. ISBN 5-02-010882-0.

VYGOTSKIJ L. S. Izbrannye psihologicheskie issledovanija, Moskvà, 1956.

1 Calvino 1979, p. 67. 2 Shvejcer 1988, p. 113. 3 Vygorskij 1956, p. 370. 4 Shvejcer 1988, p. 114. 5 L'vovskaja 1985, p. 81-82. 6 Shvejcer 1988, p. 116-117.

26 - The analysis of the text to be translated - first part

"There are days when everything I see seems to me charged with meaning: messages it would be difficult for me to communicate to others, define, translate into words [...]"1.

147 Christiane Nord has published a interesting study on the main subject of this part of the course: we will draw on this essay to trace a methodology applicable by translators to the analysis of the text to be translated2. The first distinction concerns textual and extratextual elements. The latter are factors external to the linguistic text and concern the context of the communication act. They can be systematized into who transmits, to whom, with what intention, by which medium, where, when, and why. The sender must be distinguished from the producer, above all in some types of non literary texts. In a company, for example, diffusion of messages can be delegated to a person having the role of communication manager. In this case, the company is the sender, but the person in the producer of the text. The translator, in Nord's opinion, has a role comparable to that of the producer of the text. As regards the sender, the most important to the translator is the information that can shed light on the sender's intentions, no matter if they are personal data or referring to the role or status of the sender in her culture, on the model reader addressed in the original culture, or protoculture, and on the prototext chronotope, as well as any information that can help foresee the linguistic features of the text (idiolect, dialect, sociolect, implicit culture etc.). Some information on the sender is obtainable from the document itself, from the metatextual apparatus it contains or from the fact that the author is known for publishing other texts or having a role in public events. In this phase of search for information on the sender, the translator must ask the question of cultural specificity of such information. If the sender is the Philips, if the author is Salman Rushdie, they probably are well know names even in the receiving culture, or metaculture. When on the other hand it is a person or an agency known only in a narrow context in the protoculture, in the transposition it is necessary to take it into account: this involves that some information that the writer of the protoculture tales for granted and leaves as implicit are not so for the translated text readers. When the sender is contemporary to the translator, it is also possible to directly contact the author to get the information useful to situate the text into the protocultural context to project it then onto the metacultural context. Some indirect clues can also be obtained by data strictly related to the text: if a specialized publisher publishes it in a scientific review, the author is probably an expert addressing colleagues. If it is published in a generic newspaper or in any collection of a generic publisher, then it is more probable for the text to address a larger audience. Some concrete elements present in the text provide information on the time and kind of culture in which the text was generated. A mobile phone narrows the historical framing to the past ten years; a religious ritual of circumcision narrows the context to the Hebrew and Islamic cultures. Fundamental channels for obtaining such information available only since

148 the publication of Christiane Nord's book are the search engines on the internet. Sometimes the insertion of a name or some key words in such internet software is enough to get thousands of pages of information that can be further investigated by narrowing or widening or in any way editing the search criteria. One must know that the level of reliability of internet sources is not always controllable. The easy way in which anyone can publish her own website also enormously multiplies the chances of spreading inexact information. If for ex-ample a person in his website inadvertently indicates a birth and death date of an author based on incorrect information, the datum can be spread very easily producing a sort of epidemic. For that reason the internet sources - as all sources, by the way - must be accepted cum grano salis, with a pinch of discernment - the proverbial grain of salt. When one investigates the author's intentions for publishing a text, in Nord's opinion it is necessary to distinguish between intention, function and effect. The difference between intention and effect is easily understandable: an author can have a communication goal different from its actual effect. Such a discrepancy can be traced to incorrect projections by the author, based on a model reader different from the concrete readers actually receiving the text, or to the fact that a receiver can decide to manipulate the text and receive it in her way, without reckoning the supposed author's intentions. The function of a text does not always coincide with the intention, or intended function, of the author. Such a discrepancy is especially relevant when chronotopic distance between metatext and prototext is great. As to the differences between intention and function, the former has to do mostly with the author, while the latter mostly with the reader. Nord holds that of these three factors intention is most important for translation-oriented analysis because a translation should integrally preserve the sender's intention, while function and effect can be subject to change once the text is projected on the metaculture. In this view, intention determines "the structuring of the text with regard to content ['] and form [...]"3. You will notice analogies between this view, in which the intention or skopós of the sender is prevailing, and the view based on the analysis of the dominants. We could say that, in Nord's theory of skopós, the salient aspect is that the dominant is always the author's intention. The potential intentions mentioned by Nord are five. The first, called "zero- intention", concerns those who write to relieve their feelings or put their ideas in order and is considered inexistent as far as translation are concerned (to produce a text destined to someone else one is supposed to go beyond such autistic phase of communication.) The second one is purely informative or referential or descriptive (without personal considerations, i.e. an oxymoron: a subjective and objective intentions). Third is the expressive inten-tion, in which the sender expresses her opinion on the subject. The fourth one, operative or argumentative, has the purpose to get people to think or act in the way proposed by the author and, at last, the phatic intention has the aim

149 of maintaining the contact with the receiver. To determine which of these intentions are accomplished, actualized in the analyzed text, one should investigate the method of distribution of the text and if that can suggest a more or less intense involvement of the author. If the text expresses a particularly personal opinion, as in the case of political comments or editorials4, the type of text usually is not suggestive of the author's intentions, so the information on the subjectivity of the expressed opinions must be searched above all in the position of the text. For example, in a newspaper, the area set aside for comments and editorials is usually easy to locate; the texts it contains can therefore be identified as individual's opinions or commentaries even before reading them.

Bibliographical references

CALVINO I. If on a Winter's Night a Traveller, London, Random House, 1998, ISBN 0-749-39923-6.

NORD C. Text Analysis in Translation. Theory, Methodology, and Didactic Application of a Model for Translation-Oriented Text Analysis, translated from the German by C. Nord e P. Sparrow, Amsterdam, Rodopi, 1991, ISBN 90- 5183-311-3. 1 Calvino 1979, p. 55. 2 Nord 1989, p. 35-140. 3 Nord 1989, p. 48. 4 Nord 1989, p. 50.

27 - The analysis of the text to be translated - second part

"They are announcements or presages that concern me and the world at once [...]"1.

Another essential set of information to be obtained from the prototext concerns the recipient, the model reader of the metatext. As we peruse this argument we continue following the precious work of Christiane Nord on the analysis of the prototext Assuming that it is possible to deal with translation in a purely abstract and theoretical way, staking out limits and setting universal rules, this is possible only on condition that one excludes from consideration the role of the recipient. As soon as the existence of the recipient is considered, as one recognizes that there may exist many different kinds of recipients, and that the communication act is conceived with a strong attention for the appropriate strategies for communicating with that kind of model reader, one reaches the

150 heart of communication as a pragmatic, not abstract, fact. The useful elements of the recipient to know are her communication role, her expectations, her cultural background - and the aspects of reality that are taken for granted, that are considered as implicit - her social location and her position as regards the subject. The kind of text and the kind of recipient can be related, but not necessarily. For example, a popularscience text may address many kinds of recipients: in essence, all kinds of readers except those scientists working in that same field, per whom the text would be purely redundant. Among potential readers we, therefore, would find scientists of every other field, adults not working with science, men and women of many age levels, people with education levels spanning from the minimum indispensable literacy for reading to high education levels. In dealing with interlingual translation, a first potential conflict concerns the model reader of the prototext and that of the metatext. Usually, when one thinks of a translation in simple rather than sophisticated terms, one thinks of the metatext reader simply as a man able to read in another language; strategies are therefore activated in order to allow the reading of that text by readers of more languages. But the metatext reader often belongs to another cultural community too, consequently a purely linguistic transposition might not always be understandable. Let us suppose, for example, that a sentence in British English is translated containing an allusion to the tabloid newspapers. To the British model reader, as to the model reader of any culture, the denotative meaning of the word "tabloid" is a reduced format of the newspaper, as big as one half of a traditional newspaper. The additional connotative meaning tabloid has to a British reader is that of "sensationalist newspaper, with many images, little text, addressed to a model reader of a low education level". To an Italian, for example, the tabloid format does not have such a connotation. Many famous Italian newspapers, like la Repubblica, are in that format but they do not conform to the British connotation of the word. A second distinction concerning the recipient proposed by Nord is implicitness/explicitness of the recipients. With the prototext in mind, Nord makes the example of an interview with a politician: his answers are apparently only addressed to the interviewer while they are actually addressed to potential voters that read the interview in the newspaper or watch it on TV. For the translator a similar situation can exist. Apparently, the translator addresses the model reader of the metatext (explicit recipient) but since a translation is not only a means to spread a text in a culture, but also, for the translator, a means to make known her professional capabilities to other translators, prospective clients, critics, reviewers, publishers, some of her choices can be dictated by such a situation of feeling observed. Choices appropriate for the implicit reader are not always appropriate for the explicit reader, and vice versa. An exaggerated consciousness - supposed or proven -

151 of the opposition of such needs can, in a worstcase scenario, inhibit translation capabilities. The cultural coordinates of the metatext's model reader that the translator must consider are age, sex, education level, social background, geographic origin, social status, and role in relation to the sender2. They are the same as those of the author preparing an (intersemiotic) translation of a cultural intent into a text. Let us suppose, for example, that a communications expert is asked to write a text on drugs addressed to teenagers. The intent of the communication commissioned from him is to inform teenagers on drugs and discourage their use. The text created from such an intention states that all drugs are equally dangerous, have only negative effects, and don't give any pleasant sensations. In this case, the translation is poorly done. The teenager who has tried marijuana without apparent negative consequences, reading that all drugs are equally dangerous, may be induced to try heroine since, according to the text, it cannot be more dangerous than marijuana. Someone who had good feelings after the use of hard drugs, moreover, could think that the text contains too much false information and does not believe in its general content. An exact knowledge of the cultural background of a reader has a strong influence on the author. Efficiency in communication is based mainly on the placement in a good balance between redundancy and incompleteness. The exaggerated insistence on aspects already known to the reader can only discourage and make heavy reading while, on the other hand, neglecting to explain unfamiliar elements makes understanding difficult. In order to achieve such a balance it is necessary to have exact information on the reader's cultural background. A university course, for example, addresses a number of students with a not always homogeneous cultural background. In order to be able to understand what the model target of the course is like, it is necessary to know the kind and level of excellence of the average student's high school education. Such information must be often updated: the contemporary education given by a high school does not necessarily coincide with the one provided by that school twenty or forty years ago. A reader (or a course's student) distinguishing herself neatly from the group's standards because her preparation in some respects is much more/less deep than the colleagues' has greater probability of not finding the kind of communication addressed to her appropriate. On the other hand the communicator, the translator, must try to satisfy the needs of the greatest possible number of recipients (model reader), necessarily sacrificing the needs of those individuals far-ther from the group standard. Information about the model reader of the prototext can be obtained from the origins of the text itself (dedications, notes, title3, subtitles, flaps for books, presentations, medium, time, place etc.).

152 As regards the text functions, it is possible to distinguish intended functions and functions produced unwillingly. In a text for children, for example, a patronizing tone can be appreciated by children of a given age bracket but can be very annoying for bigger kids who may feel mocked or degraded. Or, like Nord states, the translation of a restaurant menu, whose intended function is to inform, can end up having a comic function too if the translation contains a number of words not usually used in that collocation. Of course, unwilling functions of a text are not necessarily to be considered counter-productive.

Bibliographical references

CALVINO I. If on a Winter's Night a Traveller, London, Random House, 1998, ISBN 0-749-39923-6.

1 Calvino 1998, p. 55. 2 Nord 1991, p. 53. 3 Nord 1991, p. 55.

28 - The analysis of the text to be translated - third part

"Has she just arrived at this moment, or did she hear the beginning?"1

Another fundamental element in the translation-oriented analysis of a text is that concerning what in communications theory is called the "channel" of the message, the means, the medium through which the message is conveyed. What is interesting for us, of course, are not the technical aspects, but the impact the communication medium has on the perception of the message, on the quantity of information conveyed and on the potential of the medium in terms of interactivity. The first fundamental distinction is between written and spoken texts. The balance between redundancy and repetition is achieved, we said, also considering elements that, albeit not present in the message, are present in the implied context, and can therefore be taken as if explicit. In direct oral communication - meaning a communication occurring with the receiver present and not, for example, on the telephone or by radio - the elements to be taken for granted also encompass all the geographic context of the place

153 where communication occurs. The geography of the direct communication context is somehow unsophisticated because it implies - through deictics - the sharing of the knowledge about the context with the interlocutor. Deictics are mostly time and place expressions not indicating the absolute cronotopical coordinates (for example: "September 29, 2001, in Modena") but state them in relative terms ("Yesterday there", "Before someone came here", "This time I made it"). In the former case (absolute coordinates) anyone is able to recognize the time and place that are explicitly expressed in conventional terms. In the latter case (relative coordinates, deictic expressions) anyone who is not conscious of the time and place of the speech and of other data - in the last example it is necessary to know what other time is implied and what the speaker was then able to do - is not able to reconstruct it from the speech act alone. "Deixis", from the old Greek deíknymi, meaning "I show, I indicate", means "indication", and deixis is effectively comparable to the gestures sometimes accompanying speech acts. In some languages there are hand gestures indicating "come here" or "go away", for example. Deictic words are expressions always taken as understood where and/or when communication occurs. If the place where the sender is does not coincide with the place where the receiver is, deixis implies also being aware of the two different places (for example: "I'll be there in a hour"). Readers will remember what we said concerning the own world/alien world dialectics investigated especially by YUrij Lotman. In these terms, deixis is a kind of communication within one's own world taking for granted that the interlocutor belongs to that same world and ignoring the existence of alien worlds. In this sense it is ingenuous communication or, if we wish, local, provincial communication. Another feature of "live" communication, other than deixis, are its suprasegmental traits. By this very technical and nearly incomprehensible term we mean communication features that fall outside of transcribable words, among which we find tone, intonation, accent, inflexion, vocal timbre, intensity (all often fundamental features for understanding the poetics of a work that we are deprived of when we watch dubbed films) and duration, i.e. pauses as well. Just think, for example, about the difference in the exclamation "That's good!" if placed in the context of the scene of a freshly shot film, as pronounced by the director, or in the context of a fight, as a response to an interlocutor's comment considered absurd. The simple out-of-context transcription does not transmit the difference. Let us not think, however, that the mere distinction between written and oral is enough to get us out of trouble. There are oral texts born to be written, like dictation texts2 and, more interesting for translators, oral texts born to be written, or born written as in the case of reported speech within literary works.

154 In these latest instances, a further distinction concerns the implicitness/explicitness of the presence of oral expression within written discourse. In the cases of greater explicitness, the oral text can be demarcated by quotation marks or other graphic devices isolating it by the written, narrating text around it. Elsewhere the oral register can enter the narration without solution of continuity; the presence of oral communication is perceivable only though style analysis and often because of the presence of deictical words. The information the translator must, in Nord's opinion, obtain about the medium of the text to be translated concern above all the type of medium: brochure, handbook, leaflet, encyclopedia, book, periodical. Within these generic distinctions, it is important to make subtler ones, for example between a newspaper and a monthly, between specialized and popular periodical etc. The dimensions in terms of readership of the medium are also fundamental. Given the same type of medium, having more or less readers has an influence on the heterogeneity of the kinds of readers it addresses. Of course, these data are not to be considered in absolute terms, but in relation to the total number of potential readers in a given language. For example, a newspaper in English has a much larger potential audience than a newspaper in Estonian, so that a number of copies sold of 500.000, that would be an astonishingly high number for the Estonian edition, for English-reading readers would be dramatically less meaningful. If the total of potential readers is the same, a text reproduced in one million copies, as compared to another one with ten thousand, addresses a more heterogeneous audience, i.e. must be less specialized, more popular, less local, and less specific. Speaking of books, a pocket paperback of a classic work sold also at grocery store news stands can reach many more readers than a numbered edition of the same work with deluxe trims and expensive binding and acid free paper, or than an obscure book by a not widely diffused in the receiving culture author. It is not always possible through a given medium to reconstruct the intended communication, but often the kind of medium chosen is also a very important indicator. It is possible for a serious widely diffused newspaper to publish a comic or scandal piece contrasting with what a reader would expect from the stern tone usually used by the paper, but in this case, just owing to the anomaly of the event, such a piece would result as highly marked. When a medium is categorized, it is indispensable to decide if its features are culture- specific, specific to a given group of cultures, or universal: It is clear that this has a bearing for the translation of its texts into a different culture, where the role of a medium can be completely different. Since, in the practice of translation we often cone across xeroxes, excerpts, internet messages, archive or computer files, and other forms of incomplete transmissions of texts, or, better, of transmission of a complete text without its graphic context - for example cover, apparati, other texts printed near it etc. -

155 it is essential for the translator to try and gather all the omitted components from the source in order to reconstruct the features of the medium the text is taken from.

Bibliographical references

CALVINO I. If on a Winter's Night a Traveller, London, Random House, 1998, ISBN 0-749-39923-6.

NORD C. Text Analysis in Translation. Theory, Methodology, and Didactic Application of a Model for Translation-Oriented Text Analysis, translated from the German by C. Nord and P. Sparrow, Amsterdam, Rodopi, 1991, ISBN 90- 5183-311-3.

1 Calvino 1998, p. 69. 2 Nord 1991, p. 57.

29 - The analysis of the text to be translated - fourth part

"[...] there is a thing that is there, a thing made of writing, a solid, material object, which cannot be changed [...]"1

The space-time coordinates of the speech act are fundamental items for the analysis of the prototext for interlingual translation. Regarding space, the geographic element of the prototext is significant when it says more than just the language used to write it, which, in some cases, is already indicative of the place where the prototext was created. Speaking of the geographic coordinates of the prototext makes sense when it implicitly contains features of the language used in a sub-area of all the territory in which that language is spoken. For languages spoken in more than one nation, like German, English, Spanish, Portuguese, French etc, a text can be connoted as a product of one specific sub-area (for example Brazilian Portuguese, Tunisian French, Austrian German etc.). More specifically, within the same nation considered linguistically homogeneous (one official national language, many variants) both standard language and local variants can be used, or even a word can be used with a particular meaning or with a particular collocation that is characteristic of a given area. We must be conscious that different usage within the same code can be much more evident at close range than from afar2, as happens in a perspective view. To a foreigner who knows the Italian language, the whole of

156 the dialects spoken in Veneto might appear as a homogeneous whole, while to a native of Verona the differences between her dialect and Venetia's are enormous and insurmountable. It is important to know if the social conditions of the place of origin of a text allow to write freely or if a political or moral censorship exists there. In the latter case, as Nord says, authors write between the lines, so one has to make an effort to grasp the implied meaning that eluded the censors in order to reproduce it. When it is not explicitly said that the translator has a wider role than that of interlingual translation, a role leading her take the role of mediator in the most complete sense of the word, the interpretation of the 'ciphered message' is not commissioned from the translator, who must allow the metatext reader to decipher it with means similar to the ones provided to the prototext reader. Another important given concerns the city or the exact place in which a text is set for the correct deciphering of the place deictics. Some presuppositions can be implied by sentences that, when translated into another language, risk leading the reader astray. For example, references to parks, buildings, churches in interlingual translation can be misleading if one does not know what precisely we are talking about. A building called "skyscraper" in one language can be called "tower" in another, a language's "park" can become a "wood" in the other, and the same happens with "dome" and "cathedral". Translating, for example, from any language into French a passage where the Bois de Boulogne is cited, it would be misleading if such place were referred to as "Parc de Boulogne". Variations on the norm such as: "Cattedrale di Milano", "Empire State Tower" etc. would bear a similar effect. Christiane Nord proposes an example referred to deictics: in an article, after indicating place and time, we find the sentence "Now everything is quiet around here again". Nord holds that "In a translation, too, the dimension of place has to be specified either externally (e.g. in an introduction) or internally (e.g. "Now everything is quiet around the town of X again")»3. Implicit in this aspect of Nord's normative approach is a broadening of the translator's function to that of all-purpose communications mediator. The prototext's reader, in the reported example, is considered better able to understand than the metatext's reader: while in the former case, after reading that the article was written in the town X, the reader understands that "here" refers to X, the purpose in the latter case seems to be less to explain to the metatext's reader that "here" stands for "in the city X", but rather to pretend that in the original something was written that actually was not. Taking this view to the extreme of its possible consequences, when translating we should transform all direct speech into indirect speech, and edit the text every time the use of deictics presupposes the location of the action in relation to external space coordinates. "Come here" could become, for example, "He told him to move nearer to him". On this point we cannot take Nord's approach. The metatext's reader sense of direction is as good as the

157 prototext reader's, and anyone having had a normal psychic development knows how to use deictics and how to behave when decoding them. When the non-Russian reader of L. N. Tolstoy's War and Peace reads, at the beginning of book one, «Non, je vous préviens que si vous ne me dites pas que nous avons la guerre, si vous vous permettez encore de pallier toutes les infamies, toutes les atrocités de cet Antichrist (ma parole, j'y crois), je ne vous connais plus, vous n'êtes plus mon ami», she understands that we are not necessarily speaking of an action set in the place (or in the time) in which we are reading. The hyper-mediating intervention by the translator is not therefore implied by her duties, otherwise we would transform the pure interlingual translation process into a simplification and adaptation process usually non required of a translator. A very similar view is expressed by Nord as regards time deictics. The German author is amazed because she read in a Madras newspaper "there was a train crash this afternoon", stating that, in Germany, the author would have written "yesterday afternoon". The point is more complex than it might appear, because there might also be the case in which, owing to a surplus of understanding anxiety, sender and receiver end up invading each other's interpretive space, getting to what is called "Fort Worth reasoning". It seems that in the town of Fort Worth, USA, someone accustomed to receiving the newspaper at home left his newspaper boy the following message:

Don't leave a paper today. Of course, when I say today I mean tomorrow, because I am writing this yesterday4.

The client's excessive zeal must have generated only confusion in the receiver, the paperboy, because a time mediation passage that would have been so easy for him has become complex owing to the sender's desire to help the receiver. Just as the prototext reader realizes the cronotopical coordinates of the speech act through the tools provided by the author (text) and the publisher (metatext), the same applies to the reader of the translated text. An excess of zeal can only generate misunderstanding and clash with the author's communicative intent, with her narrative strategy, in which often the degree of implicitness/explicitness is a fundamental element.

Bibliographical references

CALVINO I. If on a Winter's Night a Traveller, London, Random House, 1998, ISBN 0-749-39923-6.

158 COHEN G. CUNNINGHAM D. H. Creating Technical Manuals. A step-by-step approach to writing user-friendly instructions. New York, McGraw-Hill, 1984, ISBN 0-07-011584-2.

1 Calvino 1998, p. 72. 2 Nord 1991, p. 61. 3 Nord 1991, p. 62. 4 Cohen Cunningham 1984, p. 18.

30 - The analysis of the text to be translated - fifth part

"Today each of you is the object of the other's reading, each reads in the other the unwritten story"1

In unit 29 we took the time of the speech act, under consideration, that of the drafting of the prototext. As to the drafting of the metatext, the time of the translating action is patently important only wherever the two texts are not contemporary. If the prototext belongs to another time, its analysis is influenced by the use that is meant for it. A fundamental alternative concerns the choice between prototext modernization and historicization. Using the former model of actualization, the modernizing of the text, chronological references to the prototext's time are modified and adapted to the metatext's time, in order to make them homologizable in the reader's present. In this case, the reader does not have to transfer herself into another time. In the latter, historicizing, model, the chronological datum is valued for what it is, a historical element, and is preserved as it is. When the metalanguage lexicon is not sufficient for describing all the prototext's objects, for the historical realia in question the language of the prototext is used. In this case, the metatext's reader must transfer, while reading, her reception capabilities back in time, and must cover, sometimes with the help of a metatextual structure, the chronotopical distance between herself and the prototext. The practical consequences of such diverging approaches on the translation-oriented analysis of the prototext concern the translator's point of focus of attention.

159 In the modernizing approach, the main focusing point of the translator-reader is the present, it is the cultural context of her model reader. Every element of the prototext is projected onto the outline of the model reader, and all the areas where the former doesn't fit in the latter, the area where the former does not quite cover the latter, is "altered", excluded from the channels of pure interlingual translation, and mentally sent along the channels of modernizing transformation. The translation-oriented analysis, in this case, is therefore characterized by a continuous process of projection of the prototext into the translator's present, of forward projection. The time of the metatext is at the center of such an analysis, around it the adaptation of the prototext to the categories of its culture translation strategy is built. In the historicizing perspective, on the contrary, the main focal point of the translator-reader is the past, the cultural context of the prototext. Every element of the metatext model reader's culture is projected onto the prototext outline, and all the areas where the former doesn't fit the latter, the areas where the two don't mesh, is adjusted, excluded from the channels of pure interlingual translation, and mentally sent along the channels of historicizing preservation. The translation-oriented analysis, in this case, is therefore characterized by a continuous process of projection of the translator's present onto the prototext, of backward projection. The time of the prototext is at the center of such an analysis; around the adaptation of the prototext to the categories of its culture the translation strategy is built. In order to concretely exemplify the two approaches toward the translation process, we quote a stanza from Pushkin's Evgénij Onégin in the translation by Charles Johnston, of 1977, and in the translation of Vladìmir Nabókov, of 1964. They are not the perfect absolute incarnation of the two approaches, but we think that Johnston has a more modernizing translation ideal than Nabókov's more philological one:

There came a murmur, for a fleeting moment the assembly seemed to shake... that lady the hostess was greeting, with the grand general in her wake - she was unhurried, unobtrusive, not cold, but also not effusive, no haughty stare around the press, no proud pretensions to success, no mannerism, no affectation, no artifices of the vain... No, all in her was calm and plain. She struck one as the incarnation - Shishkov, forgive me, I don't know the Russian for le comme il faut.

160 Let us now see Nabókov's version:

But lo! the throng has undulated, a whisper through the hall has run.... Toward the hostess there advanced a lady, followed by an imposing general. She was unhurried, not cold, not talkative, without a flouting gaze for everyone, without pretensions to success, without those little mannerisms, without imitational devices.... All about her was quite, simple. She seemed a faithful reproduction du comme il faut... (Shishkóv, forgive me: I do not know how to translated it).

Johnston translating has his model reader in mind; this is shown by the fact that he tries to preserve the rhyme, as a distinctive trait of poetry according to a stereotyped view. Nabókov, on the other hand, after explaining in the huge metatext (the critical apparatus of Nabókov's edition takes as much as ten times the translated text) that in his opinion the dominant of Pushkin's poem is metrics, the iambic tetrameters characterizing that work and that were defined afterwards "Onegin's tetrameters" because they set a fundamental antecedent, builds a metatext in iambs that, whenever he can, are tetrameters, too. There is, for example, the exception "She was unhurried," a dimeter. Of course, the rhyming structure, implicitly considered as the text dominant, induces Johnston to acrobatics to force the whole plot of the stanza (more than the verse's conformation) into a formal structure that he imposed upon himself. What are the general considerations about modernizing and historicizing of translated texts? The first can be considered more indicated for entertainment, because it is less tiring to the reader, the text being more easily usable. The second is better indicated for increasing the reader's knowledge of different, alien cultures. Maybe in this case it is possible to speak about entertainment, the former being entertainment "at home", consequence of a desire to enjoy oneself without going out of one's own known world. The latter is a more explorative entertainment, implies more curiosity toward the unknown, the new, the alien world. From the point of view of the translation abilities to be used, modernization emphasizes the translator's ability to make herself understood by the audience, consequently also the ability to get to know the audience one has before her and to recognize their needs. The translation-oriented analysis of a modernizing translator tends to look, for each dated reference, for one

161 homologous in the metaculture to be used as a substitution for the former. Historicization tends to emphasize the philological abilities of the translator and her ability to present the elements of a remote culture in an interesting way stimulating the reader's curiosity, and creating a metatextual apparatus that is pleasing and not too heavy.

Bibliographical references

CALVINO I. If on a Winter's Night a Traveller, London, Random House, 1998, ISBN 0-749-39923-6.

PUSHKIN A. Eugene Onegin, translation by C. Johnston, London, Penguin, 1977, ISBN 0-14-044394-0.

PUSHKIN A. Eugene Onegin, translation by V. Nabokov, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1975, ISBN 0-691-01905-3.

1 Calvino 1979, p. 156.

31 - The motives behind the prototext

"Little by little you will manage to understand something more about the origins of the translator's machinations"1.

The motives behind the writing of a text are a very useful element to consider when the text is analyzed with the aim of its possible interlingual translation. That is not to say, however, that the reasons inducing the author to create the text coincide with those triggering the promoter of a translation to have it translated. There can be the case, for example, of a poem inspired by love for a man or a woman that gets translated because, independent of its initial function, it is now interesting as a work of art. On the other hand, it is evident that the instructions for a bicycle helmet are written and translated exactly for the same reasons: try to prevent cyclists' brain damages. The text's function is another fundamental element characterizing translation-oriented analysis; it throws light on the possible translation strategies to be adopted. In this case, too, it is indispensable to distinguish the

162 function of the original in its own culture and the possible functions of the translated text in the culture receiving it. Some functions may be rare occurrences in their field, but others are recurrent to the point that they make up real categories of texts2. The possibilities for the classification of the type of a text are manifold. Without going into detail to the point of distinguishing "newspaper columns" from "travelers guidelines on public transport" and "auction bids" and "museum catalogues", it is possible to outline some broad fundamental categories within which to categorize the minor niches. One possible distinction concerns "informative" and "expressive" texts. Informative texts are purely descriptive and are based on objects welldefined in the outer world. By "expressive" we mean a text that, independent from its informative potential, is characterized by an emphasis toward formal qualities (just think for example at Hjelmslev's dichotomy between content plane and expression plane) and expression modes. A very similar distinction is that between closed or denotative texts and open or connotative texts. An (informative) text is closed to a greater degree when the interpretive possibilities are limited, while it is open (expressive) whenever it is characterized by polysemy, ambiguity, and potentially interminable semiosis. Nord speaks of literary text as well, defined in culture-specific terms as a text that, far from describing reality, has the purpose of motivating personal views of reality by describing a fictional alternative world3. It goes without saying that, in the absence of objective, universal criteria to distinguish a literary text from a non literary text, it is necessary to refer to a given culture, within which coexist authors and readers willing to agree that some works are "literary" or "non literary". Given such culture-specificity of the notion of the literary quality of a text, it is not at all safe that the "literary" role played by a text in the culture that generated it coincides with the role it plays in the metaculture, or receiving culture. There can be, for example, instances in which a literary text in the protoculture becomes informative in the metaculture because, we can suppose, in the latter culture there is no aesthetic background allowing the appreciation of the work's literariness; however the work, owing to its informative contents unessential to the source culture, becomes interesting exactly for that reason in the target culture. But the notion of "translation" is culture-specific too. So all that we say about translation, when we are not referring to the norms as impositions but as simple generalizations of recurrent events, must be taken as if accompanied by the premise "in our culture", which therefore, as all factual elements taken for granted in a single culture, we consider always implicit. Since, as Nord holds, in our culture the two aims of a textual interlingual translation are the metatext functionality and the preservation of the prototext's author intents, the translator must weigh each time if any prototext functions are compatible

163 with the target culture, and activates them and arranges them in a hierarchical order by importance. The kind of translation that most nearly satisfies the need to preserve the prototext author's intentions is defined by Nord "documentary", and is that requiring the most careful and deep translation-oriented analysis. The kind of translation that, on the other hand, tries to ensure the functionality of its use in the target culture is called "instrumental". It is important to deal here with both approaches and the metatext subtypes they create because the considerations regarding the kind of metatext that is being created have a retroductive influence on the translation-oriented analysis as well. In documentary translation the metatext reader is always conscious of dealing with a communication process that unravels before him, i.e. he is conscious of having to do with a text translated to give him the possibility of reading it. Nord indicates four types of documentary translations, differentiating based on the focalization on different aspects of the prototext: word-for-word translation, literary, philological, exoticizing translations. In the word-for-word translation, the main focalization is on the morphological, lexical, and syntactical structure of the prototext, which is reproduced in the metatext without any acknowledgment of its textual coherence. Effectively, word-for- word translations have a very low readability, above all when the two languages have sentence structures that are very different. The other subtypes of documentary translation are less extreme, but tend to achieve functionality nonetheless, and acceptability of the text by the reader. Exoticizing translation has this denomination because it tends to preserve cultural words (realia) and other features of the source culture, producing an exotic effect on the target text reader. Instrumental translation, on the other hand, tends to obscure the fact it is a translation, because the metatext reader is confronted with an autonomous text with a definite function in the target culture, with no declared link to a source text, of the existence of which the metatext reader may have no knowledge. The form, philology, and historical memory of the text are sacrificed in order to improve communicability and operational functionality of the text in the target culture. Within this type, Nord outlines three subtypes: in the first, the prototext function is preserved as it stands; as is the case for grammatical usage instructions and business correspondence. In the second subtype, the source function is altered to fit the text to the target culture; that is the case, for example, of Gulliver's Travels, written originally as a political pamphlet and translated in many countries as children literature. In the third subtype the similarity of the effect produced by the text in the culture is pursued: that is homological translation., Nord offers the translation of poetry as an example.

Bibliographical references

164 CALVINO I. If on a Winter's Night a Traveller, London, Random House, 1998, ISBN 0-749-39923-6.

1 Calvino 1998, p. 158-159. 2 Nord 1991, p. 70. 3 Nord 1991, p. 71.

32 - Content analysis

"[...] the silent voice that speaks to her through books, this ghost with a thousand faces and faceless, all the more elusive since for Ludmilla authors are never incarnated in individuals of flesh and blood, they exist for her only in published pages [...]"1.

Having examined the extratextual factors of analysis, let us pass to the inner elements of the text, to the content in particular. Among the elements outlined by Nord, the one we would like to stress is the dialectics between cultural competence of the translator reader during translation-oriented analysis and linguistic competence. Here is the joke quoted by Nord as an example:

Meisl comes to Vienna on business for the first time in his life, and in the evening he wants to see a play at the famous Burg Theatre. So he asks the lady in the booking office: "What is on tonight?" And she answers: "Twelfth Night or What You Will". "Oh well", says Meisl, "I would prefer 'The Blue Danube'"2.

In this case, the receiver has enough linguistic competence, but not enough cultural competence to understand that "Twelfth Night or What You Will" is the title of a Shakespeare play. Another possible obstacle to translation consists in the notions taken for granted in the text sentences. The main difficulty in analysis lies in the location of such implicit notions, because sometimes such implications are obvious to the translator, even if they are not necessarily so the model reader of the metatext, whom the translator addresses. Nord recommends to first make a simplified paraphrase, from which it is usually evident which elements are omitted. Such a paraphrase, far from functioning as a first translation, has the

165 simple aim of underlining the implicit elements. Nord's translation technique makes abundant use of compensation. Such procedure implies that, whenever it is not possible or comfortable to translate an element of the prototext, the loss is compensated by expressing the same concept in another part of the text. According to the supporters of compensation, it is possible to precisely define, within certain limits, what a given textual element expresses, and the aim of the translation process consists in providing the metatext reader with a text consisting in a sort of "algebraic sum" of the meanings of the original. From this presupposition, Nord illustrates the problem of the setting of a text by Cortázar, a setting that is not explicit. On the basis of that description, it is possible to decide if the story is set in a commonplace or in a luxurious context, and, generally, in which cultural context the scene is set. The aim is a better understanding of the register in which to express the sentence "tomamos café con leche": "we drink our morning coffee" in case of neutral register, "we have our coffee with milk" in case of not specified strangeness, "we have café au lait" in case of setting in France or a high-brow hotel, and "we have our ham and eggs" in case of adaptation to the metatext reader's culture, that in this case is British. Given that it is possible to understand the kind of cultural context from the description, we do not think it reasonable to stress the author's intentions insisting in that direction even in other parts of the text not marked in that way. The mentioned examples can, nonetheless, be interesting for the discussion, seen more in depth in the third part of the course, on the analytic (adequate) approach or synthetic (acceptable) approach of a translation and on the many ways in which a text can be considered "acceptable". As to phenomena and objects typical of the culture (realia) to which the prototext belongs, Nord quotes a very interesting example by Balcerzan, who translated Neruda into Polish:

Quand Neruda écrit: "las mariposas de Muzo", il faut préciser "les bleus papillons Muzo"; lorsqu'il écrit: "jacarandá", il faut ajouter "arbre violet de jacarandá". Car pour le poète qui voit tous les jours (donc connaît par l'examen immédiat du monde réel) le bleu éclatant et l'arbre de "jacarandá" couvert de fleurs violettes, cette couleur est renfermée dans le nom même; nous, nous devons l'expliquer à notre lecteur3.

The didactic explicitating approach used by Balcerzan is useful, rather than as a translation, as a guide to the reading of Neruda. The Polish reader of Balcerzan's version could hardly understand the formal aspects of Neruda's poems, but he will have a clear idea of their real references (natural, in this case). On the other hand, it often happens that the translators take on a much higher mediating than that demanded of her by culture. If the reader meets the word jacarandá and does not know what it is, he has

166 nonetheless the word's sound - an important element in a poem - and, if he wants to reconstruct the objective contextualization, he can do so beyond the reading of the poem. On the contrary, the reader who comes across meeting the explicating translation looses the pleasure of what was intentionally written between the lines, and is no longer able to reconstruct it. Among the cultural presuppositions of a text Nord indicates many possible categories: author's biography, aesthetic theories, literary genres, ideology, religion, philosophy, mythology, socio-political conditions, education4. And it is often clear that the translation or explicitation of these realia, albeit intended for an easier communication, creates misunderstandings. Here is an example:

The Allens eat kosher.

The explicitating translation of this sentence could be:

The Allens eat only proper foods.

In the first case the reader not knowing the word "kosher" can look it up on the dictionary, after which he understands that it is a Jewish religious norm. In the second case, contextualization is much harder, and someone could be mistakenly lead to think that, according to the author's point of view, all food that is not kosher is unfit, even if it was a simple neutral description. The cultural difference between prototext and metatext can also create problems of semantic redundancy (linguistic redundancy is not implied, it is the phenomenon by which, for example, in French the sentence «je ne sais pas» contains a double negation, that is nonetheless provided for by grammatical rules). If for example an English text quotes the sentence "He drank a glass of Lambrusco, a red light sparkling wine", its Italian linguistic translation would be redundant, because the Italian model reader is supposed to know what Lambrusco is. It is also possible the opposite hypothesis: Every morning she bathed in Bordeaux. Translated into a culture where French wine is not known, this sentence could inform too little. Communication must always find a balance between redundancy and informativity, and, according to some researchers, Nord among them, the translator must deal with this problem by generalizing or specifying sentences according to the cultural difference. In this stage of the course we do well to simply acknowledge the existence of the question, but we will deal with it more in depth in the third part, devoted to the production of the text.

Bibliographical references

CALVINO I. If on a Winter's Night a Traveller, London, Random House, 1998, ISBN 0-749-39923-6.

167 NORD C. Text Analysis in Translation. Theory, Methodology, and Didactic Application of a Model for Translation-Oriented Text Analysis, translated from the German by C. Nord e P. Sparrow, Amsterdam, Rodopi, 1991, ISBN 90- 5183-311-3.

1 Calvino 1998, p. 159. 2 Nord 1991, p. 88. 3 Nord 1991, p. 96. 4 Nord 1991, p. 97.

33 - Lexicon, syntax, punctuation

"How is it possible to defeat not the authors but the functions of the author, the idea that behind each book there is someone who guarantees a truth in that world of ghosts and inventions by the mere fact of having invested in it his own truth, of having identified himself with that construction of words?"1.

The lexical aspect of translation-oriented analysis is not to be neglected, even if it is the most self-evident and, therefore, easy to take for granted. The text's markedness is a culture-specific phenomenon, and the translator must consider marked traits of the source culture in order to decide how to translate them in the metatext or, whenever a textual translation is impossible, how to manage the loss. Lexical markedness is expressed, for example, by the use of out-of-context lexicon: technicalities outside the relevant technical field, or lexicon belonging to a different register that that adopted in the utterance's co-text, for example, figures of speech rare or unusual in that context, expressions belonging to specific regions within a standard lexicon, sociolects, idiolects etc. There is, moreover, syntactic markedness in which the sentence construction is purposely unusual, peculiar, for the pursuit of given expressive targets. Let us take the example of the syntactically standard sentence:

Red wine is good for the prevention of thrombosis.

And let us see the same sentence in a marked form, with a syntactic dislocation:

Red is the wine that is good for thrombosis prevention.

In this last sentence, the utterance markedness is used to force the reader's attention toward the red color of the wine, while in the previous standard sentence this detail was left in the background for the most part. It is essential

168 for the translator to catch these aspects; her knowledge of the standard constructions in the source language/culture must be very exhaustive. Lexical collocation can also be either standard or marked, and the identification of this aspect requires great sensitivity, because even dictionaries, perhaps due to space constrictions, are rather sparing in words, and only with abundant luck can one find the exact collocation she's searching for among the reported examples. Even when an example is found in the dictionary, there can be no certainty about the spontaneity of the utterance (it could be produced by the dictionary author in function of the example) or on the frequency of use of such collocation. Let us make an example in this case, too.

He wore a spacious cape.

Confronted with such sentence, an English speaker realizes that it is a peculiar collocation of the adjective "spacious". But the translator most often translates into her own language, and therefore reads the prototext in a foreign language. It is not always possible for her to have the linguistic sensitivity and/or competence necessary to decide beyond any doubt if a given collocation is marked. A peculiar collocation like "spacious cape" raises the question of its authority, of authoritativeness of the text. If the case of the writer's linguistic incompetence is to be excluded, it is advisable to think that the unusual collocation is made purposely. Normative considerations are not pertinent here, because, but for some rare examples, the translator is not required to do any corrective work (for which she is not even obliged to have a competence, since that is the editor's job). The standard attitude of a translator tends to be a descriptive one, and any corrective trespassing is to be attributed more to unconscious activity than to a deliberate appropriation of the other's jurisdiction. What a translator understands from a collocation like "spacious cape" is that the author wanted to express a differing notion from that conveyed by "wide cape": it therefore is up to the translator to decide how to render such markedness, if by a similarly improbable collocation or by another expressive device. Confronted with such doubts, the translator must ascertain whether her suspicions are founded or not in order to decide how to have the metatext reader understand that a peculiarity in syntactic association is present. In most cases, when the translator is not certain of the utterance's markedness, the translation ends up having a standardizing impact, by the suppression of its marked traits: but this is certainly not work well done with regard to either the prototext or the translation reader. The tools useful for the search and checking of such expressive details will be covered in the fourth part of this course.

169 Since lexical markedness, like syntactic markedness, is culture-specific, the choices linked to the translation of such elements are not elementary: as Nord holds, a metaphor is not to be necessarily translated into a metaphor and a simile into a simile. This principle would hold true if all languages and cultures were isomorphic, but we know this is not the case. Another element that can be marked is the length and the type (affirmation, interrogation, exclamation, ellipsis) of the sentence. This is a culture-specific trait too; for example, it is well known that in contemporary English there is a coherent trend to use short sentences, while other languages - like French, Italian, etc. - tend to more complex and, sometimes, less decipherable structures. Within the pertinent cultures, therefore, the translator checks the sentence on its peculiarity - conformity axis, and, in case of peculiarity, checks if it is a regional, social, technical, individual (of the author or of the character) peculiarity etc. These are considerations that depend on the translation strategy adopted and on the type of text under examination, but interlingual translation does not necessarily imply an adaptation of sentence type and/or length. Such adaptation is often held as an axiom in practical translation courses, but it must be cautiously considered, and to be applied only whenever the translation has strongly informative and mildly expressive finalities. As to suprasegmental features (see about that units 17 and 28 of this second part), it is important to see what the impact on written texts is of this particularly evident feature in oral texts. Possible examples are found in the use of onomatopoeias, peculiar spellings (for instance the use of double letters, both vocal and consonants, to indicate a peculiar pronunciation), use of punctuation signs. Punctuation, too, has culture-specific norms, but transgression is more or less admitted even in cultures where rules are rigidly followed. Nord uses as examples of written suprasegmental features, comparing two sentences:

John, Peter, Mary, Paul were there.

and

John and Peter and Mary and Paul were there2.

The simple choice preferring an asyndetic enumeration (with commas in this case) gives the sentence a stronger rhythm than polysyndetic construction (in this case with the "and" conjunctions) in which the reader dwells longer, in mental reading as well, on single items. Among other things please note that probably both quoted examples are marked in most cultures. because the standard form is often promiscuous, like this:

170 John, Peter, Mary and Paul were there.

Bibliographical references

CALVINO I. If on a Winter's Night a Traveller, London, Random House, 1998, ISBN 0-749-39923-6.

1 Calvino 1979, p. 159. 2 Nord 191, p. 125.

34 - Equivalence or metaphor?

"Ermes Marana dreamed of a literature made entirely of apocrypha, of false attributions, of imitations and counterfeits and pastiches"1.

Gregory Rabassa, in a short essay marked by refined sense of humor, gives some useful indications useful for sweeping away any pretence to equivalence in a light but clear-cut way within the framework of all languages including, he says, artificial languages like mathematic languages. Since we are used to thinking of an expression like 2 = 2 as correct, we do not realize that "the second 2 is obviously a hair younger than the first and therefore not its equal"2. But here Rabassa is evidently joking, attaching importance to the age of a mathematic sign, almost decontextualizing the number to insert it into a less scientific, more human world. Nowadays when the equal sign is placed between two numbers mathematicians are more careful than some time ago (although, fortunately, accountants and book-keepers continue their business as usual), and prefer the word "approximation" to "equivalence", a stronger reason yet that we should use a grain of salt when expressing certainties about the meanings of words. In a sense, allowing that 2 is equal to 2 makes sense from many points of view, and this is not surprising since numbers were created by man within tan isomorphic framework - one consisting of elements that have a form similar or comparable to that of the other elements. Relations between numbers are expressible in different but consistent forms. For example, 3 is the result both

171 of 2 + 1, and of 1 x 3, and of 1+1+1 etc. Numbers exist inasmuch as the relations between them exist, so we are not amazed at the fact that 9 ¸ 3 is 3, since 3 + 3 + 3 is 9. Words, on the other hand, were and continue to be created and freely and spontaneously altered, and their semantic content varies over time, in space, in individuals, in cultures. Therefore, any attempt is fruitless to force them into rigid formats of meaning, or to use pseudo-mathematic expedients in an attempt to say that "run = walk + fast". Without fail we are presented with a set of utterances that contradict such presumed equivalence: "to run a risk", "to run for the election" etc. To say nothing of marathon men, who walk fast but never run. Unlike numbers, words express not only an object meaning, but also the attitude of the speaker toward such object. "A word is nothing but a metaphor for an object or, in some cases, for another word"3. The implicit comparison implies a peculiar way of expressing the indicated object, not a "neutral" expression of it. Very appropriately Rabassa recalls a passage from the Gulliver's Travels in which, at Lagado Academy, the problem of the margin of misunderstanding is resolved in a very original, if not very practical, way:

The other, was a Scheme for entirely abolishing all Words whatsoever: And this was urged as a great Advantage in Point of Health as well as Brevity. [...] An Expedient was therefore offered, that since Words are only Names for Things, it would be more convenient for all Men to carry about them, such Things as were necessary to express the particular Business they are to discourse on. [...] many of the most Learned and Wise adhere to the new Scheme of expressing themselves by Things; which hath only this Inconvenience attending it; that if a Man's Business be very great, and of various Kinds, he must be obliged in Proportion to carry a greater Bundle of Things upon his Back [...] Another great Advantage proposed by this Invention, was, that it would serve as an universal Language to be understood in all civilized Nations, whose Goods and Utensils are generally of the same Kind, or nearly resembling, so that their Uses might easily be comprehended4.

Swift as usual, pretending to speak about other times and other places points his accusatory finger against society and culture in which he lives in his present, and is caustic in his implied judgment of word decoding problems. Actually, only the simultaneous presence of author and translator, together with the object the text he wants to express, could contribute to the elimination of possible misunderstandings of verbal expression, but with them also some of the polysemic richness of the utterances. In the case of Lagado's academics, the interpretive triangle formed by object,

172 interpretant, sign in the prototext would share one vertex with the relative interpretive triangle of the metatext: the object vertex.

The double translation triangle according to Lagado's academics hypothesis..

While in our reality the two triangles face one another, and the only vertex they don't share, but have very close, is the sign vertex, through which pass, first the interpretive act and, then, the translation act.

173 The translation double triangle in the reality outside Gulliver's Travels.

Rabassa never names the interpretant, but the notion is implicitly present throughout the article. He speaks of the words expressing "dog" in various cultures, about the Muslim culture's contempt toward this animal (that has negative connotations as soon as it is named, for this reason), about peculiar connotations in each different, not only national, but also individual culture: just think of the different interpretants of "dog" in two persons that as children had, one, important affectionate relationships with dogs and, in the other case, has been bitten, for example. Borges, in order to stress the inadequacy of words, proposed one of his translators not to translate what he said, but what he meant to say. The invitation is evidently ironic because an author's communicative intention is never transparent or obvious (it would be too easy). Since, in Rabassa's opinion, when writing an author does nothing but choose the metaphor that best becomes the sense of what he wants to express, and since, evidently, metaphors are all but scientifically formed ("golden", for example, can be used as a metaphor for color or richness or brilliancy and God knows how many other things, so there is no isomorphism in the network of the possible metaphors), the translator has the hard task of abductively reconstructing the process that induced the author to use given metaphors and then she has to understand his presumed communication intention.

174 Often vernacularisms, proverbs and similar expression also imply metaphors. Rabassa quotes the saying «Out of sight, out of mind»5. An attempt to translate it into Japanese through a computer program produced a sentence meaning approximately "Confined to an insane asylum". Undoubtedly, "Out of sight, out of mind" could well mean that too, but the metaphor activated by the translator is not the same as that implied by the author, so, produces a serious communication problem.

Bibliographical references

CALVINO I. If on a Winter's Night a Traveller, London, Random House, 1998, ISBN 0-749-39923-6.

RABASSA G. No two snowflakes are alike: translation as metaphor, in The Craft of Translation, edited by John Biguenet and Rainer Schulte, Chicago, London, The University of Chicago Press, 1989, ISBN 0-226-04864-3, p. 1- 12.

SWIFT J. Gulliver's Travels, 1726, in The Writings of Jonathan Swift, New York, Norton, 1973, ISBN 0-293-042839, p. 1-260.

1 Calvino 1998, p. 159. 2 Rabassa 1989, p. 1. 3 Rabassa 1989, p. 1. 4 Swift, 1726 (1973), p. 158-159. 5 Rabassa, 1989, p. 7.

35 - The analysis of the literary prototext

"And for the verb 'to read'? Will we be able to say, 'Today it reads' as we say 'Today it rains'?"1.

The book by the Slovak researcher Anton Popovič Problems of Literary Translation is a translation studies classic perhaps investigated too little in non-Slavic culture countries. In this unit we will examine the principles of translation-oriented literary text analysis according to the precepts of the Bratislava school, one of the most important in the international arena of translation science. The first phase of the prototext analysis, according to Popovič, is of registration and descriptive character. One must study the structure, the theme, the language, the composition,

175 the stylistic structure, the phonetic organization, the grammatical and morph-syntactic structure genre signs, the repertoire and rhetoric devices and their interactions. Up to this point the analysis is not so very different from a general, non translation-oriented, literary text analysis. Such an analysis is, however, insufficient if it is not accompanied by an examination of the cultural context in which the text is born, a context that concerns the translator as far as it is reflected in the structure of the work under investigation. In this sense, the elements to be examined are

the theme and its relations to society, the social definition of characters, social and psychological motivation for choosing the various means of depiction, the artistic measure in the selection of such means, the rhythmic peculiarities of the text etc.2

But in order to carry out an analysis of the text to the fullest, we must highlight the oppositions represented in the text as regards the processes through which world depictions are reflected in a work. To create an analytical guideline that functions as a model applicable to different texts, it is advisable to use the binary oppositions formed by pairs of poles that in the analyzed text are opposed in order to emphasize the importance of a point of view within a text's poetics. Here are some examples of such pairs: content - form material - method you - they time - space high - low near - far wide - narrow. The choice of the consistent pairs of opposite poles to be applied to the analysis of a given text must be done based on two principles. The first concerns the complexity of the prototext and the presence of multiple levels, inducing to use more than one binary opposition for each analyzed text. The use of a ingle binary pair, albeit particularly productive with that specific text, often unmasks only a part of the text's features, producing a deformed picture and - in the worst cases - artificially manipulated by the interpreter, and/or by the critic, to

176 suppress some aspects and emphasize others. The second principle concerns the scant productivity in the application of certain binary oppositions to some prototexts. It could be seen as a logical paradox: to get to know a text's poetics you must apply the binary oppositions that are more productive for that text, while other pairs are low productive or not productive at all. So, in order to get to know the work's poetics we must already be familiar with the poetics of the work, and know which categories to apply to its analysis? Actually, we may apply all the categories considered potentially productive to the text analysis, and then discard all the less significant results. The choice of such categories depends a lot, as it is easy to sense, on the researcher's scientific creativity (or, in our case, the translator's). In this context, Popovič proposes a communication model that, more than the traditional operative-pragmatic axis connecting author and receiver, contemplates another axis, perpendicular to the first that has at its extremes the tradition the text (literary canon) and the outer protoculture reality: the iconic depiction axis. Let us first take a look at that model :3:

Individual oppositions useful for the creation of a model for the text depend on the communicative dominant of the text. The principal pairs being, according to Popovič, are the oppositions

177 of iconic depiction of reality, of text formation, of text development, of operative-pragmatic character. The two groups of oppositions (of depiction and of development) interact between themselves,

because the relation with reality determines the author's relationship to tradition, as much as the relationship with tradition determines his relation to reality4.

The oppositions can originate in different contexts: philosophical, sociological, anthropological, psychological, semantic, semiotic, linguistic, poetologic, gnoseologic, pragmatic. In the case of literary translation, the above model becomes more complex. Here is how it is depicted by Popovič (we made a slight terminological adaptation here):

Legenda: Pa = prototext author; P = prototext; Pr = prototext reader; Plt = protoculture literary tradition; Pr = protoculture reality; Ma = metatext author; M = metatext; Mr = metatext reader; Mlt = metaculture literary tradition; Mr = metaculture reality5.

As you can notice, at the center of the model there are two figures: the prototext reader and the metatext author, that both coincide with the translator. While elaborating her translation strategy, we must first analyze the relations between the prototext and the literary canon it originates from, on one hand, and its extra-literary reality origin, on the other hand. The higher degree of complexity of the situation of the

178 translation does not depend on a simple doubling of the model to account for the "second passage" of the text by the metatext author (the translator) to her reader. Such complexity concerns above all the fact that locating the prototext dominant does not automatically dictate the choice of the metatext dominant. In some cases, the receiving culture is not able to accommodate a text having a given dominant (or, at least, the translator can believe it is so): for example, it can be considered too complex to translate a poetic composition with a rigid metric model of rhymes using meter and rhyme as a dominant for the metatext as well. It is often thought- rightly or mistakenly- that in the metaculture it is easier to catch the denotative content of a work even if it is poetical, so, the metatext's dominant often does not coincide with the prototext's. These considerations begin to project us into the subject of the third part of this course: the production of the metatext.

Bibliographical references

CALVINO I. If on a Winter's Night a Traveller, London, Random House, 1998, ISBN 0-749-39923-6.

POPOVIČ A. Problemy hudožestvennogo perevoda, edited by P. M. Toper, translation from Slovak by I. A. Bernštejn e I. S. Černjavskaja. Original title: Teória umleckého prekladu, Tatran, 1975. Moskvà, Vysšaja škola, 1980.

1 Calvino 1979, p. 176. 2 Popovič 1980, p. 42. 3 Popovič 1980, p. 43. 4 Popovič 1980, p. 44. 5 Popovič 1980, p. 53.

36 - Intuition, experience, generalization - part one

179 "How many years has it been since I could allow myself some disinterested reading?How many years has it been since I could abandon myself to a bok written by another, with no relation to what I must write myself?"1.

We have seen that Peirce's model consisting of sign - interpretant - object is very productive when applied to the decoding of a text, to its perception, its aesthetics (from the Greek aisthánesthai, "to know through senses, to perceive"). Extremely innovative in the semiosis triangle is the interpretant vertex, opening the passage connecting general perception psychology - applicable to the perception of any text by any individual - and individual psychology of the processing of perception data on the basis of the conscious and unconscious memory repertoire of the perceiver. With a little help from Douglas Robinson, one of the foremost contemporary translation scientists[,] who tried to apply some of Peirce's principles in different forms to different aspects of the translation activity, we will analyze another Peircean triad in this unit. No surprise if in this case, too, there are three vertexes: Peirce's - abductive - intuition, from a methodological point of view, which consists in the overcoming of dichotomies in general, as they are considered not dynamic enough, in order to embrace trichotomies. Peirce has been accused of "triadomany"2, but he defended himself, in part by arguing in favor of triads, in part by giving examples of fields in which he wrote without applying any triads. In the expert reader's perception of the text, two mental states alternate. The first consists of a subliminal flow allowing a fast (relatively to individual canons) reading. The temporary suspension of the conscious control over the decoding process lets the mind function in an automatic, or semiautomatic, mode. Attention, which is watchful, but kept, in a sense, in the background, does not trigger the conscious-control mode, unless abnormalities in the decoding process occur, particular problems, marked-text passages or other requiring the specific, targeted intervention of the reader's analytic mind. The latter mental state, activated, by the insurgence of the abnormalities we have just mentioned, is a state of conscious analytic control. Reading speed dramatically slows down because a sort of alarm is tripped owing to the localization of an abnormal text string. Such abnormality can be attributed to the fact that the reader is not used to reading that kind of text passages (he does not have enough experience for decoding some words, expression modes, slang expressions, local expressions, syntactic anomalies etc.) or the alarm can be triggered by a drop in conscious attention that, if uncontrolled, could compromise the success of the decoding; or else by the fact that the author has produced determined features at that point in the text with the

180 purpose of drawing the reader's attention to that particular point. The two mental states are equally useful. And it is useful for them to alternate and for mechanisms to exist that enable a shift from one to the other at the right moment. Without the former, semiautomatic, mode reading would be a very long process (which explains why experience in reading is helpful in speeding subsequent readings). Without the latter, reading speed would compromise the quality of the decoding, the attention to detail, to the marked, the strange and the alien passage. It would be an engulfing reading, appropriating the text, and unable to use it to enrich the individual's "data bank". Let us see, then, which of Peirce's triads helps us systematize and schematize the mechanism according to which part of reading functions in semiautomatic mode. The three vertexes are, in Peirce's terms (parenthetically, another version for our use), instinct (perception), experience (data collection), habit (generalization). Here is the triangle:

The knowledge acquisition triangle according to Peirce

Since the term "instinct" is rather vague and unpopular in contemporary science, let us try to limit our investigation about what it means and see only what Peirce meant by this word.

[...] the three essential characters of instinctive conduct are that it is conscious, is determined to a quasi-purpose, and that in definite respects it escapes all control3.

As far as we are concerned, to the specific intent of text perception, we can say that by "instinct" we mean here a generic readiness, disposition of a man to decode a text, which is possible thanks to the knowledge of the code in which a text is written, and thanks to previous reading experiences. The "instinctive" aim of our reading consists in locating a sense in the text and, to do that, we often use intuition. To say that does not mean to say that we get a text's sense exclusively by intuition and that, therefore, our understanding is dangling by the intuitive thread.

181 But, as Peirce makes us notice, intuition is that something extra that allows us to take a dramatic, quantum leap at the opportunity to imagine ele-ments of novelty, to hypothesize new knowledge, save then considering fundamental the need to test the hypothesis, to verify you are on the right path.

The purpose of reasoning is to proceed from the recognition of the truth we already know to the knowledge of novel truth. This we may do by instinct or by a habit of which we are hardly conscious4.

The purpose for reasoning, such as it is described, is to proceed toward the knowledge of new truth, of fresh knowledge, which eliminates all kinds of reasoning that do not add anything to acquired knowl-edge from focus, like deduction. The intuition that is linked to the perceptive phase of the text gives us a set of hypothetical elements that form a structure to constitute the whole meaning of the text.

Bibliographical references

CALVINO I. If on a Winter's Night a Traveller, London, Random House, 1998, ISBN 0-749-39923-6.

PEIRCE, C. S., The Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, edited by Charles Hartshorne, Paul Weiss, Arthur W. Burks, Cambridge (Massachusetts), Harvard University Press, 1931-1958.

ROBINSON D. Becoming a Translator. An Accelerated Course, London and New York, Routledge, 1997, ISBN 0-415-14861-8

1 Calvino 1998, p. 169. 2 Peirce, 1, 568. 3 «[...] the three essential characters of instinctive conduct are that it is conscious, is determined to a quasi-purpose, and that in definite respects it escapes all control». Peirce, 7, nota 19, traduzione nostra. [Come è consuetudine, le coordinate bibliografiche delle citazioni da Peirce vengono date senza l'indicazione della pagina, ma solo con il numero del volume delle Collected Papers seguito dal numero del paragrafo.] 4 «The purpose of reasoning is to proceed from the recognition of the truth we already know to the knowledge of novel truth. This we may do by instinct or by a habit of which we are hardly conscious». Peirce, 4, 476, traduzione nostra.

182 37 - Intuition, experience, generalization - part two

"At times I am gripped by an absurd desire: that the sentence I am about to write be the one the woman is reading at that same moment"1.

The memory of past perceptions creates a sort of subjective, partially unconscious, data bank that, though, albeit at a subliminal level, actively intervenes to bundle similar percepts and systematize them into categories. The interpretations produced by a text string are built from a historical memory that provides for the progressive comparison of equal or similar text string and, if applicable, assimilated into the previous perceptions and interpretations. The reoccurrence of such associations is what produces habit, generalization of experience and the attempt to hoist a bundle of experiences to the status of norm (regularity):

Habits have grades of strength varying from complete dissociation to inseparable association. These grades are mixtures of promptitude of action, say excitability and other ingredients not calling for separate examination here. The habit-change often consists in raising or lowering the strength of a habit. Habits also differ in their endurance (which is likewise a composite quality)2.

The experienced reader reads guided by interpretive habit, thanks to which his reading can proceed speedily following general norms of regularity, until it does not stumble in an area of marked text, in dangerous waters requiring visual navigation, particular attention in order to be able to undertake specific aesthetical and interpretive peculiarities. Here habit does not answer the reader's interpretive purpose, so one has to compensate for that by a fresh use of ad hoc analytic application. As you can see from the diagram above, habits and generalizations are not a dead end but, as the other two vertexes of the triad, communicate with each of the other elements. We have seen that instinctive perception gradually evolves into an accumulation of experience, and that the accumulation of experience in turn becomes the formation of habits. But habits, once formed, when they begin to create

183 perceptual regularities and faster reading, are they static entities? Do generalizations have an absolute and permanent value? The answer is no, and it is easy to see why. Experience and habit are founded on the possibility of cataloguing reading and interpretation perceptions. Such cataloguing implies simplification and the institution of a norm (intended, in a descriptive sense, as a statistically more frequent case, regularity) and of a series of modes, of times and of quantities of standard deviations from the norm. As a consequence, in order for a passage of text to produce an alarm reaction in the reader, for the semiautomatic reading system to call for an analytic mode of reading so that it can face an abnormal difficulty in understanding or interpretation, the experience must be deviant from the so far prepared models. This is an element of novelty. The element of novelty, the marked text, calls the attention of the watchful reading system that, after a time of difficulty-laden decoding, accomplishes the interpretive act. At the end, the new element is read and interpreted, and the cycle perception - experience - habit is closed, with the peculiarity that the new perception give birth to a new experience, to which the (old) habit is not applicable and must, therefore, be adapted. At this point the alarm signal sounds and we have - for the necessary passage - conscious, slow, analytic decoding. At the end of such new experience, the decoding of an abnormal text, the habit vertex of the triad is, however, integrated, enriched, because old habit resulted inadequate for facing the new experience, and emerged from the confrontation modified, strengthened. For this reason, the triangular cycle of knowledge acquisition is unending. A reader's experience - no matter if the reading is translation oriented - must be very rich if one demands that the consolidated habit is relatively stable. In a low-experience reader, the accumulated data bank is so poor that the first novelties radically and drastically shake its feeble habits. If the reader is a translator as well, if her reading produces the creation of a metatext of which she is author and of which a second audience will be the set of readers, her experience must be very rich, she cannot afford (in strictly economic terms also) to read slowly and go back continuously on her steps in the light of the novelties in the instinct - experience - habit

184 tricotomy. How the experience of a translator can be defined?

A good translator is someone who has never quite experienced enough to do her or his job well; just one more language, one more degree, one more year abroad, fifty or sixty more books, and s/he'll be ready to start doing the job properly. But that day never comes; not because the translator is incompetent or inexperienced, not because the translator's work is substandard, but because a good translator always wants to know more, always wants to have experienced more, never feels quite satisfied with the job s/he just completed. Expectations stay forever a step or three in front of reality, and keep the translator forever restlessly in search of more experience3.

This perspective shouldn't discourage. It does not mean that translators must constantly feel anguished for the inadequacy of their experiences; on the contrary, curiosity must never allow to falter their attention for the new, for the different.

Bibliographical references

CALVINO I. If on a Winter's Night a Traveller, London, Random House, 1998, ISBN 0-749-39923-6.

