Translation into the Second Language

Stuart Campbell

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781317884989
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

The dynamics of immigration, international commerce and the postcolonial world make it inevitable that much translation is done into a second language, despite the prevailing wisdom that translators should only work into their mother tongue. This book is the first study to explore the phenomenon of translation into a second language in a way that will interest applied linguists, translators and translation teachers, and ESOL teachers working with advanced level students.

Rather than seeing translation into a second language as deficient output, this study adopts an interlanguage framework to consider L2 translation as the product of developing competence; learning to translate is seen as a special variety of second language acquisition. Through carefully worked case studies, separate components of translation competence are identified, among them the ability to create stylistically authentic texts in English, the ability to monitor and edit output, and the psychological attitudes that the translator brings to the task. While the case studies mainly deal with Arabic speakers undergoing translator training in Australia, the conclusions will have implications for translation into a second language, especially English, around the world.

Translation into the Second Language is firmly grounded in empirical research, and in this regard it serves as a stimulus and a methodological guide for further research. It will be a valuable addition for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students of applied linguistics, translation theory, bilingualism and second language acquisition as well as those involved in teaching or practicing translation at a professional level.

1 What is translation competence?

The scope of this work

This book asks a number of questions about translation, and tries to answer them in ways that relate to current key issues in applied linguistics. The special feature of this book is that it deals with translation into the second language, an area largely ignored by applied linguistics in general and by the literature of translation studies in particular.

The problems that arise when an individual translates into a second language do not fit easily into the framework established by orthodox translation studies, which tends to assume that all translators work into their first language. Rather, they relate to four key issues in the wider field of applied linguistics. One is the issue of second language acquisition, and especially the acquisition of advanced skills and strategies in a second language; in very many cases an individual translating into a second language is still acquiring that language, so that it makes sense to think of learning to translate as a special variety of learning a second language. In fact, much of translation studies has ignored the issue of language development, tacitly assuming the existence of a perfectly bilingual translator. The second issue is that of interlanguage, the idea that the learner’s output in a second language represents a stage in the acquisition of that language, rather than an imperfect variety of it; the output of a second language translator can be thought of as a special variety of interlanguage that is framed by the demands of the task of translation. An interlanguage perspective gives us a much more insightful way of looking at the ‘errors’ that second language translators make. The third issue is the organization of language above the level of the sentence, variously referred to as text-linguistics, discourse analysis or the study of genre. This issue is a key one since the translation discussed in this book is carried out not by rank beginners in the second language, but by those with substantial competence in the language; what translation challenges is their ability to produce stylistically authentic texts. Indeed, the stylistic difficulties of students translating into a second language have been the practical motivation behind the research reported in this book, and have determined my approach to investigating translation competence. One major element in this investigation is the development of textual skills in the second language. The findings of this research may also be applicable to translation into the first language; the acquisition of textual skills is not restricted to second language learners and is, of course, a staple ingredient of first language education in schools, whether it falls under the traditional descriptor of ‘stylistics’ or the more modern ‘genre’ approach. The fourth issue is the description of levels of language competence, the importance of which comes from the fact that translation is a profession with deep concerns about accreditation and the setting of standards.

These four issues form the landmarks which this book keeps in view in going about its central task – to explore how individuals develop the competence to translate into a second language, and to show that a key aspect – textual competence – is developed in a systematic way. In this way it makes a contribution not just to translation studies, but to the wider field of applied linguistics. The exploration of translation competence will leave us somewhat wiser about how second languages are acquired, about the nature of interlanguage, about the writing of texts, and about describing levels of language competence. The book proceeds along the following lines.

In Chapter 1, I lay the programmatic groundwork and place the research in the wider context of translation studies, translation competence studies and second language acquisition research. The main questions I ask here are ‘What do we mean by translation competence?’ and ‘How have scholars dealt with it so far?’ The chapter argues strongly for a translator-centred approach (rather than text-centred or system-centred ones), which sees the output of translation as interlanguage.

In Chapter 2, I argue that translation into the second language is inevitable in many situations because of the nature of immigration and the dynamics of the translation market-place. Because of its inevitability, translator educators need to understand it and develop appropriate strategies to teach it and assess it.

