Translation as Communication across Languages and Cultures

Juliane House

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9780415734325
• eBook ISBN: 9781317362654
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

In this interdisciplinary book, Juliane House breaks new ground by situating translation within Applied Linguistics. In thirteen chapters, she examines translation as a means of communication across different languages and cultures, provides a critical overview of different approaches to translation, of the link between culture and translation, and between views of context and text in translation.

Featuring an account of translation from a linguistic-cognitive perspective, House covers problematic issues such as the existence of universals of translation, cases of untranslatability and ways and means of assessing the quality of a translation. Recent methodological and research avenues such as the role of corpora in translation and the effects of globalization processes on translation are presented in a neutral, non-biased manner. The book concludes with a thorough, historical account of the role of translation in foreign language learning and teaching and a discussion of new challenges and problems of the professional practice of translation in our world today.

Written by a highly experienced teacher and researcher in the field, Translation as Communication across Languages and Cultures is an essential resource for students and researchers of Translation Studies, Applied Linguistics and Communication Studies.

Part I

Central concepts

This part of the book gives an overview of several basic issues in the field of translation studies. Chapter 1 features a discussion of the nature of translation. Chapter 2 provides an account of important strands of translation research. Chapter 3 continues this overview with a discussion of several recent strands in translation studies. Finally, Chapter 4 reviews the literature on the concept of ‘culture’, a concept of prime relevance for the field of translation studies.

1 The nature of translation as part of Applied Linguistics

In this introductory chapter I discuss some basic issues involved in translation. I will start defining translation as part of the discipline of Applied Linguistics, and go on to explain why translation is more important today than ever before. I will then provide a description of translation from two different perspectives, as well as a definition of translation followed by accounting for several models of translation. Many of the issues discussed in this chapter will be taken up in greater detail in the following chapters.

Translation as part of Applied Linguistics

Let me start by defining what I understand by ‘Applied Linguistics’: Applied Linguistics is a broadly interdisciplinary field concerned with promoting our understanding of the role that language plays in human life. In its centre are theoretical and empirical investigations of real-world issues in which language plays a leading role. Applied Linguistics focuses on the relationship between theory and practice, using the insights gained from the theory-practice interface for solving language-related real-world problems in a principled way (see Edmondson and House 2011 who describe the discipline ‘Sprachlehrforschung’, the German version of Applied Linguistics, in exactly this way).

Applied Linguistics is not ‘linguistics applied’ because it deals with many more issues than purely linguistic ones, and because disciplines such as psychology, sociology, ethnography, anthropology, educational research, communication and media studies also inform applied linguistic research. The result is a very broad spectrum of themes in Applied Linguistics such as first, second and foreign language learning and teaching, bilingualism and multilingualism, discourse analysis, language policy and language planning, research methodology, language testing, stylistics, literature, rhetoric, literacy, translation and other areas in which language-related decision need to be, and regularly are, taken.

Translation is indeed an important part of Applied Linguistics – today more than ever before. The reasons why this should be so will be discussed in the following section.

Translation as an essential part of today’s revolution in communication

Alongside the impact of globalization on the world economy, international communication and politics, translation has also become much more important than ever before (see for example the discussion in Böttger 2008; Bielsa 2005). Information distribution via translation today relies heavily on new technologies that promote a worldwide translation industry. Translation plays a crucial and ever-growing role in multilingual news writing for international press networks, television channels, the Internet, the World Wide Web, social media, blogs, wikis etc. Today, the BBC, Al Jazeera International, Russia Today, Deutsche Welle, Press TV and many other globally and multilingually operating TV channels rely heavily on translations of messages in many different languages. Whenever information input needs to be quickly disseminated across the world in different languages, translations are indispensable. Translation is also essential for tourist information worldwide and for information flow in globalized companies, where – supported by translation processes – English as a lingua franca (ELF) is now often replaced by native languages to improve sales potentials (see Bührig and Böttger 2010; Lüdi et al. 2010).

Further, there is a growing demand for translation in localization industries. Software localization covers diverse industrial, commercial and scientific activities ranging from CD productions, engineering and testing software applications to managing complex team projects simultaneously in many countries and languages. Translations are needed in all of these. Indeed, translation is part and parcel of all worldwide localization and glocalization processes. In order to make a product available in many different languages it must be localized via translation. This process is of course similar to what House (1977) has called ‘cultural filtering’, an essential practice in covert translation (for a more detailed discussion see Chapter 8). Briefly, a covert translation is a translation which enjoys the status of an original text in the receiving linguaculture, and is not marked pragmatically as a translation at all. In order to meet the special needs of the new addressees, the translator must take different cultural presuppositions into account and create an equivalent speech event in the target culture. In order to achieve this, a ‘cultural filter’ will be applied.

