Future of English… and Translation

Translators and translator specialists have to have their wits about them. Language is a slippery, writhing mercurial beast: leave it unattended for a moment and it will be gone before you know it, changed and unrecognisable. Language has the phenomenal habit of always changing, always being in flux and because of this, translators should be in tune with current linguistic trends and language fashions.

For those of us who have worked with historical texts, it is clear what is meant here. By extension, working with texts of differing genres also requires the same kind of mental dexterity and linguistic plasticity. Although translators should be aware of language change and the need to be ‘in touch with language’, it is difficult, perhaps impossible even, to plot the course or direction of change.

One person who has made an attempt to plot the direction of change in, for example, English is Justin Rye who offers an account of the state of the English language a thousand years from now in a fascinating online article. He attempts to forecast the way English will change by briefly looking at the state of English in the year AD 1000, the year AD 2000 and then AD 3000, calling this new linguistic offshoot Late American.

American English does dominate but an important question for translators and linguists is: will the growth of English continue? Will English continue to be the only ‘global language’? Both these questions will have an enormous impact on the future of translation. If English continues to dominate then the significance of translating into and out of English will also predominate. David Crystal puts forward some interesting points regarding the future of English in his book English as a Global Language.

Regardless of which language becomes the global superpower, this will have an immense knock-on effect for translators therefore we must be atune to the growing needs of a growing global market. Languages like English, Spanish, Chinese, Urdu and Arabic may become ’basic languages’ where knowledge of two or more are required by all linguistic professionals. In the future, translators who are able to work in at least two of these ’super languages’ will be more ‘attractive’ professionals than those who cannot.

Traduttore – Traditore

When on November 8, 1519  Hernán Cortés and the Spaniards met the Emperor of the Aztecs Motēuczōma Xōcoyōtzin on the road to Tenochtitlan all eyes were focused on the exchange between the representatives of these two great Empires. The Conquest of the Aztecs and Mexico was made easier for the Spaniards due to the fact that Motēuczōma and his advisors believed Cortés to be either an emissary of the God Quetzalcoatl or Quetzalcoatl himself. The path was laid open for the expansion of the Spanish Empire.

However, an interesting chapter in this history is the part played by La Malinche, the Nahua interpreter, advisor of and later mistress to Hernán Cortés. Some attribute much to La Malinche claiming that without her linguistic help and cultural advice, the conquest of Mexico would have been rendered impossible. Most of the Spaniards referred to her as ‘the Great Lady’, the Doña Marina, and truly believed that she was the main reason for their success.

The Nahuas called her Malintzin which is all the more surprising as this is the name by which they also referred to Cortés. It seems that to them she was one in the same as Cortés. Malintzin was the name given to both Hernán Cortés and the Doña Marina. She was a woman who had a foot in both cultures and she even mothered Hernán Cortés’ son and in doing so became mother of one of the first Mestizos in history.

Most translators have heard of the traduttore-traditore distinction, that between translator and traitor, and La Malinche is evidence of this. For the Spaniards, the Doña Marina was nothing less than a godsend, however, to this day she is regarded as a traitor by the majority of Mexicans. In fact, for modern-day Mexicans, the term malinchismo refers to those who betray their country and their race.

Are translators just ‘doing their jobs’ or is there evidence to say that sometimes ‘doing your job’ is an act of cultural treachery? Was La Malinche, Doña Marina, Malintzin a traitor to her culture and people or was she just simply putting her skills to good use? Are there situations where we as translators should say less rather than more? Be concise rather than elaborate?

Degrees of Equivalence (≠ ≈ = ≡)

For many scholars, the true mark of a field of study is its possibility for statistical quantification. The Scientific Method, first postulated by Alhazen and later moulded by Francis Bacon into the Empirical Method has become a yardstick for all scientific fields. A strictly logical approach is the only basis for attaining watertight conclusions.

Translation has been practised by some of the greatest minds in history: Marcus Tullius Cicero, Saint Jerome, Desiderius Erasmus, John Dryden, Alexander Pope, Ignacy Krasicki and Roman Jakobson. However, it still remains an intangible field where descriptions of translation range from the sublime to the ridiculous.

