by Abdolmehdi Riazi, Ph.D.
Associate professor, Department of Foreign Languages & Linguistics
Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran
This Paper was Presented at
The First International Conference on Language, Literature, and Translation in the Third Millennium
Bahrain University
March 16-18, 2002
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Abstract
It is conventionally believed that familiarity with the source and
target languages, as well as the subject matter on the part of the
translator is enough for a good translation. However, due to the
findings in the field of text analysis, the role of text structure in
translation now seems crucial. Therefore, the present paper sets out
with an introduction on different types of translation followed by some
historical reviews on text analysis, and will then describe different
approaches to text analysis. As a case in point, a text analysis of the
rhetorical structure of newspaper editorials in English and Persian and
its contribution to the translation of this specific genre will be
discussed. It will be indicated that newspaper editorials in these two
languages follow a tripartite structure including "Lead," "Follow," and
"Valuate" making translation of this specific genre possible and more
accurate between the two languages. The paper will be concluded with the
idea that text analysis can contribute and lead to more accurate and
communicative translations.
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Introduction
onventionally,
it is suggested that translators should meet three requirements,
namely: 1) Familiarity with the source language, 2) Familiarity with the
target language, and 3) Familiarity with the subject matter to perform
their job successfully. Based on this premise, the translator discovers
the meaning behind the forms in the source language (SL) and does his
best to produce the same meaning in the target language (TL) using the
TL forms and structures. Naturally and supposedly what changes is the
form and the code and what should remain unchanged is the meaning and
the message (Larson, 1984).
Therefore, one may discern the most common
definition of translation, i.e., the selection of the nearest equivalent
for a language unit in the SL in a target language. Depending on
whether we consider the language unit, to be translated, at the level of
word, sentence, or a general concept, translation experts have
recognized three approaches to translation:
- translation at the level of word (word for word translation)
- translation at the level of sentence, and
- conceptual translation
In the first approach, for each word in the
SL an equivalent word is selected in the TL. This type of translation
is effective, especially in translating phrases and proper names such as
United Nations, Ministry of Education, Deep Structure, and so on.
However, it is problematic at the level of sentence due to the
differences in the syntax of source and target languages. Translated
texts as a product of this approach are not usually lucid or
communicative, and readers will get through the text slowly and
uneasily.
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The structure of the source text becomes an important
guide to decisions regarding what should or should not appear in the
derived text.
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When translating at the sentence level, the
problem of word for word translation and, therefore, lack of lucidity
will be remedied by observing the grammatical rules and word order in
the TL while preserving the meaning of individual words. So, sentences
such as "I like to swim," "I think he is clever," and "We were all
tired" can easily be translated into a target language according to the
grammatical rules of that language. Translation at the sentence level
may thus be considered the same as the translation at the word level
except that the grammatical rules and word order in the TL are observed.
Texts produced following this approach will communicate better compared
to word for word translation.
In conceptual translation, the unit of
translation is neither the word nor is it the sentence; rather it is the
concept. The best example is the translation of idioms and proverbs
such as the following.
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"He gave me a nasty look"
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"Carrying coal to Newcastle"
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"Do as Romans do while in Rome"
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"He kicked the bucket"
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Such idioms and proverbs cannot be
translated word for word; rather they should be translated into
equivalent concepts in the TL to convey the same meaning and produce the
same effect on the readers.
In addition to word-for-word,
sentence-to-sentence, and conceptual translations, other scholars have
suggested other approaches and methods of translation. Newmark (1988),
for example, has suggested communicative and semantic approaches to
translation. By definition, communicative translation attempts to
produce on its readers an effect as close as possible to that obtained
on the readers of the source language. Semantic translation, on the
other hand, attempts to render, as closely as the semantic and syntactic
structures of the TL allow, the exact contextual meaning of the
original. Semantic translation is accurate, but may not communicate
well; whereas communicative translation communicates well, but may not
be very precise.
Another aspect of translation experts have
attended to is the translation processes. For instance, Newmark (1988:
144) contends that there are three basic translation processes:
- the interpretation and analysis of the SL text;
- the translation procedure (choosing equivalents for words and sentences in the TL), and
- the reformulation of the text according to the writer's intention,
the reader's expectation, the appropriate norms of the TL, etc.
