6.5 Criticisms of discourse and register anaiysis approaches to translation

Discourse analysis models have become extremely popular among many linguistics-oriented translation theorists and serve as a useful way of tackling the linguistic structure and meaning of a text. However, the Hallidayan model has been attacked by, amongst others, Fish (1981: 59-64) for being over-complicated in its categorization of grammar and for its apparently inflexible one-to-one matching of structure and meaning. This may cause it to struggle to cope with the variety of possible interpretations of literature, especially experimental literature. Some applications to literature (e.g. Fowler 1986/96 and Simpson 1993) have therefore adopted a more flexible 'toolkit' approach, employing those elements that appear most useful while also incorporating issues from literary criticism.

As far as House's model is concerned, Gutt (1991: 46-9) raises the ques­tion as to whether it is possible to recover authorial intention and ST func­tion from register analysis. Even if it is possible, the basis of House's model is to discover 'mismatches' between ST and TT. Yet, while mismatches may indicate translation errors, they may also be caused by other translation strategies such as explicitation or compensation. It is less clear how House's model can interpret these.

The analytical frameworks of the translation theorists discussed in this chapter are English-language oriented. This becomes problematic with other languages, especially in the analysis of thematic and information structures. European languages with a more flexible word order and subject-inflected verb forms, such as Portuguese and Spanish, need to be analyzed differently.

102 Discourse and register analysis approaches

This type of problem becomes even more serious if attempts are made to impose such contrastive discourse analysis on non-European languages whose conceptual structure may differ crucially.

Linguistic differences are of course indicative of cultural differences, and Venuti (1998: 21) is one critic who sees linguistics-oriented approaches as projecting 'a conservative model of translation that would unduly restrict [translation's] role in cultural innovation and change'. As an example, Venuti discusses Grice's maxims (see section 6.3.3 above) and criticizes them for the way in which they support the fluent and 'domesticating' translation strategy that they support. Venuti considers the maxims suitable only for translation in closely defined fields, such as technical or legal documents. Baker herself is aware of the cultural bias of the maxims:

Grice's maxims seem to reflect directly notions which are known to be valued in the English-speaking world, for instance sincerity, brevity, and relevance.

(Baker 1992: 237)

It is Hatim and Mason who make a greater effort to incorporate a Hal-lidayan notion of culture and ideology into their analysis of translation, and they devote a chapter to ideology in The Translator as Communicator (Hatim and Mason 1997: 143-63). Their findings are illuminating, but, although they analyze a range of text types (written and spoken), their focus often remains linguistics-centred, both in its terminology and in the phenomena investi­gated ('lexical choice', 'cohesion', transitivity', 'style shifting', 'translator mediation', etc.). The case studies below follow this line by using the discourse analysis approaches presented in this chapter to examine two different films.

Case studies

Case study I

This case study examines Werner Herzog's German film The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (1974).' The film begins with a written introduction that scrolls down the screen (box 6.1). A possible back-translation in English is given in box 6.2. The actual English translation, which appeared two lines at a time, occupies the bottom of the screen; this is given in box 6.3.

House's model of quality assessment would show that, for ST and TT, the field is similar: both relate the story of a poor boy found in the town of N. Nevertheless, there are mismatches in the amount of information that is given: in the English, we are not told the boy's name, that he learnt to speak, that food used to be shoved into the cellar while he slept, nor, precisely, that 'the enigma of his origin' remains unsolved.

There is a similar story as far as mode is concerned: in both cases the text is written to be read, but the mode of presentation is different. The English is superimposed over part of the German, two lines at a time. To accommodate

CASE STUDIES 103 Box 6.1

1. Am Pflugstsonntag des Jahres 1828 wurde in der Stadt N. ein verwahrloster Findling aufgegriffen, den man spater Kaspar Hauser nannte.

2. Er konnte kaum gehen und sprach nur einen einzigen Satz.

3. Spater, als er sprechen lernte, berichtete er, er sei zeit seines Lebens in einem dunklen Kellerloch eingesperrtgewesen,er habe keinerlei Begriffvon der Welt gehabt und nicht gewuBt, da(3 es auBer ihm noch andere Menschen gabe, weil man ihm das Essen hereinschob.wahrend er schlief.

4. Er habe nicht gewuBt, was ein Haus.ein Baum, was Sprache sei.

5. Erst ganz zuletzt sei ein Mann zu ihm heriengekommen.

6. Das Ratsel seiner Herkunft ist bis heute nicht gelost.

Box 6.2

1. On Whit Sunday in the year 1828 in the town of N. a ragged foundling was picked up who was later called Kasper Hauser.

2. He could scarcely walk and spoke only one sentence.

3. Later, when he learnt to speak, he reported he had been locked up for his whole life in a dark cellar, he had not had any contact at all with the world and had not known that outside there were other people, because he had food slung in to him, while he slept.

4. He did not know what a house, a tree, what language was.

5. Only right at the end did a man visit him.

6. The enigma of his origin has to this day not been solved.

Box 6.3

1. One Sunday in 1828 a ragged boy was found abandoned in the town of N.

2. He could hardly walk and spoke but one sentence.

3. Later he told of being locked in a dark cellar from birth.

4. He had never seen another human being, a tree, a house before.

5. To this day no one knows where he came from - or who set him free.

this crucial visual constraint, the sentences have been shortened. Sentence 3 in the German contains a complex of reported-speech subordinate clauses, and its length gives a sense of formality befitting the early nineteenth century subject matter and speech patterns of the film. This sentence is mostly omit­ted in the TT. The English sentences are therefore less varied syntactically, although the thematic profile of the German sentences 1, 3 and 5, where a time adjunct or adverbial is in first position, is effectively mirrored in the English. Some higher-level cohesion is also lost in the immediate translation: the omis­sion of the name Kaspar Hauser is unlikely to be crucial, since one would