In the previous units, we examined some points of view on
translatability extrapolated from the thought of linguists,
philosophers, semioticians, and culturologists. From their often
diverging opinions it is difficult to synthesize a common position to
consider a temporary conclusion in translation studies on the
"translatability" concept.
The only element emerging clearly from all quoted
essays is maybe that the "translation" notion is indefinite. There are
many views on the language/culture, language/thought relations. We
have seen that, in Lotman's view, the teeming life in the semiosphere
is a swarm of translations. In this view, translatability is a sort of
chlorophyll for the photosynthesis of cultural life, without which
culture would come to an end.
The moment a person understands a notion, within the
dynamic standpoint of linguistic-textual-cultural communication we can
consider such act a radical translation phenomenon. But if, on one
hand, everyone can understand (translate) a phenomenon in her own way,
giving a personal, original contribution to semiosphere, on the other
hand there is a sort of "standard perception", a standard, undefined
mode in which a text is read (interpreted), in which some of its
cultural and textual connotations are perceived
1 .
Beyond the possibility to freely interpret any cultural
object, which may reach the extreme of what Eco calls "aberrant
decoding", there also is
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culture as education, memory, and perception by the reader of any new
text depending on the cultural experience of the perceiver, to the
point that in a sense any text in a reader's hands has already been
read; in other words, it is immediately subjected to customary rules,
peculiarities are neutralized, novelties lost. While, at the opposite
extreme, there is encompassed within the text itself, an image of the
audience, that is, the possibility of a given optimal perception
2.
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In Torop's opinion, as there cannot be a single
approach to translatability, it is possible to isolate three distinct
aspects:
translatability as a cultural-linguistic and poetic aspect of
the text: the approach inducing one to view the
translatability/untranslatability spectrum along the axis of texts, of
their intrinsic features, independent of the interaction between a
text and a single reader, i.e. from the single fruition;
translatability of the perceptive or conceptual unit of the text:
the same view as in the previous point, but here the text is thought
of in the form of a fragment, not as a whole;
translatability as pre-definability of the reception of a text
in a given culture; in this case, the relation is emphasized between
a given text and a given culture, and the potential interactions are
analyzed.
Translators can choose one of these aspects considering them
different dominants in the approach toward the text to be translated.
Beyond this group of possible dominants, referring to text, the
prototext, the translator, or the receiving culture may also be
translation dominants.
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In the first case, the original itself dictates its optimal
translatability. In the second case the translator, as a creative
personality, realizes herself through the choice of the translation
method, and the translation method indicates the definition of the
level of translatability. In the third case, the translator founds her
strategy on the possible reader of the metatext, or on the cultural
(social, political) norms; in other words, she defines the degree of
translatability based on the conditions of perception. They are three
general types of translatability
3.
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Moreover, Torop isolates five translatability
parameters, each matching a different translation strategy. Let us
look at the table showing the description of the single parameters in
the left column and, in the right column, the corresponding
translation strategies 4:
CULTURE TRANSLATABILITY
| Translatability parameters |
Translation strategies |
Language:
grammar categories
realia
conversational etiquette
associations
world image
discourse
|
nationalization (naturalization)
trans-nationalization
denationalization
mélange
|
Time:
historical
authorial
of the events
cultural
|
archaization
historization
modernization
neutralization
|
Space:
social
geographic
psychological
|
perceptive concretization:
localization
visualization
naturalization
exotization
neutralization
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Text:
gender signals
chronotopic levels
narrator and narration
expressive aura of the character
author lexicon and syntax
expression media system
|
preservation/non-preservation of the structure (element and level hierarchy)
preservation/non-preservation of cohesion
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Work:
metatext complementarity
(book):
presupposition
interpretation
readers reaction
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readers version
intratextual clarification
interlinear commentaries
special commentaries at the end
general systematic commentaries
metatextual compensation
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Socio-political manipulation:
norms and taboos (editio purificata)
translation tendentiousness
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(tendentious) purification of the texts
text orientation
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In the next unit, we will examine, one by one, each parameter and
its corresponding strategies.
Bibliographical references
ECO U. Interpretation and Overinterpretation. Umberto Eco with Richard Rorty, Jonathan Culler, Christine Brooke-Rose; edited by Stefan Collini.
Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1992. ISBN 0521402271 (hard) 0521425549 (pbk.).
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 Torop 2000, p. 141.
2 Eco 1995, p. 82. Torop 2000, p. 141.
3 Torop 2000, p. 142-143.
4 Torop 2000, p. 157.
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