International Journal of Educational Investigations

Available online @ www.ijeionline.com

2015 (December), Vol.2, No.12: 73-84

ISSN: 2410-3446

The Role of Source Text Comprehensibility and its Impact on

Translatability

Zahra Anvari1*

and Gholam Abbas Zavari1

1. Department of Foreign Languages, Isfahan (Khorasgan) Branch, Islamic Azad University,

Isfahan, Iran.

* Corresponding Author‟s Email: zr.anvari@yahoo.com

Abstract – It is common consensus that translation involves two different languages and

cultures and a good translation is supposed to transmit all the information contained in the

original. Controversy over the problem of translatability or untranslatability stems from

the vagueness of meaning and lack of consensus over understanding the nature of

language and translation. The current research aimed to investigate the relationship

between comprehensibility and translatability. To this end, 38 senior students of

translation studies were asked to read four paper-based TOEFL reading passages and

answer the inference questions. Of 38 students, 20 answered the inference questions

correctly and others were omitted. Then, the students translated the passages based on the

subjects they were interested in. Finally, the translations were evaluated based on the

Newmark's communicative translation model (1981). The collected data were analyzed by

means of nonparametric test of Spearman correlation coefficient. The results of the study

revealed that there was positive but weak correlation between comprehensibility and

translatability which was not significant statistically. According to the findings of this

study, there was no relationship between higher comprehensibility and higher

translatability and also there was no relationship between lower comprehensibility and

lower translatability. In addition, most of the translations done by students were

communicative according to the definition of communicative translation by Newmark

(1981).

Keywords: translatability, comprehensibility, communicative translation, paper-based

TOEFL reading passages

1. INTRODUCTION

The problem of translatability or untranslatability is closely related to man‟s

understanding of the nature of language, meaning and translation. Throughout the history of

translation, the question “Is translation possible or impossible?” has been repeatedly asked

and debated by philosophers, linguists as well as translators and translation theorists. Some

scholars and artists believe that virtually everything is translatable. Some of the most

prominent twentieth-century linguists including Jakobson, Bausch, Hauge, Nida and Ivir

accept the view that, in principle, everything can be expressed in any language. Those who

support this view argue that the translatability of a text is guaranteed by the existence of

universal syntactic and semantic categories and endorsed by the logic of experience.

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Translation is a field fraught with paradoxes. Translatability and untranslatability is one

such category. The paradox roots in the inevitable contradictions and difficulties arising in

the process of translating and is due to the differences between the national language and

culture. People have grown less rigid in stressing the possibility or impossibility of translation

and have shown a more sensible and practical attitude, because they understand and

constantly study language and translation. On the one hand, language should be translatable.

Language is the carrier of culture as well as the tool for expressing ideas. Cultures and ideas

can be understood and exchanged. On the other hand, language is sometimes not completely

translatable owing to the regional differences in cultural tradition and thinking model. We

cannot deny the existence of untranslatable elements in affirming that language is

translatable, and we cannot take a passive attitude to the elements which are difficult to

translate when admitting the limit of translatability. We should realize that both translatability

and untranslatability are relative.

Despite the fact that there are a lot of similarities among languages, nobody can

ignore the role of main and significant differences across languages. Hence, there are always

some parts or elements that exist in one language which cannot be seen in other languages.

As a matter of fact, all differences across languages can be covered by some kinds of

equivalents; however, there are many situations in which there is no one-to-one

correspondence between languages. This phenomenon shall be referred to as

untranslatability. This term has reference to one condition in one language that does not exist

in another language. It is studied sometimes under the topic of lacuna theory. To illustrate,

there are some words, idioms, etc. that exist in one language but have no equivalent in

another language.

Now it is apparently agreed that absolute untranslatability, whether linguistic or

cultural, does not exist. Mainly because of ideological reasons, the notion of untranslatability

has been unpopular in the twentieth century. The debate on translatability versus

untranslatability loses part of its validity as the concept of translation was expanded in the

twentieth century, since the various strategies that can be used by translators when confronted

with a gap between two languages or two cultures are acknowledged as sound translation

mechanisms. At the same time, it is assumed that the perfect translation, i.e. one which does

not entail any losses from the original is unattainable, especially when dealing with literary

translation. A practical approach to translation must accept that, since not everything that

appears in the source text can be reproduced in the target text, an evaluation of potential

losses has to be carried out. To quote Senn‟s words, “That nothing is negligible [...] is not a

principle that could possibly survive in translation. Priorities must be set.” (Snell-Hornby

&Pöhl, 1989: 79).

