Translation Quality Assessment, A Discoursal Approach in Theory and Practice (2014)

Translation Quality Assessment

Translation Quality Assessment A Discoursal Approach in Theory and Practice

Including the Analysis of English-Persain Translations of Orwell’s Animal Farm

Bahloul Salmani (Faculty Member, English Dept. Islamic Azad University, Tabriz)

Majid Khorsand

Hasanlu Translation Project

2014

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Translation Quality Assessment: A Discoursal Approach in Theory and Practice

Including the Analysis of English-Persain Translations of Orwell’s Animal Farm and

Author: Bahloul Salmani and Majid Khorsand

ISBN: 978-6009417995

Printed and bound in Iran.

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Translation Quality Assessement: A Discoursal Approach in :عنوان و نام پديد آور

Theory and Practice / Bahloul Salmani , Majid Khorsand. م. 2014= 1393: پروژه ترجمه حسنلو، تبريز : مشخصات نشر

ص. 216 :مشخصات ظاهري978- 600- 94179- 9- 5 : شابك

فيپا : نويسي وضعيت فهرستانگليسي :يادداشتكتابنامه :يادداشت

واليتي اسسمنت: ...وترنسليشن ك :آوانويسي عنوانارزشيابي -- ترجمه :موضوعگليسي انزبان :موضوعترجمهمطالعات :موضوع

1360، خرسند، مجيد :شناسه افزودهKhorsand, Majid :شناسه افزوده

2/306Pس/8ت4 1393: بندي كنگره رده 02/418 :بندي ديويي رده

3637260: كتابشناسي مليشماره

Contents

List of Figures and Tables .................................................................................. xiii Preface ................................................................................................................ xv List of Abbreviations .......................................................................................... xvii

1 Translation ...................................................................................................... 1

1.1 The Concept and Nature of Translation ................................................. 1 1.2 Kinds of Translation ............................................................................... 1 1.3 Translation as Communication across Cultures ..................................... 2

2 Equivalence in Translation .............................................................................. 5

2.1 Overview ................................................................................................ 5 2.2 Different Types of Equivalence ............................................................... 5 2.3 The Controversy over Equivalence ......................................................... 8 2.4 An Analytic Framework for Establishing Equivalence ............................ 8 2.5 Equivalence and Overt versus Covert Translation ................................... 10 2.6 Equivalence and the Concept and Function of a Culture Filter ................ 11 2.7 The Limits of Equivalence ....................................................................... 11 2.8 Summary ................................................................................................. 12

3 Approaches to Evaluating Translations .......................................................... 13

3.1 Overview ................................................................................................ 13 3.2 Impressionistic and Subjective Approaches ............................................. 13 3.3 Response-Based Behavioral Approaches ................................................. 14 3.4 Target-Text Related Approaches ............................................................ 16 3.5 Approaches Based On the Comparison of STs and TTs ......................... 17 3.6 Linguistic Analysis versus Social Judgment ............................................. 17 3.7 Summary ................................................................................................. 18

4 Discourse ......................................................................................................... 21

4.1 The Concept of Discourse ....................................................................... 21

viii TRANSLATION QUALITY ASSESSMENT

4.2 Formalist Paradigm of Discourse ............................................................ 22 4.3 Functionalist Paradigm of Discourse ....................................................... 23 4.4 Discourse Analysis (DA) ......................................................................... 24 4.5 House’s Discoursal Approach to TQA ................................................... 24 4.6 The Hallidayan Model of Language and Discourse ................................ 24 4.7 House’s Scheme for Analyzing and Comparing ST and TT .................... 26

5 House’s Original Model for Evaluating Translations ...................................... 27

5.1 Overview ................................................................................................ 27 5.2 Fundamental Concepts ........................................................................... 27

5.2.1 Equivalence and Meaning in Translation ...................................... 27 5.2.2 Functions of Language versus Functions of Texts .......................... 29

5.3 Towards a Model of Translation Quality Assessment ............................ 30 5.3.1 Dimensions of Language User ....................................................... 31 5.3.2 Dimensions of Language Use ......................................................... 31

5.4 Operation of the Model .......................................................................... 34 5.4.1 Method of Analysis and Comparison of Texts .............................. 34 5.4.2 Evaluation Scheme ........................................................................ 36 5.4.3 Justification of the Method ............................................................ 38 5.4.4 Implementation of the Model ........................................................ 38

5.5 Refinement of the Model ........................................................................ 39 5.5.1 Suggestions for a Translation Typology ........................................ 39 5.5.2 Overt Translation .......................................................................... 39 5.5.3 Covert Translation ........................................................................ 41 5.5.4 Different Types of Translations and Versions. .............................. 42 5.5.5 Covert Versions ............................................................................. 42 5.5.6 Overt Versions ............................................................................... 43 5.5.7 The Dichotomy over the Types of Translation/Version ................. 43 5.5.8 Discourse, Culture and Related Issues in House’s TQA model. ....... 44

6 House’s Revisited Model ................................................................................. 47

6.1 Overview ................................................................................................ 47 6.2 Reconsidering the Categories for Analysis .............................................. 47 6.2.1 Register Categories .............................................................................. 47 6.2.2 The Analysis at the Levels of Language/Text ....................................... 50 6.3 Rconsidering the Overt-Covert Dichotomy ............................................ 50 6.4 The Meaning of the Cultural Filter ......................................................... 54 6.5 Reconsidering of the Notion of Translation Evaluation ......................... 54

7 Expertise in Translation .................................................................................. 57

7.1 Overview ................................................................................................ 57 7.2 Translator Competence (TC) .................................................................. 58 7.3 Components of Translation Competence ................................................ 59

CONTENTS ix

8 Literary Discourse and Translation ................................................................. 61

8.1 Overview ................................................................................................ 61 8.2 Novel/Fiction Discourse .......................................................................... 61 8.3 Approaches to Translation of Literary Texts .......................................... 62 8.4 Animal Farm ........................................................................................... 63

8.4.1 Persian Translations of Animal Farm ............................................ 64 8.4.2 Adaptations of Animal Farm ......................................................... 64

9 Methodology for the Research Analysis ........................................................... 67

9.1 Overview ................................................................................................ 67 9.2 Reasearch Hypothesis and Question ....................................................... 68 9.3 Limitations and Delimitations of the Study ............................................ 68 9.4 Approach and Design ............................................................................. 69 9.5 Corpus .................................................................................................... 70 9.6 Theoretical Framework ........................................................................... 70 9.7 Analysis Procedure .................................................................................. 70 9.8 Summary ................................................................................................. 71

10 Data Analysis and Discussion of the Research .............................................. 73

10.1 Overview .............................................................................................. 73 10.2 Source Text Author’s Profile ................................................................. 73 10.3 Translators’ Professional Profiles .......................................................... 74 10.4 Text Profiles .......................................................................................... 75

10.4.1 Overview ..................................................................................... 75 10.4.2 Register ......................................................................................... 75 10.4.3 Function of the Individual Text ................................................... 76 10.4.4 Genre ........................................................................................... 77 10.4.5 Language/Text ............................................................................. 77

10.5 Source Text Profile Analysis ................................................................. 77 10.5.1 Register ........................................................................................ 77 10.5.2 Function of the Individual Text ................................................... 80 10.5.3 Genre ........................................................................................... 80 10.5.4 Language/Text ............................................................................. 80 105.5 Summary ...................................................................................... 80

10.6 Target Text 1 Profile Analysis ............................................................... 81 10.6.1 Register ........................................................................................ 81 10.6.2 Function of the Individual Text ................................................... 82 10.6.3 Genre ........................................................................................... 83 10.6.4 Language/Text ............................................................................. 83 10.6.5 Summary ..................................................................................... 83

10.7 Target Text 2 Profile Analysis ............................................................... 84 10.7.1 Register ........................................................................................ 84 10.7.2 Function of the Individual Text ................................................... 85 10.7.3 Genre ........................................................................................... 85

x TRANSLATION QUALITY ASSESSMENT

10.7.4 Language/Text ............................................................................. 85 10.7.5 Summary ..................................................................................... 85

10.8 Overtly Erroneous Errors ...................................................................... 85 10.9 Overtly Erroneous Errors of TT1 ......................................................... 87

10.9.1 Omissions .................................................................................... 87 10.9.2 Additions ..................................................................................... 92 10.9.3 Substitutions ................................................................................ 96 10.9.4 Ungrammaticality ........................................................................ 106 10.9.5 Dubious Acceptability ................................................................. 106 10.9.6 Summary ..................................................................................... 106

10.10 Overtly Erroneous Errors of TT2 ....................................................... 106 10.10.1 Omissions .................................................................................. 106 10.10.2 Additions ................................................................................... 109 10.10.3 Substitutions .............................................................................. 111 10.10.4 Ungrammaticality ...................................................................... 120 10.10.5 Dubious Acceptability ............................................................... 121 10.10.6 Summary ................................................................................... 121

10.11 Discussion ........................................................................................... 121

11 Conclusions of the Research Analysis ........................................................... 127

11.1 Overview .............................................................................................. 127 11.2 Summary of the Findings ...................................................................... 128 11.3 Implications .......................................................................................... 129 11.4 Suggestions for Further Studies ............................................................. 130

12 Excerpts for Translation Workshops ............................................................ 133

12.1 Overview .............................................................................................. 133 12.2 ST 01: The Holy Quran, Surah 1 .......................................................... 134 12.3 ST 02: The Holy Quran, Surah 2 .......................................................... 135 12.4 ST 03: Introductory of The Rose Garden of Sa’di (or The Gulistan) ..... 136 12.5 ST 04: For Whom the School Bell Tolls ................................................ 138 12.6 ST 05: O’ My Mother ........................................................................... 142 12.7 ST 06: Mystical Zapata Film Creates Controversy ................................ 144 12.8 ST 07: The Epitaph on Parvin’s Tombstone .......................................... 147 12.9 ST 08: Profiles in Courage: Chats with Independent Bookstore Owners 149 12.10 ST 09: Faithfulness to a Promise ......................................................... 154 12.11 ST 10: Dibacheh [Initiation] ............................................................... 156 12.12 ST 11: The Eagle .................................................................................. 158 12.13 ST 12: The Sea .................................................................................... 160 12.14 ST 13: Sorrow for a Midget ................................................................. 162 12.15 ST 14: Abou Ben Adhem ..................................................................... 170 12.16 ST 15: On the Earth ............................................................................. 172 12.17 ST 16, 17, 18: Excerpts from “1100 Words You Need to Know” ....... 174

CONTENTS xi

Appendices ......................................................................................................... 177

Overview ....................................................................................................... 177 Appendix A: ST, TT1, TT2 ........................................................................... 178 Appendix B: Internet links ............................................................................ 189

Bibliography ....................................................................................................... 191

List of Figures and Tables

Figures

2.1 A system for analyzing original and translated texts ..................................... 10 4.1 Genre-Register-Language/Text ..................................................................... 25 4.2 Metafunction in Relation to Language, Register and Genre ........................ 26 4.3 A Scheme for Analyzing and Comparing Original and Translation Texts .... 26 6.1Reading Historically-Established Literary Texts ........................................... 52 10.1 TT1 and TT2 Overtly Erroneous Errors .................................................... 125 12.1 Map of Disciplines Interfacing with Translation Studies ............................ 133

Tables

5.1 Dimensions of Language Use ....................................................................... 34 5.2 Overtly Erroneous Errors ............................................................................. 37 5.3 Dimensions of Cross-Cultural Difference (SL-TL) ....................................... 45 6.1 House’s Register Analysis Framework ......................................................... 49 6.2 The Dimension Overt-Covert Translation ................................................... 53 6.3 Overt versus Covert Translation .................................................................. 55 10.1 ST Analysis of Register, Function, Genre and Language/Text .................... 81 10.2 TT1 Analysis of Register, Function, Genre and Language/Text ................. 83 10.3 TT2 Analysis of Register, Function, Genre and Language/Text ................. 86 10.4 TT1 Overtly Erroneous Errors ................................................................... 106 10.5 TT2 Overtly Erroneous Errors ................................................................... 122 10.6 ST, TT1, TT2 Register Analysis, Function, Genre ..................................... 122 10.7 Mismatches between ST and TTs’ Profiles ................................................. 123 10.8 Covertly Erroneous Errors of TT1 and TT2 at the Level of Register ......... 124 10.9 Comparison of ST and TT1 at the Level of Language/Text ....................... 124 10.10 Comparison of ST and TT2 at the Level of Language/Text ..................... 124 10.11 Comparison of TT1 and TT2 Overtly Erroneous Errors ......................... 125

Preface

This study deals with the problems of interest to translators, linguists, scholars of language and literature, students of translation, EFL teachers and anyone whose profession and realm of interest is concerned with the nature of translation.

Translation of works of aesthetic and literary value particularly novels play a significant role for every language, culture and community. Translation quality has been the main concern for translation profession. One of the main concerns for doing this research was the fact that only a few academic and systematic studies have been carried out in the quality assessment of the translation of literary texts by applying different translation theories. Furthermore, translators need to be aware of the distinctive dimensions of their profession. With respect to the (more or less) limited knowledge and/or unfamiliarity with the (fundamental) socio-cultural, sociolinguistic and ideological dimensions of the source text (ST) and theoretical frameworks, translators might find it difficult and even problematic to render such dimensions of the original text particularly in literary texts. On the other hand, translators (might) not have enough knowledge of the theoretical frameworks and any other further knowledge of comparing and assessing the quality of the literary works. This situation makes the task of the translator more challenging particularly in the literary works like Orwell’s Animal Farm which is fully loaded with a lot of literary devices such as allegorical, symbolic, sociopolitical, historical, ideological, and cultural themes. This issue sometimes leads to different kinds of distortions of the intended meaning of the original text in the process of translation.

Beyond each of any selected words in any literary works especially novels, there is an ideology, and in many cases, a sublime thought. It is important for every nation to get the valuable and worthy thoughts and ideas of other cultures embedded in their written masterpieces particularly novels. This is possible only through translation.