The processes, as Newmark states, are to a small degree paralleled by translation as a science, a skill, and an art.
This paper is concerned with some aspects
of the first process. It will be suggested that a major procedure in the
interpretation and analysis of the SL text should be text analysis at
the macro-level with the goal of unfolding rhetorical macro-structures.
By macro-structures we mean patterns of expression beyond sentence
level. In the next parts of the paper, first a brief history of text
analysis will be presented followed by approaches to text analysis. The
paper will then continue by indicating how two specific genres; namely,
newspaper editorials and poetry, lend themselves to macroanalysis of
texts and how this analysis will help translators.
Historical Perspectives on Text Analysis
It is a major concern of linguists to find
out and depict clearly how human beings use language to communicate,
and, in particular, how addressers construct linguistic messages for
addressees and how addressees work on linguistic messages in order to
interpret and understand them.
Accordingly, two main approaches have been
developed in linguistics to deal with the transmission and reception of
the utterances and messages. The first is "discourse analysis," which
mainly focuses on the structure of naturally occurring spoken language,
as found in such "discourses" as conversations, commentaries, and
speeches. The second approach is "text analysis," which focuses on the
structure of written language, as found in such "texts" as essays and
articles, notices, book chapters, and so on. It is worth mentioning,
however, that the distinction between "discourse" and "text" is not
clear-cut. Both "discourse" and "text" can be used in a much broader
sense to include all language units with a communicative function,
whether spoken or written. Some scholars (see, e.g., Van Dijk, 1983;
Grabe and Kaplan, 1989; Freedman, 1989) talk about "spoken and written
discourses"; others (see, e.g., Widdowson, 1977; Halliday, 1978; Kress,
1985; Leckie-Tarry, 1993) talk about "spoken and written text." In this
paper, we stick to "text analysis" with a focus on the structure of
written language at micro- and macro-levels.
According to Connor (1994), text analysis
dates back to the Prague School of Linguistics, initiated by Vilem
Mathesius in the 1920s. Later on it was elaborated by Jan Firbas and
Frantisek Dane in the 1950s and 1960s. Connor (1994) believes that The
Prague School's major contribution to text analysis was the notion of theme and rheme, which describes the pattern of information flow in sentences and its relation to text coherence.
On the other hand, Stubbs (1995) states
that the notion of text analysis was developed in British linguistics
from the 1930s to the 1990s. In this regard, the tradition, as Stubbs
(1995) continues, is visible mainly in the work of Firth, Halliday, and
Sinclair (See, e.g., Firth 1935, 1957a, 1957b; Halliday 1985, 1992;
Sinclair 1987, 1990). The principles underlying these works, as stated
by Stubbs, demand studying the use of real language in written and
spoken discourse and performing textual analysis of naturally occurring
language.
As (Connor 1994: 682) states, "systemic
linguistics, a related approach to text analysis and semiotics, emerged
in the 1960s with the work of linguists such as Halliday, whose theories
emphasize the ideational or content-bearing functions of discourse as
well as the choices people make when they use language to structure
their interpersonal communications (see, e.g., Halliday, 1978)."
Halliday's systemic linguistics has influenced text analysis
tremendously as well as curriculum models for language education (see,
e.g., Mohan 1986). Following Halliday and Hasan's (1976) taxonomy, the
notion of cohesion has been one of the popular issues in text analysis.
According to Connor (1994), in the 1970s
and 1980s, many linguists, psychologists, and composition specialists
around the world embraced text and discourse analysis. Connor believes
that this New School of Text Analysis is characterized by an eclectic,
interdisciplinary emphasis, placing psychological and educational
theories on an equal status with linguistic theories (whereas the Prague
and systemic approaches primarily orient themselves to linguistics).
Examples of text analysis from this new approach include studies of
macro-level text structures such as Swales's (1990) studies of the
organization of introductions in scientific research articles; and
Biber's (1988) multidimensional computerized analysis of diverse
features in spoken and written texts.
