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A Descriptive Framework for

Compensation
a
Keith Harvey
a
London, UK
Published online: 21 Feb 2014.

To cite this article: Keith Harvey (1995) A Descriptive Framework for Compensation,
The Translator, 1:1, 65-86, DOI: 10.1080/13556509.1995.10798950

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 The Translator. Volume 1, Number 1 (1995), 65-86

A Descriptive Framework for Compensation

KEITH HARVEY
London, UK

Abstract. A detailed description of compensation as a translation

strategy can be of considerable help to professional translators by
highlighting some of the options available to them. More importantly,
such a description can also facilitate the pedagogical presentation of
the concept. This paper starts with an overview of the various treat-
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ments of the concept in the literature before proceeding to elaborate

a new descriptive framework for compensation along three axes:
typological, linguistic correspondence, and topographical. The dis-
cussion is illustrated throughout by examples taken from authentic
translations, including examples from the famous cartoon series
Asterix.

Compensation is a loosely used and poorly defined concept in much of the

theoretical literature, as well as in the kind of practical workshops which
are frequently organized by professional institutions. Passing references
to the concept are often tagged on to general discussions of non-literal
translation procedures, and authentic examples of it are rarely given in the
literature. And yet, in recent years scholars of translation have increas-
ingly had recourse, however brief, to the concept. What is more, they
attribute to it a powerful range of application. Baker (1992:78), for exam-
ple, invokes compensation as a technique for dealing with "any loss of
meaning, emotional force, or stylistic effect which may not be possible to
reproduce directly at a given point in the target text". And Newmark
(1991:143) claims that "compensation is the procedure which in the last
resort ensures that translation is possible".
If compensation is as important as these statements suggest, then there
is a clear need for a descriptive framework that can account for the pro-
cesses it entails. Among other things, such a framework would serve a
useful pedagogical function: trainee translators stand to gain from a more
explicit statement of the means by which they can make up for effects in
their source text that cannot be directly transferred to a target text. This
paper is an attempt to set out a descriptive framework for compensation,
using examples from the famous strip cartoon series Asterix to elaborate
the concept in action. The text I have chosen is Les Lauriers de Cesar
(Goscinny and Uderzo 1972), translated as Asterix and the Laurel Wreath

ISSN 1355-6509 © St Jerome Publishing, Manchester

 A Descriptive Framework for Compensation 66

by Anthea Bell and Derek Hockridge (1974). I have chosen Asterix be-
cause much of the humour of this particular series is created by linguistic
jokes of many kinds, including puns, adapted or misquoted idioms, errors
in performance such as spoonerisms, and so on. And compensation as a
technique is of course at its most active in the translator's attempts to deal
with just such devices.
Let me begin with a working definition of the notion of compensation.
I define compensation as:

a technique for making up for the loss of a source text effect by

recreating a similar effect in the target text through means that are
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specific to the target language and/or the target text.

Many of the terms in this definition will come under scrutiny as we

proceed. However, it is worth noting from the outset that the use of the
word technique has an important implication. Although the examples that
I will discuss will necessarily be the result of a retrospective critical
analysis of translated products, compensation is first and foremost a tech-
nique available to translators engaged in the process of transferring
meanings and effects across linguistic boundaries. Hence, its importance
in translation pedagogy is possibly greater than its significance as a de-
scriptive category in translation criticism.
Puns are often cited as the privileged site for compensation. For in-
stance, in a reference to the Asterix series, Hatim and Mason (1990:202)
note that "the translators abandon the attempt to relay the puns as such
and, instead, compensate by inserting English puns of their own which
are not part of the source text". A simple example of a compensated pun
occurs on page 14 of Asterix and the Laurel Wreath. 1 At a busy slave
market in Rome, each merchant is shouting his wares on the public place.
In the source text, a merchant cries:

Suivez mes Thraces! Suivez mes Thraces!

(Literally: Follow my Thracians! Follow my Thracians!, with a pun
on the expression suivez mes traces, or follow in my footsteps.)

The target text translates this by using its own pun:

Heavy-duty nimble Hoplites!

The humorous effect of the source text is lost and then recreated by
different means in the target text (Hoplites and its homophone lights
contrasting paradoxically with Heavy-duty). It is worth noting that in this
 Keith Harvey 67

example loss and compensation occur in the same place. Also, the same
linguistic device, a pun, is employed in the target text to create a similar
effect.

1. Compensation: a problem of definition

Explicit references to compensation are scattered throughout the litera-

ture on translation studies. These references often represent piecemeal,
non-formalized uses of the term. Particularly in texts dating from before
the mid-1980s, words such as compensation, compensatory and compen-
sate for are usually employed in a loose, common-sense way. Close
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examination of examples reveals that practically anything that did not

involve straightforward formal correspondence was subsumed under this
label.
Nida (1964) and Nida and Taber (1969) contain some representative,
early examples of loose uses of the term. In their discussion of "semantic
adjustments made in transfer", Nida and Taber (ibid:105-12) argue for
the priority of content over form in a hierarchy of translation processes.
Except in cases like poetry, form can be sacrificed in translation. Con-
versely, "in any translation there will be a type of 'loss' of semantic
content, but the process should be so designed as to keep this to a mini-
mum" (ibid: 106). In the subsequent discussion of this minimization of
semantic loss, they suggest types of compensatory strategy. For example,
not only do they approve of the translation of source text idioms by target
text idioms, they also argue for the strategic translation of non-idiomatic
forms in the source text by target language idioms: "Such idiomatic ren-
derings do much to make the translation come alive, for it is by means of
such distinctive expressions that the message can speak meaningfully to
people in terms of their own lives and behaviour" (ibid). In a footnote on
the same page, we find a passing reference to compensation:

What one must give up in order to communicate effectively can,

however, be compensated for, at least in part, by the introduction of
fitting idioms.

