Specialised Translation

Shedding the 'Non-Literary' Tag

M. Rogers

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781349502295, 9781137478405
• eBook ISBN: 9781137478412
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Teaching Languages
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This book shifts the common perception of specialised or 'LSP' translation as necessarily banal and straightforward towards a more realistic understanding of it as a complex and multilayered phenomenon which belies its standard negative binary definition as 'non-literary'.

1

Introduction

1.1 Communication and translation

The world of the late 20th and early 21st centuries has been characterised as a global society driven by information and knowledge. In this world, it is no longer ‘raw materials, land, labour and machinery’ which are major assets, it is ‘know-how, creativity, ingenuity and imagination’ (Leadbeater 1999).¹ One of the main channels for communicating know-how is text, whether it is of a formal kind and explicitly set out as written reports, text books, professional and learned journals or lectures, or of a less formal and more implicit kind, such as letters, emails, other personal communications and conversations including social media, blogs, notes and so on. There are clear historical precedents for the importance of text in the context of science and translation in the form of what Montgomery describes as an ‘aggressive trade in books and ideas – the buying and selling of textual matter, whether in piecemeal, altered, or counterfeit fashion’ which has ‘long been involved in the creating of knowledge systems and the saving of lives, well before the present-day notion of a “knowledge-based society”’ (2000: 13).

Translators are an essential part of the co-operative and innovative professional world, which has replaced the industrial world of the 19^th and 20^th centuries. As Pinchuk observed nearly 40 years ago: ‘Scientific and technical translation is part of the process of disseminating information on an international scale, which is indispensable for the functioning of our modern society’ (1977: 13), echoing Tytler’s much earlier observation that ‘good translations’ open up to us ‘all the stores of ancient knowledge’ and create ‘a free intercourse of science and of literature between all modern nations’ (1978/1813: 3–4). It is of some note here that Tytler ranks science and literature together in this statement.

In our modern society, texts and people circulate in an increasingly multilingual and multicultural environment – sometimes real, sometimes virtual – which offers many new opportunities for communication but is also subject to legal, social, cultural and economic pressures and constraints. These pressures and constraints may be legally binding, as in the case of European Union product liability laws, democratic and sometimes safety-critical as in the case of public-service translation, or commercially-driven as in the case of company marketing practices. As Leadbeater notes: ‘The best companies are able to combine different – and often competing – kinds of knowledge, people and cultures. They must be multi-lingual’ (1999: 51).² A growing academic interest in translation in increasingly specialised areas such as Economics, Business, Finance and institutions, including the role of translators and interpreters in emergency and conflict situations, reflects these trends.³

In this ‘multilingual, multifaceted world’, translation is, according to Bassnett, ‘at the heart of global communication [...] and has played a central role in the transmission of ideas and literatures over the centuries’, with ‘great changes in international communication’ taking place in the contemporary world, especially in news gathering and websites, leading to an ‘increasing demand for translation’ (2014: 3, 15, 12). Bassnett is careful to link ‘literatures’ with ‘ideas’, reflecting Tytler’s more specific concern with both literature and science.

It is against this background that the current volume aims to recast the concept of ‘non-literary’ translation in a more positive way – befitting the importance of its communicative role in our modern world as well as its complexity – as ‘specialised’ translation. The term is not a new one but the arguments in favour of this designation are rarely articulated. In this enterprise, specialised translation will not be presented in opposition to literary translation but rather alongside it, reflecting the wordings chosen by Tytler and by Bassnett, even though centuries apart. The approach taken to this task in the current volume is focused on terminology as a key feature of specialised languages, or Languages for Special Purposes (LSPs).

1.2 Why terminology?

In the following chapter, I will make the point that terminological knowledge is a necessary but insufficient condition for specialised translators to do their job. Nevertheless, in order to address what could broadly be called the profile of specialised translation, I have chosen to focus on terminology. I have therefore left myself the job of justifying my chosen focus.

The early narrow scoping of LSP studies as terminological studies is clearly due to the salience of lexical change for the analyst. Authors of texts are also likely to be aware of lexical changes, which are said to happen in what Gotti calls an ‘explicit’ way when compared to modifications in syntax, of which writers are ‘usually unaware’ (2003: 166). We might conclude here that the specialist vocabulary of a domain therefore gives us some insight into reflected decisions relating to LSP communication, whether taken by original authors of texts or by translators. This is one way in which agency can be studied.

