Text analysis in translation

In spoken discourse there are situations where the hearer would not perceive any mimical expressions or gestures of the speaker because of the spatial distance between them (e.g. in an electoral speech on a market square). And there are text types or functions where the use of non-verbal signals is conventionally forbidden. In these cases, non-verbal elements are more and more replaced by suprasegmental linguistic signs, such as stress, intonation, slowing down, etc., which can even develop into genre-specific features (e.g. sermon).

In written communication, mimical expressions or gestures cannot be used; but the reduced pragmatic contextuality of written texts must, of course, be compensated for. This is done partly by the selection of particular verbal elements, especially those representing supra-segmental features in writing (e.g. punctuation, dash, bold type), and partly by additional non-verbal means, such as pictures (a photo of the author, a cartoon illustrating the subject, a drawing showing how to hold the handle of a machine). It may happen that the non-verbal elements convey a piece of information that is even more relevant to the reader than the message transmitted by the text. A number in small print on the label of a wine bottle may in itself be of little interest, but it tells the "connoisseur" more about the quality of the wine than the name.

The range of non-verbal elements used in literature extends from the ancient acrostics to the typographical means which are found in the poems of Klopstock or Stefan George, Apollinaire or E. E. Cummings.

Non-verbal elements can belong to the conventional form of certain text types, such as the shorter lines of traditional poetic texts or the "small print" in contracts.

Of course, it is not always the author or sender with their specific communicative intention who is responsible for the layout and format of a text. But no matter who makes the final decision on text organization - the effect that these elements produce on the receiver remains the same. If the translation skopos requires "equivalence of effect", the translator must, therefore, take account of all types of nonverbal elements.

Illustrations, diagrams, drawings of certain operations, etc. are conventional supplements or even form an integral part of operating instructions or manuals. In some cases it may even be convenient for the translator to try and carry out the instructions him or herself in order to check the coherence of verbal and non-verbal elements and the functionality of the text.

The analysis of non-verbal text elements usually yields some information about the aspects of text composition (e.g. paragraph markers), presuppositions (e.g. marks of omission), lexis (e.g. facial expressions which suggest an ironic meaning), and suprasegmental features (e.g. shortened lines in a poem). Of the extratextual factors it is mainly the intention of the sender and the function of the text which may be characterized by non-verbal elements.

The importance of non-verbal elements in translation Non-verbal text elements are, like verbal elements, culture-specific. Within the framework of a translation-relevant ST analysis the translator has to find out which of the non-verbal elements of the ST can be preserved in translation and which have to be adapted to the norms and conventions of the target culture. A particular logo or name which is intended to have a positive connotation in the source culture may be associated with a negative value in the target culture; the TC conventions may not allow the graphic representation of a certain piece of information; the TC genre norms may require non-verbal instead of verbal representation, etc. What is taken for granted as regards linguistic text elements (that they have to be "translated"), is not always accepted for non-verbal elements, because initiators are often unwilling to commit themselves to the extra expense involved in adapting nonverbal material.

It is not difficult to identify the non-verbal elements of the source text, as they are usually fairly obvious and often predictable in certain media or text types. But it is important in each case to analyze the function of these elements. Quotation marks, for example, can point to an ironical meaning (in which case they represent a suprasegmental feature, i.e. a certain intonation) or to a neologism introduced ad hoc and explained in the text or to a reference to somebody else's utterances (in which case the text producer may want to express a mental reservation, which would have been marked by a wink of the eye in spoken discourse).

Checklist

The following questions may lead to a functional interpretation of

non-verbal elements:

Which non-verbal elements are included in the text?

Which function do they perform with regard to the verbal text parts?

Are they conventionally bound to the text type?

Are they determined by the medium?

Are they specifically linked to the source culture?

