Evaluation (together with stance and appraisal as outlined in Chapter Two) has been heavily researched in applied linguistics. However, as Munday (2012) observes, this represents a new direction for research in translation studies. Like modality, evaluation remains understudied in translation, especially between English and Arabic with Mansour (2013) studying appraisal epithets, Al-Shunnag (2014) exploring stance and Mahmoud (2015) examining linguistic intensification. Studies of translation between English and other languages, however, represent a growing research area with a greater number of recent studies (Munday, 2007; 2008; 2009; 2012; 2015; Vandepitte et al., 2011; Qian, 2012; Xiapong, 2013; Li Pan, 2015;
Kranich, 2016). Each of these studies focused on either all or specific subtypes and linguistic realizations of the appraisal system cross-linguistically in parallel and/or comparable translation corpora.
Al-Shunnag (2014) explored how stance is expressed in ten opinion articles on the Arab Spring extracted from American and Arabic language newspapers. For this purpose, following Hunston (2007), he adopted a corpus and discourse-analytical methodology, namely the lexico-grammatical framework of stance (Biber et al., 1999; Biber, 2006) and appraisal theory (Martin and White, 2005). Appraisal theory was chosen to complement the lexico-grammatical method because it focuses on the meanings and functions of interpersonal meanings and does not treat the forms as an end in themselves. The appraisal categories are used to classify the types or functions of stance expressed. Manual analysis of ten individual texts was used in order to identify stance markers and shifts (accentuation, weakening, and loss). The instances in which the stance is maintained were also observed. Some insights from Fairclough‘s three dimensional model (1992, 1995) critical discourse analysis (CDA) approach and Baker‘s (2006) narrative theory were also applied to account for the impact of contextual factors.
The findings show that stance was not accurately reproduced in the translated texts. Unlike privately owned newspapers, the accentuation of stance in state-owned newspapers can be considered ―a deliberate mistranslation and manipulation‖ (Al- Shunnag, 2014, p.253). A weakened stance, however, is not a deliberate mistranslation or manipulation while loss of stance pertains to instances of negative evaluation (pp.267-269). The types of stance frequently used are judgment and insecurity, since the former is a feature of the political discourse of this opinion article genre and the latter is relevant to the topic of the Arab Spring. These stance shifts are expected to influence target reader freedom by allowing divergent readings or restricting them. Last but not least, attitude is realized significantly by lexical forms of evaluation (72%) followed by modality (17%) in this newspaper genre. Mahmoud (2015) discussed the role of linguistic intensification in the translation of speech acts from English into Arabic, arguing that the intensifiers, which are part of the four speech acts (impressing, insulting, persuading and praising), add new meaning to the communicative acts in translation. This author also identified four obstacles to translating intensifiers: ―vagueness of intensifiers, boundedness of
modifying heads, fuzziness of the meanings of intensifiers, and multifunction of intensifiers‖ (ibid., pp.29-30).
First, some intensifiers are vague (e.g. ‗quite‘) while others are grammaticalized, as in ‗dreadfully nice‘. Literal translation of ‗dreadfully‘, for instance, would sound contradictory and unnatural in Arabic and ―though preserving the author's wording, loses the nuances of the original text‖ (Mahmood and Abdellatif, 2010 cited in Mahmoud, 2015, p.29). Therefore, selecting a similar delexicalized intensifier in Arabic (jiddan [very]) is recommended by Mahmoud to achieve the same degree and effect of praising. Second, gradable and ungradable adjective heads may determine different degrees of the intensifiers as in ‗quite nice‘ and ‗quite emotionless‘. Third, the meaning of some intensifiers, such as ‗utterly‘, is fuzzy, since they have developed negative or positive meanings/prosodies. Context can be quite helpful in making translation decisions about these intensifiers. In Mahmoud‘s (2015) words, ―Belonging to two or more semantic categories overshadows the rendition of such intensifiers in Arabic unless the translator eventually infers the pragmatic meaning out of context‖ (p.30, emphasis added). Fourth, the same intensifiers may have more than one pragmatic function such as the adverb ‗fully‘ in President Obama‘s utterance (2009 cited in Mahmoud, 2015, p.30), ―That commitment is at the core of the Treaty, and it must be kept for all who fully abide by it‖, which according to Mahmoud has the illocutionary functions of ‗inviting‘, ‗warning‘, ‗asking‘, ‗blaming‘ or even ‗threatening‘.