PEIRCE, C. S., The Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, edited by Charles Hartshorne, Paul Weiss, Arthur W. Burks, Cambridge (Massachusetts), Harvard University Press, 1931-1958.

ROBINSON D. Becoming a Translator. An Accelerated Course, London and New York, Routledge, 1997, ISBN 0-415-14861-8

1 Calvino 1998, p. 170. 2 Peirce, 5, 477 3 Robinson 1997, p. 111-112.

38 - Assimilation, manipulation, inference

185 "Your mind is occupied by two simultaneous concerns: the interior one, with your reading, and the other, with Ludmilla, who is late for your appointment"1.

According to Rumanian researcher, Paul Cornea, the crucial phase in understanding a text consists in a negotiation of the sense, a process having the purpose of mediating between the reader's repertoire and her new reading perceptions. As we have seen when speaking about the hermeneutic circle, the reader integrates partial, temporary meanings of words, sentences, and paragraphs into global hypotheses to check further as the reading process continues2. The paradox, presented by Cornea, consists of the strict correlation between the meaning of a word to be actualized in a specific occasion and the semantic framework in which that same word is located. To understand the semantic framework of an utterance one needs to actualize given semantic areas of the words it contains and put the other "on hold", but to understand which semantic areas of the words one needs to actualize, it is necessary to know the semantic framework of the text as a whole. Cornea suggests how to get out of this vicious circle:

By acting simultaneously: trying to "guess" the applicable semantic framework and, in the same time, intuitively presupposing the acceptable meanings of a given situation, according to the famous Wittgenstein's principle according to which "a word makes no sense, it just has uses". It is a process of double adaptation: from the framework to the items and from the items to the framework3.

The understanding of the whole sense and that of the individual meaning go hand in hand. But if we give priority to one of the elements over the other, it would prevail over the global sense, since sense is not made up of the sum of signs, if anything on the contrary, according to Benveniste, it is sense that can be split into particular signs, words4. When the reader's activity is at its maximum speed because it does not encounter any obstacles, sense negotiation is so easy and without its full aware control that it is not even perceived as such (negotiation). When the reader's activity slows, it is for some reading difficulty, like an unfamiliar word, for example. Reading can start again only when the word is attributed (temporarily, as always) some meaning, either after consulting some reference, or by abduction, through a conjecture based upon the activation of plausible meanings within the co-text and the context. In strongly referential texts, in "closed" texts, such decoding difficulties can be involuntarily caused by the author, or by lexical difficulties linked to jargons,

186 technicalities introduced to the reader's attention. In texts that are not of a strictly informative nature, those tending to self-referentiality, from the author's point of view decoding difficulties are a calculated part of the author's strategy; he wants to test the reader's capacity or attention status. Both for the conventional reader and for the translator/reader, there are two possible stances towards such difficulties: reaction or refusal5. In the latter case, the refusal of the author's provocation, the metatext's reader is an innocent victim of the process. But in the case where one decides, rather, to face the difficulties, Cornea divides the sense negotiation into three procedures: assimilation, symbolic manipulation, and multiple inference. Assimilation: by this term he means an operation that, using Lotman's terminology, we could define as appropriation from others, a leveling of that element alien to those prevailing within the receiving context. This happens when the semantic context has been realized in a supposedly definitive way, or when some units having their own complete sense have been located and because they are considered useful and coherent within a given decoding perspective must remain without contestable points. The assimilation approach, in a general sense, out of context, can appear as leveling and not keen on the prototext's peculiarities. However, sometimes it is a healthy operation for gaining a perceptive coherence that should exist but does not, owing to a decoding deficiency. The situation regarding symbolic manipulation is far more complex. The reader is asked here not to limit himself to the actualization of the primary, superficial, literal meaning of an utterance, but to discover a secondary, figurative, metaphorical sense suggested by a decoding difficulty requiring a peculiar interpretation to give cohesion to the whole text. Here are some examples Cornea makes. The poet Eminescu says "Up the time's waves, my darling, you rise". The interpretation of waves as "sea" (synecdoche) suggests an idea of infinite, while the interpretation of waves as "life difficulties" (metaphor) sends to existential torment. Since it is poetry, it is possible to accept all compatible connotations, so that symbolic manipulation reaches a multiple choice. The poet Stanescu says: "Nothing is more ambiguous than the straight line". The reader's symbolic manipulation in this case consists first of all in realizing that it is a deviant statement, i.e. contrary to common sense. The reader must then understand how the text is not totally deviant, i.e. what pertinence there is. He can then finish up thinking of a straight line as a "latent state of all possible zigzags"6, or at the concept of ambiguity as relative, and depending on the interpreter, the poet, the reader. Multiple inference is the operation consisting of the simultaneous proposal of interlinked hypotheses with the aim of overcoming a reading difficulty. When negotiating, however, sense on the basis of inferences, a fundamental role is accomplished by subjective evaluations, based of affective parameters, linked to the reader's previous experiences. Evaluation seems to come after sense formation, but actually the two processes are nearly simultaneous. As

187 soon as we have read a text passage, "an involuntary mechanism of subjective commutation signals 'pleasure' or 'displeasure', 'approval' or 'disapproval'; this feeling [¿] is emotion"7. In other words, even if at an unaware level, we judge what we perceive, and we do that on the basis of affective parameters, based on the experiences of affective relation to signs and objects evoked by signs. We do that on the basis of our subjective interpretants. The emotional state preexisting the reading can greatly influence its interpretation, both addressing it in function of the mood, resulting in restrictive, irrational choices, and increasing the desire to continue and complete the reading. Anyway, a "detached" reading, a rational reading prescinding the reader's affective experiences is very difficult, if not impossible. The translator must be aware of that in order to behave consequently. Sense negotiation is "a much more complex operation than it appears at first sight: it requires competence, associative flexibility and reading experience (to overcome difficulties) and, at the same time, the adoption of a vigilant attitude"8 over one's own prejudices, over one's own unconscious ideology to be able to control impulsive reactions and not stray too far from the path indicated - albeit implicitly - by the author's strategy, yielding aberrant decoding.

Bibliographical references

BENVENISTE É. Problems in General Linguistics, translated by Mary Elizabeth Meek Coral, Gables (Florida), University of Miami Press, 1971, ISBN 087024132X. Original edition: Problèmes de linguistique générale, Paris, Gallimard, 1966.

CALVINO I. If on a Winter's Night a Traveller, London, Random House, 1998, ISBN 0-749-39923-6.

CORNEA P. Introduzione alla teoria della lettura, edited by G. Carageani, translated by Romanian by Gabriella Bertini Carageani, Firenze, Sansoni, 1993, ISBN 88-383-1396-2. Original edition: Introducere în teoria lecturii, Bucuresti, Editura Minerva, 1988.

1 Calvino 1979, p. 141. 2 Cornea 1993, p. 187. 3 Cornea 1993, p. 189. Cornea fa qui riferimento anche a Menakem Perry, Literary dynamics. How the order of a text creates its meaning, in Poetics

188 Today, 1-2, Autumn 1979, p. 43. 4 Benveniste, 1994, p. 280. 5 Cornea 1993, p. 191. 6 Cornea 1993, p. 194. 7 Cornea 1993, p. 196. 8 Cornea 1993, p. 197. 39 - Prototext analysis and computer

"Perhaps instead of a book I could write lists of words, in alphabetical order, an avalanche of isolated words which expresses that truth I still do not know..."1.

For many decades the application of computers to philological sciences, and to text analysis in particular, was considered a sort of taboo. This is mainly because a philologist's education - be he translator, critic, professor or researcher - historically has never implied a study of the computer science applications to texts, nor, on the other hand, does the computer scientist's education imply the application of electronic power to specific and markedly humanistic activities like philology and ecdotics2. Nevertheless, I think it would be interesting to finish this second part of the translation course devoted to the prototext analysis with two units devoted to the opportunities computers provide to the translator wishing or needing to analyze the prototext in function of its translation. After the blunders - caused by an excessive enthusiasm for the swift technical evolution - that allowed the first glimpse, in the Seventies and the Eighties, of the possibility to apply computers to everything, human sciences included, even translation, a more cautious stage of investigation began. The importance, in the decodification of a text, of the rapport between its context (a computer, having no semantic competence, can only be used to count occurrences; it is not able to define and delineate context); and, the possible meanings of a word, for the activation of the useful valences and the suppression of those not applicable in relation to its links to the co-text. That, together with the new technical opportunities, gave new strength to the use of corpora for human science research. By "corpus" we mean a set of texts sharing some feature: the author, or language, or time, or genre, or other. The fundamental principle guiding this study is the observation of language - a descriptive principle - in order to extract norms intended not as prescriptions, but as a ruler by which to measure regularity. And, in order to be able to observe language in its living form, it is useful to refer to corpora as constant parameters to be compared with specific speech acts, to be queried, and upon which to do research. One of the foremost fruits of the study of corpora is the compilation of

189 concordances, i.e. lists of words (and strings of words) that repeat themselves identically within a corpus, linked with the data necessary to retrieve them (coordinates within that text). Concordances, compiled manually until just a few decades ago, with time consuming and fatiguing paper card indexing entry by entry, can now be compiled automatically by any personal computer after a preparation and pre-editing of the electronic text. From that a discipline was revived3 known as corpus linguistics. In translation studies, the use of computer and online corpora dates back to the last decade of the 20th Century. In some way, in translation practice reference to corpora is supplanting reference to dictionaries, enabling a more direct and concrete interpretation of the semantic spectrum of each word in its context. Whereas a dictionary provides for an interpretation of a word's meanings, the author's interpretation, and the translator's possible interpretive paths do not coincide with those that are useful in the given context, the consultation of a corpus is much more empirical and ductile, because it leaves the translator (or the decoder, anyway) the opportunity to intuit, to infer possible meanings from the very scene in which they rise: the speech act. In the text analysis in general, a computer, if one realizes the limits of its scope, can be a precious tool. Let us start by reviewing the limits of electronic text analysis. A computer is able to count the frequency of a word's occurrence, or of a string of characters, within a text, and maybe to calculate the predictability of such occurrences by comparing the frequency within a micro-text to the frequency within a macrotext containing the former (the corpus, for example). It is, therefore, very useful for lexical text analysis, and thus also of its lexical cohesion, of intertextual and intratextual references. Computer is also able to calculate the statistical predictability that a word co- occurs with (i.e. falls near) another, still within the framework of a given text, i.e. in relative, not absolute, terms. From what we just said, it appears evident that the person conducting the analysis has a very active role from the foremost stages of the work. Given the huge quantity of data a text can produce through the use of computers, it is indispensable for the investigation guidelines to be clear from the beginning. It is necessary that, before subjecting a text to computer analysis, a firm general knowledge of the work and its author, and of the given work in particular exists, and to hypothesize that the electronic tool may allow either to falsify or validate. In the meanwhile, you must also consider that the first results produced often direct research along channels initially unsuspected while other paths are abandoned, during the research owing to insufficient clues. A computer is not, therefore, able to set up the research, to decide which queries make sense and which do not; but neither is it able to interpret data. Once in possession of a list of a text's occurrences and co-occurrences, and

190 of the corresponding coordinates, the translator must be able to say what data are really meaningful. Methodological criteria in this sense are not absolute, they vary according to the precise circumstances of the individual analyses. Are those words that recur oftenest most important or are the rarest? In classical philology there is the notion of hapax legomenon, defined as "a form recurring only once in the given text or corpus"4. The term rose because usually a rare form is considered particularly precious and, of course, a hapax is all the more precious when the corpus containing it is vast. A hapax exists only in presence of many other frequently used words. Shannon and Weaver talk about inverse proportion between predictability/informativeness. Translated into simple terms, and applied to what interests a translator dealing with translation-oriented text analysis most, one can say that in a text, the greater the chance of finding a word in a given position, the less significant is that presence. It is another way to look at the question of the markedness of a speech act that we have so often dealt with during this course. The reasoning is very similar to Shklovsky's on "defamiliarization" or "making strange", the breaking of perceptual automatism. In the 1920s Viktor Shklovsky, Russian Formalist, realized the importance, in text perception, of breaking the routine, of examining an object according to an unprecedented point of view5. An unmarked text passage, as we would call it today, i.e. a non defamiliarizing text passage, is perceived as if its form were secondary, and the reader is induced to automatically tune in on informative contents, denotative contents, without caring for expressive modes. A marked text, on the contrary, i.e. a defamiliarizing text, providing obstacles to "normal" perception, automatic perception, draws the reader's attention to the form, that in this way, just because it is patently obvious and alters the text's perception, becomes integral part of its contents.

Bibliographical references

CALVINO I. If on a Winter's Night a Traveller, London, Einaudi, 1979.

LANA M. Testi stile frequenze, in Lingua letteratura computer, edited by Mario Ricciardi, Torino, Bollati Boringhieri, 1996, ISBN 8833909905.

LANA M. L'uso del computer nell'analisi dei testi. Scienze umane e nuove tecnologie, Milano, Franco Angeli, 1994, ISBN 8820488701.

LANCASHIRE I, Using TACT with Electronic Texts. A Guide to Text-Analysis Computing Tools, New York, The Modern Language Association of America, 1996, ISBN 0873525698.

191 ORLANDI T. Informatica umanistica, Roma, La Nuova Italia Scientifica, 1990, ISBN 8843008870.

SHANNON C. E., WEAVER W. The Mathematical Theory of Communication, Urbana (Illinois), University of Illinois Press, 1949.

SHKLOVSKY, V. B. O teorii prozy, Moskva, Federacija, 1929. Teoria della prosa, translation by C. G. de Michelis and R. Oliva, Torino, Einaudi, 1976. Theory of prose, translated by Benjamin Sher with and introduction by Gerald R. Bruns. 1st American edition, Elmwood Park (Illinois), Dalkey Archive Press, 1990, ISBN 0916583546.

1 Calvino 1979, p. 189. 2 Textual philology. From the Greek ekdosis, edition. 3 Corpus linguistics was born and initially flourished before the advent of Chomskian theories. While generative grammar spread, implying a thoroughly opposite approach - starting from the deep structure working up to the speech act, while corpus linguistics starts from the speech act and works down to the contextual and ephemeral meaning - corpus linguistics came to a halt. The diffusion of personal computers with a power unthinkable before together with criticism against Chomskian theory gave new life to corpus linguistics. 4 Lana 1996. 5 Šklovskij 1929. 40 - Prototext analysis and computer

«... "... an avalanche of isolated words which expresses that truth I still do not know, and from which the computer, reversing its program, could construct the book, my book"1.

From what we just said about Shklovsky and perceptive automatisms, it is evident that, as to lexical markedness, and exclusively for that, the computer analysis of the text can be very helpful to the translator. Usually the translator will be inclined to translate a marked word with a marked word, and an ordinarily collocated word with an analogously standard one. Among the words that are more frequent in a text, on the contrary, there are the so called "empty words". They are mostly conjunctions, prepositions, articles, copulas not useful for poetic or conceptual expression, but

192 exclusively for syntactic coherence. Always being the most frequent forms, this datum in se is not significant. Traditionally, empty words are ignored by researchers. Recently, however, some scholars postulated that they, just owing to their semantic nothingness and easy replaceability (just think, in the Italian language, at "tra" and "fra", "fino" and «sino» etc.), could form, especially if taken as a whole, text strings, identical segments unconsciously used by the author, which could signal a possible ancestral similarity, and, thus, a sort of fingerprint, of genetic patrimony of an author's style. If such a hypothesis is particularly indicative in the reconstruction of the authorship of ancient documents where the point is to decide the attribution of a text to one determined author rather than another, in a translation-oriented analysis it is suggestive too, because one can register such traits in the original and the check if they are also present in the metatext and, wherever they are not, one can decide if that implies consequences on the interpretive plane, of reception and intertextual influences. On the other hand, the presence of very frequent words alien to the empty words group can be an index of textual cohesion. Just think for example of the names of characters or the use in their place - in the prototext or the metatext - of pronouns, of the presence of deictics and their treatment in translation; in the latter case, a general trend of translated texts to a higher degree of explicitness is noticed. Often the translator takes upon herself functions of cultural mediation that do not properly fit in with the translation function and, often idiosyncratically understanding the "translator's mission", tends to facilitate - often unconsciously - the reading of the metatext by substituting deictics referring to a contingent situation (this, here, now, the, one etc.) others that instead refer to a chronotopically distant or indefinite situation (that, there, then, a, the other etc.) In brief, in order to attribute a precise meaning to low or high frequencies it is always necessary to add a human verbal synthesis that contextualizes the numerical data. Then there are words whose high frequency is not statistically significant, but indicates the presence of motives and themes within a text: isotopic networks having great cohesive significance even if not ranging among the rare occurrences. It is, therefore, important to check their presence even in the metatext. There are not, thus, exact universal rules for the interpretation of raw machine data: even the researcher equipped with powerful tools for exact measurements must use his scientific creativity in order to avoid being mislead by supposed objective truths. One of the most widespread programs for text analysis is called TACT and is freely available in the internet to all researchers and people not using it for commercial purposes. This simple program can work with text file in .txt format with line break. The TACT program is one of the most widespread in

193 the universities all over the world. It is not easy to use, to learn to use it in a profitable manner requires some familiarity with computers as they were before the advent of user-friendly interfaces. It functions in DOS environments, and in a sense it ignores Windows. One of the data obtainable with TACT and other similar programs is the type/token ratio, i.e. among types of word and their occurrences. If all the word of a text are ordered in an alphabetic order, one realizes that some words are repeated, while others appear only once. Imagine recording the repeated words on the same line, the number of the lines indicates the types (different words), while the total number of words in a corpus is expressed by occurrences or tokens: . If a man is to do something more than human, he must have more than human powers. . In this microtext there are 14 types and 17 tokens, because the words "human", "more" and "than" are repeated twice: a do have he human human If is man more more must powers something than than to A subsequently obtained given is the type/token ratio. The higher this ratio, the more lexically complex the text, rich, and, on the contrary, the lower the ratio, the more words repeat themselves and the lower lexical complexity. Another obtainable given is the collocation of word in the co-text, choosing how long the co-text sample must be. All obtained data must be anyway related to the dimensions of the reference text, because, of course, the smaller the text, the less significant the correspondent statistics. The consultation of corpora instead of dictionaries is not a quick or comfortable operation, on the contrary, it can require a good deal of time. It is the result which is more satisfactory, because it gives a more precise and concrete idea about the meaning of a word or sentence. As to English language, the greatest corpus available to the public is the British National Corpus, at the URL:

194 http://firth.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/ From here you can do queries knowing you can count of a set of texts spanning from the English language classics to oral texts recorded for the radio. As to Italian language, (but many more languages are represented, Latin included), one of the widest corpora is Wordtheque, at the address: http://www.wordtheque.com In both cases, the retrieved word refers to the text from which it was extracted, with data regarding the author and the publication. That allows the person consulting the corpus to draw her conclusions as to the reliability degree of the occurrence and the kind of usage register. To go more thoroughly into the matter of the last two units, refer to the books listed among the references. Those who have followed this course will be welcome to the third part, devoted to the production of the metatext.

Bibliographical references

CALVINO I. If on a Winter's Night a Traveller, London, Einaudi, 1979.

LANA M. Testi stile frequenze, in Lingua letteratura computer, edited by Mario Ricciardi, Torino, Bollati Boringhieri, 1996, ISBN 8833909905.

LANA M. L'uso del computer nell'analisi dei testi. Scienze umane e nuove tecnologie, Milano, Franco Angeli, 1994, ISBN 8820488701.

LANCASHIRE I, Using TACT with Electronic Texts. A Guide to Text-Analysis Computing Tools, New York, The Modern Language Association of America, 1996, ISBN 0873525698.

ORLANDI T. Informatica umanistica, Roma, La Nuova Italia Scientifica, 1990, ISBN 8843008870.

SHANNON C. E., WEAVER W. The Mathematical Theory of Communication, Urbana (Illinois), University of Illinois Press, 1949.

195 1 Calvino 1979, p. 189.

1 - Text re-creation

"[...] words [...] are in and of themselves metaphorical and therefore imprecise, and cannot be imagined without ornament"1.

In this course, the translation process is dealt with in stages, those in which it is usually divided. After a general review of problems and terminology in the first part, in the second we examined perception, assimilation, and interpretation of the prototext from various aspects. In this third part, we deal with the next stage, in which the mental construction deriving from interpretation seeks an outer realization. In this actualization stage, it is possible to outline two sub-stages from close- up range. One outline is aimed at expression, the other at cohesion. The translator, having finished her interpretive work, has two needs: first, to externalize the set of impressions caused by the text perception, translate into speech acts the mental material produced by contact with the prototext; second, to make this product coherent within itself, i.e. transform a set of speech acts into a text (the metatext). First in a somewhat unaware way a realization, as such, is formed: a sort of unorganized voice, like a chimney flue hosting the smoke rising from a fire out of strictly physical reasons, by draft, by being pulled upwards by heat etc. Secondly, this smoke signals - not necessarily belonging to a semiotic system, to a smoke signal code that renders them intelligible - are transformed, from voices isolated from context, into a coherent discourse. The reason why the two stages differ from one another is very simple. We know that interpretation concerns a whole text, not single words. The interpretation of a speech act varies according to the context in which it is inserted. But the notion "context" implies a degree of elasticity in the delimitation of concrete contexts considered in single speech acts. Depending on the time available for carrying out a specific translation work, and on the need for interpretive exploration felt by the client or the translator or both, the context considered can vary from a few words to the whole universe of meaning. As an example, let us consider the case of a simultaneous interpreter, maybe the one in which the time factor most cruelly demanding. In the best

196 hypothesis, before starting the mediation work, the interpreter is informed generally about the subject of the speeches she will have to orally translate. Consequently the interpreter can tune in on the activation of the senses relevant to that subject and tune out the senses presumably non relevant. Apart from this general briefing, the interpreter does not have tools for deep analysis, because the expression of her translation effort often must start even before being able to examine (perhaps "catch a glimpse of" would be better) the prototext as a whole. The context the simultaneous interpreter can consider for the formulation of the metatext is minimal, and the possibility for a re-creation of the metatextual cohesion is minimal too. If we follow a conference or convention through earphones and less than perfectly grammatical, lexical or syntactically cohesive sentences reach our ears among the various elements, we are willing to tolerate these little inconveniences from the start in view of the speed with which the core of the speaker's message is conveyed. An opposite example, from some points of view, is that of the philologist preparing the critical edition of a classical text. In this case, time at her disposal abounds. The contextual elements considered span texts that the author might have consulted, or to whose influence he might have undergone, historical facts the author might have known, philosophical doctrines that might have influenced him and so on. Not only: the interpretation of the single elements of the whole text can be later reviewed in the light of new conjectures activated by connections between texts made after the initial drafting of the critical edition. What is the difference between these two cases, let alone the pragmatic or contingent differences in terms of translation process? The difference lies in the dimension of the units the prototext is divided into. We stated at the beginning, "interpretation concerns a whole text, not single words". That is to say, interpretation implies the delimitation, although unwitting, of a text, a context, referring to which interpretation is made. In physics, there is the notion of "quantum". The main feature of this element is that it is a minimal, but variable entity. Something similar happens with the broadness of the perspective used when dealing with a text. Depending on the possible or desired exploration, the minimal entity of considered text differs but only when a "quantum" of text is reached the possibility of interpreting it becomes real. While reading, the process might be imperceptible but, while listening a simultaneous interpreter, it is easier to recognize it. An interpreter's speech is neither homogeneous nor parallel to the speaker's; it alternatively races and stops short. Following this stop-and-go, and its intervening pauses, whether phonically amortized by vocal streams/free-flow and slowdown/accelerations of the discourse, one can realize the limits (beginning and end) of the units the interpreter considers for disassembly in the prototext, one by one, in recoding. The segment following the procedure - nearly absent in the simultaneous

197 interpreter for contingent causes, but very significant in the case of written translation - transforms the product of the primary elaboration into a text. Every culture expresses itself in the form of the texts that are produced in that culture. In a sense, every text is a translation of the culture it is born from, it is an actualization of its culture, as incomplete as any other translation. Any text enriches the context in which it is published because it contains new elements, i.e. alien elements. The innovative contribution of a text consists of the ingredients that differ from what is implicit in the receiving culture. If a text comes from an interlingual translation, it often also originates from a geographically or politically different culture. A translator, mediator between two cultures, when choosing the translation strategy decides the degree a text must adapt to the culture and how much a culture must adapt to the text it receives. The only fixed point is that, from the linguistic point of view, the text must be adapted to the receiving culture: for this reason the translator is consulted. (But this point is not rigid because an undetermined portion, large or small, of the metatext can be preserved in the original language.) As in dreams, there is first a personal recollection of the memory and the impressions (primary elaboration), a personal record not shareable because no other is able to understand the syntax of what is told by the dreamer, unless it is followed by a secondary elaboration transforming such unshaped material in a cohesive text, recountable outside, so it is in translation, after the primary mental elaboration the transformation into text occurs. Besides the natural code of the metatext, the degree of adaptability of the text is variable, depending on whether an adequacy or acceptability approach is preferred. The difference lies in the way such secondary elaboration occurs. Having to manipulate mental material produced by elaboration of the prototext to make a cohesive text of it, in the adequacy approach the text produced satisfies criteria of maximum prototext description. The metatext, although readable, announces explicitly its identity as metatext, and has a subordinate role regarding the prototext, of which it is a sort of satellite. In the acceptability approach, the text produced satisfies the criteria of maximum readability. Tending to hide its identity as a translated text, acceptable translation tries to disguise itself as original, re-creation occurs according to the canons of the receiving culture.

Bibliographical references

MARÍAS J. Negra espalda del tiempo, Punto de lectura, 2000 (original edition 1998), ISBN 84-663-0007-7.

1 Marías 2001, p. 8. "[...] la palabra [...] es en sí misma metafórica y por ello imprecisa, y

198 además no se concibe sin ornamento [...]". Marías 2000, p. 10.

2 - Ideology of consciousness and consciousness of ideology

"[...] language can't reproduce events and shouldn't attempt to [...]"1.

Some of the works of Mihaìl Mihàjlovich Bahtìn have been published signed with the name V. N. Voloshinov, in which he points out that, presumably, would not have been compatible with the ideology expressed with his other name, with which he is world-famous. In one of these, titled Freudism and modern movements of philosophical and psychological thought, we find some interesting points to stimulate a discussion of the problems tied to the passage from internal mental language to verbal expression. In the translation process, the verbal text of the prototext is absorbed and interpreted by the translator. Bahtìn explains that this means giving an ideological imprint to that text:

Conscious individual experience is already ideological and so from the scientific point of view is not a primary, undismountable reality: rather, it is already a specific ideological elaboration of what exists. The most confused content of a savage's consciousness and the most perfect work of culture are just the two extreme links in the same chain of ideological creativity. Between them there is a whole series of uninterrupted steps and passages. The clearer my idea, the closer to the formalized products of scientific creativity. Moreover, my idea will not be able to reach a conclusive clarity if I don't find an exact verbal formulation for it2.

What Bahtìn calls "an idea", some could argue, has nothing to do with the translator's activity. She works with a prototext, but has no need to express her own ideas, on the contrary, she is asked not to express her own ideas but translate the ideas already formulated by the author in another language. This argumentation is undoubtedly valid, but we shouldn't forget that the prototext is first absorbed then reformulated by the translator; the author's ideas, then, and his ideology, before being put into words are interpreted and re-ideologized by her. There is a stage, just before their verbalization, in which

199 Bahtìn's statement about ideas is tailored to the translator's activity. "Any man's verbal expression is a little ideological construct"3 states Bahtìn, and such a statement finds solid basis both in the Freudian theory about the unconscious, which inspires the Russian researcher in this occasion, and in Peirce's theory of the interpretant. If any perception is an interpretation, we need take no further logical passages to say that any perception is ideology: a personal ideology, distinct from those proclaimed by philosophers and politicians. In the Seventies there was a slogan used that said "what is personal is politic as well": people wanted that a person's private life, his ideology about interpersonal relationships, be considered on the same plane as proclaimed, "political" ideology. On this track many movements were developed - like Feminism - that tried to transfer some principles - in the case of Feminism parity, equality, justice - from the political to the personal, family plane. Something similar is held by Bahtìn when he proposes calling" the inner and outer language that permeates all our behavior"4 "private ideology", or "concrete ideology", or "everyday ideology" [zhitejskaja ideologija]. The conflicts between conscious and unconscious mind described by psychoanalysis are nothing but conflicts between inner and outer language, i.e. conflicts about concrete ideology. In Bahtìn's view, such conflicts are ideological and not spiritual because they don't go merely beyond consciousness, they go beyond the individual, reflecting his belonging to a given social class. Bahtìn finds the moral aspect in Freud's theory that is hidden between the lines (for example, the critic of homosexuality,

Content and composition of unofficial layers of private ideology (i.e. in Freud's opinion the content and composition of the unconscious) are conditioned by the time and social class in the same measure as its "censored" layers and the system of formalized ideology (moral, law, world vision)5.

There is some distance between official and unofficial consciousness: the larger the hiatus between personal ideology and that prevailing in society, the more difficult the transformation of inner language into outer language, i.e. to put ideas into words. Transposing this principle on the plane of translation, consequences are self-evident. We said that a text's translation is translation of a culture (expressed by that text) into another culture (in the terms in which the text can be understood by the receiving culture). That implies a change of implicit, unconscious ideology in the passage to the new language at two levels:

 The unaware expression of the author's unconscious, implicit in the prototext, is translated into/substituted by/added to the translator's private ideology;

200  The expression of the ideology of the source culture (implicit feature of the prototext) is translated into/substituted by/added to the expressive potential of the ideology of the receiving culture (implicit feature of culture, elements of the unsaid present in any text belonging to a given culture).

This is a fundamental point in the translation process that is seldom dealt with, maybe in part because of its unsaid nature, its often unconscious element. It is the most important point to be made. Another fundamental element is the part of the two preceding bulleted paragraphs highlighted in bold. How are the two ideologies - the individual's and the culture's -treated in the translation process? Is there an ideological overlap of the two cultures, and consequently redundancy and the creation of a metatext itself wears traces of the travail that generated it like a sort of historical album? If an ideology is substituted for another and, in such a case, is the substitution transparent (the reader is informed) or hidden (the reader thinks he is dealing with the prototext's ideology)? If one ideology is translated into the other, is its supposed ideological homologue searched for in the receiving culture? The first step to gain some control over all these phenomena is the acknowledgement, by the translator, of the role played by her unconscious - personal and political -in the translation process and, in particular, in the process of text production, generation.

Bibliographical references MARÍAS J. Negra espalda del tiempo, Punto de lectura, 2000 (original edition 1998), ISBN 84-663-0007-7. VOLOSHINOV V. N. [BAHTIN M. M.] Frejdizm i sovremennye napravlenija filosofskoj i psihologičeskoj mysli [Freudism and modern movements of philosophical and psychological thought, in Frejdizm [Freudism], edited by V. Mahlin, Moskvà, Labirint, 1993, ISBN 5-87604-013-4. Original edition: Moskvà 1927.

1 Marías 2001, p. 7. «[...] la lengua no puede reproducir los hechos ni por lo tanto debería intentarlo [...]» Marías 1998 (2000), p. 9. 2 Vološinov 1993, p. 86. 3 Vološinov 1993, p. 87. 4 Vološinov 1993, p. 87. 5 Vološinov 1993, p. 88.

201 3 - Transformation patterns

"The entry in that dictionary, after not explaining any of this-I discovered it some time later- concluded: [...]"1.

The study of the transformation of thought into language has always been the main focus of a wide range of researchers. While studying the analysis process, on which we dwelled in the second part of this course, has the evident advantage of dealing with a concrete object - the text - from which inferences are gathered that lead to the formation of thoughts and links, studying the synthesis process, with which we are now dealing, implies the difficulty of discussing an invisible object, not easily objectifiable: thought, sense. One research trend, wishing to describe the process of synthesis for its hypothetic use in machine translation in objective terms, takes its cue from the Homskian2 theory in order to describe the passage from sense to text as a pure transformation, without going into details as far as the thought formation is concerned, with all the psychological consequences that such an approach would imply. The main advocate of such approach is the Russian researcher, French first, and then Canadian by adoption, Igor´ Aleksàndrovič Mel´čùk. The part of Mel´čuk's thought that interests us here, from the huge quantity published by this linguist, is relatively tiny and concerns what the researcher calls "sense<=>text system". Our interest is merely theoretical because, as we'll see, Mel´čuk's system is based on the notion of "synonym" and "synonymic paraphrase", which finds a very little practical applicability to the reality of translation. The main thesis is as follows:

Natural language is a peculiar type of transformer reprocessing given sense into corresponding texts and given texts into corresponding senses3.

The notion of "sense" is limited to its informational aspect, and forcefully ignores all the sphere of connotation and meaning nuances. At the basis of such conviction is the notion of "meaning equality " [ravnoznačnost´], and at

202 the center of Mel´čùk's interests is "synonymic transformation" of one text into another text "of equal meaning". Such an attitude implies some limitations, which the Russian researcher himself acknowledges:

meaning equality must be understood within the limits of a given conventional precision: we have the right to agree to ignore sense nuances that are too subtle for our objectives4.

It is clear that such a way of dealing with the study of meaning and its transformation into text is, by approach, close to the notion of translation: the very notion of "sense" is defined on the basis of the notion of "translation", even if by "translation" we mean something very simplified when compared to what we have come to understand it as in this course:

for us sense is inextricable from synonymic paraphrase, particularly from translation (which is simply an interlingual periphrasis). Such view of sense is very outdated, for example, compared to R. O. JAkobson: "The signifier is what is perceived, while signified is what is understood or, ion more concrete and operative terms, what is translated"(Jakobson 1959, p. 62)5.

The model is, therefore, simplified, but the advantage of such simplification lies in its applicability, in its operational functionality. The main purpose of the research on the sense<=>text model lies in the taxonomical classification of the modes of transformation so as to provide an objective logical descriptions of individual shifts that a computer can accept as an input. Returning to Chomsky's theory-contemplating a competence that is the single speaker's expressive potential and a performance that is the actual linguistic practice of that speaker in a concrete situation-, Mel´čùk contents himself, for the time being, with being able to make a computer work on competence. In other words, the aim is not to have computers translate real sentences, speakers' speech acts, texts that a translator encounters in her everyday practice. It is, by contrast, to try and transform normal, regular sentences, formed according to acquired norms and not deviating from these by any formal exception. The description of sense-text correspondences must incorporate, in Mel ´čùk's opinion, three components: 1) an inventory of the elementary meaning units (semes) and the rules for their combination into more complex sense units (semantic representations); 2) an inventory of the elementary text units (morphs) and the rules for their combination into more complex text units (composed words, word combinations, sentences);

203 3) rules for comparing every sense unit against the corresponding text units6. One of the problems with Mel´čùk's theory lies in the presumption of describing "passages from complex senses (obtained through combination operations) to equally complex texts [...]"7, while we know that the thought generating a text is more complex than the text. First, inner language, "mentalese" in other words, is much faster than external verbal language, and it is impossible for the actualizer -writer/speaker- to be able to produce text at the speed it is produced. Second, the organization of verbal language is linear. Words are combined according to the rules active on the syntagmatic axis and selected according to the rules active on the paradigmatic axis. From this junction, a "line" of speech is born. Mental language is, on the contrary, closer to a hypertext than to a text: it contains links beyond physical contiguity (preceding word, following word) or logical connection (affinity of function, sense, sound, etc.). It also implies at first glance arbitrary links of a mnemonic or affective character, free associations, sudden fulgurations. Third, we know that information theory always indicates the presence of a loss in every communication act. Mel´čùk's theory, speaking of complex thought matching an equally complex text, does not allow for the loss implied in thought verbalization, simplifying also in this sense. Like in Chomsky's theory, Mel´čùk's as well divides into two main elements: a linguistic part, that informs on the functioning of a language in a both descriptive and prescriptive sense, and an algorithmic part, in which mechanisms or procedures are devised that serve for making use of information about language. "Algorithm" is a technical term of mathematics deriving from the Western distortion of the name of the VIII Century Arab mathematician al-Khuwarizmi. It is a procedure for resolving problems that has the aim of sorting out the smallest possible number of rules with precise and punctual indications for executing them. Algorithms are the basis of the compilation of instructions for computers; this is why Mel´čùk wants to create them for verbal synthesis. While Chomsky's system is generative (its aim is to describe text generation based on sense), Mel´čùk's system is transformational or translational:

Un MST [sense-text model] essaie de se comporter comme un locuteur, qui ne passe son temps ni à générer des ensembles des phrases grammaticalement correctes ou à distinguer entre les phrases correctes et incorrectes, ni à transformer des structures abstraites ; un locuteur parle, c'est-à-dire qu'il exprime, au moyen de textes, les sens qu'il veut communiquer. Un MST doit faire la même chose: «traduire» un sens donné en un texte qui l'exprime (voilà pourquoi ce modèle est qualifié de «traductif»)8.

204 We are not going to further follow the sense-text theory, for the time being. However, I think it important to highlight some aspects that I consider important for translation science, that are synthesized here:

 speaking of "putting into words" mental material or inner language as a translation process, which at the beginning looked like a somewhat heretical statement, the more we consider the thought of researchers in the divergent sciences is increasingly appropriate. Mel´čùk has as a major focus what we would call "translation process" from mental into verbal (and vice versa). In this he has a similar attitude to that of behavioral psychologists: he deliberately chooses to ignore what happens in the "black box" of mind and concentrates on the outer results of such functioning;  Mel´čùk's attitude toward the stated problem is admirable on the methodological plane. To look for a taxonomy of phenomena involved in the translation process is a potentially very useful stimulus for translation science. In order to avoid studying a theory that is not easily applied to everyday translation practice, I think it advisable not to use simplified models that deal with a simplified language made only of the most important and best known rules of a language. This is the reason why I do not further investigate the diagrams created by Mel´čùk and used by him to experiment machine-assisted translation. I think it essential to work with connotation, with which virtually any real speech act is dense. But probably one day, when research is able to describe language in greater details, the taxonomic approach described in this unit will be at its methodological nucleus.

Bibliographical references MARÍAS J. Negra espalda del tiempo, Punto de lectura, 2000 (original edition 1998), ISBN 84-663-0007-7. MARÍAS J. Dark Back of Time, New York, New Directions, 2001, translation from the Spanish by Esther Allen, ISBN 0-8112-1466-4. MEL´ČÚK I. A. Opyt teorii lingvističeskih modelej «smysl<=>tekst». Semantika, sintaksis. [Experiment of theory of the linguistic "sense<=>text" models. Semantic, sintaxis]<. Moskvà, Nauka, 1974. MEL'CUK [MEL´ČÚK] I. Vers une linguistique Sens-Texte. Leçon inaugurale. Paris, Collège de France, 1997, 78 pages. ZOCK M. Sentence generation by pattern matching: the problem of syntactic choice, in R. Mitkov & N. Nicolov editors, Recent Advances in Natural Language Processing. Series: Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, Amsterdam, Benjamins, 1997, ISBN p. 317-352.

1 Marías 2001, p. 130. «La nota de ese diccionario, tras no explicar cuanto acabo de contar y descubrí algo después, terminaba así [...]». Marías 1998

205 (2000), p. 161. 2 By Noam Chomsky. Since in this name the pronunciation of the first sound is like in "hooligan", or the Spanish «Javier», the French «haut», the Tuscan «casa», for an easier pronunciation the adjective war formed on the basis of its sound and not of the way the name is written in the West. 3 Mel´čuk 1974, p. 9. 4 Mel´čuk 1974, p. 10. 5 Mel´čuk 1974, p. 11. 6 Mel´čuk 1974, p. 18. 7 Mel´čuk 1974, p. 18. 8 Mel´čuk 1997, p. 7. 4 - Text generation - first part

«[...] la palabra [...] es en sí misma metafórica y por ello imprecisa [...] »1.

The translation into words of the mental content the person writing wants to express is the subject of studies in the field of psycholinguistics, where this stage also specific to the interlingual translation process is called "text generation". Researchers dealing with it implicitly agree on the fact that it is a translation process - within the wider interlingual translation process - and to describe it spontaneously use the word "translate" and its derivatives:

Text or discourse production basically consists in determining, organizing and translating content in order to achieve specific communicative goals. We shall be concerned here only with the last component, the translation of a conceptual structure (message) into its corresponding linguistic form2.

Text-generation researchers investigate the way in which the formulation of a speech act is obtained starting from the formation of the material to be expressed through the intention to express it. In the case of interlingual translation, the text-generation process passes through one less stage: we can consider the content to be expressed already formed since, presumably, it is derived from the prototext reading as described in the second part of this course. We are, therefore, interested in all the stages of text generation following content formation. We wonder whether it makes any sense to so neatly limit the notion of translation. Didn't we see that the total translation view greatly broadens the semantic field of the word "translation"? Does it make any sense even so to state that the content expressed in a metatext is nonetheless derived from the prototext? The most sensible answer is affirmative. "Total translation" does not mean at all "free writing" and, if transfers or semiotic changes originally

206 outside the focus of translation theory are now its subjects, the point is that we have a prototext and a metatext, and the latter is an elaboration of the former. What exactly comprises this elaboration is not specified, but on the fact that it is an elaboration - not an invention from nothing, if this is possible - there are no doubts. Human mind processes language by taking it apart - unconsciously: it's all too fast for a conscious control to be active - into "processing units", conceptual chunks that may correspond to nominal groups, propositions, but never single words3. Word-for-word elaboration can lead to nowhere, can block sentence formulation. In a 1986 work, quoted in Zock 1997, the attention is focused, as an example, on what happens with French sentences containing clitics:

a) il me LE donne (he gives it to ME) b) il LE lui donne (he gives it to HIM) c) il te LE donne (he gives it to YOU)

In the analyzed examples, it would be impossible to go on formulating the sentence not knowing from start what person is the object of the action of giving4. The length of the chunks used by the single individual as a processing unit depend, beyond the complexity of the concepts to be expressed, on the technical competence of the person writing. The more expert and able the writer is, the better she is able to work on extended chunks. A translator, while writing the metatext, is no exception to this descriptive rule5: The more technical experience she has in translations, the greater the text chunks she applies at first translation microstrategies to. By translating a mental chunk6 into words, the person writing projects a conceptual structure (deep structure) onto a linguistic form (surface structure). Concepts are projected onto words, each of which has a grammatical category identity (its part of speech: noun, verb, adjective, adverb etc.), an immediate relational identity (subject, direct object, indirect object) and a larger relational identity (kind of sentence)7. These three degrees of complexity correspond to larger and larger chunks and require increasingly complex planning skills. The content and lexical form of the speech acts produced does not depend on the mental material but only on its base. Expressive "habits", "customs", cognitive experiences that tend to be repeated must be considered.

[...] there is a strong tendency to translate a given conceptual element or structure by a specific syntactic form, that is, there are default mappings8.

207 A first lexical draft of the mental content to be expressed is sometimes realized in this way, although looking for approximate matching between previous writing experiences and what needs to be expressed. This pattern matching produces a first approximate draft, comparable to what Freud calls "primary processing" referring to dream lexicalization. Such first stage implies, especially in the more expert and skilled writers, a second stage of reviewing and adjusting.

Bibliographical references

BATEMAN J. & ZOCK M. Natural Language Generation, in R. Mitkov, editor, Handbook of Computational Linguistics, Oxford University Press, 2001, ISBN

MARÍAS J. Negra espalda del tiempo, Punto de lectura, 2000 (original edition 1998), ISBN 84-663-0007-7.

ZOCK M. Holmes meets Montgomery: an unusual yet necessary encounter between a detective and a general, or, the need of analytical and strategic skills in outline planning, in VI Simposio Internacional de Comunicacion Social, Santiago de Cuba, 1999, p. 478-483.

ZOCK M. The power of words, in Message Planning, 16th International Conference on Computational Linguistics (COLING), Copenhagen, 1996, p. 990-5.

ZOCK M. Sentence generation by pattern matching: the problem of syntactic choice, in R. Mitkov & N. Nicolov editors, Recent Advances in Natural Language Processing. Series: Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, Amsterdam, Benjamins, 1997, ISBN p. 317-352.

1 Marías 1998 (2000), p. 10. 2 Added bold. Zock 1997, p. 317. 3 Zock 1997, p. 318. 4 Zock 1997, p. 318-319, note. 5 Some computer-assisted-translation systems, like Wordfast, do not use words as units; they use more extended chunks. Translators on a case-by- case basis can customize their measure. 6 Some authors speak of mental "images". Some prefer to use generic terms in order to avoid attributing inner language - characterized by many different semiotic codes - an exclusively visual dimension.

208 7 Zock 1997, p. 321-322. 8 Zock 1997, p. 323. Bold added. 5 - Text generation - second part

"[words] cannot be imagined without ornament, though it is often involuntary; there is ornament in even the most arid exposition [...]"1.

Human mind has a long-term memory, containing its stablest contents, the nearly permanent material characterizing the cultural patrimony of the individual; it's a memory that, in computer terms, can be compared to a hard disk: data can be added or deleted but, except in case of serious accidents, when the computer is switched off, data are still there. The mind has another, short-term, service memory; it is a volatile memory, lasting only as long as it is useful, and has an exclusively organizational character. It is similar to our computer RAM for at least two reasons: the first is that on its capacity depends the number of operations simultaneously feasible within a given time frame; the second is that, when the computer is turned off, the RAM is cleared. In the case of text production, such a short- term memory can, for example, organize ideas while a speech act is being organized. Since this memory is limited, many conjectures about the functioning of text generation are based precisely on this feature. The limits of our short-term memory impede our strategic capabilities to plan sentences and, especially in spoken language, they cause mistakes or flaws, like incongruity of number or gender, anacolutha, structural or logical misconnections. The passage from mental content to written text can be described in these terms:

 pinpointing elements useful for discrimination of the content to be expressed from similar contents;  pinpointing redundant elements;  choice of words (lexicalization) and attention to their cohesion (inner links);  choice of grammatical structure/s;  linear order of words;  part of speech;  sentence complexity;  prepositions and other function words;  final form2.

Due to limitations in short-term memory, sentences are built gradually, interpolating execution and planning stages. While one part of the speech act is actualized (=pronounced, written), the next one is planned: "we think while

209 we talk and, while we talk, we think"3. There are many affinities between language and perception: they are both compositional devices, both must satisfy good-form and completeness conditions (in the sense meant by Gestalt psychology: functioning occurs by chunks, by perceiving structures) 4. A fundamental stage for text generation consists in the choice of the words for expressing the message. As Michael Zock, French CNRS researcher, writes, to state that an exact chronological order exists according to which first the thought formation occurs, and then words adequate to express them are chosen, has two implications: thought rigidly and completely precedes language, and thought is completely coded and specified before lexicalization occurs5. According to Zock's hypothesis, though, linguistic coding plays an important role in content modeling as well, i.e. there is a reciprocal interaction between content and language. If the text-generation process is considered in terms of intersemiotic translation from the mental language into verbal language, since applying words to mental content generates a content, the translation process becomes complex, bi-directional, and manifold. If the selection of given words alters the content of the message to be expressed, such selection has an impact both on the structuring of that message, diverging onto paths unforeseen before the start of lexicalization, and on all revisions before the final draft (when there is one; hypertextualization of communication, the highest technical transmissibility of information increasingly limits use of words like "final draft": instead we see more "works in progress"). As we have seen when studying the interpretant and its subjective component, there is no exact, constant or universal correspondence between words and the mental subjective meaning aura or, as Zock says, [...] words cannot be directly mapped on their conceptual counterpart, that is, there is no one-to-one correspondence between concepts and words: a given word may express more than a single concept [...]6.

This implies that choosing a word or a word combination alters not only the way in which content is expressed, but the speech act's content as well. Such a statement, among other things, clamorously supports from a psychological and psycholinguistic point of view the point made, in literature by Romantic writers and, in criticism, by Russian Formalists first and then by the linguistic Structuralists, who revived interest in text semiotics in the 1960s: it is not possible to neatly distinguish form from content, because form is content and content lies in form as well. Natural languages, as opposed to artificial languages, are very flexible. The different components (conceptual, lexical and syntactic) are highly interdependent, each component possibly influencing the others. The advantage of such heterarchical architecture is that it allows for various orders of data processing. For example, lexical choice may precede the

210 choice of syntactic structure and vice versa7.

Bibliographical references BATEMAN J. & ZOCK M. Natural Language Generation, in R. Mitkov, editor, Handbook of Computational Linguistics, Oxford University Press, 2001, ISBN MARÍAS J. Negra espalda del tiempo, Punto de lectura, 2000 (original edition 1998), ISBN 84-663-0007-7. MARÍAS J. Dark Back of Time, New York, New Directions, 2001 (translated by Esther Allen), ISBN 0-8112-1466-4. ZOCK M. Holmes meets Montgomery: an unusual yet necessary encounter between a detective and a general, or, the need of analytical and strategic skills in outline planning, in VI Simposio Internacional de Comunicacion Social, Santiago de Cuba, 1999, p. 478-483. ZOCK M. The power of words, in Message Planning, 16th International Conference on Computational Linguistics (COLING), København, 1996, p. 990-5. ZOCK M. Sentence generation by pattern matching: the problem of syntactic choice, in R. Mitkov & N. Nicolov editors, Recent Advances in Natural Language Processing. Series: Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, Amsterdam, Benjamins, 1997, ISBN p. 317-352.

1 Marías 2001, p. 8. «[...] y además [la palabra] no se concibe sin ornamento, a menudo involuntario, lo hay hasta en la exposición más árida [...]» Marías 1998 (2000), p. 10. 2 Bateman e Zock 2001. 3 Zock 1997, p. 327 note. 4 Zock 1997, p. 328. 5 Zock 1997, p. 990. 6 Zock 1997, p. 990. 7 Zock 1997, p. 326.

6 - Text generation - third part

"[...] to tell what happened, give an account of what took place [...] is, in fact, a mere illusion or chimera"1.

Natural languages, as opposed to artificial languages, are very flexible. The different components (conceptual, lexical and syntactic) are highly interdependent, each component possibly influencing the others. The advantage of such heterarchical architecture is that it allows for various orders of data processing. For example, lexical choice may precede the choice of syntactic structure and vice versa2.

211 Another argument for hypothesizing that there is no rigid chronological dismantling between the mental processing and verbal draft stages is that the order in which thoughts occur does not necessarily coincide with the order in which they are formulated in verbal terms. This is also because verbal language proceeds along a line (words are in sequence) or segment (whence "suprasegmental traits"), while thought is more similar to a hypertext in which every element is related not only to the previous and the next one according to their actualization; but also to other elements which are contiguous for reasons of sound, paradigm, sense, experience, affect, accident etc.

When choosing the thoughts to be expressed, we navigate in a multidimensional hyperspace (long-term memory). The objects of this space are indexed along various dimensions (from, function, part of, etc.). For example, a rose can be seen as a flower, a gift or a symbol, a car may be indexed according to its origin (France, Italy), producer (Renault, Fiat), function (private, public transportation), type (sport, 4-wheel drive), price (luxury, economic), year (old-timer, modern), etc. This multidimensional classification (cross indexing) allows objects to appear in several categories or at different levels of a tree3.

Many experiments were carried out analyzing the trivial mistakes we all make when we speak (slips of the tongue, substitution of a word for another, inverted elements etc.). From these experiments one can try and abductively reconstruct which were the mental processing stages that determined the analyzed formulations. The prevailing view among researchers examining scientific literature about involuntary verbal mistakes embraces the view of step-by-step processing in stages; in a first stage actions or events are located in their outline, then the elements composing them, then again the interrelations, according to a model like this one:

212 Figure 1: the tree that, with its branches, represents the mental processes necessary to formulate a sentence (from Zock 1996). Temporal progression is represented moving from top to bottom. Horizontally the various part of the sentence are extended.

This tree represents the process through which the sentence «When the old man saw the little boy drowning in the river, he went to his canoe in order to rescue him»4 is generated. As you can see moving from top to bottom, from a cognitive point of view at first the two major events around which the sentence is created are identified (the old man sees, the old man goes). In a second stage, the two events are specified in their outline: perception, finalized action. In the third stage specification is greater, and so on, until the details of the final version are reached (lower part of the tree). One of the elements favoring the mixed-generation view (implying approximate but global macroplanning first, while then, the more the time to actualize the single parts into words is closer, single microplannings and detailed verbal actualizations occur) is the presence of elements making sense only contemplating the whole speech act like, in Zock's example, "When". Such a word, at the beginning of the sentence, would be unpredictable and insensible if the writer (or the speaker) did not know the global progression of the speech act, composed by a main clause and a subordinate, temporal clause. On the other hand, short-term memory is too little to allow for the planning of the whole sentence in all details from the time the first segment is actualized. It is, therefore, necessary to set up the sentence planning question like Zock does, in two stages: a general plan in which the skeleton of the sentence is present, and many specific micro-plans in which single components are actualized. When we speak of metatext drafting in terms of translation from the mental into the verbal, we want to give an approximate, general idea. Going into

213 details one realizes that, actually, there is a series of micro-translations that, like shuttles, move in the two ways from verbal to mental and vice versa. After the first approximate translation of mental material into lexicon, the semantic fields of the selected words, together with their syntactical combinability, the connotative meanings of these words for the writing person, the cognitive experiences connected to the use of such words by the subject determine an informational feedback (from verbal into mental) that influences the selection of other words and the completion and/or modification of syntactical structures (from mental into verbal). Both the stage in which the text of a translation is drafted, and the stage in which the metatext is revised, add up to a continuous work of micro- translation from the mental into verbal and vice versa that ends only in the moment when the decision not to intervene on the text any longer is made (when the draft is considered as ultimate).

Bibliographical references

BATEMAN J. & ZOCK M. Natural Language Generation, in R. Mitkov, editor, Handbook of Computational Linguistics, Oxford University Press, 2001, ISBN

MARÍAS J. Negra espalda del tiempo, Punto de lectura, 2000 (original edition 1998), ISBN 84-663-0007-7.

MARÍAS J. Dark Back of Time, New York, New Directions, 2001 (translated by Esther Allen), ISBN 0-8112-1466-4.

ZOCK M. The power of words, in Message Planning, 16th International Conference on Computational Linguistics (COLING), København, 1996, p. 990-5.

214 1 Marías 2001, p. 8. «[...] relatar lo ocurrido, dar cuenta de lo acaecido [...] es una mera ilusión o quimera [...] » Marías 1998 (2000), p. 10. 2 Zock 1997, p. 326. 3 Zock 1999, p. 481. 4 Zock 1996, p. 990-991. 7 - Translation units

«así me llamaba coherentemente [...], sin el acento correcto del apellido pero también, mas extraño, con mi original y casi olvidado nombre, yo renuncié a ese nombre pero lo recuerdo, es el mío»1.

"as [...] clearly referred to me, without the accent on the surname but also, stranger still, with my original and almost forgotten name, I renounced that name but remember it, it's mine"2.

When examining text generation, we realized that it consists in a set of tiny (and mostly unperceivable and above all not perceived by the translator while she is working) translation processes that continue to shuttle from the mental map to the verbal map. At one level there is reasoning, mental language, producing, rather than speech acts, single links to words. At a higher level there is syntactic planning that deals with finding a coherent structure for the words temporarily generated, both to express correct relations between what is symbolized by these words, and to create utterances answering both the demands of syntactic rules of the receiving culture, and of the language in which the (re)coding occurs. One of the recurring motives in translation studies is the definition of the notion of "translation unit", the magic text segment that every translator instinctively (or so it would seem) chooses as the right length for such a complex mental and verbal elaboration. Kirsten Malmkjær, in the Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies, summarizes the situation: First of all, the length of the text (or sense) segment used as a working unit varies according to the degree of linguistic (and cultural, we add) competence of the actualizer, spanning from the single word to whole sentences. And the readability of a translated text depends on the length of the translation unit used: the shorter it is, the less readable the resulting text. But if text generation occurs in the way described in Incremental Production Grammar3, the input coming from lexicon and the incremental strategy come into play at this point. In this perspective, I don't now how much sense it makes to seek the translation unit. There are probably as many translation units as stages in the process, as far as both decoding and recoding are

215 concerned. For example, microplanning has probably much fewer translation units than macroplanning, and the two different lengths are simultaneously employed (on the mental map level). In the case of intersemiotic translation, often only the whole of a given text may be considered its translation unit. Let us think, for example, of a masterpiece like Guernica by Pablo Picasso. To read it as a translation means to think of the Guernica battle as a (human? historical? visual?) text, and of Picasso's picture as a pictorial translation. It would be an equally diminishing didactic approach as one that would induce us to dismantle the masterwork into single compositional elements depicting one or another aspect of the battle: the work of art is a masterpiece because of what it is in its entirety, because as a whole it expresses pain, rage, impotence, confusion, mourning, desperation. On the other hand, there are researchers that, like the Russian translation scientist Barhudàrov, points out that even a single phoneme can be a translation unit, if transliteration is used as an example. Here is an example:

Russian-Italian Russian-English Russian-French

Чайковский Чайковский Чайковский

Čajkovskij Chaikovsky Tchaïkovski

In this transliteration of the name of the Russian compositor in three different languages one can notice, for example, that the initial phoneme /t∫/, according to the different actualizations, is rendered as Č, Ch, Tch respectively, as a function of transliteration norms (or pronunciation rules) in force in the different receiving cultures. Barhudàrov is therefore undoubtedly right as far as transliteration is concerned. Without insisting on the extreme cases, and trying to use more common cases, let us look at a concrete example, from the classic psycholinguistic book by Levelt, Speaking. From Intention to Articulation. Let us suppose we translate, in this moment we do not care from which language, and that the final result is the English sentence:

the child gave the mother the cat4

In one stage the three key elements of the sentence, the three referents, as Levelt calls them, are identified: child, cat, mother. There is no reason to think that the mind works on the three referents in the order in which they are to be expressed, but probably they are among the first elements to emerge in the actualizer's consciousness. When the individual, having chosen among the more or less 30,000 lemma

216 at her disposal, reaches the word child, that word discloses its properties to her as far as syntactic combination is concerned (rules, usage). In our specific case, the word child is a noun, it has a plural form, but it is singular here, and governs a verb in third singular person. Meanwhile, once the referent is chosen, parallel subroutines are activated having the goal of investigating the possible presence of articles, prepositions and parameter values. In our example, we realize that the referent is already known to the model reader, and that, therefore, an article should be used with it. In the instance of English, the process ends here, but that would not be so with other languages like French or Italian or Spanish, where the determinative article has a paradigm differentiating gender and number. In the case of languages that, like Russian, don't have articles, the procedure would be different still. Having settled that the child has a given function within the future sentence, and that its action is expressed by the verb to give, the location of this verb makes its syntactic properties emerge: it governs a direct object (what is given) and an indirect object (the person to which the thing is given). The location of that word, therefore, with its properties, sends feedback to the actualizer regarding the way in which the utterance can proceed. From this quick example we can get an idea of the quantity of translation processes mental-verbal-mental implied by even the formulation of the simplest sentence: if we had to say what translation units were used in the process, there is certainly a stage in which the translation unit consists of only the word child, and others where the unit increments until it covers the measure of the whole phrase. Maybe the emphasis of the debate should be shifted from the individuation of the translation unit par excellence to the study of the stages of the translation process and of the various units involved.

Bibliographical references

BARHUDAROV L. Urovni jazykovoj ierarhii i perevod, in Tetradi perevodčika, n. 6, 1969, p. 3-12.

BARHUDAROV, L. The problem of the unit of translation, in Zlateva, P., editor, Translation As Social Action: Russian And Bulgarian Perspectives, London, Routledge, 1993, p. 39-46.

KEMPEN G. Language generation systems, in I. Batori, W. Lenders, W. Putschke, editor, Computational Linguistics: An International Handbook On Computer Oriented Language Research And Applications, Berlin, De Gruyter, 1988.

217 LEVELT W. J. M. Speaking. From Intention to articulation, Cambridge (Massachusetts), The MIT Press, 1993 (original edition 1989). ISBN 0-262- 62089-8.

MALMKJÆR K. Unit of translation, in Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies, edited by M. Baker, London, Routledge, 1998, ISBN 0-415-09380-5, p. 286-288.

MARÍAS J. Negra espalda del tiempo, Punto de lectura, 2000 (original edition 1998), ISBN 84-663-0007-7.

MARÍAS J. Dark Back of Time, New York, New Directions, 2001 (translated by Esther Allen), ISBN 0-8112-1466-4.

1 Marías 200, p. 139. 2 Marías 2001, p. 112. 3 Kempen 1988. 4 Levelt 1993, p. 237. 8 - From private language to communication

«La sensación de que los libros me buscan no ha dejado de acompañarme, y todo lo que ha pasado a la vida [...] ha acabado por tener también materialización en esa forma, en forma de libro, o de documento, o de foto, o de carta, o de título»1.

"The feeling that books seek me out has stayed with me, and all that has emerged into real life [...] has finally materialized in that form, as well in the form of a book, a document, a photo, a letter, a title "2.

Language, in Wittgenstein's opinion, is a labyrinth of paths. If someone approaches language from one direction, he knows his way about, but if he approaches it from another direction, he's not so sure of his next step, he can get himself lost. This is the reason why it is so difficult to speak metalinguistically. Using language both as a means of expression and as a subject of discussion, one risks completely loosing his orientation. Discussions made within this course run the same risk: this is, in a way, "metatranslational" argument, because it has translation as its subject but it is a translation in its own rights. Their prototext consists, in part, of bibliographical references and, in part, of the author's communicative intentions. Even in this act, the private view of notions, ideas, and readings - valid as

218 private as long as it remains in the writer's mind - must succeed in translating itself into communication, i.e. into a language understandable in the outside world.

The common behaviour of mankind is the system of reference by means of which we interpret an unknown language3.

Paraphrasing Wittgenstein, we could say reciprocally that the common behavior of the others surrounding us is the system of reference by means of which we understand whether the way we translate our private language into communication is comprehensible. However, to understand how translation of our experience into words occurs, it can be useful to address one of our most subjective experiences: pain perception. Wittgenstein interrogates himself about the possibility of conceiving a language through which one expresses her personal inner experiences in a way that only she is able to understand the form of expression.

But could we also imagine a language in which a person could write down or give vocal expression to his inner experiences-his feelings, moods, and the rest-for his private use? [...] The individual words of this language are to refer to what can only be known to the person speaking; to his immediate private sensations. So another person cannot understand the language4.

That is what happens in inner language, that naturally is neither written nor spoken. That is what happens when we feel pain, and we don't feel the need to (or cannot) communicate it to anyone. Because, as the German philosopher argues, even when we describe our pain to someone, the description is a product of education: adults "teach the child new pain- behaviour»5. But focusing, as does Wittgenstein, on the subjectivity of private communication, and even wondering if the rules for private language are not mere impressions of rules, does not have immediate useful applications to the practice of translation. However, it is very interesting to keep in mind that, if every sign is linked to a private experience, it is equally linked to the common behaviour of mankind: it is, in some aspects, a formulation recalling Peirce's triad sign-interpretant-object: where by "interpretant" he means private experience, and by "object" the common behaviour of mankind. George Steiner realizes the danger implied in following Wittgenstein's logic to its fullest regarding its application to practical translation, or translational praxis, as Steiner defines it:

219 After Babel tries to show that there cannot, in any strict or responsible sense, be any such 'theory' [of translation]. The cerebral proceedings which would have to underlie and explain it are simply inaccessible. At best, we have narratives of translational praxis6.

Steiner, however, chooses a difficult path halfway between Chomsky's linguistic universals and Wittgenstein's linguistic individualism. Although he agrees with the subjective character of expression, he realizes that there is a physiological range of expressive potential between "maniacal solipsism and human generality"7, a range within which it is possible to communicate to the external world a necessary or useful portion of private language. It is possible to, however rudimentally, express oneself, even if the relations between subjective interpretant and sign and object are still basically different:

No two human beings share an identical associative context. Because such a context is made up of the totality of an individual existence, because it comprehends not only the sum of personal memory and experience but also the reservoir of the particular subconscious, it will differ from person to person. There are no facsimiles of sensibility, no twin psyches. All speech forms and notations, therefore, entail a latent or realized element of individual specificity. They are in part an idiolect8.

Steiner's multi-disciplinary attitude seems the most productive, and indispensable to acknowledge the contributions to translation science from the philosophy of language, linguistics, semiotics and psychology.

Bibliographical references

MARÍAS J. Negra espalda del tiempo, Punto de lectura, 2000 (original edition 1998), ISBN 84-663-0007-7.

MARÍAS J. Dark Back of Time, New York, New Directions, 2001 (translated by Esther Allen), ISBN 0-8112-1466-4.

STEINER G. After Babel. Aspects of Language and Translation, 3rd edition, Oxford-New York, Oxford University Press, 1998 (1975), ISBN 0-19-288093-4.

WITTGENSTEIN L. Philosophische Untersuchungen Philosophical Investigations, translated by G. E. M. Anscombe, Malden (Massachusetts), Blackwell, 1997, ISBN 0-631-20569-1.

