9 - Translation as a mental process In the previous three units, we focused mainly on two mental activities ' reading and writing ' that are part of the translation process, and we tried to describe some of their phases and the applicable implications with reference to mental functioning. We observed that ' even within the framework of one code, that is to say without shifting to another language ' we have to accomplish more than one translation process, involving nonverbal processing. Moreover, we observed that there is an intermediate stage during which words, or word combinations, are translated into an idiosyncratic mental nonverbal language that is understandable (and hence translatable into words) only by the individual accomplishing such effort in her mind.

ON THE NET(english)TOROP P.

ON THE NET(spanish)

LEUVEN-ZWART, K. M., y T. NAAIJKENS

Such analytic exam was necessary in order to identify the single mental processes involved in the mentioned activities; we know, however, that such activities are actually carried out in a minor span. During this mental work, there is a constant focusing shift between microanalysis and microanalysis, between micro-expression and macro-expression, i.e. a constant comparison between the meaning of the single utterances and the meaning of the text as a whole. Or, on a larger scale, a constant comparison between the sense of a single text and the comprehensive sense of the corpus that, consciously or unconsciously, forms the "intertext". In this context, "intertext" should be understood as the complex of intertextual links in which a text is located, with, or without, the authors acknowledgement.

After said analytic exam, we must bear in mind that the mental processing of verbal data undergoes many simultaneous, interdependent, and holistic processes1. In order to describe the mental process occurring while translating, it is necessary to temporarily put aside the individual mechanisms of the microactivities and analyze the translation process in the whole, with a systemic approach.

An important translation-studies researcher, James S. Holmes, has proposed a mental approach to translation processes, the so-called «mapping theory». He presents a synthesis of his approach in this paragraph:

I have suggested that actually the translation process is a multi-level process; while we are translating sentences, we have a map of the original text in our minds and at the same time, a map of the kind of text we want to produce in the target language. Even as we translate serially, we have this structural concept so that each sentence in our translation is determined not only by the sentence in the original but by the two maps of the original text and of the translated text which we are carrying along as we translate2.The translation process should, therefore, be considered a complex system in which understanding, processing, and projection of the translated text are interdependent portions of one structure. We can therefore put forward, as does Hönig, the existence of a sort of "central processing unit" supervising the coordination of the different mental

processes (those connected to reading, interpretation, and writing) and at the same time projecting a map of the text to be.

Let us follow Hönig's passages. The original, in order to be translated, is "moved out" of its natural context and projected onto the translator's mental reality. The translator does not work on the original text, consequently, but on its mental projection. There are two kinds of processing, the controlled workspace, and the uncontrolled workspace. In the uncontrolled workspace, the first understanding of the text takes place, consisting of the application of frames and schemes, an assortment of semantic patterns based on the perceptive experience of the translator. Such semantic schemes are not very different, from a conceptual point of view, from the cognitive types we dealt with in the unit about the reading process.

As it happens in reading (it is possible to read fractions of words or sentences and construct the unread parts), using the semantic schemes our minds tend to postulate the affinity of the utterances in the original to utterances already read or heard and assimilated.

Semantic schemes are long-term memory structures reflecting the reader's expectations, her meaning conjectures, and in part are already oriented towards a translated text that ' although existing only within the translator's mind ' is taking shape in her mental map.

Translation micro-strategies are composed of the interaction between the original text, the hypotheses on the translated text and the uncontrolled workspace. For the experienced professional a nearly automated process can become more conscious owing to the translation-oriented analysis of the text.

Researchers postulated the existence of an uncontrolled workspace using a thinking aloud protocol. Some translators were asked to say aloud what they were doing or thinking to do while they were intent in their work. Mental processes described by these protocols are those that are called "controlled workspace". Uncontrolled workspace contains, in contrast, mental activities different from those described in thinking aloud protocols. In the controlled workspace, mental processing is conscious: the translator knows that given mechanisms take place but, at the same time, she is usually unaware of them because she performs them automatically.

A translator using only the uncontrolled workspace does not have any comprehensive strategy, which takes into consideration the translated text as a whole. Such a hypothetical translator is guided only by her linguistic reflexes originating from her perception of the original text. If one wants to achieve a complete translation competence, it is necessary to adopt a rational macro-textual strategy as well.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES:

HOLMES J. S. Translated! Papers on Literary Translation and Translation Studies. Amsterdam, Rodopi, 1988. ISBN 90-6203-739-9.

HÖNIG H. G. Holmes' "Mapping Theory" and the Landscape of Mental Translation Processes, in Leuven-Zwart and Naaijkens (ed.) Translations Studies: The State of the Art. Proceedings of the first James S. Holmes Symposium on Translation Studies, Amsterdam, Rodopi, 1991. ISBN 90-5183-257-5, p. 77-89.

1 Hönig 1991, p. 78.2 Holmes 1988, p. 96.

10 - Verbal communication - Part 1We have dealt quite thoroughly with the mental aspects of the reading, writing, and translating processes. Now, we will examine some less individual aspects of the exchange (translation) of information, to see what actually happens when language involves many people in communication. In order to do that, we will draw especially on the writings of Roman JAkobsón, a great Russian scientist who - driven by an interdisciplinary attitude - made fundamental contributions to an impressive number of fields, such as linguistics, semiotics, theory of literature, translation studies.

ON THE NET(english)JAKOBSÓN R.

GOLDMAN W. (Marathon man)

Back in 1958, in his essay Closing Statements: Linguistics and Poetics - which is still mostly up-to-date after more than forty years - JAkobsón examined the six main elements that characterize communication and their related functions.

The addresser is the person who sends out themessage, addressing an addressee, within the framework of a given context. The two following tables are taken from one of JAkobsón's texts:

Factors of verbal communication:1

CONTEXT

ADDRESSER -------> MESSAGE -------> ADDRESSEE

CONTACT

CODE

Fundamental functions of verbal communication2:

REFERENTIAL

EMOTIVE -------> POETIC -------> CONATIVE

PHATIC

METALINGUAL

The referential function

The context is extremely important. In most cases, decontextualized utterances become meaningless or, at any rate, very ambiguous. This is basically due to the fact that communication is very efficient and tends not to make explicit - hence to take for granted

- some aspects of the message that are considered to be implied (i.e. context-bound). If, on a bus, a ticket collector says "Your ticket, please", it would sound rather redundant to explain what ticket he is referring to: the context makes it clear.

If, for example, we come across the utterance

Is it safe?

out of context, the utterance is ambiguous, polysemic; it can imply an impersonal or personal construction and refer to an indefinite number of things/people. That is exactly what experiences Babe, the main character of William Goldman's Marathon Man, when another character places him under interrogation to force him to confess something he does not know. His torturer keeps on asking him "Is it safe?", and Babe gives him any possible answer, attaching any possible meaning to the question, making every effort to put an end to that torment. And the torturer seems to deliberately avail himself of the ambiguity of that question, on the one hand to be able to repeat incessantly the same, insisting sentence and, on the other, to ask - through a single sentence - a polysemic question, appealing to the tortured man's possible reticence.

Through this example, we can see very clearly what is the referential function that JAkobsón talks about, as well as the importance of the context of the utterance.

In addition, in the ad language, the ambiguity of a decontextualized utterance can be useful, thanks to its inherent polysemy and interpretive ambiguity. Many advertising slogans are based on this principle.

The emotional function

The addresser-based function is called emotional or expressive. It is that part of the message which supplies information about the person who is sending the message, about the "first person" of the communicative situation. JAkobsón cites, as a typical example of emotional function, the interjections, which - according to the scholar - are not elements of the sentence, but complete sentences. "Pooh", "upsidaisy", "tut-tut" are actually complete expressions, which can be uttered separately and give a clear idea of the addresser's mood. "A man, using expressive features to indicate his angry or ironic attitude, conveys ostensible information [...]"3.

The intonation of the message can be another form through which the emotional function manifests itself. JAkobsón tells about one sentence that an actor uttered fifty times in order to convey fifty different situations, which the audience unmistakably deciphered. Hence, the emotional function is extremely important to point the message in the right direction too.

The conative function

Still within the framework of the fundamental group, we will now deal with the conative function, namely the one that refers to the addressee. The addressee, the "second person" of the situation, may be implicit, but may sometimes be emphasized, which occurs especially in the vocative and in the imperative. In the vocative, this happens because the addressee is invoked ("Listen, oh Lord!"), in the imperative because he is given an order ("Get out of my way!").

The term "conative" originates from the Latin verb conari, "to tempt", and it means "persuasive". Actually, both the orders of the imperative and the invocations of the vocative have the purpose of persuading the addressee to do something.