Bloor and Bloor (1995) contend that by the
process of analysis, linguists build up descriptions of the language,
and gradually discover more about how people use language in social
communication. The same thing can be considered with the dynamic process
of translation in that the discourse and rhetorical structures encoded
in the source language can be reconstructed in the target language, and
then the translator goes for the appropriate syntax and lexicon. One of
the indexes of a "good" translation would, therefore, be to see to what
extent a translator has been able to reconstruct the rhetorical
structures of the source text in the target language through text
analysis.
Approaches to Text Analysis
We may roughly divide the available
literature on text analysis into two groups. First, those aiming at
providing a detailed linguistic analysis of texts in terms of lexis and
syntax. This approach has mostly referred to as analysis at
micro-structure. Second, those related to the analysis and description
of the rhetorical organization of various texts. This approach has been
labeled as macro-structure analysis of texts. In this paper, we are
concerned with macro-analysis and its implication in translation. First,
the macro-structure of newspaper editorials in two languages, English,
and Persian, will be presented. Then, the macro-structure of the poems
of a famous Persian Poet, Hakim O'mar Khayam, and the English
translation of these poems by a well-known English translator,
Fitzgerald, will be presented as two cases in point. It would, of
course, be naïve to generalize these cases to all languages and all
types of genres without adequate research and empirical evidence.
However, the point of discovering and unfolding macro-structures in a SL
with the goal of reconstructing nearly the same patterns in the TL in
the process of translation deserves theoretical and practical attention.
The Case of Newspaper Editorials
Bolivar (1994) studied editorials of The Guardian. She selected 23 editorials from The Guardian
during the first three months of 1981. Based on the analysis of these
editorials, she found out that a tripartite structure called "triad"
organizes the macro structure of the editorials. Bolivar explains that
the function of the triad is to negotiate the transmission and
evaluation in written text and that it consists of three turns or
elements, namely, Lead, Follow, and Valuate, serving distinctive
functions of initiation, follow-up, and evaluation of the two. It shares
similarities with the "exchange," as the minimal unit of spoken
discourse. The following excerpt taken from The Gardian, "Behind closed Irish doors." March 3, 1981, cited in Bolivar (1994: 280-1) is an example of a triad.
| L |
Britain and Ireland are now trying, at long last, to work out a less
artificial link between them than that which binds two foreign states.
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| F |
This is the most hopeful departure of the past decade because it
opens for inspection what had lain concealed for half a century and goes
to the root of the anguish in Northern Ireland.
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| V |
The two countries now recognize that though they are independent of one another they cannot be foreign. |
According to Bolivar, not all triads have
three turns. Triads can exhibit more than three turns provided that the
sequence LF is repeated and V is the final turn. Thus, triads such as
LFLFV or LFLFLFV can be found when the V turn is delayed by the writer.
The study of editorials from other British
newspapers conducted by Bolivar confirmed the existence of three-part
structures in those newspapers.
Parallel to Bolivar's study, Riazi and
Assar (2001) conducted a similar study on Persian newspaper editorials
to see if the same macro-structures are detectable in this particular
genre. The editorials of six currently published Persian newspapers were
examined. A sample of 60 editorials, 10 for each newspaper, was
randomly selected to be analyzed.
The editorials were analyzed at two levels
1) at a rhetorical macro-structure level, and 2) at a micro syntactic
level. Each text (editorial) was segmented by sentence units and was
codified according to its function; lead, follow, or valuate. The
inter-coder reliability indices of the segmentation and codification of
the editorials were then determined. An inter-coder reliability index
above .80 was obtained. The following excerpt from Iran (June 27, 1997), one of the newspapers, is an example of a triad in Persian newspaper editorials.
| L |
The motivating command of the Late Imam in May 1979 was the
beginning of a revolutionary era for the popular movement to construct
and develop the villages through the establishment of an organization
called Jihad-e-Sazandegy.
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| F |
It was a revolutionary institution whose fundamental duty was the
improvement of economic and social conditions of villagers in Iran.