The focus of this research-oriented book was the best possible interpretation of House’s (1977, 1981, 1997, 2009, 2010) translation quality assessment (TQA) model, among the latest approaches to translation evaluation. In this book, the significance of analyzing the original and translated literary and other culture specific texts through House’s (1997/2009) revisited translation quality assessment model as well as the quality of the translation versions were discussed and the considerable pertinent problems were proposed in this realm. Based on House’s discoursal model, a literary work has to be translated overtly, to be realized as an adequate translation, and any deviation from it would be considered as an error.

xvi TRANSLATION QUALITY ASSESSMENT

The errors are twofold: the covertly and overtly erroneous errors. Moreover, House’s revesited discoursal model was applied to Orwell’s Animal Farm (1945) and its two (almost concurrent) Persian translations. Animal Farm (1945) by Eric Arthur Blair (1903–1950), known by his pen name George Orwell, is an allegorical and sociopolitical novel which was first published in England in 1945 has been famous worldwide through translations. The target texts (TTs), in this study, were by Saleh Hosseini and Masumeh Nabi-Zadeh (2004) under the title of Mazraeye Heyvanat [the farm of animals] as TT1 and Mohamad Ali Jodeyri and Samad Mohamadi Asyabi (2005) under the title of Galeye Heyvanat [the castle of animals] as TT2. The major reasons for this selection were as follows:

(1) Orwell’s Animal Farm has been overwhelmingly spread worldwide through theprocess of translation, that is, the work is hailed as one of the greatest works ofworld literature.

(2) It’s surprising that more than ten translations have been published in Persian outof Orwell’s Animal Farm, that is, it has a huge number of target audience.

(3) Animal Farm is loaded fully with allegorical, symbolic, sociopolitical,ideological, and cultural themes.

(4) The novel has been discussed by many critics in the humanities.

Many expert and novice translators undertake the task of translating, so it is alsoreasonable to conduct this study to provide a useful framework to highlight the effect of translators’ experiences on their profession with regard to Dimitrova’s (2005) notion of “expertise in translation”. Dimitrova (2005, p. 19) highlights that “translation ability can develop into translator competence (TC), through formal learning and training and/or through gaining practical professional experience. Translator competence can develop into translation expertise”. In other words, “expert performance is defined as consistently superior performance on a specific set of representative tasks for the domain” (Dimitrova, 2005, p. 16). Accordingly, this study aimed to find out the relation between the degree of the adequacy of the translations and the translators’ level of experience.

This study will shed more light on the quality assessment of translations of either pedagogical or non-pedagogical texts particularly the translations of works of aesthetic and literary value, and help the translators to better improve the quality of their translation and profession. Further developments and implications were suggested at the end.

Bahlul Salmani, [email protected]

Majid Khorsand, [email protected]

Tabriz, Iran, October 2014

00989144062797

List of Abbreviations

CDA Critical Discourse Analysis DA Discourse Analysis EFL English as a Forign Language ESL English as a Second Language LDOCE Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English OUP Oxford University Press’s Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionaries SC Source Culture SFT (Hallidayan) Systemic-Functional Theory SL Source Language ST Source Text TC Translation/Translator Competence TL Target Language TQA Translation Quality Assessment TT Target Text

1

Translation

1.1. THE CONCEPT AND NATURE OF TRANSLATION

The term translation and its meaning have been discussed and defined by many scholars from different perspectives. Munday (2008, p. 5) claims that translation refers to “the general subject field, the product (the text that has been translated) or the process (the act of producing the translation, otherwise known as translating)”. In elaborating the concept and nature of translation and comparing it to some activities, House (2009, pp. 3-4) refers to two categories: redced or inferior and superior activities:

(1) Reduced or inferior activities: Translation is a kind of inferior substitute for the real thing; likened to the back of a carpet; a kiss through a handkerchief; hygienic kissing; laying down a carpet bottom-side up;

(2) Superior activities: Translation builds bridges or extends horizons in which it is considered as a service, serving a need human beings apparently have to transcend the world to which their own particular languages confine them; mediating between languages, societies, and literatures; it is through translations that linguistic and cultural barriers may be overcome.

However, as a secondary communication and the process of interlingual replacement of ST with TT, translation cannot be the same as and of the first rank of the original but the replacement and of the second rank in comparison with the source text (House, 1977/1981, 1997, 2009). Translation is the “replacement” of a source text (ST) with a target text (TT) or the process of “interlingual replacement” of ST with TT

1.2. KINDS OF TRANSLATION

Based on linguistic aspects of translation’ of the Russian-American structuralist

2 TRANSLATION QUALITY ASSESSMENT

Roman Jakobson (1959/2004, p. 139), translation falls into three main categories:

(1) Intralingual translation, or rewording: an interpretation of verbal signs by means of other signs of the same language;

(2) Interlingual translation, or translation proper: an interpretation of verbal signs by means of some other language;

(3) Intersemiotic translation, or transmutation: an interpretation of verbal signs by means of signs of non-verbal sign systems.

All these three processes involve the “replacement of one expression of a message or unit of meaningful content by another in a different form” (House, 2009, p. 4). She continues:

Although such activities resemble translation in that they replace a message that already exists, they differ in that they are designed not to reproduce the original as a whole but to reduce it to its essential parts, or adapt it for different groups of people with different needs and expectations.

In this book, translation is considered as the process of interlingual replacement of one text by another.

1.3. TRANSLATION AS COMMUNICATION ACROSS CULTURES

Translating is both a linguistic and cultural act, an act of communication across cultures. Regarding the interwoven notion of language and culture, House (p. 11) maintains that “language is culturally embedded”: it both “expresses and shapes cultural reality”, and the meanings of linguistic items, be they words or larger segments of text, “can only be understood when considered together with the cultural context in which these linguistic items are used”. Therefore, in the process of translation, both languages and cultures come into contact. It is not exaggeration to claim that “language is the lifeblood of culture and that culture is the track along which language forms and develops” (Hongwei, 1999, p. 121; cf. Bailey, 2005, p. 9). Culture, for House (2009, p. 12), refers to “a group’s shared values and conventions which act as mental guidelines for orienting people’s thoughts and behavior”. Accordingly, it is the task of the translator to “link the source text in its cultural context to the target communicative-cultural conditions”, therefore, “the more the source and target cultural frameworks differ, the more important is the cultural work translators have to do” (p. 12). Thus, the translator has to be familiar with the language and culture of both source and target texts to the highest possible degree. Dolet (1540/1997) and Tytler (1797, p. 17) stress on the translator to have a perfect knowledge of the original, being competent in the subject and giving a faithful transfusion of the sense and meaning of the author (as cited in Munday, 2008, p. 27). Moreover, House (2009, p. 13) highlights that:

TRANSLATION 3

Translators must also pay attention to the more immediate context of situation which deals with the question of who wrote the text, when and why, and who is now reading it, who translated it, when and why, and further, who is now to read it and for what purpose. These different questions are reflected in how the text is “written, interpreted, translated and read.

However, regardless of the extra-linguistic factors including power agencies, publishers etc., the significant role of translators should not be taken for granted since translators are the main leaders and decision makers in the process of translation.

2

Equivalence in Translation

2.1. OVERVIEW

Translation is a kind of secondary communication with both a limiting and an enabling function. It can be defined as a process of replacing a text in one language by an equivalent text in another, that is, translation is a process of replacing a text in one language (the source language) with a text in a different language (the target language). The three basic features of translation are “text, equivalence, and process” (House, 2009, p. 13).

According to House (p. 29), “the first text is original and independent, but the second only exists as a version derived from the first”, therefore, “the derived version stands in for the original, and the two texts are said to be equivalent”. However, based on House’s (1977, 1981, 1997, 2009) TQA model, when a comparative analysis of a source text (ST) and a target text (TT) is carried on, both texts are analyzed individually and then a comparison is done. For this, the equivalence framework guiding the translation must be establish.

2.2. DIFFERENT TYPES OF EQUIVALENCE

Based on Jakobson’s (1959/2004) translation typology, linguistic meaning and equivalence are the key issues of interlingual translation. He follows the relation set out by Saussure between the signifier (the spoken and written signal) and the signified (the concept signified). Together, the signifier and signified form the linguistic sign, but that sign is arbitrary or unmotivated (Saussure 1916/83, pp. 67–9, as cited in Munday, 2008, p. 37). Jakobson highlights that it is possible to find out what is signified by a word even if we have never seen or experienced the concept or thing in real life. He underlines that “there is ordinarily no full equivalence between code-units” (1959/2004, p. 139). In Jakobson’s argument, the problem of meaning and equivalence thus focuses on differences in the structure and


terminology of languages rather than on any inability of one language to render a message that has been written in another verbal language. For Jakobson, “Languages differ essentially in what they must convey and not in what they may convey” (p. 141). The differences occur at three levels: the levels of gender, aspect and semantic fields.

A translated text will obviously bear very little linguistic resemblance to the original, but can be equivalent, that is to say, equal in value, in that it conveys a similar message and fulfils a similar function. Shedding more light on the equivalence in translation, House (2009, p. 29) stresses that:

Equivalence cannot be taken to mean identity or reversibility because there can never be a one-to-one relationship between a source text and one particular translation text and a particular source text will have many different translation texts that can be called equivalent to the source text in different ways, depending on how similarity of message or function is interpreted.

Concerning translators’ decision-making process, translators “must always decide between several alternative ways of realizing a particular meaning in a particular context of use, and often end up opting for some sort of compromise” (p. 30).

Catford’s distinction of a linguistic kind of equivalence is between formal correspondence and textual equivalence. For Catford (1965, p. 32), “a formal correspondent” is any TL category occupies, as nearly as possible, “the same place in the economy of the TL as the given SL category occupies in the SL”. Catford foregrounds that formal correspondent “can only be established ultimately on the basis of textual equivalence at some point”. According to Catford (p. 27), “a textual equivalent is any TL text or portion of text which is observed on a particular occasion, by methods described below, to be the equivalent of a given SL text or portion of text”. Since such formal correspondence is often not available, and then the translator has to resort to so-called translation shifts in word classes or structures.

Eugene Nida’s formal equivalence versus dynamic equivalence is another distinction. There are occasions when it is appropriate for textual equivalence to stay very close to formal correspondence, even when the result seems stilted and unnatural as in translations of legal or sacred documents where exact wording is considered crucial to the message being conveyed. This kind of formal equivalence seeks to preserve as many features of the original as possible and dynamic equivalence seeks to accommodate the needs and norms of target culture readers, and to produce a text that will more naturally engage the reader as in translations of advertisements, letters to shareholders, or tourist brochures. The following statement sheds more light on formal versus dynamic equivalence:

EQUIVALANCE IN TRANSLATION 7

The more form-bound a meaning is (e.g. a case of ambiguity through word play), the more formal the equivalence relation will have to be. Alternatively, the more context-bound a meaning is (e.g. an obscure reference to source culture), the more dynamic the equivalence will have to be. (Hatim & Munday, 2005, p. 44)

With regard to the differences between the way languages encode reality, and the varying contextual factors that affect the interpretation of texts, equivalence can only be relative but this relativity has to be controlled by the recognition of what is known as invariance. The features in the source text necessary for the target text to transfer are called invariances. House maintains that:

Invariant features capture the third element or factor that is the common ground between two elements being compared. Invariance, ultimately determines how far a translation is considered to be equivalent. Consequently, what is considered invariant mainly “depends on what is deemed to be the essential content point, or purpose of the original text or of the translation. (p. 30)

Koller (1995, pp. 191-222) proposed a small number of “different equivalence frameworks to systematize all the factors identifying the five most important ones” as follows:

(1) Denotative Equivalence: The extralinguistic, real-world referents to which the text relates.

(2) Connotative Equivalence: The connotations conveyed in the text, that is, the culturally normative feelings or associations evoked by a specific term or phrase, and by different levels of usage or styles, or social and geographical dialects.

(3) Text-Normative Equivalence: The linguistic and textual norms of usage that characterize a particular text.

(4) Pragmatic Equivalence: The recipients of the translation for whom the translation is specially designed, so that it fulfils its special communicative function for these recipients.

(5) Formal-Aesthetic Equivalence: The aesthetic, formal characteristics of the original text. For example, if the translator succeeded in maintaining wordplays, rhymes, assonance, alliteration phenomena in the translation, he or she would have managed to achieve formal-aesthetic equivalence.

Considering the nature of translation as a decision process, it can be claimed that not all of outlines and subsequent types of equivalence in translation can be accomplished in any specific case. The reason is that “the translator will have to set up a hierarchy of demands on equivalence, depending on what kind of text is being dealt with, and the purpose and type of translation aimed at” (House, 2009, p. 32).


2. 3. THE CONTROVERSY OVER EQUIVALENCE

Criticism of the use of equivalence as a central concept for translation often presupposes a rather narrow view of equivalence based on formal syntactic and lexical similarities alone. However, as was pointed out earlier, the term equivalence refers to two or more entities being of equal value, corresponding value, or having the same use or function as something else. Therefore, two texts can be equivalent in this sense even when there is little formal correspondence between them.

The interpretation-oriented and purpose-oriented approaches regard equivalence as “incompatible with their concern with subjective interpretation and the purpose of a translation” (pp. 32-33). She argues that they also reject equivalence because it seems to assume that there is some stable core meaning in a text which can be transferred intact to another text-an assumption that runs counter to the idea that meaning is made out of a text and is dependent on reader interpretation. Moreover, equivalence defined in this respect would then be a special subcategory of adequacy- source and target text have the same purpose.

However, it is essential to make the concept of equivalence more clear and precise in order to define the limits of equivalence and differentiate between a translation and a text that is some sort of adaptation or version of the original.

2.4. AN ANALYTIC FRAMEWORK FOR ESTABLISHING EQUIVALENCE

We can make the basic assumption that the original and its translation should have an equivalent function whenever possible. This function can be defined as simply “the application or use, which a text has in a particular context of situation” (House, 2009, p. 34). Considering the text and context of situation as two separate entities, but interacting with each other through an inextricable connection between the social environment and the functional organization of language, House claims that:

When we analyze an original text, compare it with its translation and establish the equivalence framework guiding the translation, both texts must be referred to the particular situation surrounding them. To do this, the broad notion of context of situation must be broken down into manageable analytic units. . . . [:] field, tenor, and mode, three sociolinguistic dimensions of the context of situation jointly characterizing a particular register, or segment of language in use. (p. 34)

Shedding more light on the three categories of register or context of situation or segment of language in use, House (p. 34) reveals the following details:

Field

Field is the subject matter or topic. Field appears by asking such questions as: What


is the text about? What kinds of things are in the text? If the analysis demonstrates that the field of the translation the same as the original, we can conclude that the two texts are equivalent in propositional content, that is, in what the author is talking about.

