MANUAL DE CARGOS Y FUNCIONES

Quote 2.1

We can distinguish . . . between situational features which are linguistically relevant, and those which are functionally relevant in that they are relevant to the communicative function of the text in that situation. For translation equivalence to occur, then, both source language and target language texts must be relatable to the functionally relevant features of the situation. A decision, in any particular case, as to what is functionally relevant in this sense must in our present state of knowledge remain to some extent a matter of opinion.

J.C. Catford (1965: 94)

It should be noted that the extremes (ST for ‘source text’, TT for ‘target text’ and A for ‘apex’) represent ideal points on a scale and do not necessarily refl ect what usually happens in practice. At the extreme ST angle, the source text would be so overemphasised that it would be diffi cult to distinguish between translation and such activities as transliteration. At the other extreme (the TT angle), the target text could theoretically become an end in itself, in which case translation would become indistingu ishable from original text production. Finally, at the apex (A), translation would be so code-like and decontextualised that to talk of an orientation towards the source or the target text would simply be meaningless.

Concept Map I

This survey of translation studies begins with the 1950s and 1960s, with linguistics as the predominant paradigm, and with ‘equivalence’ as the key concept in the study of translation. But to appreciate what the ‘linguistics turn’ in the theory and practice of translation actually involves, we must fi rst inquire into the kind of linguistics that was current at the time and the extent to which it recognised, or was seen to be relevant to, the study of translation.

The vague and atomistic approach to how language works that was adopted by early models of linguistics (e.g. structuralism ) stood in the way of any meaningful application of the subject to the study of transla- tion. It was becoming increasingly clear to translation practitioners and theoreticians alike that the process of translating from one language to another could be captured only partly by precise, fi xed rules.

An even greater impediment had to do with how the issue of ‘meaning’ was avoided by those early models of linguistics. The customary tools with which phonology and morphology were studied were simply insuffi cient for mapping such cognitive sites as human knowledge and experience that are crucial to any proper analysis of meaning relations.

The situation did not improve with the advent of such later models of linguistics as that represented by transformational-generative grammar . This particular paradigm had declared an interest in the creative and dynamic aspects of language use, but in practice would only deliver idealistic notions of competence and an illusory concept of meaning (Beaugrande, 1978).

2.1.1 Formal vs textual equivalence

Abstract notions of ‘meaning’ continued to prevail well into the 1960s, exercising considerable infl uence on how translation equivalence is conceived. In his linguistic theory of translation, the British linguist and translation theorist J.C. Catford (1965) argues that one of the central tasks of translation theory must be ‘defi ning the nature and conditions of translation equivalence’ ( p. 21 ). Equivalence is here taken to be the basis on which source language (SL) textual material is ‘replaced’ by target language (TL) textual material. Translation is considered ‘an operation performed on languages: a process of substituting a text in one language for a text in another’ (Catford, 1965: 1; italics added). The reference to ‘substitution’ in this defi nition is important. According to Catford, we do not ‘transfer’ meaning between languages; we merely ‘replace’ a source language meaning by a target language meaning that can function in the same way in the situation at hand. This is achieved either through ‘formal correspondence’ or through what Catford calls ‘textual equivalence’.

Thus, to be minimally adequate, any theory of translation needs to draw upon a theory of language and, for Catford, this prerequisite theory is envisioned specifi cally in terms of early Hallidayan ‘ scale and category

grammar ’ (or what is better known nowadays as Hallidayan Systemic Functional Grammar ). Four ‘levels’ or ‘planes’ of language are recognised:

the phonological, graphological , grammatical and lexical. In addition, four of the fundamental categories of linguistic theory are recognised: class (e.g. adjective, adverb), structure (e.g. subject–verb–complement), system (e.g. singular, plural) and unit or rank (e.g. morpheme, sentence).

2.1.2 Translation shifts

When translation cannot be carried out by adhering closely to the lin- guistic form of the source text, textual equivalence is achieved through ‘translation shifts’. The concept of ‘shift’ is defi ned in terms of departures ‘from formal correspondence in the process of going from the SL to the TL’ (Catford, 1965: 73). Two major types of shift are identifi ed: ‘level shift’ and ‘category shift’.

Concept 2.2 Formal vs textual equivalence

In Catford’s theory of translation, formal correspondence involves adher- ing as closely as possible to the linguistic form of the source text. It covers formal relationships which exist when ‘a TL category can be found which occupies the “same” place in the “economy” of the TL as the given SL category occupies in the SL’ (1965: 27) – for example, trans lating an adjec- tive by an adjective. Where this is not the case, textual equivalence will be aimed for. This obtains when any TL text or portion of text is ‘observed on a particular occasion . . . to be the equivalent of a given SL text or portion of text’ ( p. 27 ) (e.g. translating an adjective by an adverbial phrase).

Concept 2.3 Level shift vs category shift

Level shift occurs when an SL item has a TL translation equivalent at a different linguistic level from its own (grammatical, lexical, etc.). For example, source text word play achieved at the phonological level may be translated by exploiting the possibilities of the lexical level in the target language.

Category shift is a generic term referring to shifts involving any of the four categories of class, structure, system and unit (e.g. ST adjectival phrase becomes an adverbial phrase in the TT).