Attempts have made to make translation a more exact science by using a variety of tools, such as the ISO quality standard mentioned in the previous post, or various attempts to measure quality. The same can be said of the use of corpus tools or machine translation in the translation process, however, a strict form of notation could also be used to pin down equivalence in translation.

It might be helpful for translation researchers to put to use the following symbols: ≠ ≈ = ≡ where:

≠ signifies is not equal to
≈ signifies is approximately equal to or corresponds with
= signifies is equal to
≡ signifies is identical to

Obviously, this does not cover the whole range of equivalence open to the translator but it does allow us to be somewhat more specific in our description of the equivalence of certain terms. For example:

(a) Na szczęście nie ma już Układu Warszawskiego
(b) Układ Słoneczny jest czasami dzielony na oddzielne strefy
(c) Jest tu jakiś dziwny układ
(d) Podpisaliśmy Układ o Ograniczeniu Zbrojeń Strategicznych

where:

(a) układ ≡ pact & układ ≠ system
(b) układ ≡ system & układ ≠ pact
(c) układ ≈ (communist) network & układ ≠ treaty
(d) układ ≡ treaty & układ ≠ network

Perhaps the use of such notation could make life much easier for translation scholars, researchers and trainers alike.

Myths of Translation II

Continuing from the previous post, we can look at the next three myths of translation.

The fifth myth, or myth of machine translation, is that computers are able to produce accurate and appropriate translations. Krzysztof Lipiński believes this to be one of the central myths of contemporary translatology and uses several analogies and stories to counter the idea that computers can produce reliable work. However, this is not entirely true. Within very narrow and specialised fields, computers can produce decent enough translations. To believe that human translation is far too sophisticated and advanced for the computer is underestimating the current lightning-fast development of computers.

The sixth myth, or myth of the descriptability of the world, states that the world cannot be fully described. Wittgenstein believed that: “The limits of my language are the limits of my mind. All I know is what I have words for”. However, Lipiński believes that language only describes the world around us and that it exists outside of and separate from language. The world cannot be described completely as every one of us sees it differently. Similarly, every translator interprets the text through the (rose-coloured) spectacles of his or her own world.

The seventh and final myth, the myth of only one truth, can to a certain extent be taken as a continuation and result of all the other myths. There is no one truth and there can never be one truth in translation. There is never one correct answer and even if a so-called correct translation is achieved, time and diachrony show that the translation stands still but the world (and culture) around it change, forever in a state of flux. Language changes and what may have been regarded as canon may within a generation become outdated, outmoded and old-fashioned.

What do these myths tell us? Firstly, that translation, as every field of study, is fraught with complexities, bias and hearsay and not enough is done for us to feel comfortable within a seemingly hermeneutic discipline. Translation should, in other words, be disciplined hermeneutics. If we were to hone the myths that truly plague the translator then perhaps we might condense Lipiński’s ideas into four main oppositions and/or points of view:

1. literal/word-for word translation
2. untranslatable/translatable translation
3. source-/target-text translation
4. comprehensive/concise translation

It is these four points of view which shape our attitude to the source text and, in turn, mould the result of the translation process, the target text.

Myths of Translation I

Krzysztof Lipiński of the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland puts forward a thought-provoking series of ideas in his 2004 book Mity Przekładoznawska (Myths of Translation/Translatology). He posits seven common myths which have clouded the minds (and work) of translators. These are:

1. the myth of literalness
2. the myth of untranslatability
3. the myth of the ‘ugly duckling’
4. the myth of one solution
5. the myth of machine translation
6. the myth of the descriptability of the world
7. the myth of only one truth

The first myth is often seen in the translation of religious texts wherein we are tempted to copy and shadow the source text vocabulary and structure. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Ciceronian motto non verbum e verbo, sed sensum experimere de sensu sums up perfectly what translators should focus on, that is the sense and not the words.

The second myth is often seen as the ‘final frontier’. Some texts are seen as untranslatable, far too linguistically- and culturally-entrenched to make it possible for their rendition into another language. However, translations of works such as Adam Mickiewicz’s Pan Tadeusz or even Julian Tuwim’s Lokomotywa show that this is blatantly untrue.