If this is not done, they warn,

the end result is a weakening of the figurative force of the translation,

since they [the translators] do not compensate for loss of certain idi-
oms by the introduction of others. (ibid)

Examples of this generalized type of compensation with the use of idi-

omatic expressions are found inAsterix and the Laurel Wreath. On page 42,
 A Descriptive Framework for Compensation 68

for example, the source text plays with the source language idiom y faire
de vieux os (literally: make old bones there, meaning 'grow old there')
when the cut-throat Habeascorpus introduces Asterix and Obelix into the
catacombs (a series of underground passages where bodies used to be
buried in Ancient Rome):

Notre repaire: les catacombes ... c'est un refuge sur; on peut y faire de
vieux os.

This is translated closely as

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Here's our hide-out: the catacombs. It's quite safe. You'll make old
bones down here.

The target text continues in this punning vein with a play on both senses
of skeleton and on the homophone skull in skulduggery:

Tomorrow night we'll leave a skeleton staff here, and you can try
your hand at skulduggery ...

The source text passage contains no puns or notable stylistic effects to

account for this. Nor does there appear to be any loss in the vicinity which
would explain or justify the target text's inventiveness. This must there-
fore either be an example of displaced compensation (discussed under 3.3
below) or, more probably, of Nida and Taber's generalized type.
Nida and Taber's discussion of idiomatic expressions situates com-
pensation firmly in the domain of stylistic effects, that is effects that are
deliberately employed in a text for specific purposes of register, tone and
colour. Their comments also suggest that compensation does not neces-
sarily involve systematic, one-to-one correspondence of individual source
text and target text effects. The 'equivalence' of specific effects is sec-
ondary to the achievement of a balance of tone across the entire text. By
implication, the text as a whole is highlighted as the unit with which the
translator ultimately works.

1.1. Compensation and cultural mismatch

Early on in his book The Science of Translation, Wilss (1982:39) asks

"How should he [the translator] compensate micro contextually and
macrocontextually during the transfer process for structural divergences
on the intra- and extralinguistic level?". Behind the abstract terms of this
question there seems to be a familiar preoccupation with the problem of
 Keith Harvey 69

the unit of translation. The use of 'macrocontextually' acknowledges that

the unit to be worked with is sometimes situated above the levels of word,
clause or sentence.
In the same passage, Wilss points out that "the range of practicable
compensation strategies in any instance varies from language pair to lan-
guage pair" (ibid). This claim clearly ties compensation to the problem of
a systemic mismatch between source and target languages. In other words,
it suggests that compensation arises as a consequence of the mismatch
between the two language systems under consideration and is conditioned
by the limits of those systems. Wilss therefore seems to downplay the
stylistic, text-specific nature of compensation. But he later extends the
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notion of compensation to encompass cultural elements as well (ibid:50):

Cultural untranslatibility occurs when sociocultural factors cover a

different range of experience in the SL and the TL and must be made
to coincide in regard to the intended meaning in each instance ....
Translation procedures generally present possibilities for compensa-
tion, since translation is in principle possible whenever the transfer is
preceded by an understanding of the content of the original text.

Thus, Wilss mentions instances where "a lexical by-pass strategy such as
paraphrasing or explanatory translation" is "the only compensatory way
out open to the translator" (ibid: 104).
So far, then, compensation seems to have been explained as a tech-
nique for introducing idioms and as a cover term for paraphrases and
explanations. The latter might be the necessary consequence either of a
systemic mismatch between languages or of the cultural differences that
render practices in source and target cultures mutually opaque. However,
if we are to succeed in establishing compensation as a useful descriptive
category, we need to beware of using it to cover too many problems in the
process of transfer. While stylistic, text-specific devices seem to fall com-
fortably within its remit, the larger issues of the mismatch between social
and cultural practices go well beyond it and threaten to make the concept
too general to be of any pedagogical use or theoretical value.
This is not to suggest that linguistic devices used to achieve compen-
sation do not sometimes have a culture-specific component. They do in
the following example from Les Lauriers de Cesar, for instance. The joke
in this example (on page 9) is at the expense of Homeopatix's maid, a
short, stout woman with black hair and large earrings. She announces that
dinner is served in the following manner:

La Matrone elle est serbie

 A Descriptive Framework for Compensation 70

The appropriate realization of this conventional expression is Madame est

servie (literally: Madam is served). Although the maid's use of Matrone
(a pejorative word in modem French for a matronly or stout woman)
together with the excessively informal repetition of the pronoun after the
noun (La Matrone eUe ... ) is comic in itself, it is the tell-tale confusion of
the French phonemes Ivl and Ibl that confirms what the maid's appear-
ance might already have suggested to a member of the source culture: the
maid is Spanish. It is because the cultural aspect here is mediated through
a linguistic device that it becomes available for compensation.
The maid's nationality sets off particular cultural resonances in France,
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where a whole generation of working-class Spanish immigrants appeared

between the wars. Jokes about this immigrant population's misuse of the
French language, and in particular the phonemes Ivl and Ibl, are still current
in France. Such associations are of course unavailable to a member of the
target culture. The target text's translation