Mahmoud‘s (2015) discussion is not based on a specific text type or discourse analysis results. The word- and sentence-level examples discussed are a mixture of invented, dictionary-based, and naturally occurring sentences. However, his semantic account represents an attempt to uncover the potential difficulties encountered by translators when rendering English intensifiers into Arabic. It also highlights the role of a number of factors in the ‗successful‘ rendition of intensification, including pragmatic writer-reader shared knowledge, translator linguistic and cultural competence, and reader interpretation of the message.
Vandepitte et al. (2011) examined two Dutch translations of Charles Darwin‘s scientific text On the Origins of Species (1859) from two different time periods (1860 and 2000). Epistemic modal shifts in the two translations were analysed utilising Martin and White‘s (2005, p.17) framework of modality value and
orientation. The findings reveal a trend of increasing epistemic modality degrees, especially in the translation produced in the former period. The translator‘s higher degree of confidence in Darwin‘s views is attributed to the positivistic scientific ideology which prevailed during that time period.
Qian‘s (2012) analysed explicit resources of engagement (heterogloss: contraction and expansion) in a Chinese translation of a question and answer section of a speech by the then US Vice President, Dick Cheney, in order to examine shifts in the inter- subjective positioning of the translator towards the text and the reader, as well as the translation strategies employed in translating this informative text type in the light of Reiss‘s (1976) text typology theory. Both contraction and expansion were found to be significantly reduced (16 versus 12 instances, 22 versus 12) in the four cases of the TT under examination, resulting in a more ambiguous speaker positioning. Qian attributes these changes to the ST engagement to a number of reasons, namely, conscious or unconscious translator omissions, translation purpose and text function, shifts from formal cohesion in the SL to semantic cohesion in the TL which reduce the less formal features of Cheney‘s spoken language. Finally, the study concludes that the translation strategy employed is literal translation which agrees with Reiss‘s typology.
Similarly, Xiapong (2013) conducted a case study, applying quantitative and qualitative appraisal analysis, particularly attitude and graduation, to the Chinese translations of 13 issues of CNN‘s Interactive English magazine (30 hard-news and 30 soft-news items). The differences in attitudinal positioning between the STs and their translations are traced back to different readership orientations, translator stance, and differences in Chinese and Western attitudinal positioning (ibid., pp.139- 161). The case study also reveals that intervention occurs more frequently in soft- news items (13% higher). More importantly, when sensitive topics are handled in the texts, Chinese socio-political ideologies seem to underpin the changes in force and focus in the data.
Munday (2007; 2012a; 2012b; 2015), inspired by Martin and White‘s (2005) appraisal theory framework and Hunston and Thompson‘s (2003) concept of ‗evaluation‘, has investigated ideology and interpersonal meaning from a new translation research angle.
Munday (2007) investigated how ideology is expressed textually in English translations of Latin American political speeches reflecting conflict. As his findings show, the textual expressions of ideology may involve epithets, naming, pronouns and synonyms which uphold textual cohesion and coherence and, at the same time, serve the favourable or negative stance of the speaker. That is, ideology affects the ―phraseological point of view‖ in the text (ibid., p.205). However, this issue becomes more complicated when dealing with translations of partly translated texts where the author‘s political stance is expressed by recontextualization and intertextuality (ibid., p.204). Therefore, as Munday contends, translation should be termed as a ‗misrecognised‘ type of rewriting (ibid., p197).
Importantly, he contends that lexicogrammatical shifts may not be triggered by ideological orientations. Such shifts may rather reflect the translator‘s ―lexical priming‖ which refers to the cumulative occurrences of words and sequences of words in certain co-texts and texts (Hoey, 2005 cited in Munday, 2007, p.213). Lexical priming varies according to each translator‘s personal linguistic and educational experience (ibid., p.213) and can impact on the phraseological plane and interpersonal meaning of the translated texts. This should be taken into consideration when analysing translation selections (ibid.).
