2.3. The Concept and Function of a Cultural Filter

The concept of a “cultural filter” is a means of capturing socio-cultural differences in

shared conventions of behavior and communication, preferred rhetorical styles and

expectation norms in the two speech communities. These differences should not be

left to individual intuition but should be based on empirical cross-cultural research.

Given the goal of achieving functional equivalence in a covert translation, assumptions

of cultural difference should be carefully examined before interventions in the

original’s meaning structure is undertaken. The unmarked assumption is one of cultural

compatibility, unless there is evidence to the contrary. To take an example, in

the case of the German and anglophone linguistic and cultural communities the

concept of cultural filter has been given some substance through a number of empirical

contrastive-pragmatic analyses, in which anglophone and German communicative

priorities along a set of hypothesized dimensions were hypothesized. Converging

evidence from a number of cross-cultural German-English studies conducted with

different data, subjects and methodologies suggests that there are German preferences

for rhetorical styles and conventions of communicative behavior which differ

from Anglophone ones along a set of dimensions, among them directness, contentfocus,

explicitness and routine-reliance. (cf. House 1996; 1998).

Given the distinction between overt and covert translation, it is obvious that

cultural transfer is only possible in the case of overt translation, where cultural items

are transported from L1 to L2 acting as a sort of “Verfremdung.” In covert translation,

however, there is no cultural transfer, but only a sort of “cultural compensation” for

L1 cultural phenomena in L2 with the means of L2.

In speaking of a “cultural filter,” we need to know, of course, what we mean by

“culture.” Given widespread postmodernist critiques of culture as an untenable idealization

and as something outdatedly relating to the nation state of the nineteenth

century, is it today still possible to talk of “the culture” of a language community?

Has not the extension of culture to modern complex societies brought about a

complexification and problematisation of “culture” which renders it useless as a

methodological and conceptual entity? Should we therefore not follow the argumentation

by Holliday (1999) who suggested substituting “non-essentialist” “non-reified”

“small cultures” for “culture”? Obviously there is no such thing as a stable social

group untouched by outside influences and group and personal idiosyncracies, and

obviously it is wrong to assume a monolithic unified culture of which all differentness

is idealized and cancelled out. Nevertheless, modernist relativation has in practice

never yet led to its logical conclusion: the annihilation of research concerned with

culture, nor has it prevented researchers from describing cultures as interpretive

translation quality assessment: linguistic description vs social evaluation 251

252 Meta, XLVI, 2, 2001

devices for understanding emergent behavior. Further, we cannot ignore the experiences

reported by “ordinary” members of a speech community, when they perceive

members of another cultural group as behaving “differently” in particular situated

discourse events.

49. A linguist studying language acquisition by children is interested in how a child acquires the structures of language, be they phonological, syntactic or semantic. He observes the acquisition of language and records the emergence of structures one-word utterances, two-word utterances, multiple-word utterances, acquisition and differentiation of grammatical categories, transformations, etc. He is aware that there is a correlation between the physiological, cognitive and linguistic maturational milestones. He is aware also that language comes to be used progressively for expressing what we call in common parlance as one's concepts, thinking, etc. Yet he is preoccupied (for his own justifiable reasons) with the study of emergence of linguistic structures. He ignores the concomitant developments linked with the emergence of language and in the process, the genesis of thought, reasoning and logical systems is never touched upon by him, or even when touched upon, he fails to weave them into a coherent theory embracing the whole gamut of language, thought and reasoning.

Even the generative grammarian who goes beyond other theorists of language in depth is no exception to it in the sense the emergence of language is not linked with the emergence of thought processes even in his theory. As emphasized above, this does not mean that a linguist closes his eyes with regard to thought, concept, reality and logic and their relations to language as a system. In fact the developments in related fields have pushed linguists to take positions and to restate their views on the subject. However, linguists are interested more in the analysis of the system (language) than in the uses of the system, among which they include thinking also.

