ITS 07 Lesson 12

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Elena Zagar Galvo - ITS - FLUP2006

Faculdade de Letras da Universidade do PortoLnguas e Literaturas Modernas

INTRODUCTION TO TRANSLATIONSTUDIES

Power Point 8

24 October 2007

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TASK (from Lesson 11)

Search the net to find out more aboutBible translation. What was the original

language in which the Bible was written?Which language was the Bible firsttranslated into ?

Remember to note down the websiteswhere you found your answers.

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To achieve his scientific approachto T, Nida resorts to linguistics:

Semantics (structural semantics)

Pragmatics (language in use)Noam Chomskys generative-transformational grammar

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A NEW CONCEPT OF (BIBLE)TRANSLATING

Old Focus: the form of the message

NEW FOCUS:

The new focus, however, has shifted from the the formof the message to the response of the receptor. (. . .)

Even the old question: Is this a correct translation?must be answered in terms of another question, namely:For whom? Correctness must be determined by the

extent to which the average reader for which atranslation is intended will be likely to understand itcorrectly.

(Nida and Taber 1969: 1)

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Main innovations:

Pragmatic view of meaning: a word acquiresmeaning in a specific communication context

Referential (denotative or dictionary meaning)and connotative (emotive) meaning (emotionalresponse evoked in the reader).

Componential analysis (e.g., anthropology:mapping of kinship terms in different cultures)

Semantic structure analysis

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Noam Chomsky (1928) (MIT)

http://www.chomsky.info/

http://web.mit.edu/linguistics/www/chomsky.home.html

Syntactic Structures, 1957

Language is a system with underlying universalstructures (kernel sentences) which becomevisible through surface structures.

A limited n. of rules creates an infinite n. ofutterances (mathematical model) by means oftransformations.
http://www.chomsky.info/http://web.mit.edu/linguistics/www/chomsky.home.htmlhttp://web.mit.edu/linguistics/www/chomsky.home.htmlhttp://www.chomsky.info/

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Nida and Taber 1969: 39

These restructured expressions are basicallywhat many linguists call kernels; that is to say,they are the basic structural elements out ofwhich the language builds its elaborate surface

structure. In fact, one of the most importantinsights coming from transformationalgrammar is the fact that in all languages thereare half a dozen to a dozen basic structures outof which all the more elaborate formations areconstructed by means of so-called

transformations.

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What interests Nida and Taber, however,

is back-transformation, because if we canreduce surface structures to kernelsentences, then the transfer into the

other language will be easier.

This is one justification for the claim that

the three-stage process of translation ispreferable (. . .) (ibidem, p.40)

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3 stages: (1) analysis, in which the surface structure (i.e., themessage as given in language A) is analyzed in terms of (a) thegrammatical relationships and (b) the meaning of the words andcombinations of the words, (2) transfer, in which the analyzed

material is transferred in the mind of the translator fromlanguage A to language B, and (3) restructuring, in which thetransferred material is restructured in order to make the finalmessage fully acceptable in the receptor language.

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Formal equivalenceFormal equivalence focuses attention on themessage itself, in both form and content

Nida 1964: 159

It is basically source oriented; that is, it isdesigned to reveal as much as possible of theform and content of the original message (165)

e.g., gloss translations (T is close to original interms of structure)

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Dynamic equivalent and theprinciple of equivalent effect

. . . What one must determine is theresponse of the receptor to the translated

message. This response must then becompared with the way in which theoriginal receptors presumably reacted to

the message when it was given in itsoriginal setting. (Nida and Taber 1969: 1)

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Dynamic equivalence is therefore to be definedin terms of the degree to which the receptors of

the message in the receptor language respondto it in substiantially the same manner as thereceptors in the source language. This responsecan never be identical, for the cultural and

historical settings are too different, but thereshould be a high degree of equivalence ofresponse, or the translation will have failed toaccomplish its purpose.

(Nida and Taber 1969: 24)

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Criticisms levelled at Nida

Approach still focuses too much on wordlevel

Reader response is difficult, if notimpossible, to measure (Newmark, House,van den Broeck)

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Newmarks semantic andcommunicative translation

These T methods are set out in twobooks:

Approaches to Translation(1981)

A Textbook of Translation(1988)

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SEMANTIC TRANSLATION

Similar to Nidas formal equivalence;

SL emphasis;

It takes more account of the aestheticvalue of the SL text, compromising onmeaning where appropriate;

It is used for expressive textsNewmark 1988: 46-47

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COMMUNICATIVE TRANSLATION

Communicative translation attempts to render theexact contextual meaning of the original in sucha way that both content and language are

readily acceptable and comprehensible to thereadership.

[It is used] for informative and vocative texts.

[It] tends to be simple, clear and brief, and isalways written in a natural and resourceful style.

Newmark 1988: 47-48

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HOMEWORK (for 31 Oct.)

Jeremy Munday

Chapter 4 (special attention to Vinay and

Darbelnet)

ITS 07 Lesson 12

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