To sum up the previous three sections, when comparing the data in tables 4.4, 4.5 and 4.6, the study finds that there is a tendency in Murad’s translation to preserve the form of the original more than the other two translations. More attention seems to be paid to the formal features triggering implicatures, and therefore there should be more opportunity in his translation to preserve the implicatures of the original. His translation, which looks more ‘source-oriented’ (Nida 2003: 159, see ‘denotative equivalence’ Koller, Section 2.3) than the other two translations, is more faithful to the original in terms of the level of explicitness and the stylistic features. The other two translations show less concern with the form, which is evident from the multiple variations in the formal features triggering implicatures manifested in the data. As discussion has shown, these shifts can tell us some information about (i) the translator’s assumption of how explicitly the implicature of the original should be conveyed in the target language during choice-making process or (ii) her/his degree of awareness of implicature generators while information-decoding process.
However, regardless of what variations in formal structure trigger the shift or whether the shift is a deliberate translation act or not, the shift in the three translations points to particular trends. The comparison of the data in tables 4.4, 4.5 and 4.6 reveals that there are more shifts towards explicitating and losing implicatures than substituting via translating. The data for example indicate that 226 instances of the shift (78% of total shift) involve either an omission or explicitation of implicature (see Figure 4.1 below). This suggests that there is a trend towards explicitating or removing an implicit meaning via translating which in both ways suggest a tendency to increase the level of explicitness via translating [+explicitness] (see Séguinot 1988,
Øverås 1998, Klaudy 2001, 2009, and Pápai 2004, Section 2.5.1). As is evident from the data, this tendency is also demonstrated in each translation.
Figure 4.1 Explicitation, omission and substitution shifts in the translation of implicature in the corpus
The trend here, which suggests that an explicitation process is in operation in the three translations, might initially support Blum Kulka’ explicitation hypothesis: the target text tends to be more explicit than the source (see Section 2.5.1). But this may be because, as Morini (2008: 42-3) argues, translation as a communicative act can show a greater level of cooperation and politeness more than the original does and translators tend to be more cooperative and polite than original authors. Translators tend to clarify and simplify meaning, and explicitate what is implicit in the source text, because commonly they are regarded as partially responsible for the meanings of the source text and any oddity or strangeness would be first attributed to them (ibid), which is why a translated text may be more readable, natural or fluent than the original (Venuti 1995/2008). One example for this here is the improved quality, relevance, politeness and clarity of information in the translations (see Section 4.2.1, 4.2.2 and 4.2.3), which can reflect cooperative work on the part of the translator in translation. This may therefore lead us to, and give an evidence of, Toury’s (1995/2012, see Section 2.5.2) proposed ‘law of growing standardization’ in translation: a translated text tends to be “simpler, flatter, less structured, less ambiguous, less specific to a given text, and more habitual” than the original (Pym 2010: 82, see Laviosa-Braithwaite 1996).
Haqi Naseem Murad
Explication of implicature 66 40 18
omission of implicature 55 40 7
Substitution of
implicature 26 27 10
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70
One significant manifestation of standardization in the data is the consistent explicitation of implicit logical links and dropping or omission of figures of speech from translation (most prominently metaphors). According to Toury (2012: 305-309), this can reduce complexity or ambiguity of grammatical structures which leads to a greater simplification and hence indicates a general standardization in the translated text.
Another example is opting for removing from the translation features that are specific to the source system or replacing them by more habitual options offered by the target system (see Øverås 1998 and Vanderauwera 1985, Section 2.5.2). This for instance includes removing a feature like italicizing words for emphasis or substituting quotation marks and parentheses. In other cases, taboo expressions (e.g. “execrated God”) are removed and more polite forms are selected to conform to the norms of Muslim communities. Culture-specific terms (e.g. “cuckoo” “Pharisee”, “King Lear”) may be removed or implicitated in translation. What many of these manifestations may indicate here is an accommodation to target language and culture models, whose main effect here is a translation that shows less stylistic variation in comparison with the original (Munday 2012: 175).