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| V |
The marvelous achievements of Jihad-e-Sazandegy and the fruitful
actions of this public institution proved the Imam's correctness of
recognition and depth of revolutionary perception. |
Results of the analysis performed on the
editorials indicated that the most frequent pattern pertaining to all
the studied newspapers was LFV. In other words, we can say that the
general macro-structure of Persian newspaper editorials is LFV. This
finding is in line with that of Bolivar's (1994) as related to The Guardian
newspaper. This common pattern between the two languages enhances the
translatability of the newspaper editorials. The task of translators
would be to look for the triads and go for the appropriate syntax and
lexicon. It is interesting to point out that in both Bolivar's and our
study, it was found that each turn is characterized by specific sentence
types. For example, it was found that "Leads" were mostly expressed in
interrogatives; "Follows" mostly used passive structures; and "Valuates"
used conditional and copulas. The usage of special syntactic structures
for specific turns can be justified partly in light of the discoursal
function, attributed to each structure and reported in previous studies.
Interrogative sentences, for example, are used with the goal of
eliciting information or presenting some new topic for discussion. Since
the main function of L turn is to introduce the aboutness of the triad
and a subject, therefore, it seems quite reasonable to have
interrogatives mostly in L turns. On the other hand, the correspondence
of passive structures and F turns might be due to the fact that passives
provide development and elaboration of the events. Reid (1990: 201)
points out that "the passive voice is indicative of the formal
interactional character of ...[a] prose as opposed to the more personal,
interactive prose of narrative." As for V turns, we can say that the
function of conditionals is to produce or suggest some kind of solution
or desirable action on some conditions (Bolivar 1994), thus, the
association between V turns and conditionals. Becoming aware of these
macro- and micro-features of texts, we can make our translations of
particular texts and genres more accurate, meaningful, and
communicative.
The Case of Khayam's Robaiyat (Quatrains)
Omar Khayam was one of the most famous and
beloved Persian poets of middle ages. The Robaiyat of Omar Khayam is
among the few Persion masterpieces that have been translated into most
languages, including English, French, German, Italian, Russian, Chinese,
Hindi, Arabic, and Urdu. The most famous translation of the Robaiyat
from Persian into English was undertaken in 1859 by Edward J.
Fitzgerald. He has tried his utmost to adhere to the spirit of the
original poetry.
Yarmohammadi (1995) studied the rhetorical
organization of Khayam's Robaiyat (quatrains) and compared it with its
English translation by Fitzgerald. His study revealed that the
macro-structure of all Khayam's Robaiyat included three components,
namely, "description," "recommendation," and "reasoning" which can be
used as a criterion to distinguish between the real Khayam's Robaiyat
and those erroneously attributed to him. Based on his analysis,
Yarmohammadi came to the conclusion that the reason for Fitzgerald's
successful translation of Khayam's Robaiyat is that he was able to
reconstruct the same macro-structures in English and then apply
appropriate sentence structures and lexis. The following is an example
of one of the Khayam's quatrains as translated by Fitzgerald.
Fitzgerald:
And this delightful Herb whose tender Green
Fledges the River's Lip on which we lean—
Ah, lean upon it lightly! for who knows
From what once lovely Lip it springs unseen!
Literal:
The grass that grows by every stream
Like angelic smiles faintly gleam
Step gently, cause it not to scream
For it has grown from a lover's dream.
Conclusion
As Hatim and Mason (1997) state, a
translator typically operates on the verbal record of an act of
communication between source language speaker/writer and hearers/readers
and seeks to relay perceived meaning values to a group of target
language receiver(s) as an separate act of communication. However,
according to Hatim and Mason (1990), we know little about what patterns
there are and how equivalence could be achieved between them. One thing
of which we can be confident, nevertheless, is that the patterns are
always employed in the service of an overriding rhetorical purpose. This
is an aspect of texture which is of crucial importance to the
translator. The structure of the source text becomes an important guide
to decisions regarding what should or should not appear in the derived
text. The point that the present paper tried to make is the benefit
translators may derive from text analysis in translation by determining
the micro- and macro-indices of the texts to support them in their
difficult task.
Text analysis is, thus, becoming a
promising tool in performing more reliable translations. There are
numerous studies done on text analysis, which can have interesting
messages for translators. For example, the kind of structure frequently
reported for argumentative genres include "introduction, explanation of
the case under discussion, outline of the argument, proof, refutation
and conclusion" (Hatch 1992: 185). As a final word, we may say that in
translation we should first try to reconstruct the macro-structure and
rhetorical structure of the source text in the target language and then
look for the appropriate words and structures; this is a procedure that
skillful translators perform in the process of translation consciously
or unconsciously.
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