Language is used for interpersonal and intra-individual communication. Intra-individual communication is as vital as the interpersonal communication. A good part of one's own life is led in the intra-individual plane and a good part of one's own language use is on this plane. Hence the mechanisms and the characteristics of intra-individual communication are as important as the mechanisms and characteristics of interpersonal communication. However, linguists seem to be interested only in the form, content, mechanisms of the interpersonal communication as exemplified in verbal language and only a passing reference, if at all there is any, is made on the form, content, mechanisms and use of the intra-individual communication as exemplified in 'silent' language. The genetic relationship between the two and the influence of one on the other hardly form the subject matter of linguistics.

This neglect, if at all it is to be considered neglect, rather than something dictated by common agreement among the practitioners about the scope of their field, is found even in psychology to some extent. Both psychologists and linguists shun subjective reporting done by the objects of study. In studies on thought processes one has to resort to subjective reporting in addition to others. Subjective reporting does not throw light on the ongoing processes and tends to be edited versions of what went on. However, developmental psychologists do not fail to note the thought processes and link them with language and logic.

53. Wallace Chafe (  /ˈtʃeɪf/; born 1927) is an American linguist. He is Professor Emeritus and research professor at The University of California: Santa Barbara.^[1]

Chafe was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He graduated from Yale University, where he obtained his doctorate in 1958. From 1975 to 1986 he was the director of the Survey of California and Other Indian Languages at the University of California, Berkeley.^[2] He later moved to the University of California, Santa Barbara, and became professor emeritus at UCSB in 1991.

Chafe is a cognitivist; he considers semantics to be a basic component of language. He is a critic of Noam Chomsky's generative linguistics.^{[citation needed]}

He is an influential scholar in indigenous languages of the Americas, notably Iroquoian and Caddoan languages, in discourse analysis and psycholinguistics, and also prosody of speech.

Together with Johanna Nichols, he edited a seminal volume on evidentiality in language in 1986.

57. transposition is a term in linguistics to describe the substitution of a gendered personal pronoun for the other gendered form. When used to describe a woman, this would be using the pronounce his or him instead of her, and he instead of she. For men, it would be the reverse.

61. 1. Omission. Summer rains in Florida may be violent, while they last. Летом во Флориде бывают сильные ливни. From the point of view of the Russian language, the clause "while they last" is redundant and would make the Russian sentence sound very unnatural if it were to be translated.

   2. Addition. The policeman waved me on. - Полицейский помахал мне рукой, показывая что я могу проезжать. Or: ''Полицейский рукой просигналил (показал), что я могу проезжать. The compact English phrase "to wave on" has no compact equivalent in Russian.

   3. Transposition. Transposition involves changing the order of words in the target text (TT) as compared to the Source text (ST). Typically, an English sentence has a "subject+predicate+object+adverbial adjunct+place+time" word order: A delegation of Moscow State University students arrived in Gainesville yesterday. Вчеpa в Гейнзвиль прибыла группа студентов из Московского государственного университета. A typical Russian sentence would generally have a reverse word order: time+place+predicate+subject+object+adverbial adjunct.

   4. Change of grammatical forms. For example, in the Russian translation of Prime Minister Tony Blair was hit by a tomato, the original Passive Voice construction is changed to an Active Voice construction: ...в британского премьера попал помидор...

   5. Loss-of-meaning compensation involves adding to or reinforcing a TT in one place to compensate for something that hasn't been translated in a different place in the ST: I ain't got no time for that kind of thing! - to compensate for the double negation in You ain't seen nothin' yet! an emphatic syntactic construction can be used in the Rus­sian translation - To ли еще будет!

   6. Concretization is used when something in the TL is usually expressed using concepts with narrower meaning or when preserving the original concepts with broader meaning would result in an awkward translation: There were pictures on all the walls and there was a vase with flowers on the table. - На всех стенах комнаты висели картины, а на столе стояла ваза с цветами.

