Approaches to Text Analysis

We may roughly divide the available literature on text analysis into two groups. First, those aiming at providing a detailed linguistic analysis of texts in terms of lexis and syntax. This approach has mostly referred to as analysis at micro-structure. Second, those related to the analysis and description of the rhetorical organization of various texts. This approach has been labeled as macro-structure analysis of texts. In this paper, we are concerned with macro-analysis and its implication in translation. First, the macro-structure of newspaper editorials in two languages, English, and Persian, will be presented. Then, the macro-structure of the poems of a famous Persian Poet, Hakim O'mar Khayam, and the English translation of these poems by a well-known English translator, Fitzgerald, will be presented as two cases in point. It would, of course, be naïve to generalize these cases to all languages and all types of genres without adequate research and empirical evidence. However, the point of discovering and unfolding macro-structures in a SL with the goal of reconstructing nearly the same patterns in the TL in the process of translation deserves theoretical and practical attention.

The Case of Newspaper Editorials

Bolivar (1994) studied editorials of The Guardian. She selected 23 editorials from The Guardian during the first three months of 1981. Based on the analysis of these editorials, she found out that a tripartite structure called "triad" organizes the macro structure of the editorials. Bolivar explains that the function of the triad is to negotiate the transmission and evaluation in written text and that it consists of three turns or elements, namely, Lead, Follow, and Valuate, serving distinctive functions of initiation, follow-up, and evaluation of the two. It shares similarities with the "exchange," as the minimal unit of spoken discourse. The following excerpt taken from The Gardian, "Behind closed Irish doors." March 3, 1981, cited in Bolivar (1994: 280-1) is an example of a triad.

L Britain and Ireland are now trying, at long last, to work out a less artificial link between them than that which binds two foreign states.

F This is the most hopeful departure of the past decade because it opens for inspection what had lain concealed for half a century and goes to the root of the anguish in Northern Ireland.

V The two countries now recognize that though they are independent of one another they cannot be foreign.

According to Bolivar, not all triads have three turns. Triads can exhibit more than three turns provided that the sequence LF is repeated and V is the final turn. Thus, triads such as LFLFV or LFLFLFV can be found when the V turn is delayed by the writer.

The study of editorials from other British newspapers conducted by Bolivar confirmed the existence of three-part structures in those newspapers.

Parallel to Bolivar's study, Riazi and Assar (2001) conducted a similar study on Persian newspaper editorials to see if the same macro-structures are detectable in this particular genre. The editorials of six currently published Persian newspapers were examined. A sample of 60 editorials, 10 for each newspaper, was randomly selected to be analyzed.

The editorials were analyzed at two levels 1) at a rhetorical macro-structure level, and 2) at a micro syntactic level. Each text (editorial) was segmented by sentence units and was codified according to its function; lead, follow, or valuate. The inter-coder reliability indices of the segmentation and codification of the editorials were then determined. An inter-coder reliability index above .80 was obtained. The following excerpt from Iran (June 27, 1997), one of the newspapers, is an example of a triad in Persian newspaper editorials.

L The motivating command of the Late Imam in May 1979 was the beginning of a revolutionary era for the popular movement to construct and develop the villages through the establishment of an organization called Jihad-e-Sazandegy.

F It was a revolutionary institution whose fundamental duty was the improvement of economic and social conditions of villagers in Iran.

V The marvelous achievements of Jihad-e-Sazandegy and the fruitful actions of this public institution proved the Imam's correctness of recognition and depth of revolutionary perception.

