Lecture 6.

Translation procedures, strategies and methods. Minimax strategy.

1. Introduction

If language were just a classification for a set of general or universal concepts, it

would be easy to translate from an SL to a TL; furthermore, under the circumstances
the process of learning an L2 would be much easier than it actually is. In this regard,
Culler (1976) believes that languages are not nomenclatures and the concepts of one
language may differ radically from those of another, since each language articulates
or organizes the world differently, and languages do not simply name categories; they
articulate their own (p.21-2). The conclusion likely to be drawn from what Culler
(1976) writes is that one of the troublesome problems of translation is the disparity
among languages. The bigger the gap between the SL and the TL, the more difficult
the transfer of message from the former to the latter will be.

The difference between an SL and a TL and the variation in their cultures make the
process of translating a real challenge. Among the problematic factors involved in
translation such as form, meaning, style, proverbs, idioms, etc., the present paper is
going to concentrate mainly on the procedures of translating CSCs in general and on
the strategies of rendering allusions in particular.

2. Translation procedures, strategies and methods

The translating procedures, as depicted by Nida (1964) are as follow:

I. Technical procedures:
A. analysis of the source and target languages;
B. a through study of the source language text before making attempts
translate it;
C. Making judgments of the semantic and syntactic approximations. (pp.
241-45)

II. Organizational procedures:

constant reevaluation of the attempt made; contrasting it with the existing
available translations of the same text done by other translators, and checking
the text's communicative effectiveness by asking the target language readers to
evaluate its accuracy and effectiveness and studying their reactions (pp. 246-
47).

Krings (1986:18) defines translation strategy as "translator's potentially conscious

plans for solving concrete translation problems in the framework of a concrete
translation task," and Seguinot (1989) believes that there are at least three global
strategies employed by the translators: (i) translating without interruption for as long
as possible; (ii) correcting surface errors immediately; (iii) leaving the monitoring for
qualitative or stylistic errors in the text to the revision stage.

Moreover, Loescher (1991:8) defines translation strategy as "a potentially conscious

procedure for solving a problem faced in translating a text, or any segment of it." As
it is stated in this definition, the notion of consciousness is significant in
distinguishing strategies which are used by the learners or translators. In this regard,
Cohen (1998:4) asserts that "the element of consciousness is what distinguishes
strategies from these processes that are not strategic."

Furthermore, Bell (1998:188) differentiates between global (those dealing with whole
texts) and local (those dealing with text segments) strategies and confirms that this
distinction results from various kinds of translation problems.

Venuti (1998:240) indicates that translation strategies "involve the basic tasks of
choosing the foreign text to be translated and developing a method to translate it." He
employs the concepts of domesticating and foreignizing to refer to translation
strategies.

Jaaskelainen (1999:71) considers strategy as, "a series of competencies, a set of steps
or processes that favor the acquisition, storage, and/or utilization of information." He
maintains that strategies are "heuristic and flexible in nature, and their adoption
implies a decision influenced by amendments in the translator's objectives."

Taking into account the process and product of translation, Jaaskelainen (2005)
divides strategies into two major categories: some strategies relate to what happens to
texts, while other strategies relate to what happens in the process.

Product-related strategies, as Jaaskelainen (2005:15) writes, involves the basic tasks

of choosing the SL text and developing a method to translate it. However, she
maintains that process-related strategies "are a set of (loosely formulated) rules or
principles which a translator uses to reach the goals determined by the translating
situation" (p.16). Moreover, Jaaskelainen (2005:16) divides this into two types,
namely global strategies and local strategies: "global strategies refer to general
principles and modes of action and local strategies refer to specific activities in
relation to the translator's problem-solving and decision-making."