Tenor

Tenor refers to the nature of the participants, the author and his or her addressees, the relationship between them in terms of social power and familiarity, the author’s intellectual and affective stance, that is, his or her personal viewpoint. Tenor appears by asking such questions as: How does the author relate to the reader and maybe to the persons depicted in the text? How do author and readers relate to each other through the text? Equivalence of tenor would mean that the two texts represent the same kind of interpersonal interaction.

Mode

Mode refers to the channel of communication, the spoken or written medium, with many in-between possibilities such as “written to be read”, or “written to be spoken as if not written”. Mode appears by asking such questions as: How is the text actually manifested? What medium is used, and how? Equivalence in the dimension of mode relates to the means whereby the communication is enacted.

The categories of register or context of situation, field, tenor, and mode, are furthermore discussed in chapter 6 in more details.

The result of the analysis according to this scheme is a textual profile which in its entirety can be taken to characterize the register of a particular text, that is to say, the way the text relates to particular contextual factors. Besides analyzing a text in terms of these features of register. Thus, we need to extend this scheme by the notion of genre. Genres, such as, a market report, a sermon, a scientific paper, a letter to shareholders, are “culturally determined communicative events” which are textually realized by specific configurations of lexical and grammatical units (p. 35). Genres link texts to culture, in such a way that an individual textual exemplar is related to the shared knowledge about the nature of other similar texts with which this text shares a communicative purpose. With regard to the discrepancies between register and genre, register captures the connections between a text and its immediate context, and is related to a type of text, defined by its linguistic features. On the other hand, genre connects an individual text with the larger cultural context of the linguistic and cultural community in which the text is embedded, is a kind of discourse defined by its communicative function in the linguistic-cultural community at large, and is the realization of a particular configuration of the three register dimensions.

The resulting scheme for assessing the functional equivalence of an original text and its translation linking the categories of register and genre are illustrated in Figure 2.1.


Figure 2.1. A system for analyzing original and translated texts and assessing their functional equivalence (House, 2009, p. 35)

In using this scheme for determining whether and how original and translation

texts are equivalent, it becomes clear, however, that “the nature of the equivalence that can be reached crucially depends on the type of translation we are dealing with”. This helps us distinguish between overt and covert translation (p. 36).

2.5. EQUIVALENCE AND OVERT VERSUS COVERT TRANSLATION

Equivalence is one of the main concerns of translators. House (2009, pp. 36-38) sheds more light on equivalence and an overt translation as follows:

Functional equivalence between the two texts is in principle possible, but… is different in nature: it (gives) the new readers access to the function of the original. (Therefore), a switch in the discourse world becomes necessary, such that the translation operates in its own discourse world. This is called second−level functional equivalence.

By contrast, a covert translation can be explained as follows:

(1) In covert translation, the translator can and should attempt to recreate an equivalent sociocultural event.

(2) In a covert translation, the function the original has in its discourse world is to be reproduced as far as possible. Since “full functional equivalence” is aimed at, the original may be “manipulated at the levels of text and register” via the use of “a cultural filter”. The result may be a very real distance from the original.

(3) While the original and its covert translation need not be equivalent at the levels of text and register, they should be equivalent at the levels of genre and the individual text’s functional profile. Examples of covert translations are translations of advertisements which are to act as though they were originals in order to be as “effective and persuasive” as their originals. (pp. 37-38)


2.6. EQUIVALENCE AND THE CONCEPT AND FUNCTION OF A CULTURE FILTER

A cultural filter is a tool for manipulating the original at the levels of text and register usually for achieving full functional equivalence. A cultural filter [emphasis added] is a means of capturing differences in culturally shared conventions of behavior and communication, preferred rhetorical styles, and expectation norms in the source and target speech communities. Given the goal of achieving functional equivalence in covert translation, assumptions of “cultural difference” which are to be identified “at all levels of analysis” should be carefully examined before intervention in the meaning of the original is undertaken by the translator (p. 38). Thus, contrastive pragmatics and contrastive discourse analyses can make useful contributions to evaluating covert translations.

2.7. THE LIMITS OF EQUIVALENCE

The concept of equivalence runs counter to the facts of “linguistic relativity”, known as the “Whorfian hypothesis”, that our mother tongue shapes and con strains our thoughts and behaviors (p. 39). In its strong version, this hypothesis amounts to linguistic determinism, that is, the grammar and lexicon of the language we were socialized in determines our thoughts and behavior. Applied to translation, that linguistic relativity or Whorfian hypothesis implies that:

(1) The appropriate meanings in the target language can neither be accessed nor reproduced by the translator. The reason is that words across languages never exactly correspond as lexical items because they encode different semantic features and enter into different sense relations with other words.

(2) Since a grammatical form must necessarily change in translation, the uniquely encoded meaning in that form must necessarily be lost in translation too.

(3) There can never be any formal correspondence across languages and so the translation of one text into another is impossible: the only equivalence one can hope to achieve is bound to be of a general functional equivalence. (p. 39)

In contrast, we can claim that although linguistic categories may dispose people to conceive of the world in a certain way (making us see the world around us through its tinted glasses) they do not determine their conceptions. All languages have the resources to express any experience in an equivalent manner, that is, this universal expressibility principle also implies a universal translatability principle (ibid). Therefore, there is no direct correlation between language, thought, and reality, so they are in continual dynamic interaction with each other. Speakers are not imprisoned by the language they speak. This is what makes communication possible, and it is the business of translation to establish how this interaction is achieved in particular instances of text (p. 41).


With regard to untranslatability or limits of translatability, House (pp. 41-42) refers to three aspects:

(a) Private connotations: all those emotive-affective associations which individuals tend to have with certain expressions. The enormous difficulty in literary translation derives mainly from the fact that literary texts abound in such basically elusive connotations.

(b) When language departs from its normal communicative function, that is, when linguistic form is itself an essential element of the message, as in literature, and particularly poetry, for example, where meaning and form always operate closely together; they are no longer arbitrarily connected, and cannot be changed without a corresponding change of meaning. Another case of abnormal functioning of language would be wordplays of various kinds, which are so closely tied to a particular language system that they cannot be translated.

(c) Metalanguage: in which language is not only the medium of communication, but also the object of communication.

Concerning the analysis of the poetic-aesthetic texts based on her TQA model, House (1997, p. 103) claims that “the model is and has to be applicable to literary texts” and one of the reasons for revising the model is to make it applicable to the “translation of works of aesthetic and literary value”. Although such texts were (and are) excluded from further consideration in her case study analysis for they are “outside (her) professional focus of interest”, House (p. 103) maintains that “this does not mean, of course, that poetic-aesthetic text cannot and should not be considered by anybody using the model in translation quality assessment”. In other words, any researcher whose professional focus of interest is the poetic-aesthetic texts can apply House’s TQA model especially the model revisited for analysis.

2.8. SUMMARY

A translation can never be equal or same to its original; it can only be equivalent to it in certain respects. House (2009, p. 42) believes that “translation is only possible with reference to the concept of equivalence, for there can be no exact transference of meaning across texts in different languages, only an approximation appropriate to purpose”. However, how far that purpose can be achieved is also dependent on the limits of translatability. Thus only when the central concept of equivalence is clarified, is it possible to evaluate the quality of a translation.

3

Approaches to Evaluating Translations

3.1. OVERVIEW

Evaluating translations has always been both an academic and a popular undertaking: philologists and philosophers, journalists, poets, and all manner of lay people have expressed opinions on what makes a good translation. House (1997, p. 1) claims, “Evaluating the quality of a translation presupposes a theory of translation. Thus different views of translation lead to different concepts of translational quality, and hence different ways of assessing it”. Making statements about the quality of a translation originates from the heart of any theory of translation, that is, the nature of translation, or, more specifically [from] the nature of,

(1) the relationship between a source text and its translation, (2) the relationship between (features of) the text(s) and how they are perceived by

human agents (author, translator, recipient(s), (3) the consequences views about these relationships have for determining the

borders between a translation and other textual operations.

3.2. IMPRESSIONISTIC AND SUBJECTIVE APPROACHES

Impressionistic reflections on the quality of a translation are often expressed in terms of “the faithfulness to the original”, “the retention of the original's flavour, spirit, or its local colour” with a focus on “the natural flow of a translation” or the “pleasure and delight of the reader” (House, 2009, p. 43). These subjective judgements are based on two very different kinds of criteria: how far a translation captures what the original writer intended to convey on the one hand, or, on the other hand, how far a translation makes effective sense for its readers. The quality


of a translation is then believed to depend on the extent to which the translator is temperamentally in tune with what the writer intended by a text, and how a reader might interpret it. The tendency of this subjective approach is “to evaluate individual examples of translation more or less at random to come up with ad hoc optimal solutions” on the one hand, and, on the other hand, deriving more objective criteria for the quality of a translation is considered futile because the value of a translation is said to depend primarily on the translator's individual talents.

Not surprisingly, such an impressionistic approach to evaluation results in a rather confused, not to say contradictory, set of conditions to be met for a good translation to be achieved. The following mutually exclusive requirements, for instance, “creat more confusion than valid criteria for translation quality assessment” (p. 44):

(1) A translation should be a word for word rendering of the original. (2) A translation should give the ideas of the original. (3) A translation should read like an original work. (4) A translation should read like a translation. (5) A translation should reflect the style of the original. (6) A translation should reflect the style of the translator. (7) A translation should read like a contemporary of the original. (8) A translation should read like a contemporary of the translator.

This list illuminates that there seems to be a consistent tension between which ST/TT text should have the dominant role and the demands on the quality of a translation tend to veer between these two extremes. These demands are obviously difficult to reconcile, and they cannot serve as useful guidelines for translation evaluators.

In contrast to these subjective approaches to translation evaluation, various attempts have been made to use more scientific methods.

3.3. RESPONSE-BASED BEHAVIORAL APPROACHES

Adherents of these views aim at more reliable and verifiable ways of determining when and why a translation is good. They are influenced by the psychological school of behaviorism. Response-based behavioral views of translation evaluation are particularly associated with “Eugene Nida’s pioneering work on translation and his idea of using the reactions of recipients of a translation as the main basis for evaluating it” (ibid). Translation evaluation is thus linked to the effect a translation is supposed to have. The claim is that a translation is good when it arouses in its recipients the same effect as the original had-a demand which is at first sight dauntingly difficult to verify empirically.

Three evaluative criteria have been suggested in this view, as she (pp. 44-45) holds, as follows:

APPROACHES TO EVALUATING TRANSLATIONS 15

(1) General efficiency of the communication process: maximal reception with minimal effort

(2) Comprehension of intent: the accuracy with which the original’s meaning is represented in the translation-judged in terms of its comprehensibility in the target culture

(3) Equivalence of response: related to Nida’s well-known translation principle of dynamic equivalence, that is, how the recipients of a translation respond to the translation must be equivalent to the manner in which the recipients of the original responded to the original.

Regarding the last criterion, if equivalence of response cannot be empirically tested, it seems fruitless to postulate such a requirement, and the appeal to an equivalent response has really no more value than the anecdotal criteria of, for example, the pleasure and delight of the reader.

Subsequently the following modified behavioral criteria for translation evaluation are also problematic because they, likewise, cannot be verified:

(a) Correctness with which the receptors understand the message of the original, (b) Ease of comprehension, (c) Involvement a person feels as a result of a translation’s adequacy of form.

However, some experimental tests of translation quality were actually carried out based on response-based behavioral views as follows (House, 2009, pp. 45-46):

(1) The cloze technique, where the degree of comprehensibility of a translation is related to its “degree of predictability”. Given the lack of reference to the original, “the assumption that higher predictability rate and relative comprehension ease equals higher translation quality is not necessarily valid”: the original itself may have a relatively low predictability and comprehension rate.

(2) A test based on the “recipients’ reactions to several translations”: In general, relying exclusively on the responses of judges is of limited value because of the vast number of imponderable variables involved.

(3) A translation is read out to another person, who will then be asked to explain its content to other individuals not present at the first reading. The idea is to find out how well the meaning comes across far too global a test. Finer stylistic shades of meaning cannot be tapped, and the test’s reliance on a reporter rather than on the translation itself is problematic.

(4) Several individuals reading the translation aloud to an audience: Clearly, here again, there are too many other variables, and one would also need to know how well the original would be read aloud.

Taken together, the main weakness of all these response-based tests is “the lack of a norm (which can only be established by the original) against which their results


can be measured” (p. 46). The fact that the original is not taken into account may have arisen from a confusion as to what translation evaluation means: translations can only be evaluated relatively by reference to their origin. A similar lack of reference to the original can also be observed in views that focus on the variable interpretation processes involved in translation.

3.4. TARGET-TEXT RELATED APPROACHES

In the literary-descriptive approach to translation, the quality of a translation is assessed based on “how the translation functions in the system of the target language literature and culture” (House, 2009, p. 47). We can argue over the procedure as follows:

First the translated text is critiqued without reference to how it came into being, then an analysis carried out of specific solutions to translation problems pointing to the fact that the translation has been imported into the target culture system. Such solutions presuppose, however, some sort of comparison of the entire texts with one another.

However, such a comparison of entire textual exemplars is not, and probably cannot be, systematically carried out. Some questions are proposed in this respect, such as, how are we to know, when and according to what criteria a translation is a translation, not an original text? How are we to judge a translation’s particular merits? Such a translation can only be evaluated in terms of its connotative equivalence, that is, whether or not the associations surrounding these two geographical terms are equivalent.

Regarding postmodernist and deconstructionist approaches to translation, House (ibid) highlights that:

(1) They focus on the variable meanings of the original. (2) The original itself is also of little importance. (3) The translation practices and processes are critically examined in order to assess

unequal power relations reflected in the translation. (4) Translators are to become more visible when they set out to reveal in their

translations ideological and institutional manipulations of the original. (5) Translation choices such as these need to be unmasked and replaced. (6) Translation evaluation is equated with making politically pertinent statements

about why and how a translation should deviate from its original with a focus on the powerful but hidden socio-political forces responsible for skewing meanings of words and phrases in texts, and for shaping the process of selection of what gets translated in the first place

Correspondingly, in the purpose-oriented view of translation, the original is hardly recognized, the claim being that “the original is first and foremost the purpose of a translation which is the yardstick for judging a translation” with a


focus on “the target text, and how its purpose is realized” (House, 2009, p. 48). Since this purpose resembles the real-world effect of a text, it can be only vaguely defined, and it is consequently difficult to say whether and how it is fulfilled. Given the prominence of the purpose of a translation, in some cases, the fulfilment of a particular purpose (or ideology) superimposed on an original text can result in a translation which is very different from its original.

