6.3 Baker's text and pragmatic level analysis: a coursebook (d

for translators ~

House's 1977 book was perhaps the first major translation studies work to use Halliday's now popular model. Another that in recent years has had considerable influence on translation training and consequently on transla­tion studies is Mona Baker's In Other Words: A Coursebook on Translation (1992). Baker looks at equivalence at a series of levels: at word, above-word, grammar, thematic structure, cohesion and pragmatic levels. Of particular interest in the present chapter is her application of the systemic approach to thematic structure and cohesion and the incorporation of the pragmatic level, 'the way utterances are used in communicative situations' (Baker 1992: 217).

6.3.1 Thematic and information structures

Baker is typical of many translation scholars who make detailed use of the terminology of functional grammar and discourse analysis in that she devotes by far the most attention to the textual function. Explicit analysis of the ideational and interpersonal functions are few, although Baker does incorporate a comparison of nominalization and verbal forms in theme pos­ition in a scientific report in Brazilian Portuguese and English (Baker 1992: 169-71). Thus, for example, the ST begins with a pronominal verbal form (my emphasis):

Analisou-se as relacoes da dopamina cerebral com as funcoes motoras. [Analysed-were the relations of dopamine with the motor functions.]

The published English translation below presents a normalized word order with the passive verbal form in final position (my emphasis):

The relations between dopamine and motor functions were analyzed.

However, Baker recommends a different thematic structure in order to meet the genre conventions of English abstracts. This involves the use of the nominalized form analysis, which is retained in thematic position (my emphasis), and the addition of a different passive verbal form (is carried out):

An analysis is carried out of the relations between dopamine and motor functions.

An inherent problem in this kind of study is that thematic structure is realized differently in different languages. Baker gives a number of examples from languages such as Portuguese, Spanish and Arabic. These are verb-inflected languages which often place the verb in first or 'theme' position, as

96 Discourse and register analysis approaches

TEXT AND PRAGMATIC LEVEL ANALYSIS

97

in the Brazilian Portuguese example above. The consequent omission of the subject pronoun also inevitably creates a different thematic pattern. Thus, the following sentence from a speech to the European Parliament (see discus­sion point 3 at the end of this chapter) produces a different thematic struc­ture in different languages. The structure of the English ST is:

I | discussed this matter in Washington.

theme | rheme.

while thematic analysis of the Portuguese version gives:

Discuti | este assunto em Washington. theme | rheme.

Using Hallidayan analysis, the inflected verb form discuti is thematic rather than a subject pronoun, whereas in the English the verb discussed is part of

the rheme.

The fact that the Hallidayan model of thematic analysis is English-oriented must cast some doubt on its validity for translation. Baker (pp. 160-7) accepts this, and also outlines the alternative functional sentence perspec­tive model of thematic structure, which, because it takes into account 'communicative dynamism' as well as word order, may be more suitable for languages with a frequent VS order.² Despite this, Baker (p. 140) concludes that an important advantage of the systemic functional approach is that it is much more straightforward to implement: theme is in first position, come

what may.

The most important point for ST thematic analysis is that the translator should be aware of the relative markedness of the thematic and informa­tion structures. Baker points out (p. 129) that this 'can help to heighten our awareness of meaningful choices made by speakers and writers in the course of communication' and, therefore, help decide whether it is appropriate to translate using a marked form. Again, what is marked varies across languages. Problems in copying the ST pattern into the TT are given by Vazquez-Ayora (1977: 217) and Gerzymisch-Arbogast (1986). The former emphasizes that calquing a rigid English word order when translating into a VS language such as Spanish would produce a monotonous translation. The latter, in her detailed study of German and English (Gerzymisch-Arbogast 1986), con­siders the German calquing of English cleft sentences (e.g. What pleases the public is ... , What 1 meant to say was . . . ) to be clumsy. This illustrates the dilemma, pointed out by Enkvist (1978), of balancing concern for informa­tion dynamics with the sometimes incompatible concern for other areas such as basic syntactic patterns.

That it is the textual function, and most especially the thematic structure, which has most frequently been discussed in works on translation theory is perhaps because of the attention paid to this function by influential mono­lingual works in text linguistics, notably Enkvist (1978) and Beaugrande and Dressier (1981), who have exerted considerable influence on translation

theorists. Cohesion, the other element of the textual metafunction, has also *&

been the subject of a number of studies. 5

M ■D