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Summary and conclusion

The only conclusion necessary to Thinking Italian Translation is a summing up of what it is the translator is supposed to be thinking about. The first thing to remember is that, whatever revision or editing the TT has undergone, it is the translator who is ultimately responsible for it. `Thinking' translation implies a clear-sighted acceptance of this responsibility, but it also implies reducing the element of chance in how the TT will be received. If responsibility entails making decisions, applying the method presented in this book will enable the translator to make them intelligently and imaginatively enough to be confident of what the overall impact of the TT will be. This is why we have stressed throughout the course the need for a clearly formulated initial strategy, and for clearly formulated decisions of detail rationally linked to the strategy.

One thing we hope to have shown is that no strategy can be assumed a priori. Formulating an appropriate strategy means assessing the salient features of a particular ST and of the particular circumstances in which it is to be translated. The crucial question then is: `How do I decide which features are salient?' What we have tried to do is equip the student translator with a way of answering this question, whatever the nature of the ST. For our purposes, the salient features of a text can be said to be its most relevant ones, those that have significant expressive function. Devising a strategy means prioritizing the cultural, formal, semantic, stylistic and genrerelated properties of the ST according to two things: their relative textual relevance, and the amount of attention they should receive in translation. The aim is to deal with translation loss in as rational and systematic a way as possible. This implies being prepared, if necessary, to lose features that have relatively little textual relevance in a given ST (e.g. alliteration in a technical text on mining), sacrificing less relevant textual details to more relevant ones. And, of course, it implies using compensation to restore features of high textual relevance that cannot be more directly rendered (e.g. a play on words in a literary text).

`Textual relevance' is thus a qualitative measure of how far particular properties of a text are responsible for its overall impact. Textually relevant features are those that stand out as making the text what it is. Since it is the translator who decides what is textually relevant, the decision is inescapably subjective. But not necessarily damagingly so. A relatively objective test of

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textual relevance is to imagine that a particular textual property is omitted from the text and to assess what difference this would make to the overall impact of the text. If the answer is `little or none', the property in question has little textual relevance. But if omitting it would imply a loss in either the genre-representative or the individual character of the text, then it has high textual relevance.

Developing a translation strategy by assessing textual relevance in an ST entails scanning the text for every kind of feature that might be relevant to producing an appropriate TT. For this scanning to be effective, it is vital to have in mind a systematic set of questions to ask of the ST. These questions correspond to the check-list of kinds of textual feature introduced in the schema of textual matrices on p. 5. The successive chapters of Thinking Italian Translation tackle the sorts of translation issue lying behind the questions that need to be asked of texts. The idea is that the translator learns to ask the questions systematically, one after the other. As students working through the book will have found, it only takes a bit of practice to be able to do this very quickly and efficiently.

Some comments are called for on aspects of the relation between the schema of textual matrices and the book you have read. First, the `cultural' matrix is different in focus from the others. Unlike the others, it does not list types of feature that may in themselves be salient in the ST before the translator starts forming a strategy. Corresponding to Chapter 3, it lists types of feature whose relevance can only be decided when the translator starts to form a strategy. That is, it draws attention to features that force the translator to choose between source-culture and target-culture elements. As such, it does invite the translator to assess how far the culture-specificity of ST features is textually relevantÐthis is why we have included it in the schema of textual matrices.

The other matrices are more straightforward reminders of what sorts of thing to look for when asking what the relevant features of a text are. Chapters 5±7 correspond to the `formal' matrix, introducing translation issues raised by the formal properties of texts. Chapters 8 and 9 correspond to the `semantic' matrix; the translation issues addressed here are the ones most typically raised by literal and connotative meaning. Chapter 10 corresponds to the `varietal' matrix; the questions to ask here concern language variety and its translation implications. Chapter 11, corresponding to the `genre' matrix, gives a set of parameters to apply in identifying textual genre preparatory to translation. (As is explained in the Introduction and stressed throughout the course, genre is a primary factor in deciding a strategy, but can itself only be determined after the other salient features of the ST have been identified. Hence its position halfway through the course rather than at the beginning.) Chapters 12±14 then give a brief sample of the many sub-genres from which professional translators will normally choose their speciality.

Some vital topics in the book do not figure as such in the schema of matrices. This is because they either apply universally from top to bottom of the schema, or concern a translation operation, not a textual feature. Grammatical transposition,

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for example, is introduced in Chapter 2 but is of central relevance in every chapter and every practical. There is a case to be made for including it in the cultural matrix, but it is so all-pervasive that it is not useful to identify it as a discrete element in the matrix. It is in fact so important that Chapters 16±19 are given entirely to itÐand there could have been many more than these four. The topic of grammatical transposition would have been altogether too big for Chapter 3.

Another absolutely crucial topic, introduced as such in Chapter 4 but everywhere relevant, is compensation. More than anything else, successful compensation exemplifies the combination of imagination and rigour that is the mark of a good translator. However, even though compensation very often involves cultural and/or grammatical transposition, it is a translation operation, not a textual feature. So too is revising, which is introduced as such in Chapter 15, but is a vital stage in the translation process and figures in a number of chapters and practicals.

One pre-eminent translation issue is neither a textual feature nor a translation operation. This is the translation briefÐwhy the text is being translated, on whose behalf, and for what audience. As we suggest in Chapter 11, it is useful, for practical translation needs, to see the communicative purpose of a text as very closely linked with its genre. Genre, of course, is a textual feature, and as such figures at the head of the schema on p. 5. The reason why it is placed at the top is precisely that it shares a prime importance with communicative purpose: the translation process will result in a translation product, a text having specific textual features, and produced in order to meet a communicative demand. This demand, formulated by the workprovider, is the translation brief. As the brief is neither a process nor a textual feature, it does not have a chapter to itself. But it has decisive importance, and that is why we have everywhere stressed its role as a parameter in assessing the relevance of ST and TT textual features, and why, in practicals, you have been asked to produce your TTs as if in response to a specific commission.

It should be remembered that the schema of matrices can be used to analyse any text, not just an ST. It can be applied to draft TTs, their features being systematically compared with those of the ST so as to see which details will be acceptable in the final version. Published TTs can also be evaluated in the same way. But whatever the text that is analysed by this method, never forget that the watchword is¼thinking translation. This course encourages a methodical approach based on reasoned analysis of textual features and the translation problems they pose. But `methodical' is not synonymous with `mechanical' or `automatic'. As we said in the Introduction, good translators know what they are doing: for thinking translation, there has to be a thinker, an individual person using flair and rigour to take creative, responsible decisions.

To sum up, then, we have tried to do two things in this course. First, to help you ask and answer the strategic questions we listed on p. 6: `What is the message content of this particular ST? What are its salient linguistic features?

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What are its principal effects? What genre does it belong to and what audience is it aimed at? What are the functions and intended audience of my translation? What are the implications of these factors? If a choice has to be made among them, which ones should be given priority?' And second, to help you use intelligent, creative techniques for the translation operation, the battle with the problems of syntax, lexis, etc. that has to be fought in translating particular expressions in their particular context.