Cena is served

takes the appropriate functional equivalent in the target language (Dinner

is served) and adjusts it to accommodate a linguistic joke. However, the
latter is obscure and depends on a knowledge of modem Spanish or of
Latin (cena means supper or evening meal in both). Such knowledge
cannot be assumed on the part of members of the target culture. How,
then, is this loss compensated for in the target text?
Just before the maid appears, there is an exchange about Homeopatix's
house wine where considerable differences emerge between source and
target texts. In the source text, Galantine, Abraracourcix's wife, makes
the following straightforward comment:

l' espere que vous aimerez ce vin, il est fait avec Ie raisin de notre
vigne, sur la butte ...
(Literally: I hope you will like this wine, it is made with the grape
from our vine, on the hillock ... )

The target text elaborates on this with linguistic material that is culturally
marked for a member of the target culture as a pastiche of the language of
a wine connoisseur (which may itself be linked, more or less consciously,
to the cultural habits of a non-target language speaker):

Try some of the 55 B.C., from our own vineyard. It's a modest,
unpretentious little wine, but I hope you like it.
 Keith Harvey 71

Soon after this, the target text transforms another simple source text
remark with a significant piece of intertextuality for a member of the
target culture. Where the source text has Homeopatix commenting:

On ne peut vivre qu'a Lutece, tu sais.

(Literally: One can only live in Lutetia, you know.)

the target text has a pastiche of Dr Johnson:

When a man is tired of Lutetia, he is tired of life.

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It is just after this sequence that the maid announces dinner and, at least in
the source text, a piece of cultural stereotyping is put to amusing affect. It
would appear, therefore, that the justification for the various target text
elaborations which draw on cultural and intertextual knowledge is that
they compensate for the loss of the joke over the maid's heavy Spanish
accent. Note, however, that the culture-specific loss to be compensated is
manifested in linguistic terms.

1.2. Compensation: location and equivalence

InA Textbook of Translation, Newmark (1988:90) suggests that compen-

sation "is said to occur when loss of meaning, sound-effect, metaphor or
pragmatic effect in one part of a sentence is compensated in another part,
or in a contiguous sentence". Not unreasonably, therefore, he defines
compensation as a response to translation loss. However, this in itself is
not entirely unproblematic. If loss is an inevitable consequence of any
attempt to transfer sense from one language to another, and compensation
is a response to that loss, then the entire translation process could be
accounted for by the twin mechanisms of loss and compensation. Once
this happens, of course, the floodgates are open and both loss and com-
pensation get washed away as useful descriptive terms.
To counter this danger, we must specify what types of transfer be-
tween source and target texts are susceptible to compensatory strategies. I
have already stated that I believe it is important to retain the term for
essentially stylistic, text-specific features and effects. The weakness in
Newmark's definition is that it does not make this emphasis clear enough
and suggests that compensation might cover systemic, language-specific
features as well. In particular, where his definition refers to 'meaning',
are we to understand that it includes those problems inherent in the trans-
lation of lexical meaning, where the target language fails to find a
 A Descriptive Framework for Compensation 72

one-to-one equivalent for a source language item? The problem in cases

of this type is surely systemic and not stylistic: it is a consequence of the
fact that different languages divide the semantic space in different ways.
Newmark's definition also raises the issue of the location of compen-
sation in relation to the instance of loss. The assertion that the loss "is
compensated for in another part, or in a contiguous sentence" rules out -
unnecessarily, in my view - two possibilities for compensation. First, it
excludes those instances of what I call paraDel compensation, such as we
have already seen in the example of Suivez mes ThraceslHeavy-duty nimble
Hoplites. Here, the target text manifests simultaneous loss (of, say, the
source text pun) and compensation, the latter effectively overwriting the
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former. Second, this unnecessary restriction fails to account for compen-

sation over much greater distances than simply contiguous sentences,
what I have called displaced compensation in 3.3 below.
Unlike Newmark, Hatim and Mason (1990) make no mention of the
possible location of compensation in relation to loss. Compensation is
glossed as "the making good of some communicative loss by substituting
equivalent effects" (ibid:239). It would therefore seem that they consider
compensation to be characteristically unbound. Similarly, there is no speci-
fication here of the types of linguistic feature that it operates upon.
The reference to effects in Hatim and Mason's definition reinforces
the general thrust of their communicative approach to translation. How-
ever, this approach begs a number of fundamental questions. The notion
of 'equivalent' in "equivalent effects" is problematic. It is not clear from
the definition whether the equivalence of effect is necessarily bound to an
equivalence of textual device. For example, if humour is the textual effect
that has been lost from the source text as the result of the untranslatibility
of a pun, should this loss be compensated for in the target text by the same
type of linguistic feature? This is left unspecified, although examples
abound where the question of type of linguistic device is subordinated to
that of effect. One such example occurs on page 43 of Asterix and the
Laurel Wreath. The source text achieves a humorous effect through the
neologism couiquer (a verb) from the conventional onomatopoeia couic
(for squeak). The cut-throat Habeascorpus uses couic, together with an
appropriate gesture of the index finger running across the throat, as a
euphemism for the murder of an approaching passer-by:

Et s'il resiste ... Couic!