220 1 Marías 2000, p. 259. 2 Marías 2001, p. 208. 3 «Die gemeinsame menschliche Handlungsweise ist das Bezugssystem, mittels welches wir uns eine fremde Sprache deuten». Wittgenstein 1997 (1953), p. 82. 4 «Wäre aber auch eine Sprache denkbar, in der Einer seine inneren Erlebnisse - seine Gefühle, Stimmungen, etc. - für den eigenen Gebrauch aufschreiben, oder aussprechen könnte? [...] Die Wörter dieser Sprache sollen sich auf das beziehen, wovon nur der Sprechende wissen kann; auf seine unmittelbaren, privaten, Empfindungen. Ein Anderer kann diese Sprache also nicht verstehen». Wittgenstein 1997 (1953), p. 88-89. 5 «lehren das Kind ein neues Schmerzbenehmen». Wittgenstein 1997 (1953), p. 89. 6 Steiner 1998, p. viii. 7 Steiner 1998, p. 180. 8 Steiner 1998, p. 178-179.

9 - From private communication to public communication

«Y hasta nos afanamos por recordar señales o signos o ironías crueles o vaticinios no reconocidos de lo que sucedió más tarde»1.

"And we struggle to remember signals, signs, cruel ironies, unnoticed omens of what happened next"2.

The drafting of a text, as we have seen, even when it is a translation, departs from the mental view of what has been read, assimilated, and transferred over into outer verbal language. George Steiner, one of the most prestigious researchers that dealt with translation problems, has made many comments useful to accompany us along our path toward actualization, verbalization of the mental text. The basis upon which any speech act is founded is, in Steiner's opinion, comparable to an iceberg or a plant with very deep roots. The "hidden foundation" of communication is an unconscious associative network, a very extensive and intricate web of mixed and manifold relationships between mental entities and words which, on the whole, constitute an individual's uniqueness. In other words, individuality coincides with that crucible of experiences, and of experiences of experiences, verbal and non-verbal, verbalizable and non-verbalizable, that are inevitably interposed between our urgency to communicate and the result of our efforts. For each word we utter, ten others are miscarried and, ultimately, the image we give of ourselves is the one produced by the surface of these workings, by the tip of the iceberg. The fact that a speech act implies the (temporary or definitive) suppression

221 of many other speech acts gives an idea of the ephemeral nature of communication potentials, and of how misguiding and delusory understanding itself might be. As von Humboldt stated, quoted by Steiner3, "All understanding is simultaneously a noncomprehension, all agreement in ideas and emotions is at the same time a divergence"4. Maybe in this respect it is possible to pinpoint a second degree of metalingual consciousness. The first degree is fixed in the speaker who becomes conscious of the regularities and norms ruling the tool she is using - language. The second degree might be the moment where one becomes conscious of the conspicuous subjective component of signification relations, of the (relative) communicative impotence intrinsic in human nature. We have a witness of this phenomenon in the famous theater of the absurd dramatist Eugène Ionesco, in this passage from one of his journals:

It is as if, through becoming involved in literature, I had used up all possible symbols without really penetrating their meaning. They no longer have any vital significance for me. Words have killed images or are concealing them. A civilization of words is a civilization distraught. Words create confusion. Words are not the word (les mots ne sont pas la parole) [...] The fact is that words say nothing, if I may put it that way [...] There are no words for the deepest experience. The more I try to explain myself, the less I understand myself. Of course, not everything is unsayable in words, only the living truth5.

Whether or not a writer realizes her need to mediate between her private connotations and those she perceives as most common among her readers depends not only on her historical collocation in the modern time or in a period when such considerations were still never made (i.e. before Mallarmé and his contemporaries, in Steiner's opinion). There is a component related to the individual consciousness, too. "[...] more often than not, the active sources of connotation remain subconscious or outside the reach of memory"6. Only the great poets, the genial thinkers can invent words with creative values and innovative connotations. In most cases, we must be satisfied with reusing worn out semantic fields just as we have for a very long time. However,

Private connotations, private habits of stress, of elision or periphrase make up a fundamental component of speech. Their weight and semantic field are essentially individual. Meaning is at all times the potential sum total of individual adaptations. There can be no definitive lexicon or logical grammar of ordinary language or even of parts of it because different human beings, even in simple cases of reference and 'naming', will always relate different associations to a given word7.

222 The translator finds herself, therefore, faced with a distressing problem: that of translating her own private way of viewing sense into words that have the best chance of being understood by most of her readers (the model reader, or model of a reader) in a way that is not too different from the one foreseen by her translation strategy. What does the capacity to attain such a result depend on? Many factors are implied, as it is clear. In the previous unit we spoke about a progression of expression possibilities ranging from the maniac's solipsism to human generality8. The problem a translator is faced with is of the same kind: an excessively 'autistic' approach, that makes no effort to let the verbalizing translation act be understandable, and would have a consequently almost totally ignored text. On the other hand, a text that is too standardized would be free from all expressiveness. The effort an individual makes to set up her communication strategy is based on her experience. Living with other people, observing their behavior, observing the linguistic reactions of many individuals in the face of similar phenomena can be a way to try to penetrate at least a small part of that iceberg. A good communicator, a good verbalizer must be able to see her cultural world beyond her own personal world, must know it in its broadest possible vista if she wants to be able to speak to Steiner's 'hidden foundation' or the 'common ground' of many readers. This is the reason why a rich linguistic-practical experience must be present in a translator's patrimony, a deep knowledge of one's society, an uninterrupted link with the continuous developments in culture and language. Only in this way can she efficiently accomplish the eventual translation act that is supposed to be implicit in her activity, the one consisting of the production of a text. Let us close these reflections with a very meaningful and enlightening quotation from After Babel:

[...] an essential part of all natural language is private. This is why there will be in every complete speech-act a more or less prominent element of translation. All communication 'interprets' between privacies9.

Bibliographical references von HUMBOLDT W. Über die Kawi-Sprache auf der Insel Java [On the Kawi language of Java], Berlin, Konigliche Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1836- 1839.

223 von HUMBOLDT W. An Anthology of the Writings of Wilhelm von Humboldt, translated by M. Cowan, Detroit, Wayne State University Press, 1963.

MARÍAS J. Negra espalda del tiempo, Punto de lectura, 2000 (original edition 1998), ISBN 84-663-0007-7.

MARÍAS J. Dark Back of Time, New York, New Directions, 2001 (translated by Esther Allen), ISBN 0-8112-1466-4.

STEINER G. After Babel. Aspects of Language and Translation, 3rd edition, Oxford-New York, Oxford University Press, 1998 (1975), ISBN 0-19-288093-4.

1 Marías 2000, p. 214. 2 Marías 2001, p. 172. 3 Steiner 1998, p. 181. 4 von Humboldt (1836-39, p. ixxx). 5 Ionesco, quoted in Steiner 1998, p. 194. 6 Steiner 1998, p. 207. 7 Steiner 1998, p. 206. 8 Steiner 1998, p. 180. 9 Steiner 1998, p. 207. 10 - Adaptation - first part

«Los Stone no sólo asumían ser el modelo de los Alabaster, sino que querían encarnarlos [...]»1.

"The Stones not only assumed themselves to be the model of the Alabasters, but wanted to incarnate them [...]"2.

There are many misconceptions and generalizations surrounding the argument of translation and that smother it to the point of suffocation. In the absence of a science to guide translation, generations of battalions of free- wheeling amateurs have been blathering their opinions on translations, applying categories borrowed from other disciplines, preconceptions overheard in a hall and taken at once as inalienable axioms, and similar banalities. As we deal with the part of the translation process consisting in the production of the translated text or metatext, before taking spade in hand to begin excavating the foundations, we'll do our best to eliminate some muddy waters that impede a clean start: adaptation, fidelity, literality, freedom. The notion of "adaptation" is traditionally played against the notion of "translation" when commenting on the origin of a text: "Is it a translation?"

224 "No, it is an adaptation". In common speech, this answer usually means that the text did not (only) undergo interlingual translation, it was also willingly and explicitly manipulated, for example for one of the following reasons: 1) the prototext was long in comparison to the space available for the metatext; the customer therefore has explicitly demanded a foreshortened translation, specifying the length of the desired metatext; one would think that this procedure is limited to technical and informational texts, but I can testify that it is also applied to literary texts; 2) when the metatext target is a school-age public, the publisher takes up a social view (canon) of what is 'apt' or 'inapt' for a child, and prepares a censored adaptation in many possible ways: censorship of sexual references, censorship of (usually only physical) violence, censorship of words that are 'too difficult' (i.e. to pronounce, understand, etc.), political censorship of the current regime, censorship of behaviors considered contrary to public moral, etc. 3) ditto (re. censorship), even if the text is devoted to an adult public; 4) cultural features of the metatext's public differ to the point of demanding a major modification of the text contents so that it is better accepted in the reality in which it will be used; the latter point refers mainly to text of a practical character, instructions, functioning of machines or programs etc. All these types of adaptation are comprised justifiably within translations because, as these, they are characterized by the presence of a prototext or original, a metatext or translation, of a model of reader and a dominant with a hierarchy of subdominants. On the other hand, one can also say that any translation is an adaptation as well, although the various translation strategies comprehend adaptation in very different terms. The basis of the need for translation also alludes to the need for adaptation, for exportation-importation of one culture into another. The need can derive from problems of code comprehension, and such difficulty in understanding a code can be attributed to 1) a low or inexistent knowledge of the code (in interlingual translation), 2) to a different cultural placement albeit within the same natural code (for example in the popular version of a scientific text); but, apart from understanding problems, there can be the need to communicate in a different way from the one originally conceived, as in the case of the difference of semiotic code (for example in the film version of a novel), or of the difference in execution (actualization) of a same semiotic code (for example, the guitar transcription of a musical score originally written for harp). A principal difference between "translation" and "adaptation" does not exist. It can be useful to see, if by "translation" we mean an adaptation, in how many ways it is possible to view the adaptation of a written text, what should be adapted to what, who should adapt to whom and why. In the previous part of the course, dedicated to understanding, reading, interpretation, the 'adaptive' aspect of translation was premature, because an aware or unaware

225 interpretation by the translator occurs anyway, independent of the model of reader that she has in the drafting stage. Here, in the part of the course on text output, we come to the crux of the matter. Translator is the one that adapts herself in another's place or, if you will, is the one who is hired to adapt herself. A translator is called when, in a cultural mediation process, one of the two parties has not enough energy, interest, or desire to adapt to the other one. In the case of the author of a written verbal text, the personal production of her work in many languages is seldom possible, especially in fiction. One of the best known cases, that of Vladìmir Nabókov, who translated his own works from English into Russian and vice versa, originated in the deep author's dissatisfaction with translations made by others of his works, and in the need to see anyway his works translated. Much more frequent, for many reasons, are the cases of readers who learn other languages in order to read in the original authors that were never translated or were translated in a not altogether satisfactory way. When none of the aforementioned possibilities occurs, i.e. in most cases, we have a prototext and a potential reader, and an adaptation of one to the other is needed: either of the text to the reader, or of the reader to the text. What do we mean by adaptation of the reader to the text? All what is comprised in this category can generally be summarized in the notion of "metatext" or paratextual apparatus. A reader may be unable to understand some aspects of the text due to ignorance of some cultural features of the setting that originated that text. In this case, if we work on the reader rather than the text, one can prepare a second text, the metatext, in which information and interpretation keys of the most obscure elements are given. Let us take the example made by Dirk Delabastita in his fundamental book There's a Double Tongue: that of the creaking shoes in Shakespeare's King Lear. The unsaid part of Shakespeare's texts is that, in the Elizabethan culture, it was very trendy to wear creaking shoes. What the modern reader could perceive as a defect is a sign the author gives him of the wearer's sensitivity to distinguishing himself in the most up-to-date fashion (canon) of the day. In the case where the translation opts for an adaptation of the reader to the text, one can imagine a metatext (a footnote, a preface or similar) that informs the reader of this fact (as happens, among other, with the readers of this translation course). (Whenever one should choose to adapt the text to the reader, the text would be modified, and, instead of the creaking shoes, there could be an element that, to the modern model or reader, let him think of a dandy.) Adaptation of the reader to the text can mean - theoretically, anyway - many different strategies to provide the potential reader with information necessary to decode the text. Apagogetically, an interlingual translator who is charged with a version could, opting for the purely metatextual translation, abstain herself from any textual translation and prepare a handbook for the reader to

226 understand the language of the original. As we see from this example, the availability of the model of reader, both in terms of desire and of time, bears a heavily on the choice of the translation strategy to be followed.

Bibliographical references

DELABASTITA D. There's a Double Tongue. An Investigation into the Translation of Shakespeare Wordplay with Special Reference to Hamlet. Amsterdam-Atlanta (Georgia), Rodopi, 1993, ISBN 90-5183-495-0.

MARÍAS J. Negra espalda del tiempo, Punto de lectura, 2000 (original edition 1998), ISBN 84-663-0007-7.

MARÍAS J. Dark Back of Time, New York, New Directions, 2001 (translated by Esther Allen), ISBN 0-8112-1466-4.

1 Marías 2000, p. 134. 2 Marías 2001, p. 109. «Al parecer dos o tres profesores [...] que se distraían furtivamente [...] en aquellos momentos se apresuraron a esconder sus ejemplares bajo la toga»1.

"Apparently, two or three of the professors [...] who were at the moment entertaining themselves on the sly [...] rapidly concealed their copies under their gowns"2.

Two points should result as established from what was said in the previous unit. The adaptation of a text concerns mainly its unsaid portion, i.e. the implicit features of the text as part of a culture. And the fact that two poles exist that catalyze views of the possible attitudes: adapting the text to the reader, adapting the reader to the text. Let us start from the problem of the unsaid. In order to elucidate the problem of the unsaid, it is indispensable to make reference to the notion of "culture", because the unsaid is a very specific, subjective, community-specific, temporary and, on a more general scale, culture-specific phenomenon. When we say "culture", we mean, above all, a peculiar (not universal) way of perceiving reality, a perception that, as we saw in the second part of the course, does not have anything objective. An empirical and simple way to record how reality is catalogued - in an implicit way - in the different cultures is the structure of a newspaper. The news is not represented pell-mell, it is divided into specific categories:

227 national/international/local politics, editorials, entertainment, opinions, sports and so on. In a similar way, there is an inclination to use given categories, within a culture, into which the perceived reality is habitually broken down - often in an implicit way, taking the categorization for granted. Some newspapers devote one page to economy, others more than one and, just for that reason, they don't call them "economy", but divide the subject more specifically into "stock exchange", "finance", "business news" etc. Some newspapers have a boating page; others have one on mountain climbing. In the latter case, a news item that would appear, if there were one, on the "boating" page is published, for lack of better place, in a generic space, maybe with general news, or sports. The reality reflected by these newspapers is the same, but the reading given is different, if only due to the different categorization3. Any text can be considered as being composed of two components: what is said/written/expressed (explicit) and what is not explicitly said/written/expressed because it is taken for granted (implicit). The unsaid is obtainable from the context, i.e. from the culture in which the utterance is placed. The possibility to avoid always saying everything is an invaluable communication resource. Just think of a conductor getting on the train and saying: "Tickets, please!" If he were supposed to explicit the unsaid, he should make a very long speech: "This is a train of the X company. To board, one should have a document, consisting of [..]. Since someone could not have such a document, I am sent, paid, by the X Company to control ... So you are now obliged to [...]". In this intralingual explicitating translation of the message expressed by the conductor, many elements are taken for granted anyhow (just as an example, the notion of "money"). From the above example it should be clear that the unsaid part of the message can constitute a substantial (and often, the greater) part. Different cultures attribute different functions to the unsaid portion of a message. Their implicit content varies according to the varying environmental context. The utterance

I had breakfast inserted into the Italian culture context has an unsaid content concretizable, for example, into a cup of coffee with or without milk, maybe a croissant or bread, butter and jam. The same utterance, inserted into the Anglo-Saxon cultural context, can easily recall different foods: Fruit juice, eggs and bacon, and a coffee that is roasted differently and is wetter than the Italian espresso. As seen in this gastronomic example, the unsaid can make up a really substantial part of the message. Differences between cultures allow whole categories of objects or

228 phenomena present in one culture to be completely lacking in another. When an activity is particularly important, when a subject draws the attention of many people, notions revolving around such activities or subjects are much more refined and specific. In a Mediterranean culture, for example, characterized by the presence or the proximity to the sea, all that has to do with sea life is describable in much more precise terms than in a culture where the sea is present just as a remote element. The fact that a category exists in a culture, occupying a given space of sense, modifies the way in which that population tends to express its concepts. Verbal expression is a cognitive process that, as such, is subject to 'economical' laws urging reuse - as much as possible - previous cognitive experiences. When, for an individual, a phenomenon is implicit from birth, it is often hard to realize that it exists, so 'normal' is its presence. As we saw in the first part of the course, the child (or the adult) that has been speaking his mother tongue forever does not acknowledge the functioning of this language unless he starts to reason in metalingual terms (i.e. starts to study the grammar of his mother tongue, wondering the reasons of a mechanism that has always worked 'on its own')4. A further leap in knowledge, maybe even more meaningful, consists in the study of a language different from the mother tongue: the comparison between two languages emphasizes the differences, and features of the mother tongue once taken for granted are now perceived as distinctive traits, as aspects that are presented in a certain way but could be different, and that in other languages are different. Something similar, as far as the path of the individual towards self- consciousness, occurs with the implicit in a culture, made not only of linguistic implicit features but also of extra-lingual conceptual categories. The knowledge of the workings of a language is obtained from the direct or indirect contact with other cultures and from the acknowledgement of their diversity. For example, living in a system where everything "different" is banned (censored, denied, unknown), one often forms the illusion (experienced as certainty, however) that all the world is equal to one's own system: one takes for granted that all the world functions like her/his microcosm: a sort of parochialism, to put it bluntly. Knowing different cultures means - above all - understanding that one's own classification of reality is not the only one possible, that in other cultures there are not only different phenomena but also different categories hard to imagine from within one's own. Translation is the adaptation between two cultures. I purposely use the formulation "adaptation between" (instead of "adaptation of... into...") because I want, for the time being, to remain neutral about which culture should adapt itself and for what the adaptation occurs. This is one of the keys to distinguishing translation attitudes as a function of the polarization hinted at in the beginning of this unit: adapting the text to the reader, versus adapting the reader to the text. We will deal with that in the next unit.

229

Bibliographical references

DELABASTITA D. There's a Double Tongue. An Investigation into the Translation of Shakespeare Wordplay with Special Reference to Hamlet. Amsterdam-Atlanta (Georgia), Rodopi, 1993, ISBN 90-5183-495-0.

MARÍAS J. Negra espalda del tiempo, Punto de lectura, 2000 (original edition 1998), ISBN 84-663-0007-7.

MARÍAS J. Dark Back of Time, New York, New Directions, 2001 (translated by Esther Allen), ISBN 0-8112-1466-4.

1 Marías 2000, p. 79. 2 Marías 2001, p. 64. 3 unit 7 of part one 4 units 3 and 4 of part one 12 - Adaptation - third part

«Hay una buena palabra española para eso, usted la desconocerá, claro, y no resulta fácil de traducir ni de explicar, como todos los mejores vocablos»1.

"There is a very good Spanish word for this, of course you won't know it and it isn't easy to translate or explain, like all the best terms"2.

In the unit 18 of the first part we spoke of the notion of "semiosphere". Such a view is particularly helpful here for outlining the strategies of adaptation placing them along the "appropriation of the alien" versus "insertion of the alien in one's own" continuum. Using a biological metaphor, every cell in the universe of signification, each subsystem in it, is characterized by a specific culture, a particular mode of perceiving reality. When speaking of a "cell", we use a very generic word; it can refer to the individual that, with her own inner language, is the only possible receiver of a very conspicuous set of communications having the individual herself as sender, but also embraces super-individual entities, from the couple to the family to the (religious, political, cultural, school, company etc.) community, to the regional group, the nation, the continent, etc. From within each cell, all that appears outside its limits is seen as "alien". There is a sort of living oxymoron within a culture because it is a "peripheral center" or a "central periphery", if you prefer: the translator is a carrier of the

230 border culture. Without going into the linguistic translation details, by "translator" we mean, for the time being, any figure or entity having a vision beyond her own microsphere and who is interested and curious toward what lies beyond. Such a border culture induces people permeated by it to act toward a mediation, of a communication between the inside and the outside of the microsphere. Such mediation has many possibilities for its actualization, that can be placed along an axis at whose extremes are, on one end, the search for the alien element in the alien culture, to insert it in one's own as intact as possible; and, on the other end, dilution, homogenization, disassembling, de- connotation of the alien element so as to insert it into one's own culture without explicating such insertion, passing it off as its own, not as an alien, element. Sinthesizing, there are two attitudes: a centripetal one, tending to acknowledge the surrounding differences from alien systems and comparing them with the features of one's own sphere; and a centrifugal one, tending to project regularities, categories, and parameters all around one's system that are active in one's own. The first attitude is constantly measuring the limits of its culture in an ongoing comparison with alien cultures: it is the awareness of the one's own/alien dynamics. The second attitude, by contrast, is not curious toward diversity, is just anxious to apply its own categories to the alien culture - only as far as it is useful or even indispensable -, to homogenize differences to make it seem similar to what one is accustomed to: it is appropriation of alien culture. The alternative between the two attitudes is based on two kinds of factors: one of a social nature and another of individual nature. As far as power relationships between cultures are concerned (superindividual attitude), it is very interesting seeing what the Israeli semiotician Itamar Even Zohar3 has to tell us with his view of the "literary polysystem". Even-Zohar describes the whole universe of literature (meant in a very broad sense: we think directly of the universe of signification) as a polysystem, in a way not very different from what used by Lotman with the notion of "semiosphere". Within the polysystem, the interrelations between individual systems depend on their individual static or dynamic condition and on their central or peripheral position. The more peripheral a cultural system is in relation to the cultural "center", the less self-sufficient, the more receptive to new and innovational (dynamic) situations. The more central and stable a cultural system is, the less it searches for new elements outside itself, the weaker its dynamic impulse toward renewal (static). Even-Zohar indicates, within each cultural system, a subsystem consisting of the "translated literature". Since "translated literature" represents the introduction into a culture of alien elements of external systems, i.e. it represents a potential for innovation, in culturally central systems the subsystem of translated literature is peripheral, while in culturally peripheral

231 systems the translated literature subsystem is central. It is sometimes possible that the position of a culture among others in terms of power relations influences the way in which the very idea of translational adaptation is intended. When an external culture is central, and is considered an important masterpattern, the texts coming from that culture tend to be translated preserving many elements that are typical of the original culture. Elements that, if difficult to understand for the receiving culture, are, however, a very interesting subject as parts of the external culture taken as a model by one's own culture. On the contrary, when an external culture is peripheral, and one's own culture is central, the attitude of the translational adaptation often maintains a very little interest in exotic details or features recalling the idea of distance to the reader: an adaptation homogenizing alien elements to one's own culture is preferred, the alien is diluted and made unrecognizable, the good coming from without is appropriated without feeling any need to acknowledge its origin or the very fact of having imported it. So far we have seen the factors of social and international character influencing the relations of adaptation between cultures. There is, furthermore, a set of factors determining the adaptation strategy based on considerations of individual character by the translator (or publisher). In this we follow the trail of Toury's works and, in particular, his distinction of categories of adequacy and acceptability. When a text must adapt to a culture, there is a clash of textual and linguistic structures. The linguistic system also being a way to catalogue reality, it is evident that there are culture-specific features of the linguistic systems. For this reason, there are two contrasting attitudes for adapting a text: the first sets the prototext and its maximum preservation during adaptation as the dominant, despite its potential usability, or non, in the target culture: this is the more philological attitude called "adequacy" by Toury. The second sets the target culture and the usability of the text within it as its dominant, therefore provides for exceptions to the philological reproduction of the prototext to the benefit of its better readability: it is the more pragmatic attitude called "acceptability" by Toury. Since 1989 Toury's distinction is widely accepted between adequacy4 principle and acceptability principle ("If the principle or norm of adequacy is applied, a translator concentrates on the distinguishing features of the original text: its language, its style and its specific culture-bound elements. If the principle of acceptability prevails, the translator's aim is to produce a comprehensible text in which language and style are fully in accordance with the target culture's linguistic and literary conventions. The two principles do not exclude each other: a translator may pursue both norms at the same time"5 Toury, in a subsequent essay (1993), illustrates the difference, within translation science, between two trends: The first, defined as "source- oriented" (prototext oriented), deals with the translation of literary texts

232 («translation of texts which are literary themselves»). The second, defined as "target oriented" (metatext oriented), has the purpose of creating literary metatexts («to establish target literary texts»)6. The way in which Toury presents such distinction can look complex, owing maybe to the polemic style he chooses. To be explicit, in Toury's opinion the first trend aims at the creation of translations that are not texts (just think, for example, at the interlinear translations helping the understanding of the original that, however, make no sense in themselves from a syntactic or stylistic point of view, i.e. are not texts in the etymological sense of the word). In his 1995 fundamental essay there is an implicit polemic with Popovic and his "creolization" view.

Bibliographical references

DELABASTITA D. There's a Double Tongue. An Investigation into the Translation of Shakespeare Wordplay with Special Reference to Hamlet. Amsterdam-Atlanta (Georgia), Rodopi, 1993, ISBN 90-5183-495-0.

EVEN-ZOHAR Polysystem Studies, in Poetics Today, 11, 1, Tel Aviv, The Porter Institute for Poetics and Semiotics, 1990, ISSN 0333-5372.

KOMISSAROV V. N. Teorija perevoda (lingvisticeskie aspekty). Moskvà, Vysšaja škola, 1990. ISBN 5-06-001057-0.

MARÍAS J. Negra espalda del tiempo, Punto de lectura, 2000 (original edition 1998), ISBN 84-663-0007-7.

MARÍAS J. Dark Back of Time, New York, New Directions, 2001 (translated by Esther Allen), ISBN 0-8112-1466-4.

TOROP P. Translation As A Working Principle Of Culture, 2001.

TOURY G. Descriptive Translation Studies and Beyond, Amsterdam- Philadelphia, Benjamins, 1995, ISBN 90-272-1606-1.

1 Marías 2000, p. 95. 2 Marías 2001, p. 78. 3 Even-Zohar 1990. 4 On this there is agreement between even the linguistic-oriented researchers: «Adekvatnyj perevod - perevod, obespečivajuš čij pragmatičeskie zadači perevodčeskogo akta na maksimal´no vozmožnom dlja dostiženija ètoj celi urovne ekvivalentnosti, ne dopuskaja norm i uzusa PJA [...]». Komissarov

233 1990, p. 246. 5 van Leuven-Zwart, p. 93. 6 Toury 1993, p. 17. 13 - Adaptation - fourth part

«[...] para describir al personaje tomé y adorné y recompuse algunos rasgos físicos de la persona, y eso indujo a confusión sin duda a los superficiales»1.

"[...] in order to describe the fictional character I selected and embroidered upon and shifted around certain physical attributes of the real person, which must have been what led superficial readers into confusion"2.

In unit 11 we saw that in a culture cultural meta-awareness can be or be missing: citizens living in a culture (be it a tavern, a factory, a school, a club, a union) can either be aware of living in a corner differing from the rest of the world for the many features acquired, or can think that all the world is made in the same way, just a territorial extension of customs, uses, and implicit data present in their own microcosm. The two factors having greatest influence on the attitude toward either of these poles in the isolation-communicative awareness continuum are ignorance or knowledge of cultures differing from one's own and the need and the greater or lesser desire to communicate with the outside. If one wishes to, it is possible to trace in the elements of intercultural relations common to interpersonal relations: at one end one can see the autistic trend to be interested only in what is within the group, solipsism, hermeticism. In these cases, alien culture is denied or minimized. With the improvement of the degree of sociability, there are more and more strategies aimed at adapting one's culture into alien culture and vice versa. All members of a group working to make their culture known on the outside and to make outer cultures known on the inside perform translational functions, and impersonate the culture of the border3. Such translational function is not only linguistic, but it is often also linguistic, because each group has their own lexicon, their own vocabulary, reflecting the peculiar unsaid in the specific culture of that group. Meant in this much broader sense rather than the narrower, technical one, translation is a tool for growth and reciprocal enrichment between cultures. Reading a single reality from different points of view hugely enriches cognitive abilities and suggests still different readings and problem solutions. An example can be for a U.S. citizen reading news from U.S.A. in an Italian newspaper. Of course such a reality is read in a much different way as compared to how that reading is done from within, filtered by categories and value systems of Italian culture. The same type of defamiliarization would occur to the Italian citizen reading Italian news in a U.S. newspaper. Such

234 defamiliarization results from the adoption of an unprecedented point of view, and it is one of the main literary devices pointed out by Russian formalists4. The presence of a centrifugal or centripetal tendency in the relations between two groups, i.e. curiosity or appropriation, depends also on the power relationships existing between the two groups. The greater or lesser levels of reciprocal interest is caused both by the Self-view that the group has and on the consideration of alien elements. It is well known that to the Greeks the other peoples were bárbaroi, "stammerers", "barbarous", while to the Slav German populations with which they had a Western border were nemcy, i.e. "mute". The Greeks had a high - maybe not unmotivated - opinion of themselves, so they tended to consider less evolved and inferior cultures that did not have comparable social and political traditions. The Slavs thought that non-Slavic peoples spoke not a different language but, taking their point of view to the absolute, were outright unintelligible or incapable of speaking. In such cases, how does any adaptation occur? I leave it to the reader to decide if it is adaptation of transparent curiosity toward the difference or assimilation. There are also those cases where hegemonic cultures exert very strong influences on satellite cultures. In the present, Italian culture is in some respects lead by the United States' culture. Books and films originating in the United States are in wide circulation in Italy, much more than vice versa. A similar analysis can be formulated observing the quantity of English words used in Italian and vice versa. They are phenomena that, as we see, result in strong consequences also in the way of cultures adapting to one another. The very first translational adaptation of cultural phenomena is preventive, and consists of the expectations that a culture has of an outer phenomenon. Such expectations sometimes grow to the status of undeclared and not completely conscious prejudices. A Russian three-hours film is preventively considered boring, while Gone with the Wind, in spite of its 222 minutes, is generally considered a cult movie. Transferring our analysis from the length of films to the length of sequences, the length of a frame is enough to make the viewer inpatient, as she is unconsciously used to the U.S. canon of fast frames. One can speak of "periphery" or "center" of the cultural polysystem referring to the marginality/centrality of one culture in respect to another one. In the U.S. example, we used a national culture, but similar examples could be made referring to book culture compared to cinema or theater culture, and so on. The more marginal a culture, the less stable it is because of its greater exposure to alien influences. Contrarily, the more central, the stabler. There is a variable degree of innovation in a cultural system within culture as a whole. The innovative character can derive from one of three conditions of the receiving literature: 1. 1. it is still an uncrystallized system, a young culture open to outer stimuli deriving from other cultures; 2. it is a peripheral culture when compared to those dominant on a global level, or fledgling, or both

235 things; 3. it is going through a stage of renewal, of crisis, of emptiness5. An example of peripheral or central collocation of a system within culture is translation science itself. For a long while translation research had been considered an aspect of the wider heading of linguistics. Translation was considered just as a transposition of a text from one language into another (Jakobson's "interlingual translation"). As a consequence, the position of translation research was peripheral as compared to the central system of linguistics. When Jakobson opened the path for the study of translation in a not purely linguistic but more generally semiotic perspective, also including in the basic notion of "translation" transfers of non-lingual or non-interlingual nature, translation has remained a peripheral concept, but relating to the periphery of many systems, not just the linguistic. In this way an autonomous physiognomy started to form. In the last two decades of 20th century there was a huge increase in the production of texts that have translation itself as a central subject. It is not by chance during the same period the discipline has started to look for denominations6. With the new century, attempts were made from many directions to insert the translation notion in the center of the semiotic cultural system: On Lotman's trail, Gorlée and Torop spoke about "translation" as a fundamental notion for the very definition of semiotics. So translation has covered all the distance from periphery to center of the culture of communication. Beyond the many theoretical reasons to encompass extra-lingual aspects in the sphere of "translation", there are also practical reasons7. In Eugene Onegin, Pushkin for example, speaking of the Nevà's shores, writes "tam nekogda gulyal i ya" that more or less, from the strictly linguistic point of view, means "I used to stroll there myself". However, if one considers the meaning of the verb gulyat´ in the culture of Pushkin and his contemporaries, one realizes that the merely linguistic translation is limited. "Gulyat´" can also mean "to have fun", "to have a great time", "to laze": The narrator's sentence therefore acquires new meanings according to the linguistic or cultural approach followed by its translator. It is not always easy to be aware of the implicit content of one's own culture. The cultural unsaid is a sort of collective unconscious (although not universal like the one postulated by Jung), and only a relation with different cultures can contribute to its emergence. A young man waiting for the elevator with his hands in his trouser pockets scandalizes a Russian lady of the high society. Until someone tells her that, in Italy, a male having his hands in his pockets is not considered rude, the lady does not think of clearly expressing an unwritten rule: "when ladies are present, a gentleman shouldn't have his hands in his pockets". According to the power relationships existing between two cultures, the reciprocal interest varies. For example, a peripheral culture is much motivated to understand, even in detail, the functioning of the "central" culture to which it

236 is a satellite. In this case, the adaptor/mediator has an interested model reader, and has the possibility of explaining what is not immediately evident. When, on the contrary, a peripheral culture's text is translated into a central culture, the model reader tends to be much less interested in discovering differences and novelties. In the previous units we have seen that there are two basic attitudes in the relations between cultures: there are dominant cultures that exert a strong influence on the others and tend to be less interested in what happens outside them, or to read what happens in different cultures through the parameters and the categories of their own culture. And there are satellite cultures that owing to many reasons are very focused on one or more dominant cultures and tend to import with pleasure models from these cultures, adopting them as alien elements. In the relation with an element which is alien to one's culture, the two attitudes can be synthesized in this way: when the alien element is appropriated denying it the identity of alien element, appropriating it as if it were born in the receiving culture, the mediator's main preoccupation lies with the acceptability of the element for the receiving culture; when the alien element is imported preserving its identity as an element coming from an outer culture, the cultural mediator's main preoccupation lies with the adequacy of the imported text in relation to its identity in the source culture8. An adaptation focused on the acceptability of the text to the receiving culture risks erasing its identity, the origin of the text, not considering it is an imported, translated text that in its source culture has a precise identity. In this way, all the features of the text that might make it appear different are erased or blunted, and the receiving culture is not enriched by new elements, new categories, new ways of viewing the world. The adaptation focused on the adequacy of the text to the source culture risks making its fruition by the model reader laborious, but, when successful, is a very important channel for importing alien elements into one's own culture, enriching it. All the features and intertextual links of the original are brought into the receiving culture as alien elements, are thus compared with local elements and, as we know, from the comparison, awareness of identity and of differences develops.

Bibliographical references

EVEN-ZOHAR I. Polysystem Studies, in Poetics Today, 11, 1, Tel Aviv, The Porter Institute for Poetics and Semiotics, 1990, ISSN 0333-5372.

MARÍAS J. Negra espalda del tiempo, Punto de lectura, 2000 (original edition 1998), ISBN 84-663-0007-7.

237 MARÍAS J. Dark Back of Time, New York, New Directions, 2001 (translated by Esther Allen), ISBN 0-8112-1466-4.

TOROP P. Translation As A Working Principle Of Culture. Cultural Semiotics: Cultural Mechanisms, Boundaries, Identities. Tartu 26.02-2.03.2002.

TOURY G. Descriptive Translation Studies and Beyond, Amsterdam- Philadelphia, Benjamins, 1995, ISBN 90-272-1606-1.

1 Marías 2000, p. 41. 2 Marías 2001, p. 34. 3 unit 29 of part one. 4 unit 39 of part two. 5 Even-Zohar 1990. 6 Traductologie, Übersetzungwissenschaft, Translation Studies, perevodovedenie. 7 Delabastita. 8 Toury 1995. 14 - Fidelity - first part

«[...] me acuerdo de lo que dije hace mucho, al hablar del narrador y el autor que tienen aquí el mismo nombre»1.

"I remember what I said long ago, in speaking of the narrator and the author who have the same name here"2.

Translations must be faithful. On this requirement there is a general consensus in the scientific community and among translators. On the condition that nobody should get the idea of questioning what is meant by "fidelity", of course. Because, in such a case, one would realize that the consensus is achieved by "fidelity" meaning something vague, generically positive, vaguely corresponding to "goodness". A good translation is always faithful. And a faithful translation is always good. Tout se tient. The question of fidelity is covered in this course in order to free us of a category that does not have any scientific value and is unproductive and confusion-generating within translation studies. Let us start by evaluating its approximate value based on dictionary definitions. An Italian dictionary, under "fedele", writes:

2a. agg., di qcs., che rispetta la realtà dei fatti; preciso: una descrizione, un'esposizione fedele | conforme all'originale: una copia fedele di un

238 documento; una traduzione, un ritratto fedele.3

Guralnik in Webster's dictionary, under "faithful", reports:

3. accurate; reliable; exact [a faithful copy]4.

As you can notice, in both cases the meaning of the word that best matches "translation" speaks about precision, accuracy, conformity. (The legal translator who must guarantee a poorly defined "conformity" of the text she produces for the court in comparison to the original is not to be envied.) Giacomo da Lentini (1250) identified "faith" as "unconditioned adhesion to a fact, an idea" and Giamboni defined it as "adhesion of soul and mind to a religious truth, revealed or supernatural" (1292), while to Paolo Giovio "fidelity" means "conformity to the original" (1550)5. The notion of "conformity", as Giamboni's definition suggests, is metaphysical and subjective, because there are no two identical objects (objects meant also in the semiotic interpretation in the sign-interpretant- object triad), nor precise, scientific, measurable and repeatable criteria according to which two objects can be generally considered as "alike" or "unalike". Fidelity, as sometimes occurs also in the religious sphere, is outlined as an incalculable notion based on self-referentiality, on a reference within a given individual: "the one who believes is faithful", hence "s/he is faithful who believes to be faithful". Put this way, a translation's fidelity cannot be challenged, if the translator declares she has been "faithful". It is axiomatic, it can be accepted or denied, only not discussed; as happens with the faithful as respect to the existence of God that, in the Bible, is defined "Yahveh", or "I am who I am"6. It is an invitation not to discuss, but only to accept or deny (by faith, as happens for faithful and atheists, respectively) or to suspend judgment (as in the case of agnostics). I believe it impossible to define "fidelity" even in a context where distinctions should be easier and more practical, as in the marriage. Where does the partner's fidelity end: is it necessary to cultivate a recurrent, parallel relationship, or is an overt sexual engagement, or a kiss, or a caress (or, in these cases, the definition of "fidelity" depends on the body part implied), or is a mail exchange, the drafting of inspired poems, gifts, smiles, or just the fantasy of sexual promiscuity (sin of thought) enough to end it? As you can notice, proceeding from the first to the last definition of "fidelity" the group of the faithful is ever shrinking, until its virtual disappearance. In the part of this course devoted to adaptation we have seen that as far as translation is concerned one should decide to whom, to what the supposed fidelity pertains. Is it a fidelity to the prototext? To the source culture? To the

239 model of reader (which one)? To the receiving culture? To one of the dominants? To the canon? Actually, the notion of "fidelity" also traveled through centuries in the writings of people speaking about translation without tracing a reconstructable coherent guideline. In the 17th century in France there was a wide diffusion of the so-called belles infidèles, the "free" translations. With an extended macho metaphor concerning the division of women in two parts: the beautiful ones (hence necessarily unfaithful) and the ugly ones (hence necessarily faithful), translations were catalogued in this way too. The "ugly ones" are considered "faithful" because they would follow the phrase and the lexical structure of the original step-by-step. The "beautiful" ones should be unfaithful because they don't, preferring to the original structure the structure best accepted in the receiving culture to the original, and to the original's lexicon a lexicon produced spontaneously. Such a view of fidelity/infidelity, and the preference for the latter, had been endorsed already in 46 Ancient Era by Cicero in the work Libellus de optimo genere oratorum. The most quoted and most meaningful sentence writes:

I translated as an orator, not as an interpreter of a text, with the same expressions of thought, with the same ways of rendering it, with a lexicon appropriate to our language's character. In them I have tried not to render word for word, but I maintained each character and each expressive efficiency of the very words. Because I thought not more convenient to the reader to give him, coin after coin, a word after another: rather, pay him his due in the entire sum7.

From this passage it is clear that the text adaptation proposed by Cicero is closer to the sense of reading functionality than philological precision. All the more so when he states he translates "as an orator", i.e. as a person who wants himself well, and easily understood, and read, not "as an interpreter", i.e. not as a hermeneutist philologist of the original. The notion of "faithful translation" is here considered analogous to "word-for- word translation", but neither is this over-two-thousand-years-old view is the only way to understand "fidelity". In the next unit we will see how this notion evolved in the Romantic period, precisely in Wilhelm von Humboldt.

Bibliographical references

CICERO M. T. De optimo genere oratorum.

240 CORTELAZZO M. ZOLLI P. Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana, Bologna, Zanichelli, 5 v., v. 2, D-H, 1980.

DE MAURO T. Il dizionario della lingua italiana, Milano, Paravia, 2000, ISBN 88-395-5026-7.

GURALNIK D. B. Webster's New World Dictionary of the American Language, Cleveland (Ohio), Collins, 1979, ISBN 0-529-05324-1.

MARÍAS J. Negra espalda del tiempo, Punto de lectura, 2000 (original edition 1998), ISBN 84-663-0007-7.

MARÍAS J. Dark Back of Time, New York, New Directions, 2001 (translated by Esther Allen), ISBN 0-8112-1466-4.

1 Marías 2000, p. 418. 2 Marías 2001, p. 336. 3 De Mauro 2000. 4 Guralnik 1979. 5 Cortelazzo Zolli 1980, v. 2, p. 422. 6 Esodo, 3, 14. 7 Cicerone 1973, p. 33. Added emphasis.

15 - Fidelity - second part

«Soy lo más parecido que queda a ella, soy lo más parecido que queda a ella»1.

"I'm what's left that's most like her. I'm what's left that's most like her."2.

In 1816, during the Romantic period, Wilhelm von Humboldt, language philosopher and linguist, translated Sophocles and Aeschylus. In his preface to his translation of Agamemnon, to our good fortune, he decided to express himself not only on the translation strategy he adopted in the peculiar text presented, but more generally about translation itself. We will present some of his ideas here on the notion of "fidelity" in translation. The first aspect he deals with concerns details of style and expression. It is well known that one of the features universally most observed in translations consists of explicitating implicit details, rationalizing the intuitions left to the reader's estrum. It seems that often the translator feels she is guardian not only of linguistic but also mental interpretation of the text, deciding therefore - sometimes without realizing that she wasn't asked to do so - to clarify the gray

241 areas of the text. This trend has style/expression consequences as well. There are expressive peculiarities of an author, but also more generally typical of a culture, and the translator, both as a rational choice, and out of technical difficulty, can decide to try and reproduce peculiarities or blunt them transforming them into more standard expressions. Humboldt holds that a translator moved by the best fidelity intentions cannot always actually be faithful: because sometimes her idiosyncratic interpretation of the author's details can be less faithful to the original than a trivial standardization:

It can even be argued that the more a translation strives toward fidelity, the more it ultimately deviates from the original, for in attempting to imitate refined nuances and avoid simple generalities it can, in fact, only provide new and different nuances3.

It is very interesting that here the notion of "fidelity" criticized is the one of "imitation". At first glance who could maintain that an imitator is not faithful? But an imitator, just for his blind prosecution of the copy, just for his presumption he necessarily is capable of fidelity, just traces the frame's margin. He doesn't realize that in that way it is the blind faith in the possibility to imitate that generates a 'betrayal'. Humboldt, nonetheless, is not an enemy of faithful translations. On the contrary, Humboldt is favorable. But fidelity must address the "true character" of the prototext, a sort of dominant ante litteram. And to Humboldt the dominant seems the very strangeness, the foreignness. What interests in a foreign text's translation into one's own culture is its identity as something foreign or different, and Humboldt invites us to pay particular attention to such a diversity as an element that, alone, can enrich one's own, national culture.

If, however, translation is to give the language and spirit of a nation that which it does not possess or possesses in another form, then the first requirement is always fidelity. This fidelity must direct itself to the true character of the original and not rely on the incidentals, just as in general every good translation should grow out of a simple and modest love of the original and the study that this love implies-and to which the translation always returns.

Until now Humboldt, even two centuries later, appears to be a pro prototext- adequacy extremist, as compared to receiving-culture-reader acceptability. And maybe the less scientific aspect, describable with less precision, of his theory lies in his very attempt to limit this propensity of his, in stating that - as we could say - even fidelity has its limitations:

242 A necessary corollary to this view is that a translation should indeed have a foreign flavor to it, but only to a certain degree; the line beyond which this clearly becomes an error can easily be drawn. As long as one does not feel the foreignness (Fremdheit) yet does feel the foreign (Fremde), a translation has reached its highest goal; but where foreignness appears as such, and more than likely even obscures the foreign, the translator betrays his inadequacy.

From our point of view, given that at the moment we seek indications for the scientific path toward the solution of problems of fidelity in translation, there is a passage from Humboldt's theory that results more of a stumbling block than a signpost:

The instinct of the unbiased reader is not likely to miss this fine line of separation.

As a scientific criterion, the reader's instinct is really not enough. But here Humboldt goes on in his preaching against acceptability and the obliteration of the other's identity. These considerations on the own/stranger dynamics predate by more than a century and a half - in a still embryonic and not yet recognizable form - the theories of Bakhtìn and Lotman. Even if they did not explicitly name translation, but, more generally, relations between cultures.

If the translator, out of an extreme aversion to what is unusual, goes even further and strives to avoid the foreign altogether (one often hears it said of translation that the translator should write the way the author of the original would have written in the language of the translator), then all translation and whatever benefits translation may bring to a language and a nation are destroyed. (This kind of thinking has not taken into consideration that, apart from discussions of the sciences and actual facts, no writer would have written the same thing in the same way in another language.)

As example of "unfaithfulness" and impermeability to the alien element, Humboldt uses just the kind of translation popular in France we quoted in the previous unit, the belles infidèles:

How else has it happened that none of the spirit of the ancients has been assimilated by the French as a nation? Even though all of the major Greeks and Romans have been translated into the French language, and some have even been translated into the French style quite well, neither

243 the spirit of antiquity nor even an understanding of that spirit has permeated the French nation.

The great advantage, when it is a translator who speaks about translation, is that she also knows the practical aspects of what she says, that she puts her own work on the line. Here Humboldt tries to say in concrete terms how he tried to apply his view of fidelity to his translation from the Greek:

In my own work, I have tried to approach the simplicity and fidelity just described. With each new revision, I have strived to remove more of what was not plainly stated in the text. The inability to attain the peculiar beauty of the original easily entices one to embellish it with foreign decoration, which as a rule simply produces a false coloring and a different tone. I have tried to guard against un-Germanness and obscurity, but in the latter respect one should not make unjust requirements that might preclude gaining other, higher assets. A translation cannot and should not be a commentary. It should not contain ambiguities caused by insufficient understanding of the language and awkward formulations; however, where the original only intimates without clearly expressing, where it allows itself metaphors whose correlation is hard to grasp, where it leaves out intermediate ideas, the translator commits an injustice if he arbitrarily introduces a clarity that misrepresents the character of the text.

Two centuries later, these words are still very useful in referring to the many translators still convinced that "fidelity" means a systematic disambiguation. One of the more recent pronouncements as to fidelity comes from George Steiner, who doesn't refute the notion, but "translates" it in other terms. "Fidelity is not literalism or any technical device for rendering 'spirit'. The whole formulation, as we have found it again and again in discussions of translation, is hopelessly vague"4. The only way in which a translator can be faithful, in Steiner's opinion, is to be fair in the hermeneutic process. In my opinion, fidelity is an equally vague notion as the "spirit" of the Romantic theorists like Humboldt. But Steiner's idea takes us further in this direction:

The translator, the exegetist, the reader is faithful to his text, makes his response responsible, only when he endeavors to restore the balance of forces, of integral presence, which his appropriative comprehension has disrupted. Fidelity is ethical, but also, in the full sense, economic. By virtue of tact, and tact intensified is a moral vision, the translator- interpreter creates a condition of significant exchange5.

244 Steiner indicates a path that is swift, full of obstacles. Valéry says fidelity limited to the meaning is a treason. Fidelity is, maybe, a utopian concept.

Bibliographical references

HUMBOLDT W. von Einleitung zur Agamemnon -Übersetzung, 1816.

MARÍAS J. Negra espalda del tiempo, Punto de lectura, 2000 (original edition 1998), ISBN 84-663-0007-7.

MARÍAS J. Dark Back of Time, New York, New Directions, 2001 (translated by Esther Allen), ISBN 0-8112-1466-4.

STEINER G. After Babel. Aspects of Language and Translation, 3rd edition, Oxford-New York, Oxford University Press, 1998 (1975), ISBN 0-19-288093-4.

1 Marías 2000, p. 220. 2 Marías 2001, p. 177. 3 Humboldt 1816. 4 Steiner 1998, p. 318. 5 Steiner 1998, p. 318. 16 - Literality - first part

«[...] pues non se asemejaba a las onomatopeyas escritas más habituales, todas ellas fiadas a la aspiración de la consonante»1.

"[...] for it was nothing like the customary (written) onomatopoeias, all of which rely on the aspiration of the consonant"2.

"Descriptive and most obvious meaning of the word, of a writing, of a text"; this is how Dante defined "letter" seven hundred years ago. This synthetic, ancient definition tells us a lot about literality, maybe much more than the thousands of pages written on the subject since. But we had better start from the beginning. Among scholars, in the past for the most part, the word3 "literality" has been (and continues to be) widely used. Also in this case it is necessary to decide whether it is a precisely definable word and if, consequently, it can be employed in a scientific debate. Dante suggests, first of all that "letter" is the "most obvious" meaning of a word. "Obviousness" is a very context-dependent quality, also depending on the individual utilizing it. A question can be called "obvious" whenever the

245 person responding believes that the answer is clear, elementary, delivered with certainty and without any difficulty. But "obvious" questions are asked, sometimes, meaning that, for the person asking, they are not obvious at all. The literal meaning will then be obvious for some, less clear for others - here arises an initial problem. Another reason why the word "literal" is not very reliable is found in what Dante says soon after: "of the word, of a writing, of a text". In all these cases, some interpretation can be "literal", but the meanings of a word, of a passage of writing, of a whole text may not fully coincide with one another. By contrast, often the most obvious meaning of a word is the one least obvious within its co-text. A text is not made of Lego bricks, its components cannot be considered immutable, it not possible to disassemble it, or put it away separating its pieces according to form and color and then reconstruct it. The pieces of that huge building game that natural language is have completely different characteristics: they have no finite form, texture, color, or aspect. Natural language is anisomorphic. The debate on literality, or rather, the polemic use of the adjective "literal", is not new. There were cases of denigrating accusations of literality used to accuse cultures outside one's own (measuring with parameters of "righteousness") of materialism. In early Christianity, there were polemics about the "correct" interpretation of the Bible. The Hellenist school looked with suspicion at the Hebraic interpretation of the Bible, considered too literal, attributing this literalism to the inability of Jewish interpreters to view the Scriptures from a spiritual dimension. The Jews, according to the Hellenistic representation, were too materialist, were too keen on the "bodily" meaning of the Biblical text. By contrast, Hellenists prefer an allegorical interpretation. In such a view, if the Scriptures contain elements that are too base or crude, it is obvious (here we are again with the key concept of literality!) that they are there not to be literally interpreted (what is sacred cannot be base, material), but with an allegorical key. By "allegory", we remind the reader, we mean a rhetorical figure according to which a word refers to a deeper and hidden sense. The Greek etymology of the word lends to the sense of "speaking in another way". In the Hellenistic period, therefore, there was an implicit dichotomy literalism/allegory, and literality was defined ex contrario as non-allegorical meaning. The fact that a different degree of literalism existed between the two schools, of Alexandria and Antioch, was not presented and is yet another argument. It is comprised within the framework of the perception of the foreign as worse. This takes us back to the lexical dichotomy of the terms Hebrew/Jewish, made necessary by the need to confound things and mark differences between the origin of the Bible, necessarily Hebraic, and its belonging to a people, renamed "Jewish", in an attempt to discredit them to the highest possible degree, associating them by this name, not to the Bible, but to the

246 character, Judah, traitor of Jesus, and their modern exegetes, incapable to rising above mere literalism of the sacred text because they were incapable of spirituality. The fact that a different degree of literalism existed between the two schools, of Alexandria and Antioch, was not presented and is yet another argument. It is comprised within the framework of the perception of the foreign as worse. This takes us back to the lexical dichotomy of the terms Hebrew/Jewish, made necessary by the need to confound things and mark differences between the origin of the Bible, necessarily Hebraic, and its belonging to a people, renamed "Jewish", in an attempt to discredit them to the highest possible degree, associating them by this name, not to the Bible, but to the character, Judah, traitor of Jesus, and their modern exegetes, incapable to rising above mere literalism of the sacred text because they were incapable of spirituality. In this discriminatory light, the historical interpretation of Biblical events is considered the most literal and deplorable. History is of humans, not divine, a fact that "Jews" evidently did not consider well enough. But not even these polemics based on cultural differences that are so roughly cleaved, can one get have a coherent view of literalism, because one learns that the Hebraic school predicated non-literal interpretation of the Scriptures as well. It was rather a different kind of literalism. The main difference with respect to the Hellenist methods for interpretation used in the Midrash, "the non-literal method of the rabbis"4, lies in the fact that the rabbis generally considered single isolated fragments, not whole texts. In this perspective, the sense of supposed Jewish literalism lies in the fact that, instead of being based on the notion of "text" they based themselves on the notion of "writing", to use Dante's expression. Neither. in this case, can one talk of "word". Let us look at some examples: In Exodus 17.8 it is written: Then came Amalek". According to Rabbi Joshua and Rabbi Eleazar Hisma, the verse must be interpreted in an allegorical sense: when the Jews separated from the Torah, the enemy came upon them5. Not a literal interpretation, as you can clearly see. In Exodus 17.9, it is written: "Tomorrow I will stand upon the top of the hill" but, according to Rabbi Eleazar, the top (rosh) indicates the deeds of the fathers and the hill the deeds of the mothers. Maybe the only form of greater literality in Hebrew exegesis compared to the Hellenistic lies in the fact that sometimes the former tends to emphasize the importance of the single letter or word, while the latter doesn't: it would have been very difficult for them to have done otherwise, though, since Hellenistic criticism had to do with Biblical texts translated into Greek.

Bibliographical references

247 LONGXI Z. Cultural differences and Cultural Constructs: Reflections on Jewish and Chinese Literalism, in Poetics Today, 19:2, Tel Aviv, the Porter Institute for Poetics and Semiotics, Summer 1998, p. 305-328.

MARÍAS J. Negra espalda del tiempo, Punto de lectura, 2000 (original edition 1998), ISBN 84-663-0007-7.

MARÍAS J. Dark Back of Time, New York, New Directions, 2001 (translated by Esther Allen), ISBN 0-8112-1466-4.

WOLFSON H. A. The Philosophy of the Church Fathers, vol. 1, Faith, Trinity, Incarnation, Cambridge (Massachusetts), Harvard University Press, 1956.

1 Marías 2000, p. 42. 2 Marías 2001, p. 35. 3 "Word", not "term". In order to define it as "term", it must meet some precision and technical inequivocability standards. Let us see at the end of our discussion if it will have happened. 4 WOLFSON H. 24, quoted in Longxi. 5 Longxi, p. 312. 17 - Literality - second part

«[...] una reacción lectora demasiado elemental para tratarse de licenciados, en su mayoría filólogos de diversas lenguas»1.

"[...] far too elementary a reaction from readers who were college graduates, most of them students of literature in various languages"2.

Zhang Longxi makes a comparison between the interpreting debate that saw the Hellenistic and Hebraic exegetes as protagonists and the one, in a different setting, between Chinese and Jesuit exegesis regarding ancient Chinese texts. According to Matteo Ricci, a Jesuit sent in the 16th century to China to explore the cultural situation and spread Christianity, Confucianism had reached the perfect state of natural religion, and Chinese culture was therefore ready, from Ricci's point of view, to accept the light of the revealed religion, Christianity. There was the necessity to teach Chinese people not to interpret their own ancient books literally: in this way they would be able to see traces of a higher teaching. The analysis of the Chinese language carried out by Jesuit missionaries created the illusion of a lack of grammatical categories and, consequently, of the absence in their culture of the notion of "existence"; more generally, of the

248 Chinese language's inability to express abstract concepts and the subsequent interpretation of all concepts as concrete. The presumption that Chinese people were not able to distinguish spiritual from material, abstract from concrete, fictional from literal dictated a reading of Chinese reality in function of the confirmation of such a hypothesis, without seriously considering the elements that could lead to its falsification. In the contraposition of literalism and the figurative, some Western scholars argued that there was no reciprocity: the cultures that were able to assign a figurative meaning to the words would be able to grasp the literal meaning as well; by contrast, the cultures able to give only a purely literal meaning to words would be able to grasp just that, and not a figurative one. Hence the impossibility of a peer-to-peer approach between Western and Chinese culture3.

Yet the letter and the spirit, literalism and allegorism, Hebraism and Hellenism, or Chinese immanence and Western transcendence [...] are all cultural constructs rather than representations of the reality of different traditions4.

This approach, implying the projection of one's own cultural view to other cultures, is colonizing rather than translational, and is diametrically opposed to Berman's notion of translation:

The very aim of translation - to open, through the written word, a certain rapport with the Other, to enrich what is one's Own through the mediation on the Foreign meeting head-on the ethnocentric structure of every culture, that types of narcissism by which every society would like to be a pure and unadulterated Whole5.

From what we have seen it is clear that the literal approach - where by "literal" we mean a notion opposite to "allegorical" - can be useful to defend a culture's peculiarities. But in this case, too, we need to decide whether "literalism" is meant as referring to a word or to the text as a whole. Or, if it refers to the text unit as entity of a larger cultural system, if by "literality" we mean an interpretation of the text ignoring its context and co-text, like for example in the Hebraic Midrash. It is very interesting what Munday says about the negative connotation of the word "literal". Among the criteria for assessing candidates in a translation exam in the United Kingdom,

perhaps the most interesting point is the use of the term 'literal translation'. 'Literal' is used four times - and always as a criticism - concerning, for

249 example, literal translations of false friends. Interestingly enough, however, 'literal' is used as a relative term. For example, 'too literal a style of translating' produced TT expressions such as 'transmitting the budget to the ' (rather than 'delivering the budget'), and a 'totally literal translation' of déjeuner-débat 'produced very unnatural English; presumably, the 'totally literal' translation was something like 'lunch-debate' rather than 'lunchtime talk'6.

Here, by "literal", a lexical translation is probably meant, becoming a point to criticize (in the criteria authors' opinion) only when such a method is pushed to extreme consequences. In other words, when the use of a supposed lexical word-word matching breaks the "naturality" of the translating language, i.e. when the collocation of words - albeit producing a thoroughly understandable text - has a low use frequency of use in the receiving culture. The result of a similar abnormal collocation of two or more words, that does not cause misunderstandings, produces, simply, a slow down in the perception of the translated text and an estranging effect on the reader. It is rather easy to understand that a "lunch-debate" is a meal where something is being discussed, but this formulation, compared to the more frequent "work luncheon", forces the reader to think over the reception of such a word combination, not to passively assimilate a common phrase. Those who consider this way of translating "wrong" implicitly prefer a quick and easy text assimilation, without such frequent interpretive reflections. From this point of view, literalism is the enemy of pragmatic, fast, functional communication, but is a friend to slow, profound text assimilation. Let us close this short reflection on the notion of literalism with a suggestion from another arguable notion very popular in translation theory: the "equivalence" notion, on which we will touch in the next units. Nida, the widely known translator and translation theorist, uses the term "literal" referring not to a translation method, but to a stage in translation, in his dynamic equivalence concept. Murray sums up his theory like this: Nida thinks that translation occurs in stages concerning not the translator's mind, but the degree of elaboration of the text. His view does not focus on the conscious and unconscious interpretive passages made in the interpreter's mind, but on intermediate texts that would be produced before the draft of the conclusive metatext. The first "intermediate text" produced would be the same literal transfer in which word by word the prototext sentence is reproduced without bothering to give the set of words coherence, cohesion, the aspect of a text. Here is the example produced by Munday, from the Gospel of St. John, 1,6:

egeneto anthropos, apestalmenos para theou, onoma auto Ioannes

250 Whose English literal version is

became/happened man, sent from God, name to-him John while the complete version is:

There came a man, sent from God, whose name was John.

The first version is also called "formal equivalence" by Nida, while the second "dynamic equivalence"7.

Bibliographical references

BERMAN A. L'épreuve de l'étranger: culture et traduction dans l'Allemagne romantique, Paris, Gallimard, 1984.

LONGXI Z. Cultural differences and Cultural Constructs: Reflections on Jewish and Chinese Literalism, in Poetics Today, 19:2, Tel Aviv, the Porter Institute for Poetics and Semiotics, Summer 1998, p. 305-328.

MARÍAS J. Negra espalda del tiempo, Punto de lectura, 2000 (original edition 1998), ISBN 84-663-0007-7.

MARÍAS J. Dark Back of Time, New York, New Directions, 2001 (translated by Esther Allen), ISBN 0-8112-1466-4.

MUNDAY J. Introducing Translation Studies. Theories and Applications, London New York, Routledge, 2001, ISBN 0-415-22927-8.

1 Marías 2000, p. 34. 2 Marías 2001, p. 29. 3 Longxi, p. 323. 4 Longxi, p. 323. 5 Berman 1997, p. 14. 6 Munday 2001, p. 30-31. 7 Munday 2001, p. 40-42. 18 - Equivalence - first part

251 «[...] la mohína Facultad semivacía y a media luz, tomada ya por las limpiadoras que a esas horas se sienten dueñas de los residuos y así dan ordenes o ahuyentan a los profesores»1.

"[...] the gloomy university, half-empty, its light dimmed, already taken over by the cleaning ladies who at those hours feel themselves to be in charge of the day's residue and shoo away or give orders to the professors [...]"2.

The notion of equivalence in translation research has roots dating back to the time before the existence of a science dedicated to translation and the application of semiotic criteria to its study. The first researchers using the word "equivalence" in the context of translation are considered generally pure linguists who dealt with problems relating to translation meant merely as representation of verbal signs as other verbal signs. The two natural languages involved in the transformation, in this view, are generally considered - at least implicitly - isomorphic codes (i.e. consisting of elements having the same form). Catford, for example, has defined translation

replacement of textual material in one language (SL) by equivalent textual material in another language3.

Since "equivalence" derives from the Latin "equivalere", meaning "to have the same value", it is for the most part a quantitative notion whose application to spontaneously originated languages in linguistic exchange between speakers implies some affinities of these languages and artificially created languages, constructed like mathematical codes, that are isomorphic. In this view, translation is a matter of substituting each element of the protolanguage with an equivalent element of the metalanguage. It is a rather naïve notion that doesn't account for the contribution given by semiotics, and by cultural studies and psychology to the study of language. There is a passage in Peirce that bears the appearance of a superficial contradiction, while defining the notion of "interpretant" prevents its application to the translation field:

A sign, or representamen, is something which stands to somebody for something in some respect or capacity. It addresses somebody, that is, creates in the mind of that person an equivalent sign, or perhaps a more developed sign. That sign which it creates I call the interpretant of the first sign4.

Peirce, therefore, uses the notion of "equivalence", specifying that it is a subjective phenomenon ("addresses somebody"), and such equivalence

252 holds only "for some respect" and "capacity"). Therefore it is a subjective, temporary, contingent equivalent. Or, maybe, it is not event an equivalent, it is a "more developed sign". Peirce probably uses the word "equivalent" here referring not to the etymological sense of "parity of value", but referring to the secondary sense of "equal in efficiency, correspondence". Such meaning of the word "equivalent" is reinforced, in Peirce's use, by other passages of his work in which he uses it producing concrete examples, like this one:

If I may be allowed to use the word "habit," without any implication as to the time or manner in which it took birth, so as to be equivalent to the corrected phrase "habit or disposition," that is, as some general principle working in a man's nature to determine how he will act, then an instinct, in the proper sense of the word, is an inherited habit, or in more accurate language, an inherited disposition5.

It is evident that here Peirce by "equivalent" means "corresponding". When, by contrast, he uses the same word in a strict, mathematical sense, one perceives the difference, like in this case:

It is very convenient to express the negative of a predicate by simply attaching a non to it. If we adopt that plan, non-non-marries must be considered as equivalent to marries. It so happens that both in Latin and in English this convention agrees with the usage of the language. There is probably but a small minority of languages of the globe in which this very artificial rule prevails. Of two contradictory propositions each is said to result from the negation of the other6.

The argument is here more logical than linguistic, insomuch as Peirce specifies that it is a "very artificial" rule evidently when compared, for example, to the rules usually valid in natural languages. To prove that hypothesis, one could express the notion even using a mathematical formula:

(non-non-marries) = (marries)

When, on the contrary, he doesn't mean to refer to a logical-mathematical equivalence, Peirce specifies that, like in this instance:

The phrase "light of reason," or its near equivalent, may probably be found in every literature. The "old philosopher" of China, Lao-Tze, who lived in the sixth century B. C. says for example, "Whoso useth reason's

253 light, and turneth back, and goeth home to its enlightenment, surrendereth not his person to perdition. This is called practising the eternal"7.

A calm analysis of Peirce's logical thought allows us to gradually reconstruct the sense of the notion of "equivalence", which we will continue in the next unit.