Despite this standardization trend governing the translation shifts in the corpus, traces of ‘interference’ from the source text are also present in the shifts (Toury 2012), such as the presence of expressions pertinent to the source culture (e.g. “the three kingdoms”, “saints in heaven”, “King Lear”) and which may not be familiar, and hence may sound unusual, in the target system (see House 2006, Section 2.5.2). The presence of such traces here may indicate that “interference is a kind of default” or in other words that “an establishment of an interference-free output” requires special efforts or might not even possible (Toury 2012: 311 emphasis in the original). However, what the study is trying to argue is that even the interference may not be here as dominant as standardization, the translators’ tolerance of it can be traced in the shifts. The data in Table 4.5 for example indicate that in Haqi and Naseem’s translations there are 7 cases displaying the omission of cultural information specific to the source culture from the translation. However, in Murad’s translation, no cultural information is removed but the only problem the data show is opting for literal translation in places where the implicature may run the risk of being lost because of potential cultural
differences. What this suggests here is that there is more tolerance of interference from the source text in Murad’s translation than in the other two translations.
Another example that supports this is the translation of speech figures. The data in Table 4.4 and 4.5 (see also Section 4.1.1.2 and 4.1.2) show that in Haqi and Naseem’s translations 68 speech figures (e.g. metaphor or hyperbole) are either totally removed or replaced by explicitation in the translation, which in both cases indicates a deletion of a formal feature of the original. But as the data show, the form of all speech figures is kept intact in Murad’s translation. As the discussion has revealed, the form and content of most of these speech figures could have been easily preserved by literal translation because they might not deviate from what is normal in the target system, and hence their production in the translation, as in Murad’s translation, may suggest a ‘positive interference’ (Toury 2012). Take for example expressions that convey emphatic function like “in the world” in “What in the world led you wandering to Thrushcross Grange?” and “a world of things” in “Cathy sat up late, having a world of things to order for the reception of her new friends” (see Ex. 26 and 27). Though such figurative expressions are common in English, their use still makes sense in Arabic since they do not seem to deviate from the norm in the target system, and therefore the literal translation as a default option can prove unproblematic here and can likely result in achieving the same function. But again, this can point to a lesser degree of tolerance in the two translations compared to Murad’s translation.
What the explicitation trend found in the translation shifts may generally suggest is a possible change in the reader’s ‘interactive’ relationship with translated text compared to original (Mason 2000, Boase-Beier 2006, 2014). Grice, as discussed in Section 2.4.3.3, differentiates between telling someone and getting someone to think as a way to differentiate between how to tell something openly and how to imply something through speech. He bases the notion of implicatures on a view of language as a form of cooperative behaviour or joint effort between interactants to communicate. Implicatures according to him arise as a result of interactants’ mutual knowledge of the conversational maxims (Grundy 2000: 80). They are the result of a hearer or reader drawing an inductive inference as to what can be the likeliest
meaning in a certain given context (ibid, see also Renkema 2004: 136-38). What is clear here is that implicature is connected to, among other things, an inferencing process the hearer or reader makes in the course of communication.
Based on this assumption, in addition to changing the level of explicitness and the style of the original, the explicitation trend found in the translations may affect the target-reader involvement compared to the source. It can be argued here that a more explicit text will minimize the need for inference, and hence reduce the level of participation or ‘engagement’ on the part of the reader (Boase-Beier 2006, 2014, Şerban 2004). When removing or explicitaing an implicature in the source text, a lesser inferencing or processing effort (see Gutt 1998, 2000, Section 2.4.3.4) is expected on the part of the target reader to comprehend the text. Take for example when dropping a metaphor like “What vain weathercocks we are!” as in Haqi’s translation, or translating it as “how strange is our frequent change of opinion as if we are a vain weathercock!” as in Murad’s translation (see Ex. 8). Explicitating the implied meaning of the speech figure or dropping it entirely from the text here either leaves meaning ready for the reader or spares her/him the trouble of thinking, where in both cases she/he will do no or less inferencing in comparison with the source reader. The same can apply when explicitating implicit logical links in the source text or omitting or not producing some semantic details, orthographic features, and cultural words.
Good supporting evidence here can also be derived from the trend towards improving the original in terms of the quality, relevance, and clarity of information at face value. As has been explained throughout the analysis and discussion, the non-adherence to these principles at the expressed level in the source text is purposeful;
intended by the sender in the original to convey implicit meaning by inducing the reader to move from the expressed level to the implied level (see Yule 1996 and Cutting 2002, Section 2.4.3.3). Therefore, the improvement on the original information at the expressed (explicit) level found in the shifts suggests an interpretive work on the part of the translator, which will normally be indicative of less inferencing and hence a lesser cooperation or involvement on the part of the reader (see Mason and Şerban 2003, Section 2.4.3.6, and Şerban 2004 Section 2.4.3.2).