In the purpose-oriented view of translation, House (p. 50) maintains, “Translation is by its very nature characterized by a double-bind relationship to its original and to the conditions governing its reception in the new environment”.

3.5. APPROACHES BASED ON THE COMPARISON OF STs AND TTs

Regarding equivalence in translation, as it has been discussed in chapter 2, the nature of the equivalence relationship between an original and translation can be established through an analytic scheme, using the Hallidayan register categories of field, tenor, and mode for a comparative analysis of original and translation. This scheme can also be fruitfully used to evaluate translations. In other words, in first place, the source text (ST) is analysed in terms of genre, register categories of field, tenor, mode, and then functional profile of the source text is invetsigated. In second place, the same analysis and investigation is carried on over the target text. Then source text and target text are compared.

3.6. LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS VERSUS SOCIAL JUDGMENT

In translation evaluation, it is important to be aware of the difference between (linguistic) analysis and (social) judgment. This means that a distinction needs to be made between describing and explaining linguistic features of the original text and comparing them with the relevant features of the translation on the one hand, and judging how good a translation” is on the other hand. House (2009, pp. 55-56) illuminates that:

Instead of taking the complex psychological categories of the intuitions, feelings, or beliefs of the recipients of a translation or the (equally vague) effect of a translation as the basis for translation evaluation, the approach… focuses on texts, on how they are understood as genres, and how they function pragmatically. Such an approach cannot… pass judgments on: what is a ‘good’ or a ‘bad’ translation.

Judgments of the quality of a translation, depend on a great variety of factors which any enter social evaluative statement. Critical in the case of translation evaluation is that “evaluative judgments should be based on the analytic, comparative process of translation criticism”, that is, it is the linguistic analysis,


which provides grounds for arguing evaluative judgment. The choice of an overt or a covert translation depends not on the text alone or

on its interpretation by the translator, but on the reasons for the translation, on the intended readership, and on a variety of publishing and marketing policies-factors that have nothing to do with translation as a linguistic procedure. These social factors [emphasis added] concern human beings as well as sociocultural, political or ideological constraints” and often turn out to be more influential than linguistic considerations or the professional competence of the translator. However, despite such external influences, translation is at its core a linguistic-textual phenomenon, and it can be legitimately analyzed as such. For House (2009), the priority of the translation criticism is in the following order:

(1) linguistic-text analysis and comparison (2) Considerations of social factors

In other words, linguistic description and explanation should not be confused with evaluative assertions made solely on the basis of social, political, ethical or individual grounds.

Translation quality is a problematic concept if it is taken to involve only “individual and externally motivated value judgment” and passing any “final judgment” of the quality of a translation that fulfils the demands of “scientific objectivity” is very difficult indeed (2009, p. 56). Evaluators will always be forced to move flexibly from considerations of “ideology, function, genre and register” to “the communicative value of individual linguistic items” (p. 57). A responsible translation critic will arrive at a position where he/she can give only a probabilistic reconstruction of the translator’s choices. In other words, his/her task is to work out in each individual case and as far as possible, exactly where and with what types of consequences and (possibly) for which reasons translated texts are what they are in relation to their source texts. Therefore, such a modest goal might guard the translation evaluator against making prescriptive, apodictic and global judgments of the simple good versus bad type.

3.7. SUMMARY

Evaluating a translation presupposes a certain perspective on translation” and “the different perspectives on translation and on the central notion of equivalence are reflected in the different approaches to evaluation. The anecdotal and subjective view of translation evaluation is in tune with a focus on:

(1) the process of interpretation in translation; (2) the response-based behavioral view and the different target-text related views of

translation evaluation, compatible with approaches that stress the individual, social, cultural, and ideological variables involved in interpreting texts; and


(3) the linguistically-oriented views of translation that focus on the original text are closely linked to the analytic framework for text analysis, comparison, and evaluation. (p. 57)

This approach combines text-internal comparative analysis with text-external constraints and takes account of cultural norms and expectations via the concept of a cultural filter, which may be employed in covert translation.

In translation evaluation, it is crucial to distinguish between analysis, description and explanation on the one hand and judgments of values, social questions of relevance, and personal taste or preference on the other, in which both components are implicit in translation evaluation, but the second is pointless without the first.

4

Discourse

4.1. THE CONCEPT OF DISCOURSE

There are different viewpoints about the definition of discourse. Different kinds of paradigms provide different assumptions about the general nature of discourse. These paradigms are sometimes differently labeled. These differences in paradigms influence definitions of discourse. The first paradigm is Newmayer’s (1980) formalist paradigm which views discourse as “sentences” (Schiffrin, 1994, p. 20). The second paradigm is the functional paradigm and it is sometimes called emergent or interactive paradigm which views discourse as “language use” (Schiffrin, 1994). There is also a third definition of discourse provided by Schiffrin (1994) that attempts to bridge the formalist-functionalist dichotomy. Van Dijk (1997) categorized discourse into three aspects and explained:

… I have characterized discourse as essentially involving three main dimensions, namely language use, cognition, and interaction in their sociocultural contexts. Discourse analytical studies distinguish various levels, units or constructs within each of these dimensions, and formulate the rules and strategies of their normative or actual uses. They functionally relate such units or levels among each other, and thereby also explain why they are being used. In the same way, they functionally connect discourse structures with social and cultural context structures, and both again to the structures and strategies of cognition. Dicourse analysis thus moves from macro to micro level of talk, text, context or society, and vice versa… (p. 32)

Furthermore, there have been different approaches proposed by other schlars to discourse. Schiffrin (1994) categorizes these approaches into six groups:

(1) Speech Act Theory focuses on communicative acts performed through speech. (2) Interactional Sociolinguistics focuses on the social and lingustic meaning

created during interaction. (3) The Ethnography of Communication focuses on language and communication


as cultural behaviour. (4) Pragmatics focuses on the meaning of invidual utterances in hypothetical

contexts. (5) Conversation Analysis focuses on how sequential structures in conversation

provide a basis through which social order is constructed. (6) Variation Theory focuses on structural categories in texts and how form and

meaning in clauses help to define text.

4.2. FORMALIST PARADIGM OF DISCOURSE

The formalist paradigm regards language chiefly as a mental phenomenon and highlights linguistic universals as deriving from a common genetic linguistic inheritance of the human species. Moreover, formalists are inclined to explain children’s acquisition of language in terms of a built-in human capacity to learn language. Above all, formalists study language as an autonomous system (Schiffrin, 1994).

The classic definition of discourse derives from formalist assumptions (like Hyme’s 1964) that discourse is “language above the sentence or above the clause” (Schiffrin 1994, p. 23 cf. Stubbs 1983, p. 1). Van Dijk (1977, p. 4) observes that structural descriptions characterize discourse at several levels or dimensions of analysis and in terms of many different units, categories, schematic patterns, or relations. Van Dijk (1977) argues that despite the diversity of structural approaches there is a common core: structural analyses focus on the way different units function in relation to each other ( a focus shared with structuralism in general), but they disregard the functional relations with the context of which discourse is a part (pp. 23-24). Van Dijk (1977) holds that according to structurally based analyses, discourse comprises constituents (smaller linguistic units) that have particular relationships with one another and that can occur in a restricted number of rule-governed arrangements. He highlights that in many structural approaches, discourse is viewed as a level of structure higher than the sentence, or higher than another unit of text. Therefore, discourse is viewed as comprising units (morpheme, clause, proposition, and sentence).

Holker (1989) suggests that the linguistic structures of an expression, including both form-based (morphological and syntactic) and meaning-based (referential and conjunctive) relations create connectedness and cohesion (as cited in Schiffrin, 1994, pp. 24-25). Other structural approaches search for a multi-based or diversified units.

For example, Polanyi (1988) allows structures to be composed of units as varied sentences, turns, speech actions, and speech events (p. 25). Considering structural or formalist paradigm with regard to discourse, we can conclude that sentence is the unit of discourse. Also, we can state that structurally-based definitions of discourse lead to analyses of constituents that have particular relationships with one another in a text, and that can occur in a restricted set of text level arrangements. One

DISCOURSE 23

immediate problem stemming from reliance on analyses on the smaller unit of sentence is that the units in which people speak do not always seem to be like sentences (ibid).

4.3. FUNCTIONALIST PARADIGM OF DISCOURSE

The functional paradigm which is the focus of this study views discourse as “language use” (Schiffrin 1994, p. 20). This definition observes the relationship the discourse has with the context.

The functionalist paradigm is based on two general assumptions: (a) Language has functions that are external to the linguistic system itself. (b) External functions influence the internal organization of the linguistic system (Schiffrin, 1994). Consequently, functionalists such as Halliday (1985) tend to regard language as a social phenomenon and explain linguistic universals as deriving from the universality of the uses to which language is put in human society. Functionalists study language in relation to its “social functions” (Schiffrin 1994, p. 21-22). According to Halliday and Hasan (1976, p. 23), “a text is a passage of discourse which is coherent in these two regards: it is coherent with respect to the context of situation and therefore consistent in register; and it is coherent with respect to itself and therefore cohesive”. For some scholars (Fasold, 1990; Brown & Yule, 1983; Halliday, 1973; Schiffrin, 1994) discourse is language in use [emphasis added] and discourse analysis, therefore, involves purposes and functions of language [emphasis added] in human life. They believe that discourse is a socially and culturally organized system through which particular functions are realized. They claim that discourse is as collection of contextualized units of language use.

In contrast to formalists, functionalists study language in relation to its social functions (Schiffrin 1994, p. 21-22). According to the functionalist view, “the study of discourse is the study of any aspect of language use” (Schiffrin 1994, p. 31, cf. Fasold 1990, p. 15). Similarly, Brown and Yule (1989, p. 1) defining the nature of discourse state that: “The analysis of discourse is necessarily the analysis of language in use. As such, it cannot be restricted to the description of linguistic forms independent of the purposes or functions which these forms are designed to serve in human affairs” (as cited in Schiffrin 1994, p. 31). Therefore, in the functionalist paradigm, the analysis of language use cannot be independent of the analysis of the purposes and functions of language in human life.

Schiffrin (1994) quoting Fairclough (1989), states that language is a part of society, linguistic phenomena are social phenomena of a special sort, and social phenomena are in part linguistic phenomena. According to Fairclough (1989), language and society partially constitute one another-such that the analysis of language as an independent and “autonomous” system would be a contradiction in terms. Even in less extreme functionalist views, discourse is assumed interdependent with social life, in such a way that its analysis necessarily intersects with meaning


activities and systems outside itself. Considering the above-mentioned discussions, one can state that in the definition of discourse, discourse is viewed as a system (a socially and culturally organized way of speaking) through which particular functions are realized. On this basis, instead of focusing on formal regularities, the focus is on the way patterns of talk are put to use for certain purposes in particular contexts and how they result from the application of communicative strategies (p. 32).

4.4. DISCOURSE ANALYSIS (DA)

Munday (2008, p. 100) claims that discourse analysis (DA) 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”. Discourse analysis (D.A.) is necessarily the analysis of language in use. The functionalist view of discourse analysis asserts that “the study of discourse is the study of any aspect of language use” (Fasold, 1990, p. 65). Discourse analysis cannot be restricted to the description of linguistic forms independent of the purposes and functions that these forms perform. In other words, functional analyses of discourse rely less upon the strictly grammatical characteristics of utterances as sentences, than upon the way utterances are situated in contexts.

4.5. HOUSE’S DISCOURSAL APPROACH TO TQA

The model (House, 1977, 2nd ed. 1981) is based on “pragmatic theories of language use”, and it provides for the analysis of the “linguistic discoursal” as well as the “situational-cultural particularities of the source and target texts”, a comparison of the two texts and the resultant assessment of their relative match (House, 1997, p. 29). The revised model draws mainly “on pragmatic theory, on Hallidays functional and systemic theory, on notions developed inside the Prague school of language and linguistics, on register theory and stylistics as well as discourse analysis” (ibid). In other words, House’s discourse and register analysis approaches are based on the model of Hallidayan systemic functional linguistics which links “microlevel linguistic choices to the communicative function of a text and the sociocultural meaning behind it” (Munday, 2008, p. 104).

4.6. THE HALLIDAYAN MODEL OF LANGUAGE AND DISCOURSE

The framework in the original model (1977, 1981) for textual analysis and the establishment of textual function was register analysis. Identifying the register of a text is an essential part of discourse processing. The notion of register proposes “an intimate relationship of text to context” and as “functional language variation”

DISCOURSE 25

Figure 4.1. Genre-Register-Language/Text (House, 1997, p. 106)

refers to what the context-of-situation requires as “appropriate linguistic realizations in a text” (House, 1997, p. 105). Figure 4.1 illustrates Halliday and Martin’s (1993/1996/2005) belief that the relationship between genre-register-language is seen in terms of semiotic planes which relate to one another, that is, the genre is the content-plane of register, and register is the expression-plane of genre. Register in turn is the content-plane of language, with language being the expression-plane of register. In addition, Halliday (1978) maintains that if texts are found to belong to the same register, they can be said to belong to the same deeper, underlying generic structure, which defines them as belonging to the same genre. In other words, the concept of genre refers to discourse types is a category superordinate to register.

Hallidayan register analysis has been of concern to some scholars and researchers in the realm of linguistic analysis of texts and unfolding the process of meaning making particularly in the domain of (critical) discourse analysis (CDA) and (foreign) language teaching pedagogy. Regarding the concept of register or context of situation as a semantic concept, Halliday and Hasan (1989, p. 23) state that register is “a configuration of meanings that are typically associated with a particular situational configuration of field, mode, and tenor”, therefore, a register must include “the expressions, the lexico-grammatical and phonological features that typically accompany or realise these meanings”. They state that a particular register also has indexical features, indices “in the form of particular words, particular grammatical signals that have the function of indicating to the participants”. Based on the model of language in context known as systemic functional linguistics (SFL) (Halliday & Martin, 1993/1996/2005; Halliday & Webster, 2009), Martin (2009, p. 11) believes that “this model involves a rich conception of language as a meaning-making system, involving phonology/ graphology, lexicogrammar, and discourse semantics”.