Bibliographical references

CATFORD J. C. A Linguistic Theory of Translation, London, Oxford University Press, 1965.

MARÍAS J. Negra espalda del tiempo, Punto de lectura, 2000 (original edition 1998), ISBN 84-663-0007-7.

MARÍAS J. Dark Back of Time, New York, New Directions, 2001 (translated by Esther Allen), ISBN 0-8112-1466-4.

PEIRCE C. S. The Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, v. 1-6 edited by Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss, v. 7-8 edited by Arthur W. Burks, Cambridge (Massachusetts), Harvard University Press, 1931-1935, 1958.

1 Marías 2000, p. 32. 2 Marías 2001, p. 27. 3 Catford, p. 20. 4 Peirce, 2, p. 228. 5 Peirce 2, p. 170. 6 Peirce, v. 2, p. 379. 7 Peirce, v. 2, p. 24. 19 - Equivalence - second part

"[...] a salir un rato después de ella como un literal pinchaúvas"1.

"[...] leaving it some time later as a literal pinchaúvas or "puncturer of grapes", which is a way of saying ne'er do-well or good-for-nothing in Spanish [...]"2.

The intellectual meaning of a statement is precisely the same whether it refers to past or future time. To say that a piece of porcelain is soft before

254 it is baked is equivalent to saying that if anybody during that period tries to scratch it with a knife he will succeed, and to say this is again equivalent to saying that every experiment which is logically necessitated, if this be true, to turn out in a certain way, will turn out in that way; and this last statement has a corresponding equivalent, and so on endlessly3.

Peirce sets up the question of equivalence on the basis of logical arguments, specifying that he refers to an "intellectual" equivalence. Transferred into the context of a translation, intellectual equivalence has nothing to do with textual equivalence, because we know that in many texts the form of the content takes precedence over the substance. These arguments of Peirce's can tell us something about equivalence provided that we stay in the narrow framework of the purely denotative texts, the so-called "closed texts". Observing Peirce's reasoning, we cannot help but notice the affinity of the "endless" logic concatenation of equivalences to the "endless" concatenation of the signification process, in which the interpretant in the previous triad becomes sign in the next one:

sign  object interpretant   sign (2)  interpretant (2)   object (2) sign (3)  interpretant (3) etc. But of this endless series of equivalent propositions there is one which my situation in time makes to be the practical one for me, and that one becomes for me the primary meaning4.

Equivalence, a theoretic application, needs to be distinguished from non- equivalence, a practical application. Notice that the primary meaning is not attributable to the intrinsic worth of the proposition, but only, uniquely, to the chronotopical situation in which I, reader of the text, translator of the text, find myself. It is a sort of equivalence in the form of concatenation of interpretants; it is a contiguous position in the chain of interpretants, which works only here and now and for me, within me. More than equivalence, it is a coincidence, a matching that, however, I cannot justify, I have no need to explain, because it is a mental inner phenomenon of mine. It is mental contiguity that I can use

255 for communication outside of myself only if I can hope that it also works for a significant number of individuals beside me that compose the population from which I extract my contingent notion of "model reader" for the communication act I am performing.

As long as the porcelain is not yet baked, I mean by calling it soft that if anyone tries to scratch it with a knife he will readily succeed. But after it has been baked, and nobody has taken occasion to try that experiment, it is a different experiment among the endless series of equivalents that now expresses my primary meaning. The nature of the fact does not change; but my relation to it and consequent mode of conceiving do change, although I all the time recognize the equivalence of the different meanings5.

Peirce's choosing the example of a scientific experiment to speak of equivalence is significant because it openly refers to the scientific context in which such a concept can be understood.

Then you maintain, do you, that when you directly act upon a thing in making an experiment, this direct action consists entirely in the fact that subsequent experimental investigators will ultimately be led to the conclusion that you did act upon it?6

Peirce's imaginary interviewer in this passage tries to get him to say something concrete, to unbalance him on the plane of pragmatic applicability of such a reasoning, of the objectivity of the concatenation. But Peirce wants just to insert some distance from such a practical interpretation:

Ah, that I have not said, but have carefully guarded against such an interpretation by saying that it is only of conceptions, that is, of the intellectual part of meaning that I was speaking. The pragmaticist need not deny that such ideas as those of action, of actual happening, of individuality, of existence, etc., involve something like a reminiscence of an exertion of brute force which is decidedly anti-intellectual, which is an all-important ingredient of the practical, although the pragmat[ic]istic interpretation leaves it out of account7.

Peirce, therefore, thinks equivalence possible only in an intellectual sense and only when referring to a given contingent chronotope. Such a term - chronotope - was not yet created, and I attribute it to him for comfortable exposition's sake within the context of this course in which many

256 a time it was explained. Even if, for truth's sake, Peirce uses another term, a not easily translatable one, indicating the presence "there and now" of some object:

Yet while he may admit that this idea of brute thereness, - or whatever best names it, - is quite distinct from any concept, yet he is bound to maintain that this does not suffice to make an idea of practical reality .8.

Such reasoning has the purpose, as far as we are concerned, to undermine the basis of any attempt to create a theory of equivalence having value for a translator and her readers. The perspective opened on the possible existence of concatenations of equivalents on the plane of subjective interpretants is, on the contrary, very suggestive and potentially dense with useful consequences in the debate on the possibility of creating a shareable theory of the translation process. In accepting Peirce's argumentation, one suspects that those who insist too much on the notion of equivalence - not only in translation, but in other fields as well - have an imperfect view of the limitations of one's Self as compared to the Other. That there is, in other words, too optimistic a presumption that the mental mechanisms and concatenations working for oneself should necessarily follow the same path for the rest of the world. If that were the reality, translating - more generally, understanding each other - would be definitely easier.

Bibliographical references

MARÍAS J. Negra espalda del tiempo, Punto de lectura, 2000 (original edition 1998), ISBN 84-663-0007-7.

MARÍAS J. Dark Back of Time, New York, New Directions, 2001 (translated by Esther Allen), ISBN 0-8112-1466-4.

1 Marías 2000, p. 137. 2 Marías 2001, p. 112. 3 Peirce, 8, 195.

257 4 Peirce, 8, 195. 5 Peirce, 8, 195. 6 Peirce, 8, 195. 7 Peirce, 8, 195. 8 Peirce, 8, 195. 20 - Equivalence - third part

«[...] las palabras que nos sustituyen y a veces alguien recuerda o transmite, no siempre confesando su procedencia1».

"[...] the words that replace us and that someone occasionally remembers or passes on, not always confessing to their provenance [...]"2.

In the previous two units, we saw what can be some meanings or applications of the notion of "equivalence" in Peircean semiotics. We got a very fortuitous and relative notion. But, as far as translation is concerned, the main researcher that historically dedicated himself to the question of equivalence is J. C. Catford that in 1965 published the classic A linguistic theory of translation. An essay in applied linguistics, to which reference was made by other researchers for a long while after. This text is where translations studies are identified as (that, as is evident from the following quotation, was not yet specifically so named) a branch of comparative linguistics:

The theory of translation is concerned with a certain type of relation between languages and is consequently a branch of Comparative Linguistics3.

The aspect that we now call "chronotopical" in translation is destroyed at its basis, because the spacetime coordinates are eliminated a priori from the scope of research:

From the point of view of translation theory the distinction between synchronic and diachronic comparison is irrelevant. Translation equivalences can be set up, and translations performed, between any pair of languages or dialects-'related', or 'unrelated' and with any kind of spatial, temporal, social or other relationship between them4.

The notion of "equivalence" is fundamental for translation, because it is part of its own definition:

Translation may be defined as follows: the replacement of textual

258 material in one language (SL) by equivalent textual material in another language (TL)5.

And in my opinion the main problem of the whole Catford theory is his following of the notion of equivalence in order to base any other upon it. People following this course have already time and again come across the notion of "total translation" as part of Peeter Torop's theory, but until this point I have never mentioned the prehistory of the "total translation" locution, a central part of this very essay by Catford, pre-dating Torop by thirty tears. Here the notion of "total translation" is counterbalanced by the notion of restricted translation, which is the substitution of textual material of the TL only at one level, i.e. only at graphological or phonological level. By contrast, the definition of total translation is:

replacement of SL grammar and lexis by equivalent TL grammar and lexis with consequential replacement of SL phonology/graphology by (non- equivalent) TL phonology/graphology6.

The recent notion of "total translation", as it is evident, does not accept much of Catford's definition. The notion of "totality" is accepted mostly, applied however to textual components completely different in the semiotic context. The aim of Catford's total translation is finding "textual equivalents" and their substitution. Here is the definition that is given:

A textual equivalent is any TL text or portion of text which is observed on a particular occasion, by methods described below, to be the equivalent of a given SL text or portion of text7.

Something is therefore equivalent to something else - even in this view - only in a specific occasion, i.e. it is a contingent, not absolute, equivalence. This feature undermines the notion of equivalence as (mathematical) parity of value. Maybe it is not worthwhile investing too much energy in discussing the term "equivalent" more than Catford himself does. He starts from an absolute term and the, step by step, empties it of all its features until just the shell is left. We have arrived at the point where it is too difficult to decide what an equivalent is; he proposes, therefore, to go on translating in order to see 2hat happens. The equivalent is then defined as the portion of text changing when a portion of prototext changes:

A textual translation equivalent is thus: that portion of a TL text which is changed when and only when a given portion of the SL text is changed8.

259 This empirical strategy is not altogether successful, however, because there is the problem of the mismatching grammar categories (parts of speech) between different languages, in the given case Russian, French and English. Comparing the English, French, and Russian sentence:

My father was a doctor Mon père était docteur u menja Otec byl doktor the easily visible problem that, any way you decide to define "equivalent", the English "a" has no equivalents in the other two languages. Catford allows for the problem but does not let it go, rather he shifts the argument to another level:

In the Russian text, therefore, there is no translation equivalent of the Russian indefinite article. We say, then, that the Russian equivalent of a in this text is nil. Equivalence, in this example, can be established only at a higher rank, namely the group9.

On a scientific plane, this should lead to the creation of a different model, not based on the word as minimal translation unit, but on longer text fragments. Unfortunately, this is not the case. The "a doctor" case is just left unresolved. Another problem faced by the equivalence theory is the one of the semantic field of a word. There are no two identical semantic fields, not only between two languages compared, but not even in the same language. Catford knows that, and consequently tells us:

Frequently occurring SL items commonly have more than one TL equivalent in the course of a long text10.

It is advisable to let slide the contradiction implied in the sentence "more than one equivalent". Here Catford implicitly reveals that what lends strength to his theory is the possibility of the creation of translating machines. Catford is not dealing with translation, but with machine translation, even though he never tells us so explicitly. The many hints dispersed in his text, however, make us realize that perfectly well. Facing the polysemy, and difference of semantic field, problems, Catford reacts with statistics, the utility of which he neglects to explain:

260 by dividing the number of occurrences of each particular equivalent by the total number of occurrences of the SL item we obtain the equivalence- probability of each particular equivalence11.

Possessing this precious datum, equivalence-probabilities, we now know something very, very important. Namely, that when in a translation we meet the word X, in 60% of the cases we translate it with the word Y. Provided the type of text does not vary. Provided the subject does not vary. Provided the author does not vary. Provided the historical time does not vary. Provided the register does not vary. Provided the collocation does not vary. Will be able our hero to accomplish his task? We shall see in the next unit (continued).

Bibliographical references

CATFORD J. C. A Linguistic Theory of Translation, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1965. ISBN 0-19-437018-6

MARÍAS J. Negra espalda del tiempo, Punto de lectura, 2000 (original edition 1998), ISBN 84-663-0007-7.

MARÍAS J. Dark Back of Time, New York, New Directions, 2001 (translated by Esther Allen), ISBN 0-8112-1466-4.

1 Marías 2000, p. 13. 2 Marías 2001, p. 10. 3 Catford 1965, p. 20. 4 Catford 1965, p. 20. 5 Catford 1965, p. 20. 6 Catford 1965, p. 22. 7 Catford 1965, p. 27. 8 Catford 1965, p. 28. 9 Catford 1965, p. 29. 10 Catford 1965, p. 30. 11 Catford 1965, p. 30.

21 - Equivalence - part four

261 «Y las narraciones que inventamos, de las que se apropiarán los otros, o hablarán de nuestra pasada existencia perdida y jamás conocida convirtiéndonos así en ficticios»1».

"And the narratives we invent, which will be appropriated by others who, in speaking of our past existence, gone and never known, will render us fictitious"2.

Now that we've gotten to this statistical measurement of the odds that a word be translated into another specific one, we realize that such a measurement is not very useful in practice because there is context, the fundamental element of translation that a computer is unable to consider.

But the equivalence-probabilities are, in fact, constantly affected by contextual and co-textual factors (by context we mean 'context of situation', i.e. those elements of the extra-textual situation which are related to the text as being linguistically relevant: hence contextual. By co-text we mean items in the text which accompany the item under discussion: hence co-textual)3.

It remains therefore a statistical datum that, as such, can be useful only for knowing what happens in a given percentage of cases. On the basis of these statistics Catford proposes to create translation rules.

Provided the sample is big enough, translation-equivalence-probabilities may be generalized to form 'translation rules' applicable to other texts, and perhaps to the 'language as a whole'-or, more strictly, to all texts within the same variety of the language (the same dialect, register, etc.)4.

Rules, extrapolated in this way, are the least useful generalization one can put forth concerning the translation process. They concern solely the odds that a single word, under given conditions, and in a given linguistic combination, is translated through use of a single other word.

A translation rule is thus an extrapolation of the probability values of textual translation equivalences5.

I wouldn't call it "translation rule", but, better, "probability of lexical output of a word in a given linguistic combination". It is something much more limited than a translation rule, and it is so limited because the undeclared aim is to

262 command a computer to apply such a rule. One understands that when "human translators" are introduced:

For human translators the rules can make appeal to contextual meaning6.

For non-human translators, i.e. computers, this is not possible, as we know. For a computer to be able to make out which context it must apply, it is necessary to input huge quantities of data to form an adequate database, and there must be careful routing as to the semantic area in which the work takes place. But Catford soon abandons the subject of odds and computers, for a theory that could be defined as "functional non-linguistic equivalence" ante litteram.

The SL and TL items rarely have 'the same meaning' in the linguistic sense; but they can function in the same situation. In total translation, SL and TL texts or items are translation equivalents when they are interchangeable in a given situation..

It is no longer equivalence, nor linguistic correspondence: it is simple functional homology. There are no philological concerns for the prototext, pragmatically placed in the background, to the advantage of communicative functionality of the text, having - implicitly - a practical aim: being understood in a concrete situation, not expressing something extra-denotative in an artistic-literary situation.

The aim in total translation must therefore be to select TL equivalents not with 'the same meaning' as the SL items, but with the greatest possible overlap of situational range7.

Once granted the broadness of the situational range, the problem of equivalence is solved. Once more, someone tries to saddle a natural language with mathematical parameters:

translation equivalence occurs when an SL and a TL text or item are relatable to (at least some of) the same features of substance (the type of substance depends on the scope of the translation. For total translation it is situation-substance: For phonological translation it is phonic-substance: For graphological translation it is graphic-substance)8.

263 At last, we come to the key question of translatability and cultural specificity, of the implicit in culture:

In total translation, the question of 'sameness' of situation-substance is a difficult one, and is linked to the question of the 'sameness' or otherwise of the cultures (in the widest sense) to which SL and TL belong9.

There are no two identical cultures, i.e. the statement seems a little too theoretical and abstract in order to have any repercussions on the practical side. Anyway, we are told nothing more regarding the translation of a text as translation of one culture into another culture. Another subject that is touched upon is intersemiotic translation. Jakobson's essay On linguistic aspects of translation into which this category of translation falls in its first, 1959 version, was published six years before Catford's.

Translation between media is impossible (i.e. one cannot 'translate' from the spoken to the written form of a text or vice-versa)10.

Since it seems impossible for Catford not to have read Jakobson, this statement has the flavor of polemics.

Conversion from spoken to written medium, or vice-versa, is a universal practice among literates; but it is not translation, since it is not replacement by items which are equivalent because of relationship to the same substance11.

Based on Catford's complex - but maybe not as productive from the research point of view - definition, intersemiotic translation is not "translation". In another chapter of the essay, Catford tackles another concrete problem going against any attempt to fall back on equivalence: the idiolect, expressive mode that is typical of an individual. His proposal is to find the 'equivalent idiolect'.

In such a case the translator may provide the same character in his translation with an 'equivalent' idiolectal feature12.

Texts in the unmarked dialect of the SL can usually be translated in an equivalent unmarked TL dialect. When the TL has no equivalent unmarked dialect the translator may have to select one particular TL dialect13.

264 Having also brilliantly overcome also the problem of dialect, for which reason if a character in the original speaks with a typical South Carolina drawl in the French translation, owing to geographic homology, he will have the typical cadence of the Lyon area, Catford passes to the delicate question of the historical connotation in a text.

Here, as in the case of geographical dialect, equivalence of absolute location in time is normally neither possible nor desirable14.

It is no good for a text to have historical connotations (for certain terms) and, if it does, it is not 'desirable' for the translation to remind us of them. But if two languages have a different history,

Here, if the TL has no equivalent register, untranslatability may result15.

Untranslatability is the notion introduced whenever all other resources are exhausted. Research (as a whole) does not advance one iota, but the author's image is enhanced. Even for style there can be problems whenever a style does not already have an 'equivalent' in the receiving culture. In this case,

[...] cultural factors may dictate the use of a non-corresponding style as translation equivalent16.

Catford must have a closed text in mind (even if not specified), like a railway timetable or an instruction manual for the mounting of a tent. Because the problems that he poses always revolve around practical understandability, never center around expressiveness. Even when he starts speaking about the name of cultural words (realia), in this case of the sauna, he prefers a homological solution: abandoning any reference to the source culture and automatic insertion of an institution that, from the text's functional standpoint, has the same aim. In this case: to wash up.

equivalence of material aspects of the institution are less important than equivalence in its major personal or social function17.

The sauna can, therefore, be directly transformed into a bathroom.

265

Bibliographical references

CATFORD J. C. A Linguistic Theory of Translation, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1965. ISBN 0-19-437018-6

JAKOBSON R. On linguistic aspects of translation, in On translation, edited by Reuben A. Brower, Cambridge (Massachusetts), Harvard University Press, 1959, p. 232-239.

MARÍAS J. Negra espalda del tiempo, Punto de lectura, 2000 (original edition 1998), ISBN 84-663-0007-7.

MARÍAS J. Dark Back of Time, New York, New Directions, 2001 (translated by Esther Allen), ISBN 0-8112-1466-4.

1 Marías 2000, p. 14. 2 Marías 2001, p. 11. 3 Catford 1965, p. 30-31. 4 Catford 1965, p. 31. 5 Catford 1965, p. 31. 6 Catford 1965, p. 31. 7 Catford 1965, p. 49. 8 Catford 1965, p. 50. 9 Catford 1965, p. 52. 10 Catford 1965, p. 53. 11 Catford 1965, p. 53. 12 Catford 1965, p. 86. 13 Catford 1965, p. 87. 14 Catford 1965, p. 89. 15 Catford 1965, p. 90. 16 Catford 1965, p. 91. 17 Catford 1965, p. 99. 22 - Equivalence seen from the author's point of view - first part

«Basta con que alguien introduzca un 'como si' en su relato; aún más, basta con que haga un símil o una comparación o hable figuradamente [...]»1.

266 "All anyone has to do is introduce an "as if" into the story, or not even that, all you need to do is use a simile, comparison or figure of speech [...]"2.

We have seen, in the previous units of the course, how some common notions in translation studies - literality, fidelity, equivalence - had moments of success and moments of harsh criticism depending upon their historical periods and the related points of view. These translational trivialities now remain mostly in the vocabulary of non-technicians, in those approaching translation in a superficial and ephemeral way, while "translation scientists" usually prefer the use of terms giving greater assurance of their definability. The publication of a new essay by Umberto Eco gives us the means to face the question under a different light, listening to the opinion of a man who is at the same time both a widely translated novelist and a semiotician dealing with translation from a theoretical point of view. This essay, entitled "Translating and being translated", unites the usual pleasantness of Eco as a novelist and essayist with his scientific sharpness: his twofold, and therefore particularly rich, point of view. The departure is a practical example, taken from William Weaver's English version of Eco's novel Foucault's Pendulum. The original sentence is:

Diotallevi - Dio ha creato il mondo parlando, mica ha mandato un telegramma. Belbo - Fiat lux, stop. Segue lettera. Casaubon - Ai Tessalonicesi, immagino3.

The English version of this passage interprets the two latest interventions in a way different from a translation - meant in a more traditional way - of the denotative sense of the Italian sentences:

Diotallevi - God created the world by speaking. He didn't send a telegram. Belbo - Fiat lux, stop. Casaubon - Epistle follows4.

William Weaver thought to uncover in this exchange a dominant of the prototext not coinciding with the denotative meaning of the words that form it. Otherwise, as Eco himself comments, he could have easily translate "Fiat lux, stop. Letter follows. / To the Thessalonians, I guess»; I presume to say that the last mentioned version would have cost Weaver much less effort, above all as far as abductive inferences are concerned on Eco's intentions, and on the hypotheses of its rendering in Italian. Interrogative comment by Eco:

267 Can we say that this is a faithful translation of my text?5.

Moreover, Eco questions himself about the literality of that version. These questions are asked while Eco, in his role as original's author's, explains to the readers that this version by Weaver is, in his opinion, snappier still than his own original, and that he might decide to inspire himself on it for the Italian version in the case he decides to prepare a second revised edition of his novel. All this serves to say that the question of fidelity and literality has no intention of sounding like a question in which "faithfulness" and "literality" implicitly wear positive or negative connotations of "good translation" or "bad translation". They are, so to say, "neuter" questions aiming mostly at the effort to understand - as we often do in this course as well - what sense can (if they do make sense) categories like "faithful", "literal" etc. make in the semiotics of translation. The answer that Eco, all considered, gives himself is this:

The above translation can be defined as 'faithful', but it is certainly not literal6.

One should not be surprised that Eco speaks of "faithfulness" as if it were a scientifically acceptable category. The reader should not be fooled by hypotheses on the supposed naiveté of Eco (we know very well that he is not at all naive) nor on his hypothetical free use of more or less pertinent words. The fact is that, with this temporary conclusion, Eco creates the doubt in the ingenuous reader that a text can be faithful but not literal, i.e. he opens a preliminary breach in the popular conviction of many non-technical speakers that both "faithful" and "literal" are positive features of a translation and that, moreover, they often go one with the other. How is Eco's judgment is argued? The first explanation, this falsely ingenuous too, is that Weaver's version preserves the, quote, "sense" of the text, a sketchily defined sense, that is, diverging from literal meaning. This is like saying that a translation can be faithful even if the reference of the prototext (what in Peirce's triad is the "object") is different from the metatext's reference. A strong statement, that must, therefore, be justified. Eco himself feels the need to do so, and recurs to the notion of "connotation".

One could say that a good translation is not concerned with the denotation but with the connotation of words7.

268 Of course, the reader of this course knows the notion of "connotation", and many a time examples in that sense were made. Here Eco refers particularly to Barthes' connotation, that we have not yet examined. Here it is:

[...] connotation, that is, the development of a system of second-order meanings, which are so to speak parasitic on the language proper . This second order system is also a 'language', within which there develop speech-phenomena, idiolects and duplex structures. In the case of such complex or connoted systems (both characteristics are not mutually exclusive), it is therefore no longer possible to predetermine, even in global and hypothetical fashion, what belongs to the language and what belongs to speech (Barthes 1964).

Even Barthes' definition is not exact with regard to the spectrum covered by a connotative meaning. He explains that, in a parasitic way, connotation draws part of its sense from the primary signification (denotative) system adding another part, but it is not possible to define precisely what semantic spectrum covers connotation. Just that is also Eco's conclusion, and he states that:

The word connotation is an umbrella term used to name many, many kinds of non-literal senses of a word, of a sentence, or of a whole text [...] but the problems are (i) how many secondary senses can be conveyed by a linguistic expression, and (ii) which ones a translation should preserve at all costs8.

If we ever will be able to all agree that the problem of translatability (does anyone wish to risk saying "of equivalence"?) must be transferred from denotation to connotation, we would be probably starting down the right track, but all the same in a very vague field. Less sophisticated arguments end here, stating with some enthusiasm that the equivalence sought by all is not lexical equivalence, but "equivalence in meaning". For Eco, however, this is just the beginning of the trouble, because

Equivalence in meaning cannot be taken as a satisfactory criterion for a correct translation first of all because the notion of "equivalence in meaning" is obscure, then because the ingenuous idea that equivalence in meaning is provided by synonymy is unacceptable "since it is commonly accepted that there are no complete synonyms in language"9. In the next unit, we will observe the development of Eco's argumentation that, as ever, is very intriguing.

269

Bibliographical references

BARTHES R. Éléments de sémiologie, 1964, English translation Elements of semiology, London, Cape, 1967.

ECO U. Translating and being translated, in Experiences in translation, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2001, ISBN 0-8020-3533-7, p. 3-63.

MARÍAS J. Negra espalda del tiempo, Punto de lectura, 2000 (original edition 1998), ISBN 84-663-0007-7.

MARÍAS J. Dark Back of Time, New York, New Directions, 2001 (translated by Esther Allen), ISBN 0-8112-1466-4.

1 Marías 2000, p. 10. 2 Marías 2001, p. 8. 3 Cited in Eco 2001, p. 6. 4 Cited in Eco 2001, p. 7. 5 Eco 2001, p. 8, added bold. 6 Eco 2001, p. 8. 7 Eco 2001, p. 8. 8 Eco 2001, p. 9. 9 Eco 2001, p. 9.

23 - Equivalence from the author's point of view - part two

«[...] los elementos de este relato que empiezo ahora son del todo azarosos y caprichosos, meramente episódicos -impertinentes todos según la parvularia fórmula crítica, o ninguno necesitaría al otro [...]».

"[...] the elements of the story I am now embarking upon are entirely capricious, determined by chance, merely episodic and cumulative-all of them irrelevant by the elementary rule of criticism, non of them requiring any of the others [...]".

We concluded the previous unit with Eco's assertion that complete synonyms do not exist. That's why, Eco argues, one could look for a phrasal synonymy where lexical synonymy seems not feasible. There would remain, however, the problem of controlling such supposed synonymy between sentences.

270 Walter Benjamin, as we saw, has a mystical view of translation and language, and postulates the existence of a reine Sprache, a pure language toward which all translations tend, that draw all people nearer to God. If such a pure language existed, one could translate two utterances that are supposed to be synonymical into a third language, the pure language, in order to control their identity.

One needs, however, a mode of comparison appropriate to people not blessed, like Benjamin, with the gift of faith in a divine language. If two utterances in two different languages must be equal, this means that they can be disassembled into units and described in a third language, a metalanguage.

This is precisely what many machine-translation scholars are postulating. There must be a tertium comparationis that allows the passage of an expression from language A to language B by ensuring that both are equivalent to an expression in metalanguage C.

In order to compare two utterances, there seems to be no other method than the one of the metalanguage describing them. There are many theories of translation criticism based on the comparison of prototext and metatext, that consequently must execute a comparison between the two necessarily based on the description of their characteristics. But what is surprising in Eco's argument is that such a metalanguage is identified - and more importantly, in an altogether automatic and oblivious way - with mental language:

This mental language, made up of pure propositions, is currently called Mentalese.

The point is not Eco's conviction that metalanguages are "equivalent" to mental representations; it is just an efficient way to carry out the progressive demolition of the equivalence postulate. It is used Jakobson's example, the one of the electoral slogan "I like Ike", where a translation into an hypothetically equivalent utterance, "I appreciate Eisenhower", hardly would have lead to the election of that president.

There is, moreover, a theoretical objection concerning not only sentences like "I like Ike", characterized by a dominant on the plane of paronomasia, of sound more than sense, but also concerning simple denotative utterances. It is the classical Third Man objection:

If, in order to translate a text α, expressed in a language A, into a text β, expressed in a language B (and to say that β is a correct translation of α, and is similar in meaning to α), one must pass through the metalanguage X, then one is obliged first of all to

271 decide in which way α and β are similar in meaning to a text γ in X and, to decide this, one requires a new metalanguage Y, and so on ad infinitum.

The logical objection can also be expressed in this way: if, in order to state that two utterances are similar or even equivalent I use a language descriptive of the language, who can assure me that such a metalanguage satisfactorily describes language? This is where every presupposition about linguistic equivalence falls. People using a strictly denotative analysis can say that "I like Ike" is equivalent to "I appreciate Eisenhower", but then the metalanguage deals just with denotative aspects. From a methodological point of view it is, then, perhaps correct to put aside the equivalence perspective - presupposing in any case the explicit exclusion of instances unforeseen in the consideration of a given type of equivalence, and speak about translation dominants: If the dominant of the utterance is purely denotative, we can say that "I like Ike" is the translation of "I appreciate Eisenhower", but if the dominant is another one, such a correspondence nexus is excluded.

The fact that every language creates a different worldview, as Whorf maintains, plays an important role in the search for (nonexistent) linguistic equivalences when logical equivalences are the real missing element. The mere fact of thinking that two people can understand each other on the basis of linguistic equivalences is like thinking that two people of different cultures can understand each other by gestures when it is obvious that body expression ha nothing spontaneous and is a consequence of cultural habit. Seeing someone blush now stirs tenderness and sympathy, in the 17th Century England was a sign of great shame.

Every culture classifies real experience according to its own fashion. Classification is not carried out like in a yardage shop or in a hardware store, where diameters, kind of material, length, color, composition or weave lead to finding any given item with certainty in its assigned drawer. Every culture has a different chest of drawers, and different parameters as to the differences between the real objects. Divisions within single drawers do not follow the same progression in two cultures, so that the same phenomenon can be put into two very different compartments.

When God decided to put an end to man's vainglory and destroyed Babel's tower, he didn't so much create different languages, as he differentiated man's linguistic drawers and compartments. From that day on we put two equal screws in two different positions in the same drawers, or in two different drawers altogether. To top it all, man thought of intertextual references. "Sleeping" could well be a more or less precise synonym of "lethargic", "dormant", "stable". What is wrong is that "sleeping" is forever linked to "Sleeping beauty", which cannot, in whatever case, be substituted for

272 "Lethargic beauty", "Dormant beauty" or "Stable beauty". What is still worse, the word "sleeping" has this heavy burden of intertextuality even when the sender does not intend it, even malgré lui.

We decide how to translate, not on the basis of the dictionary, but on the basis of the history of two literatures [...] Therefore translating is not only connected with linguistic competence, but with intertextual, psychological, and narrative competence.

According to Quine, based on the analysis made of a sentence, many justifiable translations can be made: that is what Quine calls "indeterminacy of translation":

Just as we meaningfully speak of the truth of a sentence only within the terms of some theory or conceptual scheme [...] so on the whole we may meaningfully speak of interlinguistic synonymy only within the terms of some particular system of analytical hypotheses.

Following suit of this argument, we can say that any utterance can be subject, in the sender's and in the receiver's interpretation, to different contextualizations modifying its sense. While in the "dictionary linguistics" one could think of language as a set of types, types serve just to see the way through a forest of specific, contextualized tokens, the only ones that give us an idea of the sense of a concrete utterance we deal with. As Eco says:

Translations are not about linguistic types but rather about linguistic tokens. Translations do not concern a comparison between two languages but the interpretation of two texts in two different languages.

Bibliographical references ECO U. Translating and being translated, in Experiences in translation, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2001, ISBN 0-8020-3533-7. 3-63. MARÍAS J. Negra espalda del tiempo, Punto de lectura, 2000 (original edition 1998), ISBN 84-663-0007-7. MARÍAS J. Dark Back of Time, New York, New Directions, 2001 (translated by Esther Allen), ISBN 0-8112-1466-4.

1 Marías 2000, p. 12. 2 Marías 2001, p. 9. 3 Eco 2001, p. 11. 4 Eco 2001, p. 11. 5 Eco 2001, p. 12.

273 6 Eco 2001, p. 13. 7 Quine 1960, 2, 16. 8 Eco 2001, p. 14. 24 - Equivalence in the Soviet School: Komissarov

«Lo extraordinario del ejemplar es que en la portadilla está firmado por el propio Graham, quien además ha escrito a mano: 'Camaradas guardad vuestras energías UTILIZAD EL ASCENSOR', y más abajo: 'Aviso: el ascensor está averiado'»1.

"The extraordinary thing about my copy is that the title page is signed by Graham himself, who, in addition, has written, 'Comrades conserve your energy USE THE LIFT,' and, lower down, 'Notice: The Lift is Out of Order'"3.

In the previous units, we have examined the notion of equivalence as seen by Peirce, Catford, Eco. We sprang from one view to the other, from pure Peircean semiotics, to Catford's, I dare say, nearly computational linguistics, to the semiotician that in the mean time is a translated novelist and participates, in a way, to the others' translation choices on his texts. Now I wish, given there is a need to do so, to further increase the sense of unease of people trying to define within themselves "equivalence" and the sense of amusement of people who have renounced use of "equivalence" as a parameter for their own translation view. That's why I examine the notion of "equivalence" of one of the most important translation schools in the world (if anything, for its historical tradition and number of publications), the Russian- Soviet school.

The text examined is Theory of translation (linguistic aspects) by Vilén Naùmovich Komissàrov, published in 1990 and therefore comparatively recent (keep in mind that Fyodorov's Introduction to the translation theory a classic book of translation studies ante litteram, was published in 1953, the year in which Stalin died: In the USSR perevodovédenie [literally: "knowledge about translation", of which "traductologie" is therefore a calque] was an early one). Here two chapters are devoted to equivalence, subdivided in this way: equivalence of the functional content (third chapter) and equivalence of the semantics of the lexical units (fourth chapter). Let us see them, with examples.

We should distinguish "potential reachable equivalence", by which we mean the maximum level of common contents of two eterolingual texts through knowledge of the differences between the languages in which the two texts are coded, and

274 "translational equivalence", the actual closeness of sense of the texts in the original and translation, achieved by the translator in the translation process (1990: 51).

That is, we must distinguish the maximum potential from what a concrete metatext can actually reach, because every actualized version has a different way to be, so to speak, 'equivalent' and a different degree of 'equivalence'. (From that follows, in my opinion, the impossibility to define it 'equivalence', but I don't want to create too much interference in the exposition of Komissàrov's view.)

Since difference between two linguistic codes limits the possibility to completely preserve the original's content,

equivalence can be based on the preservation (and, correspondingly, loss) of different elements of the sense of the original. Depending on the portion of contents transmitted in the translation in order to assure its equivalence, many levels (types) of equivalence are discernable. At each level of equivalence a translation can assure some degree of interlingual communication (51).

From this general premise one can already guess what Komissàrov's terms of 'equivalence' might be:

1. Only one part of the contents is preserved (and it is the only one claiming a correspondence to the original); 2. 2. the different versions are distinguished by the portion of contents preserved (hence they have different and complementary types of correspondence): 3. 3. what is preserved is juxtaposed to what is lost, because residue or loss are constant features of translation (therefore, actually, there is no equivalent version); 4. 4. The part to be preserved is rationally chosen in function of the translator's considerations: it is something very similar to the choice of the dominant (the translator, knowing that it isn't possible to pursue any real equivalence, opts for the least depriving and onerous loss).

In pragmatic communication, every text has a fixed aim. One of Komissàrov's models of 'equivalence' consists in selecting as dominant the aim of communication. The equivalence in the translations of the first type consists of preserving only the part of the original's content constituting the aim of the communication (52). Here are some examples: 1. Maybe there is some chemistry between us that doesn't mix. Character clashes are frequent. 2. That's a pretty thing to say. You should be ashamed!

275 3. Those evening bells, those evening bells, how many a tale their music tells. Din don, din don, so many stories from that sound! In the three examples there is a different, implicit, not directly denotative meaning that is taken as an absolute dominant to realize Komissàrov's pragmatic equivalence. What is left out concerns: lexicon, syntax, paraphrase links, and even actual outer references (chemistry, beautiful things, evening etc.) This strategy can be used - Komissàrov argues - when strategies that are more conservative are unfeasible. The example of the double version of an English proverb is made: the first version preserves lexicon and structure, the second communicative function: PT A rolling stone gathers no moss MT1 On a stone that rolls there is no moss formation MT2 People who never stand still do not do anything good3. There is, then, a second type of 'equivalence', aiming not only at a shared communicative effort, but also reflecting the same extralingual situation. The difference between identification of the situation and the means for describing it reflects the peculiarity of the relations between language, thought and described reality (sign, interpretant, object). Even in this second type of 'equivalence', speech acts are not equivalent at all, but there is an extralingual experience of communicating people that makes possible reciprocal understanding. The second type of equivalence is represented by translations whose proximity to the sense in the original is not based, not even in this case, on the shared meanings of the linguistic means employed (57). Some examples follow: 1. He answered the telephone He lifted the receiver. 2. You are not fit to be in a boat. You are not to be allowed to get on a boat. 3. You see one bear, you have seen them all. All bears look like one another. Structure and syntax do not always resemble one another, but, in Komissàrov's view, here there is an increased equivalence when compared to the first type. However, typically lexicon and syntax are not comparable, there is not paraphrastic translation, the communicative function is preserved and the situation referred to is the same. In some cases the situation, however, must be varied to allow a non-aberrant communication, due to cultural translation problems, because different situations can acquire a shared meaning within a given community's culture, differing from the meaning that such situations have for member of different linguistic communities (60). For example, the fact the body language is different in all cultures is well known. In many peoples, lifting and lowering one's head many times means

276 assertion, while in Sicily, for example, it means negation. This has consequences in the gestures of characters. The third type of equivalence can be characterized by the examples: 1. Scrubbing makes me bad-tempered My mood grows bad due to floor washing. 2. London saw a cold winter last year. Last year winter in London was cold. 3. That will not be good for you. This business might end badly for you. In this third type, there is no lexical or syntactic parallelism, the two structures are not amenable to a simple syntactic transformation, communication aim and situation are unvaried and situation are preserved, while general concepts through which the description of the original's situation is realized are preserved, i.e. the "means of description of the situation" is preserved (62).

Bibliographical references KOMISSAROV V. N. Teorija perevoda (lingvisticheskie aspekty), Moskvà, Vysshaya shkola, 1990, ISBN 5-06-001057-0. MARÍAS J. Negra espalda del tiempo, Punto de lectura, 2000 (original edition 1998), ISBN 84-663-0007-7. MARÍAS J. Dark Back of Time, New York, New Directions, 2001 (translated by Esther Allen), ISBN 0-8112-1466-4.

1 Marías 2000, p. 260. 2 Marías 2001, p. 211. 3 This is Komissàrov's interpretation. But usually the sense I had never heard this interpretation - When this is used it was always in the context that you need to keep moving since moss breaks down the structures it grows upon and was, therefore, undesirable. If you kept busy, you would not break down, neither materially nor physically. 25 - The oxymoron of the different equivalents

«Se trata de una traducción del ruso [...] titulada en esta lengua Three Pairs of Silk Stockings o Tres pares de medias de seda. Lo publicó [...] en 1931, lleva como subtítulo Novela de la vida de la clase culta bajo los soviets»1.

"It is a translation from Russian [...] titled Three Pairs of Silk Stockings, published [...] in 1931, and bearing the subtitle A novel of the life of the educated class under the Soviet"2.

277 We have seen that Komissàrov divides functional 'equivalences' according to their preservation of aims, situation or descriptive means. Having outlined his distance from equivalence in this way, his argument goes on touching many other types of possible alterations (between two functionally 'equivalent' texts).

The first kind of shift concerns the generalization/specification continuum, even if the Russian term used, detalizatsiya, stresses the 'minute-detail' aspect.

It can enclose the direct indication of a different number of details typical of that situation. Consequently, synonymical communications are distinguished for their degree of explicitness. Some elements in some communications will be named, while in others they will be just implied, easily extractable from the communication, but not directly comprehended in its composition. Such elements can be considered redundant (63; emphasis added).

As you can see, the problem connected to the productive use of the notions "equivalence" and "synonymy" is similar, because they can both be taken verbatim or considered in an approximate way. Leaving aside terminology, the question is the greater or smaller didacticism of an act of linguistic mediation, depending on the fact if the model reader is viewed as able or unable to guess the connections the text takes for granted. According to Komissàrov there are language-specific peculiarities that determine translatability problems. Here are some examples:

PT I saw there was a question asked. MT I saw from the newspapers there was a question asked

PT "Will you come here, my- Miss?" Jean went. MT «Please, come in, my... Miss». Jean followed him in.

PT People went into rooms as if they meant to stay there. MT Everyone accommodated in his room as if he were going to live there forever.

The translator felt necessary to specify details unexpressed in the prototext.

The second kind of shift concerns the way in which the elements described in the speech act are interrelated. Komissàrov feels that some relations between elements can result 'logical' in one language and 'illogical' in another. Here is an example:

278 PT He was thin and tentative as he slid his birth certificate from Puerto Rico across the desk. MT He was slim and insecure while handing his Puerto Rico birth certificate.

(In this case I think there might be a problem of understanding, because "thin" here doesn't refer to absence of fat, but to paleness, faintness.) And some proverbs:

PT It is a good horse that never stumbles. MT1 A good horse never stumbles. MT2 The horse that never stumbles is so good that such horses do not exist.

The second version, proposed by Komissàrov as indispensable so that the Russian reader can understand correctly, does not honor Komissàrov's opinion of the Russian reader, who is obviously smarter than Komissàrov thinks. Besides, as all specifying translations, it disambiguates the prototext. preventing interpretations that are different from the one imposed by the translator. The same is true for this other example:

PT It is an ill wind that blows nobody good. MT1 Ill wind is good for no one. MT2 A wind being good for no one is so bad that there is no such a wind.

But the solution preferred by Komissàrov is the use of a Russian proverb, namely:

Kon´ o chetyryokh nogakh i to spotykaetsja

(Even a four-legged horse stumbles.)

Superfluous to be repeated that, as equivalence, the latter translation eliminates nearly every connotation of the text as translated text, running the risk of being perceived as an original, i.e. as a falsification.

A third kind of shift concerns the reversal relation, in which, for example, instead of saying something you deny its 'contrary' (of course, if you cannot define 'synonym', similar problems will arise with 'contrary') or when a passive construction is transformed into active etc. These transformations are considered by Komissàrov as 'synonymical' too (65). Examples:

PT Do I look all right? MT Do I have a decent look?

279

PT Will you marry me, Lady Aline? MT Do you want me to become your husband, Lady Aline?

This kind of shift occurs above all when a translator perceives as inappropriate the use of an (inanimate) object as subject of an action, i.e. when he feels inappropriate personification. A plainly cultural, not linguistic, problem, even if Komissàrov implies that English language makes a more frequent use of this figure of speech, called also "prosopopoeia". Examples:

PT Last year witnessed a sharp increase of production in this country. MT During last year in our country there was a sharp increase in production.

PT The mentality and methods of these "world-conquerors" need little comment. MT Mentality and methods of these 'world conquerors' do not need many comments

PT "You'll make yourself ill," said Betsey, "and you know that will not be good either for you or for my God-daughter" (Dickens). MT "You'll end up ill" said Betsey "and this can end up badly both for you and my God-daughter".

Komissàrov is the first to realize that the versions obtained in this way are not 'equivalent' at all; in fact he writes:

A similar method for describing the situation is used much oftener in the English language than in the Russian. Consequently, communication, in translation, has a different vectoriality (66).

In other words, the fact of an action being imposed rather than carried out modifies, other than mere grammar, also the reader's perception.

A fourth kind of shift concerns the distribution of single elements of a speech act. Such a shift is attributed by Komissàrov, in dealing exclusively with linguistic aspects of translation, to differences between languages:

The possibility of unification and consequentiality of description of the elements sometimes results heterogeneous in different languages. In these cases the order of elements in the translation text can be different than the original, for example:

280 PT Remarkable constitution, too, and lets you see it: great yachtsman. MT He is a remarkable yachtsman, he has a remarkable constitution, and he can show it.

Sometimes the redistribution of elements concerns many speech acts, i.e. an element is moved from a sentence to the next one: In this case, too, we would recognize 'equivalence'. I report Komissàrov's example:

Marina did not arrive for a long while. Svetlana was waiting for her in the lab. At last she arrived. = Marina did not arrive. Svetlana waited for her for a long time. At last she arrived in the lab (67).

Sometimes such translation device would have the aim to attain simplicity and naturalness to a spoken speech:

PT I haven't had a joint with you, old man, since we went up to Carmarthen Van in that fog before the war. Remember? (Galsworthy) MT Do you remember when we climbed in the fog to Carmarthen Van right after the war? It was our last walk together, my old friend.

In the reported example, besides the order of the elements, nearly all elements are changed, position in respect to the war included. In the next unit we will deal with semantic 'equivalences', no longer functional.

Bibliographical references

KOMISSAROV V. N. Teoriya perevoda (lingvisticheskie aspekty), Moskvà, Vysshaya shkola, 1990, ISBN 5-06-001057-0.

MARÍAS J. Negra espalda del tiempo, Punto de lectura, 2000 (original edition 1998), ISBN 84-663-0007-7.

MARÍAS J. Dark Back of Time, New York, New Directions, 2001 (translated by Esther Allen), ISBN 0-8112-1466-4.

1 Marías 2000, p. 260. 2 Marías 2001, p. 210-211. 26 - Close equivalences of the fourth kind

281 «Algo tiene de incongruente, algo tiene de irónico y quizá mucho de injusto la perduración de este volumen o de cualquiera de los objetos que nos sobreviven, y que son casi todos los que nos rodean y nos acompañan y están a nuestro servicio, simulando su insignificancia»1.

"There is something a little incongruous and ironic - and perhaps much that is unjust - about the continued existence of this volume or of any objects that survive us, that surround and accompany and serve us, feigning insignificance"2.

In the latest units, we considered three modes of prototext/metatext matching, that Komissàrov called "equivalences". Here we will see other kinds of matches concerning the meaning of the linguistic units of the prototext. We will no longer deal only with why one writes, about what one speaks and what one says, but also how one speaks.

The structure of the speech act conditions the possibility to use a given kind of words, in a given order and with given connections between the single words, and also defines a large portion of that part of the speech act that stands out during the act of communication (Komissàrov: 70).

In this kind of match, some peculiarities missing in the previous types are:

1) a substantial parallelism in the lexical composition of the two sentences: it is possible to seek words having a similar meaning for most of those in the phrase;

2) substantial reproduction of the syntactic structure, with the reproduction of the meaning of such structure;

3) besides preserving the aim and the situation of the communication, one also preserves the means of its best execution.

When syntactic parallelism is not altogether possible, one can recur to one of these alternative types:

1) use of the same structure with synonyms;

2) use of analogous structure with a different word order;

3) use of analogous structures with different links between words.

Synonymic structures. Here are some examples of the first alternative type: the child reads

282 the reading of the child the reading child what was read by the child

Differences are of many orders. They can concern one syntactical category or one type of sentence:

The child has thrown a stone

The stone was thrown by the child

That he went there was a mistake

It was a mistake that he went there

There also can be structures of different kind with a similar sense, for example the prepositional construction

In the description of this theory... the gerundive construction

Describing this theory... the subordinate construction

When one describes this theory...

Normally, such sentences are considered "equivalent", but their differences can result relevant "in a given sphere of communication, because their stylistic markedness is altered" (73) . In most cases the modification of one member of the synonymical series does not substantially modify the general content of the speech act, as seen in these examples:

I told him what I thought of her

I told him my idea of her.

He was never tired of old songs

Old songs never tired him.

It is very strange this domination of our intellect by our digestive organs

283 Strange in what measure digestive organs dominate our intellect.

Analogous structures. The word order of a sentence can fulfill the following functions:

1. enforce the governing rules of a grammatical category 2. ensure a meaningful link between part of a sentence or between sentences 3. express the emotional character of a sentence.

If, in the two cultures involved in the translation process, functions are expressed differently, the word order in the translating sentences cannot be matching: A meeting in defense of peace was held in Trafalgar Square yesterday Ieri si è tenuto a Trafalgar Square un incontro in difesa della pace The English language standard structure provides for the statement of place and time at the end of the sentence, forcing a change in word order of the standard Italian, Russian, or French structure as in many other languages. When the structure is not standard, this is used to express the emotional features of a speech act. For example, in some languages the inversion of the common word order is used to emphasize some elements of the sentence. In other languages, if such device is not usable, it can be substituted with other means. Mine is a long and sad tale Povest´ moja dlinna i pechal´na In Russian, such a displacement is not possible, like in La mia è una lunga e triste storia therefore Komissàrov postulates the inversion of povest´ and moja, expressedly marked Open flew the gate and in came the coach Vorota raspahnuli nastež´, i kareta uže byla vo dvore. In Russian, the displacement of "Open flew the gate" is not easily feasible, so Komissàrov postulates the adding of "nastezh´", i.e. "wide open", "uzhe", i.e. "already", adverbs added to give the sense expressed in English by the inversion. Him I have never seen JA ego nikogda i v glaza ne videl In Russian, such a displacement is not possible, like in Lui, non l'ho mai visto, therefore Komissàrov postulates the adding of "v glaza", i.e. "never, never". Analogous structures. In these matches the kind of link existing between structures is different, i.e. there is a difference in simple, coordinate and subordinate clause. This has a precise communication valence. For example It started to rain. We went home. It started to rain, and we went home.

284 It started to rain, so we went home. In the three examples above the causality, autonomy, expressivity etc. relationships are changed. However, different structures in one culture do not necessarily match different structures in another one. In another kind of match, the similarity of two speech acts is really strong. Here are some examples: I saw him at the theater JA videl ego v teatre Ho visto lui a teatro The house was sold for 10 thousands dollars Dom byl prodan za 10 tysjač dollarov La casa fu venduta a 10 mila dollari He was sure we should both fall ill On byl uveren, chto my oba zaboleem Era sicuro che entrambi ci saremmo ammalati The features of this kind of match are: 1) high level of parallelism in the structural organization of the text 2) maximum correlation of the lexical composition 3) preservation of all parts of contents in the original. The level of such sharing is defined by the possibility of reproducing in translation the single meaning components of the words in the original, which, in turn, depends on how one component or the other is expressed in the words of the prototext and the metatext and how in each case the choice of the word in translation is influenced by the need to render the other parts of content of the original (79). Problems deriving from polysemy of words can be divided in the following types: 1) denotative polysemy (reference of one sign to many objects) 2) connotative polysemy (particular relationships between sign and object in a specific situation or community) 3) links of the word to other words, i.e. collocation semantics (intralingual meaning). As a consequence of the differences in norm and use in the protoculture and metaculture, the lack of use in translation of the closest match of the sense to the word of the original is always noticed, thus preventing the full actualization of the equivalence of [this] type (81). Here are some examples: She knew that he had risked his neck to help her In other language one doesn't risk one's neck, but head, skin or other body parts. The children clapped their hands with joy. In other languages one claps the hand's palms, or other nuances. For these cases, Komissàrov's approach provides for the substitution of the culture- specific word (neck in the example) with a word more typically used in the receiving culture. Nothing prevents the postulation, however, that someone

285 can opt to preserve the "neck" metaphor in other languages as well, leaving it to the reader to access to the culture-specific idiom, and to autonomously understand the figurative meaning of the expression.

Bibliographical references KOMISSAROV V. N. Teoriya perevoda (lingvisticheskie aspekty), Moskvà, Vysshaya shkola, 1990, ISBN 5-06-001057-0. MARÍAS J. Negra espalda del tiempo, Punto de lectura, 2000 (original edition 1998), ISBN 84-663-0007-7. MARÍAS J. Dark Back of Time, New York, New Directions, 2001 (translated by Esther Allen), ISBN 0-8112-1466-4.

1 Marías 2000, p. 266-267. 2 Marías 2001, p. 214.

27 - Free translation - part one

«[...] ya casi nadie se acuerda, pero le ponían cachalotes moribundos a tiro para hacerle creer que él los pescaba como un Ahab de cabotaje, una vez más pobre Melville»1.

"[...] hardly anyone remembers this now, but they used to set moribund sperm whales free within firing range to make him believe he was bagging them like some tourist Ahab, poor Melville again"2.

We have considered many possible conceptions of (or inabilities to conceive) faithfulness, literality, equivalence in translation. Usually the layman speaking of translation juxtaposes these categories to "freedom": a "free" translation is also "unfaithful", "unliteral" and "unequivalent". Let us examine some points of view on freedom, on captivity and on conditional freedom.

Let us start with a 1532 essay by Juan Luis Vives, De ratione dicendi, in which he mentions translation in these terms: there are three kinds of translations: those in which solus spectatur sensus (only the sense is respected), those in which are respected sola phrasis et dictio (lexical and syntactical form only), and those in which one tries to follow both things and words, et res et verba ponderantur.

The first type is just free translation:

In the translations where just the sense is pursued, there is freedom of interpretation and those omitting what is not useful to the sense and adding what is useful to the sense are pardoned. Figures and patterns of one language are not to be expressed in

286 the other, idiotisms especially, and I don't see the use in admitting a solecism or barbarism to express the meanings of the original in as many words, as done by some with Aristotle or the Scriptures. It will be permitted to express two words with one or one with two or any other number, once one is master of the language and even can add or leave out something (127).

Free translation for Vives five hundred years ago is the one in which there is no close match between prototext word and metatext word. Someone holds that word-for-word, or even letter-for-letter fidelity is the greatest form of infidelity

... the so called precise (literal) translation is never nor can be exact, the servile copying of every word is the most mendacious of all translations (Kornej Chukovskij, Vysokoe iskusstvo,1968: 56

Vives's "free" translation, therefore coincides with someone else's "faithful" translation, and not with its opposite, as one might presume.

One century and a half later, precisely in 1690, although not exactly speaking of interlingual translation in the strict sense, the great English philosopher and re-founder of semiotics John Locke expresses his opinion on the freedom of expression in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Abstract words, that Locke calls "mixed modes", are in his opinion a way for the individual mind to connect objects and concepts that, outside one's mind, in the so called "outer reality" are separate:

the mind in mixed modes arbitrarily unites into complex ideas such as it finds convenient; whilst others that have altogether as much union in nature are left loose, and never combined into one idea, because they have no need of one name.

As long as a natural thing, realia (not meant here in the translational sense), need not be named, its existence goes on freely, without its ever being nominated.

It is evident then that the mind, by its free choice, gives a connexion to a certain number of ideas, which in nature have no more union with one another than others that it leaves out: why else is the part of the weapon the beginning of the wound is made with taken notice of, to make the distinct species called stabbing, and the figure and matter of the weapon left out?

287 Such a license, such a voluble psychological ability to synthesize outer reality in a way that is convenient for itself but non very "faithful", very "free", is actually a reasonable license, at least reasonable for the person who does it:

I do not say this is done without reason, as we shall see more by and by; but this I say, that it is done by the free choice of the mind, pursuing its own ends;

Mind pursues its own ends, egoistically, not caring if it creates logical connections that are logical for other minds as well. Then again, these abstract concepts, these mixed modes are the basis of human understanding:

and that, therefore, these species of mixed modes are the workmanship of the understanding. And there is nothing more evident than that, for the most part, in the framing of these ideas, the mind searches not its patterns in nature, nor refers the ideas it makes to the real existence of things, but puts such together as may best serve its own purposes, without tying itself to a precise imitation of anything that really exists.

The "translation" of reality into ideas is very free, so much so that it is not bound to an exact imitation of anything really existing. The affair gets more complex when the subject, who freely synthesized reality in his mind, with as much freedom tries to communicate it to someone else.

Words, by long and familiar use, as has been said, come to excite in men certain ideas so constantly and readily, that they are apt to suppose a natural connexion between them.

Every man is accustomed to the "excitation" provoked by words within himself, to the point that he is incited to believe that such an "excitation" is natural and universal. To an individual, such free logical connections are natural, but that doesn't mean that they are so for another subject, who, in his turn, manages his liberty freely:

But that they signify only men's peculiar ideas, and that by a perfect arbitrary imposition, is evident, in that they often fail to excite in others (even that use the same language) the same ideas we take them to be signs of:

The arbitrary synthesizer's frustration manifests itself when, in contact with someone else, he realizes that the same words excite different ideas in the other.

and every man has so inviolable a liberty to make words stand for what ideas he pleases, that no one hath the power to make others have the same ideas in their minds that he has, when they use the same words that he does.

288 There is no way to excite the same ideas in someone else, Locke says.

Readers who have been following the course from the beginning already understand that Locke is stating the concept of "interpretant sign" or "interpretant", though not using the term, that will be coined two centuries later by Peirce. Form that follows that "free" translation is the only usable one: anything heard, pronounced or otherwise communicated is a free translation of some psychic material into written material, or vice versa. And the freedom with which all that is accomplished by the single man is frustrated only by his desire or need to socialize, to make himself understood, to translate to the outside.

One century later, in Russian pre-Romanticism communication was even presented as privation of liberty, particularly communication in verse. Stating his opinion on poetic translation, the poet Zhukovsky postulates that it is the maximum privation of liberty of one expressing his feelings (referring to meter, rhyme, sound constrictions) realized with the least possible manifestation of such a privation of freedom:

When viewing a statue, a picture and reading a poem, more than anything we are marveled by art's success in giving such agility to marble, in deceiving the eye with colors; and in poetry, despite the obstacles created by meter and rhyme, we can express ourselves with the liberty of normal language: translating a poet into prose, we necessarily deprive the original of all those qualities.

Poetry is therefore the maximum fiction, ostentation of freedom - in translating one's thoughts into words - altogether missing in the real world. In this case, too, free translation is an oxymoron: it is, actually, a constrained translation, a translation in captivity.

Bibliographical references

DERRIDA J., Des tours de Babel (1985), in Nergaard S. (ed.), Teorie contemporanee della traduzione. Textes by Jakobson, Levý, Lotman, Toury, Eco, Nida, Zohar, Holmes, Meschonnic, Paz, Quine, Gadamer, Derrida, Milano, Bompiani, 1995, Isbn 88-452-2470-8, p. 367-418.

FRASSINETI A., Nota del traduttore, in Diderot, D., Il nipote di Rameau, Torino, Einaudi, 1984, ISBN 88-06-05737-5, p. 150-153.

LOCKE J. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 1690.

289 MARÍAS J. Negra espalda del tiempo, Punto de lectura, 2000 (original edition 1998), ISBN 84-663-0007-7.

MARÍAS J. Dark Back of Time, New York, New Directions, 2001 (translated by Esther Allen), ISBN 0-8112-1466-4.

SCHOPENHAUER A., Della lingua e delle parole, in Sul mestiere dello scrittore e sullo stile (1851), translation by Eva Amendola Kuhn, Milano, Adelphi, 1993, p. 125-149. ISBN 88-459-1013-X. Original title: Über Sprache und Worte, in Parerga und Paralipomena.

STEINER G., Real Presences (1989), Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1998, ISBN 0-226-77234-9.

VIVES J. L., Versioni o interpretazioni (1533), edited by Emilio Mattioli, in Testo a fronte, n. 12, Milano, Crocetti, 1995, Isbn 88-7887-00183-0, p. 127- 132.

ZHUKOVSKIJ V. M., O perevodah voobshche i v osobennosti o perevodah stihov (1810), in V. A. Zhukovskij-kritik, Moskvà, Sovetskaja Rossija, 1985, p. 81-85.

1 Marías 2000, p. 332. 2 Marías 2001, p. 264.

28 - Free translation - part two

«[...] De Wet dio las gracias al Presidente del Consejo de alta Traición por la corrección del proceso, y además por el derecho de completa libertad para defenderse»1.

"[...] De Wet thanked the President of the High Treason Senate for the correctness of the proceedings, and further for the right of complete freedom to defend himself"2.

The philosopher Schopenhauer refers simply to the translation of a verbal text from one language to another when he reflects on the difference existing between the semantic field of words in different languages.

290 The very fact of formulating a thought in a different language, the very fact of translating it into another language "expresses a notion with a nuance that our language does not attach to it". Translations are, in Schopenhauer's opinion, always incomplete, always ineffectual, always incomplete, because from the natural codes' anisomorphism "derives the necessarily deficient character of all translations". Every translation is false, because it is not possible to provide for a translation in a non-false way. If one opts for a philological translation, here's what happens: Even in simple prose, the best of all translations will succeed at most, as compared to the original, as the transposition of a piece of music in another tonality can succeed [...] every translation remains a dead work, and its style is constrained, rigid, unnatural: That's the reason why a false text is created, not in the sense that it falsely reproduces something, but in the sense that it is false its identity as a text. As if a body were deprived of its life, disassembled and re-assembled: a monster is obtained, that resembles a creature, but is a true reproduction in a false text. If, on the other hand, one opts for creative recoding, a fake is created as regards its relationship to the prototext, a false reproduction in a true text is created. or it becomes a free translation [...], therefore a false one. A library of translations resembles a gallery of copies. Not to mention, moreover, the translations of ancient writers that are a surrogate of them, like chicory is a surrogate of coffee. (130- 131) Schopenhauer is flawlessly coherent, one must admit: in the great philosopher's opinion, the taste of chicory is characteristic both of "free" translation and of translation "on a leash". Equally pessimistic on the hope for realizing a free translation is the great linguist Benjamin Lee Whorf. What, for many advocates of "free translation" is precisely freedom, for Whorf is conversely an obligation. And that obligation is all the more insidious because it is sneakily accepted from the moment an infant acquires its mother tongue. Obligation is the language itself, with the implied contract incorporated. We cut nature up, organize it into concepts, and ascribe significances as we do, largely because we are parties to an agreement to organize it in this way-an agreement that holds throughout our speech community and is codified in the patterns of our language. The agreement is, of course, an implicit and unstated one,

291 BUT ITS TERMS ARE ABSOLUTELY OBLIGATORY; we cannot talk at all except by subscribing to the organization and classification of data which the agreement decrees. This fact is very significant for modern science, for it means that no individual is free to describe nature with absolute impartiality but is constrained to certain modes of interpretation even while he thinks himself most free. (213-214) If any culture has a different but equally burdensome obligation to express reality in a given way, what the advocates of "free translation" call "freedom" is actually obligation: it doesn't make sense to think of a transposition of the same linguistic gown into a culture where that dress has a completely different semiotic value. The so-called free translation wouldn't be other than - in Whorfian terms - an obligatory translation, the transposition of one relationship into another. Or, more precisely, of the verbal relationship the text- protoculture has with outer reality represented by the prototext translated into the verbal relationship text-protoculture (or metaculture) to the outer reality represented by the metatext. The presumption of freedom in Whorf reveals itself for what it really is, and this explains the paradox we alluded to in the previous unit between bound and free translation (Chukovsky). A contemporary Italian writer, Augusto Frassineti, rebels against the advocates of a translation too restricted by philological criteria, and openly states he's in favor of translation as remaking, as free recoding. free [translation], I mean, inasmuch it remains unconditioned by that state of fetishistic awe for text as cultural medium of translation intended as imitation of the original in a strict sense, that is, I think, in the same sense in which figurative art was once meant as imitation of nature. (1984: 152) A philologist is a fetishist, having the prototext as object of his morbid attention, and who presumes to excite the reader in the same way, to use Locke's terminology. One who doesn't prefer free translation is sick, because instead of focusing on life focuses on himself, he is a narcissist, he can love only some textual paraphernalia of his fellow humans. The moment of maximum freedom is reached by translation with Jacques Derrida's translation deconstructionist theory. That, even if Derrida's theory of translation states that it is enemy of the pursuing of freedom. Derrida's translation is free because it doesn't aim even to be free, because it overlooks any and all duty, be it philological or liberal, and revolts at any intention to communicate the prototext's content, to "imprecisely transmit an unessential content". In Des tours de Babel, of 1985, he enunciates the four principles of translation: 1. The translator's task is not revealed by any reception. 2. Translation has not as essential aim to communicate. 3. Translation is neither an image nor a copy. 4. Translation has no obligation to transport contents, yet must evidence the affinity between languages, must exhibit its potential (1985: 386-395).

292 Derrida's is a primordial translation allowed by the subjective interpretant sign, that has no aim to produce a text apt for being understood, that has no aim to communicate to the outside. A "free" translator is an exhibitionist who enjoys in flaunting his ability to translate his way. The Derridian translator is a narcissist, because he doesn't care about text except as a mirror of his bravura; he is interested in himself as capable translator. This is undoubtedly a view of free translation, free from bonds of any kind, both toward the prototext and toward the reader. But I don't think that, after the initial impression that such a view can possibly provoke, because it provocatively overturns the recognized importance translators have in our society, has any heuristic value. I close this saunter among the points of view on free translation with a classic: George Steiner. Here a deep acknowledgement of the arbitrary notion implicit in any interpretive reading (in any reading) and in any act of writing or translation is expressed. But, fortunately, there is no translator-director in the foreground. Translation freedom in Steiner's opinion is above all freedom of the author and of the prototext: it is the exponential product of all possible sense or non-sense worlds as these are construed, imaged, tested, indwelt through the interaction of two liberties: that of the text, in movement across time, and that of the receiver. (1989: 83)

Bibliographical references CHUKOVSKY K., Vysokoe iskusstvo (1968), in Sobranie sochinenij v pjatnadcati tomah, edited by E. Chukovskaya, Moskvà, Terra, 2001, vol. 3. ISBN 5-275-00127-4. DERRIDA J., Des tours de Babel (1985), in NERGAARD S. (ed.), Teorie contemporanee della traduzione. Texts by Jakobson, Levý, Lotman, Toury, Eco, Nida, Zohar, Holmes, Meschonnic, Paz, Quine, Gadamer, Derrida, Milano, Bompiani, 1995, ISBN 88-452-2470-8, p. 367-418. FRASSINETI A., Nota del traduttore, in Diderot, D., Il nipote di Rameau, Torino, Einaudi, 1984, ISBN 88-06-05737-5, p. 150-153. LOCKE J. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 1690. MARÍAS J. Negra espalda del tiempo, Punto de lectura, 2000 (original edition 1998), ISBN 84-663-0007-7. MARÍAS J. Dark Back of Time, New York, New Directions, 2001 (translated by Esther Allen), ISBN 0-8112-1466-4. SCHOPENHAUER A., Della lingua e delle parole, in Sul mestiere dello scrittore e sullo stile (1851), translation by Eva Amendola Kuhn, Milano, Adelphi, 1993, p. 125-149. ISBN 88-459-1013-X. Original title: Über Sprache und Worte, in Parerga und Paralipomena. STEINER G., Real Presences (1989), Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1998, ISBN 0-226-77234-9.

