shifts7

More recent technical developments enable us to explore the notion of the unit of
translation in exciting ways. In Section C we have used electronic corpora to help
analyse the lexicological unit and Think-Aloud Protocols to research the thought
processes of the translator. The results are inevitably fuzzy, because of the problems
of analysing what is essentially a cognitive process. However, it does seem that
translators operate on a variety of different levels and certainly very little translation
can be carried out on a purely word level. As this section progresses, it will look at
increasingly higher levels of translation where text, discourse and ideology play
crucial roles. Unit C4, however, will first follow Vinay and Darbelnet in using the
segmentation into units of translation as a necessary prelude to the analysis of
translation shifts.

193 صفحه - an advanced

Task B11.1.1
➤ James (and linguists such as Tannen) relates coherence to intertextuality. Before
you read Text B11.1, recall the seven standards of textuality (Section A,Unit 9)
and reflect on how these cross-fertilize meaningfully (e.g. coherence is
underpinned by intertextuality and realized by cohesion).
➤ Review your notes on the two types of intertextuality – the horizontal and the
vertical (Section A, Unit 1) and provide further examples to illustrate each.
➤ Reflect on the following distinction:
What goes on ‘in translation’, i.e. in STs and TTs as ‘texts’
as opposed to
What is essentially ‘of translation’, i.e. entailed in translating as an activity
that exists in and by itself and that stands in contrast with such activities as
original writing.
➤ As you read Text B11.1, note the various definitions of genre and the examples
used to illustrate them.
➤ Focus on how the seven standards of textuality are met in Koller’s definition
of the technical text cited in this extract.
➤ Under two separate headings, note details of ‘translation as a genre’ and details
of ‘genre in translation’.
➤ Note details of parody as evidence for the existence of translation as a genre.

Text, genre and discourse shifts in translation1

As we have explained in Unit 11, Section A, recent developments in relevance
research have signalled a shift back to text typologies. These are now seen as
important templates for the alignment of communicator intentions with audience
expectations, thus guiding the text receiver in the search for optimal relevance. For
example, one would not seek intended relevance in a novel’s historical accuracy
of detail the way one would in an historical reference book.
A glance at the list of the various text typologies rehabilitated by the relevance
model, however, reveals that the term ‘textual’ is used in a fairly generic sense,
covering quite an assortment of textual products:eulog ies, summaries, novels, comic
strips, commentaries, abstracts, text books, hymn books, historical reference books,
etc. Strictly speaking, these are not all text types.While some of these forms are texts
proper (e.g. summaries, commentaries), others belong to what we have called genres
(e.g. eulogies, novels, comic strips), and still others form part of discourse (e.g.
textbooks, historical reference books).
Genre occupies Carl James in his study of translation shifts (James 1989, see Text
B11.1). James’s study may be credited with being the first to recognize, from an
essentially applied-linguistic perspective, the distinction between two levels of
abstraction in approaching the notion of genre in translation.Translation itself may
be seen as a genre in the abstract.This is a function of the total effect of choices made
and felt to be intrinsic to any act of translation (i.e. the translational sense of genre,
as in ‘all translation intrinsically seems foreign or contrived’). There is, on the
other hand, the detailed more concrete sense of genre. This subsumes all kinds of
purposeful activities with which translation, like any other form of text production,
deals and which revolve around conventionalized communicative events (i.e. the
linguistic sense of genre, as in the cooking recipe, the academic abstract