In the next units, we will examine the remaining three functions of the verbal communication.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES:

JAkobsón R. Language in Literature. Ed. Krystyna Pomorska and Stephen Rudy. Cambridge (Massachusetts), Belknap Press, 1987. ISBN 0-674-5128-3.

1 JAkobsón 1987, p. 66.2 JAkobsón 1987, p. 71.3 JAkobsón 1987, p. 67.

11 - Verbal communication - Part 2 In the previous unit, we introduced, in their outline, the mechanisms of verbal communication according to JAkobsón. In order to pinpoint the fundamental triad of this diagram of the communication system, we concentrated on three elements only - addresser, context, and addressee. One of the reasons is that - as we have seen - the referential function plays a vital role in completing the sense of the utterance. In an utterance, we never take such care as to specify every detail: we take for granted many aspects of the context, otherwise the communication would be very inefficient. The emotional and conative functions are crucial too: the former because of the role that the addresser plays in communication, the latter owing to the position of the message towards the addressee when the communication takes place.

ON THE NET - englishJAKOBSÓN R.The basic approaches to the construction of utterances

In order to continue our analysis of verbal communication, we need to consider the two main aspects of sentence building from a mental point of view.

Experiments carried out on subjects suffering from aphasia showed that the two cerebral hemispheres, the right one and the left one, govern two different functions. The left hemisphere presides over the paradigmatic selection of words, while the right hemisphere presides over their syntagmatic combination 1. Here is what that means, in simple terms:

Let us imagine the following panel as representing a slot machine. Suppose that, by pulling its (fictional) lever, we spin its parallel vertical wheels showing on their facets different words or blanks, until they stop - forming a combination of words. Our slot machine, though, even allows us to see all the words on the facets not appearing in the central window, the one showing the utterance starting with "Giampaolo".

Alfredo loves Gertrude

Who touches [the] pasta?

Yesterday he ran out of red wine

Giampaolo runs [the] coffee company

Now I will go to buy the paper

To learn requires an effort

you give [did] to Matilda?

What

First, let us have a look at the table horizontally, starting from the first line. The mind of the addresser who wants to express a concept begins, say, by looking for the subject of the action: he carries out a selectiveprocess, until he gets to the word "Alfredo", which satisfies his need of communication at that moment. In order to go on building his sentence, he has now to face a syntactical problem: after the word "Alfredo", what kinds of words are likely to follow according to the grammar rules of the English language? By raising this question, he carries out a combinational process. There are many different possibilities, but it is more likely that, after the subject, a verb will turn up. At this point, the addresser mentally reviews all the verbs he knows (selective process), singles out the one he considers fit (to love), and properly conjugates it. To get to Gertrude, he must carry out another combinational process (which prevents him from saying, for example, "Alfredo loves although") and a selective one, until he gets to "Gertrude". Slot machines do not have combinatorial capabilities. Or rather, they randomly combine what is shown on bordering wheel facets, without asking syntactical or constructional questions. Were they humans, one could say that they suffer from right-hemisphere aphasia, or contiguity disorder. Indeed, our imaginary slot machine may bring forth incomprehensible expressions, such as "To learn touches to Matilda an effort" or "Now to learn loves coffee an effort". In other words, the slot machine has a paradigmatic capability (by simply pulling its lever, we can review the whole range of possibilities), but not a syntagmatic one (indeed, it combines words randomly).

Conversely, subjects suffering from left hemisphere aphasia do not have any paradigmatic capability: in other words, they are not able to refer to the range of possibilities.

As JAkobsón ingeniously understood by reworking concepts that had already been partially identified by de Saussure, all linguistic acts are based on combination and selection capabilities.

As for the combination (syntagmatic, horizontal, metonymic axis), a word is in relation to the next one bycontiguity. In the sentence "Giampaolo runs the coffee company", between "Giampaolo" and "runs" there is no similarity, just contiguity, and the two words are combinable. The same goes for "runs" and "the coffee" and for "the coffee" and "company".

As for the selection (paradigmatic, vertical, metaphorical axis), a word is in relation to the others (above and below, in our model) by similarity.

A metonymy is a figure of speech built on the contiguity relation between literal and figurative term. For instance, "He earns his living by the sweat of his brow" substitutes "He earns his living by the work that causes his brow to sweat". As we can see, it is a syntagmatic relation (subtraction).

On the other hand, a metaphor is a simile that does not express the terms of comparison. "Golden hair" is a metaphor that originates from the implicit comparison between the color of the hair and the color of gold, a paradigmatic 2 operation.

These concepts are indispensable for dealing with the three other functions of verbal communication, which we will examine in the next unit.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES:

JAKOBSÓN R. Brain and Language. Cerebral Hemispheres and Linguistic Structure in Mutual Light. Columbus (Ohio), Slavica, 1980. ISBN 0-89357-068-0. MARCHESE, A. Dizionario di retorica e di stilistica. Milano, Mondadori, 1991. ISBN 88-04-14664-8.

1 JAkobsón 1980.2 Marchese 1991, p. 186, 187, 190, 191. In this unit, we will examine the other three elements of the communication system along with their three functions:

ON THE NET - englishJAKOBSÓN R.

a. message (poetic function)

b. contact (phatic function)

c. code (metalinguistic function).

Factors of verbal communication 1:

CONTEXT

ADDRESSER ------------------ MESSAGE ----------------- ADDRESSEECONTACT

CODE

Fundamental functions of the verbal communication 2:

REFERENTIALEMOTIVE ------------------ POETIC ----------------- CONATIVE

PHATICMETALINGUAL

Poetic function

In the previous unit, we affirmed that an utterance is built by selection (syntagmatic axis) and combination (syntagmatic axis). Well, JAkobsón states that «The poetic function projects the principle of equivalence from the axis of selection into the axis of combination» 3. In simpler words, we can say that, in poetry, the principles of syntactical construction - rules that prevent certain types of contiguousness - are sometimes ignored, and syntagmatic construction (verse composition) occurs by referring to the paradigmatic repertoire. Here is an example. Although it is in Italian, it should be clear that its importance is in the sound of word and word combinations, not in their denotative meaning:

Chi mai grida in Crimeadai crinali violacei?

Quale ardente chimeraincrimina la pace?

Lacrime di Crimea!La chimera dilegua

oltre le creste cremisicol grido della tregua. 4

"Le creste cremisi" is an example in which two words, in this case "creste" and "cremisi", are close on the paradigmatic axis (they both begin with accented "cre"), while they are not a common combination on the syntagmatic axis. The repetition of the string "cri", and its absence when the reader is induced to expect it ("chimera", with the "r" sound in a different position so that the quick reader is induced to read again "Crimea" instead of "Chimera", or "crinali", which is easier to read as "crimali") is one of many points of this poetic texture that flows on its own, without any syntagmatic concern. Poetic discourse is based on collocation, meter, paronomasia, displacement, and actual or feigned parallelism. If one tries to translate this passage into prose, or into English, one realizes at once what is not always apparent.

It can be, therefore, inferred that the poetic function is based on the message, which becomes important as such, almost regardless of the other six elements of the communication.

It is important to keep in mind that the poetic function can be found even in a prose text. In this case, the poetic function is not the dominant, but it can be found under the layers of the other (more important) functions. Here is an example taken right from the JAkobsón's text we are dealing with.

['] in metalanguage the sequence is used to build an equation, whereas in poetry the equation is used to build a sequence 5. We can see that the two phrases, separated by "whereas", have a parallel construction, and are characterized by the chiastic exchange of "sequence" and "equation". Parallelism and chiasmus are peculiar to the poetic function, even in an essay - where the poetic value is definitely of secondary importance.

The phatic function

Some messages are not relevant to the MESSAGE in the center of the table above: their main aim is to maintain the contact with the addressee. Good examples could be sentences like "Hello?" or "Can you hear me?" (speaking by phone) or, again, sentences that aim at prolonging a contact, a conversation. In an elevator, for instance, the contact with other people is an end in itself and its function is that of avoiding some embarrassing minutes of silence: the sentence "It's a nice day, isn't it?", disguised as a question, is merely a way of making some kind of conversation. An answer like "Yes, but yesterday it was less windy" actually means ("Yes, I am ready to keep a contact with you, provided that, in our relationship, we will limit ourselves to formal exchanges"). In fact, the term "phatic" originates from the Greek term phatikós, which means "statement, utterance". Before learning to speak - according to JAkobsón - the infants learn the phatic function: when they understand that, by pronouncing a syllable or a vowel, there's someone who responds to them, who tries to get in touch with them, by replying, by making interpretations in a loud voice, by exchanging glances (eye contact), they are induced to make certain sounds in order to establish a contact (preverbal communication).