293 VIVES J. L., Versioni o interpretazioni (1533), edited by Emilio Mattioli, in Testo a fronte, n. 12, Milano, Crocetti, 1995, ISBN 88-7887-00183-0, p. 127- 132. ZHUKOVSKIJ V. M., O perevodah voobshche i v osobennosti o perevodah stihov (1810), in V. A. Zhukovskij-kritik, Moskvà, Sovetskaja Rossija, 1985, p. 81-85.

1 Marías 2000, p. 354. 2 Marías 2001, p. 283.

29 - Shifts in translation and in translation criticism

«[...] nos impidió aprehender su tramo final de vida y ser sus atentos testigos, antes de la metamorfosis»1.

"[...] preventing us from seizing the final stretch of his life and being its attentive witnesses, before the metamorphosis"2.

I have devoted much attention, in this third part, to categories aimed at describing the ways in which a prototext becomes a metatext. We have read about adaptation, fidelity, literality, equivalence, freedom. I have said that these categories are non-productive for describing the shift relationships between prototext and metatext, i.e. translation strategies. Having covered that, the next problem must be faced: since, in any case, translation studies aspires to become the science that describes the possible transformations of a prototext into a metatext. What categories can be used in order for these descriptions to be more than free non-systematic individual judgments and to allow for useful application of such descriptions? In asking this question, general translation science digresses - one could argue - into translation criticism, into that peculiar discipline that deals with descriptive analysis of metatexts after they were produced, not while they are still being produced. It is true that the two branches share common traits:

 general translation studies analyze a prototext's potential transformation modes, its possible and contingent actualizations and their expediency in the different receiving cultural contexts;  translation criticism analyzes the concrete transformations (metatexts) fruit of the translation process of a prototext; to this aim, necessarily, it also analyzes the prototext, and inserts the recorded shifts into a systematic framework of potential transformations.

294 What's the difference between the two kinds of analysis? The first one is an a priori analysis or, if you please, an analysis of feasibility, in which the prototext is mentally projected onto the receiving culture. From this projection many possible strategies result, one of which is concretely pursued, and forms the production of the metatext. The second is an a posteriori analysis which starts from the result of a transformation process and retrospectively reconstructs the translation strategy that produced it. It is a really obvious occurrence of Peirce's "retroduction". But then, if they are two different stages, does it make any sense to create a systematizing grid of the prototext-metatext shifts valid both for general translation studies and for translation criticism? I'd say it does. Let us recall what Torop wrote about translation metalanguage. His is an admonition to unify the metalanguage, fruit of historical stratifications, ideological differences, different disciplinary points of view, insufficient intercultural communication. First of all, we face the problem of the evaluative approach, that prevailed for many decades and has still not been completely abandoned: When describing the concrete types of translation within translation studies, many evaluative terms coexist. For example, a good translation is defined as "adequate" (in a functional or dynamic sense), "equivalent", "valid", "exact", "realistic" and so on (Torop 2000: 78). Once this obstacle is overcome, and the evaluative approach abandoned, there are many more obstacles to be surmounted. In the huge variety of sometimes-incompatible metalanguages, even within the same discipline (just think, for example, of words like "meaning", that can be used as translation of Saussure's signifié, as a synonym of Peirce's interpretant, but also as a synonym of Morris's significance, of "referent", or even "object" according to other variegated terminologies), we could go on and on. One consists in creating another metalanguage (!) unifying all preexisting disciplinary languages: The extreme metalinguistic chaos is an obstacle not only for the development, but also for the transformation of the metalanguage into a refined language that makes perception more precise (Torop 2000: 22). Another, perhaps more feasible, way consists in clarifying the main concepts, drawing from this term (or discipline) or that according to the different instances and opportunities making the readers accustomed to the possibility of referring to the same concept or process in varied ways: [...] it is possible to juxtapose different metalanguages within an interdisciplinary methodology by falling back on a methodological translation or to translation using a single methodology. This implies that a pretty precise thought is hidden beneath an imprecise language, consisting of fragment of many metalanguages (Torop 2000: 23).

295 This is a transgression from the principle according to which common words are distinguished from terms. While in the case of non-technical words we notice the well-known phenomenon of polysemy (one word referring to many objects/concepts/processes), and polysemy, being a source of potential confusion, has however a definite function in many kinds of communication, terms - words that are part of a sectional terminology - have monosemy as a distinctive trait, or at least as a tendency. If terms were absolutely monosemic, for this word category one could speak of "linguistic equivalence". Effectively, the glossaries that have the greatest degree of reliability are addressed for a specific application, especially when regularly updated or belonging to technical areas where there is a low rate of technological or scientific innovation. Moreover, if sentences in "techno-ese" were not composed, more than of terms, of connective, structural elements, adverbs and other "disturbing" elements, it would be possible to postulate their automatic translation. Just due to the presence of these disturbing elements, one can semi- automatically translate these texts, or pre-translate them, as happens with software for translation-memory-assisted translation, like for example WordFast. Such infraction to the basic principle of translation studies is, in my opinion, forgivable if one considers the advantages it encompasses:

 possibility of using the contribution of all researchers, also in direct quotation;  habitual mental elasticity (the necessary exercise for translating one terminology into the other) that can then be very precious in the form of researchers' creativity and mental openness;  need to reinforce the basic concepts and processes of the discipline, involving a continuous effort of auto-redefinition very useful for modeling and reinforcing the sense of identity of the science of translation.

If this need to unify the technical metalanguage of translation science holds for the relationships between the works of different researchers, or at least of different schools or different disciplines, I think it is absolutely proper that here in the Logos translation course the terminology regarding general translation studies and translation criticism be consistent. I therefore aim at outlining some categories of possible translation shifts that hold true both in a preventive evaluation of the process (translation-oriented analysis; translations strategy) and in an evaluation following the result of the process (translation criticism). In the next unit we will see how it is possible to find the clearest possible way out of the obscure woods of the manifold possibilities of classification. Bibliographical references

296 MARÍAS J. Negra espalda del tiempo, Punto de lectura, 2000 (original edition 1998), ISBN 84-663-0007-7. MARÍAS J. Dark Back of Time, New York, New Directions, 2001 (translated by Esther Allen), ISBN 0-8112-1466-4. TOROP P. La traduzione totale, edited by Bruno Osimo, Modena, Guaraldi Logos, 2000, ISBN 88-8049-195-4.

1 Marías 2000, p. 214. 2 Marías 2001, p. 172.

30 - The down-top approach to transformation relationships

«el indiferente anteayer se convierte de golpe en 'los últimos años', según la fórmula de las crónicas y biografías, que a menudo dicen eso del muerto, 'durante sus últimos años...', como si hubiera podido anticiparlo nadie»1.

"what was no more than the day before yesterday is suddenly transformed into 'the final years', in the standard phrase of articles and biographies, which often speak of the deceased 'during his final years', as if anyone could have anticipated that"2.

One of the main points studies of translation processes revolve around is the description of translation choices or, if you want to consider them from the point of view of subsequent process, (see previous unit), of the shifts existing between prototext and metatext.

1. Models analyzing micro-structural shifts (those concerning small units of text, words for example) independent of the textual context and draw inferences concerning the whole text, or at least produce a list of micro- shifts that interest a given metatext. 2. Then there are chronotopical models that aim at creating a typology of (meta)texts, considered as whole texts, rather than as groups of micro-shifts, taken as whole macro-shifts. In this case, the shift categories are not absolute as above, but are related to the poetological and culturological context of the text in question.

An example of the former kind is Leuven-Zwart's model, an example of the latter type is Torop's chronotopical model, that we have already seen in unit 21 of the first part (Gian Luca Per favore Link) and reproduced here: adequate translation

297 recoding (form) transposition (contents) analysis synthesis analysis synthesis (prototext) (metatext) (prototext) (metatext)

autonomy dominant autonomy dominant autonomy dominant autonomy dominant macrostyle precision microstyle quotation theme description expression freedom Let us start from the model of the Netherlands researcher van Leuven-Zwart, who was among the first to study translation criticism from a pragmatic point of view, concretely trying to solve the question of the comparative analysis of two texts in general, of prototext and metatext in particular. Her method is applicable to intralingual translation as well. Aim of the model is to describe microstructural shifts deriving from a conscious or unconscious choice by the translator, on a semantic, syntactic or pragmatic level, and classify important shifts as Lefevere had described them3. After the comparative-model analysis, a descriptive model is used, analyzing the effects of micro-structural shifts on macrostructure, i.e. on characters, events, time, space and other textual elements. As you can see, this model proceeds from the bottom up, because no preventive analysis is made of the text's poetics from which one can arrive at the categories to be put to comparative analysis. In order to understand this model, it would be necessary to get familiar with Leuven-Zwart's vocabulary: by "transeme" the researcher means an understandable text unit with or without a predicate. Any speech act can be disassembled into transemes. By "relationship" similarities or dissimilarities between the texts are meant and, in the given case, between transemes of a text and transemes of the other texts that is compared to it. There is, moreover, another complex concept, "architranseme": it is the common denominator between prototranseme and metatranseme, expressed in simplified terms. I think that the introduction of these new terms (with the exception of the word "relationship", altogether understandable) in this course would be a mistake, and would create some confusion, without necessarily giving the reader a more precise or more articulate vision. Therefore, having named the terms to give the readers the opportunity to recognize them in an eventual reading, I take on the duty of translating Leuven-Zwart's view into a form that I consider more easily understandable. Three kinds of relations are identified as follows:

 contrast relation cases in which an element of the text is modified rendering it unrecognizable. Contrast can be recognized as o an omission o an addition or o a radical change of sense.

298 Here is an example: PT Gertrude stood up MT Camilla thought

 There is a modulation relationship (binary change) when the change occurring between a prototext's and a metatext's element follows the logics of a dichotomy, of a bifurcation along the continuum generalization versus specification or along another bipolar continuum.

For example: PT Gertrude walked MT Gertrude ran (= walk + fast) ? modulation, specification In Leuven-Zwart's model, modulation relationships (specification or generalization) can be further divided depending on the fact they concern: culture (nation, region, ethnic group, community, profession etc.) non verbal time (historization, modernization, achronization), space (localization, exotization, universalization) text style (accentuation, reconstruction, leveling), register (accentuation, reconstruction, leveling), rhetoric figures (preservation, adaptation, paraphrase), author's idiolect (accentuation, reconstruction, leveling), character's idiolect (accentuation, reconstruction, leveling).

 There is a non-binary shift when between the two elements of prototext and metatext there is a difference that, however, not ascribable to any dichotomy, it is not along any continuum between poles, rather it is a difference of a non-binary type. It refers, instead, to a text element to which there is not one single alternative but many.

For example PT Yesterday MT Today is a non-binary change, because possible alternatives to "Yesterday" on the paradigmatic ax are manifold (for example tomorrow, one day, in a week, last month etc.) This relationship considers also the categories, mostly morphological or grammatical or syntactic, that, owing to their nature, could not consist of a binary modulation. Here are some of such categories:

 tense  number  mood  gram. person  gram. class  verb form (passive/active)  verb aspect (perfective/imperfective)

299  word order  explicitation/implicitation (number of informative elements)  deixis/anaphora (intratextual and extratextual references)  assoncance, alliteration, rhyme

After this first part of the essay, in which she analyzes various micro-shifts, in the second van Leuven-Zwart examines the potential effects of such shifts, especially on a large scale, on the macrostructure of the text. Specification, depending on the elements involved, can modify the text in an emotional, picturesque, evocative, suggestive, aggressive, or stereotyped way4. In specification, the fact that the reader's attention is directed toward specific details can involve some distraction from other aspects of the text. Moreover [...] the reader of the [proto]text is given an open view with the possibility of multiple interpretation, while the reader of the [specifying] translation is not: he is presented with a closed view where only one interpretation is possible5. Another emphasized element is that some characters have different idiolects according to the situations they are in: the homogenization of the expressive modes on a single idiolect in the metatext has an unavoidable impact on its reception. The verbal shift of the person modifies the emotional involvement of the reader, or of the inner narrator, with respect to the characters. Syntactic structure can cause differences in the text perception, particularly with right and left text displacement. Deixis and anaphora deserve separate coverage. First, using a pronoun instead of a noun implies a given degree of implicitness: "If, in the narrator's opinion, sufficient pragmatic information is given in order to adequately interpret a referring expression, the cross-reference will be achieved through deictic/anaphoric elements"6. If a translator substitutes a deictic expression for its reference name, the attitude toward the reader is changed, therefore the author's strategy is changed. Van Leuven-Zwart makes some general conclusions on translations in the second half of the 20th century. There is an abundance of specification and explicitation (a trend that, as we have seen, closes interpretive perspectives left open in the prototext), as if "the translator tries to make things 'logical' and comprehensible for the reader"7. This general trend, this unstated, but documentable 'norm', of modern translations "seems to be in accordance with Toury's initial norm of acceptability: passages which, in the translator's opinion, are difficult, strange or 'illogical' are adapted to the assumed taste of the reader"8. If it is true that sometimes adaptations are necessary because otherwise the utterance would sound unnatural and clumsy, it is true that often they are voluntary as well: when using them, a subjective element is introduced. In the next unit we will further examine possible models of shift relations.

Bibliographical references

300 LEFEVERE A. Translating Poetry. Seven Strategies and a Blueprint. Amsterdam, Van Gorcum, 1975, ISBN 90-232-1263-0. LEUVEN ZWART K. van Translation and original. Similarities and dissimilarities. In Target, n. 1:2 (1989) e n. 2:1 (1990). MARÍAS J. Negra espalda del tiempo, Punto de lectura, 2000 (original edition 1998), ISBN 84-663-0007-7. MARÍAS J. Dark Back of Time, New York, New Directions, 2001 (translated by Esther Allen), ISBN 0-8112-1466-4. TOROP P. La traduzione totale, edited by Bruno Osimo, Modena, Logos, 2000, ISBN 88-8049-195-4.

1 Marías 2000, p. 214. 2 Marías 2001, p. 171. 3 In Lefevere's opinion, a translation must be judged on the basis of four equilibriums: - equilibrium between utterance and situation [many ways to express or not express it] - equilibrium between utterance/situation and the possibility to highlight a word or word group; [lexical expressivity and syntactical markedness] - equilibrium between literary langue [...] and literary parole; [literary markedness] - equilibrium between what is said and what is implied [explicitness/implicitness] (Lefevere 1975, p. 111). 4 Van Leuven-Zwart, p. 71. 5 Van Leuven-Zwart, p. 72. 6 Van Leuven-Zwart, p. 85. 7 Van Leuven-Zwart, p. 90. 8 Van Leuven-Zwart, p. 92.

31 - The top-down approach to shift relationships

«Ese ojo sin visión era físicamente perfecto, sólo que no estaba conectado con el cerebro, y así no registraba ninguna imagen»1.

"The visionless eye was physically perfect but was not connected to the brain and registered no images"2.

The Leuven-Zwart model seen in the previous unit considers a text's features a priori and, eventually, tries to outline the general consequences. Torop's chronotopical model, on the other hand, starts from a translation-oriented analysis of the specific text and, once the main features of single elements in a systemic view (with reference to the specific text-system) have been identified, checks the changes in the poetics of the text caused by the shifts. It

301 is, therefore, a top-down approach, analyzing details only once their systemic importance has been identified. In chronotopical analysis, one of the main difficulties consists in tracking a shift to linguistic elements and the resulting structural consequences. A translation-oriented analysis must, therefore, identify the dominant and the subdominants of a given text and outline their expression on the linguistic plane. Here are some of the main categories:

Conceptual words. This is the simplest category. For example, if a text's dominant is an argumentation for peace, words like "peace", "war", "arms", "disarmament" etc. are obviously important, not for their form, but because, conceptually, cover fields contiguous to the theme. These words are important not for their expressivity, not because they link distant elements of the text structure, but because their meanings directly express systemically important concepts for the text. The manipulation of these words impacts the text's contents. Functional expressions. Functional expressions can also be defined bridge words or allusive details, because they are words in themselves altogether unimportant, that, however, are strategically spread throughout the text in order to physically link, through their recurring appearance, distant text zones, in order to create Leitmotiv, sort of "inner rhymes" (attention: rhymes not of sound, but of meaning) functioning as intra-textual references. For example, a political article on Denmark, let us imagine, begins with the sentence "Once upon a time in Denmark" and at the end it finishes with the sentence "In Denmark, once, upon a time". The repetition of the sentence (in altered or non altered form; not a very meaningful sentence in itself) is not aimed at expressing a notion, but at creating an internal reference, at giving cohesion to the text. The manipulation of these expressions impacts the text's structure. Expressive fields. Another category encompasses expressive fields constituted by repetitions of words, idioms, phrases, grammatical forms, repetitions whose meaningfulness is detectable both statistically and, by a careful reader, for the way in which it is perceivable during a normal reading. Compared to the previous category, the difference lies in the absence of internal references; they are typical of an author's expressiveness, they are idiomorphic features of the style of the model author. The manipulation of these expressions impacts the text's poetics. Deictics. (From the Greek deiktikós, derived from deíksis «indication», deriving from deíknumi «I show».) These are linguistic elements referring to (or, better, taking for granted) the physical circumstances of the speech act in absolute, non relative, terms, for example, personal pronouns, demonstrative adjectives, some adverbs: here, now, after, before, there, over, under, this, that, come, leave etc. Deictics reflect an "ingenuous physics of space and time"3, ingenuous because it takes for granted that some concepts expressed

302 by deictics, relative by definition, can be understood by the addressee (reader or hearer), although they are implicit, in absolute terms. It is as ingenuous as a child that, when asked by telephone "where are you?", answers "I am here", taking for granted that the other person necessarily knows the space-time (chronotopical) coordinates of the child. Since they reflect an individual relationship of the model author or character toward a given situation, the alteration of deictics has repercussions on the depicted relationship between individuals, on the individual psychology of a character or of the author. Intertextuality and realia. Both intertextual references and realia are elements characterizing the relationships of a text (and of a culture) to other cultures. Consequently, the manipulation of such expressions impacts the relationship between cultural systems, i.e. on the group psychology of elements of the text's culture. These five fundamental categories of chronotopical analysis can be placed along the self versus other continuum, where by "own" one means "typical of the prototext", i.e. we are on the extreme of the author and the source culture, while by "other" one means "typical of the metatext", i.e. we are on the pole of the translator and the receiving culture. The placeability along the self versus other axis of these categories is a symptom of the fact that they are chronotopical, i.e. inserted within the framework of the specific analysis of a text (and of its actualizations). It is important to understand, rather, that of the categories listed in the previous unit, Leuven-Zwart's, are not placeable along the self versus other continuum because they are not chronotopical. In the shift from "fruit" to "orange", there is neither necessarily appropriation nor acknowledgement, there is, however, specification, independent of the co-text and context. Both approaches have their advantages. The advantages of the former consist, for example, in the fact that it is possible to also consider the parts of the text that don't have strategic importance, but that, however, exist. This concerns:

 aspects of the paradigmatic axis, of the lexicon (words not included in the five categories indicated for the latter model);  all syntagmatic and paradigmatic aspects having to do with differences between prose and poetry, and  all aspects of syntax in prose, that can be more or less marked.

The advantages of the latter approach, the top-down approach, consist in shedding immediate light on the main elements, distinguishing them from those in the background. Lacking a chronotopical analysis, the decision concerning translation shifts would address one element or another indifferently, regardless of their systemic value, neglecting the dominant and the subdominants.

303 In the next unit we'll see if it is possible to postulate a single model, that considers both views (bottom-up and top-down) and incorporates the types of possible prototext-metatext shifts.

Bibliographical references APRESJAN JU. D. Dejksis v leksike i grammatike i naivnaja model´ mira, in Integral´noe opisanie jazyka i sistemnaja leksikografija, Moskvà, JAzyki russkoj kul´tury, 1995, ISBN 5-88766-045-7. LEFEVERE A. Translating Poetry. Seven Strategies and a Blueprint. Amsterdam, Van Gorcum, 1975, ISBN 90-232-1263-0. LEUVEN ZWART K. van Translation and original. Similarities and dissimilarities. In Target, n. 1:2 (1989) e n. 2:1 (1990). MARÍAS J. Negra espalda del tiempo, Punto de lectura, 2000 (original edition 1998), ISBN 84-663-0007-7. MARÍAS J. Dark Back of Time, New York, New Directions, 2001 (translated by Esther Allen), ISBN 0-8112-1466-4. TOROP P. La traduzione totale, edited by Bruno Osimo, Modena, Guaraldi Logos, 2000, ISBN 88-8049-195-4.

1 Marías 2000, p. 189. 2 Marías 2001, p. 153. 3 Apresjan 1995, p. 630.

32 - Shift relationships

«Aunque ya tengo una idea general [...] quedan aún muchos interrogantes a los que he de dar respuesta»1.

"Though I now have a general idea [...] there remain many unresolved issues to which I must still respond"2.

Leuven-Zwart's model, concerning shifts along the generalization versus specification continuum, introduces a dichotomy that is complementary to - not a substitute for - the self/other dichotomy. While the latter binary distinction concerns a relationship between cultures, be they individual or group cultures, the distinction between generalization versus specification can concern both own (self) and other's elements. For example, a balalaika in a Russian text can, in translation, remain "balalaika", or can become a "mandolin" (other), but can also become "a musical instrument" (generalization).

304 In my opinion it is, therefore, necessary, for the shifts that are placeable along a continuum, to use both categories, superimposing them. A translation choice can, therefore, be:

 appropriating and generalizing  appropriating and specifying  recognizing and generalizing  recognizing and specifying

However, in the generalization versus specification dichotomy there is still a third possibility: the neutral treatment of the textual element, meaning neither specifying nor generalizing. This induces me to modify the binary opposition, evolving it into a tripolar opposition. Even in the opposition between self and other there is, in my opinion, a third possibility. It is what could be called, with the fashionable word, "globalization", but maybe we had better call it "standardization" or "homologation", and would consist of modifying an element not towards the receiving culture, not towards the source culture, but towards a generic impartial culture, prevailing over the specific cultures considered and standard to both of them. For example, a typically Russian soup like borsch, in a Russian text, can, in translation, remain "borsch", or can become "mulligatawny soup" (other), but can also become a stew (standardization, homologation). So, if we revise the four-part classification obtained earlier between self/other and generalization/specification by adding a third possibility in both cases (neutral rendering and standardization), we get a nine-part division of this kind:

 appropriating and generalizing  appropriating and specifying  appropriating and neutral  recognizing and generalizing  recognizing and specifying  recognizing and neutral  standardizing and generalizing  standardizing and specifying  standardizing and neutral

SHIFT appropriation standardization acknowledgement generalization 1 2 3

specification 4 5 6

305 neutral 7 8 9

An all-embracing model must incorporate many elements, therefore:

 this nine-part partition;  the five categories of chronotopical analysis;  the three added categories not included in chronotopical analysis but still amenable to appropriation/acknowledgement and generalization/specification (i.e. generic lexicon, syntax, versification)  the category of the elements that are modified without following neither the generalization/specification nor the self/other continua, such as: o the shifts Leuven-Zwart nominates "contrast"; o all non-binary or ternary shifts, for example, grammatical shifts.

In this way, we get the following model:

chronotopical analysis generic parameters deictics realia, conceptual expressive fields functional generic syntax intertextuality words words lexicon specification/generalization/neutral appropriation/acknowledgement/standardization dominant: dominant: dominant: dominant: dominant: paradimatic syntagmatic meter, rhyme, rhythm individual's group identity microtext macrotext/author's text poetics lexical axis identity poetics poetics generic axis character's group's mictotextual author's poetics structure's paradigm syntagmatic meter, rhyme, rhythm psychology psychology contents chronotope poetics culture poetics poetics culture chronotope chronotope chronotope chronotope culture 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

In the next units we will examine if and how such a model is applicable, whether or not it is productive and how its single parts are structured.

306 MARÍAS J. Negra espalda del tiempo, Punto de lectura, 2000 (original edition 1998), ISBN 84-663-0007-7. MARÍAS J. Dark Back of Time, New York, New Directions, 2001 (translated by Esther Allen), ISBN 0-8112-1466-4. TOROP P. La traduzione totale, edited by Bruno Osimo, Modena, Logos, 2000, ISBN 88-8049-195-4.

1 Marías 2000, p. 182. 2 Marías 2001, p. 147-148.

33 - What does "realia" mean?

«[...] uno siente regret o rimpianto, no hay palabra española exacta para eso, quizá seamos poco dados en estas tierras a lamentar lo ocurrido o lo no ocurrido, lo que hicimos o dejamos de hacer»1.

"[...] you feel what is called 'regret' in English, or 'rimpianto', in Italian; there's no Spanish word that says it exactly, maybe we're not much given in these lands to lamenting what has or hasn't happened, what we did or failed to do"2.

Having to face the question of practical application of translation shift categorization, we need material to work with and, for a part of such shifts, maybe the most apt material is that taken from everyday life, where the way of living of a people, the prosaic details of social life dictate the spontaneous origin of expressive forms that then, transposed into literature, can be very hard to translate. Some of these spontaneous expressive forms enter the vocabulary and eventually characterize the cultural, if not linguistic, way a people express themselves. Single fragments of populations carry on specific cultural traditions, that use special words to indicate them. To enter this field it is necessary to understand what "realia" means in the first place, both within translation studies, and without; in this we will be helped by two Bulgarian researchers, Sergej Vlahov e Sider Florin, who in 1980 published a whole book covering what is normally called "untranslatable", realia included. The word "realia" has its origins in Latin, not the language spoken by Romans, that used by Middle Age scholars in many European countries as a language of science, research, philosophy. Since in Latin the plural neuter nominative of an adjective transforms it into a name, "realia" means "the real things", as opposed to words, that are considered neither "things" nor "real". For this reason, the word is a plural of "realis" (real), that, however, is not

307 found in most Latin dictionaries because they usually contain the Classical, not Medieval, Latin occurrences. In this meaning, the word signifies the objects of the material culture. Entering in the field of translation studies, a radical terminological change must be enforced: "realia", in fact, does not mean objects, but signs, words and, more precisely, those words signifying objects of the material culture, especially pertaining to a local culture. It is, therefore, necessary to distinguish realia-objects (mostly outside translation studies) and realia-words (mostly inside translation studies). In every language, there are words that, without in any way distinguishing themselves in the original from the verbal co-text, nonetheless they are not easily transmissible into another language through the usual means and demand from the translator a peculiar attitude: some of these pass to the text of the translation in unaltered form (they are transcribed), others may only partially preserve in translation their morphological or phonetic structure, still others must sometimes be substituted for lexical units of a completely different value or even "composed". Among these words, we meet denominations of element of everyday life, of history, of culture etc. of a given people, country, place that do not exist in other peoples, countries and places. Exactly these words have received in translation studies the name of "realia". (1969: 432) In order to further complicate the terminological framework that is already very confused, researchers of the East European area, among the first to use this term in translation studies, do not consider it to be a plural neuter, but a feminine singular. In particular, in Russian there is the word реалия (realija) that is a singular feminine. Consequently, it is, first, possible to speak about "realia" using the singular (in order to mean one of these words), which we cannot afford, short of using the word realium which, however, as singular, looses its value as a nominalization of the adjective. Moreover, when the word is used in the plural, it looses the -a ending, following the feminine declination, and becoming реалии (realii). Linguistic differences notwithstanding, we need to be careful not to confuse the field of realia with the field of terms. Let's get Vlahov and Florin's opinion on the subject: Between realia and terms there is a fundamental difference. Terms are the basis of scientific lexicon; their scope is specialized, scientific literature; in other spheres, above all in artistic literature, they are used with a definite stylistic aim. Realia are not met mainly in artistic literature, as it is well known they represent elements of the local and historical color; we find them in some descriptive sciences also, but they are now used, above all, as denominations of described objects or even as pure terms. (1969: 433) Vlahov and Florin's research is precious, we will return to it many times again. For the time being, what I wish to stress is the definition the two Bulgarian scholars give to "realia" within the framework of interest of this course:

308 words (and composed expressions) of the popular language representing denominations of objects, concepts, typical phenomena of a given geographic place, of material life or of social-historical peculiarities of some people, nation, country, tribe, that for this reason carry a national, local or historical color; these words do not have exact matches in other languages (1969: 438). In the next units we will examine concrete instances of realia to see what are their possible actualizations and how they can be systematized.

Bibliographical references MARÍAS J. Negra espalda del tiempo, Punto de lectura, 2000 (original edition 1998), ISBN 84-663-0007-7. MARÍAS J. Dark Back of Time, New York, New Directions, 2001 (translated by Esther Allen), ISBN 0-8112-1466-4. VLAHOV S., FLORIN S., Neperovodimoe v perevode. Realii, in Masterstvo perevoda, n. 6, 1969, Moskvà, Sovetskij pisatel´, 1970, p. 432-456. VLAHOV S., FLORIN S., Neperovodimoe v perevode, Moskvà, Vysshaja shkola, 1986.

1 Marías 2000, p. 71. 2 Marías 2001, p. 58-59.

34 - Geographic and ethnographic realia

«Entonces habrá de ser nada, porque lo que pides no cabe, profesor, y soy el primero en sentirlo»1.

"Then it will have to be nothing at all, because what you're asking for won't work, Professor, and I'm the first to feel it"2.

One category of realia consists of geographic realia, that, in turn, can be divided into:

 physical geography and meteorology objects, like, for example: steppe, prairie, tampa, puszta, fiord, wadi, mistral, simoom, tornado, tsunami;  names of geographic objects linked to man's activities: polder  denominations of endemic species: kiwi, koala, Abominable Snowman, yeti, sequoia, Galápagos iguana, čheryomuha.

309 Let us examine the case of "steppe". Let us see what actualizations can there be of this element in a translation from Russian and how is it possible to catalogue them. One possibility is the simple transliteration of the Russian word:

1. step´; this choice has the characteristic of recognizing the alien element and of providing a neuter (neither specifying nor generalizing) rendering.

Another possibility consists in transcribing the Russian word trying to adapt the spelling to render its pronunciation intuitive to the receiving culture's reader:

2. stiép; this choice has the characteristic of recognizing the alien element and of providing for a neuter (neither specifying nor generalizing) rendering. Compared to the previous case, however, there is a greater appropriation of the graphic aspect.

A third possibility consists in creating a specific translatant for the receiving culture, in this case:

3. steppe; this choice has the characteristic of only partially recognizing the alien element (the reader may not know that the word "steppe" derives from Russian culture) and of providing a neuter (neither specifying nor generalizing) rendering.

A fourth possibility consists in explicitating the denotative content:

4. kind of vegetation formed by herbs with a more or less elevated content of chlorophyll; this choice has the characteristic of not recognizing the alien element, a sort of standardization of a specific category, and of providing for a specifying (neither neuter nor generalizing) rendering, i.e. explicitation;

A fifth possibility consists in substituting to steppe a local variant of this kind of vegetation:

5. puszta (for Hungarian culture), prairie (for North-American culture), pampa (for South-American culture); this choice has the characteristic of appropriating the alien element. Finding a puszta in a text set in Russia is in a sense a "geographic fake", a specifying (neither neuter nor generalizing) rendering.

A sixth possibility consists in substituting the steppe with a variant of this kind of vegetation considered 'international', the best known in the world. In our case, for example, supposing that the best known denomination is "steppe", while translating from Hungarian into English puszta, one could use as translatant

310 6. «steppe»; this choice has the characteristic of not recognizing the alien element, its assimilation to a generic 'international code' not typical of a given region, and of providing for a generalizing (neither neuter nor specifying) rendering.

The seventh possibility consists in the previous choice with the addition of an adjective specifying its geographic identity:

7. "Hungarian steppe"; this choice has the characteristic of recognizing the alien element on the plane of content, although not on the formal plane, and of providing for a neuter (neither generalizing nor specifying) rendering.

Vlahov and Florin distinguish ethnographic realia as words signifying notions of the discipline that studies everyday life and culture of peoples, forms of material and spiritual culture, customs, religion, art, folklore and so on. They are further divided into:

 everyday life: shchi, paprika, pie, spaghetti, empanadas, knedli, kumys, cider, trattoria, sauna, bistrot, drugstore; kimono, sari, sarong, toga, mocassin, lapti, sombrero, fibula, jeans; izbà, yurt, igloo, wigwam, bungalow, tucul, hacienda, amphora; fiacre, troika, cab, lando, gondola;  work: brigadeer, farmer, gaucho, consierge, dezhurnaya, fellah; machete, boleadoras; kolkhoz, rancho, latifundium, brigade, guild;  art and culture: kazachok, tarantella, coro, canzonetta, blues; balalaika, tam-tam, castanets, banjo; saga, bylina, chastushki; no (theatre), commedia dell'arte, harlequin, petrushka; ikebana; bard, minstrel, skomorokh, geisha, carnival, Ramadan, May Day, Easter, Passover, Hanukah, Thanksgiving, taroc, pitcher; Santa Claus, Valkyrie, werewolf, vampire, zhar-ptitsa, baba yagà, flying carpet, lama, shaman, bonze; Mormon, Quaker, dervish, pagoda, synagogue, ides, calends, bab´e leto;  ethnic objects and slams: Bantu, Coptic, Cossack, totonaki, basque; cockney, Fritz, gringo, gorilla, yankee; carioca, kanaka; nip, gook, Jap; wetback, greaser, beaner, WOP.  measures and money: arshin, foot, mile, yard, li, pud, hectar, pertica, acre, quarter; ruble, dollar, kopek, lira, dinar, peseta, talent, grand, green.

Let us examine the case of "synagogue". Let us see what actualizations can there be of this element in a translation from a language different from Hebrew and how is it possible to catalogue them. One possibility is the simple transliteration of the Hebrew word:

1. beit hakneset; this choice has the characteristic of recognizing the alien element and of providing for a specifying (neither neuter nor generalizing) rendering.

311 Another possibility consists in translating the Hebrew words beit hakneset to reconstruct in the receiving culture a linguistically similar form:

2. gathering house; this choice has the characteristic of not recognizing the alien element (a "gathering house" could be wherever, in any culture) and of providing for a neuter (neither specifying nor generalizing) rendering.

A third possibility consists in creating a specific translatant for the receiving culture, in this case:

3. synagogue; this choice has the characteristic of only partially recognizing the alien element (the reader may not know that "synagogue" is a Greek word deriving from Jewish culture) and of providing for a neuter (neither specifying nor generalizing) rendering.

A fourth possibility consists in explicitating the denotative content:

4. sacred building in Jewish tradition destined to the exercise of cult; this choice has the characteristic of a specifying (neither neuter nor generalizing) rendering consisting in explicitation, joined to the recognition of such an element as belonging to a given culture;

A fifth possibility would be to substitute synagogue with a local variant of this kind of element:

5. church (for Christian culture), mosque (for Islamic culture), temple (for some polytheist cultures); this choice has the characteristic of appropriating the alien element. Finding a church in a Hebrew text set in a Jewish context is in a sense a "cultural fake", a specifying (neither neuter nor generalizing) rendering.

A sixth possibility consists in substituting the synagogue with a variant of this kind of sacred building considered 'international', the best known in the world. In our case, for example, supposing that the best known denomination is "temple", one could use as translatant

6. "temple"; this choice has the characteristic of not recognizing the alien element, its assimilation to a generic 'international code' not typical of a given region, and of providing for a generalizing (neither neuter nor specifying) rendering.

The seventh possibility consists in the previous choice with the addition of an adjective specifying its cultural identity: "Hebrew temple"; this choice has the characteristic of recognizing the alien element on the plane of content, although not on the formal plane, and of providing for a neuter (neither generalizing nor specifying) rendering.

312 Bibliographical references MARÍAS J. Negra espalda del tiempo, Punto de lectura, 2000 (original edition 1998), ISBN 84-663-0007-7. MARÍAS J. Dark Back of Time, New York, New Directions, 2001 (translated by Esther Allen), ISBN 0-8112-1466-4. VLAHOV S., FLORIN S., Neperovodimoe v perevode. Realii, in Masterstvo perevoda, n. 6, 1969, Moskvà, Sovetskij pisatel´, 1970, p. 432-456. VLAHOV S., FLORIN S., Neperovodimoe v perevode, Moskvà, Vysshaja shkola, 1986.

1 Marías 2000, p. 71. 2 Marías 2001, p. 59.

35 - Political and social realia

«Ya no quería ser reconocido en otro o tener un trasunto, seguía deseando figurar en una ficción pero no como ficción»1.

"He no longer wanted to be recognized in someone else or to have a replica, he still wanted to figure in a fiction but not as fiction"2.

Continuing their catalog of realia by objects, Vlahov and Florin examined the class of political and social realia. This class contains:

 regional administrative agencies: region, province, department, county, canton, princedom; aul, hutor, bidonville; arrondissement, suk, medina, Kremlin, promenade, corso, stargalo, largo, prospekt,  organisms and offices: agora, forum; people's assembly, storting, kneset, duma, senate, chamber, congress, junta, municipality, ispolkom, High chamber, panchaiat; chancellor, khan, czar, shah, doge, pharaoh, Inca, lord, maire, sheriff, vizier, ataman, alcalde, ayatollah, satrap, Burgermeister, mayor;  social and political life: Peronist, Tupamaros, Ku Klux Klan, Wig, Tory, shock troops, Teste Di Cuoio; Partigiani, Carbonari, westernizers, Slavophiles, Magen Adom, Red Crescent; NEP, lobby, Bolshevik, Tifoso, State Advisor, società civile, Lord, Sir, Ser, Madame, Bàryshnja, Agregé, Herr, Narkompros, Zags, Ministry for Beni Culturali, Five-year Plan, college, liceo, campus; nobility, Junker, Third Estate, gentry, merchants, pariah, Untouchables, Samurai, Barin, Mujik, Fellah; Union Jack, red flag, five-pointed star, fleur de lis, crescent;  military realia: legion, cohort, phalange, horde; harquebus, P38, moschetto, carabina, katyusha; general, marshal, guastatore, commando, guerrilla, Feldwebel, ataman, dragon, corazziere, paratrooper.

313 Let us imagine having to translate a sentence containing the realia element "magen adom". It is the symbol, in Israel, of the first aid, as the red cross is commonly used in Christian countries or the red crescent in Islamic countries. One possibility is the simple transliteration of the Hebrew word:

1. The magen adom ambulance took the victim away

Such a translation strategy is specifying, because it transforms a culturally neuter element in the context (the magen adom ambulance in Israel) into a marked element not only on the cultural plane, but on the linguistic plane as well: in an English text, the magen adom sequence is hard to understand for most readers. It is a specificity recognizing strategy.

A second possibility consists in the simple linguistic translation of the sequence:

2. The red shield ambulance took the victim away

The translation strategy in the given case produces a very poor communication result, because what we are used to calling "Star of David" is, in Hebrew, "David's shield". "Red shield" is, therefore, for us not easily understandable. It is a neuter and recognizing choice, at least in its intentions.

A third possibility consists in the linguistic translation of the sequence considering what is implicit in the source culture, i.e. that what is currently called "Magen adom" is, in its complete version, "David Magen Adom", and "David Magen" in English is usually translated not as "David's shield", but as "Star of David":

3. The Red Star of David ambulance took the victim away

This is a specifying translation (owing to the addition by the translator to fill the cultural gap) and recognizing.

A fourth possibility, thinking of a Hebrew-Arab translation, consists in using the cultural homologue of the receiving culture:

4. The Red Crescent ambulance took the victim away

It is an appropriating strategy falsifying the local cultural context of the event, but renders efficiently the inner functional concept.

314 A fifth possibility, thinking of a Hebrew-Arabic translation, consists in using the cultural homologue of a world-prevailing culture, outer, however, to the source and receiving cultures.

5. The Red Cross ambulance took the victim away

It is an standardizing strategy falsifying the local cultural context of the event, but renders efficiently the inner functional concept. On the specification/generalization plane, the rendering is neuter.

A sixth possibility consists in using a generic denomination:

6. the emergency ambulance took the victim away

It is an standardizing, generalizing strategy, that, although not falsifying the cultural context of the event, deprives it of any local connotation.

A seventh possibility consists in using the linguistic translation accompanied by an explanation or gloss by the translator:

7. The Red Star of David ambulance - Israeli equivalent of the Red Cross - took the victim away

It clearly is a specifying strategy - the translator even uses a gloss that is usually forbidden by the ISO 2384 norm if not explained as "translator's note", and partially recognizing: it is recognized the cultural specificity, but, meanwhile, it is partially denied by the explanation that it is an Israeli 'equivalent', implicitly recalling a supposed cultural isomorphism in which all cultures have their "Red Cross" (or 'equivalent'). In the last two units we examined many kinds of realia and their possible actualizations in translation. We emphasized above all the synchronic and geographic differences. In the following units we will continue in other directions. Bibliographical references MARÍAS J. Negra espalda del tiempo, Punto de lectura, 2000 (original edition 1998), ISBN 84-663-0007-7. MARÍAS J. Dark Back of Time, New York, New Directions, 2001 (translated by Esther Allen), ISBN 0-8112-1466-4. VLAHOV S., FLORIN S., Neperovodimoe v perevode. Realii, in Masterstvo perevoda, n. 6, 1969, Moskvà, Sovetskij pisatel´, 1970, p. 432-456. VLAHOV S., FLORIN S., Neperovodimoe v perevode, Moskvà, Vysshaja shkola, 1986.

1 Marías 2000, p. 72.

315 2 Marías 2001, p. 60.

36 - Realia: transcription, transliteration and calques

«Escrito está y se repite idéntico sin compasión ni esperanza»1.

"Thus it is written and thus it is repeated, identically, without compassion or hope"2.

Vlahov and Florin, having shown in their book about realia that it is possible to categorize them based on the object type, or on place and time parameters, go on arranging the processes to transmit realia in translation3. Such classification, presented after the examples in the two previous units, in their book bears a more systematic character. First of all, translation is distinguished from transcription of realia as a first fundamental divide. In the case of translation, it is implicit the attempt at a greater appropriation of the alien element. In the case of transcription, there is an attempt to preserve the alien element through own means. Although such a distinction is very superficial, I think it is a first fundamental standard for distinguishing realia processing on the own versus alien axis. Transcription is, in turn, divided into transcription proper and transliteration. By "transcription" we mean: transmission of sounds of a foreign language (usually proper name, geographic name, scientific term) using the letters of the alphabet of the receiving culture. Whether or not the receiving culture and the source culture use the same or differing alphabets involves further differences. If the alphabet is different, the change is all the more necessary (although there are also text insertions in different alphabets) so that the receiving culture reader is able to process the message. If the alphabet is the same, there can be cases of adaptation reproducing the pronunciation (for example, the English chewing gum can become in Italian «ciuinga», and be treated as an Italian word of feminine gender). Transliterarion is on the other hand transmission of letters of a foreign word using the letters of the alphabet of the receiving culture. The emphasis of transcription is, therefore, on sound, while the emphasis of transliteration is on the graphic form. When transliteration is taken to the extreme, it is possible to anyone (even a computer) reconstruct the original form of a word, as if it were the coding/decoding of the Morse alphabet.

316 One could even go further, and say that the transcription approach is useful in direct interpersonal relationships, in everyday, matter-of-fact situations, while transliteration is useful in the more intellectual relationships, mediated by written formulation. The example given by Vlahov and Florin concerns the native North-American axe (that in itself is already a transcription by the British colonists of a word in a pre-existing language without a written form): the tomahawk. The Russian transcription would be томахок, i.e. «tomahok», which is a way to make pronounceable to a Russian speaker this word in a way similar to the American pronunciation. The word entered Russian culture instead as томагавк i.e. letter by letter transliterated, in a way that in Latin characters would be «tomagavk», since, usually, the sound of aspirate h is rendered in Russian with a hard g sound, and w, non existing any better, is rendered with a simple v4. As to realia translation, there are many possibilities, many ways of incorporating. The first actualization consists in the neologism, often amounting to a calque. By "calque" we usually mean the "translation calque": with material of the receiving language a simple or composed word is formed by literally translating the elements of the expression in the source culture. One classic example is the English skyscraper, that has many calques in different languages: the Russian neboskreb, the Italian grattacielo, the French gratte-ciel, the German Wolkenkratzer, for example. Then there are half-calques, in which just a part of a composed expression in preserved. For example, the translation of the German Dritte Reich is in Italian Terzo Reich, in Russian tretij rejh, in English Third Reich. There are instances of appropriation, i.e. of adaptation of foreign realia: a word in the receiving language is created that, however, fundamentally is worn over the frame - even from a phonemic point of view - of the original word. It is what happens with the pirožkě, typical Russian filled little pies, that in Estonian are called pirukas; it is what happens with the German Walküre, actualized in other languages as "valchiria" (Italian), Valkyrie (English), val ´kirija (Russian) etc.; the French concierge that in Russian becomes kons ´eržka, ending up being inflected any other Russian word of the feminine declination in -a. In many of these cases it is a matter of "grammatical" appropriation, in the sense that the adaptation allows the treatment of the word along the rules of grammatical government, inflection, conjugation of the receiving culture. The semantic neologism, on the other hand, is different from the calque due to the absence of an etymological connection to the original word. It is a word, or word combination, "created" by the translator in order to permit the rendition of the meaning contents of realia. It is also called semantic calque. One example is the English snowshoes from which the Russian snegostupy derives, formed with the sneg- root, meaning "snow", and the root stup-, meaning "step" (and having the same etymology of the English word). The

317 Italian, on the same word, has created a translation calque instead, producing "racchette da neve". An example of semantic calque is the Italian "realizzare", on the English "to realize", where the original Italian meaning of the verb (to make real, to do) the meaning of the English verb (understand) is overlaid, in sentences like: Non avevo mai realizzato che tu fossi così bassa. There are also instances of fake calques, or pseudocalques, or presumed calques. For example, in American English the Italian word latte is used to mean not what in Italian is meant by latte (milk), but «espresso coffee mixed with steamed milk», i.e. «cappuccino», another element of realia that, by contrast, has passed unchanged in the English-speaking culture. In Italian there is the word "golf" that, in many Italians' view, would be an English word with the same meaning. It is a pseudocalque, because in English "golf" doesn't mean "sweater" - as it happens in Italian - but only the sport. The pseudocalque probably derives from the British expression "golf jacket". Deprived of the name "jacket", however, in English it looses part of its meaning, but is still has it in Italian, in a very similar way to what happens with "latte", "caffelatte" and "cappuccino".

Bibliographical references MARÍAS J. Negra espalda del tiempo, Punto de lectura, 2000 (original edition 1998), ISBN 84-663-0007-7. MARÍAS J. Dark Back of Time, New York, New Directions, 2001 (translated by Esther Allen), ISBN 0-8112-1466-4. VLAHOV S., FLORIN S., Neperovodimoe v perevode. Realii, in Masterstvo perevoda, n. 6, 1969, Moskvà, Sovetskij pisatel´, 1970, p. 432-456. VLAHOV S., FLORIN S., Neperovodimoe v perevode, Moskvà, Vysshaja shkola, 1986.

1 Marías 2000, p. 73. 2 Marías 2001, p. 60. 3 Vlahov, Florin 1986: 96. 4 Vlahov, Florin, 1996: 98. 37 - Realia substitution, approximation, contextualization

«[...] contando o diciendo lo mismo cada vez que se lee u hojea o consulta, del mismo modo que la acción elegida y congelada de un cuadro[...]»1.

"[...] telling the same thing in the same way every time it's read or leafed through or consulted, just as the action of a painting, once it's "chosen and frozen"[...]"2.

318 Aside from the translation strategies examined in the previous unit, we have another possibility, when facing the translation of a text containing realia: their substitution with realia of the receiving culture. According to Vlahov and Florin, who have a prescriptive and not merely descriptive attitude,

this view causes an unacceptable "substitution" of the prototext's color with a different color [...] there are paradoxical situations in which the nearest realia to foreign realia in the receiving culture are realia, often themselves adopted (from a foreign culture), often international, but close, understandable to the reader and somehow colorless, for which reason they are preferred3.

They are chosen, implicitly, by translators preferring such a strategy. Even on this plane, I think it is impossible to state that one strategy is absolutely better or worse than another. Realia substitution can make sense, especially if the text has a pragmatic, utilitarian dominant, and the style can be given a low priority. It is clear that such a strategy, whenever applied to literary texts, tends to flatten the cultural differences, to negate them, to alter reality in order to render a text understandable, better, to make it understood without the effort to accept its diversity.

Then there is approximate translation of realia that, according to Vlahov and Florin, is the most popular. This approach allows to translate the material content of an expression at least in a vague way, but the color is nearly always lost, because instead of the connotation prescribed by the author's strategy, we have an expression necessarily deprived of that intende connotation, having a neutral style. Within such approach there are some subtypes:

The principle of substitution with a generic expression of broader meaning is resorting to the noted translation principle of generalization. The approach is indicated whenever the translator arbitrarily decides not to translate the local color, knowing that in this way he can give an idea of the objective, material reference. In the two originally Russian examples:

I prefer dry wine or borzhomi

I'd like something lighter: some narzan or lemonade in both cases the translators translated the realia with "mineral water". The immediately evident advantage consists in the fact that the reader understands what drink the sentence's protagonist wishes. The disadvantage is, obviously, that the reader will never know neither the specific drink requested nor, in cases, that such a drink exists and is particularly popular in certain areas or in specific historical periods. The reader will never know the

319 semiotic value of the act of drinking (or at least requesting) borzhomi in the cultural context in which it is inserted. Compared to this strategy, the transliteration strategy has the evident disadvantage of not being completely understandable ("what the hell is borzhomi anyway?") but it has also the indubitable advantage of allowing the interested reader to investigate and maybe find out something about a real aspect of a culture he didn't know (while in the previous case to such an aspect he simply is not allowed to access).

Based on this principle, the izba on hen's legs typical of Russian popular fairy tales can become a generic palafitte, and a pagoda can become a generic temple.

Another subtype provides the substitution with a functional analogue. The definition of this strategy is very poor, because it merely says that the substituted element arouses a similar reaction in the receiving culture reader to the one aroused by the prototext on the source culture reader. Speaking of aroused reactions is very dangerous, because there is neither objective confirmation nor the possibility of distinguishing the reactions of one reader from those of another, there is a supposition on a sort of standard reader.

Based on such a technique, for example, a not widely known game very popular in the source culture can be substituted for a very popular game in the receiving culture. In a translation from Russian into Bulgarian, since chess was not well known, a translator has transformed a chess game into a checkers game (and maybe he would have turned it into a volleyball game, but he couldn't, because the two men had "sit to play"). Similarly, a musical instrument not well known but very popular in the source culture is substituted for an instrument very well known in the receiving culture (and in such cases, for example, a Neapolitan mandolin can become a Western-American banjo).

A third subtype foresees the description, explanation and interpretation of the realia elements instead of realia, a periphrasis is introduced explicitating the denotative content. For example, instead of a Russian armyak you write "rough cloth coat", instead of kulebyaka you write "dish of filled pastry": lexicographic interpretations.

There is a fourth translation strategy consisting in the contextual translation of the realia. Realia elements are substituted with words that, in the context and co-text in which they are placed in the original, explain the sense of such a collocation. Instead of translating the lexical meaning, the systemic, relational meaning is translated, that would be, naturally, vane to search for in the dictionary. This option is followed when the translator thinks that the

320 context is the dominating factor in a given message. The example reported by Vlahov and Florin is the Russian sentence

Skol´ko stoit putyovka na sovetskij kurort? that is translated:

How much are accommodations at Soviet spas?

In this way the sense of putyovka is lost, it beaing a sort of official certificate given to someone going on vacation, or taking a refresher course, or going on retreat, that, in Soviet times, could have been free or cost a symbolic sum. Evidently this word has no 'analogue' in cultures outside the Russian-Soviet one.

Here, in synthesis, are the translation strategies for realia examined here:

o transcription o transliteration o translation o neologism (calque, half calque, appropriation, semantic neologism) o realia substitution o approximate translation (generalization, functional analogue, description, explanation, interpretation) o contextual translation

Bibliographical references MARÍAS J. Negra espalda del tiempo, Punto de lectura, 2000 (original edition 1998), ISBN 84-663-0007-7. MARÍAS J. Dark Back of Time, New York, New Directions, 2001 (translated by Esther Allen), ISBN 0-8112-1466-4. VLAHOV S., FLORIN S., Neperovodimoe v perevode. Realii, in Masterstvo perevoda, n. 6, 1969, Moskvà, Sovetskij pisatel´, 1970, p. 432-456. VLAHOV S., FLORIN S., Neperovodimoe v perevode, Moskvà, Vysshaja shkola, 1986.

1 Marías 2000, p. 73. 2 Marías 2001, p. 60. 3 Vlahov e Florin, 1986: 101.

38 - How realia can be translated

321 «[...] en él nunca veremos el rostro de quien fue pintado de espaldas ni la nuca de quien se retrató de frente ni el lado oculto de quien ofreció el perfil».

"[...] we'll never see the face of the person who was painted from behind, or the nape of the neck of the one whose face was portrayed, or the hidden side of the one in profile".

In the previous units, we examined the ways in which it is possible to translate realia. Now we proceed to the choice of one or the other strategy. The underlying notion guiding all translation choices in general, and those dealing with realia in particular, is that it does not make much sense to establish general rules; it is advisable consider pluses and minuses of each possible strategy on an individual base.

The first choice to be taken is, of course, between transliteration and translation. It is possible synthesize the variables on which such a choice depends into five points:

1. the type of text; 2. the significance of the realia in the context; 3. the type of realia, their systemic role in the source culture and in the receiving culture; 4. the languages, the collocations, and the collocabilities, the degree of acceptance of unusual collocations and exotic expressions in the receiving culture, and the translator's will to "force" the reader to overcome mental laziness in favor of a richer world awareness; 5. the metatext's model reader (with possible, probable differences as compared to the prototext's model reader).

1. the type of text If the text is a scientific text, there are probably not many realia, and the few present are mostly actually terms (words of technical terminology), that usually have the corresponding term in the receiving culture as the resulting translation. In public affairs writing, transliteration is statistically more frequent, while in fiction the choice depends mostly on the translation strategy, so that drawing statistics and mapping trends is impossible. Vlahov and Florin recommend translation for children's literature, but I don't agree. I don't think that the model reader of a book for children is stiffer or less curious of diversity; on the contrary, I think that it is often true that these are more common features of the adult reader. In adventure novels, the genre itself dictates the choice of transliteration, because deciding to read an adventure story is a choice of those curious for the new, the different, the exotic. In this case, maybe, one can make an exception to the non-generalizing rule, and state that here transliteration is nearly compulsory. In a popular science work,

322 because of the didactic character implicit in it, I think that the most apt solution would be transcription with an explication in a footnote. In the dramatic text, since there is no possibility for footnotes, the choice is more complex and falls most heavily on the strategy the director chooses for interpretation. 2. the significance of the realia in the context; The presence of realia in a sense can be more or less significant, their role can have a greater or lesser semantic value. The realia elements being alien or proper to the source culture constitutes a major difference in their consideration. When realia are alien to the source culture, it is probable that a neuter translation strategy consists in transliterating or transcribing them. The presence of realia pertaining to the source culture, on the contrary, poses a much more serious problem to the translator. In this case the degree of exotization, while transliterating and transcribing, is much greater than in the prototext: common and familiar in the source language, such words and expressions in the translation's language are out of the usual lexical context, differ by heterogeneity, and, consequently, they demand a heightened attention to be decoded. One can therefore say that wherever realia have a systemic (textual, contextual) significance, transcription is more advisable, while whenever realia are among the lower subdominants in the scale drawn by the translator in the moment when she decided her strategy. The risk implied in transcription or transliteration is, whenever it doesn't convey at all the lexical sense of the written word, of not realizing that the dominant, in this case, is just the lexical value of the word. It would be advisable, then, if one is certain that it is the case, to choose a word that is understandable in the receiving culture. 3. the type of realia The degree of awareness of determined realia in a given culture is an essential parameter. Some hardly ever arouse any doubts: it the case of ruble, franc, Bolshevik, toreador, Thermidor, Jacobin. These are words found in almost any dictionary, and in these cases transcription is a nearly obliged choice, because the reader that could in the event not being aware of their meaning can easily indirectly access it. The realia that really challenge are national, regional and local realia (of the source culture). Of these, the ones semantically more active can be transcribed, the secondary ones can be translated, according to the whole translation strategy. Words indicating given territorial or economic or political agencies, when translated, can mislead the translator. It would be misleading "to translate" the US President as Prime Minister, or translating the Clinton "administration" in Clinton "government". Along the same line, it would be at the least misinformative to speak of the "secretary of State" of an European country, when there is a minister of Foreign Affairs is in his place. Analogously, it would be misleading to translate a Soviet Kolkhoz into a farm, as if a Kolkhoz had no peculiar feature when compared to farms that are found in most areas of the world.

323 4. the source culture and the receiving culture, and their languages In the different national dictionaries, there is no uniform quota of foreign words. Some cultures are more inclined to adsorb words from "alien" cultures than others. And, for historical reasons of the single nations, some cultures leave their mark on others. For example, in the former Soviet countries, like the Baltic countries that are entering the European Union, until 1991 the quantity of Russian borrowings was very high, due to the political domination. It is very probable that, within the bounds of reason, such borrowings have been going into disuse since 1991, when these republics became independent again. For similar reasons the French borrowings dominated in English, Italian, German and Russian for many centuries, because French culture was dominant or, anyway, one of the dominant ones at the world level in the West. While in this century, above all due to the internet, we see the clamorous linguistic prevalence of English. Any culture where there is no rigid linguistic protectionism accommodates, in its dictionaries, many English-American words that are not counterbalanced in the American dictionaries with new foreignisms.

Bibliographical references FINKEL´ A. M. Ob avtoperevode, TKP, 1962, p. 104-125. MARÍAS J. Negra espalda del tiempo, Punto de lectura, 2000 (original edition 1998), ISBN 84-663-0007-7. MARÍAS J. Dark Back of Time, New York, New Directions, 2001 (translated by Esther Allen), ISBN 0-8112-1466-4. VLAHOV S., FLORIN S., Neperovodimoe v perevode. Realii, in Masterstvo perevoda, n. 6, 1969, Moskvà, Sovetskij pisatel´, 1970, p. 432-456. VLAHOV S., FLORIN S., Neperovodimoe v perevode, Moskvà, Vysshaja shkola, 1986.

1 Marías 2000, p. 73. 2 Marías 2001, p. 60. 3 1986: 106. 4 Finkel´ 1962: 112.

39 - How to translate realia

«Contar es lo que más mata t lo que más sepulta, lo que fija y dibuja y hiela nuestro rostro o el perfil o la nuca»1.

"Telling the story is what kills, what entombs, what secures and delineates and solidifies our face, profile or nape"2.

324 From what was explained in the previous unit, it is obvious that relationships, sometimes the balance of power between cultures, have an influence also on the translation strategy chosen for realia. If, as we saw, in the dictionaries of most languages there is a strong presence of English words, this is evidently a sign of a greater readiness to accept realia in the texts coming from English- speaking cultures, rather than make an effort to understand the meaning and the cultural contextualization of realia coming from other cultures, that are lesser from the point of view of international visibility.

I must add that English language is very heterogeneous, because within it Germanic, Romance, Latin, Greek traditions converge and, maybe due to this easy appropriation and use of "exotic" words, the rate of absorption of non- English words is very high. Therefore, it is not only a cultural, political, and economic predominance of the U.S., but also of a cultural and linguistic ductility. In a sense, American English has become one of the most spoken languages in the world also because within it many non-English cultures and traditions find legitimate space, as much as the United States of America is traditionally the gathering point of émigrés of every provenance.

In this sense it is the translator's task (or her employer's, whenever he dictates the strategy she is to follow) to opt for a greater or lesser visibility of the original culture in the text (or which is referred to in the text). The translator is often the link of the semiosphere's communication chain from which preservation - or obliteration - of data on the reality in the source culture depends, on which the speed of communication within the huge semiotic macro-system, the world, depends.

Finally, another cultural variable bears on the choice between transcription and translation of realia: the possible presence of interlingual homonyms.

When considering the model reader, the choice between transcription and transliteration must be planned according to the pragmatic, or aesthetic, nature of the text. In the former case, choices are substantially dictated by the practical purposes of the text, without leaving any room for personal interpretation.

In the case of an artistic text, a distinction between mass reader and scholar must be made. Such a distinction is not always possible or desirable, however.

Targeted editions are possible only for languages that have a very high number of speakers and a high rate of readers. For example, Italian is spoken in the world by a comparatively low number of people, and among them the rate of readers is very low. For this reason, when, for example, the edition of a

325 classic is planned, usually it is not targeted for a given type of reader; it has to satisfy - in the intentions, at least, the tastes of all readers, from the commuter reader to the philologist.

On the contrary, for English language, the number of readers is far greater, so it is possible to plan editions geared for a narrower target: cheap editions for the wide public, and philological editions for scholars; editions without footnotes or preface, with translated realia, easy to read, for the more "casual" readers, and editions with powerful critical apparatus, transliterated realia (maybe with a footnote), and just one line of text in each page above dozens of lines of notes - as Vladìmir Nabókov wanted - for the more sophisticated reader.

So, when one thinks that the choice between realia translation and transliteration depends on the model reader as well, this means above all on the diffusion of the language of the receiving culture and on the publishing policies followed there.

I think that the preservation of realia by transliterating them is always the best solution, even for editions destined to a mass public. It is axiomatic that for the mass public, and for children, one must prepare "easy" texts, both in the metrical form (prose editions of epical poems), and in syntax and lexicon.

I think that a casual reader shouldn't be considered casual forever either, nor punished with a low-quality product. A passion for reading must be cultivated by publishing policies as well. Readers must be attracted with interesting products, seducing them with a variegated array, coming from different regions and, as to realia, conserving the exotic flavor they lend. An exotic taste is an "extra", that can be appreciated also by casual readers, or "weak" readers.

On the contrary, finding only what is already known in texts cannot be a strong motive for increasing readership.

Maybe in some cases one tends to confuse the plane of exoticism and the plane of formal complexity. Complex texts like Joyce's Ulysses or Musil's Man without Qualities are complex even if there are no realia, and tend to be read by elite readers independent of the cultures into which they are translated.

There are many levels of reading. A text can also be read with satisfaction by someone not catching all possible levels of interpretation. And a surface reading is possible of a text containing many realia, that may not be decoded all at once, but whose presence is still an important reference for an eventual discussion, and a given from a different reality.

326 Their suppression (actually, their translation occurs more often than their suppression), or obliteration cannot have any positive consequence for any type of reader, in my opinion. I repeat that this is my personal opinion.

I close this unit about realia with a quotation:

Connotation, therefore also color, is a part of meaning, consequently it is translated with the same importance of the semantic meaning of a word. If it were impossible to do so, if the translator could transmit only the "naked" semantics of the lexical unit, the loss in color for the reader of the translation means an incomplete perception of the image, substantially, its distortion (Vlahov and Florin 1996: 121).

Bibliographical references

MARÍAS J. Negra espalda del tiempo, Punto de lectura, 2000 (original edition 1998), ISBN 84-663-0007-7.

MARÍAS J. Dark Back of Time, New York, New Directions, 2001 (translated by Esther Allen), ISBN 0-8112-1466-4.

VLAHOV S., FLORIN S., Neperovodimoe v perevode. Realii, in Masterstvo perevoda, n. 6, 1969, Moskvà, Sovetskij pisatel´, 1970, p. 432-456.

VLAHOV S., FLORIN S., Neperovodimoe v perevode, Moskvà, Vysshaja shkola, 1986.

1 Marías 2000, p. 73. 2 Marías 2001, p. 60.

40 - Proper names translation

«Ahora que voy a parar y a no contar más durante algún tiempo, me acuerdo de lo que dije hace mucho»1.

"I'm going to stop now and say no more for a while; I remember what I said long ago"2.

Another aspect that gives a text a characteristic location consists in proper names it contains, referring both to people and to objects. Apparently, personal proper name translation is not a problem because, at first glance,

327 you would say that it is a phenomenon belonging to the past, when, for example, all the writers' names were adapted to the receiving language and culture: for example, in Italian, Carlo Dickens, Leone Tolstoi, Gustavo Flaubert, Volfango Amedeo Mozart ecc.

Actually, such a practice is still partially in use. For example, the writer Tolstoy is known, in English American culture, as "Leo", which is not the translation of the original "Lev", meaning "lion", but it is its onomastic version, i.e. it is the English proper noun deriving from the same Latin root of leo leonis.

