- •Contents
- •Acknowledgements
- •Introduction
- •1 Preliminaries to translation as a process
- •PRACTICAL 1
- •1.1 Intralingual translation
- •1.2 Intralingual translation
- •1.3 Gist translation
- •2 Preliminaries to translation as a product
- •EQUIVALENCE AND TRANSLATION LOSS
- •PRACTICAL 2
- •2.1 Translation loss
- •2.2 Degrees of freedom; translation loss
- •3 Cultural transposition
- •CULTURAL TRANSPOSITION
- •Exoticism and calque
- •Cultural transplantation
- •Cultural borrowing
- •Communicative translation
- •PRACTICAL 3
- •3.1 Cultural transposition
- •4 Compensation
- •CATEGORIES OF COMPENSATION
- •PRACTICAL 4
- •4.1 Compensation
- •The formal properties of texts: Introduction
- •5 The formal properties of texts: Phonic/graphic and prosodic issues in translation
- •THE PHONIC/GRAPHIC LEVEL
- •THE PROSODIC LEVEL
- •Rudiments of Italian and English versification
- •PRACTICAL 5
- •5.1 Phonic/graphic and prosodic issues
- •5.2 Phonic/graphic and prosodic issues
- •6 The formal properties of texts: Grammatical and sentential issues in translation
- •THE GRAMMATICAL LEVEL
- •Words
- •Grammatical arrangement
- •THE SENTENTIAL LEVEL
- •PRACTICAL 6
- •6.1 Grammatical and sentential issues
- •6.2 Grammatical and sentential issues
- •7 The formal properties of texts: Discourse and intertextual issues in translation
- •THE DISCOURSE LEVEL
- •THE INTERTEXTUAL LEVEL
- •PRACTICAL 7
- •7.1 Discourse and intertextual issues
- •8 Literal meaning and translation issues
- •SYNONYMY
- •HYPERONYMY-HYPONYMY
- •PARTIALLY OVERLAPPING TRANSLATION
- •PRACTICAL 8
- •8.1 Particularizing, generalizing and partially overlapping translation
- •9 Connotative meaning and translation issues
- •ATTITUDINAL MEANING
- •ASSOCIATIVE MEANING
- •ALLUSIVE MEANING
- •REFLECTED MEANING
- •COLLOCATIVE MEANING
- •AFFECTIVE MEANING
- •PRACTICAL 9
- •9.1 Connotative meaning
- •10 Language variety: Translation issues in register, sociolect and dialect
- •REGISTER
- •Tonal register
- •Social register
- •Social or tonal?
- •SOCIOLECT
- •DIALECT
- •CODE-SWITCHING
- •PRACTICAL 10
- •10.1 Language variety
- •10.2 Language variety
- •11 Textual genre and translation issues
- •SUBJECT MATTER
- •ORAL TEXTS AND WRITTEN TEXTS
- •NOTES ON SUBTITLING
- •Sample subtitling exercise
- •PRACTICAL 11
- •11.1 Genre and translation
- •11.2 Genre and translation
- •11.3 Genre and translation
- •12 Scientific and technical translation
- •PRACTICAL 12
- •12.1 Scientific and technical translation
- •12.2 Scientific and technical translation
- •13 Official, legal and business translation
- •PREMESSA
- •BILANCIO AL 31.12.96
- •PRACTICAL 13
- •13.1 Official and legal translation
- •13.2 Official and legal translation
- •14 Translating consumeroriented texts
- •PRACTICAL 14
- •14.1 Consumer-oriented texts
- •14.2 Consumer-oriented texts
- •15 Revising and editing TTs
- •PRACTICAL 15
- •15.1 Revising and editing
- •Contrastive topics and practicals: Introduction
- •16 Contrastive topic and practical: Nominalization
- •17 Contrastive topic and practical: Determiners
- •LINGUA E LINGUACCE
- •Il Novissimo Ceccarelli Illustrato
- •UN MONDO IMBOTTITO DI MAZZETTE
- •18 Contrastive topic and practical: Adverbials
- •19 Contrastive topic and practical: Condition and future in the past
- •20 Summary and conclusion
- •Postscript: A career in translation?
- •Bibliography
- •Index
Introduction
This book is a practical course in translation from Italian into English. It has grown out of courses piloted in the universities of St Andrews and Glasgow. It has its origins in Thinking Translation, a course in FrenchEnglish translation by Sándor Hervey and Ian Higgins first published in 1992. The approach is essentially the same as in that book, but a number of key concepts, notably cultural transposition, compensation and genre, have been considerably redefined and clarified in the light of a decade's experience in teaching all four versions of the courseÐGerman and Spanish as well as French and Italian.
The original initiative for courses along these lines came from Sándor Hervey. It is a matter of great regret for the other three authors of this book that Sándor, who was out of the country during the year in which it was first drafted, died suddenly without ever seeing the Italian incarnation of the original concept. Much of Thinking Italian Translation is his, however, and his co-authors gratefully acknowledge this by dedicating the book to his memory.