The metalinguistic function

When language is used to talk about language itself (code), the communication is metalinguistic. A good example would be: "What are you saying? Are you speaking in English or what?". The same occurs when language is used to explain the meaning of a word. This is called autonymy, i.e. a word that refers not to its signified but to itself, to the signifier. By "metalinguistic function", we mean an utterance in which the addressee gives or ask for information about the code. The reader is not supposed to know the meaning of "metalinguistic function", which is explained in our example. It is apparent that the locution above cannot refer to its signified, because the latter is supposed to be unknown to the reader. In other words, autonymy is a sort of "short circuit" of the usual signifier-signified relationship. The signified is mentioned, but not to trigger possible associations with likely meanings: the signifier is temporarily "off", "deactivated"; it is only a sound or a sign that do not refer to anything, because we are talking about its cross-references, its links.

Bibliographical references

JAkobsón R. Language in Literature. Ed. by Krystyna Pomorska and Stephen Rudy. Cambridge (Massachusetts), Belknap Press, 1987.

JAkobsón R. Linguistics and poetics. In Language in Literature. Ed. by K. Pomorska and S. Rudy, p. 62-94. Cambridge (Massachusetts), Harvard University Press, 1987. ISBN 0-674-51028-3.

Scialoja T. La mela di Amleto. Milano, Garzanti, 1984.

13 - JAkobsón and translation - part 1

ON THE NET - englishJAKOBSÓN R.

Among JAkobsón's works, an essay written in 1959 stands out for its importance in the framework of general, fundamental reflections on translation problems. On Linguistic Aspects of Translation, seven pages in all, includes what more than 40 years later is still a precious source of reflections for researchers of the nature of the translation process.

Before analyzing the question in a more detailed way, a warning is appropriate: the reader should not be misled by the title of JAkobsón's essay, particularly by the adjective "linguistic". JAkobsón has a broad conception of "linguistics", far beyond the traditional limits of this discipline.

Our purpose here is to read passages of JAkobsón's essay together and comment on it, dwelling on some ideas that are of great help in thinking about translation problems. The essay is not devoted to translation as an action, but to the importance of translation in semiotic studies, to translation as a concept. Here comes one of the first and most important concepts:

No one can understand the word "cheese" unless he has a nonlinguistic acquaintance with cheese

These are Bertrand Russell's words, quoted by JAkobsón. Russell, in fact, holds that words as such are not capable to convey meanings that do not have roots in a direct subjective experience of what is meant.

This statement is controversial for a translator, because to accept it would mean to state that - for a subject unfamiliar to a given culture - it is impossible to figure out words referring to concepts or objects typical of the source culture and alien to his own.

JAkobsón questions such a statement affirming that the solution could be an intralingual translation, i.e. in this case, to explain that "cheese" means «food made of pressed curds» 1.

For a subject belonging to a culture where cheese does not exist it is, therefore, enough to know what "curds" are to get an idea about the possible meanings of "cheese". The signification process often works in this way. When we are told that the Jews fleeing from Egypt during their long journey through the desert ate "manna", we, readers of the Bible, even though we never could taste manna, can get an idea of what manna could be: a different idea for each of us, that however has a common share.

From his argument, JAkobsón draws a very important conclusion:

The meaning [...] of any word or phrase whatsoever is definitely [...] a semiotic fact 2.

It therefore does not make any sense to assign a meaning (signatum) to the object and not to the sign (signum): nobody has ever felt the smell - or the taste - of the meaning of "cheese" or "apple". A signatum may exist only if a signum exists too. Someone tasting Gorgonzola or Emmenthal cheese without verbal coding is not able to infer the meaning of the word "cheese" because, in order to explain the meaning of an unknown word, a

series of linguistic signs is necessary. The meaning of a word - if we remain in the verbal context - is nothing but its translation into a series of other words: and in this passage we notice the importance of translation, intended in a broader sense, for communication in general, and for intercultural communication in particular.

Without translation, it would be impossible to get someone to understand objects that are not part of his culture. In JAkobsón's opinion, there are three ways of interpreting a verbal sign:

1. Intralingual translation or rewording is an interpretation of verbal signs by means of other signs of the same language.

2. Interlingual translation or translation proper is an interpretation of verbal signs by means of some other language.

3. Intersemiotic translation or transmutation is an interpretation of verbal signs by means of signs of nonverbal sign systems. 3

In the aforementioned examples related to the word "cheese", there was an attempt to make an intralingual translation, i.e. to explain with a periphrasis, a circumlocution, without recurring to another language, the meaning of "cheese". The point, in other words, is to find words that are nearly synonyms. "Yet synonymy, as a rule, is not complete equivalence" 4, warns us JAkobsón. The translation into other words of the meaning of an utterance is always the result of an interpretation; therefore, it can - and does - vary according to the subjects who perform it. From this fact we can infer the variety of the possible translations in interlingual translation too.

All cognitive experience and its classification is conveyable in any existing language. Whenever there is a deficiency, terminology can be qualified and amplified by loanwords or loan translations, by neologisms or semantic shifts, and, finally, by circumlocutions 5.

Of course, a universal, empirical, and repeatable method of determining when such deficiencies do occur, whether and how - among the ways pointed out by JAkobsón - cultural intermediaries (translators, for example) should play an active role in their decoding does not exist. In other words, it is impossible to refer to a single method to deal with the problem of loss in translation. For instance, the Northeast Siberian Chukchees refer to the "screw" as a "rotating nail", to the "steel" as a "hard iron", to the "tin" as a "thin iron" and to the "chalk" as a "writing soap" 6

However, as every technical or literary translator knows very well, it is not always enough to say the right thing; very often it is essential to say it in the right way too. To this point, we will go back many times, in particular in the third part of this course.

Bibliographical references

JAkobsón R. Language in LiteratureEd. by Krystyna Pomorska e Stephen Rudy, Cambridge (Massachusetts), Belknap Press, 1987.

JAkobsón R. On Linguistic Aspects of Translation, in Language in Literature, a c. di Krystyna Pomorska e Stephen Rudy, Cambridge (Massachusetts), Harvard University Press, 1987, p. 428-435. ISBN 0-674-51028-3.

14 - JAkobsón and translation - part 2

ON THE NET - englishJAKOBSÓN R.

When dealing with interlingual translation - the most recognizable, superficial, apparent activity of a professional translator - we face the problem of the inexistent equivalence. Since seldom, if ever, in two languages we find two words covering the same semantic field 1, it is more common trying to translate not single code units, but complete messages.

The translator recodes and transmits a message received from another source 2.

JAkobsón's example refers to the Russian sentence "prinesi syru i tvorogu" 3 that, in a literal translation, would sound as: "bring cheese and cottage cheese". The reiteration of the word "cheese" makes even superficially clear that the concept of "cottage cheese" is comprised within the wider semantic category "cheese": that's the reason why the sentence sounds absurd, redundant. Cottage cheese is one of the many varieties of cheese, while tvoróg is not one of the many varieties of syr. The communication problem derives from the fact that the Russian word "syr" is connected to fermented cheese only. In a technical text, having a purely denotative nature, it is possible to deal with such difference in semantic fields acknowledging that and translating, if necessary, "syr" as "fermented cheese" instead of simply "cheese". On the contrary, in a more connotative text it is more difficult to translate expressions like this one, in which the obstacle consists in the cultural - rather than linguistic - difference. Not always, in such cases, explicitation (in this case adding the word "fermented") will do as a pragmatic or functional equivalent 4. While in the past, in order to deal with translation problems, we often had to turn to linguistics, in a sense JAkobsón reverses the approach.

No linguistic specimen may be interpreted by the science of language without a translation of its signs into other signs of the same system or into signs of another systems 5.

This means that linguistic research has to turn to translation - intralingual, interlingual, or intersemiotic translation. There is no possibility to study language without dealing with its interpretation, i.e. with its possible "translations". We can therefore state that linguistics is centered on semiotics and on translation intended in a broad sense. In this way, JAkobsón proposes a conceptual revolution comparable to the shift from the Ptolemaic view to the Copernican conception. Translation studies 6, seen this way, are no longer a marginal subfield of linguistics; they become the Sun around which language science orbits. Unlike artificial languages, in which it is possible to draw neat borders between the meanings of different utterances, in JAkobsón's opinion the main question in linguistics is equivalence in difference. We are not going to deny that verbal communication is at least in part possible but, in the meantime, we have to acknowledge that verbal communication normally produces a loss, and there are no two persons totally sharing the link between sign, sense, and mental image (interpretant, in Peirce's vocabulary).

Consequently, linguistic work is based on the notion of translatability, on the possibility to transmit verbal communication from one individual to another, and from one person's mind to the utterance that person processes in order to communicate the message to the outer world. Such work is based on phenomena described in the previous units. Since between mental imagery and its verbal expression there is a reciprocal influence, there is still a theoretical difference caused by a different formulation of apparently identical facts.