It is noteworthy that while untranslatability has traditionally been equated with

translational loss or failure, it can be a powerful source of creativity in a given literary,

political and socio-cultural context when combined with an ethics of translation that refuses

the “replication paradigm” (Folkart, 1993) based on the idea of faithfulness, loyalty, accuracy

and equivalence. The fact that faithfulness or accuracy presupposes the superiority of the

source-text, whereas equivalence implies a relation –albeit idealistic – of identity, equality,

congruence or parity between source-text and target-text (Van den Broeck, 1978), is

irrelevant insofar as the result is the same, namely a mimetic approach to the foreign work

that inhibits or curbs creative input on the part of the translator.

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Comprehensibility has a close relationship with translatability. It refers to the fact that

the intention of the original writer should be transferred from one language to another. In

order for the translator to be able to transfer the author's intention when translating a piece of

text, the translator must be able to grasp that intention.

It can be stated that text comprehensibility depends on many factors such as the text

perspective, the abstraction, the context, the complexity, and the redundancy.

Comprehensibility of a translation based on the definition provided by T.C. Halliday, refers

to 'the ease with which a translation can be understood, its clarity to the reader‟ (quoted in

Van Slype, 1979: 62).

Total translatability and total untranslatability are best regarded as limiting concepts.

Full translatability, in the sense of an integral reproduction of a text's full signification, may

be possible only in the case of artificial formal languages. Linguistically speaking, the

different approaches to the question of translatability derive from fundamentally opposing

views of the nature of language and meaning. Steiner (1975: 73) has characterized them as

universalist versus monadist views. The former affirm the possibility of translation, the latter

either deny it or regard translation as highly problematical.

Translatability means the extent to which, despite obvious differences in linguistic

structure (grammar, vocabulary, etc.), meaning can still be adequately expressed across

languages. On the other hand, untranslatability has been approved by almost all translators

and translation scholars. Unfortunately, in the previous centuries, the notion of

untranslatability was very unpopular. It was in the second half of the previous century that

untranslatability was accepted officially and took form. Nowadays, this topic is very

intelligible and comprehensible. It contains the potential for many pieces of research. As a

matter of fact, untranslatability is the reason of many differences among languages. It is a

property of a text or of any utterance in one language, for which no equivalent text or

utterance can be found in another language when translated.

Susan Bassnett identifies two types of untranslatability; they are linguistic and

cultural: „Linguistic untranslatability […] is due to differences in the SL [source language]

and the TL [target language], whereas cultural untranslatability is due to the absence in the

TL culture of a relevant situational feature for the SL text‟ (Bassnett, 1991: 32).

Newmark defines the act of translating as transferring the meaning of a text, from one

language to another, taking care mainly of the functional relevant meaning. He considers two

types of translation: semantic and communicative, although he states that the majority of texts

require communicative rather than semantic translation. Communicative translation is strictly

functional and usually the work of a team. Semantic translation is linguistic and encyclopedic

and is generally the work of one translator.

This research is targeted to investigate the relationship between comprehensibility and

translatability. For this purpose, the researcher used Newmark's (1981) communicative

translation as a proposed type of equivalence to evaluate higher and lower translatability. The

focus of this investigation will be on paper-based TOEFL reading passages.

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2. METHODOLOGY

2.1. Participants

The participants in this study consisted of 38 (N = 38) B.A English translation

students who were studying at the Islamic Azad University, Khorasgan branch in the

academic year 2013-2014. Their participation was voluntary. Both genders were asked to

read the reading comprehension passages and answer the inference questions. In the second

phase, they were asked to translate the texts (8 males, 30 females). The mean age of

participants was 25, the oldest was 34 and the youngest was 22.

2.2. Materials

The material for the present study included paper-based TOEFL reading passages.

Four reading comprehension passages followed by inference questions were selected

randomly. They were written on separate sheets and distributed among the students to read

and answer the questions. The students were asked to write down the time when they began

to read each reading comprehension passage and the time when they finished it. Then, the

prepared questionnaires containing two questions were distributed among the participants to

mark the subjects in which they were interested and had studied in that field previously. After

reviewing the questionnaires, the reading passages were given to the students based on the

subjects they were interested in and they were asked to translate the texts carefully. Again the

students were asked to write down the time when they began to translate the text and the time

when they finished it. Afterwards, these translations were graded in terms of communicative

translation as a type of equivalence proposed by Newmark (1981).

2.3. Procedures

Correlational research method was employed to analyze the data in the present study.

Correlational studies are used to show the relationship between two variables. Having

collected the sheets of reading comprehension passages and recorded the length of time for

responding to inference questions, the researcher checked the answers and omitted the

irrelevant ones (if there was any), because the basis for analysis was accurate responses. The

researcher calculated the time spent reading each passage and answering to questions by

every student. The time spent by each student to render the texts was recorded. Then, the

researcher read the translations and calculated the amount of time spent rendering the texts.