`Can translation be taught?' The question is asked surprisingly oftenÐ sometimes even by good translators, whom one would expect to know better. Certainly, as teachers of translation know, some people are naturally better at it than others. In this respect, aptitude for translation is no different from aptitude for any other activity: teaching and practice help anyone, including the most gifted, to perform at a higher level. Even Mozart had music lessons.
But most of us are not geniuses. Here again, anyone who has taught the subject knows that a structured course will help most students to become significantly better at translationÐoften good enough to earn their living at it. This book offers just such a course. Its progressive exposition of different sorts of translation problem is accompanied with plenty of practice in developing a rationale for solving them. It is a course not in translation theory, but in translation method, encouraging thoughtful consideration of possible solutions to practical problems. Theoretical issues do inevitably arise, but the aim of the course is to develop proficiency in the method, not to investigate its theoretical implications. The theoretical notions that we apply are borrowed eclectically from translation theory and linguistics, solely with this practical aim in mind. When technical or theoretical terms are first explained, they are set in bold type; they are also listed in the Glossary on pp. 211±19.
2 THINKING ITALIAN TRANSLATION
If this is not a course in translation theory or linguistics, it is not a languageteaching course, either. The focus is on how to translate. It is assumed that the student already has a good command of Italian, and is familiar with the proper use of dictionaries and, where appropriate, data banks. The course is therefore aimed at final-year undergraduates, and at postgraduates or others seeking an academic or professional qualification in translation. That said, the analytical attention given to a wide variety of texts means that students do learn a lot of ItalianÐand probably a fair bit of English, too.
This last point is important. While our main aim is to improve quality in translation, it must be remembered that this quality requires the translator to have an adequate command of English as well as of Italian. Assuming that this is the case, translator training normally focuses on translation into the mother tongue, because higher quality is achieved in that direction than in translating into a foreign language. Hence the predominance of unidirectional translation, from Italian into English, in this course. By its very nature, however, the course is also useful for Italian students seeking to improve their skills in translation into English: this is a staple part of English studies in Italy, and Thinking Italian Translation offers a new methodology and plenty of practical work in this area.
The course has a progressive structure. It begins with the fundamental issues, options and alternatives of which a translator must be aware: translation as process, translation as product, cultural issues in translation, and the nature and crucial importance of compensation in translation. Next, it looks at translation issues raised on six layers of textual variables, from the phonic to the intertextual. It then moves, via a series of semantic and stylistic topics (literal meaning, connotative meaning, register, sociolect and dialect), to the question of genre, or text-type. Further chapters are devoted to technical translation, legal and administrative translation, consumeroriented translation, and translation revision and editing.
Chapter by chapter, then, the student is progressively trained to ask, and to answer, a series of questions that apply to any text given for translation. Preeminent among these are: `What is the purpose of my translation, and what are the salient features of this text?' No translation is produced in a vacuum, and we stress throughout the course that the needs of the target audience and the requirements of the person commissioning the translation are primary factors in translation decisions. For this same reason, when students are asked in a practical to do a translation, we always include a translation brief in the assignment. As for the salient features of the text, these are what add up to its specificity as typical or atypical of a particular genre or genres. Once its genremembership, and therefore its purpose, has been pinned down, the translator can decide on a strategy for meeting the translation brief. The student's attention is kept focused on this issue by the wide variety of genres found in the practicals: in addition to technical, legal and consumer-oriented texts, students are asked to work on various sorts of journalistic and literary text, song, film subtitling, financial texts, etc.
INTRODUCTION 3
The sorts of question that need to be asked in determining the salient features of any text are listed in the schema of textual matrices on p. 5. The schema amounts to a check-list of potentially relevant kinds of textual feature. These are presented in the order in which they arise in the course, with one exception: as a reminder of the prime importance of purpose and genre, the genre matrix is placed at the top of the schema. There are two reasons for keeping discussion of genre as such until Chapter 11, even though its decisive importance is stressed throughout. The first is that the genre-membership of a text cannot be finally decided until the other salient features have been isolated. The second is that we have found that students are more confident and successful in responding to genre requirements after working on formal properties of texts, literal and connotative meaning and language variety than before. This is particularly true of texts with hybrid genre-features. Apart from genre, the schema of matrices outlines the investigation, in Chapters 3 and 5±10, of translation issues raised by textual features. (Compensation, the subject of Chapter 4, is not a textual feature, and so does not figure in the schema.) The student would be well-advised to refer to the schema before tackling a practical: it is a progressive reminder of what questions to ask of the text set for translation.
While the course systematically builds up a methodical approach, we are not trying to `mechanize' translation by offering some inflexible rule or recipe. Very much the opposite: translation is a creative activity, and the translator's personal responsibility is paramount. We therefore emphasize the need to recognize options and alternatives, the need for rational discussion, and the need for decision-making. Each chapter is intended for class discussion at the start of the corresponding seminar, and a lot of the practicals are best done by students working in small groups. This is to help students keep in mind that, whatever approach the translator adopts, it should be self-aware and methodical.
