Translation, Linguistics, Culture

A French-English Handbook

Nigel Armstrong

• Publisher: Multilingual Matters
• Year: 2005
• ISBN:
  9781847695529
• Topic: Lingue e linguistica
• Subtopic: Traduzione e interpretariato

This book takes a linguistic approach to translation issues, looking first at the structural view of language that explains the difficulty of translation and at theories of cultural non-equivalence. A subsequent chapter on text types, readership and the translator's role completes the theoretical framework. The linguistic levels of analysis are then discussed in ascending order, from morpheme up to sentence, while a summarising chapter considers various translation types and strategies, again considered in relation to text type, author and reader.

Chapter 1

The Linguistic Bases of Translation

Prpose of this Book

This book is intended both for students of French who need to do translation as a part of their degree course, whether undergraduate or postgraduate, and for students of translation who are interested in the problems posed by the rendering of French into English. The purpose of the book is to make the reader aware of some of the procedures that translators use. The rationale of the book is that an increased awareness of these operations will help to improve translation skills; clearly, this is a practical aim.

At the same time, this book aims to discuss theories of language as they impinge upon translation, and it seems worth stating at the outset why such theories are necessary. Is it not sufficient, one might wonder, to state quite simply that, leaving aside intangibles such as talent, a good translator needs minimally to have very good knowledge of the two languages of interest? In the present case, this will include educated native-speaker competence in English, and knowledge of French that derives in most cases from a study of French literature and other media, and a year spent in a francophone country. This is a likely case, as professional translation is done customarily into the translator's mother tongue, and often by graduates of French. Since language is in large part a cultural practice, very good knowledge of the two languages in question implies also a high degree of general knowledge, or acquaintance with the two cultures; including knowledge of how to find this knowledge. There is a further element of subtlety here, as good general knowledge will include a recognition of where one's general knowledge ends, and hence when a reference tool is required.

These remarks concerning general knowledge apply crucially also to linguistic knowledge, since linguistic problems, being ‘structural’ and hence built into a text, may be less visible, and capable therefore of inducing a lack of awareness in the translator that a problem is being posed. What do we mean when we say a linguistic problem is structural? Language is hard to think about, partly because, in order to do so, we are using the very system we are thinking about. We examine in further detail below what we mean by saying that a language has a structure, but when we look at a stretch of language, our response is so intuitive – language is ‘hard-wired’, we are born with a genetic language endowment that seems simply to grow, as our limbs do – that we can find it hard to see the formal structure of that piece of language. This is reflected in a widespread impatience with linguistic enquiry: ‘language is for talking about something, not something to be talked about’. From this perspective language is primarily a tool for communication rather than an object of study in its own right. This attitude is a grave shortcoming in any serious student of language, or of any subject closely connected with it, like translation. It has been suggested that the goal of linguistics is ‘to present in a precise, explicit and rigorous form facts about language which those who speak it as a native-speaker know intuitively’ (Lodge et al., 1997: 2). This goes back to what was said in the first paragraph above about our intention to raise consciousness. Awareness of some of the operations that translators use means explicit knowledge about linguistics, among other things.

This last qualification is important: we do not wish to imply that knowledge of linguistics can improve every aspect of the translator's competence. Leaving aside the obvious fact that general and specialised knowledge are of great importance too, one way of expressing this reservation is to say that translation is as much an art as a science, and that while linguistics, to the extent that it is a science, can provide a rigorous and explicit way of looking at certain translation problems, there are in practice problems beyond the scope of the discipline. This is not necessarily to say that no translation problem is unconnected in principle with linguistics; rather, we would have to be capable of including in a theory of linguistics much more than we can at present, to the extent in fact of having a ‘theory of everything’. The resources of linguistics are limited, so that we are not in a position to test in a rigorous way statements about certain differences between French and English. For example, it is often stated that French is a more ‘nominal’ language than English; that is, French has a tendency to use nouns where English uses other parts of speech. In principle, one could test this impression; in practice, the collection and analysis of enough corpora in the two languages would be a formidable task indeed. So as long as the resources available for systematising every translation problem are lacking, we are obliged to say things like ‘English seems to prefer this way of expressing it’. This is a problem of practice, not of principle. At the same time it is a relatively simple problem. Others, such as the analysis of stylistic differences between the two languages, shade into aesthetics and hence are beyond the scope of rigorous theory.