Facts are unlike to speakers whose language background provides for unlike formulation of them 7

These are words of the famous linguist Whorf, quoted in JAkobsón's essay. If we adhere rigidly to this assumption, we must admit that any kind of translation is impossible. In this case, linguistic expression is not conceived as a function of mental contents; it is viewed as a mold shaping mental contents. Such statements, emphasizing expressive, perceptive, and cognitive peculiarities of every individual, cannot help discovering shared knowledge, which would be useful dealing with translation, with bilateral understanding. Fortunately, linguistic and metalinguistic abilities are always copresent, which is very useful for understanding each other.

An ability to speak a given language implies an ability to talk about this language. Such a metalinguistic operation permits revision and redefinition of the vocabulary used 8.

Any speaker, for this reason, is able to make statements about what he is trying to express and, if necessary, to adjust vocabulary - his own or the other speakers' one - in order to make communication possible.

Bibliographical references

JAkobsón R. Language in Literature, Ed. Krystyna Pomorska and Stephen Rudy. Cambridge (Massachusetts), Belknap Press, 1987.

TOROP P. La traduzione totale [Total Translation]. Ed. B. Osimo. Modena, Guaraldi Logos, 2000. ISBN 88-8049-195-4. Original edition Total´nyj perevod. Tartu, Tartu University Press, 1995. ISBN 9985-56-122-8.

WHORF B. L. Language, Thought, and Reality. Selected Writings, edited by John B. Carroll. Preface by Stuart Chase, Cambridge (Massachusetts), Technology Press of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1956.

1 In the previous units, we showed that this is impossible even within one language, and that often one word has not entirely the same meaning for two speakers.2 JAkobsón 1987, p. 430.3 "Bring cheese and cottage cheese".4 For a more detailed study on the different conceptions of "equivalence", see the second part of this course.5 JAkobsón 1987, p. 430.

6 In this instance, we use "translation" in a very broad sense, the same meant by Peeter Torop with "total translation" (Torop 2000). In the next units, we will go back on Torop's views about translation.7 Worf 1956, p. 235.8 JAkobsón 1987, p. 431.

15 - JAkobsón and translation - part 3

ON THE NET - englishJAKOBSÓN R.

An important aspect of translation problems has to do with the effect of the existence/nonexistence of grammatical categories on translation and its possible outcome. At first view, "to walk in the park is pleasant" and "a walk in the park is pleasant" are very similar utterances; someone could even say "equivalent" expressions. JAkobsón holds that this aspect, the change in grammatical category - for example the use of a name instead of a verb or an adjective - has many consequences. In two essays, "Poetry of grammar and grammar of poetry" 1 and "Grammatical parallelism and its Russian facet" 2, JAkobsón emphasizes the structural importance of the grammatical categories in the text, especially in the literary text. Using a verb instead of a name is not the same; it has consequences in the expressive sphere. In the quoted essay on translation, the problems deriving from translations between languages with different grammatical categories are properly stressed.

It is more difficult to remain faithful to the original when we translate into a language provided with a certain grammatical category from a language lacking such a category 3.

A frequent problem for the translator from English is the use of the simple past. Sometimes, from the co-text, it is impossible to understand whether a perfective or imperfective value should be attributed to the verb, if the action is finished and definite or, on the contrary, is repeated and unfinished; it is therefore difficult to decide what tenses to use in the target language.Another tricky situation is caused by the fact that, for someone writing in English, it is not necessary even to decide if a simple past verb should be interpreted as a perfective or imperfective action. The possibility of the English language to express a "not well defined past" is an expressive tool that other language don't have, because it allows English authors not to define - to leave ambiguous - what the grammatical category doesn't imply.

"Languages differ essentially in what they must convey and not in what theycan convey. Each verb of a given language imperatively raises a set of specific yes-or-no questions, as for instance: is the narrated event conceived with or without reference to its completion? is the narrated event presented as prior to the speech event or not? Naturally the attention of native speakers and listeners will be constantly focused on such items as are compulsory in their verbal code" 4.

When a text is translated into a language in which such ambiguity is not guaranteed by the grammatical categories, the translator is forced to make an interpretation that the author had not made, is forced to make a choice and to prefer a vision that suppresses the potential for other perspectives.

JAkobsón proposes very interesting examples. The point is to translate into Russian the sentence "I hired a worker". The Russian translator must make two decisions the English speaker has not foreseen; first, deciding whether the verb "hired" has a perfective or imperfective aspect, which, as a consequence, produces a choice between "nanjal" and "nanimal"; the second concerns the gender of the worker, which produces a choice between "rabotnika" and "rabotnicu". On the other hand, from the Russian text, we will not be able to understand whether it is "a worker" or "the worker", i.e. whether it is an indefinite person or a person we have already heard of. In this case, the determinative article takes on an anaphoric value. This ambiguity of the Russian text is due to the absence of the article as grammatical category in the Russian language. What we said about the use of grammatical categories is mostly referring to a less than rational use of language. When language is employed in a rational way, the grammatical model is far less important, because what we experience is closely linked to a continuous interpretive and decoding action - a translation work. It is therefore inconceivable that rational data could be untranslatable, because in this case we would imply that we are not able to understand the rational experience itself. What can be untranslatable is experience "in jest, in dreams, in magic, briefly, in what one would call everyday verbal mythology, and in poetry above all" 5, where grammatical categories have an enormous semantic significance. JAkobsón's essay in the end quotes the Italian epigram in rhyme:

Traduttore, traditore 6.

In the history of translation studies, the quantity of trivial observations on the subject is so vast, that once again we are astonished to observe how JAkobsón can make on this basis deep, original reflections that have many important scientific consequences. First, the question of translating this epigram into English is considered: If we were to translate it "the translator is a betrayer", we would deprive it of all its paronomastic value. (Paronomasia consists in juxtaposing two words with a similar sound, or of one word being the anagram of the other.) We could be tempted, therefore, to take on a more rational point of view and to make the aphorism explicit, to answer the questions:

translator of what messages?betrayer of what values?7

With JAkobsón's levity and elegance, the reader is thus invited to understand the characteristics of the following parts of this course, whose aim is to do away with many translations studies clichés. Betrayer of what values? And, consequently, what do we mean by "fidelity"? No translator, we think (and no lover) would be openly proud of his "infidelity". To state that translations should be "faithful to the original" has the same value of the sentence "We should behave well. We should not behave naughtily". The soldiers of the French captain J. de Chabannes - monsieur de La Palice, who died during the battle of Pavia (1525) - who remembered him with verses like "Fifteen minutes before his death / he was still alive", if compared to some translation "scientists", are just beginners. Obviously, we must be faithful, but this is indefinite - JAkobsón tells us between the lines - if we do not state what we have to be faithful to. Translator of what messages? This question encourages us to investigate the complex nature of translation, its multifaceted nature and, consequently, the relative nature of the question. We have to define exactly from the beginning the terms of our discourse if we want to do serious scientific work. In this course, we will draw often on Peeter Torop's

works. He is chief of the Department of Semiotics of the Tartu University, in Estonia, and scientific and academic heir of the great scientist JUrij Lotman. Torop's conception of "total translation" will help us greatly in trying to answer JAkobsón's questions.

Bibliographical references

JAKOBSÓN R. Language in Literature, a c. di Krystyna Pomorska e Stephen Rudy, Cambridge (Massachusetts), Belknap Press, 1987.

1 Poèzija grammatiki i grammatika poèzii, 1960.2 Grammatical Parallelism and Its Russian Facet, 1966.3 Jakobsón 1987, p. 432.4 Jakobsón 1987, p. 433.5 Jakobsón 1987, p. 433.6 Jakobsón 1987, p. 435. 7 Jakobsón 1987, p. 435.

16 - Translation studies - part 1ON THE NET - englishTOROP P.

In the previous units, we saw how many processes are involved in the everyday activity we refer to as "translation", and how wide the continuum is of concepts we refer to as "translation": within this wider concept, interlingual translation is but one of its many expressions.

Many people say that (interlingual) translation is one of the oldest activities in the world. The Bible is a good example of translation: in fact its oldest versions contain words in Aramaic, parts in Hebrew and, in what is often called the "New Testament", parts in Greek. In spite of that, until the 1980s there was no specific discipline dealing with translation and/or its problems. One could suppose that, just because translation has always existed, for centuries it simply went unobserved, as an element of the cultural landscape to be taken for granted, and, even though, from Cicero's day on, a number of writings were dedicated to that subject, nobody felt or expressed the need to create a specific discipline. On the other hand, many arts or sciences have dealt with translation in a more or less marginal way, from rhetoric to narratology to linguistics. Until recently, however, nobody thought that the landscape could be turned upside down, that a Ptolemaic revolution could be made, in order to place interlingual translation, which has always been in the position of a transitory and an unauthorized satellite of the other sciences holding a stronger position. Translation can be qualified as a system having the broader concept of (total) translation at its center, and the various types of translation in satellite positions: textual, metatextual, intratextual, extratestual translation. How this relatively new science is called? It has so many names that we need the help of translators in order to understand each other.

