DIRECT COMMUNICATION

DIRECT COMMUNICATION
Relevance theoreticians had no problem responding to the question:w hat if we
needed to translate the Bible or Dickens for children? This, according to Gutt (1991)
would be a case of descriptive translation, and is therefore not acceptable as
‘translation’ but may well be called by another name (e.g. adaptation).

Example1

Example C8.1a English ST
Access all areas
Wherever you want to be
Land Rover’s entry into the fiercely competitive SUV market raised more than a few
eyebrows.
Make no mistake; it’s a real Land Rover. The car you can drive down the highway
can negotiate adrenaline-pumping steep, muddy hills and rough ground with similar
quiet authority

Consider Example C8.1a from a sample of publicity material for Freelander in
English, alongside a back-translation of the parallel Arabic version.
Note how almost the entire Arabic version is an ‘addition’, drastically rewording
the original. This is an extreme case of ‘descriptive’ translation.
➤ What kind of effect might this TT have on the target reader in a language with
which you are familiar? Is the effect compatible with the function of the text?
➤ Translate the above English ST ‘interpretively’ (adhering as far as possible
to the ST structure, etc.) into a language of your choice. What difference
in effect can you discern when comparing your version with the Arabic TT
above? Would you still regard your ‘interpretive’ version as a piece of effective
advertising?.

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?

Textual pragmatics and equivalence

Fundamental to any linguistic-textual approach in descriptive translation studies
is the assumption that translations are characterised by a double linkage: first by their
link to the source text and second by the link to the communicative conditions on the receiver’s
side. This double linkage is central in defining (and this means in particular: in differentiating)
the equivalence relation. The process of differentiating this double linkage,
and of thereby rendering it operational, is achieved by distinguishing between various
frameworks of equivalence; at this stage, (translational) equivalence merely means that
a special relationship – which can be designated as the translation relationship – is
apparent between two texts, a source (primary) one and a resultant one.
The specification of the equivalence relation follows from the definition of relational
frameworks; its application presupposes that the relational frameworks be specified.
Linguistic/textual units which differ in nature and range are regarded as target-language
equivalents if they correspond to source-language elements according to the equivalence
relations specified in a set of relational frameworks. Target-language equivalents
answer to translational units in the source text; both the similarities and the differences
between the units of the source-language and their target-language equivalents result
from the degree to which the values assigned to the relational frameworks are
preserved.

W h a t i s t r a n s l a t i o n ?

Translation Studies thus has two main objectives:
(1) to describe the phenomena of translating and translation(s) as they manifest
themselves in the world of our experience, and (2) to establish general principles by
means of which these phenomena can be explained and predicted. The two branches
of pure Translation Studies concerning themselves with these objectives can be
designated descriptive translation studies (DTS) or translation description (TD) and theoretical
translation studies (ThTS) or translation theory (TTh).
1.11
Of these two, it is perhaps appropriate to give first consideration to descriptive translation
studies, as the branch of the discipline which constantly maintains the closest contact
with the empirical phenomena under study. There would seem to be three major kinds
of research in DTS, which may be distinguished by their focus as product-oriented,
function-oriented, and process-oriented.

The other main branch of pure Translation Studies, theoretical translation studies or
translation theory, as its name implies, is not interested in describing existing translations,
observed translation functions, or experimentally determined translating
processes, but in using the results of descriptive translation studies, in combination
with the information available from related fields and disciplines, to evolve principles,
theories, and models which will serve to explain and predict what translating and
translations are and will be..

A g e n t s o f p o w e r i n t r a n s l a t i o n

This term has had many uses in Translation Studies, but its most influential
has been through the descriptive translation theorists, notably Gideon Toury,
who view norms as translation behaviour typically obtaining under specific
socio-cultural or textual situations (Toury 1995:54–5). These TT-oriented
norms encompass not only translation strategy but also how, if at all, a TT
fits into the literary and social culture of the target system. Other norms are
those proposed by Chesterman (1997), namely ‘product and expectancy
norms’ (governed by the readers’ expectations of what a translation should
be) and ‘professional norms’ (governing the translator and the translation
process).

DIRECT VS INDIRECT TRANSLATION1

DIRECT VS INDIRECT TRANSLATION
The degree of latitude which translators enjoy may be seen in terms of another
distinction which the relevance model of translation has had to adopt: direct and
indirect translation. This dichotomy addresses the need ‘to distinguish between
translations where the translator is free to elaborate or summarize [i.e. indirectly]
and those where he has to somehow stick to the explicit contents of the original’
[directly] (Gutt 1991:122). Obviously, this is not an either/or choice but rather the
two ends of a continuum. Indirect translations are intended to survive on their
own, and involve whatever changes the translator deems necessary to maximize
relevance for a new audience (i.e. the predominantly ‘descriptive’ mode of the tourist
brochure type of translation in the example discussed above). Direct translations,
on the other hand, are more closely tied to the original, a case of what we have called
‘interpretive’ resemblance.Guided by a notion of faithfulness, the translator designs
a direct translation in such a way that it resembles the original ‘closely enough in
relevant respects’ (Sperber and Wilson 1986:137

).