(Literally: And if he resists .,. Squeak!)

A perturbed Obelix asks Asterix:

 Keith Harvey 73

Dis, Asterix, on ne va tout de meme pas Ie couiquer?

(Literally: Say, Asterix, we are not really going to squeak him?)

The target text compensates for the loss of this sequence of an onomato-
poeia followed by a neologism by using a colloquial idiom:

- If he makes a fuss ... the chop!

- We're not really going to give him the chop are we Asterix?

The device employed is different, but the intended effect is arguably

comparable.
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But how does one measure equivalent effect? Gutt (1991) puts the
point rather well in his discussion of a target text that fails to reproduce
the effect of flattery of its readers' cultural knowledge that is achieved by
a source text in relation to its own readership. Suggesting at first that the
translator should apply the technique of compensation and strive to obtain
the effect of flattery by other means, Gutt (ibid:48) soon recognizes the
difficulties inherent in this solution:

Does he [the translator] do so by checking whether his translation

flatters the receptor language audience in corresponding parts of the
texts, or by making sure that the number of instances of flattery that
occur is equal between original and translation, or by some compari-
son of the cumulative flattering effect of the whole text?

In other words, Gutt concludes that there is no empirical basis for the
equivalent effect argument other than the translator's own reactions to the
texts slhe is reading (source) and writing (target). Effect turns out to be a
function of the reader's own motivation for reading a text, and even of the
various conventions that determine response in different cultures, rather
than the inherent property of a particular text.

2. A descriptive framework for compensation

In a book that is as much practical handbook for English-French transla-

tion problems and procedures as it is a theoretical overview, Hervey and
Higgins (1992:34-40) set out the longest and most detailed breakdown of
compensation in the literature. They introduce the concept of compensa-
tion as a response to the inevitable compromise that translation involves.
However, the translator is not entirely powerless when confronted with
 A Descriptive Framework for Compensation 74

such losses:

It is when faced with apparently inevitable, yet unacceptable,

compromises that translators may feel the need to resort to tech-
niques referred to as compensation - that is, techniques of making
up for the loss of important ST features through replicating ST
effects approximately in the TT by means other than those used
in the ST. (ibid:35)

Hervey and Higgins distinguish four categories of compensation: com-

pensation in kind, where different linguistic devices are employed in the
target text from those in the source text in order to re-create a similar
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effect; compensation in place, where the effect in the target text is achieved
at a different place from that in the source; compensation by merging,
where source text features are condensed in the target text; compensation
by splitting, where meanings expressed in the source text have to be
expanded into a longer stretch of text in the translation. Although they
point out that the four types of compensation can co-occur, the last two
categories, 'by merging' and 'by splitting', would appear to be mutually
exclusive. I will deal with each type briefly, using Hervey and Higgins'
own examples, before I proceed to offer an alternative framework in
section 3 below.
To illustrate compensation in kind, Hervey and Higgins discuss a
French narrative which achieves a strong stylistic effect through the inter-
play of past historic and perfect tenses. The text (ibid:35) recounts the life
of a young fighter in the French Resistance:

Quelques jours apres la Liberation, on retrouva son corps dans un

charnier. Elle a ete fusillee Ie 8 juillet 1944 a l'age de 23 ans.
Elle fut une militante exemplaire.

In this account of the fighter's death, the ordinary use of the past historic
tense for narrative (retrouva, Jut) is interrupted by the appearance of the
perfect (a ete Jusillee) to convey shock and immediacy. The English tense
system cannot reproduce the effects obtained by this interplay of tenses.
Consequently, for the last two sentences Hervey and Higgins suggest the
following translation (ibid:36):

This girl was shot on 8 July 1944, at the age of 23.

She was an exemplary resistante.

Here, the demonstrative This, the noun girl rather than the pronoun Elle in
the source text, the strategic placing of the rhetorical comma after 1944,
 Keith Harvey 75

and the cultural borrowing of the term resistante all contribute to com-
pensating for the loss of "the emotional impact of the ST's play on
tenses" (ibid:36).
This example is highly significant for our purposes because it illus-
trates that stylistic potential is present in some systemic features of a
language. Another example in French would be the stylistic implications
of the presence in the language system of the pronominal forms of famili-
arity and politeness, commonly known as the TN distinction (see Hatim
and Mason 1990:28; Baker 1992:96-98; Hervey and Higgins 1992:36). In
other words, these examples show that our understanding of stylistic ef-
fects must include those that are not unique to a particular text. Such
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effects are inscribed within a particular linguistic system and can be acti-
vated for stylistic purposes within a specific text.
Another point worth making here is that all the examples of compen-
sation in kind given by Hervey and Higgins are of an essentially parallel
type. Despite their assertion that compensation in kind and compensation
in place can hypothetically co-occur, if an instance of compensation em-
ploying very different linguistic devices were to be located a long way
from a particular loss, it would be extremely difficult to identify and
prove the relation between them.
Under compensation in place, Hervey and Higgins (ibid:37) include
compensation "for an untranslatable pun in the ST by using a pun on
another word at a different place in the TT". Another example (ibid:38) is
located at a level that we have not so far considered, yet one at which
stylistic, text-specific effects are typically found, namely the use of sound
for rhetorical effect:

Voila ce que veulent dire les viriles acclamations de nos villes et de

nos villages, purges enfin de I' ennemi.

