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.
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The translator recodes
and transmits a message received from another source 2.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Facts are unlike to speakers whose language background
provides for unlike formulation of them 7
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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.
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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.
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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.
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ON THE NET
(english)
JAKOBSÓN R.
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