According to Martin, Figure 4.2 illuminates that:

One of the reasons for separating genre from field, tenor, and mode was to allow for shifts in field, tenor, and mode variables from one stage of a genre to another (e.g., being friendly in the beginning of a service encounter and then toughening up to close the sale). (p. 12)


4.7. HOUSE’S SCHEME FOR ANALYZING AND COMPARING ST AND TT

On the basis of the above considerations and in adaptation of Martin (1993, p. 120), Figure 4.3 refers to a scheme for analyzing and comparing original and translation texts.

Figure 4.2 Metafunction in Relation to Language, Register and Genre (Martin, 2009, p. 12)

Figure 4.3. A Scheme for Analyzing and Comparing Original and Translation Texts (House 1997, p. 108).

5

House’s Original Model for Evaluating Translations

5.1. OVERVIEW

Juliane House was born in Germany in 1942 (VIAF. Retrieved 3/8/2013) is a translator, researcher and a scholar in linguistics, and in Translation Studies and Teaching in particular. House (2009, p. xi) maintains:

My view of translation has grown over more than forty years. I first obtained a diploma in translation at the University of Heidelberg, then worked as a translator and interpreter for an international company in Frankfurt before moving on to deal with more theoretical aspects of translation at the universities of Toronto, Bochum, and Hamburg.

Including a lot of articles and some books in the realm of Translation Quality Assessment (TQA), a version of her Ph.D. dissertation, “submitted to the University of Toronto, Canada, in February 1976”, was published in 1977 and 1981 “by the Guter Narr Verlag” under the title of “A Model for Translation Quality Assessment” (House, 1981, p. vii). In addition, a second version with some modification was published in 1997 under the title of “Translation Quality Assessment, A Model Revisited”. Subsequently in 2009, she published the book “Translation” by Oxford University Press, elaborating on her revised TQA model and outlining on the contemporary issues in the realm of translation studies.

5.2. FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTS

5.2.1. Equivalence and meaning in translation

The model (House, 1977; 2nd ed. 1981) is based on “pragmatic theories of language use”, and it provides for the analysis of the “linguistic discoursal” as well


as the “situational-cultural particularities of the source and target texts”, a comparison of the two texts and the resultant assessment of their relative match (1997, p. 29). The (revised) model (1997) draws mainly on pragmatic theory, on Hallidays functional and systemic theory, on notions developed inside the Prague school of language and linguistics, on register theory and stylistics as well as discourse analysis.

The model is also based on the notion of equivalence: translation is constituted by a double-binding relationship both to its source and to the communicative conditions of the receiving linguaculture, and it is the concept of equivalence which captures this relationship. She argues, “The concept of equivalence is differentiated in this model according to an empirically derived distinction into overt and covert translation” (ibid). The notions of overt and covert translation were discussed in advance in this book in chapter 2 and are elaborated more in chapters 5 and 6 as well.

The notion of equivalence, on which the model is based, is related to the “preservation of meaning” across two different languages in which three aspects of that “meaning” are particularly important for translation: “a semantic aspect, a pragmatic aspect, and a textual aspect of meaning”, as House (pp. 30-31) explains them in details as follows:

(1) The semantic aspect of meaning consists of the relationship of reference or denotation, that is, the relationship of linguistic units or symbols to their referents in some possible world, where possible world means any world that the human mind is capable of constructing… . The referential aspect of meaning is the one which is most readily accessible, and for which equivalence in translation can most easily be seen to be present or absent.

(2) Pragmatic meaning is here referred to as the illocutionary force that an utterance is said to have, that is, the particular use of an expression on specific occasion. The illocutionary force of an utterance is to be differentiated from its propositional content, that is, the semantic information that an utterance contains. The illocutionary force of an utterance may often be predicted from grammatical features, for example word order, mood of the verb, stress, intonation or the presence of performative verbs. In actual speech situations, it is the context that clarifies the illocutionary force of an utterance. Since translation, which handles language in use, that is, parole, is clearly concerned with instances of acts of speech, considerations of illocutionary force or pragmatic meaning are of great importance for translation. In effect, in translation we do not operate with sentences at all but with utterances, that is, units of discourse characterized by their use-value in communication. In certain types of translation then, it is both possible and necessary to aim at equivalence of pragmatic meaning at the expense of semantic meaning. Pragmatic meaning

HOUSE’S ORIGINAL MODEL FOR EVALUATING TRANSLATIONS 29

overrides semantic meaning in these cases. In addition, we can then consider a translation a primarily pragmatic reconstruction of its original.

(3) The textual aspect of meaning because the necessity of achieving connectivity between successive sentences in another language while at the same time retaining the semantic meaning conveyed in the original is important especially in overt translation. A text is any stretch of language in which the individual components relate to one another and form a cohesive whole. A text is thus a linkage of sentences into a larger unit. Various relations of co-textual reference take place in the process of text constitution, for example theme-rheme sequences, occurrences of pro-forms, substitutions, co-references, ellipses, anaphora. It is these different ways of text constitution which account for the textual meaning that should be kept equivalent in translation.

Accordingly, House (1997, p. 31) defines translation as “the replacement of a text in the source language by a semantically and pragmatically equivalent text in the target language”. Taking equivalence as the fundamental criterion of translation quality, she reveals that an adequate translation text is a pragmatically and semantically equivalent one, having a function equivalent to that of its source text.

5.2.2. Functions of language versus functions of texts

With regard to function as a fundamental principle of language and among many different classification schemes for the functions of language, House (pp. 32-36) uses “the traditional dichotomy of the two broad (pre-analytical) functions”, for choosing and grouping a sample of texts and for labelling the two components of the textual function discovered in the individual texts. She (1997, p. 36) adopts “Halliday’s terms ideational and interpersonal [emphasis added] as labels for the referential and the non-referential functional components”. Regarding Halliday’s textual function, she (p. 35) explains that through the textual function, “language makes links with itself and with the situation”. Halliday’s textual function relates to a different intra-language level, to a level of internal organization of linguistic items. Halliday’s model confirms that the basic split of language use into a referential or content oriented function and a non-referential, interpersonal function. This basic division into “a cognitive function and an expressive/emotive-connative function” is paralleled by the customary division of “meaning into cognitive (or denotative) meaning” including concepts which people have with regard to the “content of verbal communication, and emotive, connotative meaning covering the emotional reactions” which people have with regard to various linguistic forms (p. 35). Halliday’s ideational function [emphasis added] (with its experiential and logical functional components) thus corresponds to Popper’s descriptive and argumentative functions. Concerning its interpersonal function [emphasis added], House (p. 35) holds that:


Language acts as an expression of a speaker’s attitudes and his influence on the attitudes and behavior of the hearer, and serves as a means for conveying- the speaker’s relationship with his interlocutor(s), and for expressing social roles including communication roles such as questioner and respondent.

Richards and Schmidt (2002, p. 217) maintain that although most linguists focus primarily on the formal characteristics of language, “there is also a long tradition originally deriving from work in anthropology which is equally concerned with the functions of language”. According to Richards and Schmidt, functions of language or language functions consists of four categories. Language is often described as having the following major functions:

(1) A descriptive function (or ideational function, in Halliday’s framework), organizing a speaker’s or writer’s experience of the world and conveying information which can be stated or denied and in some cases tested.

(2) A social function (interpersonal function in Halliday’s terms), used to establish, maintain and signal relationships between people.

(3) An expressive function, through which speakers signal information about their opinions, prejudices, past experiences, and so forth; and

(4) A textual function, creating written and spoken texts.

These functions frequently overlap, and most utterances accomplish more than one function at the same time.

5.3. TOWARDS A MODEL OF TRANSLATION QUALITY ASSESSMENT

In order to characterize the function of an individual text, function must be defined differently from functions of language. House (1997, p. 36) defines the function of a text as “the application or use which the text has in the particular context of a situation”. Establishing such a function of an individual text involves the characteri-zation of its textual profile which results from a systematic linguistic-pragmatic analysis of the text in its context of situation. Context of situation is the context in which the text unfolds and “is encapsulated in the text” through a systematic relationship between the social environment, and the functional organisation of language (Halliday & Hasan, 1989, p. 11).

For the particular purpose of establishing functional equivalence between a source text and a translation text, House (1997, p. 37) maintains that “the source text has to be analyzed first such that the equivalence which may be sought for the translation text can be stated precisely”. Since textual function was defined as the use of a text in a particular situation, each individual text must be referred to the particular situation enveloping it.

For her purpose of constructing a model for situational-functional text analysis


and assessment of translation, House (p. 39) eclectically adapted Crystal and Davy’s (1969) model in two sections of “Dimensions of Language User” and “Dimensions of language Use”, featuring the following subcategories.

5.3.1. Dimensions of language user

These dimensions are 1) Geographical Origin 2) Social Class 3) Time. Regarding the dimensions of language user, the categories of geographical origin and social class are adopted from Crystal and Davy’s (1969, p. 66) notion of dialect. House (1997, p. 38) explains:

Dialect refers to features which mark an author's geographical origin (regional dialect), where the unmarked case is the national standard language, or his position on a social scale (social dialect), where the unmarked case is the construct of the educated middle class speaker of the standard language. Time refers to those features which provide clues to a text's temporal provenance.

5.3.2. Dimensions of language use

These dimensions are (1) Medium: simple/complex (2) Participation: simple/ complex (3) Social Role Relationship (4) Social Attitude (5) Province. House (1997, pp. 39-42) explains the dimensions of language use as follows:

Medium

(1) Medium-simple: where language stays within one category, that is, spoken to be heard or written to be read (in the sense of not read aloud).

(2) Medium-complex: writing

Writing: to be spoken as if not written Writing: to be spoken Writing: not necessarily to be spoken-to be read as if heard

In determining features of the spoken mode in the various manifestations of a Complex Medium, phenomena such as structural-simplicity, incompleteness of sentences, specific manner of text constitution, particular theme-rheme sequencing, subjectivity (marked, for instance, through the use of modal particles and gambits), high redundancy, etc are considered.

Participation

A text may be either a “simple” monologue or dialogue, or a more “complex” mixture involving, in an overt “monologue”, various means of indirect participation elicitation and indirect addressee involvement manifest linguistically, for instance, in a characteristic use of pronouns, switches between declarative, imperative and


interrogative sentence patterns or the presence of contact parentheses, and exclamations.

Social Role Relationship

(1) symmetrical (2) asymmetric

House (1997, p. 41) subdivided Crystal and Davy’s dimension Status into two categories: Social Role Relationship and Social Attitude. Under Social Role Relationship, House analyzed the role relationship between addresser and addressees, which may be either symmetrical (marked by the existence of solidarity or equality) or asymmetric (marked by the presence of some kind of authority). In considering the addresser’s social role vis-a-vis the addressee(s), account is further taken of the relatively permanent position role (teacher, priest) and the more transient situational role (visitor in a prison, speaker at a given occasion).

Social Attitude

Under this dimension, concerning the degrees of social distance or proximity resulting in relative formality or informality, the distinctions of different styles are made consisting of five different styles or levels of formality: frozen, formal, consultative, casual and intimate. The consultative and the casual style levels which can also be called colloquial styles are used to deal with public information.

(1) Consultative Style: The consultative style is the most neutral style in which the norm for conversations or letters between strangers and it is mostly marked negatively, that is, through the absence of both formal and informal style markers. In using consultative style, the addresser does not assume that he can leave out certain parts of his message— which he might be able to do in a socially closer relationship where much of the message is “understood”. In consultative style, the author has to be fairly elaborate in supplying background information. A further characteristic of consultative style is the participation of the addressee(s)—hence the term “consultative”—either directly or implicitly.

(2) Casual Style: Casual style is especially marked by various degrees of implicitness, in which the addresser may indulge because of the level of intimacy between himself and the addressee(s). Background information is not necessary: casual style is used with friends or “insiders” of all kinds with whom the addresser has something to share or desires or imagines that there is something to share. Ellipses, contractions, and the use of lexical items and collocations marked [- formal] are characteristic linguistic markers of casual style.

(3) Intimate style: Intimate style excludes the public information. In other words, it is the language used between people who are personally very close to each other


with a maximum of shared background information being available. Its major feature is referred to as “extraction”, an extreme type of ellipsis.

(4) Formal style: Formal style deviates from consultative style in that addressee participation is to a large degree omitted. Formal texts are well-structured, elaborate, logically sequenced, and strongly cohesive. They clearly demonstrate advance planning.

(5) Frozen style: Frozen style, like intimate style an extreme style, is the most formal, premeditated, often “literary” style. Frozen texts may be consummate products of art meant for the education and edification of the readers, but it may also be used in business letters, in which the social distance between writer and the reader is thus given expression.

Province

Province is very broadly defined as referring not only to the text producer’s occupational and professional activity but also to the field or topic of the text in its widest sense of area of operation, of the language activity as well as details of the text production as these can be deduced from the text itself (the notion of register is relevant here).

With respect to the abovementioned dimensions, the situational dimensions and their linguistic correlates are then considered to be the means by which the text’s function is realized, that is, the function of a text is established as a result of an analysis of the text along the eight situational dimensions. In relation with the basic criterion of functional match for translation equivalence, we can claim that a translation text should “not only match its source text in function, but employ equivalent situational dimensional means to achieve that function” (1997, p. 42). In other word, for a translation of optimal quality, it is desirable to “have a match between source and translation text along these dimensions which are found- in the course of the analysis -to contribute in a particular way to each of the two functional components, ideational and interpersonal, of the text’s function.

By using situational dimensions for opening up the source text, a particular textual profile is obtained for the source text. This profile, which characterizes the function of the text, is the norm against which the quality of the translation text is to be measured. In other words, a given translation text is analyzed using the same dimensional scheme and at the same level of delicacy, and the degree to which its textual profile and function match or do not match the source text’s is the degree to which the translation text is more or less adequate in quality.

In brief, the dimensions of language user are as follows (1) Geographical Origin (regional dialect) (2) Social Class (social dialect) (3) Time (a text's temporal provenance)

Furthermore, Table 5.1 illustrates the dimensions of language use in a more tangible way.