A significant characteristic of the texts in many LSP genres has been noted by many authors to be their lexical density: nominalisation (see Chapter 3 for more details) has been identified as a key feature of English scientific writing, for example, from as early as the 17th century when ‘the verb merely link[ed] the very long nominal phrases coming before and after it’ and a ‘general tendency’ was noted ‘towards a loss of importance of the verb, compensated by a growth of importance of the noun’ (Gotti 2003: 167). These noun phrases carry a heavy referential load and are therefore key to successful LSP communication. As these phrases are often terms in themselves, by studying them we can gain some insight into a key feature of LSP communication, both textually and referentially.

Technical authors and translators make common use of codified reference sources. But these sources do not cover all aspects of LSPs: we would be hard pressed, for example, to find a reference book of LSP grammar (whatever that might be) or grammars, as the principal syntactic differences from Language for General Purposes (LGP) lie not in the inventory of available structures but in their textual distribution (see Jakobsen 1994a: 10). It is, of course, the case that LSP scholars have charted and analysed semantic, syntactic, morphological and pragmatic aspects of LSP discourses, as well as lexical aspects, but these are not works of codification for the purposes of reference and re-use. What has been codified in LSP communication is terminology. Since the very early days of LSP studies, termbanks, and later termbases, have, for instance, been an important concern (Rogers 2006a). So the ways in which terminological knowledge and use are documented for future use are of interest for the insights we may gain, not only about the ways in which terminological resources are structured, but also about the relationship between the use of terms in text and their formal codification. This applies to the medium of paper, and since the 1970s, also to various digital formats, which can lead to qualitative changes. Questions therefore arise relating not only to the technological aspects of representation but also to philosophical issues surrounding the structuring of knowledge through logic and ontology.

Given the key role which terms play in the communication of specialist content, as well as the salience which the ‘reflected’ development and use of lexical items have for analytical purposes, it is no surprise that terminological issues form a significant part of historical analyses of translation, and of specialist writing in general. In fact, what we now call specialised translation, especially in relation to early science, receives as much attention as literary translation in many historically based studies. Specialised translation has a long and distinguished history which is often accessed through one of its key elements: its terminology.

It might be assumed that the scope of any study of ‘non-literary’ translation on the basis of terminology is highly constrained, being limited to two aspects: (a) in areas of discovery and invention, morphological issues of (primary) term formation and of (secondary) term formation in a relatively culture-free zone; and (b) in more established areas, lexical semantic issues of equivalence. But as we shall see in the following chapters, LSP discourse (and hence its lexical content), and translation in particular where two cultures meet, is certainly not free from cultural issues of many kinds. These include the conceptualisation of different subject fields to the use of metaphor in some genres, as well as pragmatic issues such as rhetorical purpose. These issues all further extend the range of analytical perspectives. The analysis of terms therefore encompasses a wide and informative field of study.

A last point, which in terms of analysis is a trivial one, is the scope of a volume of the present kind. A focus is necessary and in my view, terminology provides a rich and multifaceted way of approaching the chosen topic of establishing so-called ‘non-literary translation’ as a significant part of Translation Studies, even an essential part.

1.3 A first stab at the literary versus ‘non-literary’ distinction

The complexity and importance of many types of specialised translation are clearly reflected in the research investment made by bodies such as the European Commission, which recognises how specialised translation and interpreting in the legal field,⁴ for instance, is central to human and civil rights and the administration of justice, as indicated in the 2010 Directive on the right to translation and interpreting in criminal proceedings.⁵ Another European Directive in the following year addresses patients’ rights in cross-border healthcare, bearing in mind the challenges posed by multilingual communication in the medical field.⁶ This is stuff which affects people’s lives. But an image persists of technical and other types of specialised translation as being the ‘dogsbody’ tasks of the profession (Franco Aixelá 2004): it’s just a question of mugging up on a few terms, which in themselves present few, if any, translation problems because a ‘widget’ is a ‘widget’ is a ‘widget’. Not only do these assumptions over-simplify many problems of terminological equivalence, they also ignore other features of LSP texts beyond the lexical and the ‘technical’. Similar views about a claimed lack of complexity in scientific translation have been noted by Olohan, who points out that ‘universalist and positivist perspectives on science’ have led to assumptions that ‘the translation of science will lack the richness of features that fascinate in literary texts and will provide little scope for translators to make decisions, exercise agency, etc.’ (2013: 428) (see also Salama-Carr 2009: 47).