DESCRIPTIVE VS INTERPRETIVE1

DESCRIPTIVE VS INTERPRETIVE
In dealing with these form–content problems, the relevance model of translation
employs a range of cognitive tools, including inference and the ability to perceive
and interact with textual salience functionally.An important distinction entertained
by the text user relates to two ways of using language:‘ descriptive’ and ‘interpretive’.
These reflect the two ways our minds entertain thoughts.An utterance is said to be
descriptive if it is intended to be true of a state of affairs in some possible world.On
the other hand, an utterance is said to be interpretive if it is intended by the speaker
not to represent his or her own thoughts but those of someone else.
To see the descriptive vs interpretive dichotomy in practical translation terms, let
us consider two translation situations, one involving the production in English of
a tourist brochure (with the instruction of producing a text that is ultra-functional
in guiding tourists round a city), the other the production of an advert (with the
instruction that the translation is for use by top planners of marketing strategy).
Thus, while the resultant English tourist brochure could conceivably be composed
without reference to the original, the translation of the advertisement would be
crucially dependent on the ST

The tourist brochure would be an instance of descriptive use in that the TT is
intended to achieve relevance in its own right, whereas the advertisement translation
could succeed only in virtue of its resemblance to some SL original. In practice,
this points to a greater freedom enjoyed by the translator of the tourist brochure
(hence the luxury of producing what is almost akin to an original text). The advertisement’s
translator, on the other hand, can work only interpretively (resigned to
the limitations of a medium called translation).

Task A8.7
➤ To what extent do you think ‘interpretive’ translation is tantamount to ‘literal’
translation, and ‘descriptive’ translation to ‘free’ translation?
➤ Find a tourist brochure and translate a portion into another language.Comment
on whether your translation is interpretive or descriptive. Can you conceive
of how the tourist brochure might sound, were you to adopt an alternative
strategy?
Task A8.8
➤ What problems are likely to be encountered in translating a sacred text
descriptively?

shifts78

J. C. Catford (1965) A Linguistic Theory of Translation, Oxford: OUP,
Chapter 12, pp. 73-82.
1.1 Level shifts. By a shift of level we mean that a SL item at one linguistic level has
a TL translation equivalent at a different level.
We have already pointed out that translation between the levels of phonology and
graphology – or between either of these levels and the levels of grammar and lexis –
is impossible. Translation between these levels is absolutely ruled out by our theory,
which posits ‘relationship to the same substance’ as the necessary condition of

translation equivalence. We are left, then, with shifts from grammar to lexis and viceversa
as the only possible level shifts in translation; and such shifts are, of course,
quite common.
1.11 Examples of level shifts are sometimes encountered in the translation of the
verbal aspects of Russian and English. Both these language have an aspectual
opposition – of very roughly the same type – seen most clearly in the ‘past’ or preterite
tense: the opposition between Russian imperfective and perfective (e.g. pisal and napisal),
and between English simple and continuous (wrote and was writing).
There is, however, an important difference between the two aspect systems, namely
that the polarity of marking is not the same. In Russian, the (contextually) marked term
in the system is the perfective; this explicitly refers to the uniqueness or completion of the
event. The imperfective is unmarked – in other words it is relatively neutral in these
respects (the event may or may not actually be unique or completed, etc., but at any
rate the imperfective is indifferent to these features – does not explicitly refer to this
‘perfectiveness’).1
In English, the (contextually and morphologically) marked term is the continuous;
this explicitly refers to the development, the progress, of the event. The ‘simple’ form is
neutral in this respect (the event may or may not actually be in progress, but the simple
form does not explicitly refer to this aspect of the event).
We indicate these differences in the following diagram, in which the marked terms
in the Russian and English aspect systems are enclosed in rectangles:

1.12 One result of this difference between Russian and English is that Russian
imperfective (e.g. pisal) is translatable with almost equal frequency by English simple
(wrote) or continuous (was writing). But the marked terms (napisal – was writing) are
mutually untranslatable.
A Russian writer can create a certain contrastive effect by using an imperfective and
then, so to speak, ‘capping’ this by using the (marked) perfective. In such a case, the
same effect of explicit, contrastive, reference to completion may have to be translated
into English by a change of lexical item. The following example2 shows this

Cˇto zˇe delal Bel’tov v prodolzˇenie etix des’ati let? Vse ili pocˇti vse. Cˇ to on sdelal?
Nicˇego ili pocˇti nicˇego.’
Here the imperfective, delal, is ‘capped’ by the perfective sdelal. Delal can be translated
by either did or was doing – but, since there is no contextual reason to make explicit
reference to the progress of the event, the former is the better translation. We can thus
say ‘What did Beltov do . . .?’ The Russian perfective, with its marked insistence on
completion can cap this effectively: ‘What did he do and complete?’ But the English marked
term insists on the progress of the event, so cannot be used here. (‘What was he doing’
is obviously inappropriate.) In English, in this case, we must use a different lexical
verb: a lexical item which includes reference to completion in its contextual meaning,
e.g. achieve.3 The whole passage can thus be translated:
What did Beltov do during these ten years? Everything, or almost everything.
What did he achieve? Nothing, or almost nothing?
:

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.