Lecture 3. Lexis and Sentence

Lexis

The choice of lexis is determined by both extra and intratexrual factors. Therefore, the characteristics of the lexical items used in a text often yield information not only about the extratextual factors, but also about other intratextual aspects. For example, the semantic and stylistic characteristics of lexis (e.g. connotations, semantic fields, register) may point to the dimensions of content, subject matter, and presuppositions, whereas the formal and grammatical characteristics (e.g. parts of speech, word function, morphology) refer the analyst to predictable syntactic structures and suprasegmental features.

Intratextual determinants of lexis

The selection of lexical items is largely determined by the dimensions of subject matter and content. Depending on the subject matter, certain semantic fields will be represented by more items than others, and the textual connection of key words will constitute isotopic chains throughout the text.

In this context, morphological aspects (suffixes, prefixes, compositions, acronyms, etc.), collocations, idioms, figurative use (metonymy, metaphor), etc. have to be analysed from the point of view of textual semantics. Componential analysis, etymological investigations, and comparative lexicological studies can also be helpful when the meaning of certain words, especially of neologisms, is not clear.

Extratextual determinants of lexis

The field of lexis, on the other hand, illustrates particularly well the interdependence of extratextual and intratextual factors. The extratextual factors not only set the frame of reference for the selection of words, but they are themselves often -directly or indirectly - mentioned in the text. I will therefore deal with the extratextual factors one by one in order to explain the impact these factors can have on the choice of lexical items.

The first question is whether or not the expectations deriving from the external information and clues as to the general character of the sender (time, geographical and social origin, education, status, etc.) or his/her particular position regarding the analysed text (e.g. communicative role) are verified by the text. This also applies to any internal sender who may be mentioned or presupposed in the text, e.g. in the case of quotations or in fictional texts. If the analysis confirms the expectations, such characteristics can be assumed to be non-intentional; if not, it seems likely that by disappointing the receiver's expectations the sender wanted to produce a certain effect. If there is little or no external information on the sender, the analysis of the pragmatic aspects of lexis may provide some clues to the person of the sender.

The second question is whether the author is mentioned in the text as sender. In such a case, the use of the first person, of expressions like in my view in contrast with other persons' opinions, etc. gives the readers the impression that the sender is addressing them directly. In non-fictional texts we can assume that the first person really does refer to the author. For some text types, there are even conventions as to how authors should refer to themselves, e.g. the use of the first person plural or the third person singular

As far as the impact of the sender's intention on lexis is concerned, we have to ask whether and how the intention is reflected by the selection of words or, if there is no external information, what intention can be inferred from the use of words in the text. It is the pragmatic aspect of intentionality in the sense of "concrete interest" underlying the text production which is being analysed in this context.

This intentionality is reflected by those characteristics of lexis which are not due to the specific situational conditions or to norms and conventions, as well as by those features which appear to signal an intentional "violation" of any norms and conventions valid both for the genre in question and for the conditions of medium, place, time, and motive of communication characterizing the situation of the text. This means that a feature of lexis can be assumed to be intentional if the translator has to analyse the interest and the purpose which induced the author to use precisely this expression, this figure, this word.

Example

Language can be used, for example, to camouflage the real significance of an event, as is shown in the following paragraph from an article on "doublespeak": "Attentive observers of the English language also learned recently that the multi-billion-dollar stock market crash of 1987 was simply a fourth-quarter equity retreat; that aircraft don't crash, they have uncontrolled contact *with the ground; that janitors are environmental technicians; that it was a diagnostic misadventure of a high magnitude which caused the death of a patient in a Philadelphia hospital, not malpractice; and that Ronald Reagan wasn't really unconscious while he underwent minor surgery, just in a non-decision-making form." (THE SUNDAY TIMES, 7 January 1990)

In order to elicit the sender's intention it seems advisable to analyse the "degree of originality" of the lexis used in the text. This is common practice with similes and metaphors. But it can also be applied to other figures of speech, such as the adoption of words from other areas of lexis (e.g. language for special purposes in a general text), other registers (e.g. slang words in a formal text), or from regional or social dialects, and to the metonymic use of words (e.g. the Pentagon for the US Ministry of Defense). In all these cases the translator has to examine whether the choice of words is common or at least standardised for certain text types or whether it can be regarded as original or even extravagant.