What is required therefore, to the extent that it is possible, is a systematisation of the translator's art; a body of knowledge about translation procedures that might result from a debriefing session aiming to ask an expert to explain the issues that need to be borne in mind when rendering a text into English from French. As the title of this book states, the focus here is upon the cultural and linguistic issues that arise. This may seem obvious; how can a book about translation ignore such issues? The question should seem uncontroversial. Clearly, language is central both to thought and to cultural identity, and the serious student of French, and of French translation, will seek a deeper understanding of how the language works. The double sense of the term ‘linguist’ is pertinent here: a student of French is clearly a linguist in the polyglot sense of knowing more than one language. At the same time, students of French at any advanced level need also to be linguists in the linguistician sense – the sense of being intensely interested in, and aware of, the structure of the language, and of how it works as a means of cultural expression. The systematic or linguistic approach to the study of language offers therefore a means of understanding, beyond the superficial level, how French people think about themselves and their culture; and what distinguishes French from other languages. As was suggested above, non-linguists are in general uninterested in the form of language, being content so long as the content is received loud and clear. Let us emphasise one last time that the microscopic approach to language adopted by the linguistician is necessary for adequate translation.

We can see from this brief discussion of what is required in a good translator, that a simple definition like ‘very good knowledge of the two languages of interest’ brings us very quickly to the question of what we mean by knowledge, what kind of knowledge, as well as to the question of what we can call ‘meta-knowledge’, or knowledge about knowledge. While a fully bilingual translator having a very good knowledge of the two cultures may arrive at translation solutions without formal instruction, less privileged individuals seem to require a theoretical training that depends on making explicit two crucial (and related) aspects of the two languages. These are the purely linguistic structures of the languages of interest, and the cultural aspects: by these latter is meant the twofold fact that languages both express a set of cultural practices that can differ quite considerably, and at the same time are conditioned by those practices, often in subtle ways that go beyond lexical items whose culturespecificity is fairly easily apparent.

This book will look therefore at aspects of French both as a linguistic system and as an expression of cultural behaviour. We will proceed largely by looking at examples, mostly from French, although we will consider English examples occasionally where this seems suitable to the issue in question. We may appear to be labouring the point about linguistics, but someone who pursues an advanced-level interest in French unaccompanied by an interest in the linguistics of French is like a student of music who reads no musical theory. An analogy that is sometimes drawn is between language and linguistics on the one hand, and music and musicology on the other. Advanced competence as a linguist (as polyglot) or a musician seems difficult without knowledge of the associated theory. As an example, consider the following passage from Le Monde (16 October 2000) about the French adoption of Human Rights legislation as it concerns the right of appeal in the higher courts:

(1) Au couperet des verdicts succèdera, pour celui que la justice reconnaít criminel, un temps inédit : la possibilité, si le jugement ou la peine ne lui conviennent pas, de faire appel et d’être rejugé.

As Newmark (1988: 39) suggests: ‘any translation is an exercise in applied linguistics’. The phrase ‘applied linguistics’ has several senses, the commonest being its use in language-learning theory and practice, but we can paraphrase it in this context as ‘the application of knowledge of linguistics to aid translation’. Among the fundamental concepts of linguistics is that of the ‘level of linguistic analysis’, or simply ‘linguistic level’. Three are normally distinguished: phonology (the sound level); grammar, comprising morphology (word formation) and syntax (sentence formation); and lexis (vocabulary). This threefold division makes sense a lot of the time, as we can often analyse the sounds of a language without reference to its grammar, and so forth. In other words, these three levels can be thought of as independent of one another and useful for clear analysis. If we examine the sentence quoted above, we quickly see that the levels of grammar and lexis provide useful frameworks for thinking about the problems the passage poses for a translator. The sound level can be relevant when dialogue is being translated, but is a fairly marginal issue in written translation. In the following chapter we will however examine this level from the viewpoint of how certain sounds communicate culture-specific information.

If we attempt a word-for-word translation of the first part of passage (1), problems of grammar and lexis surface very quickly:

(2) ‘To the guillotine-blade [chopper, cleaver, etc.] of [the] verdicts will succeed, for he whom justice recognises [as] criminal …’

It seems useful to be able to use a set of linguistic terms to articulate the translation problems here. Why does the very first word au potentially give trouble? Perhaps because it is a frequent word, and its less usual function is capable of being overlooked in the present context. At first sight the translator may analyse au couperet as ‘at the guillotine-blade’, without seeing that au depends on the following verb. This problem is present in turn because the sentence structure is inside out, or ‘inverted’ in the terminology, which goes against the English tendency. A smooth English version will put in very first position the clause which in the French original is placed second, pour celui que la justice reconnaît criminel, followed by the subject of the sentence, un temps inédit, with as a result something like:

(3) For those found guilty, an unprecedented era will follow these [brutal and] irreversible decisions: the possibility of appeal and retrial if they do not accept the judgment or sentence.

A further linguistic operation worth pointing out is that performed on couperet. Literally ‘chopper’, ‘cleaver’, ‘guillotine-blade’, these terms seem unsuitable in English for several reasons. Evocation of the guillotine especially produces ‘static’ or interference, in the form of unwanted resonance or ‘connotational meaning’ to do with UK parliamentary procedure or the French Revolution. The other terms are similarly rich in needless connotation: that is, the peripheral meaning that overlays the central ‘denotation’ or reference the word makes to a concept from the stock shared by the linguistic community. We discuss connotation and denotation in more detail in a later chapter. The operation performed here is one of abstraction: identification is made of the non-concrete qualities referred to by the blade metaphor, and these replace the concrete French word.