An analogous phenomenon is noticed in the Western spelling of some names originally belonging to non-Latin alphabets. The Russian name "Dmitrij" is sometimes translated as "Demeter", sometimes it is adapted to the regional pronunciation, becoming, for example, Dmitri or Dmitry in English (for an English speaker it is difficult to pronounce two vowel sounds like "ij"). Similarly, the name "Vasilij" is easily pronounced, both in English and in Italian and in French, with an unwilling doubling of the "s", such doubling reflecting itself even in the spelling often adopted especially in non-scientific editions: Vassily or Vassili. From this point of view, the attitude is towards adaptation, comfort, despite of philological correctness.

A similar description can be made as to transliteration or transcription of Hebrew. Many common words in a non-Jewish context too have, in Latin characters, double consonants that in Hebrew do not exist. Here are some examples from an English dictionary:

current spelling spelling without consonant doubling azzimo azimo cabbala cabala hanukkà hanukà harosset haroset hassid hasid kippur kipur pessah pesah sadduceo saduceo shabbat shabat talled taled yiddish yidish

But in this general pronounciation-friendly attitude, to the disadvantage of philology, there is consistency. Because in other cases there is an exaggerated philological insistence if compared to other feeble points. For example, we all know the novel Anna Karenina, but maybe not all know that

328 the heroine's surname, in any Western language, would be "Karenin", i.e. the same as her husband's. In French, German, Italian, Spanish, English, where surnames are not declined by gender, the novel's title, if inspired to the same acceptability - and not adequacy - criteria could easily be Anna Karenin.

Although it is a descriptive, not prescriptive, science, translation science dictates, however, inner consistency in translation choices throughout a text (or in a series of texts). It would, therefore, be desirable to stick to one or another trend.

Let us examine proper object nouns. This category is often actualized in: names of agencies names of cinemas, theaters names of streets

With the exception of international agencies having a multilingual name (for example Unione Europea, Union Européenne, European Union, Europäische Union ecc.), the translation of the proper name of an agency can create confusion. For example, translating names of the universities containing a place name (University of California, Washington University, Università degli Studi di Milano, Moskovskij gosudarstvennyj universitet) can be dangerous because in some cases the place name refers to the place where the university has its basis, in other cases it is simply an appellation. For example, translating "Milan University" would create confusion, because in Milan there are more than ten universities that, if translated, could more or less fit in this English translation. The same can be said for the University of California, that, if literally translated, would give the (wrong) idea that in California there is just one university. Translating «Washington University» as «Università di Washington» would be simply a mistake: this university is not in either Washington state nor in Washington, D.C., but rather in Missouri.

There are, then, particular cases in which a translation would really be ridiculous. Since some names have a meaning beyond their meaning as proper names, the paradox could be realized in which the Milan "Università Bocconi", that bears the surname of its founder, could be translated as "Bite University" or "Mouthful University", since "boccone" in Italian means "bite" or "mouthful". That is what happened during the English translation of the Italian ministers' biographies when they were put in office in 2001, in the Italian government official site.

329 An important aspect concerning realia in general and proper names in particular, which is valid for all translators of all linguistic combinations, is as follows: when coming across an element of realia or a proper name, the first question to be asked is from what culture, in what language it originates. Once this is settled, the choice is between:

1. transliterating or transcribing the original spelling 2. translating or adapting the original spelling

what is not permissible is:

3. *transcription or adaptation of non-original spelling belonging to the language/culture in which the text is incidentally written.

As an example of this third, undesirable option, I take Martin Cruz Smith's novel Gorky Park, published in Italian with the same English title in Pier Francesco Paolini's translation (who, presumably, didn't have a major role in deciding about the title, because usually such task belongs to the marketing office of a publisher). The U.S. novel is set in an amusement park in Moscow, that in Russian is called «Park imeni Gor´kogo». Therefore, Martin Cruz Smith legitimately decided to give it the English version of the name, translating the Russian denomination: Gorky Park. The Italian publisher had the opportunity to:

1. transliterating or transcribing the original spelling («Park imeni Gor ´kogo») 2. translating or adapting the original spelling («Parco Gor´kij»

and instead opted for what I consider the unallowable option:

3. *transcribing or adapting the non original spelling belonging to the language/culture in which the text is incidentally written: so the text was translated as "Gorky Park", as if in New York or in another U.S. town there were a park entitled to the Russian writer.

In this way an evident false is created, if not from the literary point of view, from the literary setting point of view. The readers are given the illusion that somewhere in the world there is a "Gorky Park" [in English] or, maybe, that the thriller is not set in Russia. The French publisher has made a still more complex false: in France the novel is known as Gorki Parc i.e. preserving the English construction in which the first name is a modifier of the second, but translating "Park" as "Parc", therefore creating a hybrid in which:

330 construction is English the assumed language is French the proper name is originally Russian (imagine that!) Danish have called it «Gorkij Park» adapting the Russian writer's name spelling, but leaving the illusion that the park bear this name (in Danish or Russian). The Finnish publisher has made a thoroughly legitimate choice by publishing it as Gorkin puisto, i.e. translating the title in Finnish.

The third 40-unit section of this course ends here, but the topics foreseen for the third part are not completely covered. The many topics to be dealt with as far as production of translated text is concerned will be explained in the fourth section, the next 40 units.

1 Marías 2000, p. 419. 2 Marías 2001, p. 336.

1 - The re-expression of the original

"For people of the most varied backgrounds lived there, on any one day you could hear seven or eight languages. Aside from the Bulgarians [...] there were many Turks [...] and next to it was the neighborhood of the Sefardim, the Spanish Jews [...] There were Greek, Albanians, Armenians, Gypsies [...] my wetnurse was Rumanian. There were also Russians here and there"1.

Already in 1963, the great Czech father of translation studies Jiří Levý in the classic book Umení překladu had made assumptions that guided research on translation towards a broader conception, in which interlingual translation was also considered from an extra-lingual - and, more generically, semiotic - point of view. One can see that from the fact that he considers a writer - the prototext's author - a translator of reality, analogous to the interlingual translator, who translates the original that is, in turn, a translation of reality. The interlingual translator would thus become a "translator squared".

Of the original's author an artistic expression of reality is demanded, of the translator an artistic re-styling [in Czech: přestylizace]. The translator expresses his talent first

331 of all as an artist of the word, consequently, in a first place, he must be a style specialist2.

Such a statement implies that the interlingual translator interprets the prototext reality in a subjective way (as does the author with the matter that he decides to use for his own creation) and that translation is heavily influenced by the author's personal style, by his idiolect.

The practical realization of a version is based, in Levý's opinion, on three focal points:

1. the interrelation between two linguistic systems; 2. the influence of the original's language on the artistic texture of the metatext; 3. the strained style of the translation, deriving from the translation of an idea into a language other than that in which it was originated;

Let us analyze these three aspects. When Levý speaks of the reciprocal relation at work between two linguistic systems, he implic-itly refers to the two cultural systems. He does not limit himself to viewing the superficial aspect of the linguistic system as a self- referential code; he also examines its reality-related aspects, with the culture in which it was originated and developed. In fact his concern is to make clear that the relationship be-tween a text and the culture that generates it - the general culture of the environment, the individual author's culture, the culture of those cultural cur-rents to which the author is exposed - is a relation-ship impossible to recreate in any other language, in any other culture: The language of the original and the language of the translation are not immediately commensurable. The linguistic capabilities of two languages are not "equivalent", and that is why it is not possible to trans-late in a mechanic way. The exact meanings and the aesthetic qualities of the words have no reciprocal match. For this reason, the more the role of language in the artistic structure of a text is important, the harder to translate it; of course, a feature of poetic translation is its greater license and greater strain in the texture3. From this analysis, it is already clear that the metatext is characterized by a lesser degree of spontaneity and naturalness (and if it is spontaneous, this is a false trait, because it is an artful elaboration on a text that originated spontaneously, in a different culture, obeying different criteria and a different cohesion). Levý sets some examples of different views of everyday cultural aspects. The way to count the floors of a building, for example. U.S. people and Russians calculate that the floor that is on the same level as the ground outside the house is the first floor, whereas in the other cultures this is considered as the ground floor, the first floor being that above. Another

332 example of Levý's is the segmentation of the parts of the day in two cultures, the German and the English: German English

Nacht night

Morgen Morning

Vormittag

Nachmittag Afternoon

Abend Evening

Nacht Night Moreover, there are still greater differences as regards the way to refer to brothers and sisters in four cultures examined4: Hungarian English German Indonesian

older bâtya brother siblings Bruder Geschwister sudara brother younger öccs brother

older nene sister Schwester sister younger hug sister These differences are not always resolved by the translator's awareness and ability, because every culture has a degree of precision that is different in order to express concepts in given areas. On the whole, one can say that the lexicons of the different languages are characterized by a different concentration of terms to signify different areas of reality and, consequently, form the position of members of two languages reality in them is articulated with a different level of precision5.

333 In the figure, taken from Levý's book, on the left you can read: «Lingua A» and underneath «Lingua B». On the upper side, three letters of the alphabet represent three abstract "segments" of reality. On the right, an indication of the possibility for the progression to go on freely. The presence of little vertical traits represents the presence, in a culture, for example, of seven lexical alternatives in the A culture compared to two in the B culture (semantic segment a), of twelve lexical alternatives in the A culture compared to five in the B culture (semantic segment b), of two lexical alternatives in the A culture compared to ten in the B culture (semantic segment c). Consequently, even a very good translation is always a result of a compromise. The syntactical and lexical potentialities of any language impose given limitations to the translator's work in the writing stage. In order to cope with the above analyzed situation, a translator must mobilize all means she has at her disposal. Wherever the origi-nal's author uses the expressive means that are most become to him, that arise spontaneously from him and indissolubly from the matter about which he is expressing his thought, the translator must turn to expressive modes that can even be alien to her, that often are confined to the extremes of the local origi-nal literary production. For this reason, one can say that the translator goes beyond the limits of the experience of the original literature. As regards the second point, the influence of the original on the metatext can be of direct or indi-rect character, The negative direct influence mani-fests itself in clumsy constructions, borrowings and in the lack, in translation, of the expressive means not present in the metatext's language. The indirect influence of the original's language is, on the other hand, measured in the frequency with which the translator deviates from the prototext's stylistic traits that she considers neutral, directly deriving from its grammatical structure. Substantially, an expert translator, in order to avoid calques and forms deriving from the different grammatical structure, systematically deviates from them, so that in the end her translations contain many grammatical traits that are typical of the prototext inferior to the quantity in the texts spontaneously created in the receiving culture. If, for example, one is translating from Rus-sian, and the translator is (maybe much too) aware that there is a huge series of adverbs that are formed with a negativizing prefix, like for example nedalekò, "not far from", she tends to never trans-lating nedalekò as "not far from...", to always translating it as

334 "close" or "near", whereas, the form is actually possible in the receiving language - more similar to that of the Russian adverb - "not far from". Translated literature for all these motives tends to emerge as a system on its own, within which elements have shared features, as Gideon Toury had guessed.

Bibliographical references CANETTI ELIAS Die gerettete Zunge. - Die Fackel im Ohr. - Das Augenspiel, München, Carl Hanser Verlag, 1995, ISBN 3-446-18062-1. LEVÝ JIŘÍ, Umení překladu, Praha, Ceskoslovenský spisovatel, 1963. Russian translation by Vladìmir Rossel´s, Iskusstvo perevoda, Moskvà, Progress, 1974.

1 Canetti 1999: 6. 2 Levý 1963 (1974): 77. 3 Levý 1963 (1974): 77. 4 Levý 1963 (1974): 80. 5 Levý 1963 (1974): 81.

2 - Comparing the expressive potential

"Every detail of them is present to my mind, but not in the language I heard them in. I heard them in Bulgarian, but I know them in German"1

Jiří Levý illustrates in a very clever and understandable way what happens in the decoding/recoding process in terms of expressive potential of each language/culture.

In previous parts of this course we discussed how difficult it is to decide about the preeminence of language over culture or, vice versa: to determine which of the two elements is in function in respect to the other one. Some theories, especially in the past, tended to see language as a mere expressive instrument of a culture that has been already formed autonomously and that needs language just to find a verbal "translation".

A somewhat opposite school of thought attributes absolute preeminence of language over culture. According to this current, even thought is linguistic, even intra-individual reflections are uniquely possible thanks to the natural code. In this view, there is no mental code, and extralingual culture is a mere extension of the linguistic one, generated by a linguistic structure. A well- known example of this current is Schleiermacher:

335 Every human being is, on one hand, under the power of the language he speaks; he and all his thought is a product of it. He cannot, with complete certainty, think nothing that is outside the limits of language. The form of his concepts, the way and the means to connect them are delineated for him by the language in which he was born and educated; intellect and imagination are linked to it2.

Other theorists, the first of them, Whorf, promote a mutual influence of language and culture. The presence of definite linguistic categories, in this view that I share, gives life to some thought modes, while, on the other hand, some cultural views even produce, in the long run, linguistic forms.

Any way you prefer to look at it, a point on which all researchers agree is that stylistic expressivity of each language differs from that of the others. The prototext originates spontaneously from the expressive potentialities of an author inserted in a linguistic and cultural context, while the metatext originates artificially as a result of expressive potentialities of the protoculture adapted to a different linguistic and cultural context.

For this reason, Levý holds that a comparative stylistics of each pair of languages and cultures is indispensable to translators. Even when taking for granted that any given language in its entirety can express more or less the same volume of information as the next, the fact remains that the same concept may be expressed directly in one language while only indirectly in another. A concept that corresponds to a lexical unit, to a word in one culture, in another can require a much longer elucidation, maybe a sentence or more.

The comparative stylistics that Levý proposes to translators foresees the comparison of just two languages/cultures at any one time. For each pair of languages/cultures one can delineate three segments:

A. what informative means of the two languages can be considered approximatively reciprocal translatants; B: what informative means present in the original’s language are absent in the language of the translation; C: what informative means missing in the original’s language are present in the language of the translation3;

While the problem of the missing linguistic means in the receiving language which are present in the prototext language were dealt with by other researchers too, it is very important that Levý gives so much attention to the C segment, concerning the expressive potential of the receiving language that is not stimulated by corresponding stylemes of the original. Such a situation can be graphically expressed in this way:

spectrum of expressive potential

336 type of relation potential potential potential between present in the present in present in protoculture and protoculture both the metaculture and absent in cultures metaculture the and absent metaculture in the protoculture

function of the compensatory translatants hidden segment from a elements possibilities translational point of view language/culture of the original

segments B A C language/culture of the translation

In this table, which is a free reinterpretation of the table in Levý 1974: 81, gray spaces indicate the presence of linguistic-expressive potential, while red spaces indicate the absence of such potential.

Usually the discussion on the translation loss is limited to the possibilities contemplated in the B and A columns. Taking a difference of semantic field between two words for granted in any case, as in the A segment, one usually searches for translatants that, in a given context and co-text, satisfy at least a minimum of the translatability criteria, and such translatants are found in the receiving text language.

When, on the contrary, the translatant is missing in the metatext language (B segment column), one falls back on compensatory elements (for example circumlocution or periphrases, or even metatextual elements like footnotes).

What is most innovative in Levý’s theory concerns the column corresponding to the C segment, where the expressive potential of the receiving language is so great that, seeing the lack in the source language, are not spontaneously considered by the translator. Here is the situation as described by Levý:

The average translator tries under the pressure of the original fully valid substitutes for the semantic units of the original. Doing so, however, in her intuitional searches she can always unwillingly have to deal with one of two following related phenomena:

337 1) if she doesn’t use the specific means of her own language, for which the original doesn’t give any base, the expressive spectrum of the translation will be poorer than the corresponding spectrum in the original work written in the mother tongue (only type A instead of types A + C);

2) in the original there is a group of latent units of a semantic or stylistic nature that the author could not actualize because of the conditions of his language, that the translator can discover and express thanks to her own, in this case, wider information possibilities4.

The translator is usually reliant on the expressive potential of her own language only when she receives a stimulus from the prototext in that direction. At first the prototext does not give any suggestion outside the A+C framework, consequently the language of the translator limiting herself to such a mechanism misses the original’s richness (owing to the interlingual transfer and the losses it encompasses), but also misses the richness of a text autonomously originated in the metatext language. Not being thought in the metatext language, it tends to exploit a very reduced expressive potential.

Levý, on the contrary, feels that the translator should possibly tend towards extending the expressive potential from the A+C segments to the A+B+C segments, also mobilizing the reserves of her tongue beyond the boundaries of experience of the original literature. For this reason, many writers and scholars in the course of history, especially since the Romantic era, have affirmed that translation is a very important means to enlarge the expressive potential of a language. Schleiermacher feels too that:

In the same way as our territory probably became richer and more fertile, and our climate more amiable and gentle after so many transplantations of foreign plants, so we feel that our language, that we less practice owing to our Northern lethargy, can only blossom and develop its perfect power thanks to the most varied contacts with what is foreign5.

Bibliographical references

CANETTI ELIAS Die gerettete Zunge. - Die Fackel im Ohr. - Das Augenspiel, München, Carl Hanser Verlag, 1995, ISBN 3-446-18062-1.

CANETTI ELIAS The Tongue Set Free. Remembrance of a European Childhood, translated by Joachim Neugroschel, in The Memoirs of Elias Canetti, New York, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999, ISBN 0-374- 19950-7, p. 1-286.

338 LEVÝ JIRÍ, Umení překladu, Praha, Ceskoslovenský spisovatel, 1963. Russian translation by Vladìmir Rossel´s, Iskusstvo perevoda, Moskvà, Progress, 1974.

SCHLEIERMACHER F. Über die verschiedenen Methoden des Übersetzens, 1813.

1 Canetti 1999: 12. 2 Schleiermacher 1813. 3 Levý 1974: 81. 4 Levý 1974: 82. 5 Schleiermacher 1813.

3 - Direct and indirect influences of the protolanguage

"All events of those first few years were in Ladino or Bulgarian. It wasn’t until much later that most of them were rendered into German within me"1.

As in the two previous units, we continue to follow the precious contribution of Levý regarding the recreation of the metatext. The influence of the prototext on the metatext is always perceivable in the translator’s style. Such an influence can be direct or indirect. The direct influence can be in positive (i.e. presence of added elements) or in negative (i.e. missing elements that were present in the prototext); the positive influence consists in the presence in the metatext of clumsy (from the point of view of metaculture) constructs, borrowed from the prototext; the negative one consists in the absence in the metatext of expressive means lacking in the prototext language.

influence of the prototext on the metatext

direct indirect in positive in negative in negative

clumsy missing missing constructs expressive constructs means typical of the

339 prototext language

One can perceive the indirect influence of the language of the prototext by registering the frequency with which the translator diverges from the typical style constructs of the original, that the translator interprets as neutral grammatical traits. I have covered this aspect in unit one.

Beyond these problems deriving directly from the anisomorphism of natural codes, there are others deriving from the fact that thought – originally actualized in the language of the prototext – is somehow inextricable from the language in which it was actualized. Whorf too argues in favor of this point, although in another context, when he states:

We are thus introduced to a new principle of relativity, which holds that all observers are not led by the same physical evidence to the same picture of the universe, unless their linguistic backgrounds are similar, or can in some way be calibrated2.

Being born and raised within a linguistic culture ultimately creates a different world view in different individuals, which in a sense contradicts the very possibility of translation, unless translation is considered an extension of a new and different world view:

facts are different for speakers whose linguistic background imposes a different formulation of facts3.

After all, a good translator behaves exactly this way: gives a metacultural version of the world view expressed by the prototext as to the protoculture. But stating so creates serious risks of arbitrarily extending the translator’s interpretive and re-creative capabilities. What is the limit to the creative translator’s re-interpretation of the prototext, or on the other extreme when the translator’s personality overrides the culture expressed by the text?

It is on this backdrop that Levý refers to the multiple decisions that, non only in theory but in practice as well, the translator must make4. The translator

must restore in the speech its potential for expansion, discover the path of linguistic productivity. In an era of predominance of linguistic stereotypes it is not an useless operation.

While the original work is born in the national tongue and is completed with language itself, in translation linguistic creativity is an exceptional event, it does not enter as an

340 inextricable element in the creative process, but is called in only by accidental linguistic situations5.

In other words, at first sight the translation process does not substantially involve a linguistic creativity, it is mainly a technical ability based on a text which is already a result of linguistic creativity. Such view of translation is contrasted by Levý, because, as the Czech scholar states, it is the harbinger of style leveling and, consequently, of content leveling as well.

In this sense Levý does not hold high opinion of the automatic mechanisms that the expert translator uses almost without realizing it. Speaking in terms of Peirce’s triad of instinct, experience and habit, we can say that Levý warns against habit, it consisting of a set of stereotyped solutions, of translational clichés that ultimately transform the typical elements of a (proto) text into typical elements of a (meta) repertoire. As Toury states,

in translation, source-text textemes tend to be converted into target-language (or target-culture) repertoremes6.

In order to overcome the great differences existing between the expressive systems of the two languages, translators have ready-made clichés, constructs that bear the imprint of the effort of their elaboration. In Levý’s opinion it is possible to perceive at first sight that a text was translated from the great number of constructs that, however correct on the grammatical and stylistic planes, are a little bit affectatious.

Stereotyped decisions – result of a non-creative approach to art – are typical in an analogous form also of another art that has to do with recreation: play-acting7.

Such a parallel between "reproductive" arts, as Levý calls them, recalls a similar parallel described by Luigi Pirandello in the essay "Illustratori, attori e traduttori", of 1908. As the title of the essay itself suggests, Pirandello had sensed the extraordinary similarities existing between the processes that I would call "translational", and Pirandello himself did not hesitate to call "translations":

Illustrators, actors and translators, considering them carefully, find themselves in the same situation when under aesthetic critical judgment. All three are confronted with a work of art that has been already expressed, i.e. already conceived and executed by others; one has to translate it into another art; the second, into material action; the third into another language. How will these translations be possible?8

341 Bibliographical references

CANETTI ELIAS Die gerettete Zunge. - Die Fackel im Ohr. - Das Augenspiel, München, Carl Hanser Verlag, 1995, ISBN 3-446-18062-1.

LEVÝ JIRÍ, Umení prekladu, Praha, Ceskoslovenský spisovatel, 1963. Russian translation by Vladìmir Rossel´s, Iskusstvo perevoda, Moskvà, Progress, 1974.

PIRANDELLO L., Illustratori, attori e traduttori (1908), in Saggi, edited by Manlio Lo Vecchio Musti, Milano, Mondadori, 1939, p. 227-246.

TOURY G., Descriptive Translation Studies and Beyond, Amsterdam, Benjamins, 1995, ISBN 90-272-1606-1.

WHORF B. L., Language, Thought, and Reality. Selected Writings, edited by John B. Carroll, preface by Stuart Chase, Cambridge (Massachusetts), Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1956.

1 Canetti 1999: 12. 2 Whorf 1956: 214. 3 Whorf 1956: 235. 4 Levý 1963: 84. 5 Levý 1963: 84. 6 Toury 1995: 268. 7 Levý 1963: 84. 8 Pirandello 1908: 238.

4 - Recreation and stereotype

"I cannot say exactly how this happened. I don't know at what point in time, on what occasion, this or that translated itself"1.

Like the actor, Levý argues, the translator has her own clichés, as well as her own stereotypes, whose existence does not depend on the translation

342 process in itself, but, rather, on the exaggerated inflexibility of the translator. Such lack of elasticity, in Levý's opinion, must be attributed to the minor talent characterizing, in his opinion, the average translator as compared to the average author:

Usually less talented than the author of the original, he is more receptive toward the clichés popular in the original literature: he uses, let us suppose, standard devices to archaize a text (for example, in English, the -eth suffix), to create a caricature he uses always the same dialect, and so on2.

Such a reflection may easily provoke outraged reactions by translators, who feel demoted to "grade B writers". Actually, it is not at all certain that such a distinction is always grounded. The considerations to be made are numerous, not the least the economic ones. Writing is not always and not everywhere more lucrative than translating, often the opposite is true. Therefore, it is conceivable that some writers (either effective or potential authors of books) translate to make ends meet, and this very fact would falsify Levý's axiom.

Setting controversy aside, Levý's reasoning is still interesting in my opinion, and possibly should be stated in a less categorical way. Levý, anyway, holds that the ageing of translations - quicker, according to most researchers, than the ageing of original works, compelling the retranslation of classic works - is due to the fact that a translator, in her youth, during education, learns to write in a given way, and then, not being as creative an artist as a writer, goes on using the same techniques, the same devices, using the same forced language for decades and decades, old already before being born.

Such a phenomenon would be most noticeable in the translation of poetry. In the translation of poetry we often notice

remnants of survived poetic style, devalued by the "poetic-ness" of the translation. The focusing on "poetic diction", particularly in the case of the translation of ancient poetry characterized by formal exactitude, can invite even a good translator to embellishments that are out of place3.

The three main features of this kind of "bad" translation (please notice that here Levý breaks one of the main principles of translation studies: an approach that, no longer descriptive, becomes prescriptive; on the other hand, such principles in 1963 had not yet been stated) are:

1. stereotyping: the use of clichés and the superimposition of one's own view of the world and life onto the one expressed by the text poetics; 2. the exterior characterization of characters: when a translator realizes she has grasped a feature, she exaggerates it in order to make it surely perceivable, and

343 in doing so she overwhelms the balance of the prototext; 3. the likelihood game: having to confer likelihood to some portions of text, the translator bases herself on her personal poetic view, and in such a way the translator's style levels and flattens the styles of the various prototexts.

A good translator, in Levý's opinion, is one who, setting aside her training, and using creativity, lends herself to discovery and selection and, from time to time, finds good solutions appropriate to the context, without using the 'autopilot' of the cliché, of her training. Discovery is thus contained, limited by selection, and inventive is limited by electivity. In other words, while it is necessary for the translator to have fantasy and linguistic smartness, it is also necessary that she be guided by a sober taste, so that she is not seduced by the temptation of expressivity, forgetting that her task is to reproduce the original without incurring style clumsiness. Contrary to what one might expect, however, not only superficiality jeopardizes the good result of a translation: sometimes an expert translator who is philologically well equipped can find very good solutions for single translatants, but the artistic wholeness of the work is disrupted and the result is fragmentary, if exact. It is not a real metatext, it is a non-coherent set of translatants. It is interesting to note the nervous and mental limitations to the translator's capabilities. Levý concludes his chapter on restyling with three points made by psycholinguistic analysis that would be hard to come by intuitively:

1. translators accustomed to always translate from an A language to a B language gradually loose their ability to converse in the A language, because the lexical units of this language are associated more securely with lexical units of the B language than to other lexical units of the A language. Maybe, referring to Jakobson, one could say that the paradigmatic axis (selection) outrivals the syntagmatic axis (combination); 2. translators accustomed to translate always from an A language to a B language and contrariwise loose their awareness of the structural differences between the two languages and run the heavy risk of using clumsy constructs in both languages; 3. the habit of the experienced translator to create associative connections between lexical units of the A language and the B language promotes the production of stereotypes that sometimes hamper the style differentiation of the single translation.

Maybe the prospect is not always so melancholy as is described here; it is very important, however, to consider these possibilities, these mental mechanisms.

344 Bibliographical references CANETTI ELIAS Die gerettete Zunge. - Die Fackel im Ohr. - Das Augenspiel, München, Carl Hanser Verlag, 1995, ISBN 3-446-18062-1. CANETTI ELIAS CANETTI ELIAS The Tongue Set Free. Remembrance of a European Childhood, translated by Joachim Neugroschel, in The Memoirs of Elias Canetti, New York, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999, ISBN 0-374-19950- 7, p. 1-286. LEVÝ JIRÍ, Umení prekladu, Praha, Ceskoslovenský spisovatel, 1963. Rus- sian translation by Vladìmir Rossel´s, Iskusstvo perevoda, Moskvà, Pro- gress, 1974. PIRANDELLO L., Illustratori, attori e traduttori (1908), in Saggi, edited by Manlio Lo Vecchio Musti, Milano, Mondadori, 1939, p. 227-246. TOURY G., Descriptive Translation Studies and Beyond, Amsterdam, Benja- mins, 1995, ISBN 90-272-1606-1. WHORF B. L., Language, Thought, and Reality. Selected Writings, edited by John B. Carroll, preface by Stuart Chase, Cambridge (Massachuset-ts), Massachu-setts Institute of Technology, 1956.

1 Canetti 1999: 13. 2 Levý 1963: 86. 3 Levý 1963: 86

5 - Games theory

"My son, you're playing, and your father is dead! You're playing, you're playing, and your father is dead! Your father is dead! Your father is dead! You're playing, your father is dead!"1.

In mathematics there is a theory, the so called "games theory", that is integrated into that discipline because it provides for the formalization of logical passages occurring during play. According to the type of information that games have (perfect/imperfect, complete, incomplete), they are classified from a logical point of view.

Until 1966, nobody had the idea to apply this branch of mathematics and logics to the study of translation. And, traditionally, translation, since it was considered a subset of linguistics, was considered among the humanistic disciplines, that unfortunately still tend to be considered as separate from the so-called "scientific" ones. If you think about it, between a "humanistic" discipline like translation studies "scientific" discipline like medicine it is not

345 certain that we ever have the possibility to easily determine that one is truly "more scientific" than the other one.

On October 11th, 1966, on occasion of Roman Jakobson's seventieth birthday, many colleagues all over the world compiled a collection of articles to honor him: Jirí Levý's one is an article entitled Translation as a decision process.

Translation is considered a set of game moves, i.e. consecutive situations that force the translator to choose among a given, usually easily definable, number of alternatives. Con-sidering, for instance, the choice of a transla-tant for a single word of the prototext, pre-sumably the translator reviews the possible translatants before deciding what solution is the best.

Levý has the example of a translation from German into English, of the title of Bertold Brecht's drama Der gute Mensch von Sezuan. The translator considers two possibilities:

Der gute Mensch von Sezuan / \

The Good The Good Man of Woman of Sechuan Sechuan

In order to illustrate gradually the whole set of decision processes implied in this translation process, Levý subdivides it into the following components: situation:: in English there is no word precisely matching the German word Mensch; «person» is a partial match, but belongs to another style register; two English words have a semantic field that, in the whole, covers nearly the semantic field of Mensch: they are man and woman; instruction 1:: the point is to define the class of the possible alternatives: in the case of the example, finding an English word denoting the class of beings that scientifically are defined as homo sapiens; paradigm:: this component immediately reminds us of Jakobson and the argument on

346 right and left brain hemisphere, syntagmatic and paradigmatic axis; in this case, the paradigm is the whole set of words that, one in alternative to the other, can or better must be used as translatants for Mensch. Levý locates two possible translatants: man, woman; instruction 2: : this phase serves to guide the choice from among the alternatives; the choice, always depending on the context and co-text, in this case is based on the whole text of Brecht's drama; the two alternative possibilities are not equivalent between themselves, nor equivalent to the word to be translated; that does not mean, however, that the choice is or can be random; it is always dictated by the context.

This last operation is the one that sends the expert systems that have been created to give the illusion of being able to use machine translation into tilt: machines are not able to consider the context, both because one should create "contextual" data bases within which computers could choose the best solution, and because the logical synthesis of a word and its context is difficult to be defined in formal terms. Levý says:

the interpreter has to choose from a class of possible meanings of the word or motif, from different conceptions of a character, of style, or of the author's philosophical views. The choice is more limited ('easier'), if the number of possible alternatives is smaller, or if it is restricted by context (Levý 1967: 1172).

What Levý emphasizes here is how much a decision is interlinked to all those that follow it, and conclusively prevents a series of potential ensuing decisions. Once the translator, in the example, chooses "man" or "woman", that predetermines some grammatical consequences (the gender-sensible forms, for example) and interpretive questions linked to the poetic view of the whole work.

For these reasons, from the point of view of the mathematical theory of games, translation is a game with complete information. "Every succeeding move is influenced by the knowledge of previous decisions and by the situation which resulted from them". To give a more concrete example, translation is comparable to a chess game, not a card game. In the following diagram, that I transfer directly from the article,

347 it is possible to see in a graphic form what happens through decision processes in translation. The point where the solid line and the dotted line split corresponds to the moment where a decision or translation choice is made. Solid lines represent choices still possible after the first one, while dotted lines represent ensuing choices that, after the choice that has been made, are no longer possible.

The graphic representation always provides for a choice between two possibilities, but actually in translation practice choices are not always of a binary type: they very often are among a very high number of alternatives. A graphic representation of the many-alternatives procedure would be very complex.

One of the possibilities would consist - in theory, at least: in practice I think it very com-plicated to conceive - in reckoning with all the decisions deriving from a given choice, and then, based on the poetics of the text to be translated, try to set a hierarchical order of the elements by importance, i.e. a sort of hierarchy of dominant plus subdominants. Each choice, and each decision deriving from it, give birth to a different "game", which in translation is called "version".

Levý sees the translation process as a succession of definitional instructions and selective instructions. A definitional instruction produces a paradigm of the possible choices, the selective one implies the choice within the given paradigm.

definitional instruction / \

selective instruction selective instruction definitional instruction definitional instruction

348 selective selective selective selective instruction instruction instruction instruction

The given example in this case is the English translation of the German word Bursche. The instruction system is as follows:

young man / \

young man young man standard substandard / \ / \

young young young young man man man man bookish literary vulgar colloquial

Il corrispondente sistema dei paradigmi è invece il seguente:

boy, fellow, lad, youngster, chap, guy, larh / \ boy, fellow, youngster, chap, guy, lark lad / \ / \ youngster, boy, lark chap, lad fellow guy

349 In the next unit we will see our way through the workings of such a system on the translation choice.

Bibliographical references

CANETTI ELIAS Die gerettete Zunge. - Die Fackel im Ohr. - Das Augenspiel, München, Carl Hanser Verlag, 1995, ISBN 3-446-18062-1.

LEVÝ JIRÍ, Translation as a decision proc-ess, in To Honor Roman Jakobson. Es-says on the occasion of his seventieth birthday, Den Haag - Paris, Mouton, 1967, vol. 2, p. 1171-1182.

1 Canetti 1999: 62.

6 - Chain of choices

"I managed to play with them while also dealing with the wallpaper people"1.

In the previous unit, we have seen that often in translation choices imply chains of repercussions: every choice implies other choices – or impossibility to choose – and sometimes this can occur even without the translator’s full awareness. Such choices can be objective, i.e. determined by the kind of linguistic material used. But they can also be subjective, therefore depending on the translator’s memory, on her ideology and her aesthetic canon.

Every translatant, i.e. every word located in a translated text, can be used in the attempt to reconstruct its origin. It is a matter of backtracking along the decision process that led to the choice of the translatant starting from the prototext. Such process is called by Levý "generative model". However, it is very important to distinguish it from Chomsky’s generative view because, but for the name, it has nothing to do with that linguistic approach. The organization of Levýs reasoning refers, if anything, more to the semiotic world than to generative linguistics:

350 The decision processes in translation have the structure of a semiotic system, having its semantic aspect (i.e., a repertory of units defined through their relation to their denotata), and its syntax (i.e., rules for combining these units – whether by units we mean paradigms or instructions) (1966: 1179).

Levý depicts words according to a recognoscative model, which is used by the reader to trace back the possible decisions of the translator. Such a model provides for lexical units be organized hierarchically, from the most generic to the most specific one. Let us examine Levý’s example (1966: 1174):

to exist

/ \

to move to rest

/ \ / | \

to move as a whole to to to to mov sit stand lie e in parts

/ / | \

to to to fly to drive walk ride

| \

to to be drive driven

This is the scheme followed by the author for the drafting of the prototext, and this is also the scheme followed by the translator in order to get to the possible translatants. Such a specifying path can, however, especially in case of incomplete awareness by the translator, be brought to a higher or lower level as compared to the author, causing a specifying or generalizing translation, respectively.

In our concrete case, the example is the English sentence:

His Lordship jumps into a cab, and goes to the railroad.

The translation

351 Her Excellency jumps into a cab and has himself brought to the railroad. is specifying because, on the basis of the scheme that we just showed, it has one more level of specification (the one distinguishing to go and to be transported) as compared to the original, that only stated "goes".

Levý calls this specifications "surplus decisions". Since, however, the discussion following Levý’s article has centered on the terminology comparing generalization and specification. Because it is very useful, I think it important for the readers of this course to know that such surplus decisions are, exactly, definable as "semantic specifications".

Specifications and, more generally, translation decisions, can be necessary or unnecessary, motivated and unmotivated. They are motivated if made on the basis of contextual needs (of both linguistic and cultural character). They are necessary if the metatext language does not have some (grammatical, or syntactical, or semantic or cultural) categories, present in the source language of the prototext.

The broader the semantic segmentation in the source language when compared to that of the target language, the greater the dispersion of translation variants becomes (1966: 1175).

And, I add, the greater the necessary rate of specification when translating. Let us suppose that, in the following diagram, in the left column the source language is depicted, while in the right column the receiving language is depicted:

source culture receiving culture

make produce

manufacture

constitute

create

form

earn ecc.

352 In the source culture, only one word is present to denote the meaning covered, in the receiving culture, by a series of more specific words. Consequently, translation is necessarily specifying. By contrast,

the finer the lexical segmentation of the source language in comparison to that of the target language, the more limited is the dispersion of translation variants (1966: 1175).

I add in this case too that in this scenario the number of translation variants is lower because translation is generalizing, and one translatant matches the semantic field that in the source language was covered by more than one lexical units:

source culture receiving culture

produce make

manufacture

constitute

create

form

earn etc.

Another way Levý synthesizes the translation process in the form of chains of decisions is that according to which, being an interpretive and, at the same time, creative process, there are two pertinent kinds of choice:

1. a choice within the semantic field of the word (or the group of words) of the prototext in order to find the interpretation (meaning) that makes sense in the context and co-text and eliminate the meanings that should be narcotized in the context and co-text; 2. a choice, from a sampling of target language words, of the translatant that best satisfies the expression of the meaning located during the choice made at 1.

The last aspect of translation as a decision process Levý deals with is the pragmatic one, i.e. of the practice of translation. Levý demonstrates that he is not a follower of the trends of his time, in which the "translation theorists" tended not to consider practical aspects. Since translation activity is inserted

353 in a social context, in which both the time used to complete a translation variant, and the work lucrativity variant (connected to the previous one) are very important, it does not make any sense thinking of translation activity as a job in which the problem can be solved ignoring the time required to solve it. For this reason, Levý suggests to consider the strategy followed by most translators a minimax strategy: i.e. aiming at producing the most effect with the least effort. This means that the translator does not pursue the best, ideal solution; she instead is contented of a form which, more or less, expresses all the necessary meanings and stylistic values, though it is probable that, after hours of experimenting and rewriting, a better solution might be found (Levý 1967: 1180). In Levý’s opinion, the translator aims at the minimally admissible result according to her own linguistic and aesthetic standards. She therefore focuses on the reaction of her reading public (model reader), trying to figure out in what percentage it can be composed of philologists, language purists, distracted or superficial readers etc. The example made this time by Levý is the French translation of the English words not a little embarrassed The translators considers two possibilities: 1. pas peu embarrassé 2. très embarrassé With the decision 1, the stylistic trait of understatement (litotes) is preserved, but the risk is run that most French-purism-sensitive readers will be annoyed by this feature, a supposed Anglicism. With the decision 2, the stylistic trait of understatement (litotes) is not preserved, but the risk is not run that most French-purism-sensitive readers will be annoyed by this feature, a supposed Anglicism. Therefore, in Levýs opinion, the translator each time mentally calibrates her model reader and ends up choosing the solution creating the least dissent among most readers. This attempt, even if not well developed, to apply semiotic and mathematical models to the translation process is, in my opinion, very interesting; it should deserve a deeper elaboration, leading maybe to the creation of a more articulated theory.

354 1 Canetti 1980: 58

7 - Loss: temporal factors

"It is not like the literary translation of a book from one language to another, it is a translation that happened of its own accord in my unconscious, and since I ordinarily avoid this word like the plague, a word that has become meaningless from overuse, I apologize for employing it in this one and only case"1.

Any form of communication – and therefore translation – is subject to the semiotic law of loss. Nida states: "If one is to insist that translation must involve no loss of information whatsoever, then obviously not only translating but all communication is impossible" (Nida 1959: 13)

Shannon and Weaver, in 1949, elaborated a mathematic model of communication, that eventually was used and incorporated by semiotic research, like for example in the famous 1960 essay by Jakobson entitled Linguistics and poetics, the one in which he distinguishes the six components of communication

CONTEXT (referential function)

ADDRESSER MESSAGE ADDRESSEE (emotive (poetic (conative function) function) function)

CONTACT (phatic function)

CODE (metalingual function)

The six components of communication and the six functions (Jakobson 1960: 66-71).

355 and the six related functions. Jakobson’s accomplishment is the re- elaboration of a simpler model, considering, under the name of "signal", both the message and the code. In the following figure, you can see how that model works:

The little vertical snake rising in the center is what is called "noise". It is called this because the context in which this model of communication was originally conceptualized concerns audio communication, but the notion is valid for any kind of communication. In other types of communication, other than acoustic, speaking of "noise" is metaphoric, and refers to any hindrance or obstacle one can encounter while transferring a message from the sender’s (addresser’s) mind to the receiver’s (addressee’s) mind.

Where can the "noise" be and on which phases of the communicative processes does it impact? The noise can be in the sender or in the receiver (i.e. can consist of a communicative deficiency in either of the two subjects). It can be in the message, that can be drafted without preoccupation to fulfill a communication function, and, therefore, be received in a way differing from the intentions of the sender. And it can be in the code: every code has a standard version; if you deviate too much from it, you run the risk of producing a text that is easily misunderstood.

But one of the factors the question of the translation residue influences most is the context. This happens owing to an intuitable reason: in translation, the context changes, and this holds true in almost all cases. The famous Slovak translation researcher Anton Popovič helps us elaborate some points regarding the residue, starting from the time factor. The time factor concerns, of course, translators that do not translate contemporary works, because, otherwise, the distance over time to the prototext would be equal to zero.

In translating a text belonging to the past, the translator "usually actualizes it making it accessible to her contemporaries. Historicizing is justified in the case in which the author chooses to use it; in the other cases, it represents an expressive device of the translator" (Popovič 1975: 122).

356 The two most popular orientations can be schematized in this way: a conservative or historicizing orientation (retentive translation); a modernizing orientation (re-creative translation).

The two orientations are matched by a different focus held by the translator. In the former case, the translator is focused on the prototext’s author, while in the latter she is primarily focused on the needs of the model reader of the metatext.

Among the forms of modernization, Popovič (like Holmes) distinguishes two types:

"traditional" modernization, i.e. relative modernization, in which the translator modifies lexicon and syntax to make them more easily read by the contemporary reader, but the verse form, for example, is presented the same way as in the original; radical modernization, in which theme and socio-cultural aspects of the text are also modified, realia included; a horse, for example, may become a motorcycle.

The time factor is not, as appears at first sight, the same for all the aspects of all cultures. In order to understand it better, one can use the notion of "cultural time".

In every culture a phenomenon, a literary current, a fashion, the sensitivity toward a problem each have their own maturation times. Industrialization, for example, in the British Empire occurred in the second half of the 18th century, while in other European countries like Russia and Italy it occurred mainly at the beginning of the twentieth. That implied – and in translation may still imply – varying stages of maturation in cultures as far as cultural aspects connected to economic development are concerned.

For example, trade unionism and the working class’s claims, and more generally working class conditions as seen in a novel like Mary Barton written in 1848 by Elizabeth Gaskell do not match events in almost any other world culture of the same period. And it may happen that when in one country the problem of safety regulations in factories is part of current events, in another country, recently industrialized, the prevailing mentality there tends to focus on the privilege of having paid employment more than on its negative effects. If, therefore, a novel like Gaskell’s were translated to another culture in that

357 same 1848, there would have been serious problems of understanding due to the differing cultural time of the two.

Popovič postulates three possibilities:

1. the cultural time of original and translation coincide:

______------______

2. the cultural time of the translation is tardy as confronted to the cultural time of the original:

______------______

as in the case of Italian or Russian Romanticism as compared to the English Romanticism;

3. the cultural time of the original is completely missing in the translation culture:

______------______------as can happen in the case in which a literary genre does not exist at all in the metaculture: In the next unit we will analyze more semiotic aspects of the translation process, concerning the translations ageing too, which, as popular sense suggests, is much faster than the original ageing.

Bibliographical references CANETTI ELIAS Die gerettete Zunge. - Die Fackel im Ohr. - Das Augenspiel, München, Carl Hanser Verlag, 1995, ISBN 3-446-18062-1. CANETTI ELIAS The Tongue Set Free. Remembrance of a European Childhood, translated by Joachim Neugroschel, in The Memoirs of Elias Canetti, New York, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999, ISBN 0-374-19950-7, p. 1-286. JAKOBSON R. Linguistics and poetics, in Language in Literature, ed by Krystyna Pomorska, Harvard, Belknap-Harvard University Press, 1987, p. 62- 94. NIDA, E. Bible translating, in Brower, R.A. ed., On translation, Harvard, Harvard University Press, 1959, p. 11-31.)

358 POPOVIČ A. Teória umeleckého prekladu, Tatran, 1975. Russian translation by I. A. Bernštejn e I. S. Černjavskaja, edited by N. A. Kondrašov, Problemy hudožestvennogo perevoda, Moskvà, Vysšaja škola, 1980.

1 Canetti 1999: 13.

8 - Translation loss: time factors in the comparison of metatexts

"At this time, when I was starting to read, English had an irresistible effect on me, and no one had ever used English to deliver such a speech to me in which I played such an important part"1

Another aspect that makes it interesting to examine time-affected factors of translation loss no longer concerns the comparison of prototext and metatext, but the comparison of many versions of the same prototext as related to their time location.

Popovič, with his semiotic approach to the problem, identifies the specific trait, from this point of view, of translation as compared to other kinds of communication acts, like for example the drafting of the original. The latter is a unique and unrepeatable act, having a clearly defined place in time. The potential translations of this first creative act are, however, manifold, probably infinite. Balcerzan, quoted by Popovič, writes:

the translation of any foreign work always maintains the character of one of many possible communications. What marks a translation’s authenticity is, therefore, its multiplicity, its repeatability (Balcerzan 1968: 23).

After such a description, translation becomes an oxymoron: it is a text that, in order to be authentic, must be repeatable, must be multipliable. Forcing the terms of the argument a little, one could say that a translation is the text that, in order to be authentic, must be a copy. Which sounds overtly paradoxical, especially if one compares translation to works in the field of figurative arts.

Usually, when one inquires on the facility with which a translation becomes "dated", or simply when people wonder why a given classical text, already translated many a time into a given language, is still being translated by new and different translators, one looks for the feature that makes these texts so rapidly outdated in the way translators work. Sometimes people say that the reason for such ageing lies in the fact that a text, brought forth in a "natural" way within a given language and culture, and endowed with given

359 spontaneous elements (direct expression of the author’s creativity) or artificial (creativity mediated by the technical capabilities of the author), must be recreated – in a thoroughly artificial way – in another language and culture. For this reason, even all the aspects that in the prototext seemed spontaneous, in the metatext now become forced; whenever they appear spontaneous, it is a feigned spontaneity, because, evidently, the translator tries to reproduce another person’s creativity, and this action, since it doesn’t concern one’s own creativity, cannot be anything but feigned.

Popovič inverts such a view centered upon the individual translator’s way of working to favor a view focused on the specific nature of the translatory communicative act. Let us read his own words:

The seriality of the translation as mode of its existence as compared to the completeness of the original creative work is a dangerous propriety. Due to its more elevated degree of "openness", a translation is sooner subject to ageing. It can find itself excluded from the literary "swim". This fact also determines the place of the translation within the literary process (Popovič 1975: 128).

Such a view can also be interpreted as revolutionary because, in a sense, it would reverse cause and effect: it would not be the translation’s ageing to cause re-translation, but re-translation – and the resulting possibility for comparison of the different versions – that emphasizes ageing. In other words, it would be the appearance of a new version of a given prototext to emphasize the deficiencies and the translation loss implied by a previous version and until that point considered as "canonical", wholly accepted as "representing" that prototext.

The cause of ageing must be sought in the circumstance upon which the translation’s language and style depend on the expressive canon effective at the moment the translation is done. The receiver also abides by such a canon, the receiver being, in the case of translation, the group of readers, among whom also is found the "proto-reader", i.e. the translator. The receiver evaluates the translation both in comparison to previous actualizations of the same prototext in the receiving language, and in relation to the original. In Popovič’s opinion, language and style undergo a strong transformation produced not only by the peculiarities of the text, but also by the translator’s efforts; for these reasons, the modifications the original undergoes create a metatext that is less resistant to uses or abuses, less stable in time.

In the case of a translation tending towards acceptability – and, in Toury’s logic, not having philological correctness as a principal dominant – the

360 metatext is created for contemporary readers, therefore, its requisites are dictated by the criteria of acceptability of a given generation of readers and critics: in this sense, it tends to age more quickly (but for the same reasons an original text also ages.

Actually, the ageing of a translation is not an absolute phenomenon, it is a relative one:

Examples taken from practice show that readers are interested also the oldest translations. In them there is the attraction of what is old, a sort of archaic gloss, the same of the prototexts of antique origin (Popovič 1975: 129).

The ageing of translations, seen from the point of view of translation loss, can also be interpreted in these terms. The acceptability canon of readers of each generation determines, depending on its historical moment, a given readers’ propensity for given types of loss. (Of course it is not taken for granted that readers and criticists perceive the phenomenon in this way: it is much more probable that they are aware of their own preferences in a positive sense. In other words, it is more probable for them to say, "I like a text having these characteristics" rather than "I like a text that omits such aspects of communication". The principle of "semiotic noise" expressed in the previous unit being understood, it is clear that every different communicative – and translational – approach, each different chosen dominant has a corresponding kind of loss.)

Considering translational taste in this historical key can be very interesting. And, in light of the existence of translational loss, it seems thoroughly sensible to think of the problem in these terms. In such a view, translation is the communicative act that is a repeatable, bearer of loss, in relation to which a reader’s taste can also be expressed ex negativo: and the predilection of one version as compared to the others is also a predilection for a given loss of the message’s content as compared to other losses represented in other versions, be they real or potential.

Bibliographical references

BALCERZAN E. Poetyka przekładu artystycznego, Nurt, 1968.

CANETTI ELIAS Die gerettete Zunge. - Die Fackel im Ohr. - Das Augenspiel, München, Carl Hanser Verlag, 1995, ISBN 3-446-18062-1.

361 CANETTI ELIAS The Tongue Set Free. Remembrance of a European Childhood, translated by Joachim Neugroschel, in The Memoirs of Elias Canetti, New York, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999, ISBN 0-374-19950-7, p. 1-286.

POPOVIC A. Teória umeleckého prekladu, Tatran, 1975. Russian translation by I. A. Bernštejn and I. S. Cernjavskaja, edited by N. A. Kondrašov, Problemy hudožestvennogo perevoda, Moskvà, Vysšaja škola, 1980.

1 Canetti 1999 : 51.

9 - Translation loss: cultural factors

"She certainly did not tolerate my giving up the other languages; education, for her, was the literature of all the languages she knew, but the language of our love – and what a love it was! – became German"1

In the two previous units, we have examined some implications of time factors as regards translational loss. Let us now examine cultural factors. Every text originates as an expression of some contradiction between the transmitter’s culture and the model reader’s culture. This aspect – evident in every text – is particularly noticeable in interlingual translation, in which the more superficially perceivable linguistic differences are added to the cultural differences.

Consequently, every text is a compromise formation, a mixing of cultural trends.

We indicate such a phenomenon with a semiotic term: “creolization” of two texts, the original’s text and the translation’s text (Popovič 1975: 130).

As much as Creole is a language synthesizing influences of two very different cultures, in semiotics the notion of "creolization" is used in a broad sense, even for cultural influences that not necessarily have to do with language. The two cultures of a translation undergo a reciprocal partial coincidence as in this illustration, taken from Popovič:

362 Such a source culture (1) is usually in turn a conglomeration of the author’s personal culture and the collective culture of her environment. The receiving culture (2) is instead the culture of the "outer world", the others’ world. Such a semiotic contradiction is the same stressed by Yuri Lotman (1968) when he talks about the Self-Other relation, between We and Them and so on. In interlingual translation, such a contradiction is self-evident because it is the meeting of two cultures, the prototext and the metatext cultures. In Popovič’s opinion, three different situations can be outlined in that explosion of contradictions between cultures.

The first is represented by this figure (Popovič 1975: 131):

Here, activity in the prototext culture (1 in the previous figure) is stronger than the activity of the metatext’s culture (2 in the previous figure). The source culture therefore exerts a centripetal stress on the receiving culture.

A second case is represented by this other figure:

363 Here, activity in the metatext culture (2 in the previous figure) is stronger than the activity of the prototext’s culture (1 in the previous figure). The source culture therefore exerts a centrifugal stress on the receiving culture.

The third and last case is represented by the following figure:

In translation, a balanced interaction of source culture and receiving culture takes place. Since in a translation only one version is expressed, the translator must solve these contradictions in one of three ways. Each way produces a different kind of loss.

If the translator chooses the first solution, the reader of the translation comes across many elements of the protoculture, and the communication loss mostly consists in the readability of the text (that sometimes preserves the construction traits typical of the source culture) and in the understandability of realia and of other culture-specific elements.

If the translator chooses the second solution, the reader of the translation is dealing with a text that is very readable and fluent, where culture-specific elements were substituted by elements that are culture-specific in the reader’s culture: in this case, the communication loss consists mainly in the lack of transposition of the text’s culture-specific elements, a text that has lost its cultural identity for the benefit of readability.

If the translator chooses the third solution, the translation loss will be mixed: it will consists in part of culture-specific elements, and in part of linguistic and construction elements. Popovič expresses the dialectics between the two poles in this way:

Let us consider the translation situation where an other culture’s confines are completely erased, when in translation the impression of "translated" is lost, so is the

364 pole representing the Self. By contrast, let us consider a situation in which the receivers find themselves in the framework of the other culture, not considering their predisposition and their conditions for its reception, [this is] the extreme stressing of the cultural pole of the original in a translation (Popovič 1975: 138-139).

The reason why Popovič dwells so much on the notion of “creolization” is that the totality of the actualizations of a prototext is located along the continuum between these two poles, while the case could hardly really exist of a version embodying the appropriating remake in absolute terms or the unreadable acknowledgement. Once the existence of these two poles is acknowledged, therefore, in such a view one has to examine every single real translation actually realized as a creolization along the axis between the two poles.

In this perspective, translation loss is always to be located in terms of cultural distance of the reader from the text, or cultural distance of the text from the original.

Bibliographical references

CANETTI ELIAS Die gerettete Zunge. - Die Fackel im Ohr. - Das Augenspiel, München, Carl Hanser Verlag, 1995, ISBN 3-446-18062-1.

LOTMAN JU. O metajazyke tipologicheskih opisanij kul´tury [On the metalanguage of typological descriptions of culture], 1968, in Semiosfera, Sankt-Peterburg, Iskusstvo-SPB, 2000, ISBN 5-210-01488-6, p. 462-484.

POPOVIČ A. Teória umeleckého prekladu, Tatran, 1975. Russian translation by I. A. Bernshtejn and I. S. Chernjavskaja, edited by N. A. Kondrashov, Problemy hudozhestvennogo perevoda, Moskvà, Vysshaja shkola, 1980.

1 Canetti 1999: 77.

10 - Compensation and explicitation

365 "I did nurture a deep resentment toward my mother, and it vanished only years later, after his death, when she herself began teaching me German"1.

In the first part of this course (unit 17) I have already hinted at the existence of a metatext meant not as a text containing the textual translation of an original in another language, but as a set of critical apparati, of supplemental texts, accompanying the existence of their corresponding main text. The existence of the metatext is motivated by Torop’s total translation strategy that foresees a preventive analysis in order to establish what the communicative loss deriving from a given translation act might be and how to cope with such a loss.

This does not mean that the translator always enacts a strategy that considers the principles of total translation in this sense. In some cases, a translator does not bother with the problem of the translation loss, either because she is not aware of it, or because, resigned to the inevitability of such a loss, she has no intention to engage in a strategy to cope with the problem.

Translation science literature usually deals with a problem similar to metatextual rendering separately under two entries: compensation and explicitation.

"Compensation" here means "the technique of making up for the translation loss of important ST features by approximating their effects in the TT through means other than those used in the ST" (Hervey and Higgins 1992: 248). By «explicitation» we mean "the process of introducing information into the target language which is present only implicitly in the source language, but which can be derived from the context or the situation" (Vinay and Darbelnet 1958: 8).

One can easily see that these two categories do not precisely define which translation shifts encompass these entries and which do not. Moreover, it is not specified if compensation and explicitation must necessarily occur within the translated text, or if one can also consider paratextual rendering.

What clearly unites the two categories to Torop’s metatextual translation is the starting point: they are strategies enacted as a consequence of the acknowledgement of a loss at the basis every translation act. Harvey writes: "Given that the transfer of meanings from one language to another continually involves some degree of loss, the translator must decide if and when compensation is warranted" (38). Even Barhudàrov explicitly refers to the loss implied in the communication act in order to explain the conditions under which compensation is called for:

366 This device is used in cases when given elements of the emitting language text for one reason or another do not have equivalents [sic] in the receiving language and cannot be transmitted through its means; in these cases, in order to compensate for the semantic loss determined by the fact that a given unit in the emitting language remained untranslated or was translated incompletely (not for the whole spectrum of its meaning), the translator transmits the same information through another means, not necessarily in the same position within the target text as it was found in the original (218-219).

Please note that the above definition is still anchored to the old view of the purely linguistic concept of translation: the impossibility of finding an "equivalent" – granted – is considered a rare occurrence, the exception confirming the rule; moreover, translation is still viewed as a (complete) transfer of single lexical units. The notion of "text" as a semiotic whole having a different (and greater) meaning as compared to the sum of its components, and the notion of "implicit cultural information" and the consequences of the cultural differences in terms of translatability are not accounted for. However, it is important to stress that compensation is viewed as a device that can shift the placement in the translated text where an element thereof can compensate the loss incurred in another part of the original text. Such a shift, in principle, can therefore even occur outside the text, in a critical apparatus for example.

Crisafulli, probably realizing how difficult it is to base scientific definitions on vague and arguable notions like the so called "effect of the text on the reader", gives us a more stable version of the notion of "compensation":

The notion of compensation seems to imply two basic facts: first, the equivalence relationship as an ideal pursued by translators, and second, the assumption that one can subject to analysis the relationship between source-text and target-text features in order to establish whether the latter are really compensatory. Thus, the ‘loss’ in translation which necessitates compensation must concern some concrete, tangible property of the source text and not some elusive quality, and the same remark applies to the compensatory devices in the translation (260).

Some authors include explicitation among the translation shifts in the "additions" category (for example Barhudàrov, 221-226), to be used only when there is a mismatching of the lexical units of the two texts (i.e. always, one might add today). For other authors, however, explicitation is an intrinsic feature of translation: a higher level of explicitation in the translated text

it might be the case that explicitation is a universal strategy inherent in the process of language mediation, as practiced by language learners, non-professional translators and professional translators alike (Blum-Kulka 1986: 21).

367 According to this view, that has gone down in the annals of history as "explicitation hypothesis", consciousness of the translational/communicational loss is a common, general feature, even if it is probably an aconscious phenomenon. This lack of awareness can explain the wide use of explicitation and the need to apply linguistic and statistical research to sensitize oneself to its use. Blum-Kulka holds that, for this reason, translated texts are characterized by redundancy:

The process of interpretations performed by the translator on the source text might lead to a [meta]text which is more redundant than the [proto]text. This redundancy can be expressed by a rise in the level of cohesive explicitness in the [meta]text. This argument may be stated as "the explicitation hypothesis", which postulates an observed cohesive explicitness from [proto]text to [meta]texts regardless of the increase traceable to differences between the two linguistic and textual systems involved. It follows that explicitation is viewed here as inherent in the process of translation (1986: 19).

Here, Blum-Kulka probably wants to stress that the tendency to explicitate does not always arise from objective needs of the two languages; it is, on the contrary, a spontaneous, irrational, uncontrolled constant, that is however popular in all processes of linguistic mediation. In the next unit I will show why the explicitation as a spontaneous tendency lies outside the problem of the loss.

Bibliographical references

BARHUDAROV L. S. JAzyk i perevod. Voprosy obščej i častnoj teorii perevoda, Moskvà, Meždunarodnye otnošenija, 1975.

BLUM-KULKA SHOSHANA Shifts of Cohesion and Coherence in Translation, in Interlingual and Intercultural Communication: Discourse and Cognition in Translation and Second Language Acquisition Studies, a cura di Juliane House e Shosgana Blum-Kulka, Tübingen, Narr, 1986, p. 17-35.

CANETTI ELIAS Die gerettete Zunge. - Die Fackel im Ohr. - Das Augenspiel, München, Carl Hanser Verlag, 1995, ISBN 3-446-18062-1.

368 CRISAFULLI E. Dante’s Puns and the question of compensation, in Wordplay and Translation, edited by Dirk Delabastita, Manchester, St. Jerome Publishing, 1996, ISBN 1-900650-01-0, p. 259-276.

HARVEY K. Compensation, in Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies, edited by M. Baker, London, Routledge, 1998, ISBN 0-415-09380-5, p. 37-40.

HERVEY SÁNDOR and HIGGINS IAN Thinking Translation: A Course in Translation Method: French to English, London, Routledge, 1992.

KLAUDY KINGA Explicitation, in Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies edited by M. Baker, London, Routledge, 1998, ISBN 0-415-09380-5, p. 80-84.

KOMISSAROV V. N. Teoriya perevoda (lingvisticheskie aspekty), Moskvà, Vysshaya shkola, 1990, ISBN 5-06-001057-0.

PYM ANTHONY Epistemological Problems in Translation and its Teaching. A Seminar for Thinking Students, Calaceit (Teruel), Caminade, 1993.

VINAY J.-P. e DARBELNET J. Stylistique comparée du français et de l’anglais. Méthode de traduction, Paris, Didier, 1958.

1 Canetti 1999: 28.

11 - Metatextual rendering

"Whenever I found a newspaper anywhere in the house, he allowed me to read him the headlines, and now and then, if it wasn’t too difficult, he explained what they meant"1.

At the end of the previous unit, the question of explicitation as a spontaneous, aconscious mental process emerged; it would be typical, in Blum-Kulka’s opinion, of every act of linguistic mediation. The kind of explicitation that interests me here, having to deal with the management of the translational loss, is, however, the one that is not characterized by redundancy. If translations are more redundant than their originals, this is an aspect beyond the question of the loss management. What is interesting here is the outcome of the parts of the prototext that do not have redundant translatants and, on the contrary, involve communication deficiencies.

369 I would like to warn against the methodological risk of considering differently the explicitation due to differences between the linguistic systems and explicitation due to differences between extra lingual cultural systems. In my opinion, from the semiotic point of view, both kinds of explicitation have a cultural origin. Pym stresses implicit cultural information as a triggering cause for explicitation:

when you’re crossing a cultural wall, you encounter particular places requiring textual expansion. The most difficult terms tend to require some paraphrase or explanation, usually justifiable as the explicitation of implicit cultural information (1993: 123).

I therefore propose to speak more generally of explicitation due to cultural differences, implying obviously also the subspecies of linguistic differences. Linguistic formal differences considered by some researchers – closed in the old view of linguistics as a world isolated from cultural influences – as the main cause of explicitation and compensation (any word in the original having no equivalents", "elements of sense lost by translating a unit of source language of the prototext» (Komissarov 1990: 185) are, in my view, much more productive if included in the wider category of cultural implicitness.

If one accepts Whorf’s hypothesis – about the reciprocal influence of language and extra-linguistic culture – I couldn’t help but include the linguistic, stylistic and textual differences in the wider world of cultural features.

But how can a translator’s note, an afterword, a chronology, a caption, an added bibliography, a review be considered on the same plane as explicitating and compensatory acts? No author speaks in these terms, because such elements do not belong to the text; they belong to the critical paratextual apparatus or, according to Torop’s terms, to the metatext.

First of all we should ask ourselves if such elements are expression of explicitation or compensation.

An afterword is always compensatory, i.e. it is added in the publication of a translated text in order to improve the fruition by the metatext’s readers. If an afterword were not compensatory, there wouldn’t be any reason to publish it. Is it explicitating, as well? I would say so, except for the cases of very deep authors who create apparati that, more than an accompaniment to the main text, are poetic works of their own.

A translator’s note is always explicitating, rather, it originates with the primary aim to explicitate something that can be difficult to understand owing to cultural differences. Is it compensatory, too? Of course it is. If there is no need to compensate an expressive deficiency in the text, a publisher hardly would

370 allow the publication of a translator’s note, that in the publishing field is considered – wrongly, probably – as the sign of a defeat, of a translator’s inadequacy, instead as a sign of the translator’s awareness of the differences in the information implicit in the two cultures, the eventual risk of loss and her willfulness to limit it.

Even a chronology, a map, a caption are, at the same time, explicitating and compensatory. I think we therefore ought to draw some temporary conclusions about the application of the principles of total translation to that branch of studies directly interested in the notions of explicitation and compensation.

