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SOCIOLINGUISTICS AND TRANSLATION: LANGUAGE VARIETIES IN

TRANSLATION
One of the main areas of interest of sociolinguistics is the study of language
varieties, i.e. of the ways in which (the same) language may differ in time, between
geographical areas or different groups separated by certain social criteria (e.g.,
ethnicity, religion, social status, gender, level of education, age, etc.);

The area of language varieties illustrates better than any other area of study the
close connection between 1) the users of language, 2) the language they speak and
3) the particular situation of communication they are in.

The study of language varieties also highlights the importance of the concept of
context defined by Hatim-Mason as “the extra-textual environment which exerts a
determining influence on the language used” (1990: 240).

From a translation perspective, language varieties play a crucial part when it comes
to the choices a translator has to make as to which TL variety (s)he should use in
translation, according to the context of communication in the source or target
language and culture.

Classifications of language varieties

A. One of the best known classifications of language varieties belongs to
Halliday, Mc. Intosh and Strevens (1964), who recognise as criteria of
language variation:
1) the user of language himself/herself, and
2) the use to which (s)he puts language.

B. Another classification was suggested by J. C. Catford (1965), who divides

language varieties into two major classes:

1) those which are more or less permanent for a given performer or group of
performers;
2) the transient ones, which change with each communicative situation.

 In principle, user-related language varieties are permanent, whereas use-

related ones are transient.

A. User-related, permanent language varieties

 User-related language varieties include idiolects and dialects. They are both
deviations from a standard ‘unmarked’ language used in mass-media.
  The idiolect is a language variety related to the identity of the
speaker/performer. It has to do with each speaker’s highly personal way of
using the same language, his/her favourite expressions, different
pronunciations of particular words, as well as a tendency to over-use specific
syntactic structures. For the translator of literary texts, idiolect is relevant
both when identifying an author’s style or when a writer portrays his/her
characters through their peculiar way of speaking. Thus, for instance, great
humourists such as Charles Dickens and Ion Luca Caragiale make ample use
of it and their translators try to preserve the characters’ idiolects. In Charles
Dickens’s David Copperfield, for instance, Uriah Heep’s idiolect is wonderfully
appropriate for the character’s slyness and hypocrisy:

ST: Oh, really Master Copperfield... I beg your pardon Mister Copperfield, but the other comes
so natural. I don’t like that you should put a constraint upon yourself to ask an’ umble person
like me to your’ ouse.

TT: Oh, zău, domnişorule Copperfield..., vă cer iertare, domnule Copperfield, îmi vine mai uşor să
vă spun domnişorule, nu vreau să vă silesc să poftiţi în casa Dumneavoastră un om atât de umil
ca mine.” (translated by Ionel Jianu)

 Dialects have a) geographical, b) temporal or c) social dimensions.

a) Geographical dialects correspond to geographical variation and may reveal the

provenance area of the performer. However, the dynamics of geographical variation
are too complex to describe easily. Thus, for instance, the use of dialect may also
have ideological and political implications (it may reveal the speaker’s nationalism or
patriotism); geographical dialect may, sometimes, be related to the speaker’s lack of
formal education or to a more careless form of language, or to familiar language
used in informal situations.

- EXAMPLE 1: Creangă wrote Memories of My Boyhood in Moldavian dialect as used in

19th century Romania (temporal dimension).

ST: “Ei, măi băieţi, ia amu trageţi la aghioase, zise un plăieş.”

TT: “Now, boys, let us lie down and sleep it off, one of the men said.
(translated by Ana Cartianu and R. C. Johnston)

Translating geographical dialects is a real obstacle to translation. On the one hand, rendering ST
dialect by standard TL has the disadvantage of losing the special effect intended by the use
of dialect in the ST; on the other hand, rendering dialect by dialect runs the risk of creating
unintended effects. In the previous example, the translators replaced geographical dialect
by familiar, informal language in the TT. However, the geographical dimension of dialect
was, inevitably, lost.
 - EXAMPLE 2: In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain uses no less than
seven dialects. Huck himself speaks the south-western dialect and Jim the African-
American dialect. As this geographical diversity cannot be preserved in the TL, the
Romanian translator also replaced dialect by informal and, in Jim’s case, even
broken Romanian language:

ST (Huck): “Gone away? Why, what in the nation do you mean? I hain’t been gone
anywheres. Where would I go to?
(Jim): “Well, looky here, boss, dey’s sumfn wrong, dey is (...) Is I heah or whah is I?”