The target text (ibid) compensates for the inevitable loss of the sequence
of alliteration and assonance by exploiting a different sequence of sounds
in the corresponding sentence:

This is what the cheering means, resounding through our towns and
villages cleansed at last of the enemy.

The phonetic reinforcement here does indeed make use of sounds which
are different from those used in the source text, but only incidentally does
it take place on different 'equivalent' words. The source text's veulent
dire, for example, which contributes two elements of phonetic reinforce-
ment to the chain, finds its standard translation equivalent, means, also
 A Descriptive Framework for Compensation 76

contributing an instance in the target text. We are thus left with the im-
pression that more long-range examples of compensation in place would
have enabled Hervey and Higgins to bring home the possibilities of this
type more forcefully.
Hervey and Higgins' last two types of compensation, by merging and
by splitting, are presented as complementary procedures. Whereas any
problems that arose with the 'in kind' and 'in place' types were a conse-
quence of the quality of the examples chosen to illustrate them, with these
last two categories I believe that serious doubts emerge as to their validity
as compensation at all.
Hervey and Higgins give two examples for each category. To illus-
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trate compensation by merging, they point to a phrase from a technical

source text, "en cas de feux et incendies", for which they propose the
target text "in the event of fire" (ibid:38). They justify their choice by
suggesting that "in a technical text like this one, a translation such as
'little fires or big fires/ones', or 'fires and conflagrations/blazes' would
be comically inappropriate or unidiomatic" (ibid:39). However, the rea-
son for this inappropriateness is not to be found exclusively in the text
genre, as they suggest. Rather, it is a consequence of the difference be-
tween two lexical systems. In other words, the French lexical universe
has inscribed within it the distinction between fires of different sizes and
degrees of gravity in a way that the lexical universe of English has not.
The target language alternatives given, conflagrations and blazes, do, it is
true, suggest larger fires, but their connotations in English are more emo-
tive and, thus, stylistically more marked than the everyday incendies in
French. These qualities are part of the systemic meanings of these items
in English.
Compensation by splitting is considered necessary "in cases where
there is no single TL word that covers the same range of meaning as a
given ST word" (ibid:39). As an example, Hervey and Higgins discuss
the 'splitting' of the French papillons into butterflies and moths in the
English title of an article on lepidoptera. But again, the choice here is
hardly a stylistic one for the translator, whose rendering will be deter-
mined by a knowledge of the distinctions made or not made explicit in the
different lexical systems. Thus, English lexicalizes a distinction here that
is brought out in other ways in French (moths would be papillons de nuit,
hence papillons can function in French as a superordinate for the species
of both night and day). The problem here is essentially a systemic one.
The concept of compensation which we are trying to refine cannot be
called upon to cover it.
 Keith Harvey 77

3. A new descriptive framework for compensation

I would now like to bring together the issues I have been discussing and to
set out a more systematic framework for compensation. The aim here is to
refine our understanding of compensation as a theoretical concept and
thereby increase its power as a pedagogical tool.
It should be clear from the discussion so far that one of the central
problems we face is establishing what does or does not count as an in-
stance of compensation. We may be certain, for example, that we do not
wish to include straightforward instances of grammatical transposition.
These belong to systemic transfer between languages and do not have a
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stylistic, text-specific function. Similarly, where a word in the source

language does not have a straightforward equivalent in the target lan-
guage, we would not include a resulting paraphrase in the target text
within our category of compensation. On the other hand, I have suggested
that we can confidently include puns and phonoaesthetic effects that are
specific to the source text as areas that could prompt target text compensa-
tion.
What should we do, then, with the fairly standard replacement of con-
ventional rhetorical routines between languages? For example, is the
translation of the French

- ~a va?
- ~a va.

by the English

- How are you?

- Fine.

an instance of compensation? If we accept the criteria that (i) compensa-

tion operates on stylistic, text-specific features, and (ii) sociocultural
practices (of which such a conventional exchange is a verbal example)
require cultural substitution, which is itself another distinct category of
transfer, then the answer is negative. Not all non-literal translation proce-
dures, in other words, are instances of compensation, and culturally-
determined routines are examples of those that fall outside the scope of
compensation as I have defined it in this paper.
Assuming that we can develop a reliable method for identifying in-
stances of compensation, we still need to address the question of the
diversity of relationships that may obtain between the source text effect
that is lost and the target text device that strives to compensate for it. The
 A Descriptive Framework for Compensation 78

two main issues that a descriptive framework should attempt to address

are therefore: (i) developing explicit criteria for recognizing instances of
compensation, and (ii) explaining the relationship that obtains between
the relevant stretches of source and target texts. The framework proposed
here addresses both issues along three axes. The first, typological, tack-
les the question of elaborating criteria for recognizing instances of
compensation. The second, degree of linguistic correspondence, and the
third, topographical, attempt to account for the relationship between loss
and compensation of effects.

