Diamond Translation

As we have seen in previous entires, translation theory often uses metaphors to describe translation, the translation process and sometimes even translation quality. An interesting metaphor is comparing translation and translation quality assessment to the analysis of diamonds.

The quality of diamonds is usually assessed according to the system most commonly known as the four Cs:

carat
colour
clarity
cut

Carat refers to the weight of the diamond, colour refers to the diamond’s hue, clarity refers to the number of defects within the diamond, and cut refers to the way in which a polished diamond is created from a rough stone.

These four Cs could easily be superimposed onto a matrix for translation quality assessment where:

carat = information
colour = style
clarity = fluency
cut = accuracy

This gives us a neat guide for quickly analysing the quality of a translation. Thus, a good translation should contain and will be marked by high quality in each of these categories. In other words, the translation will contain:

(1) relevant information
(2) appropriate style/register
(3) fluent language (without errors)
(4) accurate, polished language

Translating Lines

The previous post mentioned the metaphors used in translation. However, metaphors themselves can be difficult to translate. A problematic such metaphor is line. Interestingly, translation itself is often seen as ‘treading a fine line’ (balancować na cienkiej linie). Some may say that the difference between a spectacularly good translation (a very rare occurrence indeed) and an average one is an extremely fine line with only certain factors playing a vital role (for instance, cohesion, fluency and coherence).

This brings us to the metaphor itself. With the recent lustracja (vetting) debate raging in Poland, discussion of the historical reasons for the current political situation has centred around two historical events - the Round Table talks that pitted the Communists with the Solidarity Opposition and, what concerns us here, the term Gruba Kreska.

One of the first ideas that comes to mind is Terence Malick’s film The Thin Red Line based on the James Jones’ book of the same name. As we know it can refer to military units who are outnumbered holding firm against an enemy. However, this is not the term we are looking for but it is an interesting analogy to what is happening in current politics.

It is worth looking at the source of the phrase Gruba Kreska:

Przeszłość odkreślamy grubą linią. Odpowiadać będziemy jedynie za to, co uczyniliśmy, by wydobyć Polskę z obecnego stanu załamania.

Interestingly, Tadeusz Mazowiecki never used the word gruba kreska but gruba linia. His original idea - as we can see - was to divide the past from the present. German uses the useful composite Vergangenheitsbewältigung (past management) for the same concept. However, gruba kreska has changed its meaning somewhat and has now come to mean - in some political circles - the policy of not punishing the Communists for the crimes they committed.

The equivalent in common use is thick line, however, for many people this translation is simply not adequate and not entirely faithful. Yes, it is the easiest translation and a good example of one-to-one equivalence but there is some doubt about its fidelity. There is a sense that we have tried to capture smoke in a glass box: the meaning is fluid and changing but we have attempted to force it into the form thick line.

In certain contexts we could translate przeszłość odkreślamy grubą linią as:
we can draw a line to divide off the past
we can divide the past from the present
let us draw a line to strike out the past
…

However, the concept of gruba kreska still remains. A functional equivalent for this term may in fact not be thick line but thin line due to the fact that history has shown the ambiguity of this concept. The thick line has become a political thin line; for certain politicians there is little now to divide Mazowiecki’s camp from the post-communists. Therefore, for those who support Mazowiecki’s doctrine of responsibility for one’s own actions we might use thick line, but for those who believe he simply gave a bye to the criminal actions of the communists, we may use fine line or thin line.

In later years, Mazowiecki stated:

Starsi synowie pomagali mi także przy pisaniu pierwszego mojego wystąpienia w Sejmie z 24 sierpnia. Było w nim zdanie, że przeszłość odkreślamy grubą linią. Byliśmy w Laskach. Czytaliśmy zdanie po zdaniu. Przypomnę. “Rząd, który utworzę, nie ponosi odpowiedzialności za hipotekę, którą dziedziczy. Ma ona jednak wpływ na okoliczności, w których przychodzi nam działać. Przeszłość odkreślamy grubą linią. Odpowiadać będziemy jedynie za to, co uczyniliśmy, by wydobyć Polskę z obecnego stanu załamania”. Wojtek zapytał: “Z tą grubą linią, czy jesteś pewny, że chcesz to powiedzieć?”. “Pewny - odpowiedziałem - musi zostać”. Przestrzegł, że z tych zdań mogą wyniknąć kłopoty. Józio Duriasz też mnie przestrzegał. Powiedziałem cytatem z Ewangelii: “Com napisał - napisałem”… Przez wiele miesięcy nikt z tego akapitu nie robił żadnego problemu. Dopiero na wiosnę 1990 r. pojawiło się określenie grubej kreski, choć ja mówiłem o linii, ale to szczegół, nieważny. Gorzej, że przeinaczono jej sens i posłużono się nią w zniekształconej postaci i interpretacji do wywołania tzw. wojny na górze.