Results of the analysis performed on the editorials indicated that the most frequent pattern pertaining to all the studied newspapers was LFV. In other words, we can say that the general macro-structure of Persian newspaper editorials is LFV. This finding is in line with that of Bolivar's (1994) as related to The Guardian newspaper. This common pattern between the two languages enhances the translatability of the newspaper editorials. The task of translators would be to look for the triads and go for the appropriate syntax and lexicon. It is interesting to point out that in both Bolivar's and our study, it was found that each turn is characterized by specific sentence types. For example, it was found that "Leads" were mostly expressed in interrogatives; "Follows" mostly used passive structures; and "Valuates" used conditional and copulas. The usage of special syntactic structures for specific turns can be justified partly in light of the discoursal function, attributed to each structure and reported in previous studies. Interrogative sentences, for example, are used with the goal of eliciting information or presenting some new topic for discussion. Since the main function of L turn is to introduce the aboutness of the triad and a subject, therefore, it seems quite reasonable to have interrogatives mostly in L turns. On the other hand, the correspondence of passive structures and F turns might be due to the fact that passives provide development and elaboration of the events. Reid (1990: 201) points out that "the passive voice is indicative of the formal interactional character of ...[a] prose as opposed to the more personal, interactive prose of narrative." As for V turns, we can say that the function of conditionals is to produce or suggest some kind of solution or desirable action on some conditions (Bolivar 1994), thus, the association between V turns and conditionals. Becoming aware of these macro- and micro-features of texts, we can make our translations of particular texts and genres more accurate, meaningful, and communicative.

The Case of Khayam's Robaiyat (Quatrains)

Omar Khayam was one of the most famous and beloved Persian poets of middle ages. The Robaiyat of Omar Khayam is among the few Persion masterpieces that have been translated into most languages, including English, French, German, Italian, Russian, Chinese, Hindi, Arabic, and Urdu. The most famous translation of the Robaiyat from Persian into English was undertaken in 1859 by Edward J. Fitzgerald. He has tried his utmost to adhere to the spirit of the original poetry.

Yarmohammadi (1995) studied the rhetorical organization of Khayam's Robaiyat (quatrains) and compared it with its English translation by Fitzgerald. His study revealed that the macro-structure of all Khayam's Robaiyat included three components, namely, "description," "recommendation," and "reasoning" which can be used as a criterion to distinguish between the real Khayam's Robaiyat and those erroneously attributed to him. Based on his analysis, Yarmohammadi came to the conclusion that the reason for Fitzgerald's successful translation of Khayam's Robaiyat is that he was able to reconstruct the same macro-structures in English and then apply appropriate sentence structures and lexis. The following is an example of one of the Khayam's quatrains as translated by Fitzgerald.

Fitzgerald:

And this delightful Herb whose tender Green

Fledges the River's Lip on which we lean—

Ah, lean upon it lightly! for who knows

From what once lovely Lip it springs unseen!

Literal:

The grass that grows by every stream

Like angelic smiles faintly gleam

Step gently, cause it not to scream

For it has grown from a lover's dream.

Conclusion

As Hatim and Mason (1997) state, a translator typically operates on the verbal record of an act of communication between source language speaker/writer and hearers/readers and seeks to relay perceived meaning values to a group of target language receiver(s) as an separate act of communication. However, according to Hatim and Mason (1990), we know little about what patterns there are and how equivalence could be achieved between them. One thing of which we can be confident, nevertheless, is that the patterns are always employed in the service of an overriding rhetorical purpose. This is an aspect of texture which is of crucial importance to the translator. The structure of the source text becomes an important guide to decisions regarding what should or should not appear in the derived text. The point that the present paper tried to make is the benefit translators may derive from text analysis in translation by determining the micro- and macro-indices of the texts to support them in their difficult task.

Text analysis is, thus, becoming a promising tool in performing more reliable translations. There are numerous studies done on text analysis, which can have interesting messages for translators. For example, the kind of structure frequently reported for argumentative genres include "introduction, explanation of the case under discussion, outline of the argument, proof, refutation and conclusion" (Hatch 1992: 185). As a final word, we may say that in translation we should first try to reconstruct the macro-structure and rhetorical structure of the source text in the target language and then look for the appropriate words and structures; this is a procedure that skillful translators perform in the process of translation consciously or unconsciously.

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This article was originally published at Translation Journal (http://accurapid.com/journal).