In this book, the case that linguistics is capable of informing the study of translation is clearly stated. However, linguistics is not monolithic and a variety of models must be recognised as valid, each designed to achieve certain goals and not necessarily others. By the same token, translation studies has not remained a prisoner within one paradigm. As this survey has shown, different perspectives have systematically been adopted and different approaches invoked to shed new light on a con- stantly evolving intercultural and interlinguistic phenomenon.
One way of capturing this diversity is to see linguistics from the vantage point of how translation studies has opened up to a diverse range of infl uences. The following discussion will highlight those areas of interface between translation studies and a variety of adjacent dis- ciplines both within and outside linguistics. Instead of focusing on what has been achieved, the emphasis will be on connections which can still be made. This entails that we follow to a natural conclusion the line already traced in portraying the way translation studies has evolved: from a narrower focus on languages in contact, to such broader issues as gender and ideology .
6.4.1 Contrastive analysis
Comparing or contrasting two or more languages at various levels of linguistic description has interacted with translation studies in two basic ways:
• It has provided explanations and solutions for problems encountered in translation practice (Nida, 1964).
• It has in turn received from translation a range of theoretical and practical insights, as well as actual data and specifi c information ( James, 1980).
To play such an important role, contrastive analysis has had to broaden its scope, taking in pragmatics, text linguistics, discourse analysis, rhetoric. The translation data used has taken many forms: naturally occurring, fabricated or translated by the analyst. The level at which such data is elicited has also varied considerably, from word and lexico-grammatical features, to stretches of texts, entire interactions and communicative events.
6.4.2 Sociolinguistics
Sociolinguistics has contributed to the debate in translation studies from at least two perspectives:
1. The identifi cation, description and explanation of how language relates to social situations and communicative events. This has to do with language in texts and, by extension, with features of the text with which translators constantly deal (e.g. regional dialect).
2. The analysis of:
• how the translator as an individual sees his or her task in society (upholding norms , etc.);
• the translator’s response to the needs of a target audience operat- ing in a different language and culture;
• the implications of such attitudes in terms of translation strategy and the philosophy underpinning it.
Since such attitudes are by and large norm-driven, the kind of socio- linguistics involved here would not be one dealing solely with discrete and disparate elements found in texts. Rather, it is a sociolinguistics of texts relating to the entire concept of translation in all its complexity (Fawcett, 1997). This kind of sociolinguistics has subsumed work done on the language of translation, including:
• Modes such as fl uent, dynamically equivalent translation when these emerge as norms.
• Universals of translation, evolving as norms in and of translations (Baker, 1995).
6.4.3 Psycholinguistics
The transfer of meaning involved in translation is certainly part of a mental process and thus relies in a major way on a complex form of information processing. Building on what happens in monolingual communication, psycholinguistic studies of translation proceed from an analysis of the constraints under which bilingual mediation works. Translation-specifi c components in the area of problem-recognition and problem-solving are added, and the process is seen in terms of analysis and synthesis (and revision if translation and not interpreting is being specifi cally studied). Drawing heavily on psycholinguistics, introspection (immediate retrospection and think-aloud) has recently emerged as an important area of research in translation process studies.
6.4.4 Corpus linguistics
Work on translation universals informed by the kind of sociolinguistics applied to the entire concept of translation (and not merely to what happens in translations) has recently emerged as an important research issue in corpus translation studies. This is partly modelled on corpus linguistics or the use of corpora in the scientifi c study of language in use. A number of concerns are shared by the two fi elds of inquiry, Corpus Linguistics and Corpus Translation Studies:
• Primacy is accorded to authentic instances of language use, and to a move away from introspection (Holmes, 1978b: 101).
• Texts are viewed not as idealised entities but rather as observable facts (Toury, 1980: 79).
• A concern with what corpora should consist of and with how to guard against such pitfalls as bias in the selection of materials. • Recognition that computational and statistical tools are not suffi cient
by themselves, and that intuition and observation have a role to play. In the specifi c area of design criteria for building corpora, certain developments in corpus linguistics have shaped thinking in corpus translation theory:
• In addition to random selection, which is still widely practised, a more active stance in dealing with the data is promoted. In both linguistics and translation, there has been a noticeable tendency to intervene purposefully in order to channel compilation of text samples in par- ticular directions thought to be more suited to the specifi c concerns of the discipline.
• A more differentiated framework is employed to ensure that the mater- ial is ‘representative’, not only of such aspects as spoken or written language, but also of particular types of text or genre (Baker, 1993).
6.4.5 Text linguistics
The concept of a ‘whole’ language is now untenable, and such notions as register, text type, text function, cohesion and coherence have become common currency in debating translation issues. Together with insights from text linguistics, critical discourse analysis and genre theory, this new focus has sensitised translators to issues such as power, ideology and manipulation in translation.
6.4.6 Cultural studies and deconstruction
With the growing popularity of academic subjects such as cultural studies, the issue of ideology and the way it becomes bound up with translation strategy has come to the fore. The fi eld of translation has benefi ted considerably from insights yielded by this kind of enquiry. Under what may be termed ‘the ideology of translation’, translation theorists have become interested in such aspects of the process as:
• the choice of works to be translated (what is valued and what is excluded);
• the power structure which controls the production and consumption of translations;
• who has access to translation and who is denied access;
• what is omitted, added or altered in seeking to control the message.
6.4.7 Gender studies
Gender studies and feminist scholarship have drawn attention to a considerable body of writing by women. As a result, women translators have begun to ponder what it means to be a woman translator in a male tradition. A number of factors long overlooked have suddenly emerged: • the choice of texts to translate, a problematic issue particularly when
the text to be translated is ideologically contentious;
• the languages involved, with issues such as the translation of word
play acquiring a momentum of their own;
• textual practices across cultures.
Joining forces with post-colonial research and the study of popular culture, feminist translation studies has made a huge contribution to the study of the politics and ideology of translation.
6.4.8 Literature
Two phases in the relationship between literature and translation may be highlighted:
1. A traditional phase, in which literary translators have had to accept well-established hierarchies regarding what constitutes literature: poetry, prose, drama, high as opposed to low culture and so on. Modes of writing such as science fi ction, children’s literature and ‘pulp’ fi ction would be excluded, with translation itself being treated with the low esteem accorded to derivative forms of text production.
2. A more recent phase, in which some of these ideas are challenged by new theories such as the polysystem model: any literature comprises not only the canonic, but also long denigrated forms such as soap operas.
Further reading
• On the evolution of cultural studies, and specifi cally on polysystems theory and its applications in translation studies, see Gentzler (1993), Hermans (1999).
• On such cultural studies developments as the Manipulation School, see Hermans (1985b).
• On functionalism and Skopos Theory, see the chapter by Hans Vermeer, and the chapter by Katherina Reiss in Chesterman (1989), Nord (1997), Holz-Mänttäri (1984).