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complement for `flourish', so that the sentence does not end with unidiomatic abruptness.

CATEGORIES OF COMPENSATION

In discussing TTs, it is sometimes helpful to distinguish between different categories of compensation. We shall suggest three. Remember, however, that most cases of compensation belong in more than one category. The most important thing is not to agonize over what label to give an instance of compensation, but to be clear what loss it compensates for and how it does so. Remember, too, that the question of how to compensate can never be considered in and for itself, in isolation from other crucial factors: context, style, genre, the purpose of the ST and of the TT.

Compensation is needed whenever consideration of these factors confronts the translator with inevitable, but unwelcome, compromise. Simply put, it is a less unwelcome compromise. It usually entails a difference in mode between the ST textual effect and the TT textual effect. This compensation in mode can take very many forms. For instance, it may involve making explicit what is implicit in the ST, or implicit what is explicit. Literal meaning may have to replace connotative meaning, or vice versa. Compensation may involve substituting concrete for abstract, or abstract for concrete. It nearly always involves using different parts of speech and syntactic structures from those indicated by literal translation. There are examples of all these devices in our `Blackpool' TT. In other texts, the same approach may result in replacing, say, a snatch of Dante with an analogous snatch of Milton. An ST pun may have to be replaced with a different form of word play. All these sorts of substitution may be confined to single words, but they more usually extend to whole phrases, sentences, or even paragraphs. Sometimes, a whole text is affected. For instance, quite apart from lexical and grammatical considerations, if a poem is heavily marked by rhyme and assonance, and the translator decides that for some reason rhyme and assonance would lead to unacceptable translation loss, compensation might consist of heavily marking the TT with rhythm and alliteration instead.

Compensation also usually entails a change in place, the TT textual effect occurring at a different place, relative to the other features in the TT context, from the corresponding textual effect in the ST context. We shall call this compensation in place. A simple example in the `Blackpool' text is the use of `old' to qualify `traditions' instead of `craftsmanship'.

Compensation also often involves a change in `economy', ST features having to be spread over a relatively longer length of TT. We shall call this compensation by splitting. The following sentence, from an unpublished essay by the composer Luca Francesconi, provides an excellent example of the need for compensation by splitting:

40 THINKING ITALIAN TRANSLATION

Anzi, la sensazione brutale è che si voglia eliminare tutto ciò che non è evasione e naturalmente anche la ricerca musicale, che è prima di tutto ricerca instancabile di identità e di valori fondanti, linguistici ed umani. Ricerca che porta con sé nel bene e nel male il retaggio del grande, antichissimo pensiero occidentale.

The term `ricerca' is central to the author's thinking throughout this essay. Now in many contexts, it clearly means either `research', or `search', or `quest', or `investigation', or `study'. In such cases, the translator simply has to choose the right term. But in many other contexts, including this one, it means several of these things at once. There is no single English word that can carry these same combinations of meanings. This is where compensation by splitting comes in. In the following TT, we have tried to divide up the semantic load of `ricerca' and spread it over several TL expressions:

On the contrary, the brutal impression is that there is a wish to do away with anything that is not escapism, including of course research in and through musicÐthat is, above all, a search, an indefatigable quest for founding values, linguistic and human. A quest that brings with it, for better or for worse, the great and ancient heritage of Western thought.

In this TT, the use of `in and through music' instead of `musical' triggers two of the four sorts of `ricerca' that are implied in the ST: research into music, and the use of music as a tool for acquiring knowledge. The other two are conveyed as nouns in apposition to `research': `search' and `quest'. The complexity of `ricerca' is therefore split up into its components and spread over three nouns and two prepositions. Note that, as happens more often than not, this compensation by splitting also entails grammatical transpositionÐthat is, there is also an element of compensation in mode. There are three instances of this. First, part of the noun `ricerca' is expressed by prepositions. Second, these prepositions need a noun after them, so the noun `music' corresponds to the adjective `musicale'. Third, introducing the noun `music' means that `che' cannot be translated with a relative pronoun, because `research in and through music, which is ¼' is ambiguous: hence the change in syntax, the relative pronoun being replaced with a dash and the conjunction `that is'.

This complex example raises very clearly the issue of the parameters of compensation. What we have done is deliberately introduce loss in economy and grammar in order to avoid more serious loss in message content. Now, since it is after all the translator's job to convey the message content, it could be reasonably argued that splitting `ricerca' as we have done is not strictly speaking compensation, but simply a constraint. That is, to do full justice to the ST's semantic complexity, the translator does not have a choice, because this expansion is the only adequate solutionÐusing fewer or other possible meanings of `ricerca' would simply have given a mistranslation.

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It is of course true that if, in this context, `ricerca' is seen as having four meanings, a TT that does not in some way convey them all should be considered defective. In deciding whether the changes introduced amount to compensation, the crucial factor is the role of context. If an ST expression has a standard TL counterpart that, regardless of context, spreads it over a relatively longer stretch of TT, then this is a constraint, an instance of canonic expansion, not of compensation. So, for example, `fondo rettificativo' will always be translated as `exchange equalization fund', whatever the contextÐin every case, the translation is predictable; that is, the differences between ST expression and TT expression only reflect lexical and syntactic differences between Italian and English. The `ricerca' example is not like this, however. It does reflect lexical differences between Italian and English, but our expansion is not canonic or predictable; in fact it is virtually unrepeatable. To the extent that it is a specific reaction to specific occurrences of `ricerca' in a specific context, it is a case of compensation.

Distinguishing the three sorts of compensation is a rough-and-ready categorization. Each could be refined and subdivided. In any case, most cases of compensation involve more than one category. However, our purpose here is not to elaborate a taxonomy, but simply to alert students to the possibilities and mechanisms of compensation. In fact, in the case of compensation in mode and compensation in place, it is not usually even necessary to label them as such, because virtually all compensation entails difference in mode and place. The most important lesson to be learned from this chapter is that compensation is a matter of choice and decision. It is the reduction of an unacceptable translation loss through the calculated introduction of a less unacceptable one. Or, to put it differently, a deliberately introduced loss is a small price to pay if it is used to avoid the more serious loss that would be entailed by conventional translation of the expression concerned. So where there is no real choice open to the translator, the element of active compensation is minimal. The easiest way of illustrating this is to look at communicative translation. Communicative translation does certainly involve compensation, in that it reduces translation loss by deploying resources like those mentioned in the previous paragraph. But the element of compensation is, in a sense, `automatic': the original compensation was created long ago, by the first person who decided that, say, `Chi non risica non rosica' was best rendered with a TL equivalent like `Nothing ventured, nothing gained'. Certainly, ever since then, translators confronted with this proverb have had to be alert enough to recognize the need for communicative translationÐto that extent, producing the TL equivalent does, like all translation, involve choice and decision. But in cases like this one, the translator is not required to devise the TT expression from scratch. Therefore, in discussing TTs, such cases are generally more usefully noted as communicative translation than analysed as instances of compensation.

The same is true of the myriad cases where the canonic literal translation involves grammatical transposition. Take a simple exchange like `Ho fame.Ð