Producing a localized, i.e. culturally filtered and translated, version of a product is essential for opening up new markets, since immediate access to information about a product in a local language increases its demand. An important offshoot is the design of localized advertising, again involving massive translation activity. Translation can thus be said to lie at the very heart of the global economy today: it tailors products to meet the needs of local markets everywhere in processes of glocalization.

Translation is also increasingly propelled by the World Wide Web, whose development has spread the need for translation into e-commerce globalization. And the steady increase of non-English speaking Web users naturally also boosts translation.

Another factor contributing to the growing importance of translation is e-learning. The expansion of digital industries centred around e-learning and other education forms spread over the Web in many different languages again shows the intimate link between translation and today’s global economy (see for example Cronin 2003: 8–41).

In sum, globalization has led to a veritable explosion of demand for translation. Translation is therefore not simply a by-product of globalization, but an integral part of it. Without translation, the global capitalist consumer-oriented and growth-fixated economy would not be possible.

Translation as cross-linguistic and cross-cultural communication

Translation has been an important cross-linguistic and cross-cultural practice since earliest times. Translation can be seen as the replacement of something else, something that pre-existed, ideas and expressions represented at second hand, as it were. In this sense, translation as cross-linguistic and cross-cultural communication is often considered to be ‘second best’, not ‘the real thing’, leading invariably to distortions and losses of what was originally ‘meant’. Translation, on this view, is essentially a secondary communicative event. Normally a communicative event happens only once. With translation, on the other hand, communicative events are reduplicated for persons or groups otherwise prevented from participating in or appreciating the original communicative event. Despite its nature as a secondary event, translation undoubtedly provides an important service in that it mediates between different languages, overcoming linguistic and cultural barriers.

Translation is the written form of mediation, interpreting the oral one. While we will in this book deal with translation, a few words about the differences between these two modes of cross-linguistic and cross-cultural communication may be warranted here. Translation and interpreting are both similar and different activities: similar in that, obviously, both involve a language switch, different in that in translation (usually) a fixed, relatively permanently available and in principle unlimitedly repeatable text in one language is changed into a text in another language, which can be corrected as often as the translator sees fit. In interpreting, on the other hand, a text is transformed into a new text in another language, but it is, as a rule, orally available only once (see Moser-Mercer 2002; Gile 2002). Since the new text emerges chunk by chunk and does not ‘stay’ permanently with the interpreter (or the addressees), it is only controllable and correctible by the interpreter to a limited extent. While some steps or phases in the interpreting process can be regarded as ‘automatic’ and need little reflective thought and strategic endeavour, others may be more complex and take more time. This requires a lot of cognitive effort and co-ordination, as the interpreter has to listen, understand and ‘re-code’ bit by bit at the same time. All this is very different in translating, where the translator can usually read and translate the source text at his or her own pace. And, very important, the source text is available for translation in its entirety, whereas, in simultaneous and consecutive interpreting, it is produced and presented bit by bit. This is an enormous challenge for the interpreter who must create an ongoing text out of these incremental bits – a text which must eventually form a coherent whole.

In translation, as a rule, neither the author of a source text nor the addressees of the target text are present, so no overt interaction (and with it, the possibility of direct feedback) can take place. In interpreting, on the other hand, both author and addressees are usually co-present, so interaction and feedback are possible.

The relationship between translation and interpreting studies on the one hand and intercultural communication on the other hand has not been much researched. Although there have been some previous attempts at providing such a link (e.g. by Schäffner and Adab 1995; Snell-Hornby 1995; Katan 2004). While these attempts have largely failed to place this linkage on firm linguistic basis, this has been the major thrust of a volume edited by Bührig et al. (2009), and see the discussion in House (2012a).

How can we define translation as intercultural communication? It can be simply characterized as communication between members of different cultures who presumably follow differing sociocultural rules for behaviour, including speaking and who can range from groups at the national level like linguistic minorities (Turks or Lebanese in Germany) as well as groups that have potentially differing rules for speaking such as social class, age, gender. In the past, many studies of intercultural communication have been concerned with cases of failed intercultural communication, cases in which interactants fail to understand one another and thus cannot communicate successfully. Reasons for this were often ascribed to ‘intercultural differences’ such as values, beliefs, behaviours of culture members (see for example Gumperz 1982; J. Thomas 1983; Tannen 1986; Blum-Kulka et al. 1989; Scollon and Scollon 1994; House 1996, 2003a; Spencer-Oatey 2000; House et al. 2003; Holmes 2006). More recently, however, many researchers have shifted their focus on how interactants manage intercultural understanding (see for example Sarangi 1994; Clyne 1994; Bührig and ten Thije 2006). It is also intercultural understanding which is the basis for the single most important concept in translation and interpreting studies: functional equivalence. Functional equivalence is a condition for achieving a comparable function of a text in another context. So intercultural understanding is the success with which the linguistic-cultural transposition has been undertaken.

