The formal properties of texts: Introduction

We have suggested that translation is most usefully taken as a challenge to reduce translation loss. The threat of loss is most obvious when the translator confronts general issues of cultural transfer like those discussed in Chapter 3. However, a threat of greater translation loss is actually posed by the formal properties of the ST.

In assessing the formal properties of texts, it is helpful to borrow some fundamental notions from linguistics. Linguistics offers a hierarchically ordered series of discrete levels on which formal properties can be discussed in a systematic way. Of course, although it is essential to distinguish between these levels when analysing texts, they do not actually function separately from one another: textual features on a given level always have their effect in terms of features on all the other levels.

In any text, there are many points at which it could have been different. Where there is one sound, there might have been another (compare `road tolls' and `toad rolls'). Or where there is a question mark there might have been an exclamation mark (compare `What rubbish?' and `What rubbish!'). Or where there is an allusion to the Bible there might have been one to Shakespeare. All these points of detail where a text could have been different Ðthat is, where it could have been another textÐare what we shall call textual variables. These textual variables are what the series of levels defined in linguistics make it possible to identify.

Taking the levels one at a time has two main advantages. First, looking at textual variables on a series of isolated levels makes it easier to see which are important in the ST and which are less important. As we have seen, all ST features inevitably fall prey to translation loss in some respect or other. For example, even if the TT conveys literal meaning exactly, there will at the very least be phonic loss, and very likely also loss in terms of connotations, register, and so on. It is therefore excellent translation strategy to decide in broad terms which category or categories of textual variables are indispensable in a given ST, and which can be ignored.

The other advantage in scanning the text level by level is that a proposed TT can be assessed by isolating and comparing the formal variables of ST and TT. The translator or reviser is thus able to see precisely what textual variables of the ST

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are absent from the TT, and vice versa. This makes the assessment of translation loss less impressionistic, which in turn permits a more self-aware and methodical way of reducing it.

We suggest six levels of textual variables, hierarchically arranged, in the sense that each level is built on top of the preceding one. Using the term `hierarchy' is not meant to imply that features on a `higher' level are by definition more important than those on a `lower' level: the variables only have their effect in terms of one another, and their relative importance varies from text to text or even utterance to utterance. Other categories and hierarchies could have been adopted, but arguing about alternative frameworks belongs to linguistics, not to translation method. We shall progress `bottom up', from phonic details to intertextual matters. We find that students are more comfortable with this than with a `top down' approach. In Chapters 5±7, we shall work our way up through the levels, showing what kinds of textual variable can be found on each, and how they may function in a text. Together, the six levels constitute part of a checklist of questions which the translator can ask of an ST, in order to determine what levels and properties are important in it and most need to be respected in the TT. This method does not imply a plodding or piecemeal approach to translation: applying the checklist quickly becomes automatic and very effective. (For the whole checklist, see above, p. 5.)