1Applying Systemic Functional Linguistics to translation studiesTheoretical and applied considerations (part I)1
Christian M.I.M. Matthiessen, Bo Wang, and Yuanyi Ma
Interviewee: Christian M.I.M. Matthiessen
Interviewers: Bo Wang and Yuanyi Ma
Date: October 20, 2016
Place: The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong
DOI: 10.4324/9781003166610-1
Christian M.I.M. Matthiessen is Distinguished Professor of the School of Foreign Languages, Hunan University. He has degrees in linguistics from Lund University (BA) where he also studied Arabic and philosophy, and from the University of California, Los Angeles (MA, PhD), and has previously held positions at the University of Sydney and Macquarie University in Australia and the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. In this interview, Bo Wang first asks about the significance of applying Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) to translation studies. Then they discuss various topics on SFTS, including the linguistic turn in translation studies, the differences between prescriptive and descriptive studies in translation, and Matthiessen’s (2001, 2014a) own work on translation, relating to the environments of translation and metafunctional translation shift. Finally, Christian Matthiessen suggests some directions for future research.
1.1 Significance of studying translation in the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistics
That is a very general characterization of the kind of theory we want to bring to the linguistic study of translation. SFL is a holistic theory of language in context, and it has certain key features. One is that it is meaning-oriented, which immediately implicates text since text is a unit of meaning functioning in context. Descriptions of particular languages have been text-based from the beginning. Meaning-oriented means paying attention to different kinds of meaning in terms of how they are unified and balanced in text.
Also, importantly, SFL is oriented towards the paradigmatic axis. SFL conceives of language as a resource organized as choices in meaning available to speakers and listeners (or writers and readers). These are the key elements you need in reasoning about translation and understanding translation in terms of the meaning potential of the source language, the meaning potential of the target language, recreating meanings in the course of translation, and recreating meanings in context.
Even if nothing had been done in terms of an SFL perspective on translation, these features of SFL would present it as an interesting candidate with a powerful potential for engaging with translation. But in fact significant parts of this potential have been actualized: there is a long history going back to the 1950s, first on machine translation and then on human translation. Halliday (1956a) worked on the notion of a mechanical thesaurus as an alternative to the traditional conception of a dictionary in the context of the machine translation project he was part of in the 1950s, which was directed by Margaret Masterman. The notion of mechanical thesaurus means thinking of language as a resource organized paradigmatically: not as a list of entries, but rather as a network of alternatives in lexical meaning.
In the 1960s, there were relevant early SFL discussions of translation as a general phenomenon – for example, Halliday (1962), Halliday, McIntosh, & Strevens (1964) and, importantly, Catford (1965); see also Ellis (1966). In the last 25 years, there have been more scholars doing research by using SFL in translator training in different parts of the world and constantly with different language pairs. That has been successful.
Apart from SFL, you can look around for other linguistic theories of language that have the potential to shed light on translation and whether some work has actually been done. In this vein, it is fair to say that the only major theory of language where translation has been taken seriously from the start is SFL. This is important in seeing translation as part of what a linguistic theory has to account for; as far as systemic functional theory is concerned, translation is not an optional extra but rather central to the potential for multilinguality in language and central as a fundamental linguistic process. Your question was: “What insights can be derived from studying translation in the perspective of SFL?” In a way, I’ve answered the question of how SFL can shed light on translation. Now, to return to your question, I would like to reiterate that translation is a linguistic phenomenon, so all linguistic theories should really take translation – and interpreting – as phenomena that they must engage with and account for if they want to be taken seriously as linguistic theories. As a number of linguists have pointed out, including Michael Halliday (e.g. 1974) and Nick Evans (2010), multilingualism can be taken as the unmarked condition of human societies – for most of our history, our ancestors must have been multilingual, so it stands to reason that interpreting would also have been part of the human condition. Consequently, the engagement with multilinguality should really be central to all linguistic theories, not an optional extra or afterthought.
Rounding off this first exchange, I would add in response to your first question, “What insights can be derived from studying translation in the perspective of SFL?” that one absolutely fundamental insight is this: translation can be viewed in relation to other multilingual phenomena, including code switching and code mixing (cf. the increasing attention paid to translanguaging in the last couple of decades), and multilingual studies, including language comparison and contrastive analysis and language typology (cf. Matthiessen, Teruya, & Wu 2008). While for practical purposes scholars find it useful to refer to Systemic Functional Translation Studies, or SFTS, which is understandable, I try to avoid it – certainly as an institutionalized abbreviation – because I think that by now we have actually had enough of dedicated translation studies in the sense of isolating and insulating both the multilingual phenomena and the studies of these phenomena from other closely related areas.
1.2 A linguistic turn in translation studies
Christian Matthiessen: Yes, I think so; and there is arguably an emergent linguistic turn now, perhaps suggesting a helical movement rather than simply turns. Such turns are sometimes, or even often, a matter of attention rather than original contribution in the sense of first mention. For example, I would have pointed to Malinowski as a pioneer in drawing attention to culture (cf. Steiner 2005a, 2015a, 2019) – and so laying the foundation of, or at least anticipating, the cultural turn, but remarkably Bassnett & Lefevere (1990) do not refer to his work or even mention him.3 Firth (1957b: 106) summarizes Malinowski’s approach to the interpretation of Kiriwinan text through translation as follows:
The main features of his textual method can be summarized as follows: having placed the text functionally, from the sociological point of view, let us say, as a particular kind of spell tabulated in his systematic magic, linguistic statements of meaning
are to be made – first, by an interlinear word-for-word translation, sometimes described as a literal
or verbal
translation, each expression and formative affix being rendered by its English equivalent
, secondly a free translation in what might be described as running English
, thirdly by the collation of the interlinear and free translations, leading, fourthly, to the detailed commentary, or the contextual specification of meaning
.
This in a sense takes us from low-ranking grammar to context – the context of situation of a particular text and the context of culture in which it operates.
Both Eugene Nida (e.g. 1964, 2001) and Ian Catford (1965) took steps that could be seen to initiate a linguistic turn in different ways in the 1960s.4 Nida was, of course, particularly active in the context of Bible translation. Catford, more generally, conceived of linguistic translation studies as one aspect of typological linguistics, comparative linguistics and general linguistics, and wrote about that in his monograph in 1965. From the 1960s onwards, other people also did, and conceived of, translation in the linguistic context (e.g. Ellis 1966). Later, there was a reaction against Catford in certain quarters as a linguistics imperialist. But he has a place for context – for example, Catford (1965: 49) writes, “The SL [source language] and TL [target language] items rarely have ‘the same meaning’ in the linguistic sense; but they can function in the same situation. In total translation, SL and TL texts or items are translation equivalents when they are interchangeable in a given situation.”
Looking back on this as an outsider to translation studies institutionalized as a distinct separate discipline, it struck me over the years what extraordinary efforts scholars would go to in order to avoid actually engaging with language in translation studies,5 instead focusing on other aspects of translation like the contexts of culture of translation, to put this in Malinowski’s terms – terms developed in SFL, and translator competence. They are, of course, part of a holistic engagement with translation as a multilingual phenomenon, and I am absolutely not saying they were not useful, but they did not actually engage with the primary phenomenon and the most difficult phenomenon – i.e. language, the multilingual meaning potential, and the multilingual processing. People find all sorts of ways of avoiding engag...