Gazeta Wyborcza 11/09/2004

This is a fine example of a term which has left its author and has taken on a life of its own.

Metaphorical Translation

The amount of metaphors used to describe translators and the work of translators is truly astounding. The old familiar comparisons of translation being like a mirror or being a copy of the original keep cropping up in various works concerning translators and translating. Much depends, of course, on our approach to translation - whether we focus on theory or practice.

Another previous blog entry - The Translation Process - attempted to look at a different way in which we can view translation, as a combination of perception and reaction. Some might add reflection also to these two.

In a recent article published in Gazeta Wyborcza the translator is described as a hunting dog. In the article, Martin Pollack details the translation process and highlights the research side of translation - something that is overlooked by many people. Translation requires, above all, a vast amount of experience on the part of the translator but also the ability to absorb and learn information at a speedy rate.

The question that could be posited here is which metaphors best describe translation to us all?

Practice vs. Theory

As in many professions, there seems to be a distinct division within the field of translation between translation practitioners and translation theorists. Is there a correct path? Does one particular path dominate over the other? Experience shows that the two paths do not often cross and that there is a large organised group of translation theorists mainly centred around the academia, whereas translation practitioners are probably an even larger yet more loosely organised bunch.

The theorists think, the practitioners do, and because of this fact the theorists often draw more attention to themselves. The practitioners get their heads down and do the task required of them.

The best way forward is for practitioners to utilise some of the ideas put forward by the theorists (corpus linguistics being a wonderful example) and for theorists to take a healthy step away from what they are doing in order to actually translate and remember what it is all about. Many academic staff who teach translation do not actually translate. Unfortunately, a great deal of practitioners know little about the newest theories in their own field.

Deconstructing Text

The very meaning of “meaning” is under threat. Everything that translators do and have done through the ages has been to question the very essence of “meaning” and as such we have slowly and painstakingly helped to chip away at the fundaments of significance, implication, the signified and implicature. Translators actively help to erode language and languages. Sometimes, they help smooth certain meanings while at other times they fashion meanings which are very different from what might be regarded as “faithful” or “accurate”. We carve out what we feel is appropriate, and not necessarily that which is generally regarded as appropriate.

Deconstruction provides an interesting look at the work of the translator and the processes surrounding the formulation of meaning and bridging the gap between signified and signifier. Let us take the following Polish text:

“To nie był mój dzień, ale mogłoby być gorzej.”

When considering a translation, deconstruction allows us to look at all possibilities and strike out those that we reject. For example:

It  simply  just wasn’t my day, but it  could’ve  could  have been  be  a great deal  a lot much  worse  than it was.

Deconstruction creates a parallel universe of meanings that go on endlessly rather like a bizarre perverted game of translational Chinese Whispers. In fact, we can use apply deconstruction as a way of interpreting the process of language change and decay. Let us take for example, the word weird and its close counterpart wierd (or more usually, wyrd). Both come from the same Anglo-Saxon root, however, the first means unusual or strange, whereas the second means eldritch, uncanny or unearthly.

Etymology is, of course, an important part of element in the construction of meaning and is therefore crucial to the translator’s know-how work. How we translate meaning rests lies deeply within our knowledge of the whole string of meanings that can be attached to a given word. Deconstruction does embue imbues the translation process with a sense of relativism, however, in doing so it allows us to consider the whole of meaning, orthography, phonology and therefore language in its entirety and then, through a process of selection, chosse choose what we believe to be the most appropriate solution, which is of course a highly subjective process action in itself.

The circle turns, the number of interpretations correlate directly with the number of speakers of a language of a word multiply endlessly, however idiosyncratic they might be. And so language moves on, grows and transforms again. With every new reading, there is a new interpretation and the only pseudo correct meaning seems to be the subjective notions of the (critical) masses and this mass quality is what many believe to be the process by which we arrive at the ultimate signified, the transcendental signifier.

Multi-layered Equivalence

As mentioned in a previous entry - Translation Equivalence - in order to understand the translation process we must also understand the term that is “equivalence”. It is essential that we realise the fact that equivalence is a multifaceted phenomenon. It follows therefore that not realising this fact leads to bizarre or even erroneous translations. An example might be in order here. Inadequate translation is not as simple as getting the words wrong or not understanding the original. More often than not an inappropriate, inadequate or odd translation is one which does not take into account all the various types of equivalence.

The fact that equivalence is multifaceted can be seen when watching/listening to television programmes that translate the original text through subtitling or dubbing. Not only are we dealing with translation proper but we are also having to cope with the transmutation of the original into another form - change of speaker (subtitling) or change of mode (dubbing). It is here that the fault lines are most often visible.