English-speaking researchers call it "translation studies" or, familiarly, TS. In this way, they have coined a locution untranslatable into nearly any other language, untranslatable, at least, without creating an important loss. The main problem comes with the word "studies", which in languages other than English is not always translatable simply using the plural of a word translating "study". However, a science called "translation studies" is undoubtedly a scientific endeavor related to translation. Frenchmen use the term traductologie. Berman wrote in 1985:

The awareness of translation experiences, as distinct from all objectifying knowledge not within its framework (as dealt with by linguistics, compared literature, poetics) is what I call traductologie 1.

Some translation researchers and some translators, including those translating from French, think that "traductologie" is a swearword, not meaning literally that it is obscene, alluding instead to its disagreeable aesthetic taste. Not every translation researcher would be glad to print "traductologist" on her business card, even if we cannot deny that the construction of this word follows widely accepted criteria. Germans prefer another solution. Maybe at a first glance you could think it is a rather long word: they call this discipline Übersetzungwissenschaft, that is to say "translation science", stressing in a still stronger way that they believe in the scientific character of their endeavor, which is obviously welcome. Russians, offer another alternative, with a similar process of word composition, speak about perevodovédenie, which however does not mean exactly "translation science", because "science" - and "discipline" - is usually expressed by the word nauka. Védenie is something between competence and awareness. It has an old Indo-European root: in Sanskrit, we find the word vida, meaning "knowledge". Russians are lucky, because with the suffix -védenie they solve many terminology problems: literaturovédenie, for example, means "literary theory", "narratology", and many other similar disciplines. In Italy many terms are used: traduttologia, scienza della traduzione, teoria e storia della traduzione, an old and obsolete denomination implying a nonexisting distinction between translation theory and practice, recalling linguistics applied to translation problems. In this course, we will use both the terms: "translation studies" and "translation science". A Tartu University scholar, Peeter Torop, who inherited JUrij Lotman's place as a chief of the local Semiotics Department, in 1995 wrote a book entitled Total´nyj perevod [Total Translation], which is soon to be printed in English by the Guaraldi Logos publishers 2. We share Torop's general approach to the question of translation research. Let us explain what Torop means by "total", an adjective that might induce awe owing to its absolute value. In Torop's opinion, translation should be total for two reasons. First, by "translation" we mean not only interlingual translation, but metatextual, intratextual, intertextual, and extratextual translation as well. (We will see in the following units what we mean by these definitions.) We feel that the total approach to overall translation problems has a greater chance of obtaining scientific results because translation - as a process - is the same in all these instances. Differences concern only the initial product and the final result, which may or may not be texts. That is why the overall translation process is the core of our studies. The second reason to consider translation in a total sense is that, even if we value the various contributions made to translation studies ante litteram, or before the existence of this science, we wish to pursue the "search for a comprehensive methodology" 3, the creation of a translation science that can plunge its roots in previous studies. In doing so, we face an apparently insuperable obstacle: every science has its own terminology and, often, every author has idiosyncratic preferences for single words. The result is that two essays may deal with the same subject even if their superficial contents

are very different one from another, and the subjects themselves are nominated in different ways: a sort of pre-translation-science Babel. We share the hope with Torop that the translation researchers will first translate the results of translation studies into one metalanguage, and then translate the different analysis methods into one unifying methodology. In other words, translation researchers should first methodologically translate the results of translation studies into a single language, so that we can use this basis to do research in a scientifically homogeneous context, preventing the risk of being misunderstood by colleagues and translators.

Bibliographical references

BERMAN A. et al. Les tours de Babel. Essais sur la traduction. Essays by Antoine Berman, Gérard Granel, Annick Jaulin, Georges Mailhos, Henry Meschonnic, Mosé, Friedrich Schleiermacher. Mauzevin, Trans-Europ-Repress, 1985. ISBN 2-905670-17-7.

TOROP P. La traduzione totale. Ed. by B. Osimo. Modena, Guaraldi Logos, 2000. ISBN 88-8049-195-4. Original edition in Russian: Total´nyj perevod. Tartu, Tartu Ülikooli Kirjastus [Tartu University Press], 1995. ISBN 9985-56-122-8.

1 Berman 1985, p. 38.2 The Italian edition was published in November 2000 (ISBN 88-8049-195-4). The English edition should be printed by 2001.3 Torop 2000, p. 24.

17 - Translation studies - part 2ON THE NET - englishTOROP P. We have seen in the previous unit that Torop distinguishes various kinds of translations. Let us examine them one at a time.

Textual translation: this is the core of translation studies, also because it is the kind of translation activity about which we have the widest literature. It is, moreover, what more traditionally is referred to as "translation". By "textual translation", we mean a process by which a text is transformed into another text. This term does not make a distinction between interlingual and intralingual translation. The textual paraphrase of a text, for example, is a kind of textual translation, even if the two texts - prototext and paraphrase - are composed with the same code. The "prototext" is what is sometimes referred to as "original", or "source text". The word is formed by the prefix proto-, deriving from the Greek word prôtos, meaning "first", a meaning that can be used both to mean "first in time" and "first in space". Using the same word-formation principle, what sometimes is called "translated text" or "target text" - that is to say the result of textual translation - can be called "metatext". The prefix meta-, from the Greek word metá, meaning "after" (and also "with" and "for"), can refer to a shift, a continuum, a transfer, or also to posteriority, additionality. We must stress the difference between two meanings of the word "metatext", both of them relevant to translation studies: first, "result of a textual translation process", the second one is "metatextual translation process" (see further details in the next paragraph).

Being the most visible, textual translation is the kind of translation with a wider literature. When we talk about the other types of translation, we still have the model of textual translation in mind: that is the reason why the general methodology of translation science, even when meant in a "total" sense, should be based on textual translation. Textual translation studies are often based on literary texts. This fact should not fool translators or future translators, especially those working with nonliterary texts: one should not think that an analysis of a literary text is meaningful only for a literary text or, worse yet, only for that single literary text. This would be in contrast to one of the two main principles of total translation: the center of translation studies is the translation process, whose core is common to all types of translation and, therefore, to all kinds of interlingual, textual translations.

By "metatextual translation", we mean a process transferring a text not into another text, but into a culture: in other words, the metatext is the overall image a text creates of itself in a given culture. The overall image of a text in a culture is determined by the text itself and by what in that culture is said about that text. A hint at a text, made publicly by someone, in a written or oral form; a quotation; a critical essay; an item in an encyclopedia referring to that text or author; an afterword to a text or the critical apparatus to an edition, and so on: all that contributes to create the overall image of a text in a culture. If metatextual translation is intralingual, then the metatext consists of the aforementioned elements only; if it isinterlingual, then among the metatextual elements there also can be the translated text that, as we have just seen, can be called "metatext" even by itself. Actually, it is a part of the whole metatext of an interlingual translation. Sometimes, as Torop stresses, textual and metatextual translations are simultaneous, contextual operations: they go together:

When the translator or the publisher himself prepares the preface, commentary, illustrations, glossaries, and so on to a translated text, it is possible a translation being textual and metatextual at the same time1.

In some cases, the interlingual translation is written by a translator, the preface by another author and the critical apparatus by a third person. The metatext is then a collective endeavor, not always coordinated and coherent.

Intertextual translation. In our world, no text rises in autonomy, outside a context. This is increasingly true when we face the faster and capillary circulation of information that, on one hand, tends to globalize culture but, on the other hand, makes easier the interchange between cultures and promotes development beyond differences. The great Russian semiotician JUrij Lotman (1922-1993) in 1984 published an essay on this topic called "The semiosphere". The cultural universe is compared to a body, on the model of Vernadsky's concept of biosphere 2. This body may have more psychological than biological features, but it has the characteristics of a system:

[...] the modern world semiosphere that, having grown wider and wider through centuries, has now a universal character, includes signals from satellites and poets' verses and animal cries. [...] The dynamic development of semiosphere elements (of substructures) tends toward specification and increases, therefore, the inner variety of the whole 3.

We feel reassured, in a time when there are people who are afraid that the internet will standardize local cultures, tastes and traditions:

[...] the process of reciprocal information and inclusion in a general cultural world not only nears different cultures, but emphasizes their differences too. By entering in a general cultural world, a culture begins in

fact to cultivate more intensely its originality. [...] An isolated culture is always "for itself", "natural", and "ruled by customary laws". As soon as it becomes a part of a wider system, it gets to know an outer point of view about itself, and discovers its own specificity 4.