TT: (Huck): “Eu, plecat? Ce tot îndrugi acolo? N-am fost plecat nicăieri. Unde puteam să
plec?”
(Jim): “Ascultă, Huck, aici nu lucru curat, asta sigur. Dacă Jim nu aici unde?”
(translated by Petre Solomon)

b) Temporal dialects reflect language change through time. Each generation has its
own linguistic fashions, its favourite words and expressions, and present-day
readers could, for instance, try to read texts written at least 50 years ago to realize
how much language has changed – on both lexical and, sometimes, even syntactic
level. For the particular case of ‘very old texts’ translations are still expected by
contemporary readers to have a communicative value, i.e. ‘to make sense’ and have
an impact on them. This is why translations of old texts are generally a combination
of archaic words and phrases with contemporary language.

c) Social dialects (Sociolects) emerge in response to social stratification within a

speech community. In this case, translators are, once again, confronted with
problems of comprehensibility with ideological, political and social implications.
Social dialects are more clearly defined in English than in Romanian. Phonological
features may be relevant in this respect as well. English U and non-U dialects can be
rendered into Romanian by the contrastive pair educated/careful as opposed to
uneducated/careless language. Social dialects are frequently used by “realistic”
writers as a means of emphasizing a character’s social position, his/her belonging
to a particular social class/category.

In the children’s novel Little Lord Fauntleroy, Frances Hodgson Burnett often uses the
interplay between sociolects and geographical dialects in order to better portray her
characters:

ST (Upper class-the Earl): “What is it? It is evident something has happened. What was
the extraordinary event, if I may ask?”

TT: “Ce s-a întâmplat? E limpede că s-a întâmplat ceva. Ce eveniment extraordinar, dacă
pot să mă exprim aşa, te-a tulburat într-atât?”
 ST (Lower class-Bridget): “Oh, Master Ceddie! (...) It’s twinty-foive dollars is here. Where
be’s the misthress?

TT “Vai de mine, domnişorule Ceddie!(...) Aici îs douăşcinci de dolari! Unde-i stăpâna?”

(translated by Rodica Buţureanu)

 As can be seen from the examples above, it is easier to provide equivalents

for social than for geographical dialects.

B. Use-related, transient language varieties

 This second category of language variation sheds light on conscious stylistic choices
made by language users according to different situations of communication. In other
words, a relationship exists between a given situation and the language used in it.
These varieties are called registers and they are defined “in terms of differences in
grammar, vocabulary, etc., between two samples of language activity such as a sports
commentary and a church service.”(Hatim-Mason, 1990: 46)
 One can distinguish three basic aspects of register: field of discourse (domeniul
discursiv), mode of discourse
and tenor of discourse.
 The field of discourse refers, in fact, to the field of activity which may be medicine,
journalism, mathematics, sports, agriculture, advertising, etc. For example, a doctor
uses a different language in his surgery, when discussing a diagnosis with a
colleague, from the language (s)he uses, for instance, with his / her family at home.

 Translations should, obviously, reflect all these variations in the field of

discourse. If the field of discourse is quite clearly delimited, the translations into
Romanian should be culturally and communicatively relevant to their readers. In
the examples below, the field of discourse is marked in brackets. If you translate
them into Romanian you will be able to realize differences in the language used
which are triggered by differences in the field of discourse:

- A Taste of India (title of an illustrated book on Indian cooking)

- Johnny Walker-born 1820, and still going strong (advert for Johnny Walker whisky)
- CANADA-THE BIG COUNTRY FOR BIG VALUE HOLIDAYS (tourist brochure)
- Store in a cool dry place. Keep well out of reach of children (standard instructions on
medicine boxes).
- Add soup mix and milk and simmer for five minutes (instructions on a soup sachet),
etc.
  The mode of discourse refers to the medium of the language activity. The basic
distinction here is the one between speech and writing and the various
permutations on such a distinction, such as, for instance, written language to be
spoken as if not written, written language to be read aloud, etc. As a general
remark, it is well-known that written messages require a higher degree of
elaboration and self-control, a distinction that translators can preserve in most
languages. It is nevertheless quite common for fluctuations in mode to be
inappropriately reflected in translated materials.