In a recent programme on Discovery Channel, the narrator of the documentary was discussing the possibility of life on other planets and the use of radio telescopes as well as the analysis by scientists of deep-space radio signals. Scientists in the mid-90s found very odd radio signals coming from a particular point in space. On screen we see a list of numbers and in red ink the word “Wow!” written by one of the scientists. Interestingly, the Polish dubbed translation rendered this word as “No, no…” which is, of course, inappropriate and inadequate both contextually and stylistically. A more adequate translation might be “Kurcze!”, “Ale czad!” or a phrase of similar force. The example shows how when moving from one mode to another, the style has undergone a significant change and we cannot talk about true connotative, pragmatic or contextual equivalence.

Translation Equivalence

A key concept in translation is equivalence and this helps establish our approach to translation. Equivalence centres around the processes interacting between the original source text and translated text.

We can talk of six types of equivalence: (1) Referential equivalence is established when the words in the source language (SL) refer to the same objects in the world as the words in the target language (TL). (2) Connotative equivalence is established when the words in both languages and texts trigger the same associations and connotations. (3) Pragmatic equivalence refers to words in both languages having the same effect on the readers in both languages. (4) Contextual equivalence is established when words in both languages are used in the same or similar contexts. (5) Formal equivalence refers to words in both languages having similar phonological or orthographic features. (6) Textual equivalence refers to aspects of cohesion and coherence which are similar in both texts and languages.

An equivalent text is therefore more than just one isolated feature and is rather a whole host of inter-related aspects.

Functions in Translation

What is the nature of translation? The nature of translation is akin to the nature of language itself. The function of translation - like language - is to communicate. The general over-riding function of translation is communicative. This should always be at the fore-front of our minds. Therefore theories of translation should mirror theories of language. In this respect, we can look at linguistics and the functions of language put forward by two well-known linguists - Karl Buhler (1934) and Roman Jakobson (1960).

Karl Buhler put forward three functions of language: (1) representational - referring to objects in the real world; (2) expressive - referring to the writer of the text; (3) conative - referring to the reader of the text.

Jakobson took Buhler’s three functions but expanded on them to give us six linguistic functions: (1) referential - referring to objects in the real world; (2) expressive - referring to the writer of the text; (3) conative - referring to the reader of the text; (4) phatic - where the function of language is to establish, maintain, prolong or discontinue communication; (5) metalinguistic - referring to when the text is focused on the code itself; (6) poetic - when the text is focused on the message for its own sake.

The translator’s task is not only to transfer a message from one culture to another but to assess the functions of both the original and translated text and assess the level of functional equivalence between the two.

Our Mission

The world is full of languages. Estimates vary but we can say that there are approximately 6,800 known human languages with probably a great deal more, not to mention the hundreds of different dialects in the world whose statuses hover between that of dialect and fully-fledged language (the ditinction is often very blurred). This is the status quo. We all live together on this planet. The elements that we all have in common greatly outweigh those elements that differentiate us.

When we discuss languages one of the first things that linguists do is to categorise language - place it into tidy, describable boxes. We talk about grammar, phonology, lexis etc. Furthermore, we try to find similarities (not distinctions) between particular languages. We have formulated theories regarding the genealogy and creation of languages. We draw language families in which similarities and blood ties are highlighted. The idea is that we look for what we share rather than what distinguishes us.

Where do translators fit in? In a world full of different languages, the role of the translator is to be the communicative linchpin, the go-between. Our mission is to bring understanding to a world full of misunderstanding. Our task is to bring order to the confusion. This might sound high and mighty but the role of the translator is of vital importance. Without translators the world would come to a standstill. In a very real sense, our mission is to bring peace to the world by helping people communicate with one another and understand each others ideas, dream, emotions and desires.

A very honourable mission indeed.

A “Gift” for Translation

Whenever a group of linguists or polyglots are brought together and find themselves deep in conversation, the topic of translation often crops up. When asked about their ability to translate half the group maintains they can and do translate. The other half maintain they do not have the gift. What is this gift that they talk about?

Umberto Eco has written an interesting essay in which he discusses the gift. He mentions the gift of tongues, that is glossolalia - the ability to express oneself in ecstatic language that can be understood by everyone. However, a more accurate description of what translators might aim for is xenoglossia, that is the gift of speaking other languages, or polyglottism.

However, linguists do not necessarily mean glossolalia or xenoglossia, rather they mean an inherent ability to be better translators than other polyglots who would seemingly be equally predisposed to be competent translators. One may or may not have particular predispositions, however, hard work and experience cannot be discounted. Just because someone feels that he or she does not have the gift does not mean that he or she cannot translate.