The course is divided into a series of units intended to fit into an academic timetable. Each of the first eleven units comprises a chapter outlining a coherent set of notions and problems, and a practical or practicals in which students are set concrete translation tasks relevant to the chapter. These units are designed to be studied in numerical order, and are the essential foundation for the rest of the course. Chapters 12±14 give practice in various genres which commonly provide the bread and butter of professional translators. Ideally, all of these should be worked through, but local conditions may oblige the tutor to leave one out. Chapter 15 focuses on revision and editing. Chapters 16±19 are different from the others. They can be studied at whatever points in the course seem most opportune. These chapters are devoted to four areas of `contrastive linguistics' in which Italian-English translation problems commonly occur.
Each unit needs between 90 minutes and 2 hours of seminar time. It is vital that each student should have the necessary reference books in class: a c.2000page monolingual Italian dictionary, a similar-sized Italian-English/ EnglishItalian dictionary, an English dictionary and an English thesaurus. Some of the practical work will be done at homeÐsometimes individually, sometimes in
4 THINKING ITALIAN TRANSLATION
groupsÐand handed in for assessment by the tutor. How often this is done will be decided by tutors and students between them. Full suggestions for teaching and assessment can be found in S.Hervey, I. Higgins, S.Cragie and P.Gambarotta,
Thinking Italian Translation: Tutor's Handbook (Routledge, 2000), which can be obtained from the address given on the opening page of this book.
Note that Practical 11 involves work on oral texts, which are easily obtainable commercially. Details are given on pp. 126±7. Some of the practicals involve work on texts that are not contained in the present volume, but are intended for distribution in class. These texts are found in the Tutor's Handbook.
Students doing the course often inquire about the possibility of translation as a career. The Postscript (pp. 208±10) outlines the nature, attractions and drawbacks of translation work, and contains information about professional bodies which can give detailed help and advice.
SCHEMA OF TEXTUAL MATRICES |
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Question to ask |
Matrix of features |
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Examples of |
about the text |
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typical features |
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GENRE MATRIX (Chapter 11) |
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What genre(s) |
Genre types: |
literary |
short story, etc. |
does this text |
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belong to: |
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religious |
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biblical text, etc. |
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philosophical |
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essay on good and |
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evil, etc. |
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empirical |
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scientific paper, |
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balance sheet, etc. |
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persuasive |
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law, |
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advertisement, etc. |
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hybrid |
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sermon, parody, |
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job contract, etc. |
Oral vs written: |
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dialogue, song, |
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subtitles, etc. |
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CULTURAL MATRIX (Chapter 3) |
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Are there |
Exoticism |
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wholesale |
significant |
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foreignness |
features |
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presenting a |
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choice between: |
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Calque |
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idiom translated |
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literally, etc. |
Cultural borrowing |
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name of historical |
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movement, etc. |
Communicative translation |
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public notices, |
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proverbs, etc. |
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INTRODUCTION 5 |
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SCHEMA OF TEXTUAL MATRICES |
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Question to ask |
Matrix of features |
Examples of |
about the text |
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typical features |
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Cultural transplantation |
Rome recast as |
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Edinburgh, etc. |
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FORMAL MATRIX (Chapters 5±7) |
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Are there |
Phonic/graphic level |
alliteration, |
significant |
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layout, etc. |
features on the: |
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Prosodic level |
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vocal pitch, |
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rhythm, etc. |
Grammatical level: |
lexis |
archaism, |
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overtones, etc. |
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syntax |
simple vs complex |
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syntax, etc. |
Sentential level |
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sequential focus, |
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intonation, etc. |
Discourse level |
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cohesion markers, |
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etc. |
Intertextual level |
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pastiche, allusion |
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to Dante, etc. |
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SEMANTIC MATRIX (Chapters 8±9) |
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Are there |
Literal meaning |
synonymy, etc. |
significant |
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instances of: |
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Attitudinal meaning |
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hostile attitude to |
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referent, etc. |
Associative meaning |
gender |
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stereotyping of |
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referent, etc. |
Allusive meaning |
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echo of proverb, |
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etc. |
Reflected meaning |
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play on words, |
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etc. |
Collocative meaning |
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collocative clash, |
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etc. |
Affective meaning |
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offensive attitude |
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to addressee, etc. |
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VARIETAL MATRIX (Chapter 10) |
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Are there |
Tonal register |
ingratiating tone, |
significant |
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etc. |
instances of: |
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Social register |
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left-wing student |
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dropout, etc. |
6 THINKING ITALIAN TRANSLATION
SCHEMA OF TEXTUAL MATRICES |
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Question to ask |
Matrix of features |
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Examples of |
about the text |
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typical features |
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Sociolect |
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Milan urban |
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working class, etc. |
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Dialect |
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Sicilianisms, etc. |
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