The first conclusion concerns the desirability to unify all the compensatory, explicitating or explicative devices situated not within, but in the margin of the translated text under the notion of "metatextual rendering". Neglecting the question of the spontaneous tendency of linguistic mediators to make explicit, and dwelling only on the aspects of explicitation deriving from the (conscious or aconscious) awareness of a translational loss, I propose to unify such "motivated" explicitation to compensation, which was always considered a non-spontaneous but rational process, under the concept of "metatextual rendering". Here is a graphic representation:

place of within the translated text (metatext 1) outside the translated text the shift (metatext 2)

traditional compensation explicitation compensation explicitation translator’s category notes

kind of reasoned reasoned spontaneous reasoned mental process

category intratextual compensation explicitation metatextual rendering according and explicitation hypothesis to total translation

This new systematization of translation shifts has the advantage of unifying all those having bearing on the recovery of losses, i.e. that are within the competence of "metatextual rendering". I therefore think that this representation is much more productive for a semiotic approach to translation.

371 Bibliographical references

BARHUDAROV L. S. JAzyk i perevod. Voprosy obšcej i castnoj teorii perevoda, Moskvà, Meždunarodnye otnošenija, 1975.

BLUM-KULKA SHOSHANA Shifts of Cohesion and Coherence in Translation, in Interlingual and Intercultural Communication: Discourse and Cognition in Translation and Second Language Acquisition Studies, edited by Juliane House and Shosgana Blum-Kulka, Tübingen, Narr, 1986, p. 17-35.

CANETTI ELIAS Die gerettete Zunge. - Die Fackel im Ohr. - Das Augenspiel, München, Carl Hanser Verlag, 1995, ISBN 3-446-18062-1.

CRISAFULLI E. Dante’s Puns and the question of compensation, in Wordplay and Translation, edited by Dirk Delabastita, Manchester, St. Jerome Publishing, 1996, ISBN 1-900650-01-0, p. 259-276.

HARVEY K. Compensation, in Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies, edited by M. Baker, London, Routledge, 1998, ISBN 0-415-09380-5, p. 37-40.

HERVEY SÁNDOR and HIGGINS IAN Thinking Translation: A Course in Translation Method: French to English, London, Routledge, 1992.

KLAUDY KINGA Explicitation, in Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies edited by M. Baker, London, Routledge, 1998, ISBN 0-415-09380-5, p. 80-84.

KOMISSAROV V. N. Teoriya perevoda (lingvisticheskie aspekty), Moskvà, Vysshaya shkola, 1990, ISBN 5-06-001057-0.

PYM ANTHONY Epistemological Problems in Translation and its Teaching. A Seminar for Thinking Students, Calaceit (Teruel), Caminade, 1993.

VINAY J.-P. e DARBELNET J. Stylistique comparée du français et de l’anglais. Méthode de traduction, Paris, Didier, 1958.

1 Canetti 1999: 64.

372 12 - Wordplay

"But since Mother, while saying these words, gazed at the book in her hand,I grabbed the opportunity and said: ‘Yes, I would like to. I’ll need it at school in Vienna’"1.

Having examined the problems regarding translation loss and its management, we now face one of the questions that traditionally concerns the production of a translation loss more directly: wordplay translation. The text that most exhaustively deals with this problem is undoubtedly the monumental work by Dirk Delabastita (1993).

As in the case of poetry, the first point to be made on wordplay concerns the taboo about its supposed untranslatability. Many authors have spoken of untranslatability, while translations with translated wordplay continued to be published, even if this self-evident contradiction made no bells ring for any of them.

Delabastita argues against that axiom on two points. The first concerns the exaggerated importance attributed to the anisomorphism of natural languages. The advocates of untranslatability hold that it is founded on the fact that a pun has a metatextual charge that is complementary to the textual one. Let us examine a concrete example (Delabastita 1993: 347):

You come most carefully upon your hour,

Where carefully has two meanings that are relevant in the context: precisely, attentively anxiously, full of care or anxiety

The very fact that the double entendre is suggested by the author (Shakespeare, in this case) has metalingual implications. Because the reader, who in the absence of rules can devote herself to the primary sense suggested by the words in the context, when she meets a word like the ‘carefully’ in this example she faces a junction from which, unlike from the usual situation, originate two hermeneutic paths that are equally relevant. Neither of the two mentioned meanings can be narcotized in favor of the other, because they both suggest very plausible interpretations.

The reader, therefore, is induced to ask questions about which interpretation to choose and, moreover, is forced to (metalinguistically) wonder about the ambivalent nature of the word in question. But the metalingual charge is partially transferable. It is not systematically repeatable (for example, it is not

373 at all easy to find a word in a language other than English having the same semantic ambivalence), nonetheless it may be repeatable. Two natural languages being anisomorphic does not imply that they cannot have a common feature. They have some shared features, as it is proved, for example, by the fact that Whorf, wishing to study languages that were as little isomorphic as possible to American English, turned to the Hopi language, that has no connections to the Indo-European branch, granted that Indo-European languages have shared traits. Such similarities would have invalidated the results of his research.

The second point against the axiom of wordplay’s untranslatability axiom focuses on its textual function. In order to understand such an argument one should be familiar with two semiotic terms: synfunction and autofunction.

"Autofunction" is the function that a sign element has within itself, independent of the context. "Synfunction" is the systems meaning of a sign element, i.e. its contextual meaning.

Those who say that wordplay is untranslatable imply that wordplay is autofunctional, i.e. that it has a value in itself. But if you consider the synfunctional aspect of wordplay, which is often very important:

What is the textual function of the pun in question? are there certain translation shifts that will not affect the original synfunctional value of the wordplay and are therefore permitted? In discussions of translatability, such synfunctional considerations must prevail over the shortsighted autofunctional question whether or not every individual pun is repeatable in another language (Delabastita 1993: 184).

Set aside, therefore, the untranslatability prejudice, Delabastita inspects the different outcomes of the translated wordplay, and locates nine categories.

The first category is called PUN > PUN, i.e. it is the outcome that from a pun produces a pun. Of course, the debate on the different perception that a translated pun can have on the model reader of the metatext. Said difference in perception is very difficult to be evaluated. Here is an example of a pun translated with a very similar pun:

The naked truth of it is, I have no shirt.

Where «naked» has the double sense of «pure, sincere» and «not covered by clothes». The same double sense we find in the Italian and in the Netherlandish version (Delabastita 1993: 195):

374 La nuda verità è, non ho la camicia. De naakte waarheid is, dat ik geen hemd heb.

This is a very fortunate case, because the adjective in the metatext has a polysemy that is very similar to the one of "naked".

The second category is PUN > NON-PUN. In this case, the prototext’s wordplay has a text fragment without any wordplay as an outcome. Let us see this example of Delabastita’s:

Peace! Be to me and every man that dares not fight.

Where «peace» has the double sense of "silence" and "absence of fighting". In the Italian and the Netherlandish versions the two sense are rendered in a very different way, without any pun:

Calma! Pace a me e a tutti gli uomini che non osano lottare. Rust! en vrede voor mij, en voor iedereen die niet durft te vechten.

In these cases, the translation loss is not so much in the semantic content, as in the missing conveyance of the linguistic attitude, of the absence of the spirit of double entendre.

The third category outlined by Delabastita is PUN > PUNOID, i.e. the outcome of a pun translated with a pseudo-wordplay. Let us see an example with a French version:

I do adore thy sweet grace’s slipper. Loves her by the foot. He may not be the yard.

Where "yard" has a double meaning of "unit of measure" and "penis". The French version examined in Delabastita 208 ignores such a double meaning:

J’adore la pantoufle de ta suave Altesse. Il l’aime au pied. Il ne pourrait se permettre davantage.

In these pseudo-wordplays, clearly (differently from the previous category) the translator recognized the wordplay and was inclined towards an explicitating rendering.

375 The following category is called PUN > ZERO. In the metatext, simply, there is no fragment that could be considered a translatant of the prototext wordplay. It is a case of omission.

Another category, named "direct copy", consists in transcribing the wordplay in the language in which it was expressed in the prototext, with no explanation, leaving the metatext reader to face the pun on her own.

There is still the possibility of transference, consisting in the covert use of a semantic of the prototext language even in translation. Such a category is usually called "semantic calque", and consists in coining (or simply using) a word in the receiving language that semantically is composed through the same procedure as the word to be translated.

There is the possibility of the NON-PUN > PUN solution, i.e. adding a pun not present in the original, usually as a compensative device (see the unit 10 in this part of the course). Delabastita distinguishes this category from the ZERO > PUN category, in which the wordplay is created from nowhere, through the addition of verbal material that in the original does not exist. In the NON-PUN > PUN category, however, the prototext material is present, but does not have a play on words as an outcome.

The last category is the one where in the place of the pun there is a sort of metatextual apparatus, a footnote for example. But we will deal with that in the next unit.

Bibliographical references

CANETTI ELIAS Die gerettete Zunge. - Die Fackel im Ohr. - Das Augenspiel, München, Carl Hanser Verlag, 1995, ISBN 3-446-18062-1.

DELABASTITA D. There’s a Double Tongue. An investigation into the translation of Shakespeare’s wordplay with special reference to Hamlet, Amsterdam, Rodopi, 1993, ISBN 90-5183-495-0.

1 Canetti 1999: 76.

376 13 - Translator’s notes

"But despite this explanation, I felt she was withholding the book like a secret"1.

At the end of the previous unit, we saw that beyond the various alternatives listed there is yet another possibility for the rendering of wordplay. It is metatextual rendering, a translator’s note for example. Theorists have difficulty in staying on a descriptive, not normative, approach on this point because many see translator’s notes as a thing to be avoided, a moment of weakness, of surrender, as a laying down the translator’s arms. As if the translator were personally responsible of the problems of cultural and textual translatability, and should, like a superman, be always up to the task, or above it.

In my opinion, those against translator’s notes should be contrary to the author’s and editors’ notes as well. If these are elements disturbing the correct text fruition, they are so in any case. When an editor adds a critical set of texts so that the (untranslated) work is more understandable, I don’t believe that anybody would have the nerve to consider them a surrender on her part.

The use of footnotes (or endnotes) is part of the tendency towards the explicitation of content of the translated work. And explicitation can be useful, useless or harmful, depending on the type of reader one addresses. Systematic or uncontrolled explicitation is in any case condemnable, because it ends up being applied even in the cases when the translator is unaware of doing so.

Among the researchers siding against footnotes let us read, for example, what Umberto Eco writes in his beautiful book in which he covers his own experiences as a translator and translated author:

There are losses that we could consider absolute. They are the cases when it is not possible to translate, and if such cases occur, let’s suppose, in the middle of a novel, the translator falls back on the ultima ratio, introducing a footnote – and then the footnote ratifies her defeat. An example of absolute loss is provided by many wordplays2.

In this case Eco couldn’t have a detached tone, being the author of the texts that are used as examples. The moment when he speaks about the notes to translations of his own texts it is not the semiotician who prevails, it is the author, whose intention (the well-known intentio auctoris that for dead or

377 inaccessible authors is at the center of many discussions among the interpreters of their work), if expressed by the author himself, is indisputable.

But there are theorists against footnotes even if they are not directly involved with their own texts, as well. Of course, they are theorists of a generation that preceded the semiotic, descriptive approach and, particularly, Paul Newmark, who does not identify himself with any "school" of translation research, wishing to stay away from any "theory". It’s no accident Newmark declares categorical rejection in his preface of the possible existence of any translation science (Newmark 1981: 7).

About footnotes, Newmark holds that it is better to prevent their use by introducing explanations directly in the text. This method determines that the translation reader is induced to believe that the information added by the translator comes from the author, because there is no graphic distinction between glosses and text. (The copyists’ glosses are among the causes of the philologists’ difficulties in reconstructing the original lection of a text.) It is a mystifying and manipulatory method presupposing a model reader unable to understand the difference between reading an original and reading a translation. It is a method that prevents the formation of an awareness, in the reader, of the differences of other cultures.

Among the authors that are able to maintain a detached tone on the footnote question is Dirk Delabastita, who deals with the problem together with the other publishing techniques aimed at creating secondary (meta)texts. They are

compensatory opportunities that follow from the fact that translators can establish a second level of communication, allowing themselves to reflect and comment on the result of these transfer activities. The translated text being already a metatext in its own right (i.e. vis-à-vis the [prototext], this meta-reflection of the translator can ultimately bear on the [prototext], on the [metatext], and on the transfer processes that led from the one to the other (Delabastita 1993: 218).

Delabastita therefore describes very clearly why we have two types of metatext: the one reflecting the main text of the translation act, what in the most ingenuous and primitive sense can be called "translation"; the other one, the complementary metatext, that in the case of interlingual translation has two reasons to be called metatext:

 meta-text as meta-reflection on the text, i.e. metalingual reflection;  meta-text as result of a translation process concerning the prototext, therefore "text coming after".

378 Delabastita himself indicates the semiotic boundaries of such a communication mode. The wordplay has as an important feature its similarity to a short circuit: it has a denotative meaning on one side, on the other one being a metalingual reflection on such a meaning, which leads to the so-called "double-entendre". A double meaning produces humor simply because the two paths of meaning meet when everything induces consideration of their autonomous existence. In the moment when a play on word cannot find a satisfactory translation in the main metatext, its rendering through the complementary metatext typically doesn’t have a denotative component, since, by definition, the footnote or the comment are metalingual, metatextual interventions. Therefore there is no "short circuit" that would naturally provoke the laugh, or at least the intellectual enjoyment; only the explanation of the causes of the laugh in the original language. The pleasure, therefore, is much less direct, because in the place of the spontaneous pleasure there is an explanation of what’s missing in the reader’s own language. The other boundary stressed by Delabastita is the linearity of verbal communication. Since the fruition of a text cannot occur but in a linear, sequential way (being different from a dream or a film, for example, where stimuli simultaneously play on many senses, and communication is therefore multiple), it is impossible for the reader to read the wordplay and, simultaneously, the footnote explaining it. Its substance is therefore altered. Delabastita catalogues the type of comment that can be contained in a footnote to a play on words. The first type concerns a comment on the wordplay in the prototext. The second type concerns the comment on the metatext, in the case when the translator is afraid that her own translation is not effective enough. The third type is a comment on the prototext-metatext relation: a note that would explain the untranslatability of a given wordplay, or the way in which the wordplay was translated by another wordplay, and why.

Bibliographical references CANETTI ELIAS Die gerettete Zunge. - Die Fackel im Ohr. - Das Augenspiel, München, Carl Hanser Verlag, 1995, ISBN 3-446-18062-1. CANETTI ELIAS The Tongue Set Free. Remembrance of a European Childhood, translated by Joachim Neugroschel, in The Memoirs of Elias Canetti, New York, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999, ISBN 0-374-19950-7, p. 1-286. DELABASTITA D. There’s a Double Tongue. An investigation into the translation of Shakespeare’s wordplay with special reference to Hamlet, Amsterdam, Rodopi, 1993, ISBN 90-5183-495-0. ECO U. Dire quasi la stessa cosa. Esperienze di traduzione, Milano, Bompiani, 2003, ISBN 88-452-5397-X. NEWMARK P. La traduzione: problemi e metodi. Teoria e pratica di un lavoro difficile e di incompresa responsabilità, tranlated from English by Flavia

379 Frangini, Milano Garzanti, 1988, ISBN 88-11-47229-6. Original title: Approaches to translation, Pergamon Press, 1981.

1 Canetti 1999: 73. 2 Eco 2003: 95.

14 - Imitation

"[...] not so much influenced by Schiller as determined in every detail, but in such a way that everything was ludicrous, dripping with ethics and nobility, garrulous and shallow, as though having passed through six pairs of hands, each less gifted than the earlier pair [...]"1.

In the previous unit, I spoke about metatextual rendering and, in particular, translator’s notes. I introduce here another form of prototext-metatext relation, passing under the name of "imitation". This category is not used much in modern science, but is still frequent in talk of about translations, meaning, "excessively free translation" or "excessively free rendering in order to be possible to speak of translation".

[...] imitation of an author is the most advantageous way for a translator to show himself, but the great-est wrong which can be done to the memory and reputation of the dead2.

John Dryden, in 1680, is forthright in judging imitation that he considers one of the two equally despicable opposite extremes in the attitude that one can have toward translation. Dryden’s classification consists in dividing the translation process into three forms:

1. metaphrase, word-for-word, interlinear translation;

it is the type found especially in the editions with parallel text, in which the translated page may not contain a real text, but simply an aid to the reading of the original. The translator here focuses her work not on the creation of a metatext, but rather on the translation of the single words so that the reader can trace back, without referring to a dictionary, to the original word. The term comes from the Greek "metaphrázō", i.e. «I express within", "I explain toward", and is now a seldom used word.

2. paraphrase, i.e. translation in which the translator has the author in mind; not his words, however, but his sense;

380 that implies the translator grasps the sense (apparently unique, without any possible ambiguous significations), and, without any possibility for error, decide the best way to re-express it in the reader’s language; this term also comes from the Greek "paraphrázō", i.e. "I express near". At school, paraphrase is taught, meant as a sort of intralingual translation.

3. imitation,

where the translator (if now he has not lost that name) assumes the liberty, not only to vary from the words and sense, but to forsake them both as he sees occasion; and taking only some general hints from the original, to run division on the groundwork, as he pleases3. Underlying the utopian view of imitation meant in this way, one glimpses the myth of a translation that shouldn’t appear translated, a translated text that would present itself as an original. The imitator must give the reader the illusion of reading in the original, and all cultural references must be modified to prevent the reader from feeling altogether out of place. Utopian because the dream behind such approach is writing as if the author would have written if he had lived in the same chronotope as the translator. If Pindar had lived in England in Cowley’s time (this is Dryden’s example), how would he have written his odes? The answer that I might give is that maybe he wouldn’t have written any odes, but rather a novel instead. But then what should the translator do: write a novel based on the odes? And also as regards contents, this reasoning can take a wide tangent. If the content of a standard ode was ethic and civil, should the translator introduce an ethic - civil content to her metatext comparable (in a systemic sense) to that in the original, making the necessary changes? Let us see what Dryden says: I take imitation of an author, in their sense, to be an endeavour of a later poet to write like one who has written before him, on the same subject; that is, not to translate his words, or to be confined to his sense, but only to set him as a pattern, and to write, as he supposes that author would have done, had he lived in our age, and in our country (Dryden 1680; 19). Dryden substantially disclaims such an extremism, as he does its opposite, metaphrase or "verbal translation" (meaning "word-for-word"), and favors a middle road. As rightly states Douglas Robinson, it is a paradox that the root of "imitate", etymologically meaning "mimic", "slavishly copy", in translation studies ends up meaning something totally different, the exact opposite: "doing something totally different from the original author, wandering too far and too freely from the words and the sense of the SL text" (Robinson 1998: 111). In figurative art, one distinguishes imitation from the original, from the authentic work of art. In the case of translation, the imitation being considered almost a synonym of "free translation" recalls another myth of the old school: the one according to

381 which a ‘faithful’ translation coincides with the original, while ‘free’ translation is "just an imitation". Leaving aside etymologic absurdities, to conclude, I must say that this category of imitation is very unproductive in the scientific field. As I showed in the third part of this course for the notions of fidelity, literality and equivalence, the concept of imitation risks being a burdensome carryover from the normative approach. The normative theory of translation was not uninteresting only because it dictated adherence to disputable rules; it was also of little interest because it was not very descriptive. Making use of categories so elastic and poorly defined as those just mentioned, it was always possible to throw the unwelcome versions in the ‘negative’ heap (imitation, unfaithfulness, freedom, lack of equivalence) and those welcomed in the ‘positive’ one (faithful, literal, equivalent, exact), preventing such judgments from explaining the characteristics of one or other version in detail. The normative burden prevented, when it was dominant in this field, authentic scientific progress. As Robinson says, The normative assumption that translation is either faithful or free (and that if it’s faithful it translates either individual words or individual sentences) has blinded us to the full range of even individual translators’ actual methodological repertoires, let alone the collective repertoire of all translators taken en masse. So deep does the ban on free translation run that it is difficult even to begin to think about it in positive, appreciative ways, and that much more difficult to trace its astonishing diversity (Robinson 1998: 89:90).

Bibliographical references CANETTI ELIAS Die gerettete Zunge. - Die Fackel im Ohr. - Das Augenspiel, München, Carl Hanser Verlag, 1995, ISBN 3-446-18062-1. CANETTI ELIAS The Tongue Set Free. Remembrance of a European Childhood, translated by Joachim Neugroschel, in The Memoirs of Elias Canetti, New York, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999, ISBN 0-374-19950-7, p. 1-286. DRYDEN J. Preface to Ovid’s Epistles, Translated by Several Hands, 1680, p. 68-72. ROBINSON D. Free translation, in Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies, edited by M. Baker, London, Routledge, 1998, ISBN 0-415-09380-5, p. 87-90. ROBINSON D. Imitation, in Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies, edited by M. Baker, London, Routledge, 1998, ISBN 0-415-09380-5, p. 111- 112.

1 Canetti 1999: 207. 2 Dryden: 20. 3 Dryden (1680: 17).

382 15 - Phraseologisms

"Only especially dramatic events, murder and manslaughter so to speak, and the worst terrors have been retained by me in their Ladino wording, and very precisely and indestructibly at that"1.

In each cultural context there are typical modes of expression that assemble words in order to signify something that is not limited to the sum of the meanings of the single words that compose them; an extra meaning, usually metaphorical, becomes part and parcel of this particular assembly. "To find oneself between hammer and anvil" does not literally mean to be in that physical condition; it means rather to be in a stressing or very difficult situation. In our everyday life we seldom find the hammer or anvil in our immediate vicinity.

Phraseologisms – or expressions that would aspire at becoming so – are formed in huge quantities, but do not always succeed. Sometimes are formed and disappear almost simultaneously. The only instances that create problems for the translator are the stable, recurrent lexical idioms, that for their metaphorical meaning do not rely only on the reader’s logic at the time of reading, but also, and above all, on the value that such a metaphor has assumed in the history of the language under discussion.

The first obstacle for the translator consists in recognizing phraseologisms. If unrecognized, they are translated interpreting the meaning of the single words to the letter, with doubtful outcome, to say the least. The translator is always alert in order to catch a passage that is marked, she forms a particular sensitivity allowing her, ideally at least, to stop and think about an unusual formulation even when in her experience she never ran across that particular idiomatic expression.

Once the expression is identified, the next problem consists in decoding it. All authors agree that dictionaries are not always reliable tools in this sense. First, they don’t contain all phraseologisms, then because every day new ones are formed, and lastly because dictionaries have a limited length and cannot contain all. The second problem consists in the identification of phraseologisms under a given entry: "to be between hammer and anvil" can be found under the words "between", or "anvil", or "hammer", or "be", but certainly if it is present under one entry it is absent in all the other entries, otherwise the dictionary would be too redundant (some redundancy is physiologic and functional to effective communication, in order to cover the "voids" produced by physical and/or semiotic noise).

383 The latter problem is easily avoidable if one has the CD edition of the dictionary, and its software for the dictionary data management allows the so called "full-text search". If, for example, the word "anvil" is searched in the Webster’s New World Dictionary, the following words are referred to: anvil, bone, ear, hardy, horn, incus, middle ear, stithy "anvil, bone, ear, hardy, horn, incus, middle ear, stithy", and the word that interests me is none of these.

The third problem is the use of bilingual dictionaries. In this case, the provided solutions are not the explanation of the sense of phraseologisms that, in the compiler’s intentions, should serve to translate them into the other language. Since there is never a good coincidence of meaning between phraseologisms, there is a very high risk of finding others that have different metaphors, a different meaning, and are not at all fit for specific cases.

Once the idiom has been recognized and understood, the task is not yet finished: in the contrary, one could say that has just begun. The problem is to find a translating expression.

In the most fortunate cases, in two cultures the same phraseologism has formed based on the same metaphor. It is the case of the mentioned example, "being between hammer and anvil", existing also: in Italian: trovarsi tra l’incudine e il martello in French: entre l’enclume et le marteau in Russian: meždu molotom i nakoval´nej in German: zwischen Hammer und Amboss in Bulgarian: meždu čuk i nakovalnja2 and, in many other languages, I suppose. This kind of translation can be seldom done, when the opportunity occurs and when the phraseologism does not have a culture-specific connotation (otherwise it would be lost, forming a translation loss).

In other cases, the translator opts for a different idiom, based on a different metaphor, that, in the translator’s opinion, conveys the same kind of contextual meaning. Vlahov and Florin use as example the idioms meaning "to be fortunate". Here are some examples:

Italian: nascere sotto la buona stella

Italian: essere nato con la camicia

384 French: être né coiffé

English: to be born with a silver spoon in one’s mouth

English: thank one’s (lucky) stars

English: to be born with a cowl on one’s head

Russian: rodit´sja v soročke, v rubaške

Russian: rodit´sja pod sčastlěvoj zvezdój

In a connotative text the choice of a translating idiom can be a big problem, because the author’s intention can be to use a given metaphor (for example the stars, or the shirts mentioned above), that is functional to the network of intertextual references, and to the clues willingly distributed by the author for the model reader inclined to make given conjectures, and the replacing idiom can radically shift the metaphor’s tenor, misleading the metatext’s reader.

If, on the other hand, what counts most is only transporting the denotative meaning, for example when the notion of "never" is expressed through a phraseologism, one can use different metaphors without great difficulties:

German: wenn die Hunde mit dem Schwanz bellen (when the hounds start barking with their tail)

English: when the moon turns to green cheese

Russian: kogda rak na gore svistnet i ryba zapoet (when the crab whistles in the mountains and the fish starts singing)

Bulgarian: koga se pokači svinja s ž´´lti čehli na kruša (when the pig in yellow slippers climbs the pear tree)

Italian: alle calende greche

There is, moreover, the possibility of a non phraseological translation of an idiom. This choice is preferred when the denotative meaning of the translation act is chosen as a dominant, and one is ready to compromise as to the presentation of the expressive color, of the meaning nuances, of connotation and aphoristic form.

In the case of non phraseological rendering, there are two possibilities: one can opt for a lexical translation or for a calque. The lexical translation consists in expliciting through other words the denotative meaning of the

385 phraseologism, giving up all the other style and connotation aspects. In the case of the "hammer and anvil" idiom, a lexical rendering could be "to be in an uneasy, stressing situation".

The calque would consist instead in translating the idiom to the letter into a culture where such a form is not recognized as an idiom: in this case the reader of the receiving culture perceives the idiom as unusual and feels the problem to interpret it in a non literal, metaphorical way. The calque has the advantage of preserving intact all second-degree, non-denotative references, that in some authors’ strategy can have an essential importance. It is true that the reconstruction of the denotative meaning is left to the receiving culture’s ability, but it is true as well that the metaphor is an essential, primal semiosic mechanism, that therefore belongs to all cultures.

Bibliographical references

CANETTI ELIAS Die gerettete Zunge. - Die Fackel im Ohr. - Das Augenspiel, München, Carl Hanser Verlag, 1995, ISBN 3-446-18062-1.

RECKER JA. I. Teorija perevoda i perevodčeskaja praktika, Moskvà, Meždunarodnye otnošenija, 1974.

VLAHOV S., FLORIN S., Neperovodimoe v perevode, Moskvà, Vysshaja shkola, 1986.

1 Canetti 1999: 12-13. 2 Vlahov e Florin: 239.

16 - Types of text

"I knew his book before he came to us, I had half memorized it, for it contained very many numbers"1.

When setting up the translation strategy following the translation-oriented analysis of the prototext, many factors come into play. The dominant of the

386 prototext must be evaluated to check its validity in the receiving culture. Sometimes the dominant of a translated text doesn’t coincide with the dominant of the original, and such difference is to be ascribed to the very evaluations of this kind.

The dominant doesn’t depend only on the text itself, or on its systemic relation with the culture in which it was originated; it depends for the most part on its systemic relation with the culture receiving it and of which it becomes a part. But it depends also on the model reader it is to address and on the kind of text it is.

The model reader of the metatext does not always coincide with the model reader of the prototext. Sometimes, a text that in a given culture plays a given role, in another culture can play a different role and address a different kind of reader.

But also the type of text has an influence on the way in which the translation strategy is prepared. We know that originally natural language is purely oral language. Writing is a consequence of subsequent evolutions. Conventions, which differ in different cultures, assign different proprieties to oral and written language. Such differences influence the texts composed for oral use, but also the modes of writing intended to describe or reproduce oral texts.

Usually, an oral text is less considered than a written text. The Romans used to say "Verba volant, scripta manent" ("Spoken words fly away, written ones remain"). Since a written text has more probability of being preserved, more attention is devoted to its composition. Not only: a written text is also a demonstration of effort, of will; not by chance in our culture contracts have a legal value only if they are written.

In the spontaneous interaction between speakers, clearly there is not enough time to devise complex communicative strategies. And the deeper the affective relationship between the speakers, the more each speaker can afford expressing herself in a more abbreviated format and the listener will still be receptive in understanding. One uses fewer functions that serve to control the communicative intention of speakers.

Spoken language is therefore spontaneous by nature. That doesn’t mean that characters who speak in an ostentatious manner do not exist. It means, at the most, that a speaker, who speaks in a style typical of the registers of written text, is not spontaneous; his stands out as marked discourse, different from the average.

387 What influences do these considerations have on the translation of different types of texts? This is what we shall see in the next units. In translation for film and theater, where most – sometimes the whole – of the verbal text is formed by dialogues, there is the apparent paradox that a written text has the typical functions of the oral text: the translator must deal with an oral text that, however, appears... dressed up as a written text2.

This argument holds for the translation of drama destined for performance of the translated texts, for there can be also the translation of drama for the sake of reading, in which there would be fewer concerns about the performability of the text.

This argument holds for dubbing too, to which I’ll devote some space in a further unit. For subtitles, it holds true to a lesser degree. Subtitles are, in fact, a very particular case, since they are written text, however transcribe oral discourse that, in its turn, is the oral actualization of a written text (script). Not only: subtitles are not a complete transcription of the matching dialogue lines. They often are just a synthesis. As written synthetic translation of an oral, non- written, discourse, subtitles do not always reflect the spontaneity of an oral text. Sometimes, in order to bring about such a synthesis, the translator departs from the standard communication principles for oral discourse so that she can put the approximate contents of the dialogue to be reproduced in the few lines at her disposal.

All said above on cinema and theater does not hold true when there is a narrator, homodiegetic or heterodiegetic, that adds to the characters of the story in an analogous way to the inner narrator in a novel, who in written works is usually given much more space. Obviously, the inner narrator’s discourse can be on a completely different register than that of the spoken language.

A literary genre that I consider borderline between written and oral discourse is the fairy tale. The fairy tale is the expression of folklore heritage. For centuries, each fairy tale was orally transmitted from generation to generation, loosing subjective features from the proto-author and enriching its general cultural heritage with each retelling. In different eras and by different means researchers took on the work of listening to the narration of popular storytellers and transcribing such oral texts. Among the most famous examples, the Grimm brothers in Germany in the Nineteenth century and Italo Calvino in Italy in the Twentieth.

Of course, transcription is itself a sort of translation. Some transcribers opted for a philological rendering; many preferred instead to adapt what they heard to the ruling principles in the written register. Transcriptions of the first type,

388 the philological ones, have many features of the oral folk discourse in the written text: swift shifts from past tense to present tense, frequent use of indirect free discourse, use of words of a low social register and, rarely, of words of standard- high register, that in this context stand strongly out as marked text. Sometimes you find strange singular-plural concordances, in flexive languages sometimes fallen into disuse or obsolete cases, unusual turns of words.

When, on the other hand, the transcriber elaborates the folk material giving it a form more similar to that of literary registers, he operates in a way that is not dissimilar that used by a dreamer in retelling (or transcribing) the memories of a dream. While the memories are fragmentary, they have unexplained logical shifts, the transcriber, having to insert this material in the segment of the verbal discourse, adds logical connections, inserts explanations, adds annotations that show the strange nature of the described situations even from the writer’s point of view.

A transcribed fairy tale is the triumph of orality in a written text, but here that also depends on the type of dominant the translator used in her translation strategy. A translator of fairy tales who eliminates these signs of oral discourse assigning them to a literary register completely foreign to them wouldn’t make any sense.

In the next units I’ll examine these and other types of texts in order to see each time what kinds of problems faces the translator. I’ll also try to demolish the theoretical bases of the distinction between "technical translation" and "literary translation’, showing that other categories are maybe more productive to distinguish the types of text not yet cited in this unit: translation for publishers, essay translation, sectional translation, translation for newspapers.

Bibliographical references

CANETTI ELIAS Die gerettete Zunge. - Die Fackel im Ohr. - Das Augenspiel, München, Carl Hanser Verlag, 1995, ISBN 3-446-18062-1.

389 1 Canetti 1999: 239. 2 To such a norm an exception are some dramatic works above all before the Romatic period, written in verse with a rather formal register.

17 - Dubbing

"Since I had an easy time with Latin, I got used to a kind of double existence with him. My ears followed his instruction, so that, if called on, I could always reply. My eyes read a small volume that I kept open under my desk"1.

One of the types of translated text that comes closest to the orality pole is dubbed films, where by "dubbing" is meant the technique of postsincronization consisting in the deleting of the original voice of the actor pronouncing hie text during the shots, and its substitution with another recording.

There are many types of dubbing. The authorial dubbing is the one where the director himself decides to have his actors’ voices dubbed, either with the same actors’ voice, or with the dubbers’ voices. Such type of dubbing, usually occurring within the same language, is a sort of intralingual self-translation and deserves a treatment of its own, since it is part of the original creation. The director decides to publish his film with dubbed voices, so that the viewer or the critic can judge the whole filmic text, and they know that the author’s intention coincides with the result they have before them.

One of the reasons why a director may decide to have a given character’s line dubbed can lie in the desire to give that character a given voice, different from the chosen actor’s. The timbre of the voice, its intensity, the pronunciation, inflections, pauses, whispers are all features concurring to shape the poetics of a movies character; for this reason it is sensible for the director to desire and to be able make decisions on the subject, in the same way as he participates in the decisions concerning the makeup, the clothing, the casting.

In most cases, however, dubbing is a process with which the director and the authors have nothing to do, and that is motivated by the desire to propose an interlingual translation of dialogues to facilitate the fruition of the work in countries with cultures and languages differing from the original. The buyers of the dubbing are not directors, but distributors; they make these decisions within the framework of general choices in marketing or commercialization of the film product.

Having to propose a film to a culture in which the spoken language of the film is unknown to most people, the distributor has two techniques at its disposal, one alternative to the other: dubbing and subtitling. In some countries (Italy,

390 Germany, Spain, France) the tradition of dubbing prevails, while in others (Scandinavian countries, Netherlands, Switzerland, Slavic countries) usually the audience prefers films with subtitles. Usually the distributors choose to avoid trying to modify the habits of the audience of the different countries, preferring to overindulge them. That is why, thanks to such inertia owing to short-term commercial reasons, they continue to dub in the countries where in the past dubbing was used and where often it was done for precise historical reasons. In Italy, for example, dubbing originated during the Fascist period, in which the regime wanted to control and minimize outside cultural influences. In this period they got to the point of transform in a local version traditionally non-Italian place names as if to remove uncomfortable cultural traces, transforming, for example, Courmayeur into "Cortemaggiore". In Spain a similar dubbing-friendly attitude occurred during the Fascist dictatorship of Francisco Franco: the few non-Spanish films admitted in the Spanish cinemas were dubbed with the aim – according to Ballester – to minimize the international influence (1995: 175-177).

Actually, dubbing is a translation technique specifically aimed at hiding the nature of the text as translated text. As Shuttleworth and Cowie write, it «is designed to give the impression that the actors whom the audience sees are actually speaking in TL"2. Dubbing is considered successful when it can coordinate the actor’s lips movements with the sounds produced by the dubber, especially those sounds that make use of the lips.

A high-quality dubbing has, therefore, the aim of pretending that an actor’s playing is acting directly in the language of the receiving culture. In other words, the aim of interlingual dubbing is denying the translated nature of the filmic text.

According to Goris (1993: 170), among the disadvantages of dubbing there is also the loss of authenticity because a very high number of actors of many nationalities are represented by, in the receiving culture, the timbre and recitative features of a narrow range of dubbers. The fact that, in a given culture, the playing of an actor is received in the form of the representation of another actor, who didn’t receive any instruction from the former actor or from the director to represent him or her, is in itself at least a curious thing, and presents itself as an abuse (above all by the distributors) Then the fact that ten or fifty actors in a given culture are presented as having the same voice is a further element of confusion and text manipulation, occurring, by the way, with the audience completely unaware.

That’s the reason why I don’t agree at all with Baker and Hochel’s statement that

391 a dubbed film or programme is always overtly presented and perceived as a translation3.

Such a statement is based on a wrong assumption: that the lip movement always disclose the false nature of dubbing:

in a dubbed film we are constantly aware through images and non-matching mouth movements of the presence of a foreign language and culture4.

It would be as much as saying that dubbing does not give the illusion of the film being local, but only at the condition that it is badly made, and when therefore the lips movements are not coordinated to the sounds of the translated text. Getting to the extreme consequences Peter Fawcett’s argument, one should infer that dubbing is innocuous on the plane of cultural falsification on condition that it is realized in a bad way, denouncing in this way overtly its nature of unsuccessful imitation (meant in contraposition to "original"). But I don’t think that Fawcett wants to say that dubbing, in order to be acceptable, must be made in a bad way.

In the next unit we will continue the discussion of dubbing, looking at its differences connected to the type of text.

Bibliographical references

BAKER MONA e HOCHEL BRAŇO Dubbing, in Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies edited by Mona Baker, London, Routledge, 1998, ISBN 0- 415-09380-5, p. 74-76.

BALLESTER ANA The Politics of Dubbing. Spain: A Case Study, in Translation and the Manipulation of Discourse: Selected Papers of the CERA Research Seminars in Translation Studies 1992-1993, Leuven, CETRA, p. 159-181.

CANETTI ELIAS Die gerettete Zunge. - Die Fackel im Ohr. - Das Augenspiel, München, Carl Hanser Verlag, 1995, ISBN 3-446-18062-1.

FAWCETT PETER Translating Film, in On Translating French Literature and Film, edited by Geoffrey T. Harris, Amsterdam, Rodopi, 1996, p. 65-88.

392 GORIS O. The Question of French Dubbing: Towards a Frame for Systematic Invetsigation, in Target, 5:2, p. 169-190.

SHUTTLEWORTH MARK e COWIE MOIRA, Dictionary of Translation Studies, Manchester, St. Jerome, 1997, ISBN 1-900650-03-7.

1 Canetti 1999: 249. 2 Shuttleworth and Cowie 1997: 45 3 Baker and Hochel 1998: 76. 4 Fawcett 1996: 76.

18 - Dubbing (second part)

"He would then raise his finger threateningly and yell – it was the only loud sound I ever heard from him: "Falsu!" (False child!) And he drawled out the accented a; the word sounded both ominous and plaintive, I can still hear it as though I had visited him only yesterday"1.

The model "reader" of the dubbed film is a person presumably not able to appreciate the poetics of an actor’s voice. The model reader of a subtitled film has a cognitive potential superior to his counterpart viewer of the dubbed film. This is why, as Delabastita states, a dubbed film demands a less intense cognitive effort by the user as compared to the subtitled film. Such a model reader is, therefore, not very gifted as far as the ability of appreciating a work from the aesthetic point of view is concerned, and has a reduced cognitive ability. Due to these considerations made by the distributors in the choice of marketing strategies, I think that it is justified to think it is not flattering to be perceived as belonging to a dubbing-focused culture.

Moreover, the model viewer of a dubbed film is a person who must not realize the glaring contradiction intrinsic in the fact that actors ‘speak’ her language but exist in a world culturally totally foreign, with inscriptions and references in a different language.

The culture of dubbing-focused countries is a culture where little by little one get used to being careless about contradictions, about points of encounter and collision between own culture and others’ culture. The speedometer in the foreground, indicates "60", and the actor comments "We are going at a hundred an hour". The actor presses in the elevator the ‘1’ button and the elevator goes to the ground floor, and nobody in the film or in the cinema takes notice.

393 What in common speech is called cultural "provincialism" is the tendency to mentally extend the principles and usages of one’s own culture to the rest of the world, without asking oneself the question of cultural specificity of one’s own way of being and doing. Such a mentality is favored by the absence or scarcity of clues in favor of the presence of different cultures in other parts of the world. The greater the opportunities to communicate and travel, the lesser the provincialism in the people.

It is true that sometimes the prevailing tourism is that in which one’s own culture is reproduced in miniature around oneself, when one goes to a vacation village and does not get in touch at all with the local population or with their culture. One enters an artificial microcosm where he has the illusion that even there, where one is, this is how life is, not only on this side of the wall, also in the rest of the territory.

But when, instead, one really visits a foreign land, one lives in it and has exchanges and interactions with people who permanently live there, one realizes that habits and uses that we always had taken for granted can be different according to the country where one is. One thus forms a notion of cultural relativism on her own, a personal one whose elaboration is as large as her provincialism leaves room for it to be. They are two complementary notions.

In filmic translation, dubbing is the implemental tool of cultural provincialism. Cinema, in itself, like all media tends to be a wonderful instrument for de- provincialization. Through films, cultures make contact and comparisons, and spectators after the fruition of each filmic text see the world from a new point of view.

Such broadening of minds, such opportunity to see more facets of reality is muted, is diminished by dubbing, for two reasons:

 first because it doesn’t alert the user as would occur in presence of different cultures, because it is a form of implicit, not explicit, culture, that tries to pass the translated text off as an original;  moreover, because it deprives the user of the cultural estrangement that is produced by linguistic difference; the subliminal message given with dubbing is: "all over the world my language is spoken".

It is not surprising, therefore, that dubbing has been, and sometimes still is, congenial to dictatorships of nationalistic and chauvinistic type. The cultural militia that is language, invades – in the aconscious imagination of the viewer of a dubbed film – all the extra-national space, where everybody hails it with no resistance. The nationalist’s delusion of omnipotence triumphs.

394 * * * The dubbing technique, as compared to subtitling, is enormously more expensive. Cost differences have been carefully studied; the conclusion was that dubbing costs fifteen times more than subtitling2. The high price elevates the price of tickets at the theater, affects the quantity of advertisement on TV, the price of videos on sale and for rent. It is a tangible difference that you can check in the price of a movie on optic or magnetic medium on sale with soundtrack only in the original or with a dubbed soundtrack, too. In some countries, for reasons that are essentially cost related, a system of translation of the verbal filmic text is used that is not synchronized with the original lines, neither does it completely erase the original sound track. The viewer, basically, watches the film, with the original soundtrack at a very low volume that is sometimes perceivable. Over this sound track is recorded the voice of one speaker (only one speaker for all the characters) who just reads the lines of dialogue just before or after they are pronounced in the original, with no claim of similarity to the original sound. This system, used for example for the TV in most east European countries, has the advantage of not necessitating the reproduction of all the sounds outside dialogues, because the viewer can hear them directly from the original soundtrack. It has also the advantage of presenting the film as openly non- original: the original is even heard in the background. And the translated text has no pretense of substituting itself to the original; it may even add to the original. In this case it is, therefore, a metatextual rendering. The original soundtrack (prototext) is offered the viewers with the subsidiary apparatus (metatextual) of the voice-over. In this case, the viewer doesn’t get the illusion of having an original presented. Indeed, the limit of this method lies just in the fact that fruition is made so very hard by the complication of the voice-over, without expressivity, cold, like a newscast, partly covering sounds and words of the original that might, if heard, be helpful.

Bibliographical references BAKER MONA e HOCHEL BRANO Dubbing, in Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies edited by Mona Baker, London, Routledge, 1998, ISBN 0- 415-09380-5, p. 74-76. BALLESTER ANA The Politics of Dubbing. Spain: A Case Study, in Translation and the Manipulation of Discourse: Selected Papers of the CERA Research Seminars in Translation Studies 1992-1993, Leuven, CETRA, p. 159-181. CANETTI ELIAS Die gerettete Zunge. - Die Fackel im Ohr. - Das Augenspiel, München, Carl Hanser Verlag, 1995, ISBN 3-446-18062-1. CANETTI ELIAS The Tongue Set Free. Remembrance of a European Childhood, translated by Joachim Neugroschel, in The Memoirs of Elias

395 Canetti, New York, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999, ISBN 0-374-19950-7, p. 1-286. FAWCETT PETER Translating Film, in On Translating French Literature and Film, edited by Geoffrey T. Harris, Amsterdam, Rodopi, 1996, p. 65-88. LUYKEN GEORG-MICHAEL et alia, Overcoming Language Barriers in Television: Dubbing and Subtitling for the European Audience, Manchester, The European Institute for the Media, 1991. SHUTTLEWORTH MARK e COWIE MOIRA, Dictionary of Translation Studies, Manchester, St. Jerome, 1997, ISBN 1-900650-03-7.

1 Canetti 1999: 21. 2 Luyken 1991: 106.

19 - Subtitling

"My weekly letters to her, reporting on all sorts of things, climaxed in the proudly ornate signature, with the following words underneath: ‘In spe poeta clarus’»1.

Subtitling is a complex form of translation, involving, as it does, the transfer from oral language into written language. Moreover, it is sometimes an intersemiotic form of translation.

There are two kinds of subtitling: one used as a physical aid (for hard of hearing) and the other used as a linguistic aid (for those who aren’t familiar with the language spoken in the audiovisual text. Sometimes, such distinction is considered similar to the distinction between intralingual and interlingual subtitling, but the two phenomena do not always coincide.

Subtitles as an aid to intralingual translation are becoming more widespread. For those who have some rudiments of the language spoken in the audiovisual text, but not enough to easily decipher the same text in the spoken version, the written text helps connect pronunciation to the graphic form, and also to understand how the sound must be mentally divided into single words. Typically, neophytes to a language have a hard time in establishing the division between words. The tendency is to mentally match the divisions between words, whatever their effective reason, to the speaker’s pauses.

Therefore, we can identify four types of subtitling:

1. intralingual, as a physical aid 2. intralingual, as a linguistic aid

396 3. interlingual, as a linguistic aid 4. interlingual, as a physical aid

It is not necessary to repeat that intralingual and interlingual translation are expressions of the same kind of process and have manifold analogies. Some researchers are careful to try to understand if and when subtitling can be considered a form of translation. For researchers adhering to the principles of total translation the question is easily answered, since it is clear that it is one of the forms of translation contemplated by Jakobson since 1959. From a semiotic point of view, the most interesting form of audiovisual translation is subtitling as a physical aid, since it is a mixed intrasemiotic and intersemiotic translation. Let us see how. Oral discourse is formed by a text – easily transcribable if there are no space- time limits – and by the so-called "super-segmental traits", formed by intonation, inflexion, tone, timbre and in short all features of the vocal execution of a (sometimes imaginary) written score. Pirandello expressed his idea on this point very well: How often does a playwright, when listening to the repetitions of one of his works, shout: "No, not that way!" contorting himself as if in torment, for the irritation, the rage, the pain of not seeing correspondence in the translation into material reality, that must necessarily be another’s, that inception and that ideal execution that are his only his?2 Acting – and more generally, oral discourse – emerges as one of the many possible executions of a same written text. The hard of hearing, even when they can see the actors’ gestic expression, their corporeity and their expressive movements, can’t perceive an actor’s phonic execution of the verbal text of the audiovisual; that is why the subtitles must also give, more than the verbal translation of the text, an intersemiotic translation of the phonic non verbal part of the prototext. In subtitling as linguistic aid, the prototext’s super-segmental traits get to destination not through the mediation of subtitles, but directly – and this is a fundamental difference from dubbing – because the original soundtrack remains intact and accessible to the user. In subtitling as physical aid, there is a verbal (interlingual or intralingual) translation accompanied by an intersemiotic translation in which there is a verbal synthesis of a message that, otherwise, would be lost. These are the cases when the subtitle contains expressions like "background music" "sudden noise" "crack" "kiss smack" etc. The same kind of transfer of phonic super-segmental traits also occurs in dubbing, but in that case it is entrusted to the re-interpretation of the actor dubbing, a reinterpretation starting with the dubber’s vocal timbre itself. Another fundamental difference between subtitling as a physical aid and as a linguistic aid lies in its supplementary or complementary nature as compared to the prototext. And this degree of complementariness is placeable along the adequacy / acceptability continuum.

397 If by "adequate translation" we mean that, to maximizing respect for the expressive potential of a prototext, which demands a great effort of the user – in terms of cognitive and cultural elasticity – and arrives as near as possible to the intact text, instead of demanding a text that is nearer the user; "acceptable translation" is the one that demands the least effort to the user, who can save himself that effort with little concern for the price paid in cultural and linguistic features of the prototext. On this basis, it is possible to create a hierarchy of the types of audiovisual mediation starting from the more adequate to the more acceptable one:

1. intralingual subtitling as a linguistic aid; it is a form of complementary translation, in which the prototext is intact and subtitling has the only aim of facilitating the fruition of the prototext as it is; 2. interlingual subtitling as a linguistic aid; it is a mixed form, complementary and supplementary, of translation, in which the prototext remains intact but subtitling has not only the purpose of facilitating the fruition of the prototext as it is, because it provides also a written interlingual interpretation of dialogues; what it facilitates, therefore, more than the deciphering of the dialogues as in the language in which they are, is the understanding of their semantic contents; 3. voice over; it is a mixed form, complementary and supplementary, of translation, in which the visual prototext is intact (but somewhat hidden), and the translated text has the purpose of facilitating the fruition of the prototext as it is; it doesn’t facilitate the deciphering of the dialogues as such in the language in which they are written, but only the understanding of their semantic contents; 4. intralingual subtitling as a physical aid; it is a mixed form, complementary and supplementary, of translation, in which the visual prototext is intact but the audio prototext is missing, and subtitling has not only the purpose of facilitating the fruition of the prototext as it is, because it provides also a written interlingual interpretation of dialogues; what makes things easier, therefore, is not the deciphering of dialogues as they are in the language in which they are, but only the understanding of their semantic contents; 5. interlingual subtitling as a physical aid; it is a mixed form of translation, complementary and supplementary, in which the visual prototext is intact but the audio prototext is missing, and the subtitling does not facilitate the fruition of the prototext as it is, because it provides also a written interlingual interpretation of dialogues; what it facilitates, therefore, is not the deciphering of dialogues as they are in the language in which they are, but only the understanding of their semantic contents in another language; 6. dubbing; it is a supplementary form of translation, because the verbal prototext is completely suppressed; the purpose is not making easier the deciphering or understanding of dialogues, but their substitution with dialogues that are comprehensible to the user.

398 Bibliographical references CANETTI ELIAS Die gerettete Zunge. - Die Fackel im Ohr. - Das Augenspiel, München, Carl Hanser Verlag, 1995, ISBN 3-446-18062-1. CANETTI ELIAS The Tongue Set Free. Remembrance of a European Childhood, translated by Joachim Neugroschel, in The Memoirs of Elias Canetti, New York, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999, ISBN 0-374-19950-7, p. 1-286. DE LINDE ZOé e KAY NEIL The Semiotics of Subtitling, Manchester, St. Jerome, 1999, ISBN 1-900650-18-5. IVARSSON MARY CARROLL Subtitling, Simrishamn, Transedit HB, 1998, ISBN 91-971799-2-2. PIRANDELLO L., Illustratori, attori e traduttori (1908), in Saggi, edited by Manlio Lo Vecchio Musti, Milano, Mondadori, 1939, p. 227-246.

1 Canetti 1999: 208. 2 Pirandello 1908: 237.

20 - Subtitling - second part

"But teaching me the script was something for which Mother had no patience at all. She threw away her principles overboard, and I kept the book"1.

In intralingual subtitling as a physical aid, time-tried techniques for graphically translating at least a few super-segmental traits were elaborated. De Linde and Kay (1999) offer some examples.

One of the inaudible super-segmental traits is hesitation, the pause in which the speaker shows second thoughts on her last utterance. In these cases one technique consists in using an ellipsis before and after the pause and using a new line without a real need for one, but that of expressing such hesitating pause:

No...

...But I don’t dislike him. (1999: 13)

This type of graphic device expresses a nuance of expression analogue to those expressed by vocal hesitations, like er, hmm, etc.

Another element that the hard of hearing can’t perceive is the tone of voice. For this reason, beyond observing the facial expression of actors, that can be very indicative in that sense, the viewers can take advantage of other graphical devices. For example, in the subtitle:

399 No, no. You’re not late (!) (Ibidem) one perceives a tone of lively expression, of insistence, or peremptory affirmation, while in the subtitle:

No, no. You’re not late (?) one can sense the ironic intention of the speaker, who probably is pulling the collocutor’s leg, wishing to express the exact opposite of the denotative meaning of the pronounced words. Note that in these instances, the punctuation is in parentheses to distinguish it from the usual punctuation, that has its usual conventional meaning.

As to particular accents and pronunciations, sometimes it is possible to use particular spellings that can suggest a pronunciation different from the standard one. In American English there are some examples widely used even in printed texts. For example gonna substitutes going to, wanna substitutes want to, ain’t substitutes isn’t and so on. And origins of the speaker can be revealed by a spelling that imitates pronunciation, be it foreign or regional: a Japanese could ask "You rike my rickshaw?", a Southerner could axe a girl out to corfee, a Hippy could greet his buddies with "Whut’s hap’nin’" and an Italian can show concern asking "Wassa matta u?" But when the spelling cannot be of use, there can be a metalingual intervention within the framework of the subtitle:

AMERICAN ACCENT:

TV is a medium because it is neither rare nor well done. (ibidem)

This pun would hardly have found a different way of expressing the American accent. It is based on the ambivalence of three meanings: medium, rare and well-done are the three levels at which you can order a steak in the U. S.: medium or pink centered, rare or red in the center, well done or brown in the center. At the same time, medium is also the (Latin) singular of media, meant here as mass media, rare means also «uncommon» and well done means also «done in a good way».

Puns are another hard point for translators dealing with subtitles. Particularly, homophones create great pain when you want to transcribe them. De Linde and Kay refer the example from a Quentin Tarantino’s movie, the famous Pulp Fiction:

400 Three tomatoes are walking down the street. Papa, mama and baby tomato. Baby tomato starts lagging behind. Papa tomato gets really angry... goes back and squishes him. Says "Ketchup".

The difficulty here is understanding the pun between "catch up" and "ketchup". The subtitler’s choice here fell on the use of the spelling of the word more unusual in this context (ketchup), hoping that the viewer can recall the sentence that would be obvious in that context (catch up).

Another element that the hard of hearing don’t perceive and on which, moreover, they have no clue, are the sounds from sources outside the screen’s field. In case of a bloodcurdling scream, an often used method consists in verbally explicitating what in the soundtrack is implicit:

BLOODCURDLING SCREAM

Here the cap script gives an idea of the intensity of noise and, even if in the viewer won’t experience the same effect that the actual scream, certainly it will allow her to put herself in condition to perceive the remainder of the plot as if she had heard it.

Music in movies is indicated by a verbal explicitation indicating the type of melody that one would hear, at least to approximately give the viewer an idea. If the music is sung, the graphic sign # is put before the text, that, by convention, is thus received as sung music.

If subtitles have the advantage of not being a substitute for the prototext, of accompanying it, they have the disadvantage of transforming an intersemiotic reception using the channels of visual perception of images and hearing into an intersemiotic reception that, in the case of people of normal hearing, is still richer, since it involves hearing, visual perception of images and visual perception of verbal text. De Linde and Kay ask a question also essential for dubbing:

Subtitles integrate with oral, visual and audio information. In contrast to these forms, subtitles are not conceptualized at the time of film production. Rather, they are later additions which must combine with the audio-visual make-up of the source film.

When oral dialogue is substituted by [written] textual discourse the overall structure of the film narrative is changed (1999: 17).

Such a reflection concerning the addition of intervention extraneous to the production at a later time is an element of primary importance also as far as dubbing is concerned, where the translated text comes to the point of

401 completely substituting the text designed and realized by the authors of the film.

A practice sometimes followed in subtitling translation consists in realizing that the subtitle, since it is written literature, "should" respect the canons ruling in the receiving culture as far as written literature is concerned.

Such consideration in my opinion is completely unfounded and absurd, because the nature of the subtitle as transcription of the oral discourse is self- evident. In this way, many written printed translations whose dialogues are deformed and transported from one register to another only for the fact of having been transcribed. It would make no sense that a spoken sentence like

What the hell is all this ruckus? became, in a subtitle or in a novel :

I think I may have heard some noise.

It is a view of translation as censorship, where the publisher, or the translator for the publisher, is forced to pretend that the reality of the spoken language is different from what it is. Novels published in this way (and movies subtitled in this way) in the end appear as ridiculous, because they lose all touch with reality. I cite here an example of a recently published book. Two neighbors are talking in the garden:

"Anyway" I said "I gotta cut the grass now."

"Let me do it " said Tim.

The editor transformed this fresh, spontaneous exchange into something impossible: "Well, now," I said, "I simply must mow the lawn." "Allow me," responded Tim. (Knight 2003: 46). It is evident that two normal persons simply jawboning, not reading a newscast, would not use the more formal verb mow. When "Let me do it" becomes "Allow me" the situation becomes comically formal. The tone assumes that limited to parodies of upper class English nobility. Try the line yourself while leaning over the back fence!

Bibliographical references CANETTI ELIAS Die gerettete Zunge. - Die Fackel im Ohr. - Das Augenspiel, München, Carl Hanser Verlag, 1995, ISBN 3-446-18062-1.

402 CANETTI ELIAS The Tongue Set Free. Remembrance of a European Childhood, translated by Joachim Neugroschel, in The Memoirs of Elias Canetti, New York, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999, ISBN 0-374-19950-7, p. 1-286. DE LINDE ZOÉ and KAY NEIL The Semiotics of Subtitling, Manchester, St. Jerome, 1999, ISBN 1-900650-18-5. IVARSSON MARY CARROLL Subtitling, Simrishamn, Transedit HB, 1998, ISBN 91-971799-2-2. PIRANDELLO L. Illustratori, attori e traduttori (1908), in Saggi, edited by Manlio Lo Vecchio Musti, Milano, Mondadori, 1939, p. 227-246.

1 Canetti 1999: 76.

21 - Translating for theater

" [...] plays that were merely read were dead, a woeful surrogate, and when I, in order to test her and deepen my misery, asked ‘Even if they’re read aloud?’ she would say unabashedly and without the least consideration: ‘Even if they’re read aloud!’"1.

In the typology of texts to be translated, the theatrical text is that presenting the biggest problems as far as plausibility of dialogues and playability of lines are concerned.

When speaking of translation for theater, we must distinguish translation for printed editions and translation for acting. Drama, especially the classics, are also read for themselves, and in such a case the translator can set the dominant not in the playability but in the philological care for the original text and the culture where it originated. Translation for theater becomes, in this case, an example of literary translation, where obviously direct speech is much more prevalent than indirect speech, and where, therefore, any preoccupation for the translation of dialogues is justifiable.

But when a translation is made for the dramatization of a work, the criteria for playability are fundamental. Here is what Pirandello wrote speaking of the playwright, and I think can be said of the drama translator:

But in order for the characters to jump alive and moving off the written pages, the playwright must find that word that is spoken action, the living word that moves, the immediate expression, natural to the action, the unique expression that cannot be but that one, that is proper to that given character in that given situation; words, expressions that cannot be invented, that arise when the author has truly identified

403 with his creature to the point that he feels it like the creature feels, until he himself wants it like the creature itself wants itself (1908: 235).

In Luzi’s opinion, the acid test of the stage is when it reveals the adequateness of a translation. The stage functions as amplifier not only for the good solutions, also for the unhappy ones, causing moments of embarrassment in the theater. Luzi considers such a concrete possibility of trial a fortune as compared to the problems of poetic translation. In it the translator’s liberty is enormous, and there is not even a direct confrontation with the audience.

The stage reveals even that circumstantial dramaticity a text of real dramatic poetry hides to the reading in its recesses, both in the thoughtful extension and in the tentative flattening of the speech: it allows, in short, the translator to reach out and touch more than just an explicit action the barely visible filigree of inner and diffuse dramaturgy projecting concrete consequences onto the scene [...] The stage like a seismograph records the variations in the character’s energy /1990: 98). such a likeness to the seismograph can be extended in general to the translator’s revision and her self-critical mind. Having an audience – potentially or in reality – who listens to the produced text emphasizes the weaknesses in one’s work and allows greater critical lucidity.

In drama translation, the maximum of the translator’s sensitivity is required for fresh and plausible dialogues. An implausible dialogue line uttered by a character in a given work has a negative impact on the actor’s work, it disables he identification with the part and his playing it well.

An important part of the drama production contains dialect, slang, and jargon elements. Here the translator must decide in favor of a re-creation of such elements with dialects, slang, and jargon in the receiving culture.

The question of dialect is very hard. The affected use of dialect (like when a translator attributes a given dialect to a character) often creates an unwanted burlesque effect. But the greatest problem is that the viewer gets a false idea of the theatrical work, thinking perhaps that it isn’t a translated work, since he recognizes a dialect of the receiving culture.

One way to solve this problem (or at least not to make it worse) consists in the use of supertitles. A work is played in the original language, and over the stage a luminous text is beamed above the action containing the translation of the spoken lines. It is a solution systematically used by some drama companies. For example, the Malyj Teatr of Saint Petersburg, directed by Dodin, tours throughout the world, performing in Russian with supertitles and,

404 if such a medium fatigues the audience, certainly doesn’t discourage them from following passionately the company’s representations, that can last many hours and are often divided into two evenings.

Creative re-writing is also widespread, often commissioned to playwrights of the receiving culture. Here the prototext is used as an outline, a pattern on which freely build the metatext. Such a procedure is particularly used in cultures where the taste for entertainment prevails over the cultural curiosity for the different and the new. So, in comedy, in general, especially in non- classical contemporary comedy, considering the dominant of the metatext as pure entertainment to the detriment of recognizability of the cultural origins of a work, there are frequent complete reworkings, with a reconstruction of the cultural references, changed in order to have the target culture as its subject.

The model viewer of such operations has few pretences or cultural interests, goes to theater to laugh, therefore more for physical exercise than mental. Drama critiques, on the other hand, are sometimes so well adapted to their cultural milieu that they do not realize they place odd demands on translators and adapters. Anderman quotes the case of a French critic:

When Pinter’s The Caretaker was staged in translation in France, a French critic reacted negatively to Davies, the tramp, drinking tea. He would have preferred him to be drinking wine since in France ‘tea is a drink taken mainly by genteel old ladies’ (1998: 72).

This French critic has indeed little consideration for the spectators of his nation. He thinks they cannot understand that tea in a British drama has a definite sense in that context, and has the presumption of modifying the dramatic text of no less than the great Harold Pinter.

It is, however, valid to consider the time constrictions of audiences at the theater. If at home a reader has time to think over elements she does not understand and to seek help from reference works, at the theater she does not have that possibility. That means that, without necessarily thinking that the audience is ignorant, lazy or feeble-minded, it may be necessary to offer them the tools for understanding at least the greater part of what is played in the moment of use.

Bibliographical references

405 ANDERMAN GUNILLA Drama translation, in Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies, edited by M. Baker, London, Routledge, 1998, ISBN 0- 415-09380-5, p. 71-74.

CANETTI ELIAS Die gerettete Zunge. - Die Fackel im Ohr. - Das Augenspiel, München, Carl Hanser Verlag, 1995, ISBN 3-446-18062-1.

LUZI MARIO Sulla traduzione teatrale, in Testo a fronte, n. 3, Milano, Guerini, 1990, ISBN 88-7802-184-9, p. 97-99.

PIRANDELLO L., Illustratori, attori e traduttori (1908), in Saggi, edited by Manlio Lo Vecchio Musti, Milano, Mondadori, 1939, p. 227-246.

1 Canetti 1999: 138.

22 - Terminology

"He pronounced his words with a Viennese accent, that pronunciation put him more decisively into his element"1.

Many units of this course have been devoted to understanding the problems arising from the interpretation of the meaning of words in absolute and not taking them in their contextual terms. Diverging from the tendency to a prescriptive view of language and of translation, I tried to argue for the benefit of a descriptive view, one in which use determines the fundamental reality instrumental in making tactical and strategic decisions as far as expression, interpretation and translation are concerned,

Language as a consequence of the spontaneous interaction of speakers, and writing as process of intellectualization of what has always existed, i.e. oral language, are phenomena characterizing, as we saw in the latest units, many translation techniques that have to do with written reproduction of spoken discourse. If you don’t want direct speech, reported in a written text to be stiff according to the canons with which we are taught to write compositions at

406 school, translator and writer must be able to distinguish between written register and oral register, and draw from the latter when they want to give a real (in the case of writing) or realistic (in the case of translation) description of the real-life situation of people speaking.

When you enter technical and scientific sectors, in a way the perspective changes. Here language has nothing spontaneous and has nothing to do with the interaction among speakers. Here all principles are in force that do not exist in live language, the perfect matching, equivalence, total translatability almost without any loss. Here we don’t find polysemic words, but monosemic terms. Here is how.