The theoretical framework of this study was based on the Newmark's communicative

translation model (1981). Three raters with Ph.D. degree in English translation and

translation studies participated in this study. The translations done by the participants were

distributed among the raters. They expressed their own personal ideas on each translation by

scoring them out of 20.

3. RESULTS

In order to test the relationship between comprehensibility and translatability,

Spearman correlation coefficient was employed. As the below table shows, descriptive

statistics of the two variables, i.e. comprehensibility and translatability including the sample

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size, mean, standard deviation, median and maximum and minimum scores for each student

are presented.

Table 1. Descriptive statistics of comprehensibility and translatability of reading passage 1

Simple Statistics

Variable N Mean StdDev Median Minimum Maximum

Comprehensibility1 20 7.60000 3.45497 6.50000 4.00000 19.00000

Translatability1 20 33.30000 7.37778 31.50000 18.00000 52.00000

Table 2. Correlation coefficient between comprehensibility and translatability of reading passage 1

Spearman Correlation Coefficients, N = 20

Prob> |r| under H0: Rho=0

comp1 Trans1

Comprehensibility 1 1.00000

0.16079

0.4983

Translatability 1 0.16079

0.4983

1.00000

Correlation coefficient between comprehensibility and translatability as well as their

significance level are shown in the above table. As it is observed, thecorrelation coefficient

between comprehensibility and translatability is equal to 0.16 at the significance level 0.49.

Therefore, correlation coefficient between the two variables is positive but is not significantly

statistically difference from zero, because p-value is equal to 0.49 and greater than 0.05.

Given that there is a positive but weak correlation between the two variables which is not

significant statistically, H0 is not rejected.

Table 3. Descriptive statistics of comprehensibility and translatability of reading passage 2

Simple Statistics

Variable N Mean StdDev Median Minimum Maximum

Comprehensibility2 20 4.20000 1.00525 4.00000 3.00000 6.00000

Translatability 2 20 47.10000 8.44113 49.00000 30.00000 62.00000

In the above table, descriptive statistics of the two variables, i.e. comprehensibility

and translatability including the sample size, mean, standard deviation, median and maximum

and minimum scores for each student are presented.

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Table 4. Correlation coefficient between comprehensibility and translatability of reading passage 2

Spearman Correlation Coefficients, N = 20

Prob> |r| under H0: Rho=0

comp2 Trans2

Comprehensibility 2 1.00000

0.12310

0.6051

Translatability 2 0.12310

0.6051

1.00000

Correlation coefficient between comprehensibility and translatability as well as their

significance level are shown in the above table. As it is observed, thecorrelation coefficient

between comprehensibility and translatability is equal to 0.12 at the significance level 0.60.

Therefore, correlation coefficient between the two variables is positive but is not significantly

statistically difference from zero, because p-value is equal to 0.60 and greater than 0.05.

Given that there is a positive but weak correlation between the two variables which is not

significant statistically, H0 is not rejected.

Table 5. Descriptive statistics of comprehensibility and translatability of reading passage 3

Simple Statistics

Variable N Mean StdDev Median Minimum Maximum

Comprehensibility 3 20 8.00000 2.80976 7.50000 5.00000 15.00000

Translatability 3 4 34.00000 10.23067 38.00000 19.00000 41.00000

In the above table, descriptive statistics of the two variables, i.e. comprehensibility

and translatability including the sample size, mean, standard deviation, median and maximum

and minimum scores for each student are presented.

Table 6. Correlation coefficient between comprehensibility and translatability of reading passage 3

Spearman Correlation Coefficients

Prob> |r| under H0: Rho=0

Number of Observations

comp3 Trans3

Comprehensibility3 1.00000

20

0.00000

1.0000

4

Translatability 3 0.00000

1.0000

4

1.00000

4

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Correlation coefficient between comprehensibility and translatability as well as their

significance level are shown in the above table. As it is observed, thecorrelation coefficient

between comprehensibility and translatability is equal to 0.00 at the significance level 1.0.

Therefore, correlation coefficient between the two variables is positive but is not significantly

statistically difference from zero, because p-value is equal to 1.0 and greater than 0.05. Given

that there is a positive but weak correlation between the two variables which is not significant

statistically, H0 is not rejected.

Table 7. Descriptive statistics of comprehensibility and translatability of reading passage 4

Simple Statistics

Variable N Mean StdDev Median Minimum Maximum

Comprehensibility 4 20 5.05000 2.11449 5.00000 2.00000 11.00000

Translatability 4 5 47.60000 9.55510 45.00000 38.00000 60.00000

In the above table, descriptive statistics of the two variables, i.e. comprehensibility and

translatability including the sample size, mean, standard deviation, median and maximum and

minimum scores for each student are presented.