 The tenor of discourse illustrates the relationship between the

participants in communication, between the addresser and the addressee. This
relationship may be analysed in terms of basic distinctions such as polite-colloquial-
intimate language on a scale of categories which range from formal to informal. The
linguist Martin Joos refers to tenor as ‘style’. He distinguishes between 1) frozen; 2)
formal; 3) consultative; 4) casual and 5) intimate styles. Thus, Good day, Sir, will
appear as frozen; good-bye as formal; so long as, perhaps, casual; bye-bye, ta-ta -
intimate, etc.

 Use-related varieties of language also called registers raise no translation problems

as they exist in all languages.

C. Slang

 An overlap between dialect and register manifests itself in the case of slang, which
has clear social and temporal dimensions. As a temporal dialect, it is a ‘novelty
language’ used, in a more consistent way, by the younger generations
(‘fashionable’ people, social outcasts, etc.) and is generally perceived as non-
standard. At the same time, it has to do with registers, as it implies a high degree of
informality and familiarity between the speakers.

 Whereas some words and phrases have penetrated into ‘colloquial speech’, some others
have become outdated as slang is, among other things, a matter of fashion in language. It
has also been defined as “the poetry of ordinary people” (Quirk & Stein 1990: 118) as it
may, indeed, reveal most unexpected combinations and associations. The fact that slang is
frequently meant to be a non-transparent way of speaking makes it difficult to understand
sometimes even by native speakers. Moreover, there are differences between slang in BrE,
AmE, etc.

 The translators’ difficulties are, in such cases, manifold. First of all, they may think of
intralingual paraphrase/translation to make sure they have properly grasped the source
text meaning, before finding an adequate equivalent in the TL.
  Apart from ‘ordinary’ slang there is also rhyming slang in British/Cockney English, the
meaning of which needs to be understood by translators [for instance: dog & bone
(=phone), bees & honey (=money), north & south (=mouth), etc.], before trying to
achieve a similarly picturesque way of expressing SL slang in the TL. When Romanian
is used as a TL, there are quantitative differences between the slang areas in the two
languages: the number of Romanian ‘slang’ words and phrases is considerably
lower. When there is no acceptable slang solution, all the translator can do is 1)
preserve, if possible, the striking images in the SL without using slang and 2)
compensate for the loss of slang by using a colloquial level of speech. In the
Romanian translation of The Catcher in the Rye/De veghe în lanul de secară by J. D.
Salinger, a novel in which slang becomes literary style, the American English slang is
replaced by a colloquial style in the Romanian translation.

ST: In the first place that stuff bores me, and in the second place my parents would have
about two haemorrhages apiece if I told anything pretty personal about them.(...) They’re
nice and all - I’m not saying that - but they’re also touchy as hell.

TT: Mai întâi pentru că mă plictiseşte, pe urmă pentru că, dacă m-aş apuca scă vorbesc cât
de puţin despre treburile lor intime, părinţii mei ar face câte două hemoragii fiecare.(...)
Sunt ei drăguţi şi cumsecade - nu spun nu - da-s îngrozitor de sensibili.
(translated by Catinca Ralea and Lucian Bratu)

To conclude, we may say that, whereas geographical dialects may raise

insurmountable difficulties in terms of close equivalents and require the
replacement of the geographical dimension of dialect by informal/colloquial register
in the TL, sociolects and registers can be more easily preserved in the TL because
they exist in all languages.

The issue of language varieties is one of the clearest instances in support of the idea
that context plays a leading part in communication, making contextual
investigations in the SL and in the TL a compulsory step in the translating process.
Thus, the success of the translations entirely depends on the way in which
translators ensure their socio- cultural relevance for their readers.