3.1. The typological axis: identifying instances of compensation

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The first axis I wish to propose assumes that while compensation con-
cerns itself with stylistic devices in text, these depend more or less heavily
on the systemic features of a language. I would therefore suggest distin-
guishing between two types of compensation along the typological axis:
stylistic and stylistic-systemic.
Stylistic compensation occurs where the effects achieved in the source
and target texts are text-specific and contribute uniquely to the colour,
tone and register of that particular text. We have seen many examples of
this type of compensation, including Hervey and Higgins' discussion, under
compensation in place (1992:37-38), of the use of sound for achieving
rhetorical effect.
Stylistic-systemic compensation is where the effects have a stylistic
value where they occur in the text, but these draw upon part of the con-
ventional systemic resources of the language. The exploitation of verb
tense relations for rhetorical effect, discussed by Hervey and Higgins
under compensation in kind (ibid:35-36), belongs to this category. I
would also include here the use of idiomatic expressions which, while
representing a conscious choice to employ a marked form for effect,
draws upon the lexical store of a language in a conventional way.
Another example of stylistic-systemic compensation occurs on page
28 of Asterix and the Laurel Wreath. Obelix regrets that Asterix has
decided that circumstances no longer make it necessary for them to buy
themselves out of slavery. The source text has the personal pronoun no us
('us') functioning as the direct object of the reflexive verb me payer (an
informal structure meaning 'buy'):

J'aurais bien aime me nous payer .... <;a m'aurait fait un souvenir a
rapporter de notre voyage.
(Literally: I would have liked to buy myself us (i.e. buy us for myself)
.... It would have made me a souvenir to take back from our trip.)
 Keith Harvey 79

Of course, me (reflexive pronoun, 'myself') followed directly by nous

(direct object, 'us') form a string where the semantic oddity of the idea
expressed is deliberately reinforced by the grammatical strangeness. To-
gether they generate humour. The target language translation of me payer
can only be the less idiomatic buy:

I should have liked to buy us.

This target sentence cannot reproduce the source text's grammatical ef-
fect, which depended on the contiguity of two types of pronoun. The loss
here is of a systemic device in the source language, where reflexive verbs
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abound, that was put to stylistic effect.

However, the next target text sentence, instead of reproducing the
source text's <;a m'auraitfait ... ('It would have made me ... ') makes the
subject of the sentence We and thus compensates for the loss of an equiva-
lent effect for me nous in the previous sentence:

We would have made a nice souvenir to take home from our trip.

The proximity of "We ... our" goes some way towards achieving a similar
effect through the use of grammatical words in the target language.

3.2. The correspondence axis: establishing the linguistic relationship

Once we have identified an instance of compensation, the next step is to

describe the degree of linguistic correspondence between the devices used
to achieve the effect in source and target texts. Three types of relationship
can be distinguished here: direct correspondence, analogical correspond-
ence, and non-correspondence.
Direct correspondence occurs where a lost effect that is achieved by
a given linguistic device in the source text is compensated for by the use
of the same type of linguistic device in the target text. We have seen many
examples of this, including the various puns discussed earlier, as well as
the phonoaesthetic devices described by Hervey and Higgins (1992:38).
It is important to note that I am not specifically interested here in whether
the effect compensated for in the target text remains comparable to that
lost in the source text. What interests me at this stage, for the purpose of
developing the current descriptive framework, is the means or devices by
which the effect is achieved in both texts.
Langeveld (1988:83) provides us with a succinct example of direct
correspondence in his brief discussion of compensation. The source text
 A Descriptive Framework for Compensation 80

is a sentence from Thomas Mann's Der Zauberberg:

Aber mit seiner Chaussure, hore mal, da steht es scheusslich.

(Literally: But with his shoe, listen, there it stands hideously.)

He notes the stylistic value of the use of the French word chaussure
('shoe') in the source language, German, and how this is not available for
a translation into Dutch:

The French word 'Chaussure' makes this sentence sound pretentious.

In Dutch the word 'chaussure' for shoes, footwear, is never used, not
even by the most affectedly speaking people. The Dutch translator has
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therefore opted for the more neutral 'schoeisel' (footwear) and has
inserted the French element elsewhere in the sentence by translating
'scheusslich' (awful) by 'affreus', a French word (affreux = hideous)
which is used in Dutch and does have the affectedness that is called for
by the SL text: "Maar zijn schoeisel, zeg, dat is affreus." (ibid)

An extended example of direct correspondence occurs in Samuel

Beckett's own translation of his French play Fin de Partie (1956:51). In
the source text, there is a dialogue between the characters Clov and Hamm
that culminates in an obscene pun prompted by a malapropism. A flea is
in Clov's trousers:

Clov: La vachel
Hamm: Tu l'as eue?
Clov: On dirait ... A moins qu'elle ne se tienne colte.
Hamm: Coite! Coite tu veux dire. A moins qu'elle ne se tienne coite.
Clov: Ah! On dit coite? On ne dit pas coite?
Hamm: Mais voyons! Si elle se tenait coite nous serions baises.

(Literally:
Clov: The cow! [conventional French exclamation]
Hamm: Did you get her?
Clov: One would say so ... Unless she's holding herself coitus.
Hamm: Coitus! Quiet you mean. Unless she's holding herself quiet.
Clov: Ah! One says quiet? One doesn't say coitus?
Hamm: But let's see! lf she was holding herself coitus we'd be fucked.)