Other aspects of this brief stretch of language are equally worthy of comment: for example, the sense of inédit, which here, in collocation with temps, needs to be translated as ‘new’ or ‘unprecedented’. But the general point of this discussion is to emphasise the advantages conferred by an explicitly linguistics-based approach to translation. We are concerned here with a consciousness-raising process, to do with the minutiae of language at every level. So for instance, in the text discussed above the translator needs to be aware of a piece of terminology like ‘prepositional phrase’, the term that describes au couperet, as well as of the level upon which this linguistic item is situated, and the consequent fact that certain verbs construe with, or have to be accompanied by, certain prepositions. Other concepts required to deal adequately with this stretch of language are inversion (which in turn implies the notion of the subject + verb sentence structure); metaphor; collocation; and connotation. As Newmark (1988: 8) states: ‘[a translator] is consciously or intuitively following a theory of translation, just as any teacher of grammar teaches a theory of linguistics’.

We can expand further on this by saying that a theory of translation is most obviously a linguistic theory. We will discuss the fundamentals of the theory in this and the next chapter, before considering individually the linguistic levels referred to above. A further point is that the degree of consciousness or intuitiveness employed by the translator will probably be connected with the stage of competence reached. It is common knowledge that beginners in any highly skilled procedure proceed slowly and hesitantly at first, because they are still at the stage of consciously applying the body of knowledge they have acquired, before that knowledge has been fully internalised at an intuitive level. What is slightly paradoxical is that translators often appear not to receive a body of knowledge as such, at least compared to practitioners of professions requiring a similar level of skill. As stated above, the minimum knowledge required by a competent translator is very good knowledge of two languages and their associated cultures. We have argued above that this knowledge implies a further layer to make it explicit, namely linguistic theory.

Finally in this introductory section, we need to consider the point that the use of the term linguistic theory may imply something contentious; after all, we only theorise on matters about which we are not certain. But in this book, we present linguistic theory very largely as description, so far as that is possible in relation to a subject like language, which is not amenable to direct observation. By this is meant that we can only look at individual examples of language, each of which can differ considerably from speaker to speaker, so much so that it is possible to ask whether ‘the English language’ exists independently of the sum of the Englishes spoken by its speakers. If it does, it is clearly rather an abstract entity. Nevertheless we present here foundational theories of language that have stood the test of time and are generally accepted in the community of linguists.

Saussure's Theory of Language

If we accept that an adequate understanding of the underlying issues surrounding translation requires an acquaintance with linguistics, any discussion of the fundamentals of the present-day discipline will be widely agreed to have to start with Ferdinand de Saussure (1857–1913). Saussure, a Swiss linguist, was responsible for clarifying many previously muddy ideas about the nature of language. Culler (1976: 7) refers to him as ‘the father of modern linguistics, the man who re-organized the systematic study of language and languages in such a way as to make possible the achievements of twentieth-century linguistics’. Among Saussure's crucial insights is the notion of language as structure. Indeed, Saussure's theory of language is often referred to as ‘structural linguistics’. When we speak of the structure of anything, we refer to the relation of its parts to each other, and to the whole; which elements are more closely associated with each other than others; how they are disposed in a hierarchy; and so on. One of Saussure's most striking statements is that language is structure, and that form is unimportant, or at least secondary. What follows from this is that language achieves meaning through a system of oppositions.

To illustrate this, one of the famous analogies that Saussure used in order to explain the structural view of language was with the pieces used in chess. Although chess pieces have conventional shapes, we recognise each piece, both in itself but also by virtue of its differences from the others, and a chess set could be (and no doubt has been) assembled from bottle-tops, pebbles, etc. for lack of a conventional set. In this latter case, what is important is (1) that the players should recognise and agree on the value of the unconventional pieces; and (2) that these pieces should be differentiated one from the other. This is what is meant by the achievement of meaning through a system of oppositions. As Saussure expresses the matter: ‘leur plus exacte caractéristique [des termes] est d’être ce que les autres ne sont pas’ (1973: 162); or even more starkly (and famously): ‘dans la langue il n’y a que des différences’ (1973: 166). Thus, it so happens that we produce language by issuing pulses of air from our lungs, and by modifying these pulses through the movements of our vocal organs. This process results in a series of pops, clicks, hisses and notes, or ‘consonants’ and ‘vowels’ to use the commonly accepted terms, and we combine these in groups we know our hearer will convert back into meaning. The secondary language system deriving from this relies (typically) on black shapes imposed on a white ground of some sort; that is, writing. We take these systems for granted so much that we cease to see them as conventional, but other systems relying on the rapping of our knuckles on a hard surface, air entering the lungs rather than issuing from them, the production of puffs of smoke, and so forth, are quite conceivable, and indeed some have been devised.

The important point here t...