The second extract in this unit (Text B11.2) shifts the focus from genre to discourse,
and from Applied Linguistics to Cultural Studies, the discipline which examines the
cultural ramifications of issues such as conventions and attitudes. In this field of
inquiry, two basic research trends may be identified:one simply unsympathetic
to linguistics or even to discourse analysis, the other cognisant of the contribution
of discourse studies to the study of culture and translation. The latter approach may  be illustrated by the work of the Canadian cultural commentator and translation
theorist Donald Bruce which, while firmly grounded in Cultural Studies, has nevertheless
branched out in a number of interesting ways to include discursive models
and socio-political theory. Specifically, it is the focus on discourse alongside other
types of sign (genre, text, etc.) which has primarily motivated our choice of this
reading at this point in our discussion.
But, whatever the brand, Cultural Studies is credited with raising an important
question in the study of translation. This relates to which texts to translate and which
to ignore. This sensitive decision is closely bound up with the translation strategy
favoured by a given translation tradition. For example,within the Anglo-American
translation tradition, careful selection has ensured that only those texts which lend
themselves to a domesticating strategy are included, while other texts which resist
such a strategy are all but totally excluded.The question of what determines whether
a text will be translated and published or not is thus at the heart of cultural politics,
a topic that Donald Bruce addresses in his study of discourse shifts.).

Main Issues of Translation Studies45

1.13Cases of more or less incomplete shift from grammar to lexis are quite frequent
in translation between other languages. For example, the English: This text is intended
for . . . may have as its French TL equivalent: Le présent manuel s’adresse à . . . Here the
SL modifier, This – a term in a grammatical system of deictics – has as its TL equivalent
the modifier Le présent, an article + a lexical adjective. Such cases are not rare in French,
cf. also This may reach you before I arrive = Fr. Il se peut que ce mot vous parvienne avant mon
arrivée. Once again the grammatical item this has a partially lexical translation
equivalent ce mot.4
1.2 Category shifts. In 2.4 we referred to unbounded and rank-bound translation: the first
being approximately ‘normal’ or ‘free’ translation in which SL–TL equivalences are set
up at whatever rank is appropriate. Usually, but not always, there is sentence–sentence
equivalence,5 but in the course of a text, equivalences may shift up and down the rankscale,
often being established at ranks lower than the sentence. We use the term ‘rankbound’
translation only to refer to those special cases where equivalence is deliberately
limited to ranks below the sentence, thus leading to ‘bad translation’ = i.e. translation
in which the TL text is either not a normal TL form at all, or is not relatable to the same
situational substance as the SL text.
In normal, unbounded, translation, then, translation equivalences may occur
between sentences, clauses, groups, words and (though rarely) morphemes. The
following is an example where equivalence can be established to some extent right
down to morpheme rank:
Fr. SL text J’ai laissé mes lunettes sur la table
Eng. TL text I’ve left my glasses on the table
144
Extension
B
SECTION
3

T e x t r e g i s t e r i n t r a n s l a t i o n1

Does your own language signal the different thrust emerging from a text such
as that of the Dean? Are there specific devices for conveying detachment?
Our concern with text type in Unit 9 led us to consider this unit of interaction from
two distinct yet related perspectives. In the present unit,we covered the first of these
perspectives:t extual registers. This is seen in terms of linguistic variation giving rise
to dialects as a reflection of the language user’s geographical, historical and social
provenance.What is perhaps more significant is that register variation can also be
viewed from a language use vantage point.Here,we need to account for such aspects
of the way language varies as field (involving both subject matter and social
institutions served), tenor, catering for formality or informality and the way this
gives rise to complex relationships of power and solidarity, and mode, covering the
cohesion and coherence of texts. Text types, then, are recognized in terms of the
context of situation and the register employed. In Unit 11 we turn to a different
perspective and examine how translation shifts can occur in related areas of text,
genre and discourse