The explicitation trend in operation here may therefore suggest a target text that may elicit a less, or maybe a different, response to the translation on the part of the target reader, reducing her/his dynamic role of interpretation in comparison with the original. If we assume for example that “each act of reading a text is in itself an act of translation, i.e. interpretation” and that “we feed our own beliefs, knowledge, attitudes and so on into our processing of texts”, the translator’s reading here will impose a particular reading to the text (Hatim and Mason 1990: 10-11). Interpretation may sometimes lead to the imposition of the translator’s subjective conception on the original, or producing subjective ideas conflicting with the original, preventing or limiting arbitrarily the readers’ projecting of their own views into the text (Levý 2011:
38-47, see also Hermans 1996 and Baker 2000a). If we also assume that a translation may evoke in its reader a perlocutionary effect (Austin 1962/1975), which in a literary text may take the form of “aesthetic experiences of pleasure, feelings of appreciation, enjoyment or admiration, images” etc. (Hickey 1998: 226, see ‘perlocutionary equivalence’ Section 2.4.3.4), the loss of some of the original stylistic features, most prominently speech figures, suggested by the explicitation trend here leads to a reduced, or at least different, perlocutionary effect evoked by the translation compared to the original (see Hervey 1998).
One might therefore assume that a good translation should leave the target reader free to think and that a good translator should not impose his personal conception by spelling out the implicit meanings because these might lead to “an adaptation rather than a translation” (Levý 2011: 47). However, if we assume translating is more about intertextual and narrative competence and about the interpretation of two texts in two different languages, conveying hidden or intended meanings in the translation may become of priority even by breaching the lexical or referential faithfulness and limiting the role of the reader (Eco 2001/2008: 13-17). The translator’s interpretive decisions here may be important to preserve ‘the deep sense of the story’ and reveal it to the reader ‘at all costs’ (ibid). Even if the interpretation here may sometimes eradicate other possible meanings or deviates from the original, any interpretation in the end remains, or should be looked at, as a bet on the sense of a certain text.
Finally, regardless of the different propositions that can be made about the trends of shift here, what can be obvious from all of the above is that the reader is repositioned in the translation as being less co-operative and less willing to take part by providing the necessary links and calculating the intended implicature, and needing to be helped and given more interpretation while reading or interpreting the text compared to the original reader. This may reflect the translator’s belief while translating that the target reader may be linguistically, culturally and temporally distant from the source text or that s/he may not share the source author’s assumptions (Ross 2014: 137). Following this assumption, the three figures given in Figure 4.1 may give information about the literary translators’ pattern of choices and views on the target reader, more precisely their assumption about how more explicitly s/he needs to know than the original (cf. Baker 2000a, Saldanha 2011). For example, Haqi and Naseem’s translations, which appear more explicit than Murad’s translation, reposition the reader as needing more explanation and more explicit or less implicit information. While in Murad’s translation, which is the least explicit here, the reader is viewed as needing less help with this regard than the other two translations.
Chapter Five: Deixis
This chapter explores the major problematic areas in the translation of deictic expressions in the novel. The types of deictic elements that will be examined and analyzed in the study are shown in Figure 5.1 below. This categorization of deixis is based on Levinson’s (1983, 2006) theory of deixis, which draws upon some previous influential accounts of deixis such as Bühler (1935), Fillmore (1975) and Lyons (1977) (see Section 2.4.3.5). The study explores how deictic expressions are rendered and treated in the target texts. Adopting a framework of analysis based on a number of previous studies that have incorporated deixis into their model of analysis (e.g.
Richardson 1998, Munday 1997b, Mason and Şerban 2003, Goethals 2007, 2009 and Bosseaux 2007, see Section 2.4.3.6), the study seeks to explore five features: (i) the types of deixis that have undergone shift, (ii) the types of shift in their translation, (iii) the variations in the translations that trigger them (iv) the effects these translational deictic shifts can bring to the meanings of the novel and its narrative structure, and (v) the translation behaviours the shifts are associated with. Like the previous two chapters, this chapter will be divided into two sections, where the first section discusses these feature at micro levels and the second section explores them at macro levels.