The myth of the ‘ugly duckling’ is often found amongst writers and scholars. The idea is that a translation is not (and should not) be better than the original. The premise being that translations are not original, creative works but simply copies of the source text. Anyone reading Irena Tuwim’s Kubuś Puchatek, her translation of A.A. Milne’s Winnie the Pooh, would realise that this is not the case. Kubuś Puchatek has become such an important work in Poland that certain neologisms, for example, Małe Conieco (not present in the original) are now firmly part of Polish culture and even the Polish literary tradition.

The fourth myth, or myth of one solution, suggests that when translating only one possible solution is ‘correct’ and that all other suggestions are ‘incorrect’. The problem here is that terms such as ‘correct’ and ‘incorrect’ cannot in any way be quantified. Adam Mickiewicz’s Rękawiczka, his translation-cum-reworking of Friedrich Schiller’s 1797 masterpiece Der Handschuh, has become canonical. In fact, it is regarded as a work of Polish literature. Other translations are seen to be poorer but, on inspection, we would find that much of Mickiewicz’s translation is extremely loose and more a re-interpretation than a translation. There is never only one possible solution in translation.

More to follow…

When is a Translation not a Translation?

A common misconception among many people who have little to do with translation (and even, surprisingly, among many translators themselves) is that any piece of text that is ‘shifted’, ‘moved’ or ‘transformed’ from one language into another is a translation. Nothing could be further from the truth. John Dryden, the poet, playwright, literary critic and translator eloquently divided the types (or problems) of translation into three categories:

metaphrase, where an author/translator translates word for word
paraphrase, where an author/translator translates sense for sense
imitation, where an author/translator abandons the original text

Additionally, Roman Jakobson distinguished three types of translation, although he focused more on the systemic nature of language and symbol systems:

intralingual translation, or interpretation of verbal signs by means of others in the same language
interlingual translation, or interpretation of verbals signs by means of some other language
semiotic translation, or interpretation of verbal signs by means of a non-verbal sign system

Translation is often used as an umbrella term for all these different phenomena, which makes a discussion of translation extremely difficult. We can safely say that most of the work undertaken by the majority of translators is Jakobson’s interlingual translation, however, it is not as easy to make the same clear-cut distinction when it comes to the categories put forward by John Dryden way back in the 17th century.

Most translators would like to think that their work is a type of paraphrase but more often than not it includes large chunks of imitation or even metaphrase. A wonderful oft-quoted example is the subtitling mistake found in several comedy programmes that had been translated from English to Polish in the 1990s. “you’re pulling my leg” was translated (literally) as “ciągniesz mnie za nogę” much to the bewilderment of English-speaking Poles.

A ‘translation’, therefore, is not always a translation.

Tasty Language

Not only is tongue a synonym for language and speech (the Latin is lingua) but the human tongue is also a fascinating organ important in the articulation of language, in the process of eating and responsible for our sense of taste. The human organ is said to have approximately 10,000 taste buds. The equivalent of the word ‘taste bud’ in other (Indo-European) languages is fascinating in itself. The Czech and Polish equivalents (respectively, chuťový pohárek and kubki smakowe) are wonderful phrases which literally mean ‘taste cups’ or ‘cups of taste’. Why buds and cups?

The answer can be found in the Latin for ‘taste bud’ - caliculus gustatorius and this seems to give us some insights into the word/phrase in other languages. Caliculus can be defined in English as a ‘small cup’, a ‘goblet’, a ‘polyp’ or a ‘small cup-shaped hollow’. This does not entirely explain the English use of ‘bud’, but it does help us understand why ‘cup’ is used in Czech and Polish.

Another interesting point is the word smak in Polish (cмак in Ukrainian) which was borrowed from German. It derives from the Old High German smac giving us Geschmack in German, Grundsmak in Swedish, Smaak in Dutch, and Smak in Norwegian. The word smack was actually used also in English (smæc in Old English) and the remnants of this expression (meaning taste) can be seen in the phrase, “This smacks of…”

Polish and Ukrainian use the borrowed smak (cмак) whereas other Slavonic languages use chuť (Czech and Slovakian), bкус (= vkus) (Russian and Belarusian) and okus (Croatian, Slovenian). To compare, the Lithuanian is the rather similar skonis. Language is simply a repository of culture, ideas and knowledge. Every language is in itself a vessel, a ‘cup’ that houses the history of that language and its people and shows us what the language and its people have experienced. Sometimes, looking into this ‘tasty cup’ can give us some surprising results.