We can see the similarity between this argument and what we said in unit 5 referring to linguistic self-consciousness. One's own way of verbal expression appears to be "natural" as soon as we do not observe it from outside, we do not begin to make questions about its mechanisms, and we do not acquire a core of metalinguistic self-consciousness. These considerations of semiotic and psychological character suggest a systemic approach to the problem of intercultural influences. The literary critic Harold Bloom, theorizing on cultural influences in literature, synthesizes systemic approach and Freudian psychoanalysis. He finds in the cultural system a mechanism in which the author of a text is in the position of a son trying desperately to emerge with an identity of his own despite the cultural domination of his "fathers", his literary precursors. We can easily notice that said vision is strongly influenced by the Freudian concept of Oedipal complex: the emerging identity of an author is considered a metaphor of the definition of a son's identity, taking for granted the existence of a conscious or unconscious conflict with his father. In the case of cultural influences, every precursor is a potential father, more or less "encumbering" according to his importance in a given culture. In Bloom's opinion, the text becomes

a psychic battlefield upon which authentic forces struggle for the only victory worth winning, the divinating triumph over oblivion 5.

Every author, in Bloom's vision, is annoyed realizing that what he writes is not completely original, that he writes also as a reaction to his precursors - in the same way as a son is annoyed to behave in reaction to his father's personality, instead of following his own desires and aspirations. For this reason the author tends to deny this kind of influence or, as one says in psychoanalysis, to repress the debt. Repression, like any other psychic mechanism intended to create a false perception of reality in order to make it acceptable, causes - as a side effect - the impossibility to interpret the precursors' works in a conscious way. Bloom's work is centered on this kind of interpretation, which is neither lucid nor aware, and becomes a misinterpretation: every work is thus the misinterpretation of a parent work, and every reading is actually a misreading of what was written by the precursor.

Bibliographical references

BLOOM H. Poetry and Repression: Revisionism from Blake to Stevens. New Haven, Yale University Press, 1976

LOTMAN JU. Lekcii po struktural´noj poètike. In JU. M. Lotman i tartusko-moskovskaja somioticheskaja shkola. Moskvà, Gnozis, 1994, p. 10-263. ISBN 5-7333-0486-3.

LOTMAN JU. O semiosfere [Sulla semiosfera], in Töid märgisüsteemide alalt/Trudy po znakovym sistemam/Sign Systems Studies, volume 17, Tartu, 1984. ISSN 1406-4243.

TOROP P. La traduzione totale. Ed. by B. Osimo. Modena, Guaraldi-Logos, 2000. ISBN 88-8049-195-4. Or. ed.Total´nyj perevod. Tartu, Tartu Ülikooli Kirjastus [Tartu University Press], 1995. ISBN 9985-56-122-8.

VERNADSKIJ V. I. Biosfera [The Biosphere], Moskvà, 1967.

1 Torop 2000, p. 31.2 Vernadskij 1967.3 Lotman 1985, p. 69.4 Lotman 1985, p. 76.5 Bloom 1976, p. 2.

18 - Translation studies - part 3ON THE NET - englishTOROP P.

In the previous unit, speaking about intertextual translation, we were led to widen the object of our analysis to the whole semiosphere, to the whole cultural universe, the environment in which cultural influences interact.

As we said, there are no texts rising from nowhere, independently of the context, from outside the semiosphere system. Consequently, when an author writes a text, a part of what she writes is a product of outer influences, while another part is a product of her own personal contemplation. The author's creativity, however, is not shown only in the part of the work deriving from her personal creation, but also in her ability to choose and synthesize what others have written or said.

When an author assimilates material - in an explicit or implicit, conscious or unconscious way -coming from others' texts, she makes an intertextual translation, and the assimilated material is called intertext 1. At this stage of our exposition, we are not yet interested in defining whether the other's material is originally written or pronounced in the same code as the metatext or in another. For the moment, we need only define whether it is a quotation and, if so, if it is an explicit or implicit one. If, on the other hand, it is an allusion, we need to know how difficult it is for the reader to understand it. Otherwise, the author can also unwillingly echo elements she has absorbed from the semiosphere system.

Torop makes an important point here: «The author and the translator and the reader all have a textual memory» 2. This synthesizing comment has many repercussions on the act of practical translation. This means that, beyond the author's memory, allowing her to insert other's texts in her text, the translator must - if she wants to do a good job - realize the presence of the other's text and make it recognizable to the reader of the metatext.

If, for example, an author "quotes" a passage by someone else without using quotation marks or other graphic devices to indicate the beginning and end points of the quotations, it is very important for the translator to catch the citation and convey it to the reader of the metatext. In every single case the translator must decide how to do that, for instance whether within or outside of the translated text.

It is also very important to remember that the reader has a textual memory, because that determines the possibility to grasp the presence of other's text (intertext) within the declared author's text.

Whenever the reader's textual memory or her encyclopedic ability are insufficient to grasp said intertextual links, the damage is limited to the fruition of this reader and of those who are going to receive information about that text from her. On the other hand, when the reader is the translator - i.e. when the translator's textual memory (or competence) is insufficient - the problem is more complex, because the risk is to be unable to convey in the metatext the mark of other's language (of other's word, in Bakhtinian terms). Such missing links have repercussions not only on one single reader, but on all possible metatext readers.

As to intratextual translation, all that was said about intertextual translation is true, with the exception that, in some way, we have to deal with "inner quotations", of links of the author to herself, from a passage of her work to an other one: it is, therefore, the interweaving of the author's poetics. While the intertext has the semiosphere as a reference system, "intratext" refers to the microsystem of the author's text.

Extratextual translation concerns the intersemiotic translation described by JAkobson. In it, the original material - prototext - is generally verbal text, while metatext is made, for example, of visual images, still, or moving as in film. It can also work the other way round, with a prototext made of music, images and so on, and a verbal metatext.

Every art's language has its own articulation; its composing elements can be completely different. At the same time, however, natural language can be used as a language to describe all of them (metalanguage). Art criticism is actually a description of visual and linguistic art works by means of the natural language 3.

In every art, expressive devices are different, and each art provides expressive capabilities that the other arts may not possess. In cinema, it is the director's creativity that allows her to choose and combine the expressive capabilities available and may be missing in other kinds of codes. Torop gives us a very interesting example of creativity in the choice of cinematographic devices:

[...] in Buñuel's last film That Obscure Object of Desire, where the aged man's incapacity to understand a young woman (later his wife) is rendered - in the psychological space - using two distinct actresses for the role of the same character. In the topographic chronotope, therefore, the lines of the plot see the hero meet two women, that in the psychological chronotope is one concrete and well defined woman in each scene, while in the metaphysical chronotope they are a mysterious and unappreciated woman 4.

In literature, this kind of artistic device would be unfeasible, because what in the film is rendered by an image (the viewer suddenly sees another actress on the screen, but he realizes that she represents the same character as the other), in terms of natural language that would be rendered very clumsily owing to the lengthy and difficult verbal explanation. The writer would need an additional artistic device.

Such reflections have important consequences when we must translate a written text into a film, because the equivalence principle is far from being present, and we must work instead on the different expressive potential of all the codes involved. The analysis

of this kind of problems falls within the framework of the analysis of translation in a broad sense, of total translation.

What we said about the various kinds of translation suggests that a solely linguistic approach to translation studies in inadequate in itself because it "doesn't cover the whole range of translation problems" 5. The methodological contribution of semiotics is necessary because semiotic metalanguage is more open, on one hand, to the different codes or sign systems, and, on the other hand, to the cultural aspects of the translation reception 6.

The core of translation studies must be a universal model of the translation process applicable to all of the various kinds of translation we have talked about. And, on the basis of this model, we must try to describe, without any evaluative purpose, how the translation process works. This because "a science that has as a purpose to describe translation as a process should not be prescriptive, it should be theoretical" 7.

Bibliographical references

EVEN-ZOHAR I. Polysystem Studies. Poetics Today, 11, n. 1, 1990.

GORLÉE, D. L. Semiotics and the problem of translation with special reference to the semiotics of Charles S. Peirce. Amsterdam, Rodopi, 1994.

REVZIN I., ROZENCVEJG V. Osnovy obshchego i mashinnogo perevoda [The bases of general and automatic translation], Moskvà, 1964.

TOROP P. La traduzione totale. Ed. by B. Osimo. Modena, Guaraldi Logos, 2000. ISBN 88-8049-195-4. Or. ed.Total´nyj perevod. Tartu, Tartu Ülikooli Kirjastus [Tartu University Press], 1995. ISBN 9985-56-122-8.