The popular assumption that translators of science exercise little, if any, agency and act rather as ‘mere conduits for the smooth transmission of authoritative knowledge’ is cited by the sociologist, Steve Fuller,⁷ as the reason why the role of translators in the distribution of knowledge is underestimated (Fuller 1998: 54). Summing this up, Fuller makes the point, as more recent work in translation theory such as that of Salama-Carr and Olohan has highlighted, that ‘scientific knowledge is not simply reproduced as it gets distributed across a variety of settings, but rather it is produced anew to suit the needs of new users’ (ibid.). This seems like another way of characterising translation as ‘rewriting’ after Lefevere on literary translation (see Chapter 3). Elsewhere a similar point is made by Jakobsen in the context of specialised translation, namely that cognitively ‘[t]ranslation is as complicated and multifaceted as text production’ (1994b: 48). Fuller acknowledges that translators understand that ‘all translations involve tradeoffs’, depending on spatio-temporal context, but points out that this insight is not shared by philosophers and scientists, who assume that there is ‘a spatiotemporally invariant “content” that is transmitted across contexts’ (1998: 55), a view not entirely unfamiliar in the field of translation itself when the challenges of the translation of science are compared less than favourably with those associated with the translation of literature.

Nevertheless, there are, of course, differences in the challenges posed by literary and non-literary translation. Most specialised translations are deliberately made to function as if they originated in the target culture and language. Even with a content-focused informative orientation rather than a more explicitly reader-oriented focus, adjustments are made to accommodate the target audience’s expectations of target-language genre conventions. Yet despite the domesticating approach, which aims to mask the provenance of the published text as a translation, in many cases it is often immediately evident that an LSP text is a translation, as many genres, including notably product documentation of various kinds, legally require multilingual versions, often appearing in close physical proximity.

While it is becoming increasingly common for the translator to be acknowledged in the paratext of literary publications, regardless of the translation approach and resulting degree of ‘visibility’ in the text, in specialised translation invisibility in the text itself (assuming a well-targeted translation) is usually accompanied by anonymity (En traduction spécialisée [...] l’invisibilité est la norme⁸ [Scarpa 2010: 123]). LSP texts are also often written by authorial teams, or edited to produce an updated version by someone other than the original author/s. The resulting voice is therefore not an individual one. Exceptions to the anonymity norm might include academic writing or company/organisational reports by a named author or authors, although the conventions of the genre usually trump personal style.

In terms of style, literary translators attest to ‘multiple rereadings and rewritings’ (Peter Bush⁹ as cited in Bassnett 2014: 105) in arriving at a final version of their translation: the source text is seen as highly interpretable and is made dynamic through repeated and different translations in so far as ‘texts move as contexts change’ (2014: 108). Consequently, multiple versions produced at different times and by different translators in the same target language may be in circulation for the same source text all at one time, with opinion varying on the quality of each translation according to many factors, including the time and the place in which it is produced and received. The situation with many LSP texts is different in so far as multiple translated versions of the source text are unlikely to be in circulation, given satisfactory version control. Their locus of publication, for example, on packaging, in product inserts, or in software user interfaces, also precludes the co-existence of multiple versions: as products and services are updated, so too is the accompanying or embedded documentation in line with product cycles or legal changes. LSP texts are also unlikely to be retranslated unless demonstrably error-prone, as their value may be ephemeral and linked to a particular financial, legal, commercial, or manufacturing situation. This marks out a further difference from literary translation, although we cannot necessarily draw the conclusion that ephemerality means a lack of complexity for the translator. Space constraints, for example, pose significant challenges for the translati...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Tables
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Specialised Translation: An Orientation
• 3 Borders and Borderlands
• 4 Terminology and Specialised Translation: A Historical Perspective
• 5 Terminology and Text: Closing the Gaps
• 6 Concluding Remarks
• Notes
• References
• Index