Category shifts are interesting and may involve:

• a ‘class shift’, when an SL item is translated by means of a TL item belonging to a different grammatical class – for example, the adjective in medical student becomes an adverbial phrase in the French or Arabic equivalent ‘student in medicine’;

• a ‘structure shift’ involving a change in grammatical structure between ST and target text TT – for example, John loves Mary becomes ‘Is love at John on Mary’ in Gaelic;

• a ‘unit shift’ where a strict rank-for-rank correspondence between SL and TL sentences, clauses, groups, words and morphemes is not observed – for example, the English defi nite article translated by a change in word order in Russian;

• an ‘intra-system shift’ which occurs when translation involves selection of a non-corresponding term in the TL system – this is regardless of whether the SL and TL possess systems which approximately corres- pond formally – for example, an SL ‘singular’ becomes a TL ‘plural’, although both number systems are available in both languages.

2.1.3 Catford’s Formal and Textual Equivalence assessed

The reaction to Catford’s approach has generally been lukewarm. Accord ing to his critics, Catford sees equivalence as being essentially quan- tifi able with translation merely a matter of ‘replacing’ each SL item with the most suitable ‘TL equivalent’ (Shuttleworth and Cowie, 1997: 50). Inevitably, the statistical bias characteristic of research within the frame- work proposed by Catford lends itself to such criticisms. In a sample of English texts, for example, the textual equivalents of the French item dans are found to be in with a probability of 73%, into (19%), from (1.5%) and about/inside (0.75%) (Catford, 1965: 30). Probabilities of this kind based on a suffi ciently large corpus of data are used to form what Catford

It has to be noted that the two kinds of shift are not mutually exclusive all the time. A translation through level shift could, on a different occasion or by a different translator, be achieved through category shift. Although Catford’s model was not designed to account for phenomena such as translator preferences, there will always be cases (particularly regarding level shift) which will go beyond straightforward incompatibility between the SL and TL linguistic systems and which can be explained adequately only in such terms as the translator’s own style. Further research is needed in this area of motivated decision making in translation (Wilss, 1994).

optimistically calls ‘translation rules’. Such probability general isations, which characterise Catford’s whole approach and which appealed to machine translation advocates at the time, have been heavily theorising by many, including Delisle (1982) who fi nds the approach fundamen- tally fl awed because of its static comparative-linguistic slant.

What the critics portray as an atomistic approach to language use is also said to be equally evident in the way Catford approaches ‘textual equivalence’. For Catford, ‘equivalence’ obtains in cases where translation cannot be carried out by adhering closely to the linguistic form of the source text (e.g. when a preposition cannot be translated by a preposition). These shifts, as described by Catford, whether grammat ical or lexical, are almost all purely linguistic and in most cases are opted for automatically by the translator, leading to minor structural differences between SL and TL. In this approach, crucial cultural, textual and other situational factors are ostensibly overlooked. Whereas in fact, as pointed out above, there will always be cases, particularly regarding ‘level shift’, which go beyond obvious incompatibilities between the SL and TL linguistic systems and which will necessarily involve translators’ preferences.

These shortcomings notwithstanding, and although the entire analyt- ical apparatus is self-evidently decontextualised and highly theoretical, Catford’s contribution remains ‘one of the very few original attempts to give a systematic description of translation from a linguistic point of view’ (Fawcett, 1997: 121).

While Catford excludes contextual concerns from the remit he sets himself in the standard theory he proposes, noting in particular that deciding on what is ‘functionally relevant’ in a given situation is inevitably ‘a matter of opinion’ ( p. 94 ), this exclusion or apparent lack of interest in matters contextual is, in fact, deliberate. In developing his scheme, Catford made a strategic choice: to provide an account of the nature and conditions of ‘translation equivalence’, a notion he deploys from the outset in its narrowest sense. Any assessment of Catford should, there- fore, start from where Catford himself stands regarding what translation is and what the aims of his translation theory actually are.

It is often claimed with good reason that the intellectual climate pre valent at the time signifi cantly infl uenced the narrow focus on translation and linguistics opted for by Catford. Indeed, this was a time when ‘ core ’ linguistics was a dominant force. Yet this was also a time when numerous works on context -sensitive linguistics were becoming available, introducing the theories of Austin and Searle, Peirce and Grice, Firth and Halliday (e.g. Halliday et al., 1964; Enkvist et al., 1964; Widdowson, 1979; Leech, 1983). So, why did Catford not incorporate

such new per spectives in his linguistic theory of translation, as his critics claim?

In fact, this wealth of material and the insights emanating from the new focus in linguistics did not go unnoticed by Catford: in his discussion of the concept of social–contextual function in his analysis of dialect translation, for example, he clearly shows that he was no stranger to con- textual linguistics. Regarding dialect translation, Catford (1965: 87–8) incisively observes that ‘the criterion . . . is the “human” or “social” geographical one . . . rather than a purely locational criterion’.

In re-assessing Catford’s book some twenty years after publication, Henry (1984: 155) makes a special mention of Catford’s fi nal chapter, on the limits of translatability, and highlights Catford’s assertion that translation equivalence, rather than being just a formal linguistic con- cept, tends to involve communicative features such as text and utterance function and relevance to the situation and culture.

In the same vein, it can be said that Catford uses the term ‘textual equivalence’ to refer to source and target items being more generally ‘interchangeable in a given situation’ (1965: 49) – that is, ‘relatable to (at least some of ) the same features of substance’ (1965: 50), with ‘substance’ used in the Firthian sense as subsuming sound and script as well as extratextual factors and circumstances. This is a forward-looking and comprehensive notion that, even by today’s standards, can adequately account for such intercultural issues as how users of different languages perceive and talk about reality from their own distinct cultural, historical and sociolinguistic vantage points.