shifts1

Task A4.3
➤ What means of comparison did you use when assessing shifts in Task A4.2
above? How objective do you feel this comparison was?
Attempts at objectifying the comparison have included van Leuven-Zwart’s
Architranseme concept where the dictionary meaning of the ST term was taken
as a comparator and used independently to evaluate the closeness of the ST and TT
term (van Leuven-Zwart 1989, 1990). However, the success of the Architranseme
rests upon the absolute objective dependability of the decontextualized dictionary
meaning and the analyst’s ability to accurately and repeatedly decide whether a
shift has occurred in the translation context. In view of the difficulty, not to say
impossibility, of achieving this, many theorists have moved away from the tertium
comparationis (see Snell-Hornby 1990). Gideon Toury is the Israeli scholar who
has been the prime proponent of Descriptive Translation Studies, a branch of the
discipline that sets out to describe translation by comparing and analysing ST–TT
pairs. In his work, Toury initially used a supposed ‘invariant’ as a form of comparison
(Toury 1980), but in his major work Descriptive Translation Studies – and
Beyond (Toury 1995) he drops this in favour of a more flexible ‘ad-hoc’ approach
to the selection of features, dependent on the characteristics of the specific texts
under consideration. Importantly, he warns against ‘the totally negative kind of
reasoning required by the search for shifts’ (Toury 1995:84) in which error and
failure and loss in translation are highlighted. Instead, for Toury translation shift
analysis is most valuable as a form of ‘discovery’, ‘a step towards the formulation of
explanatory hypotheses’ about the practice of translation (1995:85). The relevance
and applications of translation shifts are issues which we shall explore further in
Sections B and C

This unit describes a theoretical position that promotes the systematic analysis of
the changes that take place in moving from ST to TT. A change, known technically
as a ‘shift’, is generally any translation that moves away from formal correspondence.
Analysis normally first requires identification of the translation unit. The bestknown
work in this area is by Catford, who first used the term shift, and by Vinay
and Darbelnet, whose detailed taxonomy has influenced many theorists. But, as we
shall see in Unit 11, shifts also occur on the higher levels of text, genre and discourse..

Tertium comparationis1

A non-linguistic, intermediate form of the meaning of a ST and TT. The idea
is that an invariant meaning exists, independent of both texts, which can be
used to gauge or assist transfer of meaning between ST and TT

This can be described graphically as follows:
ST chunk TT chunk
comparator
This has long been a thorny issue in Translation Studies and no one measure
has ever been accepted by all..

Compensation, loss and gain

A translation technique used to compensate for translation loss. The translator
offsets an inevitable loss at one point in the text by adding a suitable
element at another point, achieving a compensatory translation gain.
For example, an informal text in French using the second personal pronoun
tu might be rendered in English by informal lexis or use of the first name
or nickname. Compensation in an interpretive sense, restoring life to the TT,
is the fourth ‘movement’ of Steiner’s hermeneutic process (Steiner 1998:39,
see Part A, Unit 13).

These translation procedures have influenced later taxonomies by, amongst others,
van Leuven-Zwart (1989, 1990), who attempts a very complex analysis of extracts
from translations of Latin American fiction. However, despite a systematic means
of analysis based on the denotative meaning of each word, the decision as to whether
a shift has occurred is inevitably subjective since an evaluation of the equivalence
of the ST and TT units is required. Some kind of evaluator, known in translation
as a tertium comparationis, is necessary.

shiffts

Task A4.2
➤ The Eurostar ST has been reproduced below together with the German
translation. Look at the translation units that are matched up and, using the
back-translation to help you, note any ‘mismatches’, denoting shifts.
Example A4.3a
Eurostar
Please note that smoke detectors will be fitted on-board. Any misconduct will result in
necessary action being taken by rail staff and/or police.
Example A4.3b German
Beachten Sie bitte, daß die Züge mit Rauchdetektoren ausgestattet werden. Jeder
Verstoß wird mit den erforderlichen Maßnahmen durch das Bahnpersonal und/oder die
Polizei geahndet.
[Note please that the trains with smokedetectors fitted will be. Each violation will-be
with the necessary measures through the railstaff and/or the police punished.]

