The Routledge Handbook of Translation Studies and Linguistics

Kirsten Malmkjaer, Kirsten Malmkjaer

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781317434511
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Translating & Interpreting
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

The Routledge Handbook of Translation Studies and Linguistics explores the interrelationships between translation studies and linguistics in six sections of state-of-the-art chapters, written by leading specialists from around the world.

The first part begins by addressing the relationships between translation studies and linguistics as major topics of study in themselves before focusing, in individual chapters, on the relationships between translation on the one hand and semantics, semiotics and the sound system of language on the other. Part II explores the nature of meaning and the ways in which meaning can be shared in text pairs that are related to each other as first-written texts and their translations, while Part III focuses on the relationships between translation and interpreting and the written and spoken word. Part IV considers the users of language and situations involving more than one language and Part V addresses technological tools that can assist language users. Finally, Part VI presents chapters on the links between areas of applied linguistics and translation and interpreting.

With an introduction by the editor and an extensive bibliography, this handbook is an indispensable resource for advanced students of translation studies, interpreting studies and applied linguistics.

Part I
The nature of language, translation and interpreting

1
Theories of linguistics and of translation and interpreting

Kirsten Malmkjær

Introduction and definitions

Linguistics is the academic discipline that focuses on languages, and since translation can be seen, in Catford’s (1965, 1) words as “an operation performed on languages”, many scholars interested in translation and interpreting have looked to linguistics for theoretical input (Nida 1964; Vinay and Darbelnet 1958/1995; Neubert 1973, 1985; Halverson 2007, 2010, 2013, 2014). Equally, though, linguists have sought enlightenment about language and languages through the study of languages in contact with each other in situations involving translation or interpreting (Sapir 1921; Jakobson 1959). Some scholars, especially those with a geographical background in Europe (e.g. Jakobson) and/or a disciplinary leaning towards field linguistics and/or anthropology (e.g. Sapir) fall equally comfortably into both the linguistic and the Translation Studies discipline.

Catford’s definition has been criticised by Snell-Hornby (1995 [1988], 3) for expressing too narrow a view of what translation is and for deriving translation rules from “isolated and even absurdly simplistic sentences” (1995 [1988], 20). For their part, interpreting studies scholars like Seleskovitch (1975, 1978) and Seleskovitch and Lederer (1984, 1989) have warned that linguistics is too focused on words and expressions to be able to account for interpreting. Instead, they prefer the so-called theory of sense developed by Seleskovitch, according to which an interpreter abstracts sense from words in the source language in order to express a similar sense in the target language. Of course, a linguist might argue that the role of language in this process remains significant, and given the heightened concentration in the late 20th and early 21st centuries on the cognitive processes involved in translating and interpreting (see Chapter 18 in this volume), such criticisms seem less pertinent than they were when originally posed.

It is possible that at least some negative views of linguistics as a foundation for the development of translation and interpreting studies were based on a desire to forge independent disciplines and a concern that the complex processes of translating and interpreting would be overlooked in the effort to relate languages to each other, often with little regard for empirical data and even less attention paid to context. To a limited extent, these fears have been realised in the work by Gutt (1991), for example. Gutt draws heavily on Sperber and Wilson’s (1986) relevance theoretic account of linguistic interaction (see Chapter 6 in this volume), so he pays considerable attention to context; nevertheless, he also claims that, given relevance theory, there is no need for a separate theory of translation Gutt (1990, 135, italics original):

the phenomenon commonly referred to as “translation” can be accounted for naturally within the relevance theory of communication developed by Sperber and Wilson: there is no need for a distinct general theory of translation.

Of course, there are also translation scholars who have viewed linguistics positively. In addition to Catford, who bases his theory on the linguistic theory of Halliday (1961), these include Vinay and Darbelnet (1958), who believe with Trager and Smith (1951, 81) that linguistics is “the most exact of human sciences” (Vinay and Darbelnet 1958/1995, 7) and who draw heavily on Saussure’s theory of signs (see in particular Vinay and Darbelnet 1958/1995, 12–15); Nida (1964, 9), who refers to Chomsky (1957; 1962 [published as 1964]); and Halverson (2007, 2010, 2013, 2014), who draws on the cognitive linguistic theory developed by Langacker (1983, 1987, 1991a, 1991b, 1999, 2008).

Historical perspectives

It is likely that people have been studying language for as long as there has been speech, and documented speculation about language, especially about its origins, dates back at least as far as the seventh century BCE (Mufwene 2013, 16). Each of the great traditions (Arab, Chinese, Greco-Roman, Indian, Near Eastern, Semitic, Western, and so on) has its own history (Law 1990, 784 and ff), but linguistics as such can still be considered a relatively young discipline. According to Fox (2006, 317) the discipline became established in the nineteenth century as what Burridge (2013, 141) describes as “a new science, distinct from literary studies and philosophical enquiry”; and what is generally thought of as the first major publication in modern linguistics, Ferdinand de Saussure’s Cours de linguistique générale was published in 1916 (references here are to the Fontana/Collins edition introduced by Jonathan Culler and first published in 1974). Partfour of this course concerns geographical linguistics, and in it, Saussure considers the diversity of languages to which he refers as “The most striking thing about the study of languages” and “the first observation made in linguistics” (1916/1974, 191); and, he adds, “Having noticed that two idioms differ, one instinctively looks for similarities” (1916/1974, 192). Saussure, however, does not dwell on the concept or practice of translation, an omission that sets him at odds with his contemporary, Edward Sapir, for whom comparison between languages is undertaken as field-work by way of informant-aided translation of words and expressions. This is not a mere matter of methodological difference between the founders of two scholarly traditions; followers of Sapir’s comparative methodology consider, in the words of Roman Jakobson, that comparison through translation is the only legitimate method of linguistic inquiry. As Jakobson puts it (1959, 234): “No linguistic specimen may be interpreted by the science of language without a translation of its signs into other signs of the same system or into signs of another system”. This approach to linguistic data collection is illustrated especially clearly by Edward Sapir (1921).