Chapter 3 supports the case for the inevitability of translation into the second language by analysing data on the candidature for an Australian university course in translation. This study shows in detail – possibly for the first time – the educational and linguistic profile of the clientele for a professional translation course in a state founded on immigration. The results reflect a complex and dynamic educational problem.

Chapter 4 presents a preliminary study that was carried out on a group of examination candidates for certification as translators from Arabic – their first language – into English. The results of this study suggest that there is systematic variation in the way the candidates were able to manipulate written genres, or, in other words, in their textual competence. The main result of this study is that the competence of such translators may be profiled as substandard, pretextual or textual.

In Chapters 5 and 6 I explore this notion further by analysing textual competence from the points of view of linguistic structure and lexis. Chapter 5 shows that in translators into a second language there appears to be a gradient from those whose grammatical usage is more like that of spoken language to those whose usage is more written in character. Chapter 6 looks at vocabulary choice and the extent to which translators look beyond the immediate sentence to the text itself; it also builds on the idea of translation competence by proposing the notion of disposition – that the vocabulary choices made by translators into the second language reveal tendencies of risk-taking versus prudence and persistence versus capitulation.

In Chapter 7 I examine the issue of the monitoring of translation performance as an aspect of translation competence: first, by comparing self-assessment of translation output quality in translators into their first and second languages, and secondly, by examining the systematic variation in monitoring strategies used by translators into the second language.

Chapter 8 summarizes the aspects of the model dealt with in this research, acknowledges omissions, and suggests wider applicability.

The importance of a translator-centred view on translation

It is a little ironic that the role of the translator has only recently become a concern in translation studies. Only 30 years ago the writings of Catford were concerned primarily with the match or mismatch between source and target codes; the translator was a more or less invisible instrument since the product of translation – not the process – was the focus of attention (Catford, 1965) (although some hints about individual working styles of medieval translators are available: Amos (1973)).

It has been where translation is discussed in a real-life framework that translators are considered at all. Nida and Taber (1969), for example, include an appendix on ‘Organisation of Translation Projects’ where Bible translators are advised how to establish project teams. It is suggested, for instance, that ‘the native speakers in such cases are recognised as the real translators, while the foreigners who participate are exegetical informants and assistants’ (Nida and Taber, 1969: 174). This was no doubt a radical statement at the time since it suggested that not all those in the translation team had to be perfect bilinguals. If the point was noticed at all by the mainstream world of commercial and government translation, it was considered a marginal phenomenon that arose because of the kinds of languages that Bible translators deal with. There are plenty of reasons to see translation into a second language as an activity as normal and possibly as widespread as translation into the first language.

More recently, the translation process has caught the interest of theorists, in line with an entire shift in thinking about language:

During the last thirty years … the study of language has undergone radical changes: the focus of interest has widened from the purely historical to the contemporary, from the prescriptive to the descriptive, from the theoretical system to the concrete realization, from the micro-level of the sign to the macro-structure of the text. (Snell-Hornby, 1988: 7–8)

It is now accepted that merely to study target texts is insufficient: ‘To study translations in isolation from the factors affecting their production is consequently to miss out an important dimension of the phenomenon’ (Hatim and Mason, 1990: 13). Any conception of the wider context or process necessarily entails admitting the translator into the picture, for example, as a participant in a chain of communication or as the possessor of the linguistic and cognitive skills that make the act of translation possible. The translator can no longer be thought of as a ghostly perfect bilingual, but as a living being with a role and abilities that can be described and discussed; when the translator emerges, then translation competence begins to emerge as an important issue. Such a situation opens the way for views like that of Toury, who concedes that in translator training the development of bilingualism might be partially sacrificed for other abilities (Toury, 1984). Indeed, Bell (1991) develops a model of translating that uses proposals about translator competence as its foundation stone. The idea of the translator playing a key role reaches its apogee in Hewson and Martin (1991), where the Translation Operator is the core of the so-called Variational approach. One can only speculate about why it has taken the translator so long to emerge, but at the same time be thankful that a new viewpoint on the translation process is available.

