«"[...] the current that brings the sentences to [..]
stop for a moment before being absorbed by the
circuits of her mind [...]» 1.
At the end of the previous unit, we touched on the
subject of the honing of perception, allowing, with practice, to detect
finer and finer details. More than that, with practice it is possible to
improve the duration, complexity, and depth of concentration on the
perceptual act. Gibson's examples concern a production engineer who can
oversee a long sequence of mechanical operations, or a pilot who can keep
track of all the information provided by his various instruments.
Without a great stretch of the imagination, we can fancy what
such refinement of perceptual abilities can mean when applied to
translation activities. Obviously, the great concentration ability of a
simultaneous interpreter comes easily to mind - many operations, not
only those of a perceptual nature, to be carried out within an extremely
short time span. Or that of a translator who is reading and, at the same
time, has to keep track of all the inner and outer balances the utterance
has in connection with the whole text: numerous synthesis and analysis
operations carried out without the same pressure of the time limitations
imposed on an interpreter, but which force her to focus on the structure
as a whole and not on individual perceptual.
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The spatial relations in an array, and the temporal relations
in a sequence, permit the information to be taken in progressively
larger and longer units or "chunks". One can finally grasp the
simultaneous composition of a whole panel of instruments or a
panorama, and apprehend the successive composition of a whole
production line or a whole symphony 2.
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Refinement of perceptual ability does not necessarily
impose an active a role for memory. As it is possible to think without
recalling, it is also possible to learn without remembering. Just as
sensations are occasional and incidental symptoms of perceiving,
"conscious remembering is an occasional and incidental symptom of
learning" 3.
Given that Gibson uses the adjective "conscious", we are lead to think
that, when he writes that these operations do not impose the use of
memory, the American psychologist refers only to conscious memory. We
could reformulate some of his further statements this way: it is possible
to think without using conscious memories, taking for granted the automatic
and unknowing use of associations and memories.
The same can be said about recognition: as we can recognize a
person we know we have already met and not know who is she or where we met,
it is, therefore, possible to recognize a word without remembering
anything else about it. This is another argument suggesting the
disconnection of learning and conscious memory.
Let us now see how Gibson's theory of information collection
explains the effect of language on perception, a subject of still greater
interest to many translators.
Unlike previous theories that consider language a sort of code
for labeling the reality perceived (drawing the conclusion that words, with
their semantic limitations, limit perceptual capabilities confining the
blurred perceptions to restricted coded definitions), Gibson postulates
that language can have predication capabilities as well. It is not
accidental that language is built with grammar, not only with vocabulary
or, to say it in JAkobsonian terms, that it has syntagmatic association
capabilities, beyond paradigmatic combination capabilities. The endless
combinability of words, despite the (supposed) finiteness of each word,
greatly increases the predication capabilities and, consequently, the
expressive and interpretive potential. Gibson's conclusion is that
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Selection is inevitable. But this does not imply that the
verbal fixing of information distorts the perception of
the world 4.
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Having perceived an object, the observer goes on and
detects what Gibson calls affordances. Let us read in his own words about
what he means by this term, coined by Gibson himself, then used by many
researchers and spread all over the world exclusively in its English
version.
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I have coined this word as a substitute for values, a term
which carries an old burden of philosophical meaning. I mean
simply what things furnish, for good or ill. What they afford
the observer, after all, depends on their properties 5.
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With a polemic attitude toward the psychology based
exclusively on laboratory experiments, and perhaps, also toward perceptual
limitations postulated by the Gestalt school, Gibson sees the environmental,
contextual aspect of perception in a new light. In a Darwinian
perspective, according to which we must continuously adapt ourselves to
our environment, we grasp the affordance of each object; in the case of an
object or of a word, we do not limit ourselves to the fixed, denoted
meaning, which would set insurmountable limits to perception, we also
perceive the connotative, contextual, environmental meaning.
If observer and observed environment are not abstract entities
but are part of one context, this implies the impossibility of any kind of
objective, detached observation "from without", in the same way as a
fixed, cold, unrepeatable reading is impossible. The observer is part of
the environment surrounding her as well as the text she is reading, so that
each reading, each textual perception is, at the same time, a self-analysis 6.
In turn, from this consideration derives the notion that each
act of reading, in which one reads the text and at the same time, oneself,
is a more or less subjective interpretation. A notion we will return to
repeatedly during this second part of the translation course dedicated to
the perception of the text by the translator.
In the following units, we will touch upon the relationships
between language and thought.
Bibliographical references
CALVINO I. If on a Winter's Night a Traveller, translated by William Weaver, London, Vintage, 1998, ISBN 0-7493-9923-6.
GIBSON J. J. The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems, Westport (Connecticut), Greenwood Press, 1983, ISBN 0-313-23961-4. Prima edizione: 1966.
LOSTIA M. Modelli della mente, modelli della persona. Le due anime della psicologia, Firenze, Giunti, 1994. ISBN 88-09-20556-1.
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