 Formation of lexicon. In normal, non-sector, language, words spontaneously originate from oral, contingent culture-specific situations, then they come to form a part of the written patrimony. In sector language, terms originate in an artificial way when national or international committees and standard agencies decide the name to give a given object or scientifically describable object in objective terms. Terms are labels attached to objects.  Kind of society. From the above follows that societies producing terminology are different from societies producing common language. In a society in which knowledge is passed down from father to son, from professor to student, i.e. it is handed down in a practical way, no terminology is necessary: even words connected to techniques and skills can be non-terms, because their comprehension is verified in the practice. On the other hand, in a society in which knowledge is passed down through education and written culture, terminology is essential for guaranteeing specificity and univocity of information (Crevatin 2002: 3).  Relation to the object. In extra-sector language, speakers spontaneously attribute the same word meaning relations that send to more than one object. For example, the word "pen", originally referred to a bird’s body part, now predominantly means an object we use for writing. Then if a literary or journalistic prize is created and is called "pen" or "golden pen", and one says "X received the pen in 2002" there is a further semantic shift: here the sentence no longer means simply that someone gave someone else a pen. In sector language, on the other hand, there is a two-way matching of term and object. In ideal terminology, a term is matched by one and only one object, and one object is matched by one and only one term.  Time factor. In common language, as we know, time determines the evolution of meaning of words, and there are essays on the history of language, diachronic grammars, disciplines like philology studying the evolution of language in time. Since, as time goes by, even the terms of the sector languages are subject to change, to avoid confusion in reference, in terminology the time factor is not considered. Terminology is synchronic, i.e. it photographs a given terminological

407 reality in the present without a thought for the historical evolution in the background of the terms now in force in a given discipline.  Space factor. Common language, as we know, has geographical shifts. The English spoken in South Africa is different from the Australian one, from the British, the American English and so on. And the Italian spoken in Milan is different from the one spoken in Lecce or Sassari. In sector languages, within any homogeneous linguistic area terms do not change. If, for example, they decide that in English a given object is called "screw eye", it will be called "screw eye" everywhere in the world where a variety of English is spoken. And once you get to know that the Italian equivalent is "vite ad anello", such term is valid from Sicily to Canton Ticino, without any local variation.  Sector factor. Since, however, terminology is not in an ideal situation, but in a real one, even this discipline must face the question of borrowings and inter- sector exchanges. It happens that the same terms exist in different disciplines, referring to completely different objects. Every time you use a term, the collocutor must know what discipline you are referring to. For example, the term "bullet" has different meanings depending on its presence in the defense/military sector (and has an Italian equivalent "pallottola") in the software sector (and its Italian equivalent is "richiamo") or in the finance sector (and its Italian equivalent is "rimborso in un’unica soluzione alla scadenza".  Culture factor. We’ve seen many times that often words have a culture-specific meaning, which determines the interlingual non-equivalence and the missing absolute synonymy even within the same language. In every culture a word (even of the same language) has a different meaning, owing to the different relations it has to its cultural system. In terminology the problem of culture-specificity is not posed because, as I wrote a few lines above, terms are homogeneous in homogeneous linguistic areas. In the decisions made by committees and standard agencies no room is left to culture-specificity.  Connotation factor. In common language we know how important the connotation factor is, the here and now of the speech act. In sector language, terms have only denotative value, and connotation is completely abolished. Sector texts are closed texts, open only to a single interpretation.

From the above it is also clear that translation studies applied to sector terminology cannot be anything but prescriptive rather than descriptive. This is the only field in translation science where translatants can be either right or wrong and in which the translator’s and editor’s liberty have strong limitations.

408 Canetti, New York, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999, ISBN 0-374-19950-7, p. 1-286. CREVATIN FRANCO Terminologia, traduzione, cultura, in Manuale di terminologia. Aspetti teorici, metodologici e applicativi, Milano, Hoepli, 2002, ISBN 88-203-2943-3, p. 1-7. SOGLIA SUSANNA Origine, sviluppo e tendenze della terminologia moderna, in Manuale di terminologia. Aspetti teorici, metodologici e applicativi, Milano, Hoepli, 2002, ISBN 88-203-2943-3, p. 9-25.

1 Canetti 1999: 213.

23 - Specific-area translation

"I kept all the stories by spinning them further and using them as starting points to invent new ones for myself; but I was no less enticed by the areas of knowledge"1.

Often the most obvious distinction that is made while trying to create a typology of translation is that between literary and technical translation.

In the reality of the market, such a distinction is not very productive, above all because the two categories are not clearly defined.

There are major differences between a translation ordered by a publisher and a translation ordered by a different kind of company, that needs it for internal use, or to publish it as a leaflet to accompany other products, or as advertising material.

While literary translation proper accounts for just 1 percent of the world production of translations2, it is clear that when people superficially speak of "literary translation" they tend to mistake it for and/or overlap it with translation for publishers.

By "literary translation" I mean only translation of fiction (novels, stories) or poetry or theater or, occasionally, cinema. Translation for publishers, on the other hand, accounts for a huge mass of non-literary texts. According to the above-quoted source, translations for publishers are responsible for 20 percent of the total translations, and of these only one twentieth is classed as literary. I think that, therefore, it is more interesting to use the category of translation for publishers (usually absent from typologies). Within translation for publishers, one can distinguish literary translation, non-fiction translation, poetry translation, and journalistic translation.

409 As for translation for publishers, the greatest part is represented by specific area translation, or specialized translation. In the previous unit I outlined the principles of terminology, valid also when dealing with specialized translation.

When dealing with translation general, I spoke of the importance of translation-oriented analysis, of the choice of the dominant for the metatext reader, of the individuation of the translation loss and its metatextual rendering. All these parameters are peculiar in specialized translation.

Translation-oriented analysis. In a specialized specific-area text, you don’t need to make an overall analysis, because a series of variables connected to the general text are excluded in advance. In specialized translation the elements to be analyzed are mainly:

1. the level of specialization of the text; a specialized text can be popular (as in the case of the instructions for use of an appliance, in which they must translate technical information into a language understandable by all); it can have a medium level of specialization, so that it is understandable, not only by technical personnel, but also by people having a competence in related fields; or it can be devoted only to experts in that field, and therefore have a very high level of specialization; 2. the field; as we saw in the previous unit, terms generally have only one equivalent in other languages a correspond one-to-one to one object or phenomenon; but thanks to the phenomenon of crossover borrowings, it can occur that in a given language the term from the Arms sector bullet is borrowed by the Finance sector. In order for the one-to-one correspondence to be guaranteed, it is therefore indispensable to know in what field the text was written for the terminology to be disambiguated; 3. text aim; the specialized text is characterized by a very high informational content, to the detriment of its poetic and connotative content; the translator has, therefore, lots of leeway for her action, given the condition that she knows exactly what the informational aim of the text is.

Choice of the dominant. The informational aim of the text is always the absolute dominant in specialized translation. Let us see what Federica Scarpa says on the subject: The non-literary translator’s primary objective is not necessarily "fidelity" to the form of the original text – which often, on the contrary, must be ameliorated – but the integral reproduction of the information of the original and their adaptation to norms and editorial conventions of the target language/culture3. From this point of view, the choice of the dominant of specialized translation creates fewer problems when compared to a non-specialized text.

410 Translational loss and metatextual rendering. Interlingual specialized translation can be practically free of translational loss, excepting the loss common to all forms of communication. Given there is no confusion by the translator about the sector the text belongs to, the level of specialization and the knowledge of the text’s aim, the operation should have no loss. Usually, therefore, no metatextual rendering is necessary, also because the prototext is not an object of philological veneration, but rather a communication tool to be put into use, after which no trace of the translation remains, nor should it. In this type of translation, the tendency of veering toward the pole of adequacy or acceptability is rather easy to solve. Adequacy has no meaning at all because, as Scarpa in the quoted passage says, an improvement on the prototext is often necessary. The improvement of the text during translation or after it – unfortunately still used by even prestigious publishers – in specialized translation finds its raison d’être, and not in translation for publishers. And here the principle that translation must not be perceived as such is legal, even because in a specialized text to perceive that it is a translated text means also, most times, it takes a big effort to decipher the translation. This basic difference in the approach toward the two kinds of translation is stressed in a very understandable and perceptive way by Scarpa: Ultimately, to the "estranging" approach of literary translation, where the reader is immersed in a text where the differences between source and target language/culture are usually preserved because it is the text that counts, a "familiarizing" approach of specialized translation is opposed, or – borrowing an expression of software translation for its adaptation to the needs of the target users’ culture – "localizing", where the source language/culture tends to be brought nearer and familiarized to the target reader, because the text is seen, above all, as a means for transmitting information4. What has been said does not mean that the specialized translator (or the multiple-specialization translator dealing with a specialized translation) necessarily has an easier time. Her fees are generally much higher than those of the colleague working for publishers and, as time passes and her skill sharpens, the time necessary to translate a page is progressively less. By contrast, just for the specialization of her work, she must know the textual habits that are favored in the sector. The same concepts, expressed in a different way from what’s usual, can provoke an estrangement undesirable in the informative text. To counter this problem, the translator must work starting from text prototypes, the so called "parallel texts", that are text of the same sector originally written in the target language/culture. Or, if these are missing, texts translated in the same sector from other languages.

Bibliographical references CANETTI ELIAS Die gerettete Zunge. - Die Fackel im Ohr. - Das Augenspiel, München, Carl Hanser Verlag, 1995, ISBN 3-446-18062-1.

411 CANETTI ELIAS The Tongue Set Free. Remembrance of a European Childhood, translated by Joachim Neugroschel, in The Memoirs of Elias Canetti, New York, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999, ISBN 0-374-19950-7, p. 1-286. SCARPA FEDERICA La traduzione specializzata. Lingue speciali e mediazione linguistica, Milano, Hoepli, 2001, ISBN 88-203-2709-0.

1 Canetti 1999: 204. 2 Scarpa 2001: 67. 3 Scarpa 2001: 70. 4 Scarpa 2001: 70.

24 - Translation for publishers

"It was striking that not only she, but also Fräulein Rosy and the other women in the house accepted any poet who had published at all"1.

The category of translation for publishers covers all translations ordered by publishers and executed for them, independent of the kind of text it may be. Publishers print text of any kind, from the literary to specialized technical, to essays, to journalistic texts. What do translations of this kind have in common?

The fact that they are done for the publishing industry which, as many researchers have stressed, is an immense power system2.

While in a rapport with a single non-publishing company a translator has a rather good leverage for negotiation because companies usually are not a system, a network to her, so they have a one-to-one relation with the translator, publishers establish a compact system of written and unwritten rules against which the translator, a weak, solitary element, has nearly no power of negotiation.

Rules. Publishers are very rigid in applying their editorial rules. Such rules, to add a little mayhem, in Italy and in many other countries are not consistent between one publisher and the next, nor are they consistent with the norms of the ISO (International Standards Organization) and the national standards agencies. During my personal working experience, I collected the leaflets stating the editorial norms of the publishers I worked for, so I could see that each of the established norms were formed on the personal tastes of editors who make the decisions in that establishment; there are also publishers that change their norms pretty frequently.

412 Contracts. Even if the legislation in many countries equalizes translation and writing, contracts are seldom drafted according to this principle. In the countries where translation must be considered as an alienation of copyrights, in order to avoid paying large sums in the case of a successful book, publishers prepare contracts in which a translator is paid in a lump sum, independent of the quantity of copies sold.

Fees. While the demand for translations for publishers is far greater than the supply, the fees paid for translations is in constant decline. In Italy, for example, there are thousands of people that consider their greatest aspiration to work for a publisher, while publishers cover only 20 percent of the global translation market. Therefore, publishers take advantage of that and do not seek out the highest quality translators, except in case of dire need, because a successful translator will have conquered a good position on the market and require higher fees; publishers often prefer to offer their jobs to younger beginners who, since they are eager to start this kind of job, are ready to work for low fees, and sometimes for free, useful for those starting their career as work experience to put on their CV.

Texts. The secret hope of any translator working for publishers is to work on interesting texts. This should be the difference compared to a translator working for companies or private individuals. Nearly all translators for publishers are strong readers in the languages from which they translate, therefore they often have passions for certain authors and wish to propose their translation of these authors to the publishers they know. This is one of the strongest illusions linking translators to the publishing world. But in most cases publishers choose a text that is proposed to them by literary agents.

Agents. This is another difference between the publishing world and the rest of the world. Publishing agents (sometimes mistakenly called "literary agents", while they usually they deal mostly with non fiction) in the case of translations make a profit on the economic mediation between an author and a publisher of a different country. Usually an author’s fortune abroad depends a great deal on the decision of her agent. Every agent handles a given number of authors, sometimes a very high number, so, inevitably, not being able to devote all their time to all authors, he concentrates on the authors that he thinks are most interesting, or more probable sources of profit. In countries like Italy, international publishing agencies are few; that’s why publishers, translators and authors must cultivate the relations with them if they want to have a successful career.

Publishing information networks. Publishers have many official relations, through professional and private associations, through which they exchange information. The name of a translator who did a good job can circulate in this

413 way, and she may get new assignments; in the same way, the supposedly bad jobs of a translator are circulated by word of mouth in order to warn other publishers.

Restrictive covenants. The relations between publisher and translator are ruled by the agreement, that is often preprinted by the publisher to give a clear idea to the translator (or author) of the exiguous power of her negotiation. The text is fixed, and is very similar from one publisher to the next. In Italy all publishing agreements contain a clause that more or less says:

If the publisher, to its unquestionable judgment, will consider inadequate the translator’s work, will be able to reject completely or in part her work, refusing to comply by the payment obligations.

When revision, to the unquestionable judgment of the publisher, is made necessary by the translator’s work, its cost are charged to the translator. When retranslation is deemed necessary, the translator’s work is not paid.

Quality control. Quality control of translations for publishers is ruled by the same principles: the publisher’s judgment (often referred to the judgment to the editor) has an infinite value, the translator’s, no value at all. When texts are not completely closed and specialized (see previous units), where the text cannot be objectively wrong because the sign-object relation is rigorously one-to-one – in most cases –, the judgment over a translation’s quality is always arbitrary. Some evaluation criteria for translations are present in translation studies literature, but publishers tend to ignore it because they prefer to stick by purely commercial criteria. As Fawcett says3, the final product is mostly modeled by editors. This often leads to the creation of a domesticated translation, eliminating the newest and less standard aspects. Since often the editor’s competence in the source language and culture is not as strong as the translator’s, corrections are modeled on criteria of readability in the target language4. Most important, for them, is a translation to be easily read, fluently. For this reason, translators who have a greater metatranslational knowledge – who therefore are educated on the theoretical, beside the practical, side – tend to come out of the confrontation with publishers somewhat frustrated.

Bibliographical references

CANETTI ELIAS Die gerettete Zunge. - Die Fackel im Ohr. - Das Augenspiel, München, Carl Hanser Verlag, 1995, ISBN 3-446-18062-1.

414 CANETTI ELIAS The Tongue Set Free. Remembrance of a European Childhood, translated by Joachim Neugroschel, in The Memoirs of Elias Canetti, New York, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999, ISBN 0-374-19950-7, p. 1-286.

FAWCETT P. Translation and power play, in The Translator, 1.2, 1995, p. 177- 192.

MUNDAY JEREMY Systems in Translation: A computer-assisted systemic analysis of the translation of García-Marquez, Ph. D. thesis, Bradford, 1997.

VENUTI LAWRENCE The Scandals of Translation: Towards the Ethics of Difference, London - New York, Routledge, 1998, ISBN 0-415-16930-5.

1 Canetti 1999: 197. 2 Venuti 1998: 31-66. 3 1995:189. 4 Munday 1997: 170.

25 - Literary translation quality

"One ascribes the qualities of light to [knowledge], the speed at which it would like to spread is the highest, and one honors it by describing it as enlightenment"1.

The translation of fiction is one of the rarest activities in the general scene of translation production. Of a hundred translated pages, roughly one is to be ascribed to the category of literary translation; however, many translators and translators-to-be dream of becoming literary translators.

The production of literary translations can be divided into two categories: translation of contemporary works and re-translation of classical literature. While the causes of the former are well evident to all, why should classics be translated that were already translated five, ten, twenty years before is a subject of reflection and, sometimes, perplexity.

The explanation for the ageing of translations of classics lies in the fact that the translation process aims at translating a text in the receiving culture, a culture that obviously is in part a product of its age. The more a translation tends toward the acceptability pole in the receiving culture, the more it is subject to ageing. And, in contemporary publishing, a proclivity for the production of acceptable texts in the receiving culture (by market standards) is

415 a marked one. Hence the need to re-translate classics to adapt them every time to the need of the public.

One of the key questions in literary production is the assessment of the product’s quality. Quality is a key question in the educational institutions (higher schools of cultural mediation, post-graduate courses in translation), where literary translation is taught and students must be assessed; and it is a serious problem for publishers, where the question is in the hands of decision- makers and decision-enforcers.

Juliane House (1998) has a very well structured analysis of the main approaches to the evaluation of translation quality.

The first group outlined is the analysis based on personal and subjective experience. It is the approach preferred by those who never studied translation theory and criticism and even by many translators and editors who, having studied in this field, however feel that theory is misleading, and that the only important element is personal practice. Such an intuitive approach has the flaw of not being able to explain precisely in operational terms what is meant by "fidelity to the original" and "natural fluency of the translated text". Being intuitive approaches, they are intrinsically what is farthest from theory, they don’t event contemplate the possibility of following general principles. Those who take side with such an approach usually argue that the most important elements are personal knowledge, intuition and the translator’s artistic competence.

Another approach is that oriented at directing the reader’s reaction, i.e. Nida’s dynamic equivalence: The good quality of a translation is measured by the fact that the reader reacts to it in an analogous way as the reader of the original. The problem with such an approach is that from an operational point of view there is no way to test the similarities between the readers’ reactions. Secondly, if the former problem could be solved, and a text producing the same reaction could be produced, we would get a markedly acceptable text for the receiving culture and not adequate to the original. That is why Nida’s response-oriented approach implies an ideological choice: to adapt the text to the reader, not to give the reader the tools to approach the text in a form that is as similar to the original as possible.

The are text-based approaches, then, among which Wilss’, according to which the assessment yardstick is the set of fruitive rules existing in the two cultural communities. When a translation is far from the use rules widespread in the receiving culture, such variance is considered as a fault of the translation. It does not escape notice that such an approach can penalize the texts that in the source culture have marked deviations from cultural rules. Koller’s

416 method, that bears many similarities to Wilss’, has three stages: critical analysis of the prototext and its translatability in the receiving culture; comparison of translation and original, also taking into consideration the method applied; evaluation of the translation by speakers of the target culture able to give a metalingual assessment based on the specific textual features formerly outlined.

Reiss and Vermeer too, with the skopos theory, stress the importance of the translation’s aim. Since all attention is devoted to the way the prototext was adapted to the receiving culture’s needs, obviously philological interest for the original and semiotic interest for the diversity of the source culture are lost from sight. The prototext is considered as a source of pragmatic information; therefore I think that such an approach is not good for literary translation.

Then there is Juliane House’s theory, with two important points. In the first, overt translation is distinguished from 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 covert translation is required when neither condition holds, i.e. when the source text is not source culture specific (1998: 199).

The other interesting concept is that of cultural filter, that is the filter the translator applies in the translation process to produce a metatext. Here is how House defines it:

a set of cross-cultural dimensions along which members of the two cultures differ in sociocultural predispositions and communicative preferences. This also makes evaluation difficult because it involves assessing the quality of the cultural filters introduced in translation (ibidem).

To all these difficulties in evaluating a literary translation, for publishers, the further problem added is that most editors, in Italy at least , adhere to the first approach outlined, the intuitive approach enemy of theory. Often the best way to have your translation accepted depends on many random factors, and on the fact that given instinctual proclivities of the translator match the editor’s. But if one had to discuss theoretically why a given version is more or less acceptable, a problem would arise:

Such intuitive treatments of translation quality are atheoretical in nature, and the possibility of establishing general principles for translation quality is generally rejected (House 1998: 197).

417 Bibliographical references

CANETTI ELIAS Die gerettete Zunge. - Die Fackel im Ohr. - Das Augenspiel, München, Carl Hanser Verlag, 1995, ISBN 3-446-18062-1.

HOUSE JULIANE Quality of Translation, in Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies edited by Mona Baker, London, Routledge, 1998, ISBN 0- 415-09380-5, p. 197-200.

1 Canetti 1980: 280.

26 - Translation of poetry

"Behind him, whom I despised because I knew him and I was disgusted by his glib, flattering speech, stood the figure of a writer, of whom I was not allowed to read a single line, whom I didn’t even know; and never have I feared any writer so much as Schnitzler at that period"1

Translation of poetry is probably the subject in translation studies that triggers the strongest polemics. Even those not specialized in translation often have an opinion on the subject; consequently it is much platitudinized.

One of the most boring and useless debates concerns translatability and untranslatability of poetry. It is not worth while spending time on that, since there is a commercial and private production of translation of poetry, and thus a readers public ready to read such translated texts and to recognize, in a way, more or less perceivable traces of identity of this or that author.

Someone translates poetry and someone reads translated poetry, and that is more than enough.

Even for poetry, the translation dilemma is either creating a text enabling a reader to access the original, or creating a beautiful poetic text inspired by the original. Therefore, it is better make some distinctions on the aim pursued by translating poetry.

418 1. direct access to the original: probably the most common form of translation of poetry is metatextual, and consists in a critical apparatus prepared for a poem – in the same language of the poem or in another language – allowing people not particularly proficient in that language to access an interpretation of the text through a clarification of the semantic values of the original.

2. interlinear translation with parallel text: this is another form of direct access to the original, but in this case the aid is textual and not metatextual. Even if it is not always possible to call a parallel text "text". When the parallel verse is the reproduction, word for word, of the original verse, its only aim is to indicate the meaning (the one, among the many possible meanings, chosen by the translator) attributed to the individual words in the original, and seldom the whole result can be called "text" in the proper sense of the word, i.e. a consistent and coherent set of words.

3. philological translation: a translation that does not consider the readability of the text that is produced, only its philological adherence to the prototext. Aim of such a translation is to give access to the original for readers unable to access it through one of the previous strategies. Philological translation can be in prose or verse. When in verse, the verse of the metatext generally matches the verse of the prototext, but of course there are no rhymes (if not by chance), or pursued alliterations , and rhythm and other non- denotative aspects of the text are not considered. One of the most famous advocates of such a strategy is Vladimir Nabokov:

There is a certain small Malayan bird of the thrush family which is said to sing only when tormented in an unspeakable way by a specially trained child at the annual Feast of Flowers. There is Casanova making love to a harlot while looking from the window at the nameless tortures inflicted on Damiens. These are the visions that sicken me when I read the "poetical" translations from martyred Russian poets by some of my famous contemporaries. A tortured author and a deceived reader, this is the inevitable outcome of arty paraphrase. The only object and justification of translation is the conveying of the most exact information possible and this can be only achieved by a literal translation, with notes. (1973: 81)

4. single-dominant translation: usually the result of a poor and superficial analysis of the prototext, or of insufficient poetic competence, or of a low- profile publishing policy . One aspect of the original is found, the one most visible to the inexpert reader, like rhyme for example. In translation, the rhyme pattern is reproduced. Due to the anisomorphism of natural codes, pursuing the rhyme means obligatorily discounting the sense. For the dominant’s sake, all the rest is lost, relegating the role of subdominant to the sense, when a part of it can be preserved. This kind of translation, especially when the rhyme

419 is preserved and the measure of the verse is even, is also called "singsong" because of the effect similar to counting-out rhymes.

5. translation with a hierarchy of dominant and subdominants: this is the method that, while seeking an equilibrium between the opposite extremes of translatability ad untranslatability, takes for granted the impossibility to translate everything. It is a strategy deriving from Torop’s total translation view. You first make a translation-oriented analysis of the prototext to identify the dominant elements in the source culture. Then such dominants are projected onto the receiving culture, and one must foresee the understandable elements, those textually incomprehensible and the partially understandable ones. Based on the model reader, the publishing strategy, the type of publication and, often, the translator’s taste, one decides which important elements of the prototext can become dominants of the metatext, and which elements can be rendered only metatextually (through a critical apparatus)

Then a critical apparatus is made in which the metatext reader is told all that and a metatextual rendering of the translation residue (e. g. explaining the meter of the prototext that is not possible to reproduce in the metatext, or what connotative meaning a given poetic form in the source culture has).

When drafting the translated text, absolute precedence is given to the main dominant; once rendered, the translator tries to make room for the other dominants too, according to the hierarchy set during analysis.

The most important aspect of such an approach is absolute transparency of the decisions made by the translator (often by the publisher too) as concerns translation strategy. A translation of poetry that doesn’t make clear what its carefully analyzed blind spots are, runs the risk of presenting itself as a "complete", "absolute" translation or, as some insist in saying, "faithful" translation of the original, a situation in which the reader comes out of feeling cheated, teased and/or manipulated.

6. cultural transposition: it is the strategy of people thinking of those who believe themselves able to find the cultural homologue of the poetic forms from a culture to the other. Let us see how David Connolly expresses the notion:

the sonnet form does not signify for the contemporary North American reader what it did for Petrarch’s contemporaries in fourteenth-century Italy. Using the same form for a translation in a different age and a different culture may therefore carry quite a different meaning and produce the opposite of a faithful rendering. One solution is to look for a cultural equivalent (such as the English iambic pentameter for French

420 Alexandrines) or a temporal equivalent (modern free verse for classical verse forms of the past) (1998: 174).

Putting aside the presumption implicit in the choice of a supposed "equivalent", cultural or temporal that it might be, since it is evident that such a choice is highly disputable anyway, such a strategy has a very low consideration of its model reader. It implies a person who isn’t’ open-minded enough to understand that a given form can have had a different meaning in another time or in another culture. This is what I have already written about rendering the reader responsible, and on esteem for the reader. With this kind of strategy one decides to underestimate her, to withdraw any responsibility she may have and, to top it all, to propose her a text that is very different from the original but that is presented as a "faithful translation".

7. poetic translation - author’s translation: the translation is given a poet in the receiving culture. The result is often poetry, sometimes wonderful, sometimes better than the original. It is the best choice if one wants to produce poetic texts inspired by the original in another language, and if the philological interest is the last of the subdominants.

Bibliographical references

CANETTI ELIAS Die gerettete Zunge. - Die Fackel im Ohr. - Das Augenspiel, München, Carl Hanser Verlag, 1995, ISBN 3-446-18062-1.

CONNOLLY DAVID Poetry Translation, in Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies edited by Mona Baker, London, Routledge, 1998, ISBN 0- 415-09380-5, p. 171-176.

NABÓKOV VLADÌMIR Strong Opinions (1973), New York, Vintage, 1990, ISBN 0-679-72609-8.

1 Canetti 1999: 133.

27 - Journalistic translation

421 "He knew only the Hebrew alphabet in which Ladino was written, and the only newspapers he read were in that language. They had Spanish names like El Tiempo and La Voz de la Verdad. They were printed in Hebrew letters and appeared, I believe, only once a week"1

Translation for newspapers has some peculiarity that distinguish it from generic non-fiction translation. At first sight, one could think that a newspaper text, since it expresses facts, communicates information, is a purely denotative text, therefore relatively easy to translate as far as construction and style are concerned, with a few difficulties of lexical order at the most.

Actually, in a newspapers texts are heterogeneous. Let us leave aside semiannual, monthly or weekly periodicals that may contain texts that are not very journalistic, i.e. texts that could be easily found even in non-periodical publications. Let us focus our attention exclusively on daily newspapers.

Chronicle. Sections devoted to news reports are those usually having the highest denotative content. Reporting events of international, national or local nature, sometimes simply paraphrasing press releases, usually the personal or political comment of the journalist is minimal, so connotative aspects are likewise. In this kind of translation the difficulties are mainly connected to the standard form in which news is communicated in different cultures. In English, for example, in a news chronicle the verb is usually at the end of the main clause, especially the verbs like "say", for example:

The shot was heard in the area of half a mile, Mr Homer reported.

When translating texts like that into other languages that don’t systematically see the main clause in a final position, if a translator wants to avoid a construction calque, the sentence must be reconstructed inserting the main verb in a standard position.

Political commentaries. These can create serious problems to translators. Politicians very readily create new words and terms. Just think, for example of road map, New Deal, Manifest Destiny, trickle-down economics, detente, affirmative action. They are words that in a political speech can be very many; they are an obstacle for the translator to decode and then, to recode into the target culture. Of course, one must distinguish the translation of a political news story to be published in a newspaper of another country from the translation of a political news story to be published in a different context in the target culture.

In the latter case it is not difficult creating translator’s notes and give a metatextual rendering of the inevitable translation residue. But in case of

422 translations for newspapers, where footnotes are not possible and the reader must be able to "consume" the product even in unfavorable contextual conditions (on a bus, in the lunch break, half asleep in the morning), the problem is very trying. The practice of glossing is professionally despicable in general, and translation for dailies is no exception. Attributing explanations or other translator’s comments to this or other author would be a serious problem (note that sometimes the authors of political stories are politicians themselves). The translator therefore can only open a square bracket, rapidly explain what she cannot translate and insert a "translator’s note" acronym, and close the bracket and go on.

Peres declared that the road map [a plan by European Union and United States to find a solution to the Near-East conflict. Translator’s. note] is still a feasible strategy.

Of course such clarifications are necessary only when an expression has not yet been used widely. In the example, in a paper such a clarification would not be necessary a few weeks after the introduction of the term.

Contextual references. The very fact that papers by their nature and use have few clarifications, and take a lot for granted, creates a major translation problem. Newspaper text contains a huge ratio of culture-specific implicit. This because they are published every day. The high frequency of their publications implies that one of the chronotope dimensions is taken for granted: time. This dawns on you when you stay abroad for a month and then, on your return, you have trouble in understanding your habitual newspaper. To understand today’s newspaper, you must know yesterday’s, and so on. The whole historical series of papers constitutes a huge hypertext to which today’s newspaper makes free reference.

Another chronotope coordinate element that newspapers always take for granted is place. When news don’t report any information on place, the town where the paper is made is implied (and in this case a street named or the place where an event took place, without specifying the town). If news is about national policy and no place is stated, the government seat is implied. When talking about local policy and no place is stated, the local government seat is implied. And so on.

Often even cultural coordinates are implied, because a newspaper’s reader, implicitly, belongs to an identifiable culture, extending over a necessary time and place (of course an exception is represented by readers of newspapers in an archive, perusing stories written in an earlier time frame). That’s why, for example, the name of a soccer player or a TV broadcast can be inserted as intertextual translation as metaphors of something else and the reader – even

423 the one who doesn’t watch TV or follow soccer – must be able to understand at least the connotative value in order to read efficiently.

Local lexicon. Another feature of newspapers is the use of local lexicon. In some cities newspapers, stories in dialect can be published. Often, but in explicitly international papers like for example International Herald Tribune, the local variant of the language in question prevails, even if proper dialect is not used.

For example, in the Sacramento Bee you will find an account of events on J Street while USA Today will specify near Capital Park. And the Bee would say Davis, Galt or Rancho Cordova while USA Today would read "near Sacramento" hopefully specifying the direction outside the city. Then there are questions of local or editorial preference in phraseology and/or slang.

Editorials and "third page". In the newspaper there are the so called "culture page" articles, a term referring to essay-like stories and/or opinions often not devoted to the current day’s events, that could be published as much as a month earlier or later. These are real essays, and for their translation I invite you to read next unit.

Bibliographical references

CANETTI ELIAS Die gerettete Zunge. - Die Fackel im Ohr. - Das Augenspiel, München, Carl Hanser Verlag, 1995, ISBN 3-446-18062-1.

1 Canetti 1999: 94.

28 - Essay translation

"After all, I had no book to check myself in; she stubbornly and mercilessly refused to let me have it, though knowing what friendship I felt for books and how much easier it would all have been for me with a book"1.

424 Essay translation is seldom a category on its own isolated from the subtypes of translated texts. This is also because of the old distinction between "literary translation" and "technical translation", under which names one presumed to exhaust the whole spectrum of the possible types of text. A short preamble is, therefore, necessary to define the terms of the discourse.

We have seen so far translation for cinema (dubbing and subtitling), for theater, specialized translation, of technical texts, translation for publishers, literary (fiction) translation, poetic translation and journalistic translation, defining for each the scope of application. First, I must repeat that not all these categories are mutually exclusive. For example, translation for publishers and essay translation have a vast shared set.

Essay translation concerns texts that are neither fiction nor poetry, hence is comprised within the limits of non fiction. Differently from a scientific or field- specific text, however, in an essay text sometimes the aesthetic component is very important. The subject can be philosophical, political, literary, scientific or contemporary society (differing from fiction, therefore, in that the subject is always connected to an organized field of knowledge). But the argument, unlike that of the scientific article, is sometimes made without punctual and forced references to the relative bibliography. While in a scientific article all statements must result from other quoted scientific articles or empirical experiments made by the writing researcher, the elegance of treatment allows to fly higher, to take the references that are considered well-known for granted. The intertextual reference in an essay can therefore be implicit, and the essay is less fixed on updating the international scientific community on the latest research developments in a given field than on making reflections of more general character more for orienting the background methodology than detailing the single experiment.

Thanks to this general meditative character, typical of a philosophical essay (one could say that the essay is an extension of the "philosophical essay" genre to other fields of knowledge: philosophy of science, philosophy of language, philosophy of politics, philosophy of literature), the essay is usually more elegant and literarily more eloquent than a scientific article. Moreover, unlike a scientific article, characterized by strong denotativity, or referentiality, an essay contains many connotative and intertextual references. And all that also has very important consequences on the plane of its translation.

Let's take the example of an essay from the field of translation studies, maybe the most prestigious essay in this field, the classic After Babel by George Steiner. Here is a sentence almost randomly chosen in the book:

425 Wittgenstein asked where, when, and by what rationally established criterion the process of free yet potentially linked and significant association in psychoanalysis could be said to have a stop. An exercise in 'total' reading is also potentially unending. (Steiner 1998: 8)

In 38 words Steiner involves many disciplines and many authors and much knowledge indispensable to the translator in managing the interlingual rendition. Here is an example:

 Wittgenstein: Wittgenstein's thought must be known, and in particular his essay on psychoanalysis, Conversations on Freud, in which the philosopher criticizes the termination of the therapy, entrusted to the unique and partially intuitive judgment of the therapist, since the process could hypothetically continue forever;  psychoanalysis: knowledge of Freud and psychoanalysis, and in particular of the complex question of terminable or interminable analysis; the epistemological debate arises from the conflict, initiated by Wittgenstein himself, between physics, the science of all sciences, and the then newly formed discipline of psychoanalysis;  association: the translation of this word, in function of an implicit reference to Freud's theory of "free association", implies the recognition of that reference and consequently taking it into account;  significant: when dealing with a text on translation, the word "significant" rings a series (or at least it should) of alarms. One regards Saussure's theory on the significant and its meaning (signifiant and signifié): can "significant" be the translation of one of these terms? The answer that the translator must give herself is no, because the two terms in English are "signifier" and "signified". Another alarm sounds regarding the significance, intended as the explanation of the meaning: can "significant" be, in this case, the adjective deriving from "significance", meant as Charles Morris intends in Signification and Significance? Or is it a simple adjective (not a technical term) that means something like "meaningful"? The translator, only after having excluded a direct tie to Morris's terminology, can come to the conclusion that the correct translation is the simple, non-terminological adjective "significant".  ‘ total’ reading: comprehension - and translation - of this formula, in which Steiner presents 'total' in single quotes, as if to indicate a connotative, personal, metaphorical use, presupposes at least an acquaintance with Catford's theory of "total translation", if not Torop's theory of the same name. Furthermore it implies that the translator is aware of the connotative allusion of "reading" in the semiotic sense, that is, not the reading of a written verbal text but the interpretation of that which the patient says in psychoanalysis. In this double metaphor, the "text" that the patient constructs session after session is assimilated like a written text, a single text, and the psychoanalyst is compared to a reader-interpreter.  unending: this adjective, too, presupposes that the translator understands the

426 intertextual reference to the debate between terminable and non-terminable analysis and that she uses in the metatext, the word that, in the receiving culture, constitutes an intertextual reference to that debate; for example, in Italian the adjective "interminabile" and not, "infinito".

From this example we can see how a simple six-line excerpt from an essay can call into play a series of wisdom from different disciplines, differing also from the declared area of interest of the volume itself. This is typical of essay translation, as it is also typical that the writing style is not a dry relation of experimental data, but rather, it has a meaningful style that makes it often possible to retrace the original author without knowing who he is. In the translation of essays the terminological difficulties of field-specific translation (if only on a middle level of technicality) mount with the addition of the difficulties of literary translation.

1 Canetti 1999: 75.

29 - Ideology and translation

"In my mind, I formed the elements of a new ideology; Wilson had taken over the goal of saving humanity from war"1.

As with all forms of communication, as for translation, a debate has been going on since time immemorial over the possibility that ideology influences the strategies adopted. When meaning by "ideology" a set of convictions aimed at some practical action (Seliger 1976: 91-92), we usually disregard the aspects of individual ideology to the advantage of the so-called collective ideologies, those around which political and social movements gravitate.

Tejaswini Niranjana did some research on the subject of the relationship between translation and ideology:

427 In a post-colonial context the problematic of translation becomes a significant site for raising questions of representation, power, and historicity. The context is one of contesting and contested stories attempting to account for, to recount, the asymmetry and inequality of relations between peoples, races, languages2.

This argument develops og the theme of the cultural implicit. Ideology intrinsic in the existence of a culture with a given set of values, implicit and taken for granted, provides for the non-neutral description of that which is other; what is more, ideology, judgment are completely hidden. Judging a world that is other, and moreover judging it with a "false clean conscience" like those who believe or pretend to, that they don’t judge at all, that they limit themselves to describing reality, is a double violence.

In forming a certain kind of subject, in presenting particular versions of the colonized, translation brings into being overarching concepts of reality and representation. These concepts, and what they allow us to assume, completely occlude the violence that accompanies the construction of the colonial subject3.

There is, therefore, a form of implicit ideology deriving from the existence of a culture and of power relationships between the cultures themselves. But there are also forms of explicit ideology that have the use of ideology in translation as their objective. In some spheres of Feminist criticism there is the explicit proposal to censure through translation some male-chauvinist aspects of literature, and to recreate such works in a politically correct version that can be acceptable to women.

In this case the implicit ideology is that of the male-chauvinist, which saturates the pre-Feminist literature, and the explicit ideology is Feminist that intends, through an overtly violent act (and therefore intentionally less violent than the male one, that is insidious), to overthrow the power relationships in the literary field through translation. I’m not interested here in taking sides for or against a given ideological viewpoint in translation: I’d like to point out the differences of method and differences on the continuum implicitness/explicitness of ideology.

Still on the front of explicit ideology – or at least very apparent in the eyes of other cultures – there are cases like that of Fëdorov who, in his classic Osnovy obshchej teorii perevoda (Foundations for a general theory of translation, 1953) is often in line with the Soviet ideology prevailing in the Fifties. The third chapter, sounding overtly comical read today, makes it possible to understand how dramatic it could be for people living that situation from the inside, is entitled "Marx, Engels and Lenin on translation". In it we realize that of course the three Marxist ideologists were indefatigable

428 translators and refined translation scholars. Read what Vladìmir Il´ìch Uljànov, in art Lenin, wrote about translation:

We ruin the Russian language. We use foreign words without necessity. We use them inappropriately. Why should we say defekty, when we can say nedočety or nedostatki or probely? [...] Shouldn’t we declare war against the unnecessary use of foreign words? (Lenin, Complete works, volume 40, p. 40, p. 49)

From this position, between the lines, we realize how Lenin was conservative, chauvinist and nationalist, and how little he cared that the perception of the other (that he calls "foreign") were culturally neuter. It is very well known that in the Soviet regime, to be able to be published even in a scientific context, one should celebrate the personality of the leader (in Russian the word vozhd ´, sometimes translated as "guide", derives from the verb vodit´, to lead, therefore it sounds as a calque on the Latin language, as in Italian the word dux attributed to Mussolini). This personality cult characterizes all totalitarian regimes, where often ubiquitously the image of the dux is spread and his enterprises are described in fields very far from politics.

All references to the cabinet of Italian Premier Berlusconi are completely intended.

Beyond these "surface ideologies", we must consider the subjective ideologies that sometimes remain unspoken. The Italian satirical songwriter Giorgio Gaber used to sing in a celebrated song:

Un’idea, un concetto, un’idea,

finché resta un’idea

è soltanto un’astrazione.

Se potessi mangiare un’idea

avrei fatto la mia

rivoluzione4.

The underlying sense of these verses emphasizes that, beyond the stated ideologies and independently from them, there are ideologies of which people can have no conscious awareness, that however dominate their minds in a insidious way.

429 If for example my stated ideology is Egalitarianism, and I attend demonstrations for brotherhood among peoples, but I have a disgust for the smell of food of my neighbors belonging to a culture different from mine, the conflict between public and private ideology (surface and deep ideology) is self evident.

Since, as we have seen in the previous parts of the course, the interlingual translation process actually consists in a set of intersemiotic translation processes bringing the verbal material to be translated into mental material of the translator, who then re-transforms it in verbal form, the individual implicit ideology of the translator is an essential aspect of the translation process.

I therefore consider it impossible to divide the ideological aspect from the other aspects of translation. Since everybody has an ideology, and everybody translating interferes with the translation process with their own ideology, the best solution in my opinion is for such ideology to be explicit at least for the translator herself. In other words, this means that it is necessary for each translator to have at least some control over her own mental processes and her own deep ideology so as to be able to inform her texts’ readers of the kind of ideological deformation inevitably following from such a premiss.

Bibliographical references

CANETTI ELIAS Die gerettete Zunge. - Die Fackel im Ohr. - Das Augenspiel, München, Carl Hanser Verlag, 1995, ISBN 3-446-18062-1.

FAWCETT PETER Ideology and translation, in Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies, 1998: 106-111.

NIRANJANA TEJASWINI Siting Translation. History, Post-Structuralism, and the Colonial Context, Berkeley, Univerity of California Press, 1992, ISBN 0- 520-07451-3.

1 Canetti 1999: 225. 2 Niranjana 1992: 1. 3 Niranjana 1992: 2.

430 4 An idea, a notion, an idea, until it remains an idea is just an abstraction. If I could eat an idea I could accomplish my revolution.

30 - Words and emotions

"I watched over her as she over me, and if you are close to someone, you gain an unerring sense for all emotions consistent with him"1.

The phenomenon of subjective interpretation of the sense of words – hence the subjective rendering of those words in translation – is a general phenomenon and, as we saw, concerns the intrinsic nature of the signification process. The fact that a sign (the linguistic sign included) refers to an object only by passing through an interpretant, or mental sign, determines that the translator’s subjective experience, the emotions that that individual has felt in relation to that word and the objects evoked by it, play a dramatic role in creating associations, both to the object and to the potential translatants.

Something very similar was intended by Franco Fornari in his theory of coinemes. Fornari wrote the theory about "units of affective signification" because, even if he didn’t openly refer to Peirce, he considered fundamental the individual experience background in determining the meaning of texts (where by "text", in a semiotic way, we mean any object, verbal texts included).

If such an argument is generally valid for a semiotic approach to translation, it is interesting to notice that researchers with a more classic and traditional view, like Levitskaya and Fiterman, also devote a whole chapter to the translation of words with a strong emotional charge. An example that is used to explain the terms of the question is the following:

They were narrow, startling eyes that looked like jewels in this light

The adjective "startling" is undoubtedly a word with an emotional meaning. In different contexts it could be translated as "astounding", "amazing", "unusual", but also "alarming", as in the case of "startling news". Such translation results come mostly from the association with given words, that in some cases tends to become a permanent phenomenon. Just think for example of the adjective "black" in the following collocations: black heart black future black comedy

431 black melancholy black envy black ingratitude and of the adjective "rosy" or "rose" in the following: rosy hopes rosy glasses.

From such examples you understand that not only the individual history of the association of a given word is important to given affective contexts concerning the object, the external referent the word refers to; the personal experience of the individual with those words is also fundamental, as are her associative habits. In other words, those called "free associations" in Freudian theory, the ones allowing the therapist to rebuild the origins of the patient’s views, the emotional connections, the repressions, in the common history of individual expression in speakers and writers manifested in the form of idiosyncrasies, preferences, peculiar use (idiolect); in the case of translators, we can speak of "translation idiolect". This shouldn’t however be meant as a sort of code in virtue of which, in the translator X’s opinion, the word A in a given language results always in the word A1; because it is emotional context and co-text in combination with the translator’s psyche to determine a given result.

In the following example (Levitskaya and Fiterman 170) you notice the peculiar color that can take the adjective "stark" in an anomalous context:

If professional conspirators and thugs are, by any large number of French Canadians, changed into martyrs and heroes, the outlook becomes stark indeed.

In such a context the adjective "stark" does not mean "stiff", nor has an intensifying value, as in the combination "stark mad", that means approximately "completely mad". It refers rather to the name "starkness", meant as "desolation", "bleakness".

Levitskaya and Fiterman report a few examples of how the adjective "fierce" can be interpreted in a different way according to the context. In one example, this is it:

Her fierce glance became furious as she directed it from Renny’s face to Ernest’s.

432 In the following example the translatant in another language cannot but be different:

There was no answer, only the tapping on the window, once more repeated, fierce and sharp.

In the next example the sense is completely different:

Near the pump she spied a bee’s nest as large [needs correction also in the Italian] as a man’s hat, glimmering palely, a smooth sphere, a sleeping world of fierce activity.

In the following example, taken from Faulkner, it is possible to give "fierce" a meaning indicate by dictionaries as a typical meaning in U.S. slang:

At night passers would see the fierce dead glare of the patent lamp...

Moreover, there are cases in which the adjective "fierce" has the nearly adverbial role of intensifier, like for example "fierce black hair", "fierce red mustache", that can be easily interpreted like "very black hair", or "carrot-red mustache".

Having to draw shareable examples of an exquisitely subjective phenomenon, such cases of different translatants of the English adjective "fierce" can be considered fit enough, but of course in a collective lesson it is not possible to dwell on the tastes, preferences and personal evocations of single words. And the same happens when there is a client you work for and there follow interpretive discussions on the translatant of this or that word.

When both parties are aware that the meaning to be attributed to words depends, in part, on the ability for empathy with the author, on being able to guess what the mood of the author might be in choosing that adjective instead of another, on the capability to filter one’s own past experiences and separate them from one’s own translation choices, the discussion can have no end, and be useful and productive. Ultimately, owing to the unending nature of such interpretive discussions, the conclusion is usually reached on the basis of which party is in the position of greater force in the rapport.

A subtler problem is presented when the client, or the translator, is convinced that there is an inextricable relation between a word and one of the translatants. In such cases, the margin for discussion is very nearly zero. All the interpretations other than that considered the only correct one, are relentlessly conceived of as "wrong". From such clash one of the parties can only come out frustrated, because her profound knowledge of language and

433 translation collides with a wall of ignorance, incomprehension and presumption.

Bibliographical references

CANETTI ELIAS Die gerettete Zunge. - Die Fackel im Ohr. - Das Augenspiel, München, Carl Hanser Verlag, 1995, ISBN 3-446-18062-1.

FORNARI FRANCO Coinema e icona. Nuova proposta per la psicoanalisi dell’arte, Milano, Il saggiatore, 1979.

LEVITSKAYA T. R., FITERMAN A. M. Problemy perevoda. Na materiale anglijskogo jazyka, Moskvà, Mezhdunarodnye otnoshenija, 1976.

1 Canetti 1999: 173.

31 - Revision and self-criticism

«I couldn’t get through dictations, I made hair-raising mistakes. Ganzhorn saw the kettle of fish and corrected my mistakes with lifted highbrows»1.

There are mental mechanisms that give us the impression that what we do makes sense just for the fact that it is we that did it. Whenever such mechanisms fail, we risk living in a state of permanent uncertainty and disappointment about the inadequacy of our performance. Such mechanisms can of course have negative repercussions. If they are overdeveloped, the individual tends to be too much sure of herself, and is not self-critical enough. This is a crucial defect for a translator.

We have seen that a single translation process actually consists of a very wide-ranging set of intersemiotic translation processes. The text is transformed at first into the translator’s non-verbal mental material, and hence is transformed back into verbal material fit for the receiving culture.

434 Such a series of transfers of the verbal prototext into the mental metatext, and in turn becoming the mental prototext of a further verbal metatext has components which, at least in part, remain without conscious awareness. We saw that especially in the units 36 and 37 of the second part. Without such an aconscious component, the translator’s work would be incompatible with her economic survival, because it would be too time-consuming.

Consequently, whenever a translator ends her first draft, prints it and sits at the table for revision, she has before her a text that is partially new, because, although it is a fruit of her labor, it was partially generated by habitual processes and by an alternate motion oscillating between reading, alert translation, and translation by "autopilot". Since it is a back-breaking labor, mental mechanisms intervene to give a sense of mental "compensation" to the individual: it was hard work, but the result is good.

For this reason self-review and self-criticism are very difficult processes. One has to activate a strength of critical penetration toward a product that is one’s own, and therefore by mental definition a good one. The Russian Formalists, and Shklovsky in particular, viewed art as a procedure or device (priyom), i.e. defined as artistic any form different from the one the reader is accustomed to. Conscious of the perceptive automatic mechanisms, they realized the importance of their disruption (estrangement) for a work to be perceived as a creative, and not merely an informative, object.

A similar approach is, in my opinion, also valid for linguistic and cultural structures. A translator compares the two systems: source culture and receiving culture. In the case where the translator is bilingual, the two cultures are both "mother cultures", i.e. learnt in a spontaneous way since childhood. In the case of monolingual upbringing, only the receiving culture coincides with the translator’s mother culture, while the other one was "learnt" at a conscious age. In both cases the source culture text is brought into one’s own culture that, from the point of view of self-consciousness, is a sort of no-man’s land.

The linguistic and cultural structures of the receiving culture were acquired in a spontaneous way, and as such they have been used from the moment in which the metalingual (and metacultural) function was activated, i.e. when one starts reasoning on such structures. The reason why it is much easier (and more professional) to translate into the receiving culture is that in it we have preformed structures, while in the other culture we would start building our structure brick by brick, from the ground up.

435 The preformed structures constituting our mother culture were often formed in a non-conscious way, and we use them initially more out of habit than by rational choice.

The translator reads the text in the source culture, ready to catch standard or deviant syntactic structures, lexical frequencies, idiolects, registers, and to reproduce them in the receiving culture, but, owing to the laborious mental gymnastics she is forced to undertake, she easily looses the detachment she needs, and in such cases she can make semantic and syntactic calques from which, when cool headed, she could defend herself from. While in a "green" translator such a risk is ever present, in the expert translator it lies in the pressure, fatigue and stress of work, the risk of trusting false friends, like the English "to assist" becoming the French "assister", or the English "sensible" becoming the French "sensible" or the German "sensibel" (examples from Shuttleworth 1997: 58). The ability to detach herself from her own text is inversely proportional to the translator’s overall – and affective – investment. On the other hand, a very boring text can induce even the most vigilant of translators to lower her guard.

From what I said, an "external" revision may seem the fitting solution, i.e. a revision by someone that is not the translator herself, that therefore evaluates the translated text as someone else’s product, not her own, for whom therefore all the obstacles involved in the attitude toward one’s own product are not standing. The problem is, when the revision is made by someone else, it is not easy for that person to be aware of the translation strategy that was followed, and therefore for her to operate reasonably.

In some cases, for example, a translator can use compensation (see unit ten of this part of the course) in order to avoid a loss connected to an untranslatable element in that time and place, and the addition that such a compensation involves could easily be read by the reviewer as an illicit addition and therefore edited out. The same can be said of the characterization of the various modes of speaking of the characters etc.:

By "character’s expressive aura" we mean the set of traits that constantly accompany her/him, a lexical field defining the unit of perception of the character. It is strange that in new, revisioned editions of old translations such a unit can be absent; in other words, the editor’s psychology is different from the translator’s psychology. (Torop 1995: 150)

Exactly because there is a self-evident difference between the reviser’s psyche and the translator’s, and between them there is often no communication or just a very superficial and hurried communication, the publisher’s revision always poses serious problems as far as translation

436 quality is concerned. This is also caused by the fact that in the editorial offices, for reasons of productivity or imprudence, such problems are seldom considered.

Such a reality brings us to the question of self-revision. Are there techniques to avoid the mental mechanisms of defending one’s own text?

One should do her bets to live one’s text as if it were someone else’s. For this reason it is necessary, within the limits of possibility, to live the text as chronotopically distant, both in time and in space, therefore.

The time between the first draft and revision must be as large as possible. And this is one of the parameters. As far as "space" is concerned, detachment can be greater and greater passing from the first to the last of the situations described below:

1. reading one’s text on the monitor; (strongly discouraged)

2. reading one’s text on the paper; (not recommended)

3. reading one’s printed text alone and aloud2;

4. reading one’s printed text aloud to someone else; (strongly recommended)

5. listening to the text read aloud by someone else to the author; (strongly recommended)

6. listening to the text read aloud by someone else to the author before an audience; (strongly recommended, but I realize it is an unrealistically ideal situation).

Bibliographical references

CANETTI ELIAS Die gerettete Zunge. - Die Fackel im Ohr. - Das Augenspiel, München, Carl Hanser Verlag, 1995, ISBN 3-446-18062-1.

SHUTTLEWORTH MARK e COWIE MOIRA, Dictionary of Translation Studies, Manchester, St. Jerome, 1997, ISBN 1-900650-03-7.

437 La traduzione totale, edited by Bruno Osimo, Modena, Guaraldi Logos, 2000, ISBN 88-8049-195-4. Total´nyj perevod. Tartu, Tartu Ülikooli Kirjastus, 1995, ISBN 9985-56-122-8.

1 Canetti 1980: 314. 2 Such a proceeding involves at least one risk: the voice introduces super- segmental traits that might make the text more comprehensible, above all if read by the translation's author. It is much better if the text is read by someone else.

32 - Intertextual references

«The Armenian and I exchanged a few words, but very few, and I don’t know what the language was. But he waited for me before he started chopping»1.

One of the factors that is most incisive on translation activity is intertextuality. The problem can be approached from at least two perspectives. The first is based upon the intertextual reference itself as a translation process, equipped with metatext (the reference itself) and a prototext (the text to which the reference is made). The second one concerns intertextuality implied in translated and texts and texts being translated and the problems connected to cultural translatability.

Starting from the first approach: intertextual reference as translation process. I prefer to begin with a concrete example. In the article Our House Wasn’t Dirty Enough?2, the author describes problems she had with her children’s allergies, and their doctors’ recommendations about hygiene in the apartment. Even with the author’s precautions, for many years her kids had asthma crises, and they overcame the problem only as they grew up. Meanwhile, new theories about allergies sustain that a little dust in the environment where allergic subjects live can curb the onset of allergies. At this point the author realizes that she has devoted years of attention to her child in a way that may have been counter-productive, and he skeptically looks forward to the next medical "discovery" that will jeopardize the "firm ideas" of the moment. And comments in this way:

But after years of watching theories come and go, I started taking them with a grain of dust.

The part we are interested in here is the finale, "with a grain of dust". Of course a translation not considering intertextuality in this last part would be an

438 abstruse, meaningless version. To understand the strategy that guided the author, and translate in an intelligible way the intertextual reference, it must be deciphered. And deciphering of intertextual references most often starts from a strange element, a marked piece.

The metatext of this intertextual reference made by Denise Grady is therefore "with a grain of dust". The task for the reader, and the translator, is backtracking to what could have been its prototext to which an implicit reference is made. There is a real translation technique to solve such problems. Let us suppose that the translator realizes the existence of something strange in this sentence, without understanding what kind of reference could it be. One possibility is inserting in a research engine the quoted string "with a grain of dust", through which we don’t get any results. The ten referred sites don’t say anything interesting on the problem.

Now we must suppose that it is an imperfect reference, not a thorough quotation, and therefore we must think of what part of the string can contain an element different as compared to the prototext. Some suspect fall at once on the word "dust", because it is very relevant to the story’s subject, as much as to be hardly very relevant to the prototext too. We then insert in the search engine grid the quoted string "with a grain of", and we get non longer ten, more than 1500 results. Which are revealing.

Nine texts out of ten, in effect, have the string completed in the same way, i.e. with the word "salt". One can infer then that the prototext is "with a grain of salt". We still must understand where this text is taken from and therefore what should it evoke in the text to be translated. Inserting in the search engine "with a grain of salt", the complete prototext, we easily get that it’s the English version of a Latin sentence, cum grano salis, taken from Plinius’s Natural history. Moreover, nearly all occurrences refer, before the searched string, the verb "to take", i.e. one should "take something with a grain of salt", and, examining the co-texts of many occurrences one discovers that this sentence means more or less to accept or to take a theory, or a concept, with some diffidence. Once you get to the Latin prototext of the English sentence, you can easily search it in Latin. On an encyclopedia I found that the meaning of "cum grano salis" is "with some common sense, discernment".

We must now understand what sense is implied in substituting salt with dust in the context of that story, i.e. what’s the sense of the intertextual translation. One sense is undoubtedly making the text more witty, ironical, and to call the attention of readers who are able to dig under the text’s surface hunting for intertextual references, as we did here. The humor consists in the fact that the sentence, with dust instead of salt, can be easily recognized, and becomes tailored to the subject (dust, allergies).

439 Now we must decide how to translate into another language such an intertextual reference (the only part of this multiple translation process that is usually considered). We must first of all be aware of the way in which the saying is known (if it is known) in the receiving culture: for example, in Italian it is known in its Latin version. Then we must try to modify it in a way as to preserve its recognizability, albeit by adding the "dust" element. One solution could be "cum grano pulveris".

From such an example we can see that what is commonly called "metatextual translation" is actually a set of translation processes, with a set of intermediate passages (in some views prototexts, metatexts in others), as in the following scheme:

Cum grano salis

(initial prototext)

↓

With a grain of salt

(first-level metatext,

second-level prototext)



With a grain of dust

(second-level metatext,

third-level prototext)



440 ironical effect within the text

(third-level metatext,

fourth-level prototext)

↓

cum grano pulveris

(fourth-level, final metatext)

If you look carefully at that scheme, you realize something odd: for the reader who is not also the translator, the interpretive process regresses, from the center of the scheme to the start. For the reader-translator, the interpretive process goes in two directions: the first is that common to the reader’s, backwards towards the last (recognizable as last) prototext. The translator now must culturally mediate towards the final metatext by first translating the sense of the presence of such intertext (third level), then finding a translation strategy to render it in the receiving culture(fourth level).

Translating an intertextual reference, therefore, means translating a translation process: we get therefore to a real second-degree translation, so to speak, or translation squared. In the next unit we’ll see where the other track leads, the presence of intertextuality in translated texts, with the consequent problems of implicitness and explicitness of the intertext.

Bibliographical references

CANETTI ELIAS Die gerettete Zunge. - Die Fackel im Ohr. - Das Augenspiel, München, Carl Hanser Verlag, 1995, ISBN 3-446-18062-1.

441 GRADY DENISE Our House Wasn't Dirty Enough?, in New York Times, 19 marzo 2001.

1 Canetti 1999: 15. 2 Grady 2001

33 - Implicit and explicit intertextuality

" If he leaned over too far, I thought he was about to kiss her, even though that would have been quite impossible, at least because of the tea table between them"1.

Another way to approach intertextuality focuses on the references present in texts translated and being translated and on problems of cultural translatability. The problem is more serious than one might first think because any utterance we make, oral or written, verbal or non-verbal, is inserted into a context of intertextual influences that affect the very way in which an utterance originates. In his essay on the semiosphere, Lotman compares the cultural universe, or universe of signification, to an organism, a macro-system, in which single cultures interact, becoming more complex. Lotman focuses on the relation between the culture of the self, or own culture (of the single individual or cultural, geographic or social group she belongs to) and other’s culture as a beneficent opportunity for cultures to beneficially contaminate one another and evolve, without homogenizing with one another, rather, emphasizing their differences. This occurs due to the awareness of one’s own identity generated by the comparison with the other.

Translation, in this sense, is situated on the border between the cultures; it is the phenomenon allowing communication between cultures, the perception of the other, enriching that of our own and of the other. Intertextual references are a concrete example of this kind of "culture of the borderline".

When a translator comes across an intertextual reference in the text she is translating, as the bearer of the border culture, of mediation between cultures, she feels responsible for the individuation of such intertextual references and enacts strategies aimed at giving the metatext reader access to such references. But, as we’ll see, intertextual references can be more or less explicit. A translator approaching intertextual references as a nuisance, on the other hand, who does all she can to hide it in the metatext’s readability does not embody the culture of the border, and has a view of cultural mediation as a relation between a censorious avant-garde and the mass of readers, that

442 can be kept in the dark about what happens in the "higher chambers" according to the translator’s whim.

Intertextual translation can even be unconscious. In Bloom’s opinion, texts are full of traces of previous texts not because the author consciously put them in, but because of an unconscious desire to eclipse precursors, due to unwillingness to accept one’s own role as author influenced by other authors and a tendency to deny the debt of acknowledgment or recognition.

Beyond the distinction between conscious and unconscious intertexts, we can also catalogue intertextual references along the implicitness/explicitness continuum. Of course, the more an intertext is implicit, the harder it is to identify and translate. There are at least three ways, or points of view, according to which an intertextual reference can be considered more or less explicit:

1. it can be more or less explicit that a text is an intertext; for example, if the intertext has a graphic indication (for example, enclosed in quotes), it is more explicit than when it is confused with the co-text; 2. the source from which the intertext comes can be more or less explicit; for example, if an intertext is explicitly attributed to a source, the reader clearly understands it as a citation; if the quote or the intertext remains anonymous, it is harder to understand its origin; 3. the function attributed by the author to the intertext can be more or less explicit; for example, if the intertext is explicitly used to exemplify something or to make an argument, the reader can effortlessly understand its function; if the quote or the intertext is apparently deprived of an exact function, it is harder to understand its strategic reason.

In the latter cases, concerning the source and function of an intertextual reference, passing from source culture to receiving culture can complicate the scenario. It is so because a source known in the source culture might not be as well known in the receiving culture, and a function easily comprehensible in the source culture can be less easily understandable in the receiving culture. In the following table, taken from Osimo 2001: 16-19, you notice that the degree of difficulty of a cultural transposition of a reference varies according to many parameters.

Intertextuality Hardness Source Source Function Function Hardness in known to known in known known in the the decoding translator decoding

443 receiving to the in the culture translator receiving culture

Implicit 8 no no no no 128 intertext yes 64

yes no 64

yes 32

yes no no 64

yes 32

yes no 32

yes 16

yes no no no 64

yes 32

yes no 32

yes 16

yes no no 32

yes 16

yes no 16

yes 8

2 no no no no 32

yes 16

yes no 16

yes 8

yes no no 16

yes 8

yes no 8

yes 4

444 yes no no no 16

yes 8

yes no 8

yes 4

yes no no 8

yes 4

yes no 4

yes 2

Implicit 4 no no no no 64 intertext yes 32

yes no 32

yes 16

yes no no 32

yes 16

yes no 16

yes 8

yes no no no 32

yes 16

yes no 16

yes 8

yes no no 16

yes 8

yes no 8

yes 4

4 no no no no 64

yes 32

yes no 32

yes 16

445 yes no no 32

yes 16

yes no 16

yes 8

yes no no no 32

yes 16

yes no 16

yes 8

yes no no 16

yes 8

yes no 8

Explicit 4 no no no no 64 intertext yes 32

yes no 32

yes 16

yes no no 32

yes 16

yes no 16

yes 8

yes no no no 32

yes 16

yes no 16

yes 8

yes no no 16

yes 8

yes no 8

yes 4

1 no no no no 16

446 yes 8

yes no 8

yes 4

yes no no 8

yes 4

yes no 4

yes 2

yes no no no 8

yes 4

yes no 4

yes 2

yes no no 4

yes 2

yes no 2

yes 1

Explicit 4 no no no no 64 intertext yes 32

yes no 32

yes 16

yes no no 32

yes 16

yes no 16

yes 8

yes no no no 32

yes 16

yes no 16

yes 8

yes no no 16

447 yes 8

yes no 8

yes 4

1 no no no no 16

yes 8

yes no 8

yes 4

yes no no 8

yes 4

yes no 4

yes 2

yes no no no 8

yes 4

yes no 4

yes 2

yes no no 4

yes 2

yes no 2

yes 1 In the first two columns the presence/absence of quotes or other graphic delimiters allowing to understand where the quote or intertext starts/ends is contemplated; the explicitness of their presence is examined. The third and fourth columns are devoted to the implicitness/explicitness of the intertext’s source. The fifth and sixth columns are devoted to the implicitness/explicitness of the intertext’s function. In the last columns I indicated a coefficient of difficulty in mediation that, as you can see, is amplified exponentially as source, function, and presence of the quote are made implicit. Moreover, it is important to retain the possibility that the individual translator decipher the presence, the source or the function of a given intertext. This is a subjective parameter. As usual in the case of the translator, its missing decoding has a chain effect on the recoding in all of her readers.

448 Bibliographical references CANETTI ELIAS Die gerettete Zunge. - Die Fackel im Ohr. - Das Augenspiel, München, Carl Hanser Verlag, 1995, ISBN 3-446-18062-1. CANETTI ELIAS The Tongue Set Free. Remembrance of a European Childhood, translated by Joachim Neugroschel, in The Memoirs of Elias Canetti, New York, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999, ISBN 0-374-19950-7, p. 1-286. LOTMAN JU. 1984 O semiosfere, in Izbrannyе statґi v trëh tоmah, 1:11-24. Tallinn, Alеksandra, 1992. Italian translation: La semiosfera, edited by S. Salvestroni, Venezia, Marsilio, 1985. ISBN 88-317-4703-7.

1 Canetti 1999: 130.

449