The analysis of various lexical items in a text can often show that a particular stylistic feature is characteristic of the whole text. If the translation skopos requires the preservation of such features, individual translation decisions (in the field of lexis as well as content, composition, sentence structure, etc.) have to be subordinated to this purpose. The translator has to plan the translation strategies with this overall purpose in mind, looking for the stylistic means which serve to achieve this purpose in the target language and culture instead of translating metaphor by metaphor or simile by simile.

Similarly, the translator should also assess the stylistic implications of the author's "semantic intentionality". Semantic intentionality refers to the reasons which have induced the author to select one particular piece of information for his or her text from the wide range of all possible information, and to the effect that this choice has on the audience. This can be of particular importance in fictional texts since it may be assumed that the number of informational details which the author may choose from is limited only by the situational conditions. The decision to take one specific detail rather than another constitutes an important clue to the author's (stylistic, literary) intention.

A text may not only contain implicit clues to the sender's intention, but also explicit expressions or (often conventional) cliches by which the sender's intention is announced.

Example

"Our aim is therefore to replace a sporadic approach with a systematic one; to minimise - we can never remove - the intuitive element in criteria of analysis." (From the Introduction to Crystal & Davy 1969: 14).

The medium mainly influences the level of style of the lexical elements (colloquial, formal), word formation (e.g. abbreviated words or acronyms as used in mobile phone messages) and deictic expressions (e.g. operating instructions, which come to the receiver together with the machine).

Example

Just a few examples of typical newspaper abbreviations and compounds, collected from one page of THE SUNDAY TIMES (7 January 1990, p. El); Ј215m fraud, pre-tax profits, RAF, ISC, CSF, GEC, GrandMet, Bond Corp, a pubs-for-breweries swap, the UK dairy-produce company, cash-rich institutions, PR group.

The aspect of time is also reflected in deictic elements, in internal time references, and in temporal markings of certain lexical items. This last aspect is particularly relevant both to the translation of old texts and to that of texts whose language is marked as "modern". In old texts we would not expect "modernisms" (and vice versa).

However, the translator has to decide whether the translation skopos requires a "synchronous" or an "actualizing" translation. As it might be difficult for a 21st century translator to render a text in the language of the 18th century, s/he should at least take care not to use typically 21st century lexis (e.g. fashion words).

In Jonathan Swift's A Voyage to Lilliput, archaic forms like giveth, mathema-ticks, physick, Old Jury instead of Old Jewry, my self and words like hosier (in the 1735 edition, reprinted in Gulliver s Travels, Everyman's Library, London 1940) mark the text as "old" without being an obstacle to comprehension. The German translation (Swift 1983), however, is written in unmarked modern German.

Certain text types, such as legal documents, are characterized by archaic lexis.

The motive or occasion for communication may influence the choice of lexis by requiring a particular level of style (e.g. in a funeral address) or certain formulas or cliches. This can be an important aspect when the target text is intended to be used on a different occasion from that of the source text.

Text function (in correlation with the text type) is also frequently reflected in the choice of lexical items. For example, some examples of typical lexical features of the language of newspaper reporting: complex pre and postmodification, typical adjective compounds such as more and faster-arriving, sequences of adjectives; emphatic and colloquial lexis, etc. Language for special purposes and metalanguage are other function-specific fields of word use. Genre conventions point to the fact that the sender is interested in subordinating form to content, thus setting guidelines for a particular effect of the text. If the function changes within the text, the use of text-type conventions or of functional style can signal a particular stylistic interest on the part of the author.

Checklist

The following questions may be helpful in analysing the lexis used in a text.

1. How are the extratextual factors reflected in the use of lexis (regional and social dialects, historical language varieties, choice of register, medium-specific lexis, conventional formulas determined by occasion or function, etc.)?

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