Recent studies on translation competence

A number of authors have made explicit statements about translation competence. Toury (1984) suggests that bilinguals have an ‘innate translation competence comprising bilingual and interlingual ability’, as well as ‘transfer competence’ (Toury, 1984: 189–90). While Toury’s focus is translation teaching, Bell’s horizon is wider – he has a model of the process of translating in his sights – when he proposes three ways in which translator competence might be characterized (Bell, 1991).¹ One way is an ‘ideal bilingual competence’ characterization (p. 38), which would conceive of the translator as an idealized, flawlessly performing system, in much the same way that transformational-generative grammarians assume an ideal speaker—hearer and describe the competence, but not the performance, of that speaker-hearer. Another way is to characterize translator competence as an ‘expert system’ containing a knowledge base and an inference mechanism (p. 39). Finally, Bell suggests a ‘communicative competence’ characterization with four components, namely grammatical, sociolinguistic, discourse and strategic competence (p. 41), with clear affinities to Canale and Swain (1980). This last characterization resonates with the ideas of Kiraly (1990) who bemoans the product focus of translation teaching in general and the scant regard paid to the process of second language acquisition in teaching translation into foreign languages:

… a great deal of time is spent ‘learning’ and virtually none is spent using the language for self-expression or communication. This is the result of the dominant paradigm in translation teaching, which can be called the ‘equivalence’ or ‘linguistic transfer’ paradigm. (Kiraly, 1990: 209)

Hewson and Martin (1991) also talk about competence while they are building a theory of translation (actually the title of their Chapter 3). Their theory is reflected in the types of competence they propose. ‘Acquired interlinguistic competence’ is fairly straightforward: ‘… competence in at least two linguistic systems and a certain knowledge of the L[anguage] C[ultures] associated with them’ (p. 52). Next is ‘Dissimilative competence’, which includes: ‘(1) an aptitude to generate and dissimilate homologous statements and (2) an aptitude to define and recreate socio-cultural norms’ (p. 52). Finally, there is ‘Transferred competence’ – not something possessed by the translator, but ‘… all the dissimilative competence which has been accumulated and committed to translation auxiliaries such as translation methods, dictionaries, data banks, and expert systems’ (p. 52).

Nord (1992), in advocating text analysis as a translation teaching method offers a catalogue of competences that should underpin teaching:

… competence of text reception and analysis, research competence, transfer competence, competence of text production, competence of translation quality assessment, and, of course, linguistic and cultural competence both on the source and the target side, which is the main prerequisite of translation activity. (Nord, 1992: 47)

Meanwhile Pym (1992), in an attempt to dissociate translation from linguistics, provides a definition of translational competence in a kind of behavioural framework:

1. The ability to generate a target-text series of more than one viable term (target text₁, target text₂… target text_n) for a source text.

2. The ability to select only one target text from this series, quickly and with justified confidence, and to propose this target text as a replacement of source text for a specific purpose and reader. (Pym, 1992: 281)

Finally, some writers simply mention translation competence in passing, as if it were a given. For example, Farahzad talks of examination candidates’ ‘level of command of both source and target language as well as their level of translational competence’ (Farahzad, 1992: 276).

It seems that the way translation competence is characterized has a great deal to do with one’s purpose. Teaching has already been mentioned; in this case investigating translation competence ought to make for more effective intervention in the classroom. Theorizing about the translation process is another purpose, where investigating what translators have to know will lay the foundation stone of a description of what translating is. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine why one would want to investigate translation competence at all without some broader purpose in view. In the next section I will examine these purposes in some detail.

Possible ways of conceptualizing translation competence

There are a number of major areas of enquiry in translation studies that have an interest in translation competence. These can be termed approaches to investigating translation competence because they are quite distinct in their methodology and objectives. The three most important of these are psychological modelling of the translation process, translation quality assessment and translation pedagogy.

Psychological modelling

By psychologic...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Author’s Preface
• Author’s Acknowledgements
• Publisher’s Acknowledgements
• 1 What is translation competence?
• 2 Challenging the insistence on translation into the first language
• 3 A case study of candidates for translator education
• 4 Translation into a second language and second language competence
• 5 Translation competence and grammar
• 6 Translation competence and lexis
• 7 Monitoring translation performance
• 8 Towards a model of translation competence
• APPENDIX 1: Examples of target texts with varying combinations of textual competence, risk-taking and persistence
• APPENDIX 2: Real-time edited texts
• References
• Index