   7. Generalization is used when something in the TL is usually expressed using concepts with broader meaning or when pre­serving the original concepts with narrower meaning would result in an awkward translation: She ordered a daiquiri. (= a sweet alcoholic drink made of rum and fruit juice) - Она заказала коктейль. Or. There used to be a drugstore (a Walgreens pharmacy) around here. I need to buy some soda water. - Здесь раньше был магазин. Мне надо купить газированной воды. In the latter example, translating drugstore or Walgreens pharmacy as аптека or аптека "Уолгринз " would not only be baffling to a Russian - because in Russia they do not sell газированную воду in аптеках - but it would also be unnecessary as for the purposes of communication магазин is just as good in this con­text. The more specific drugstore or Walgreens pharmacy is translated here by the more general term магазин.

   8. Antonymic translation involves trans­lating a phrase or clause containing a negation using a phrase or clause that does not contain a negation or vice versa: I don't think you're right. - Я думаю, что вы не правы.

   9. Meaning extension or sense development involves translating a cause by its effect or vice versa: You can't be serious. - Вы, должно быть, шутите. (Cause is translated by its effect: Since you can't be serious, it follows that you must be joking). In the above example, meaning extension is combined with an antonymic translation. Another example: He answered the phone. - Он поднял трубку. You can't speak on the phone unless you have lifted the receiver. The effect "answered" in the ST is translated by its cause "lifted the receiver" (="поднял трубку") in the ТТ.

   10. Metonymic translation. A metonymic translation is similar to meaning extension. Metonymy is a figure of speech in which one word or phrase is substituted for another with which it is closely associated, as in the use of Moscow for the Russian government. Using a part for the whole, the whole for one of ifs parts, or one of two contiguous concepts for the other are typical metonymic figures of speech. E.g.: School broke up for the summer recess. - Занятия прекратились. Все ушли на летние каникулы. (Или: Начались летние каникулы.)

   11. Sentence integration involves com­bining two or more sentences into one: Your presence isn't required. Nor is it desirable. - Ваше присутствие не требуется и даже нежелательно.

   12. Sentence fragmentation involves split­ting one complex or compound sentence into two or more simpler sen­tences: People everywhere are confronted with the need to make deci­sions in the face of ignorance and this dilemma is growing. - Люди везде сталкиваются с необходимостью принятия решений при отсутствии достаточной информации. Эта проблема возникает все чаще и чаще. Both sentence integration and sentence fragmentation are prompted by considerations of text cohesion and coherence. Cohesion is the network of surface relations which link words and sentences in a text. Coherence is the network of conceptual relations which underlie the surface text. Both concern the ways stretches of language are connected to each other. In the case of cohesion, stretches of language are connected to each other by virtue of lexical and grammatical dependencies. In the case of coherence, they are connected by virtue of conceptual or meaning dependencies as perceived by language users.

  

65. The antonymic translating is employed for the sake of achieving faithfulness in conveying the content or expressiveness when an affirmative in sense or structure language unit (word, word-combination or sentence) is conveyed as a negative in a sense or structure but identical in content language unit or vice versa

69.

Я.И. Рецкер	Л.С. Бархударов	В.Н. Комиссаров
II. Грамматичесикие Т.		III. Грамматические Т.
Полные (главные ЧП)
Частичные (второст. ЧП)
		Дословный П. (нулевая Т.)
		Членение предложений
		Объединение предложений
	б. Грамматические замены	Грамматические замены
	З. формы слова
	З. Части речи	З. Части речи
	З. членов предложения	З. членов предложения
	Синтаксич. замены в сложном предложении	З. предложений определенного типа
		З. грамматической категории
	II. Перестановки III. Добавления IV. Опущения

73. Though the notions of simple sentence and composite sentence seem to be well defined and distinctly opposed to each other, this does not mean that there are no transitional elements between them. As in so many other cases, in the sphere of sentence types we find a considerable number of phenomena which, though not exactly transgressing the limits of the simple sentence, do not quite fit into it, and show some peculiarities which justify our treating them as transitional between the simple and the composite sentence. Of these, we will consider the following syntactical phenomena: (1) sentences with homogeneous parts (sometimes also termed "contracted sentences"). (2) sentences with a dependent appendix, and (3) sentences with secondary predication. Different as they are in many respects, these phenomena are alike in that they gradually get out of the limits of the simple sentence and approach the composite sentence (some of them the compound, others the complex sentence).