The use of coite ('quiet') instead of corte ('coitus') allows Hamm to relish
the vulgar ambiguity of baises ('fucked/done for'). Beckett compensates
for the loss of this sequence in translation (Endgame 1957:27) by substi-
tuting a target language-specific malapropism that leads to another vulgar
pun. The correspondence of linguistic devices employed in source and
 Keith Harvey 81

target texts is thus direct:

Cloy: The Bastard!

Hamm: Did you get him?
Cloy: Looks like it ... Unless he's laying doggo.
Hamm: Laying! Lying you mean. Unless he's lying doggo.
Cloy: Ah! One says lying? One doesn't say laying?
Hamm: Use your head, can't you. If he was laying we'd be bitched.

Direct correspondence is one of the most typical types of compensation. It

is also one of the most straightforward to identify and account for. Other
types are more complex and potentially problematic.
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Analogical correspondence occurs where the device used in the tar-

get text to compensate for a lost source text effect is derived from the
same linguistic repertoire as that used in the source text, without being of
an identical type. Hervey and Higgins (1992:37) cite an example that fits
into this category from another text in the Asterix series. In Asterix en
Corse (translated as Asterix in Corsica), there is a passage where the
source text "hinges on the mutual incomprehension of speakers of differ-
ent dialects" (ibid). The translation compensates for the loss of this effect
by substituting a whole sequence of playful punning between the charac-
ters. Although the linguistic devices employed in source and target texts
are different, they are both metalinguistic in character. I would therefore
characterize the target text compensation as analogical. Note that this is in
contrast with the long sequence from Beckett's Endgame cited above.
There, source text puns are replaced by target-text specific puns; in other
words, by the same metalinguistic device.
The example of stylistic-systemic compensation discussed above, where
the source text exploited the syntax of reflexive verbs (me nous payer) is a
further instance of analogical correspondence. The target text's exploita-
tion of the relation between a possessive pronoun (We) and a possessive
adjective (our) depends on a similar, though not identical, lexico-
grammatical device.
Non-correspondence occurs where the loss of an effect generated by
a source text device is compensated for by a target text device that shares
no linguistic features with it. Hervey and Higgins' example, discussed
under compensation in place, of the use of an array of rhetorical devices
(punctuation, lexical borrowing, etc.) to compensate for a source text's
exploitation of the source language's tense system represents an example
of this type of compensation. Similarly, we saw in the example of Couic/
couiquer (see 2.1.) how a sequence containing onomatopoeia and neolo-
gisms in the source text was compensated for by a conventional target
 A Descriptive Framework for Compensation 82

language idiom in the target text. This too is an instance of compensation

with non-correspondence of linguistic devices.

3.3. The topographical axis: location and distance

The third axis is topographical, that is it concerns the respective location

of the effect that is lost in the source text and compensated for in the
target text. I suggest that four broad types of relationship between the two
can be identified along this axis: parallel, contiguous, displaced and gen-
eralized.
A parallel relationship obtains where the compensation occurs at ex-
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actly the same place in the target text as the effect that has been lost in the
source text. The compensation here effectively overwrites the loss. Ex-
amples of parallel compensation can be found in the handling of proper
names betweenLes Lauriers de Cesar and Asterix and the Laurel Wreath.
For example, the Gaulish chief Abraracourcix (a pun on the source lan-
guage idiom tomber sur quelqu 'un a bras raccourcis, literally: to fall
with shortened arms on someone, meaning 'to set upon someone') be-
comes Vitalstatistix in the target text. In the source text, Homeopatix's
wife is called Galantine. The translators seem to have assumed that the
cold pressed meat dish, galantine, was less familiar to members of the
target culture. Consequently, the humour is renamed after a sweet dish,
Tapioca.
A contiguous relationship obtains where the compensation occurs in
the target text within a short distance from the lost effect of the source
text. The translation from German into Dutch of the sentence by Thomas
Mann, discussed in Langeveld (1988) and quoted under direct corre-
spondence above, provides a clear example. There, the effect obtained by
the use of the French chaussure ('shoes') in the German source text is
compensated for later in the corresponding sentence in the Dutch transla-
tion by using another lexical item, affreus ('hideous'), whose French origin
is clearly marked for the target audience.
For another example of contiguous compensation, we can turn to page 4
of Asterix and the Laurel Wreath, which contains this sentence:

But Getafix also has other recipes up his sleeve ...

The idiom up his sleeve is a stylistic device that goes beyond the source
text's

Mais Panoramix a d'autres recettes en reserve ...

(Literally: But Panoramix has other recipes in reserve ... )
 Keith Harvey 83

There is a conscious choice here on the part of the translator to 'go

idiomatic': in reserve would have done just as well in the target text as in
the source text, and would have maintained the tone of the latter more
closely. I suggest this is an example of contiguous compensation because
of something that happens on the same page. At the end of the source
text's description of Abraracourcix, we have the popular source language
expression

C'est pas demain la veille!

(Literally: Tomorrow's not the eve!)

The popular, informal character is underlined grammatically by the drop-

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ping of the ne element of the source language negative particle before the
verb (i.e. n'est). This is translated as

Tomorrow never comes.