TOURY G. In Search of a Theory of Translation, Tel Aviv University, The Porter Institute for Poetics and Semiotics, 1980.

1 Torop 2000, p. 223-304.2 Torop 2000, p. 31.3 Torop 2000, p. 316.4 Torop 2000, p. 326.5 Torop 2000, p. 188.6 Gorlée 1993; Even-Zohar 1990; Toury 1980.7 Revzin, Rozencvejg 1964, p. 21.

19 - The translation process - part 1ON THE NET - englishJAKOBSÓN

TOROP P. As we said at the end of the previous unit, the unifying element of any translation-science research must be the understanding and description of the translation process that is shared by all the types of translations we have described.

Some researchers tend to distinguish neatly between:

• product-analysis approaches, that concentrate on the translated text or metatext, and

• process-analysis approaches, that concentrate on the process through which from the prototext the metatext is obtained.

According to one of the more important translation scientists, James S. Holmes (1924-1986), who laid the foundations for the new translation-studies discipline, this distinction is nearly impossible at a practical level and does not provide many results:

True, it is very useful to make a distinction between the product-oriented study of translations and the process-oriented study of translating. But this distinction cannot leave to scholar leave to ignore the self-evident fact that the one is the result of the other, and that the nature of the product cannot be understood without a comprehension of the nature of the process 1.

When we say that we want to pay much attention to the translation process in translation science, we have better view of it in a broad sense, i.e. not as something complementary to the translation product. The translation process is viewed as an interrelation between the original and the translated text.

The translator reading the text she is about to translate does so projecting the potential metatexts into a virtual space within which the new text begins to take shape, first in terms of mental material (processing of material as perceived by the translator), then in terms of concrete insertion of such material in a rigid and conventional structure: the future metatext code (the language of the translated text). The human mind takes into exam - a very quick but not always thoroughly conscious way - the various potential possibilities to project the prototext into the metatext language and - with a procedure of choice that has much in common with the games theory 2 - opts for the optimal solution among the prefigured ones.

This selection work is made more complicated by the awareness that often choices made have chain of consequences. To opt for one translating word instead of another precludes some semantic potentials while stressing other possible meanings, creates new intratextual and intertextual links while erasing other possible links. Every temporary choice should be weighed in view of the whole text, and there is never a "final" choice because the evolution of the prototext in relation to the global text is limitless.

The text, as we saw, is a complex entity composed, among other things, of a system of intertextual and intratextual links. One of the aspects which the translator's attention should particularly focus upon is the distinction between standard and marked elements: the neutral/specific nature of an element is to be considered in the light of the cultural context (intertextual links) and of the single author's poetologic context (intratextual links). It is to be viewed in relation to the verbal units immediately preceding and following (co-text) the examined word.

The reader of a poem or the viewer of a painting has a vivid awareness of two orders: the traditional canon and the artistic novelty as a deviation from that canon. It is precisely against the background of the tradition that innovation is conceived. The Formalist studies brought to light that this simultaneous preservation of tradition and breaking away from tradition form the essence of every new work of art 3.

Since there is never a real sign-sign equivalence on the linguistic plane or on the cultural plane, in her projective activity the translator is biased toward certain aspects of the prototext and pays less attention to other elements that she considers of secondary importance. At the basis of the translation activity there is "the choice of the element you consider foremost in the translated production" 4; in other words, the text is to be analyzed with criteria that should be as much objective as possible in order to isolate an element, a dominant, forming the main entity around which the identification of the whole text is built:

The dominant may be defined as the focusing component of a work of art: it rules, determines, and transforms the remaining components. It is the dominant which guarantees the integrity of the structure 5.

Not only literary works can undergo such analysis that determines translation choices: every text has its own dominant. What distinguishes a literary work is, in some cases, the aesthetic function of the dominant:

[...] a poetic work is defined as a verbal message whose aesthetic function is its dominant 6.

In the translation process, the dominant of a text must not be identified depending on the literary/non-literary nature of the prototext. Even if this aspect may appear fundamental in the analysis of the text apart from the translation, in the real translation process we need to concentrate on the complex interweaving of the relations between the role of the prototext in the source culture and language and the role of the metatext in the target culture and language 7.

The theoretical model of the translation process, the core of translation science, should describe the various possibilities in the transfer of the dominant, i.e. the various theoretical possibilities to translate 8.

Bibliographical references

BRJUSOV V. Fialki v tigele [Violets in the crucible], in Sobranie sochinenij v semi tomah [Selected works in seven books], vol. 6, Moskvà 1975.

GORLÉE D. L. Semiotics and the Problem of Translation with Special Reference to the Semiotic of Charles S. Peirce. Alblasserdam, Offsetdrukkerij Kanters, 1993.

HOLMES J. S. Translated! Papers on Literary Translation and Translation Studies. Amsterdam, Rodopi, 1988. ISBN 90-6203-739-9.

TOROP P. La traduzione totale. Ed. by B. Osimo. Modena, Guaraldi Logos, 2000. ISBN 88-8049-195-4. Or. ed.Total´nyj perevod. Tartu, Tartu Ülikooli Kirjastus [Tartu University Press], 1995. ISBN 9985-56-122-8.

1 Holmes 1988, p. 81.2 Gorlée 1993.3 JAkobsón 1987, p. 46.4 Brjusov 1975, p. 106.5 JAkobsón 1987, p. 41.6 JAkobsón 1987, p. 43.7 Torop 2000, p.197.8 Torop 2000, p.197.

20 - The translation process - part 2ON THE NET - english

ECO U.

TOROP P.

TOURY G. The translation process is characterized by an analysis stage and a synthesis stage. During analysis, the translator refers to the prototext in order to understand it as fully as possible. The synthesis stage is the one in which the prototext is projected onto the reader, better, onto the idea that the translator forms of who will be the standard reader of the metatext.

[...] the text postulates the reader's cooperation as a condition for its actualization. Or, better, we can say that a text is a product whose interpretive fate must be part of its generation mechanism: to generate a text means to enact a strategy enclosing the prediction of the other's moves - as, by the way, it happens in every strategy 1.

In other words, Eco tells us that, when we create a text (Eco does not speak about translation, but his points holds for us too) we foresee the reader's moves. We postulate, therefore, the existence of a Model Reader:

The Model Reader is a set of conditions of happiness, textually established, that must be satisfied for a text to be fully actualized in its potential contents 2.

This means that the translator, elaborating her translation strategy, projects the prototext onto her Model Reader, onto a type of reader that she infers from the relation between prototext and target culture. Noone of the real readers, or empirical readers, can therefore coincide completely with the Model Reader. And what Eco tells us is that is that, the more the empirical reader X is different from the postulated model, the less complete will be the actualization of the potential contents of the text, i.e. the less complete the text fruition or understanding will be. This is what happens during the synthesis stage of the translation process.

As we will see better in the following parts of this course, we do not approve of or share in the opposition between "free" and "literal" translation be-cause we do not think that either of these two types of translation can be defined with scientific criteria. Much more interesting is, in our opinion, to concentrate on the dominant of the translation: the translation process can be centered on the analysis phase; in this case, the dominant of the translation is focused on the author of the prototext, and on the translator. The translation process can also be centered on the synthesis stage; in this case the translation dominant will be the focus on the Model Reader of the metatext 3. Of course, the dominant of the prototext and the dominant of the metatext may not always coincide. The two polarities toward which the translation process may be oriented are what Toury calls adequacy principle and acceptability principle. Adequacy is the measure of the adherence of the metatext to the prototext, from the translator's point of view, also considering her deontological principles. Acceptability is, on the other hand, seen in relation to the culture receiving the metatext, the target culture. An exaggeratedly "adequate" translation can be unacceptable, i.e. there may not be any concrete expressions of its Model Reader. This somewhat abstract argument needs some concrete examples if we do not want to loose the thread of what we are saying. One of the most translated books in the world, probably the most translated, is the Bible. The translations made before Martin Luther tend mostly toward the "adequacy" pole, for a very simple reason. The Bible is a sacred text for Jews, Christians and Muslims alike. For this reason, the translators attributed a very high value not only to its contents, but to its form as well: to its sounds, even to the form of its signs; for this reason they tried to produce a version as close to the letter of the original as possible. Martin Luther realized that the German translation of the Bible was incomprehensible to most German speaking believers, and that this fact was causing a gap between the Church and its flock. Therefore, he proposed a more understandable version:

I wanted to speak German and not Latin or Greek, because I had the purpose of speaking German in my translation. [...] One should not ask the letters of the Latin language how one should speak in German, as these asses do; one should ask that of the mother in her home, of the kids in the street, of the common man in the marketplace, and one should watch each mouth to know how they speak and then translate consequently. Then they will understand and realize that we are speaking with them in German 4.

