Учебное пособие: Text analysis in translation

Example

a)The difference in cultural or social level could be called "downgrade" or "upgrade", depending on whether it is seen from the lower or the higher level.

b)The distance between London and Liverpool is much "shorter" as perceived by a Texan than by an Englishman,

c) The names of places, areas and tribes listed in Act 2, 9-11, do not make sense as a description of the "horizon of the Jewish world" unless Syria is assumed to be the place of text production, and not Jerusalem, where the Pentecostal event is set.

What to find out about the dimension of space

In the dimension of space we have to consider not only linguistic aspects but also cultural and political conditions. A text published in a country where literature is censored must be read "in another light" than a text whose author has not been subject to any restrictions, since authors under censorship often write "between the lines".

In addition to the name of the state or country the text comes from, it may even be necessary to know the exact area or town of text production in order to be able to interpret the deictic elements correctly. This applies to the ST as well as to the TT, which would normally be read in the target cultural environment.

Example

In the case of newspaper articles, the place where the paper is published is normally taken to be the place of text production as well. Therefore, readers of the Sunday Times can assume that the information "Mortgage cut in sight" refers to Great Britain, while all articles on the first page of the international edition of the Herald Tribune have to indicate the place the article refers to: "U.S. Banks Lower Prime Interest Rate", "In Leipzig, Protesters Fear Resurgence of Communist Power", "Tamil Guerrilla Army Nears Goal in Sri Lanka", etc. If correspondents send their reports from somewhere else, the place of text production is usually specified together with the author's name ("By David Binder, New York Times Service, Bucharest") or at the beginning of the text ("LEIPZIG, East Germany"), so that the reader can interpret a sentence as "Now everything is quiet around here again" correctly. In a translation, too, the dimension of place has to be specified either externally (e.g. in an introduction) or internally (e.g. "Now everything is quiet around Leipzig again").

Information about the place of text production also gives an indication of the cultural affiliation of the sender and/or the addressees, the medium (in the case of culture-bound or culture-specific media), the motive (at least where combined with the dimension of time) arid the in-tratextual features (such as regional dialect or deictic expressions).

How to obtain information about the dimension of space

As a rule, information about the dimension of space can be found in the text environment in the form of the place of publication, the name of the publishing company, the first edition details, or newspaper headlines, or in the secondary literature. Sometimes, it is presupposed to be part of the receiver's general background knowledge (e.g. in the case of publications by international organizations or institutions or by world-famous writers). From the intratextual point of view, certain linguistic features may provide a clue as to where the text was written or intended to be read.

Other clues may be obtained from the information about the sender (e.g.: Where did s/he live, work, etc.?), the addressed audience (e.g.: What culture-specific information may be presupposed to be known by the receiver?), medium (e.g.: Is it bound to a certain culture?), or motive (e.g.: Is it a culture-specific motive?).

Checklist

The following questions may help to find out the relevant information about the place of communication:

1.Where was the text produced or transmitted? Is any information on the dimension of space to be found in the text environment? Is any information on space presupposed to be part of the receiver's general background knowledge?

2.What clues as to the dimension of space can be inferred from other situational factors (sender, receiver, medium, motive)?

3.What conclusions can be drawn from the data and clues obtained about the dimension of space as regards

(a)other extratextual factors (sender, receiver, medium, motive) and

(b)the intratextual features?

Lecture 3. The relevance of the dimension of time and text function

Time of communication

Every language is subject to constant change in its use and its norms. So the time of text production is, first and foremost, an important pre-signal for the historical state of linguistic development the text represents. This applies not only to language use as such (from the sender's point of view) but also to the historical comprehension of linguistic units (from the receiver's point of view), which is itself bound to a certain period or epoch, since linguistic changes are usually determined by socio-cultural changes.

Moreover, this process of change affects the area of text types. Certain genres are linked to a particular period (e.g. oracles and epic poems as opposed to weather reports and television plays), and, of course, genre conventions also undergo change. Depending on the age of the text, the receiver/translator may have totally different expectations as to the typical features of the text type in question. S/he may even expect obsolete forms that are not used any more.

Example

Being asked what they thought to be the typical syntactic feature of a German recipe, the majority of competent native speakers of German mention the subjunctive of the present tense: "Man nehme...", whereas modern German recipes are written exclusively in infinitive constructions. Today, thesubjunctive is used only to give a recipe an old-fashioned touch, as if it was from Grandmother s Recipe Book.

In addition to the linguistic aspects, the dimension of time can throw some light on the communicative background of the sender and the addressed audience, and thus provide a clue