This expression is arguably of a more neutral (maybe even formal) regis-

ter in English than the source expression is in French. The difference in
register represents a certain loss in translation, and this leads me to sug-
gest that the apparently unprompted use of the idiom up his sleeve earlier
on the same page of the target text is in fact an example of contiguous
compensation.
A relationship of displaced compensation obtains when the instance
of compensation in the target text is a long distance from the source text
loss. This type of compensation throws up a number of difficulties. First,
it is obvious that the distinction between contiguous and displaced com-
pensation is relative rather than absolute. The decision to categorize a
target text feature as one or the other may largely depend on the size of
the text under consideration. In a long text, such as Asterix, one might
judge that compensation 'on the same page' is essentially contiguous. In a
sonnet, by contrast, an instance of compensation that occurs a mere few
lines after a source text loss might appear to be displaced. Second, when
dealing with a long text, it becomes increasingly clear that the analyst can
do little more than suggest that a certain target text feature is displaced
compensation. Short of asking the translator to recall the process s/he
went through, such a judgement must remain largely speCUlative. By its
very nature, this type of compensation takes the text as a whole as the unit
of translation. As a result, the analyst would have to undertake a quantita-
tive study of devices and effects in the text as a whole in order to produce
convincing evidence of displaced compensation.
Having recognized these limitations, it might be useful to quote a
possible instance of this type of compensation. In a bilingual edition of
 A Descriptive Framework for Compensation 84

Beckett's Happy Days/Oh les Beaux lours (Beckett 1978), Knowlson

notes that the English source text features the following newspaper adver-
tisement (ibid:26):

Wanted bright boy.

This is translated (ibid:27) as

Coquet deux-pieces calme soleil.

(Literally: Charming two-room flat quiet sun)

Knowlson (ibid: 120) accounts for such a radical, and apparently uncalled-
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for, semantic change by pointing out that this "new French text also
compensated to some extent for the omission in French of the Cymbeline
quotation 'Fear no more the heat 0' the sun"'. In other words, the refer-
ence to solei! ('sun') in the target text advertisement (with its bearing on
the plight of the characters in the play, marooned on a beach with only a
parasol for protection) compensates for the loss incurred much later in the
act where the source text quotes from Shakespeare's Cymbeline. This is
replaced in the target text by a quote from Racine's Athalie that does not
mention the sun.
Partly because of the practical difficulties of identifying instances of
displaced compensation, I suggest a fourth type of relationship along the
topographical axis, namely generalized compensation. This occurs where
the target text includes stylistic features that help to naturalize the text for
the target reader and that aim to achieve a comparable number and quality
of effects, without these being tied to any specific instances of source text
loss. This is in fact the way that Nida and Taber conceived of compensa-
tion in general (see section 1 above). An example of this type of compensation
occurs on page 23 of Asterix and the Laurel Wreath, where the target text
has Osseus Humerus' dissolute son Metatarsus exclaiming

Hey Pater, Pater! We don't often see oculus to oculus ...

This is inventive and comic in a way that the source text is not:

Ah pater, pater! Nous ne sommes pas souvent d'accord ...

(Literally: Ah father, father! We don't often agree ... )

There appears to be nothing in the vicinity that accounts for the effect
created in the target text. It is, therefore, either a case of displaced com-
 Keith Harvey 85

pensation that I have not been able to identify or more simply, perhaps, an
instance of generalized compensation.

4. Conclusion

The framework sketched out in this paper should in theory allow the
analyst to describe any instance of compensation systematically along all
three axes. Thus, the pun in Suivez mes ThraceslHeavy-duty nimble
Hoplites, discussed earlier, is an instance in the target text of parallel
compensation, of a stylistic type, with direct correspondence of linguistic
devices. On the other hand, the effect hinging on the language of the
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Spanish maid (discussed in section 1.1 above), which was lost in transla-
tion, is made up for in the target text by contiguous compensation, of a
stylistic type, with non-correspondence of linguistic devices. Obviously,
some combinations are more likely to be identifiable than others. For
example, displaced compensation with non-correspondence of linguistic
devices would be difficult to spot in an extended text.
The framework presented in this paper needs extensive testing against
authentic and varied instances of translation. Its validity and usefulness
should be explored with reference to non-literary translation, in order to
establish whether certain types of compensation are privileged over oth-
ers in the translation of, say, commercial texts. The framework also needs
to be tested on translations between non-cognate languages in order to see
whether this crucial variable affects its descriptive power.
And finally, introspective protocols could be devised to gauge the
extent to which this description actually accounts for the processes that
translators go through. Similarly, proof of its pedagogical efficacy could
be sought in order to see how far it clarifies the issues involved in com-
pensation for trainee translators, and to what extent it can be integrated
into their range of internalized techniques. Given the importance attached
to the notion of compensation in the literature, it seems reasonable to
suggest that any future descriptive framework should satisfy at least these
requirements.

KEITH HARVEY
45 Bonham Road, Brixton, London SW2 5HN, UK

Notes

1. Page numbers are identical in source and target texts. This applies to all
examples from Asterix and the Laurel Wreath.
 A Descriptive Framework for Compensation 86

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Laurel Wreath, 1974, London: Hodder Dargaud.
Gutt, Ernst-August (1991) Translation and Relevance: Cognition and Context,
Oxford: Blackwell.
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