Table 5.1. Dimensions of Language Use, adopted from House (1997, pp. 39-42)

Dimensions of Language Use

Medium Simple spoken to be heard

written to be read

Complex: writing to be spoken as if not written

to be spoken

not necessarily to be spoken/to

be read as if heard

Participation Simple

Complex

Social Role Relationship Symmetrical

Asymmetric

Social Attitude Consultative Style (the most neutral style)

Casual Style

Intimate Style

Formal Style

Frozen Style (the most formal style)

Province (in relation with register)

5.4. OPERATION OF THE MODEL

With regard to the method of operation of the model, House (1997, p. 43) outlines the method of analyzing and comparing texts first by indicating “how the various situational dimensions of the model are realized syntactically, lexically, and textually, drawing eclectically on a number of concepts deemed useful for the establishment of linguistic correlates to the situational dimensions”. The second method of analyzing and comparing texts is by the evaluation scheme for the “measurement of mismatches” between source and translation texts. Finally, the method of operation of the model is justified.

5.4.1. Method of analysis and comparison of texts

Starting from the assumption that in order to make qualitative statements about a translation text (TT), TT must be compared with the source text’s (ST) textual profile which determines the norm against which the appropriateness of TT is judged. The first task in this model is a detailed analysis of ST. Using the set of situational dimensions as outlined earlier, it is necessary to establish text-specific linguistic correlates of the situational dimensions.

In seeking to extend the descriptive power of the model, House (p. 43) also made use of the following items:


(1) The convention of expressing the components of meaning by means of feature symbols such as [+/- human], [+/- abstract];

(2) Rhetorical-stylistic concepts such as alliteration and anacoluthon, concepts from speech act and pragmatic theory, discourse analysis; and

(3) The concepts of foregrounding and automatization developed by Prague school linguists.

Foregrounding can be defined as a linguistic device for making the reader conscious of a particular linguistic form such that the linguistic form itself attracts attention, and is felt to be unusual or de-automatized, as is the case, for example, in alliteration, assonance, onomatopoeia, puns, and wordplays. Automatization is defined as the opposite of foregrounding referring to the conventional, normal uses of the devices of language such that the linguistic forms themselves do not attract special attention. House maintains that on each of the situational dimensions, “syntactic, lexical and textual means, although it might not always be the case that all three categories are found to be operative on a particular dimension,” are differentiated.

With respect to her treatment of textual means, House (p. 44) outlines that:

I based my treatment of textual means of realizing a particular situational feature eclectically on Enkvist’s work on linguistic stylistics (1973), on work done in the Prague school on theme-rheme distribution and on the insightful work on texts in spoken and written language by Söll (1974), as well as on Edmondson's early work on discourse analysis later (1981) to be published in his model for discourse analysis.

Important in the conception of this model was the inclusion of textual means in which House (1997, pp. 44-45) distinguishes three main textual aspects:

(1) Theme dynamics charts the various patterns of semantic relationships by which themes recur in texts (e.g. repetition, anaphoric and cataphoric reference, pro-forms, ellipsis, synonymy, and near-synonymy) and takes account of functional sentence perspective. For the purposes of this model, the notion of functional sentence perspective was rather simplistically interpreted by House (ibid) as follows:

Any utterance consists of two basic parts which differ in the function they have in carrying information: (a) the theme which refers to facts either taken for granted, universally known, or given from the context, and which therefore do not, or only marginally, contribute to the new information conveyed by the total utterance; (b) the rheme containing the main new information conveyed by the utterance.

Word order is the primary formal means of realizing the theme-rheme distribution: in normal, unmarked speech, the theme precedes the rheme


(objective position), in emotive speech, however, the rheme precedes the theme (subjective position).

(2) Clausal Linkage is described by a system of logical relations between clauses and sentences in a text, for example additive, adversative, alternative, causal, explanatory, or illative relations.

(3) Iconic Linkage or structural parallelism occurs when two or more sentences in a text cohere because they are, at the surface level, isomorphic. Two basic types of text constitution are distinguished as emic and etic texts. An emic text is one which is solely determined by text-immanent criteria, and an etic text is one which is determined through text-transcending means, that is, temporal, personal, or local deictics pointing to various features of the situation enveloping the text, the addresser, and the addressee(s).

Textual features such as the overall logical structure, the presence of narrative or other routine formulae, and the presence or absence of redundancy are also considered.

Following the analysis of ST, TT is analyzed in the same manner, and “the two resulting textual profiles are compared for their relative matching” (House, 1997, p. 45). In the presentation of the results of the analysis of TT, the procedure is restricted to listing the mismatches along the various dimensions.

In short, the comparative model can be reduced to a register analysis of both ST and TT according to their realization through lexical, syntactic and textual means. House (pp. 44-45) argues that textual means refers to the following categories:

(1) Theme-dynamics: thematic structure and cohesion; (2) Clausal linkage: additive (and, in addition), adversative, etc.; (3) Iconic linkage: parallelism of structures.

5.4.2. Evaluation scheme

If a translation text, in order to be adequate, is to fulfill the requirement of a dimensional, and as a result of this, a functional match, then “any mismatch along the dimensions is an error. Such dimensional errors which are called “covertly erroneous errors” demand “a much more qualitative-descriptive, in-depth analysis” than “overtly erroneous errors” resulted either from “a mismatch of the denotative meanings of source and translation text elements” or from “a breach of the target language system” as House (p. 45) claims as follows:

(1) The denotative meaning of elements of ST was changed by the translator: omissions, additions and substitutions (wrong selections or combinations of elements).

(2) The breaches of the target language system: ungrammaticality referring to clear breaches of the language system, and cases of dubious acceptability which refers


to breaches of the norm of usage defined as a bundle of linguistic rules underlying the actual use of language (as opposed to the language system concerning with the potentialities of a language).

Table 5.2 illustrates the overtly erroneous errors in brief. The final qualitative judgment of a translation text consists, then, of a listing of

both covertly and overtly erroneous errors and of a statement of the relative match of the ideational and the interpersonal functional components of the textual function. The notion of a mismatch on a particular situational dimension, as House (p. 46) underlines, constitutes a covert error presupposes:

(1) that the socio-cultural norms, or more specifically the norm-conditioned expectations generated by the texts, are essentially comparable. Obvious differences in the unique cultural heritage must, of course, be stated explicitly and discussed in each particular text;

(2) that the differences between the two languages are such that they can largely be overcome in translation, that is, basic inter-translatability between the two languages is assumed. Again, exceptional cases… must be stated explicitly and treated as exceptions;

(3) that no special secondary function is added to the translation text, that is, works translated for special audiences (e.g., classical works translated for children) or special purposes (e.g., interlinear translations which are designed for a clarification of the structural differences between the two languages involved) are explicitly excluded. Such translations are no longer translations but are defined as overt versions of an original text.

Given these three presuppositions, it is thus assumed that the addressees of a translation text “form comparable sub-group in the target community to the sub-group formed by the addressees of the source text in the source language community” both being defined as “speakers of the contemporary standard language.” In other words, that supra-regional variety which is (commonly) used by the educated middle class speaker and which is at the same time accepted by the majority of the whole language community.

Table 5.2. Overtly Erroneous Errors, adopted from House (1997, p. 45)

Ove

rtly

Err

oneo

us

Err

ors

A mismatch of denotative

meanings of ST and TT

elements

Omissions (not translated)

Additions (creative translation)

Substitutions

(wrong selections/wrong combinations of elements)

The breaches of the target

language system

Ungrammaticality

Dubious Acceptability (breaches of the norm of usage)


5.4.3. Justification of the method

As we discussed before, House’s translation quality assessment (TQA) model is a professionally eclectic model based on Prague School ideas, speech act theory, pragmatics, discourse analysis and corpus-based distinctions between the spoken and written language. House (p. 103) outlines that any type of texts especially literary works can be analyzed through this model of translation quality assessment. Shedding more light on the model, House (p. 46) maintains that:

Apart from using the objectively fixed set of situational dimensions as a sort of tertium comparationis, this method of determining the appropriateness of a TT depends of course on the analyst’s intuition and on the intuitive judgments of further judges asked to help substantiate certain points.

Therefore, this approach of relying on the analyses (as a native speaker, a near-native speaker, and at the same time an expert in translation) seemed to be the only feasible method of putting this type of model into practice”. She (pp. 46-47) holds that the use of “the fixed set of situational dimensions” and “authentic texts (rather than pre-fabricated examples)”, with which the model was tested, makes her investigation more objective. It is of course undeniably true that the decisions about the appropriateness of linguistic elements in any TT must necessarily always contain a subjective and hermeneutic element. Equivalence relationships between items belonging to two languages be considered non-absolute ones falling on a cline of more or less equivalent with a range of equivalents in both directions running from more or less probable.

House (pp. 102-103) declares that the whole analytical apparatus is designed to “explicate the basis of any global judgment”. In other words, it enables the evaluator to “make the analyses and interpretations transparent, explicit and non-subjective but only to a certain point”, therefore, the ultimate judgment of quality resulting from the analyses contains “necessarily a hermeneutic, subjective component”. The interpretation of mismatches in the formation of an assessment of quality contains an interpretative hermeneutic element. Accordingly, translation is “a complex hermeneutic process” (1981, p. 64).

5.4.4. Implementation of the model

House’s original model of translation quality assessment (1977) was tried out with a corpus of eight English and German textual pairs, four belonging to the ideational functional category, and four to the interpersonal functional category. The texts covered a wide range of different provinces: “a scientific text, an economic text, a journalistic article and a tourist information brochure” make up the ideational set of texts; “an excerpt from a sermon, a political speech, a moral anecdote and a


dialogue taken from a comedy” belong to the interpersonal set of texts (1997, p. 48).

5.5. REFINEMENT OF THE MODEL

5.5.1 Suggestions for a translation typology

It is presupposed that “if one can classify texts successfully, then one will have successfully accounted for differences in translations and the theoretical problems surrounding translation evaluation” (p. 65). There is however clearly some relation between source text type and appropriate translation type. I suggested a basic division into two major translation types: overt translation and covert translation.

5.5.2. Overt translation

An overt translation is one in which “the addressees of the translation text are quite overtly not being directly addressed” and it “must overtly be a translation not, as it were, a second original” (p. 66). On the other hand, the source text is tied in a specific manner to the source language community and its culture and it is specifically directed at source culture addressees but at the same time points beyond the source language community because it is independent of its source language origin, also of potential general human interest. According to House (pp. 66-67), such source texts that have an established worth or status in the source language community and potentially in in other communities are divided into two groups:

(1) Overt historically-linked source texts: those tied to a specific occasion in which a precisely specified source language audience is/was being addressed.

(2) Overt timeless source texts: those transcending as works of art and aesthetic creations a distinct historical meaning while, of course, always necessarily displaying period and culture-specificity because of the status of the addresser, who is a product of his time and culture. Both these texts are quite clearly source-culture-specific because they are marked on the language user dimensions and because they have independent status in the language community through belonging to the community’s cultural products. Both texts are literary texts having the feature [+ fictional]. In other words, the texts are situationally abstract in that they do not immediately refer to a unique historic situation, in which both author and readers find themselves. The message in a fictional text is text-contained, which gives the text its independent value.

Regarding both groups of source texts, then, historically-linked and timeless ones, House (1997, p. 67) insists that:

A direct match of the original function of the source text is not possible in overt translation, either because the source text is tied to a specific non-repeatable historic


event in the source culture… or because of the unique status (as a literary text) that the source text has in the source culture.

In cases of overt translation “a similar second-level function”, that is, a kind of “topicalization of the original function” may have to be posited as “a criterion for adequate translation” (p. 68). This second-level function is then the function holding for the contemporary standard language speaker of the target culture and frequently also for their potential counterparts in the source culture, who may also not be the original addressees. In overt translation, the source text, as a piece of work with a certain status in the source language community, must remain as intact as possible given the necessary transfer and recoding in another language precisely because its status in the socio-cultural context of the source language community, which must be topicalized in the target culture, necessitates major changes. It is this dialectical relationship between preservation and alteration which makes the finding of translation equivalents difficult in cases of overt translation.

In the case of overt translation a second level function must be aimed at in translation. Since in an overt translation the ST is, in a way, “sacrosanct” due to its status (as a work of art or a historical document), the translator cannot strive for “simple functional equivalence in the target culture”, which would involve the “undertaking of adjustments of cultural presuppositions” (p. 68). Therefore, he or she has to restrict himself to simply transposing the ST from the source to the target culture, giving target culture members the opportunity to have access to the original via the medium of the foreign language. Overt translations are more straightforward since their STs are taken over unaltered, therefore, such translations are merely transplanted into a new environment with no provisions being made for the TT addressee’s (potentially different) norms of expectation. The major difficulty in translating overtly is the finding of linguistic-cultural equivalents on the language user dimensions.

In her book Translation, House (2009, pp. 36-38) elaborates more on an overt translation as follows:

(1) An overt translation is thus quite overtly a translation, not as it was a second original.

(2) In overt translation, the work of the translator is visible. Since it is the translator's task to give target culture members an unadulterated impression of, and access to, the original text and its cultural impact on source culture members, the translator puts target culture members in a position to observe and/or judge this text from the outside.

(3) An overt translation is in a sense the more straightforward because the original can be taken over without sociocultural modification.

(4) Readers of the translation will know that the text was not meant for them, but for other addressees-all designed to mean something for the original addressees.


A “judgment” whether a translation of culture-specific user characteristics is “adequate” in an overt translation cannot be “objectively” given (1997, p. 76). In other words, the degree of correspondence in terms of social status between dialects in two different cultures cannot be measured at the present time since no completed cultural-comparative studies exist. Such an evaluation must therefore necessarily remain to a certain degree a subjective matter.

5.5.3. Covert translation

A covert translation is a translation including features, according to House (1997, p. 69), as follows:

(1) It enjoys the status of an original source text in the target culture; (2) It is not marked pragmatically as a translation text of a source text but may,

conceivably, have been created in its own right; (3) Its source text is not specifically addressed to a particular source culture

audience. In other words, it is not particularly tied to the source language and culture; and

(4) It is thus both possible and desirable to keep the function of the source text equivalent in the translation text.

A source text and its covert translation text are pragmatically of equal concern for source and target language addressees, that is, both are, as it were, equally directly addressed. They have equivalent purposes, they are based on contemporary, equivalent needs of a comparable audience in the source and target language communities.

