czech

Two other papers on translation shifts by Czech writers were published in
the influential volume The Nuture of Translation: Essays on the Theory and
Practice of Literury Translation (Holmes 1970). FrantiSek Miko concentrates
on discussing different theoretical aspects of what he terms 'shifts of expression'
or style in translation. He maintains (Miko 1970: 66) that retaining the
expressive character or style of the ST is the main and perhaps only goal of
the translator. Miko suggests an analysis of style under categories such as operativity, iconicity, subjectivity, affectation, prominence and contrast. In
the same volume, Anton PopoviP (1970: 85) emphasizes the importance of
the shift of expression concept:
An analysis of the shifts of expression, applied to all levels of the text, will bring to
light the general system of the translation, with its dominant and subordinate
elements.
This is an important development. Shift analysis can be seen as a way of
influencing the system of norms which govern the translation process, a
concept which is discussed in more detail in chapter 7. PopoviP (p. 801, in
terms very similar to LevG1s, relates shifts to the 'literal vs. free' debate,
considering them to arise from the tension between the original text and the
translation ideal, and to be the result of the translator's conscious efforts
faithfully to reproduce the aesthetic totality of the original. A clarification of
these principles is to be seen in Popovii-'s short Dictionary for the Analysis of
Literary Translation (1976), where the entry 'adequacy of translation' is
defined as synonymous with both 'faithfulness to the original' and 'stylistic
equivalence in translation'. Stylistic equivalence is itself defined (p. 6) as
'functional equivalence of elements in both original and translation aiming
at an expressive identity with an invariant of identical meaning'. However, in
their articles neither PopoviE nor Miko applies the ideas in detail to the
analysis of translated texts.

EQUIVALENCE AND EQUIVALENT EFFECT2

Chapter 4 details attempts that have been made to provide a taxonomy of
the linguistic changes or 'shifts' which occur in translation. The main model
described here is Vinay and Darbelnet's classic taxonomy, but reference is
also made to Catford's linguistic model and van Leuven-Zwart's translation
shift approach from the 1980s

In chapter 4, we discuss taxonomic linguistic
approaches that have attempted to produce a comprehensive model of translation shift analysis. Chapter 7 considers modern descriptive translation
studies; its leading proponent, Gideon Toury, has moved away from
a prescriptive definition of equivalence and, accepting as given that a TT
is 'equivalent' to its ST, insted seeks to identify the web of relations
between the two. Yet, there is still a great deal of practically oriented writing
on translation that continues a prescriptive discussion of equivalence.
Translator training courses also, perhaps inevitably, have this focus: errors
by the trainee translators are often corrected prescriptively according to a
notion of equivalence held by the trainer. For this reason, equivalence is
an issue that will remain central to the practice of translation, even if
translation studies and translation theory has, for the time being at least,
marginalized it.

E x p l o r a t i o n

In Section A, we mentioned the use of translation shift analysis in Descriptive
Translation Studies as a means of producing hypotheses and making generalizations
about translation. Find several ST–TT pairs in your own languages.
Analyse them according to Vinay and Darbelnet’s procedures.What general
trends emerge in the analysis? What are the most frequent types of translation
procedures? What hypotheses can you suggest concerning what is happening
in these translations? How would it be possible to test these hypotheses?

Summary of Translation shifts

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.

Descriptive2

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)

Descriptive1

Here Holmes uses ‘translating’ for the process and ‘translation’ for the product. The
descriptions and generalized principles envisaged were much reinforced by Gideon
Toury in his Descriptive Translation Studies and Beyond (1995) where two tentative
general ‘laws’ of translation are proposed:
1. the law of growing standardization – TTs generally display less linguistic
variation than STs, and
2. the law of interference – common ST lexical and syntactic patterns tend to be
copied, creating unusual patterns in the TT.
In both instances, the contention is that translated language in general displays
specific characteristics, known as universals of translation.