Minority Expansion

The United Kingdom has traditionally been home to a large number of language schools offering “English in the home of English”. Students from the world over make linguistic pilgrimages to the major cities of England in order to learn, study, brush up on or tweak their English language skills.

However, due to the influx of so many Polish people, the Polish language is now in vogue. Language schools and local community centres are all registering a large number of people wanting to learn Polish. Evening classes offering Polish have become incredibly popular in the south of England.

What is more interesting is the fact that the greatest number of people wanting to learn Polish are English men, the reason being is that they are eager to learn the language of their newly-acquired Polish girlfriends or wives.

The effect of minority languages on nations has never really been a focal point of research within modern linguistics. Bilingualism and diglossia usually prevails in the literature, although it could be fascinating to learn what effects (new and old) minority languages might have on a society and its linguistic habits.

Polish made its first modern impact on the British Isles after the war with a whole host of communities being scattered all over England, Wales and Scotland, however, the post-war Poles left a fairly weak linguistic imprint on modern-day English. The new Polish influx could be different. Nowadays, British citizens are more eager to learn foreign languages than their parents and grandparents before them; linguistic tolerance is at a much higher level than before.

Polish will never have the same effect as Hindi, Urdu, Gujarati or Bengali but in the upcoming years it will be curious to see the linguistic ripples (or waves) that this Slavonic language might have on the already colourful linguistic patchwork that is the modern-day United Kingdom. The hope is that linguists will have the foresight to map this interesting process.

Google Translatosphere

Technology is now part and parcel of translation. There has been a great deal of information and press reports of a new service Google intends to offer to translators in the near future in the guise of Google Translation Center which according to some is set to become the world’s largest translation memory. According to information coming out of Google and related sites, the Translation Center will allow you to upload a document and request translations in over forty languages as well as the possibility of creating, editing documents created using Google’s online translation tools.

Many translators and translation may shudder to think that Google is encroaching onto their territory but this can only be good news for the world of translation. More tools does not necessarily mean better quality but the hope is that greater access to translation memories and other tools may be a bootstrap operation for the translation community and assist in its development. Easier access to such tools may be a catalyst to create better tools and in this sense the Google Translation Center can only be a good thing. For more information try these two links: Gigaom and Blogoscoped.

Measuring Quality

Can the quality of a translated text be measured using purely statistical methods? What is the definition of statistical? What do we have in mind when we speak of a method or methodology? Without doubt, care must be taken with the terminology we use due to the fact that statistical could relate to a variety of techniques which in some way or other make use of statistics. Similarly, the term computerised is bandied about and often relates to a wide spectrum of techniques.

Statistical and/or computerised (or even computer-based) techniques are most certainly the way forward for translators, translator trainers and editors/proof-readers. This is not to say that the computer will relieve us of the work we put into the translation process but will rather provide us with powerful tools that can improve the quality of translation as well as save valuable time when producing texts. Already, computer-aided human translation has given us translation memories (like Trados) that have had a huge impact on speed and quality.

Nevertheless, is it possible for computer-based tools to measure the quality of a particular text? We have seen that the analysis of language corpora can give us clues into how a text works. By looking at purely quantitative features, such as frequency lists, it is possible to assess the mechanics and style of a text. By extension, we should therefore be able to assess the quality of a translation. If translators are able to pinpoint particular linguistic elements that might correlate to the quality of a text in a particular domain we should be able to talk of a statistical-based study of translation quality.

Research into translation quality assessment seems to point to a procedural approach to the assessment of quality, however, a simpler path might be the search for specific statistical anchor points which the translation assessor could use to determine if the translation fulfils the basic functions of a text with regards to style, for example, the appropriate number of nouns, verbs, adjectives and the appropriate ratio between these parts of speech.

Statistical tools are just that. Tools. The Universal Translator so often depicted in science fiction films may well be a pipe dream and momentarily unrealistic but this does not mean we cannot push the limits of statistical and computer-based linguistics to the very edge so that not only theorists but translation practitioners can also put them to use.