Concerning covert translation, House (p. 70) sheds more light on the translator’s task by claiming that:

The translator has to take different cultural presuppositions in the two language communities into account in order to meet the needs of the target language addressees in their cultural setting, and in order to keep the textual function equivalent in source and target cultures.

In other words, the translation is “to act as though it were not a translation” and the task of the translator is “to hide the text's real origin”, therefore, the translator him/herself remains “invisible, hiding behind his or her recreation of the original” (2009, p. 37).

For House (1997, p. 70), “culture” and “cultural” in this context mean “the anthropological concept of all those traditional, explicit and implicit designs-for living which act as potential guides for the behavior of members of the culture” and “culture” itself is considered as “a group’s dominant and learned sets of habits, as the totality of its non-biological inheritance involving presuppositions, values, and preferences”.


In brief, in a covert translation, the translator has to make allowances for underlying cultural differences by placing a cultural filter between the source text and the translation text to view the source text through the glasses of a target culture member.

Existing and verified differences of the “socio-cultural norms and presuppo-sitions of cultural knowledge” were to be taken care of in covert translation through the application of a “cultural filter” (p. 71).

However, given the goal of achieving functional equivalence in a covert translation, assumptions of cultural difference should be carefully examined before any change in the source text is undertaken. In cases of unproven assumptions of cultural difference, the translator might be led to apply a cultural filter whose application resulting in possibly deliberate mismatches between the source text and the translation text along several situational parameters, was seen as not justified. In other words, House recommended a non-risk taking strategy [emphasis added] in covert translation when applying a cultural filter, that is, when in doubt, leave it out, or more respectably put, the unmarked assumption is one of cultural compa-tibility, unless there is evidence to the contrary.

On the other hand, House (p. 75) believes that the functional equivalence, possible only in cases of covert translation, is “extremely difficult to achieve” because differences in the “socio-cultural norms of the two linguacultures” have to be taken into account, and a cultural filter must be applied. Such filtering is crucial whenever the original has a well-marked interpersonal component of the textual function and it is the interpersonal component which presents the most difficult (and interesting) problems of translation equivalence.

It should be mentioned that the lack of objective knowledge about differences in the socio-cultural norms makes it difficult to assess the legitimacy of any changes made because of the application of the cultural filter. The evaluation of covert translation is characterized by the difficulty of dealing with “differences of cultural presupposition” with respect to “Social Role Relationship, Social Attitude” etc. in a particular text (p. 79).

5.5.4. Different types of translations and versions

Concerning translation types and versions, House (1997, pp. 71-78) sheds more light on this notion by explaining two aspects of covert and overt. Based on the earlier discussion on the covert and overt translation, we focus on the notion of “version” in this part.

5.5.5. Covert versions

If a covert translation “accommodates”, unwarrantedly and in a patterned way, for “the target culture group’s different presuppositions” about “the Social Role


Relationship and Social Attitude of addressees vis-à-vis the addresser in a particular Province”, then such a translation is no longer a translation but will be defined as “a covert version” which is by definition an “inadequate translation” in that the application of the cultural filter is “unjustified” (p. 73).

5.5.6. Overt versions

Overt versions are produced whenever “a special function is overtly added to a TT”, that is,

(1) in particular when a translation is to “reach a particular audience”, for example special editions for a youthful audience with the resultant omissions, additions, simplifications, or different accentuations of certain features of ST etc., or popularizations of specialist works designed for the lay public, and

(2) when TT is given a special added purpose, for example “interlingual versions or linguistic translations”, or resumes and abstracts, where it is the express special purpose of the version producer to pass on only “the most essential facts” (pp. 73-74).

5.5.7. The dichotomy over the types of translation/version

In the discussion of different types of translation and the distinction between a translation and a version, the assumptions that a particular text may be adequately translated in only one particular way or a particular text necessitates either an overt or a covert translation may, however, not hold in every case. Thus, any text may, for specific purposes, require an overt translation, that is, it may be viewed as a document which “has independent status and exists in its own right” (1977, p. 74).

Further, there may well be source texts for which the choice overt-or-covert translation is a subjective one. The following are three examples concerning the issue of the choice of overt-or-covert translation illustrated by House (pp. 74-75):

(1) Fairy tales [emphasis added] may be viewed as folk products of a particular culture, which would predispose a translator to opt for an overt translation;

(2) Non-culture specific texts, anonymously produced, with the general function of entertaining and educating the young, which would suggest a covert translation;

(3) The case of the Bible, which may be treated as either a collection of historical literary documents, in which case an overt translation would seem to be called for, or as a collection of human truths directly relevant to Everyman, in which case a covert translation might seem appropriate.

Moreover, it is obvious that the specific purpose for which a translation is required, that is, the specific brief a translator is given, will determine whether a translation or an overt version should be aimed at. In other words, just as the


decision as to whether an overt or a covert translation is appropriate for a particular text may be conditioned by factors such as the changeable status of the text producer, so clearly the initial choice between translating a given source text and producing a version of it, cannot be made on the basis of features of the text, but is conditioned by the arbitrarily determined purpose for which the translation/version is required.

However, a particular ST does not necessarily require “once and for all” either a covert or an overt translation, given the different, “dynamic” ways of viewing a text and different purposes for which a translation may, in the course of time, be required (p. 77). In evaluating translations, a version must be distinguished from a translation, and an overt translation from a covert translation. These categories are designed to clarify the nature of the equivalence required for a translation of optimal quality.

It should be mentioned that the model takes account of both original and translation by positing a cline along which it can be shown which tie of the double-bind has priority in any particular case, the two endpoints of the cline being marked by the concepts overt translation (source text focused) and covert translation (target text focused).

5.5.8. Discourse, culture and related issues in House’s TQA model

As we mentioned before, House’s (revised) TQA model (1997, 2009) draws eclectically on Prague School ideas, speech act theory, pragmatics, discourse analysis and corpus-based distinctions between the spoken and written language.

Translation involves the movement of texts across “time and space”, and whenever texts move, they also shift from one “discourse world” into another and so relate to a different sociocultural reality (p. 36). Applying the concept of discourse world to different types of translation, we can say that in an overt translation, the original sociocultural frame is left as intact as possible, given the need of expression in another language. Relating overt translation to the “three-tiered analytical scheme”, an original and its overt translation can be equivalent at “the level of text, register, and genre”, but “not at the level of the individual text’s functional profile”, that is, what the text can mean for a target reader (ibid). However, the discourse world of the original is co-activated, so members of the target culture can eavesdrop, and appreciate the original textual function, albeit at a remove. Functional equivalence between the two texts is in principle possible. However, it is different in nature: it gives the new readers access to the function of the original, but as this access is to be realized in a different language and takes place in the target linguistic and cultural community, a switch in the discourse world becomes necessary, such that the translation operates in its own discourse world.

On the other hand, A covert translation operates therefore “quite overtly” in the discourse world of the target culture, with no attempt being made to “co-activate


the discourse world in which the original unfolds” (p. 37). One of the most intriguing “open questions” that emerged from the original model, is the nature of the cultural filter to be applied in covert translation, where the differences in “communicative preferences, mentalities and values” are taken into account in translation (1997, p. 79).

The analysis of the realization of “speech acts”, especially “requests and complaints” as potentially “face threatening acts” was one of the most important parts of the work (p. 82). Phenomena such as directness and politeness in the use of speech act were investigated, and different levels of directness were suggested ranging, for example in the ease of requests from the most direct level, the raw imperative to the most indirect hints with which speakers skirt around a subject.

From all the individual results of a whole series of cross-cultural pragmatic analyses based on different subjects, data and methodologies, House (p. 84) avers that “a consistent pattern” of cross-cultural differences that has emerged from House’s SL-TL (German-English) contrastive pragmatic analyses can be displayed along five dimensions as in Table 5.3.

It must be stressed that these are continua or clines rather than clear-cut dichotomies, which we are dealing here with tendencies rather than categorical distinctions. Thus, House (1997) adopted some scholars’ prospects to her model particularly Edmondson’s (1981) model of discourse analysis mainly regarding the revised concept of overt versus covert translation.

Table 5.3. Dimensions of Cross-Cultural Difference... [SL-TL] House (1997, p. 84)

Dimensions of Cross-Cultural Difference (SL-TL)

Directness ↔ Indirectness

Orientation towards Self ↔ Orientation towards Other

Orientation towards Content ↔ Orientation towards Persons

Explicitness ↔ Implicitness

Ad-hoc Formulation ↔ Use of Verbal Routines

6

House’s Revisited Model

6.1. OVERVIEW

The revision of the model (1997), emerging 20 years after the original one (1977, 1981), concerns the categories for analysis, in particular those originally used for “register analysis, the distinction between overt and covert translation including the cultural filter now substantiated by empirical research”, as well as a re-consideration of the whole notion of “translation evaluation” (House, 1997, p. 101).

Regarding the reasons of revising the model, House (p. 103) stresses that “the model is and has to be applicable to literary texts”, indeed the tensions that arose in the process of revising the model between “covert and overt translations” and the issue of “cultural filtering and cultural transferability” are distinctly relevant with regard to the “translation of works of aesthetic and literary value”.

6.2. RECONSIDERING THE CATEGORIES FOR ANALYSIS

In this section, we review the framework for the analytic categories, and, specifically clarify the relationship between textual function, linguistic characteristics and social use of a text by introducing the category genre.

6.2.1. Register categories

Based on the Hallidayan model of language and discourse, the register categories field, tenor and mode are explained and/or sub-differentiated in the following manner, as House (pp. 108-109) illuminates as follows:

Field

Field refers to the nature of the social action that is taking place, it captures what is going on, that is, the field of activity, the topic, the content of the text or its subject


matter. The degrees of generality, specificity or granularity in lexical items according to rubrics of specialized, general, popular are differentiated which however specifies some features that will now be subsumed under Genre.

Tenor

Tenor refers to who is taking part, to the nature of the participants, the addresser and the addressees, and the relationship between them in terms of social power and social distance, as well as the “degree of emotional charge” in the relationship between addresser and addressee(s) (Halliday, 1978, p. 33). Included here are the addresser's temporal, geographical, social provenance as well as his intellectual, emotional or affective stance (his personal viewpoint) vis-à-vis the content he is portraying and the communicative task he is engaged in. The category of subjectivity, personal affect, stance and the role of affect in meaning making is also taken more seriously into account. The subdivisions of the dimension Social Attitude have been simplified in a tripartite division into formal-consultative-informal.

Mode

Mode refers to both the channel -spoken or written (which can be simple, e.g., written to be read or complex, e.g., written to be spoken as if not written), and the degree to which potential or real participation is allowed for between the interlocutors. Participation can also be simple, that is, a monologue with no addressee participation “built into the text” or complex with various addressee-involving mechanisms characterizing the text. In taking account of the differences in texts between the spoken and the written medium, when appropriate, the empirically established (corpus-based) oral-literate dimensions-dimensions along which linguistic choices may reflect medium- are taken into considerations. These parameters are as follows:

(1) Involved versus Informational Text Production (2) Explicit versus Situation-Dependent Reference (3) Abstract versus Non-Abstract Presentation of Information.

Thus, with respect to each of these three dimensions, the poles characterize academic exposition and conversation respectively. However, House (1997, p. 109-110) illuminates the dimensions respectively as follows:

(1) Along this dimension, spoken genres tend to veer towards involved production, written genres towards informational production. Among written genres, personal letters are clearly marked by involvedness, and among the spoken genres, prepared speeches and broadcasts are strongly marked for informational production.

HOUSE’S RIVISITED MODEL 49

(2) Written genres are strongly marked for explicit reference, spoken ones for situation-dependent reference. However, public speeches and interviews behave like written genres along this dimension, and fiction genres resemble spoken ones.

(3) Written genres tend to be, full of abstract information, spoken genres tend to lack it. Nevertheless, fiction genres and personal letters resemble spoken genres along this dimension.

Thus, it should be mentioned that none of the dimensions defines an absolute spoken/written distinction. Such findings and insights are, of course, directly relevant to the type of cross-linguistic textual comparison that can be considered as an integral part of translation quality assessment.

Additions and modifications to the original model are explained by House (p. 110) as follows:

(1) The introduction of the category GENRE, in between as it were the register characterization and the textual function;

(2) The subdivisions of the register categories TENOR (Author's Provenance and Stance, Social Role Relationship and Social Attitude) and MODE (Medium as reflected by linguistic choices along the three parameters involved versus informational, explicit versus situation-dependent, and abstract versus non-abstract information).

Table 6.1 illustrates House’s register analysis framework concerning the three sociolinguistic dimensions of the context of situation including field, tenor and mode.

Table 6.1. House’s Register Analysis Framework, adopted from House (1997, pp. 108-109)

Reg

iste

r

Field Subject matter

Social action Specialized/General/Popular

Tenor Author’s provenance and

stance

Social role relationship Symmetrical/Asymmetrical

Social attitude Formal/Consultative/Informal

Mode Medium

(spoken or written)/

( simple or complex)

- Involved versus Informational Text

- Explicit versus Situation-Dependent

- Abstract versus Non-Abstract Information

Participation simple or complex


6.2.2. The analysis at the levels of language/text

The analysis of the source text along with the translation texts at the level of language/text considered in the study is with a focus on the items word, clause, sentence and paragraph. For instance, if ST and TT are equal only at the level of sentence, we conclude that the unit of translation is sentence. On the other hand, if there is no equality in any language/text levels between ST and TT, then, we can conclude that the translation is fully free, i.e., the translation is not overt at the level of language/text. The items are defined according to Richards and Schmidt (2002) as follows:

Word

Word is the smallest of the linguistic units which can occur on its own in speech or writing and in writing, word boundaries are usually recognized by spaces between the words (p. 588).

Clause

Clause is a group of words which form a grammatical unit and which contain a subject and a finite verb (pp. 74-75). A clause forms a sentence or part of a sentence and often functions as a noun, adjective, or adverb. Clauses are classified as dependent or independent.

Sentence

Sentence is the largest unit of grammatical organization within which parts of speech (e.g. nouns, verbs, adverbs) and grammatical classes (e.g. word, phrase, and clause) are said to function. In English, a sentence normally contains one independent clause with a finite verb (p. 480).