The Roman Catholic Church considered this operation sacrilegious, and was one of the causes of Luther's excommunication. This is how the Lutheran or Protestant religion began. Afterwards, however, the Roman Catholic Church also changed its position and proposed increasingly understandable texts to its believers in a form increasingly close to the "acceptability" pole. The Bible, however, is being translated even today, and sometimes the translations are very different from the most widespread versions, so different that some consider them too far from the "adequacy" principles. Here are some passages from Exodus in the King James version (left column) and in Young's literal version (right column):

1 Now these are the names of the children of Israel, which came into Egypt; every man and his household came with Jacob.2 Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah,3 Issachar, Zebulun, and Benjamin,4 Dan, and Naphtali, Gad, and Asher.5 And all the souls that came out of the loins of Jacob were seventy souls: for Joseph was in Egypt already.6 And Joseph died, and all his brethren, and all that generation.7 And the children of Israel were fruitful, and increased abundantly, and multiplied, and waxed exceeding mighty; and the land was filled with them 5.

1 And these [are] the names of the sons of Israel who are coming into Egypt with Jacob; a man and his household have they come;2 Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah,3 Issachar, Zebulun, and Benjamin,4 Dan, and Naphtali, Gad, and Asher.5 And all the persons coming out of the thigh of Jacob are seventy persons; as to Joseph, he was in Egypt.6 And Joseph dieth, and all his brethren, and all that generation;7 and the sons of Israel have been fruitful, and they teem, and multiply, and are very very mighty, and the land is filled with them 6.

As you can see, Young's version is closer to "adequacy", to the point that some phrases contain no verb (indicated in square brackets), and sometimes phrases are difficult to understand from a grammatical point of view. With this example of the concrete difference between the acceptability principle and the "adequacy" principle, we hope to ease the comprehension of the ideological choices translators and publishers make that have so much influence on the form of translated text.

Bibliographical references

ECO U. Lector in fabula. La cooperazione interpretativa nei testi narrativi. Milano, Bompiani, 1991. ISBN 88-452-1221-1.English edition: The role of the reader: explorations in the semiotics of texts. Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1979

LUTHER M. Sendbrief vom Dolmetschen, 1530.

TOROP P. La traduzione totale. Ed. by B. Osimo. Modena, Guaraldi Logos, 2000. ISBN 88-8049-195-4. Or. ed.Total´nyj perevod. Tartu, Tartu Ülikooli Kirjastus [Tartu University Press], 1995. ISBN 9985-56-122-8.

TOURY G. In Search of a Theory of Translation, Tel Aviv, The Porter Insistute for Poetics and Semiotics, 1980.

1 Eco 1991, p. 54. Author's emphasis.2 Eco 1991, p. 62. Author's emphasis.3 Torop 2000, p. 200 - 201.4 Martin Luther 1530, p. 106.5 The Bible Gateway http://bible.gospelcom.net/6 The Bible Gateway http://bible.gospelcom.net/

Having examined the consequences of a practical nature in the difference between an adequacy-oriented approach and an acceptability-oriented approach, we are aware of the fact that - pointing to the main ideological dichotomy at the basis of any translation - we have stressed the most self-evident and important distinction. Nevertheless, we are still far

from providing a full description of the criteria through which it is possible to define a general model of the translation process. The Danish researcher L. Hjelmslev 1 proposed the distinction, within a text, between, on one hand, form and substance of the content and, on the other hand, the form and substance of expression. In this way, the text is divided into two planes (expression and content), each of which is divided into two parts (form and substance), producing the following quadripartition:

the content substance is, in a sense, objective, and does not vary from one language to another, but points to inherent qualities. For example, colors can be described as a certain range of visible frequencies. What in English is called "green" is, for most English-speaking people, related to a given combination of impressions linked to the perception of wavelengths comprised between 5000 and 5700 angstrom. Therefore, if we superficially think of the translatability of the English concept of "green", we might think that it is easy to transpose it into another language;

the content form: in English, the word "green" points to the content substance we just described. Hjelmslev observes that the content form varies from one language to another. This means that we do not have a perfect match between the semantic fields of similar content forms in different languages. Hjelmslev provides as example the mismatching of the names of colors spanning from green to brown in the English and in the Welsh languages 2:

green gwyrddgreen

glas

blue

glas

gray llwyd

brown

llwyd

Among other examples of mismatching between content form and content substance in different languages are the English words "abortion" and "miscarriage", that in some languages are identified by a single indistinctive word (for example, "aborto" in Italian, "avortement" in French). On the contrary, the content form of English word "hair" in many other languages matches two different words, one indicating the head hair, the other denoting the body hair (for example, in Italian "capello" and "pelo", in French "cheveu" and "poil");

expression substance is the graphic and phonic expression of the content. If an utterance is a graphic expression substance, it has corresponding phonic expression form. Hjelmslev uses as an example the toponym "Berlin" (expression substance), which is translated into different expression forms, depending on the fact if it is pronounced (and then actualized) in German, English, Danish, or Japanese . If, on the other hand, an utterance is a phonic expression substance, it has its graphic expression form. To illustrate, Hjelmslev uses the example of the sound /got/, which corresponds to different expression forms and content substances according to the different languages. The pronunciation of got is the graphic form of the expression that, in English, matches the content substance "past form of to get"; but it also corresponds to the pronunciation of

Gott, the graphic form of the German content substance "God"; and it is the same as the pronunciation of godt, the graphic form of the expression matching the Danish content substance of "well";

expression form is the way in which the expression substance is actualized, i.e. the way in which a graphic form is pronounced or a phonic form is written.

Hjelmslev's distinction between expression plan and content plan is carried on in translation studies by Torop, who postulates that the expression plane (substance and form) of the prototext is

recoded - through the means of the other language and the other culture - into the expression plan of the translated text, while the content plan is transposed into the content plan of the translated text4.

By recoding, we mean a linguistic, formal, style process, while transposition is a process that, as regards literary texts, implies the understanding of the poetic model, of the content structure of the text. The two processes are not, however, independent one of the other. They are interrelated on the methodological plane. When discussing translation problems, however, it is better to consider them separately in order to better understand their different functions within the context of the translation process. Recalling what we have covered in the previous unit, and the distinction between the analysis and synthesis stages, Torop makes use of a model that results from the intersection of the distinction between phases (analysis/synthesis) and the distinction between processes (recoding/transposition). From these two pairs of elements, Torop gets a quadripartition of the potential actualizations of the translation process. Before exposing a taxonomy of the various kinds of translation, Torop states his general definition of "adequate translation": it is a translation in which transposition and recoding go through the analysis and synthesis stages, preserving the peculiar interrelations between expression and content plans of a given text in the process. In other words, the dominant of the original is preserved. However, there are many ways to preserve the peculiar interrelations between expression and content plans (to preserve the dominant of the prototext). Depending on the means the translator chooses, she may produce various translations that can be equally "adequate" . "Adequate" translations are further subdivided by Torop into "dominant-centered" [dominant-nye], and "autonomous", i.e. having the purpose of transmitting only one of the plans of the prototext. For example, an autonomous translation could be the prose translation of a poem 6. Summing the quadripartition analysis/synthesis and transposition/recoding and the dichotomy dominant-centered/autonomous, Torop produces the following eight-part model 7.

adequate translationadequate translationadequate translationadequate translationadequate translationadequate translationadequate translationadequate translation

recodingrecodingrecodingrecoding transpositiontranspositiontranspositiontransposition

analysisanalysis synthesissynthesis analysisanalysis synthesissynthesis

autonomus dominant-centered

autonomous dominant-centered

autonomous

dominant-centered

autonomous

dominant-centered

macro-style precision micro-style quotation theme description expression freedom

In the next unit we will examine in detail this model.

Bibliographical references

HJELMSLEV L. I fondamenti della teoria del linguaggio. A cura di Giulio C. Lepschy. Torino, Einaudi, 1975. Or. ed.Omkring Sprogteoriens Grundlæggelse, København, Festskrift udg. af Københavns Universitet, 1943. English translation: Prolegomena to a Theory of Language, ed. by F. J. Whitfield, University of Wisconsin, 1961.

TOROP P. La traduzione totale. Ed. by B. Osimo. Modena, Guaraldi Logos, 2000. ISBN 88-8049-195-4. Or. ed.Total´nyj perevod. Tartu, Tartu Ülikooli Kirjastus [Tartu University Press], 1995. ISBN 9985-56-122-8.

1 Hjelmslev 1975.2 Hjelmslev 1975, p. 58.3 Hjelmslev 1975, p. 61.4 Torop 2000, p. 200.5 Torop 2000, p. 200 6 Torop 2000, p. 56.7 Torop 2000, p. 204.