94 Discourse and register analysis approaches

functional equivalence' should be sought, with the TT enabling access to the function of the ST, allowing the TT receivers to 'eavesdrop' on the ST. For example, British readers of Thomas Mann can use an English TT of The Magic Mountain to gain access to the ST Die Zauberberg, but they know they are reading a translation and the individual function of the two texts cannot be the same.

A covert translation 'is a translation which enjoys the status of an original source text in the target culture' (p. 69). The ST is not linked particularly to the ST culture or audience; both ST and TT address their respective receivers directly. Examples given by House are a tourist information book­let, a letter from a company chairman to the shareholders and an article in the Unesco Courier. The function of a covert translation is 'to recreate, reproduce or represent in the translated text the function the original has in its linguacultural framework and discourse world' (p. 114). It does this with­out taking the TT reader into the discourse world of the ST. Hence, equiva­lence is necessary at the level of genre and the individual text function, but what House (p. 114) calls a 'cultural filter' needs to be applied by the transla­tor, modifying cultural elements and thus giving the impression that the TT is an original. This may involve changes at the levels of language/text and register. House (pp. 115-17) discusses the meaning of cultural filter in the context of German-English comparative pragmatic studies which she has conducted and gives examples of different practices in the two cultures that need to be reflected in translation. For instance, she finds that German tends to prefer a more direct content focus, whereas English is more interpersonal. This would need to be reflected in covert translation, the letter from the company chairman being more interpersonal in English, for instance.

House is at pains to point out the fact that the 'overt'-'covert' translation distinction is a cline rather than a pair of binary opposites. Furthermore, in cases where covertly functional equivalence is desired but where the ST genre does not exist in the target culture, the aim should be to produce a covert version rather than a covert translation. Version is also the term used to describe apparently unforced changes in genre (p. 161).

House applies the model to a number of texts, including (pp. 147-57) an extract from a polemical history text about civilian Germans' involvement in the holocaust (ST English, TT German). A pattern of differences is identified in the dimensions of field and tenor. In field, the repetition of the word Qerman in the ST, which serves to highlight German civilian responsibility in the events, is less frequent in the TT. In tenor, there is a reduction in intensi-fiers, superlatives and other emotive lexis. This makes the author's stance less obvious in the TT, and House even suggests (p. 155) that it has an effect on the realization of genre. Whereas the ST is a controversial popular history book (albeit based on the author's doctoral thesis), the TT is a more formal academic treatise. House goes on to posit possible reasons for these changes, notably pressure from the German publishers for political and marketing reasons. The linking of the linguistic analysis to real-world translation

TEXT AND PRAGMATIC LEVEL ANALYSIS 95

conditions is a move that owes something to the theory of translational f*

action which was discussed in chapter 5. J

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