The link between functional equivalence (basis of translation/interpreting) and intercultural understanding (basis of intercultural communication) is highlighted when we consider the concept of the ‘dilated speech situation’ (Ehlich 1984: 12). According to Ehlich, the main characteristic or functions of ‘texts’ is their role as ‘agents of transmission’ providing a bridge between speaker and hearer who are not at the same place at the same time. It is a text’s role as a sort of ‘messenger’ that makes it possible for the hearer to receive the speaker’s linguistic action despite the divergence of the production and reception situations. Through such a ‘transmission’ carried out by a text, the original speech situation becomes ‘dilated’. Because a speaker knows that her message will be ‘passed on’, she adapts her formulation accordingly, i.e. a speaker makes a ‘text’ out of her linguistic action. Texts are therefore not limited to the written medium, but can also exist in an oral form. The notion of the ‘dilated speech situation’ is highly relevant for oral and written intercultural communication, translation and interpreting. Both translation and interpreting can be characterized by a specific rupture of the original speech situation which is the result of a linguistic barrier between author and reader or between speaker (member of culture 1) and hearer (member of culture 2) which can only be bridged by acts of translation and interpreting. Bührig and Rehbein (2000: 15) hypothesize an ‘internally dilated speech situation’ for the case of interpreting, where the primary communication participants are co-present but unable to communicate without mediating action on the part of the interpreter. It is the interpreter who will have to bridge the linguistically conditioned rupture. The translator/interpreter passes on the linguistic action in L1 (situation 1) to the L2 addressees (situation 2). This procedure is not without consequence for the transmitted linguistic action. While already monolingual texts show signs of being prepared for transmission, this is of course particularly true of translated texts: they undergo a double transmission process.

Besides the importance of the dilation of the speech situation in translation and interpreting, another characteristic of these two mediating modes is that both are essentially reflective activities, much more so than ‘normal’ monolingual communicative actions. Reflection is here aimed at the achievement of functional equivalence. On account of this inherent reflective nature, both translation and interpreting have a potential for intercultural communication and intercultural understanding.

In recent decades a major shift in translation studies has occurred away from text- and linguistically-oriented approaches to socially and culturally oriented ones, a concern with translating as a cultural procedure, touching upon such issues as race, class, gender, minority status, ideology, ethics and giving them a central place in analyses of translational phenomena. The so-called ‘cultural turn in interpreting studies’ is epitomized in statements such as ‘One does not translate languages but cultures’. How did this shift come about? Translation studies, I would suggest, is here simply following a general trend in the humanities and social sciences, whose contents and methodologies (at least in the so-called First World) have over the past decades been substantially influenced by postmodernist, postcolonial, feminist and other socio-politically and philosophically motivated schools. Translation is no exception in this regard (see for example Venuti 1995; von Flotow 1997; Robinson 1997), and translation studies’ history of mimicking fashionable trends, is here, it seems to me, simply replayed.

Another way of taking account of ‘culture’ in translation follows the model set by some linguistic schools, for example the Prague school of linguistics or British Contextualism or Systemic-functional Grammar, schools which conceived of language as primarily a social phenomenon, which is naturally and inextricably intertwined with culture. In these and other socio-linguistically and contextually oriented approaches, language is viewed as embedded in culture such that the meaning of any linguistic item can only, and rather obviously, be properly understood with reference to the cultural context enveloping it. Since in translation ‘meaning’ is of particular importance, it follows that translation cannot be fully understood outside a cultural frame of reference. Adherents of such an integrative view of language and culture (see for example Hatim and Mason 1997; House 1997; E. Steiner 1998), while considering translation to be a particular type of culturally determined practice, also hold that it is, at its core, a predominantly linguistic procedure. They thus differ significantly from a radical cultural studies view in which translation is taken to be predominantly, or even exclusively culture-related.

This is why in this book we will take translation as cross-linguistic and cross-cultural communication – where the two cannot, and should not, be separated.

Translation as a cognitive process

Apart from the social contextual approach to translation, there is another important new trend which looks at translation as a cognitive process. Cognitive aspects of translation and in particular the process of translation in the translator’s mind have been investigated for over thirty years with a recent upsurge of interest in issues relating to translation as a cognitive process (see Göpferich and Jääskeläinen 2009; Shreve and Angelone 2010; O’Brien 2011; Ehrensberger-Dow et al. 2013). This increase in interest about ‘what goes on in translators’ heads’ owes much to the availability of modern technology, to continuously improving instruments and methods for the empirical investigation of particular aspects of a translator’s performance such as keystroke logging, eye-tracking or screen recording as well as various neuro-psychological techniques. As O’Brien (2013: 6) has rightly pointed out, translation process research has heavily ‘borrowed’ from a number of disciplines: linguistics, psychology, cognitive science, neuroscience, reading and writing research and langua...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part I Central concepts
• Part II Translatability, universals, text, context and translation evaluation
• Part III Some new research avenues in translation studies
• Part IV Translation practice in different societal domains
• Bibliography
• Index