Table 8. Correlation coefficient between comprehensibility and translatability of reading passage 4

Spearman Correlation Coefficients

Prob> |r| under H0: Rho=0

Number of Observations

comp4 Trans4

Comprehensibility4 1.00000

20

0.05270

0.9329

5

Translatability 4 0.05270

0.9329

5

1.00000

5

Correlation coefficient between comprehensibility and translatability as well as their

significance level are shown in the above table. As it is observed, thecorrelation coefficient

between comprehensibility and translatability is equal to 0.05 at the significance level 0.93.

Therefore, correlation coefficient between the two variables is positive but is not significantly

statistically difference from zero, because p-value is equal to 0.93 and greater than 0.05.

Given that there is a positive but weak correlation between the two variables which is not

significant statistically, H0 is not rejected.

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Table 9. Descriptive statistics of mean comprehensibility and mean translatability

Simple Statistics

Variable N Mean StdDev Median Minimum Maximum

Comprehensibility mean 20 6.20000 1.99110 5.62500 3.75000 11.25000

Translatability mean 20 40.20500 7.32483 39.60000 22.30000 51.30000

In the above table, descriptive statistics of the two variables, i.e. mean

comprehensibility and mean translatability including the sample size, mean, standard

deviation, median and maximum and minimum scores for each student are presented.

Table 10. Correlation coefficient between mean comprehensibility and mean translatability

Spearman Correlation Coefficients, N = 20

Prob> |r| under H0: Rho=0

compmean Transmean

Comprehensibility mean 1.00000

0.06151

0.7967

Translatability mean 0.06151

0.7967

1.00000

Correlation coefficient between mean comprehensibility and mean translatability as

well as their significance level are shown in the above table. As it is observed, thecorrelation

coefficient between mean comprehensibility and mean translatability is equal to 0.06 at the

significance level 0.79. Therefore, correlation coefficient between the two variables is

positive but is not significantly statistically difference from zero, because p-value is equal to

0.79 and greater than 0.05. Given that there is a positive but weak correlation between the

two variables which is not significant statistically, H0 is not rejected.

This study had three raters who had different ideas about the translations. They had

their own reasons for their choices such as economy, effectiveness of the translation on them,

simplicity, and the communicativeness of the translations. They gave a score to each

translation out of 20 that is shown in the chart below.

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Figure 1. Raters‟ scores to the translations done by students for reading comprehension passage 1

Figure 2. Raters‟ scores to the translations done by students for reading comprehension passage 2

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Figure 3. Raters‟ scores to the translations done by students for reading comprehension passage 3

Figure 4. Raters‟ scores to the translations done by students for reading comprehension passage 4

4. DISCUSSION

The aim of this study was to explore whether there is a relationship between

comprehensibility and translatability or not. In this regard, one research question was posed.

The research question dealt with the relationship between comprehensibility and

translatability.

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Based on the results reported in Tables 1 to 10, there was a positive but weak

correlation between the two variables. Spearman correlation coefficient was used to confirm

this relation.

Rahemi‟s research (2013) was in contrast with the present study. The results of his

study showed that there was a positive correlation between students‟ reading comprehension

and their translation ability. The present study showed that there was no correlation between

comprehensibility and translatability.

Newmark (1988) states that translation involves four processes: comprehension of the

vocabulary of the original source-language texts; comprehension of the meaning of the

original source-language message; reformulation of the message in the target-language; and

judgment of the adequacy of the target-language text. It means that, after reducing and

comprehending the text, the translator then both reformulate the meaning into the target

language equivalently and insert that meaning into an appropriate target-language sentence

structure to convey the meaning.

5. CONCLUSION

Translatability or untranslatability may be a void issue, because every translation work

has a temporal dimension and what was once considered untranslatable may become

translatable at a later time. With the turning out of each newer version or changes in the

context of translation, hopefully, it may become comprehensible to, or be fully appreciated

by, the target readers eventually.

The study showed that there was no direct relationship between comprehensibility and

translatability. Accordingly, it can be stated that there was no direct relationship between

higher comprehensibility and higher translatability and also between lower comprehensibility

and lower translatability.

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Bassnett, S. (1991).Translation studies. London: Routledge.

Folkart, B. (1993). Modes of writing: Translation as replication or invention. Romance

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Newmark, P (1981). Approaches to translation. Oxford and New York: Pergamon.

Newmark, P. (1988b). Approaches to translation. London: Prentice Hall.

Rahemi, E. F. (2013). The correlation between reading comprehension and translation ability:

A correlational study on fourth year students at English Department of UNP. Journal

of English Language Teaching, 1 (2).

Snell-Hornby, M. & Esther, P. (1989).Translation and lexicography. Missouri: John

Benjamins B.V./Paintbrush/Euralex.

Steiner, G. (1975). After Babel: Aspects of language and translation. Oxford: Oxford

University Press.

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Van den Broeck, R. (1978). The concept of equivalence in translation theory: Some critical

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accessed: 23/02/2006].