He has also contributed to the use of discourse analysis in Translation Studies by suggesting new directions for future research based on his detailed appraisal analysis of the interpretations of Obama‘s inaugural and State of the Union speeches (Munday, 2012a; 2012b). His main conclusion was that translation shifts of interpersonal meaning are more likely to occur in graduation than type (2012b, p.331) with his findings revealing a tendency towards a graduation reduction trend (35% of the instances analysed) (2012a, p. 157). The reduction can be considered ‗significant‘ even though it is not consistently downplayed in every example, since it is relevant to translator evaluation and intervention (2012b, p.329). Counter- expectancy items are similarly relevant to translator attitude and intervention (ibid., p.331).
According to Munday (2012b, p.329), ―These may be isolated moments in the text, but they are points where the speaker‘s evaluation and intervention are at their most prominent and thus the treatment of such items is significant.‖ Moreover, graduation shifts cover both direct and indirect attitudinal markers (such as lexical intensifiers
and non-core lexis) as well as positive and negative attitude, and engagement. Importantly, appraisal can be analysed across cultures and texts, and as Munday notes (2012b, pp. 324-331), appraisal expression may vary in the same genre across cultures and appraisal meanings cluster in text and co-text. In addition, indirect attitude reflected in cultural allusions or value-rich words can trigger different reader responses across cultures. According to Munday (2012b, p.323), the more indirect the speaker‘s attitude, the more reader response varies. All in all, treatment of invoked evaluation in translation is more revealing and striking when translating what Munday termed ―value rich‖, i.e. ―high risk‖ or ―sensitive/critical‘‘ points which require translator evaluation and intervention (2012a, p.41).
Munday (2015) developed his previous work regarding appraisal analysis of attitude (Munday, 2012a, 2012b) by examining how engagement (reporting verbs) and graduation resources (intensification) determine translator/interpreter positioning. His analysis focuses on the translation of reporting verbs and intensification, as they are explicit indicators of the ―translator‘s/interpreter‘s degree of ‗investment‘ in a proposition and control over the text receiver‘s response‖ (2015, p.1). Munday (2015) argues that engagement and graduation are closely related to the stance positioning of the translator/producer and the reader.
The analysis was carried out using ‗discourse space theory‘ (Chilton, 2004). The analysis of the examples of translated reported verbs show that the translators adopt significantly different stances reflected in their individual choices of reporting verb which create very distinctive patterns of evaluative prosody. Thus, evaluation is not a mere set of isolated items but is rather complex and affects the text. Graduation, which is closely related to writer/reader positioning, was also found to have been reduced, probably because the fact that the translator was less invested in the text (Munday, 2015, p.18).
Pan (2015) applied appraisal analysis (Martin and White, 2005) and Fairclough‘s (1995a, 1995b) approach to Chinese translations of English news reports appearing in Reference News, a Chinese state-run newspaper. The study looks at how deviations from the ST graduation are influenced by ideological orientations. According to Pan (2015), evaluation deviation is ―a linguistic resource in the target text differing in evaluative meanings from its counterpart in the source text‖ (p. 221). Deviation can be classified into three categories: deviation in the presentation
of events, deviation in the presentation of news actors, and deviation in dissimulating representations (ibid).
Deviations in graduation generally reveal ideological manipulations of the STs‘ Western ideologies. For example, negative evaluation of China is either downplayed or omitted while positive evaluation of China is up-scaled. In the words of Pan (2015, p.233):
In RN‘s case, the evaluation deviations can be regarded as signs of RN‘s resistance to the ideological positioning of the original reports and its attempt to contest the hegemony of Anglophone media in spreading discourses related to China‘s realities to its domestic readers.
Pan‘s analysis also demonstrates that news reporting is not impartial. More importantly, it succeeds in combining both the micro- (appraisal and graduation) and macro-level dimensions of CDA (Fairclough 1995a). Hence, the author argues that the results can be recontextualised and employed to analyse institutional and social contexts which have different ideological orientations (ibid.).
4.4 Discourse Analysis in Translation Studies