Paragraph

Paragraph is “a unit of organization of written language in many languages, which serves to indicate how the main ideas in a written text are grouped” (p. 382). In text linguistics, paragraphs are treated as “indicators of the macro-structure of a text” (pp. 382-383). They group sentences which belong together, generally those which deal with the same topic and therefore a new paragraph indicates “a change in topic or sub-topic” (p. 383).

6.3. RCONSIDERING THE OVERT-COVERT DICHOTOMY

The important distinction between overt and covert translation needs to be reconsidered and elaborated according to House’s revisited TQA model (1997). The concepts of overt and covert translation of the original model are “retained” but


developed on the “distinction and achieved greater explanatory adequacy by relating it to the revised analytic model and to the concepts of frame and frame shifting, … discourse worlds and world shifts” (House, 1997, p. 111). Thus a frame is metacommunicative: any message that defines a frame gives the receiver instructions in his interpretation of the message included in the frame. Based on Edmondson (1981), the notion of a “discourse world” refers to “a superordinate framework for interpreting meaning in a certain way” (p. 112). Edmondson (1981, p. 201) maintains that a discourse world is to be understood as “an application of the notion of a possible world derived from logical semantics to the pragmatic interpretation of conversational behavior”. Shedding light on Edmondson’s model of discourse analysis, House (1997, p. 112) maintains, “world switching or the handling of two discourse worlds occurs for instance when the teacher moves from an unreal instructionary world to the real world of the classroom”.

However, regarding overt translation, only a second level function can be reached because the translation embeds the text in a new speech event, which gives it also a new frame. An overt translation is a case of “language mention (as opposed to language use in covert translation)” and similar to a “citation or quotation” (ibid).

With respect to the four levels in the revised analytic model (function-genre-register-language/text), an original text and its overt translation are to be equivalent at the level of language/text and register (with its various dimensions) as well as genre. At the level of the “individual textual function”, functional equivalence is still possible but it is of a different nature: it can be described as enabling access to the function the original text has (had) in its discourse world or frame. As this access is realized in the target linguaculture via the translation text, a switch in the discourse world and the frame becomes necessary, that is, the translation is differently framed, it operates in its own frame and discourse world, and can thus reach at best what House has called second-level functional equivalence. This type of functional equivalence is achieved through the required equivalence at the language/text and register levels, which facilitates the co-activation of the original’s frame and discourse world. In this way members of the target linguaculture may “eavesdrop”, as it were, that is, be enabled to appreciate the original textual function, albeit at a distance.

With regard to the significant task of the translator in overt translation, House (p. 112) maintains that:

The results of his/her work are clearly visible. Since it is the translator’s task to allow persons in the target culture to gain access to the source text and its cultural impact on source culture persons, the translator puts target culture members in a position to observe, be worked upon and evaluate the original text’s function as, members of the target culture.


Figure 6.1. Reading Historically-Established Literary Texts (House, 1997, p. 113)

Concerning literary works which House (p. 113) had originally classified as

“timeless, of general time/space-transcending human and aesthetic interest”, they “carry/create its own cultural frame of reference”, and thus “textual interpretation” is, in part, both “time-bound, and culture-bound”. Thus an established work of literature, two discourse worlds co-exist for the contemporary reader situated in the linguaculture of the writer, and both are co-activated by the readership of the translation, such that three discourse worlds can be said in this instance to co-exist. This situation is represented in Figure 6.1, which, however, takes no account of the location of a translation (and indeed of different translations) along the temporal axis. In overt translation, the reader can/will operate in different worlds and clearly, a reader can be moved, upset, horrified as though he were in fact a member of the source linguaculture”. The translation is, overall, to be overt, in the sense that “no cultural filtering is in principle licensed” (p. 113).

On the other hand, in covert translation, the translator attempts to re-create an equivalent speech event, therefore, the function of a covert translation is to “recreate, reproduce or represent” in the translation text the function the original has in its “linguacultural framework and discourse world” (House, 1997, p. 114). A covert translation operates quite overtly in the different frame and discourse world provided in the target linguaculture without wishing to coactivate the discourse world in which the original had unfolded. Covert translation is thus at the same time psycholinguistically less complex than overt translation and more deceptive. The translator’s task is, in a sense, to cheat, and to be hidden behind his feat, the transmutation of the original. The cultural filter he/she employs is so skillfully integrated into the fabric of the text that the seams do not show. Since functional equivalence is aimed at, changes at the levels of language/text and register may if


necessary be undertaken. The result may be a very real distance from the original text, which is why covert translations are received as if they were in fact originals. This characteristic belying of their origins in covert translation texts creates ethical problems because of the deception of the origins of the text. Pym (1992, p. 185) points to the danger inherent in such a procedure, and he points out that what he terms “radical misrepresentations of transfer” should also be critically examined as “an eclipse of intercultural distance and thus as potentially pernicious imposition of cultural homogeneity”.

In the terms provided in the revised analytic model, House (1997, p. 114) maintains that the following situation seems to hold in the case of covert translation:

At the levels of language/text and register (with its dimensions of field, tenor and mode) the original and a covert translation need not be equivalent, that is, the original can be manipulated using a cultural filter to be based on cross-cultural empirical research.

With respect to the distinction of overt and covert translation and version, at the level of genre, and at the level of the individual textual function, equivalence is necessary. In other words, the distinction between a translation and an overt version (where a special secondary function is added overtly to the translation) as well as between a translation and a covert version (resulting from an unjustified application of a cultural filter) made in the original model, still holds in the revised model. Consider also the following case if, in a covert translation situation, “the GENRE established for the original text does not exist in the target linguaculture”, then translation (covert or otherwise) is impossible, that is, a version results (pp. 114-115). In an overt translation situation, it is irrelevant whether the GENRE holds in the target linguaculture. In the embedded or secondary world of course, GENRE is noted +, that is, kept constant.

Overt and covert translations differ on the dimension of REGISTER and the demands of equivalence of the communicative values of the linguistic units in the two texts. They also clearly differ in terms of the possibility of reaching equivalence of the individual textual function. These differences can be displayed in Table 6.2

Table 6.2. The Dimension Overt-Covert Translation (House, 1997, p. 115)

Level

Is strict equivalence the translational goal?

Overt Translation Covert Translation

Primary level function

Secondary level function

Genre

Register

Language/Text

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

(does not apply)

Yes

No

No


Furthermore, the features of overt and covert translations help us distinguish one from another. Table 6.3 comparatively elaborates on the significant and exclusive features of overt versus covert translation more clearly and tangibly. ST, TT and TC in this table stand for source text, target text and target culture respectively.

It should be noted that whether an original text is translated overtly or covertly depends upon many criteria.

6.4. THE MEANING OF THE CULTURAL FILTER

Converging evidence from a number of cross-cultural studies of different language pairs suggest that “different communicative preferences” of readers are realized in the two “linguacultures” including dimensions such as “directness, self-reference, content-focus, explicitness, and routine-reliance” (House, 1997, pp. 115-116). The changes, which were called mismatches in the original analysis, can now be seen in a different light, that is, as the natural consequence of the differences in communicative norms in the two linguacultures. It must be pointed out at this stage that it is necessary to distinguish much more between the “analysis proper and the judgment, the evaluation”. Unlike the scientifically (linguistically) based analysis, the evaluative judgment is ultimately not a scientific one, but rather a reflection of a social, political, ethical moral or personal stance. In other words, it is important to be aware of the difference between “(scientifically based) analysis and (social) judgment” in evaluating translations (p. 117). To differentiate between a covert version and a covert translation presupposes a judgment of social norms, but such norms are not stable and static but dynamic and subject to manifold influences. The translator may well have been aware of the differences in communicative norms and expectations in the SL/TL-speaking linguacultures, and his/her translation consequently did no more than reflect these differences. In other words, what was listed as a cluster of mismatches may no longer count as such, and the translation originally diagnosed as a covert version can be seen as a covert translation.

6.5. RECONSIDERING THE NOTION OF TRANSLATION EVALUATION

With respect to a revised view to the notion of translation evaluation, the model clearly lays open the many factors that might theoretically have influenced the translator in “making certain decisions and rejecting others”, thus providing the basis for evaluation in a particular case, which is “much more constructive” (House, 1997, p. 118). Concerning the foundation of this model, House foregrounds that:

The model presented here is a text-based, linguistic one in the broad Hallidayan conception of linguistics, which looks at language in social life and focusses on texts,


Table 6.3. Overt versus Covert Translation, Adopted from House (1997, 2009, 2010 as cited in Khorsand & Salmani, 2014b, pp. 139-140)

Overt translation Covert translation

It is equivalent at the levels of text, register, and genre.

It is equivalent at the levels of genre and the individual text’s functional profile, i.e. what the text can mean for a target reader.

It operates quite overtly as a translation. It operates quite overtly in TT/TC discourse world not as a translation but as a second original.

It is marked semantically and pragmatically a translation.

It is not marked pragmatically as a translation.

ST elements shine through TT. ST elements are absent in TT.

There is second level or second-hand or partial functional equivalence.

There is full or primary or real functional equivalence.

Function of ST discourse world to TT readership is accessible, i.e. the readership can afford to eavesdrop at a lingua-cultural distance, appreciate the original textual function and observe and/or judge TT from outside.

Function of ST discourse world to TT readership is inaccessible, i.e. the readership fails to keep track of ST lingua-cultural or ST discourse world.

It co-activates ST discourse world, i.e. a switch in the discourse world occurs.

It recreates, reproduces or represents an original text/an equivalent sociocultural event, i.e. it hides ST’s real origin.

It is more straightforward, i.e. ST is taken over without sociocultural modification.

Different discourse worlds of ST and TT cultures are considered.

Cultural filtering is withheld, i.e. ST is not distorted at the levels of text and register.

Cultural filtering is applied, i.e. ST is manipulated at the levels of text and register to compensate for culture specificity.

It is embedded in a new speech event in the target culture.

It enjoys the status of ST in the target language culture.

It is close to the original culture. It is distant from the original culture.

ST must remain as intact as possible in TT. ST is transmuted in translation and TT is misleading.

There is a linguistic-cultural transfer. It operates exclusively in the new target culture.

TT audience is not directly addressed. ST is not specifically addressed to a TC audience.

It is psycholinguistically more complex and not deceptive.

It is psycholinguistically less complex and more deceptive.

It is a case of language mention resembling a quotation.

ST and TT differ only accidentally in their languages.

Translator’s task is not to cheat but to be visible. Translator’s task is to cheat and be invisible.

It is linguistically and psycholinguisticly of a distinctly hybrid entity.

It is of a homogeneous entity.

Texts that should be translated overtly: Documents of historical events and texts considered sacrosanct; Literary texts (e.g. fairy tales and so forth); Culture specific texts; Speeches by famous personalities at a certain time and in a certain place.

Texts that should be translated covertly: Transitory texts designed for ready consumption (e.g. instructions, commercial circulars, advertisements, journalistic and scientific texts); The Bible; Non-culture specific texts.


the products of human decision processes that are the most tangible and least ambiguously analyzable entities. (p. 118)

It must be mentioned that the choice of an overt or a covert translation depends not just on the translator himself, or on the text or the translator’s personal interpretation of the text, but also, and to a considerable extent, on the reasons for the translation, on the implied readers, non-publishing and marketing policies. In other words, in translation there are many factors that cannot be controlled by the translator and have nothing to do with translation as a linguistic procedure or with the translator’s linguacultural competence. Such factors are social factors; they concern human agents and socio-political or even ideological constraints that normally have far greater power and influence than the translator. Still, a translation is also a linguistic-textual phenomenon and can be legitimately described, analyzed and assessed as such. As a field of inquiry, House claims that:

Translation criticism will always have to move from in a macro-analytical focus to a micro-analytical one, from considerations of ideology, function, genre, register to the communicative value of individual linguistic units in order to enable the reconstruction of the translator’s choices and his decision processes in as objective a manner as possible. (p. 119)

Appendix B

Internet links

Visiting the following links is highly recommended for having access to most of the world links in the field of translation from associations and professional organizations to journals, magazines, conferences and other resources, and publishers:

http://www.monabaker.com/tsresources/links.htm http://www.iatis.org/index.php/web-links http://ip-science.thomsonreuters.com/mjl/ http://www.elsevier.com/online-tools/scopus/content-overview http://journals.indexcopernicus.com/ http://www.conferencealerts.com/ http://atanet.org/certification/eligibility_approved.php http://nsts.fusp.it/ http://journals.msrt.ir/ http://isc.gov.ir/

Besides the abovementioned links, the following is a list of some useful Iranian internet links recommended for researchers of translation studies to visit and gain a great benefit. Translation Studies [ ترجمه مطالعات ], a journal published by Allameh Tabatabai

University: http://www.translationstudies.ir/

The Linguistics Society of Iran (LSI) ايران] شناسى زبان [انجمن was founded in 2001

and recognized as an academic society by the Iranian Ministry of Science, Research and Technology in 2004:

http://lsi.ir/


Language and Translation Studies [مطالعات زبان و ترجمه], a journal published by

Ferdowsi Mashhad University: http://jm.um.ac.ir/

About Translation [ ه ترجمهدربار ], a magazine published by the M.A. translation

(graduate) students of Science and Research Branch of Islamic Azad University and Allameh Tabatabai University:

http://www.about-translation.ir/ Forign Language Research Journal [ هاي خارجي ناختي در زبانش هاي زبان پژوهش ], a

journal published by Tehran Universirty http://jflr.ut.ac.ir/

Iranian Translators and Interpreters Associations [انجمن مترجمان ايران]: http://itia.ir/

Iran Association of Translators [جامعه مترجمان رسمي ايران]:

http://www.iaot.ir/ Iranian Translators Cyber Association [انجمن مجازي مترجمين ايران]:

http://itcanet.ir/ Science Association of English Translation of Allameh Tabatabai University

:[انجمن علمي مترجمي انگليسي دانشگاه عالمه]http://tsassociation.blogfa.com/

Center for Organizing Translation and Publication [ مركز ساماندهي ترجمه و نشر معارف :[اسالمي و علوم انساني

http://www.samantarjomeh.ir/ Center For Translation of the Holy Quran [موسسه فرهنگي ترجمان وحي]:

http://www.cthq.ir/ Motarjem Online [مترجم آنالين]:

http://www.motarjemonline.com/

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Translation Quality Assessment, A Discoursal Approach in Theory and Practice (2014)

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