For example, Sapir (1921, 92–93) identifies thirteen concepts expressed in the sentence, “the farmer kills the duckling”.

I. Concrete concepts:

1. First subject of discourse: farmer
2. Second subject of discourse: duckling
3. Activity: kill

These concrete subjects can be analysed into:

A. Radical concepts

1. Verb (to) farm (concept 1)
2. Noun: duck (concept 2)
3. Verb: kill (concept 3)

and

B. Derivational concepts

1. Agentive: expressed by the suffix -er (concept 4)
2. Diminutive: expressed by the suffix -ling (concept 5)

II. Relational concepts: including two instances of Definiteness of Reference expressed by “the” (concepts 6 and 7); Declarative modality expressed by the position of the subject and verb (concept 8); two instances of Personal Relations realised by the subjectivity of “farmer” and the objectivity of “duckling” (concepts 9 and 10); two instances of singular number expressed by the lack of plural suffix on “farmer” and on “duckling” (concepts 11 and 12) and one instance of time expressed by lack of any past tense indication on the verb and by the suffixed “-s” (concept 13).

In other languages, Sapir (1921, 94–98) points out, some or all of these concepts may be ordered differently, and some may not be expressed, while concepts that the English sentence does not express are expressed in other languages. In the German “equivalent sentence”, as Sapir (1921, 95) refers to the sentence, “Der Bauer tötet das Entelein”, for example, the expression of definiteness:

is unavoidably coupled with three other concepts – number (both der and das are explicitly singular), case (der is subjective; das is subjective or objective, by elimination therefore objective), and gender, a new concept of the relational order that is not in this case explicitly involved in English (der is masculine, das is neuter).

In Yana, an extinct language that was spoken in north-central California:

Literally translated, the equivalent sentence would read something like “kill-s-he farmer [although the Yana did not farm] he to duckling,” in which “he” and “to” are rather awkward English renderings of a general third person pronoun … and an objective particle which indicates that the following noun is connected with the verb otherwise than as a subject. The suffixed element in “kill-s” corresponds to the English suffix with the important exceptions that it makes no reference to the number of the subject and that the statement is known to be true, that it is vouched for by the speaker.

(Sapir 1921, 96)

Sapir (1921, 96–98) also compares the sentence with its Chinese and Kwakiutl translations (Kwakiutl was spoken in what is now British Columbia), noting numerous differences, but concluding, nevertheless, that (1921, 126):

No language wholly fails to distinguish noun and verb, though in particular cases the nature of the distinction may be an elusive one. It is different with the other parts of speech. Not one of them is imperatively required for the life of language.

This is important, because this finding in linguistics (that all languages examined employ noun-like and verb-like elements), arrived at through a research method that is empirical, immensely thorough and profoundly translational, coincides with the findings of logico-philosophical analysis of language that subject and predicate are fundamental elements of expression. Both disciplines provide a basis in similarity against which the prolific differences between languages can be measured.

Core issues and topics

Can there be translation?

It is widely, although not universally, agreed that the common core of languages referred to in the previous section suffices to ensure that some degree of translation between languages can always be achieved. This does not mean that there are not profound differences between languages which can have significant effects on how speakers of these languages understand their surroundings, on the societies that they live in and on the processes of translation between the languages; but it does mean that the concept of linguistic relativity, popularised by Benjamin Lee Whorf (e.g. Whorf circa 1936), but also supported to an extent by Sapir himself (e.g. Sapir 1929/Mandelbaum 1949, 69), has been rethought, as Gumperz and Levinson’s (1996a) book title suggests. For Translation Studies, it means that its metier is not spurious, as it would be if languages differed so radically that no translation could be conceived of (though how that would be established is a moot point). This possibility is considered by Whorf (1936/Carroll 1956) on the basis of information he learnt from a speaker of the Hopi Indian language whom he met in New York. According to this informant, the Hopi language contains:

no words, grammatical forms, constructions or expressions that refer directly to what we call “time,” or to past, present, or future, or to enduring or lasting, or to motion as kinematic rather than dynamic … or that even refer to space in such a way as to exclude that element of extension or existence that we call “time”. … In this Hopi view, time disappears and space is altered … At the same time, new concepts and abstractions flow into the picture, taking up the task of describing the universe without reference to such time or space – abstractions for which our language lacks adequate terms.

(Whorf 1936/Carroll 1956, 57–58)

In Hopi, rather than time and space being, as Kant (1781, A26/B42 and A33/B49–50) has it, the forms of human experience, there are two “cosmic forms” (1936/Carroll 1956, 59), Manifested and Manifesting. The Manifested “comprises all that is or has been accessible to the senses”; the Manifesting comprises:

all that we call future, BUT NOT MERELY THIS; it includes … all that we call mental – everything that appears or exists in the mind, or, as the Hopi would prefer to say, in the HEART, not only the heart of man, but the heart of animals, plants, and things.

(Whorf 1936/Carroll 1956, 59; small caps in the original)

Differences of this type between distant languages led Whorf to suggest “a new principle of relativity” (1940/Carroll 1956, 214) according to which “all observers are not led by the same physical evidence to the same picture of the universe, unless their linguistic backgrounds are similar, or can in some way be calibrated”; and since by calibration Whorf appears to mean setting a sentence of language a together with a sentence in language b in such a way that the word classes and their associated concepts in the two sentences match up fairly well, “translated” serves as at least a close synonym; and, according to Whorf, it is doubtful whether this is possible between even simp...