ST TT
1. please bitte
2. note beachten Sie
3. that daß
die Züge
4. smoke detectors mit Rauchdetektoren
5. will be fitted ausgestattet werden
6. on-board
7. Any misconduct Jeder Verstoß
8. will result in wird . . . mit
9. necessary action den erforderlichen Maßnahmen
10. being taken geahndet
11. by rail staff durch das Bahnpersonal
12. and/or und/oder
13. police die Polizei

Clear shifts in the second sentence can be seen in translation unit 7, where any
misconduct becomes the more specific and stronger ‘each violation’ in the German,
and in units 8 and 10, where will result in . . . being taken is altered to ‘will . . . with
. . . be punished’.Yet numerous issues arise when this type of analysis is undertaken,
not least what the translation unit is. This is illustrated by the term smoke detectors
in this and other versions (the leaflet also contained French and Flemish versions):
the German and Flemish have a one word equivalent (Rauchdetektoren and rookdetectoren
respectively) but the French needs the multi-word unit détecteurs de fumée
[‘detectors of smoke’]. Few would argue that the translations are correct and close
equivalents, but should the number of word forms used be taken into consideration
when deciding if a shift has taken place? Similarly, has a shift occurred in the
German because of the obligatory placing of the passive werden at the end of sentence
1? And how are we to decide if Verstoß, infraction (in the French) or overtreding
(Flemish) involves a shift from ST misconduct?
Identifying that a shift has taken place leads to questions such as what kind of
shift, what form of classification we can use and what the importance of the shifts
is. As will begin to become clear in Section B Text B3.1, Vinay and Darbelnet’s
categorization of translation procedures is very detailed. They name two ‘methods’
covering seven procedures:
1. direct translation, which covers
borrowing, calque and literal translation, and
2. oblique translation, which is transposition, modulation, equivalence and
adaptation.
30
I n t r o d u c t i o n
A
SECTION
ST TT
1. please bitte
2. note beachten Sie
3. that daß
die Züge
4. smoke detectors mit Rauchdetektoren
5. will be fitted ausgestattet werden
6. on-board
7. Any misconduct Jeder Verstoß
8. will result in wird . . . mit
9. necessary action den erforderlichen Maßnahmen
10. being taken geahndet
11. by rail staff durch das Bahnpersonal
12. and/or und/oder
13. police die Polizei

These procedures are applied on three levels of language:
i. the lexicon
ii. the grammatical structures and
iii. the ‘message’,which is used to refer to the situational utterance and some of the
higher text elements such as sentence and paragraphs.
At the level of message, Vinay and Darbelnet discuss such strategies as compensation,
an important term in translation which is linked to the notion of loss and
gain.

shifts translaton11

Task A4.1
➤ Look at these two examples. How many departures from formal correspondence
can you detect? How do you decide what a departure is?
Analysing these examples, it is clear that there are many formal correspondences at
lexical and grammatical levels:
please – bitte
beachten – note
that – daß
smoke detectors – Rauchdetektoren
will be – werden

Systemic differences between the languages must be accepted. These include wordorder
changes and the construction of the German imperative with the addition
of the pronoun Sie [‘you’]. However, there is a clear departure from formal
correspondence in the translation of the ST on-board and the restructuring of the
second clause. In this text, the only possible textual equivalent for on-board is die
Züge (‘the trains’) which is added with a change of grammatical subject (ST smoke
detectors to TT die Züge). The analyst then has to decide whether ausgestattet is a
formal correspondent of fitted. A dictionary definition is not enough since some
dictionaries may give ausstatten as a translation of to equip or fit out but not fit.
However, the role occupied by ausgestattet and fitted in the two languages is very
similar, so it is highly unlikely that we would class this as a shift.
Catford was the first to use the term shift, but the most comprehensive taxonomy
of translation shifts, based on their ‘translation procedures’, was set out by the
Canadians Jean-Paul Vinay and Jean Darbelnet in their A Comparative Stylistics
of French and English (1958/1995).While it is true that they approach the subject
from the point of view of comparative or contrastive stylistics, using parallel
non-translated as well as translated texts, they describe a detailed and systematic
model for the analysis and comparison of a ST–TT pair. The first step involves
identification and numbering of the ST units and the units of translation (see
Section A, Unit 3). This is followed by a matching of the two.