Newmark (1988b) mentions the difference between translation methods and

translation procedures. He writes that, "[w]hile translation methods relate to whole
texts, translation procedures are used for sentences and the smaller units of language"
(p.81). He goes on to refer to the following methods of translation:

 Word-for-word translation: in which the SL word order is preserved and the

words translated singly by their most common meanings, out of context.
 Literal translation: in which the SL grammatical constructions are converted to
their nearest TL equivalents, but the lexical words are again translated singly,
out of context.
  Faithful translation: it attempts to produce the precise contextual meaning of
the original within the constraints of the TL grammatical structures.
 Semantic translation: which differs from 'faithful translation' only in as far as it
must take more account of the aesthetic value of the SL text.
 Adaptation: which is the freest form of translation, and is used mainly for plays
(comedies) and poetry; the themes, characters, plots are usually preserved, the
SL culture is converted to the TL culture and the text is rewritten.
 Free translation: it produces the TL text without the style, form, or content of
the original.
 Idiomatic translation: it reproduces the 'message' of the original but tends to
distort nuances of meaning by preferring colloquialisms and idioms where
these do not exist in the original.
 Communicative translation: it attempts to render the exact contextual meaning
of the original in such a way that both content and language are readily
acceptable and comprehensible to the readership (1988b: 45-47).

Newmark (1991:10-12) writes of a continuum existing between "semantic" and

"communicative" translation. Any translation can be "more, or less semantic—more,
or less, communicative—even a particular section or sentence can be treated more
communicatively or less semantically." Both seek an "equivalent effect." Zhongying
(1994: 97), who prefers literal translation to free translation, writes that, "[i]n China,
it is agreed by many that one should translate literally, if possible, or appeal to free
translation."

In order to clarify the distinction between procedure and strategy, the forthcoming
section is allotted to discussing the procedures of translating culture-specific terms,
and strategies for rendering allusions will be explained in detail.

2.1. Procedures of translating culture-specific concepts (CSCs)

Graedler (2000:3) puts forth some procedures of translating CSCs:

1. Making up a new word.

2. Explaining the meaning of the SL expression in lieu of translating it.
3. Preserving the SL term intact.
4. Opting for a word in the TL which seems similar to or has the same
"relevance" as the SL term.

Defining culture-bound terms (CBTs) as the terms which "refer to concepts,

institutions and personnel which are specific to the SL culture" (p.2), Harvey
(2000:2-6) puts forward the following four major techniques for translating CBTs:

1. Functional Equivalence: It means using a referent in the TL culture whose

function is similar to that of the source language (SL) referent. As Harvey
(2000:2) writes, authors are divided over the merits of this technique: Weston
(1991:23) describes it as "the ideal method of translation," while Sarcevic
 (1985:131) asserts that it is "misleading and should be avoided."
2. Formal Equivalence or 'linguistic equivalence': It means a 'word-for-word'
translation.
3. Transcription or 'borrowing' (i.e. reproducing or, where necessary,
transliterating the original term): It stands at the far end of SL-oriented
strategies. If the term is formally transparent or is explained in the context, it
may be used alone. In other cases, particularly where no knowledge of the SL
by the reader is presumed, transcription is accompanied by an explanation or a
translator's note.
4. Descriptive or self-explanatory translation: It uses generic terms (not CBTs) to
convey the meaning. It is appropriate in a wide variety of contexts where
formal equivalence is considered insufficiently clear. In a text aimed at a
specialized reader, it can be helpful to add the original SL term to avoid
ambiguity.

The following are the different translation procedures that Newmark (1988b)
proposes:

 Transference: it is the process of transferring an SL word to a TL text. It

includes transliteration and is the same as what Harvey (2000:5) named
"transcription."
 Naturalization: it adapts the SL word first to the normal pronunciation, then to
the normal morphology of the TL. (Newmark, 1988b:82)
 Cultural equivalent: it means replacing a cultural word in the SL with a TL
one. however, "they are not accurate" (Newmark, 1988b:83)
 Functional equivalent: it requires the use of a culture-neutral word. (Newmark,
1988b:83)
 Descriptive equivalent: in this procedure the meaning of the CBT is explained
in several words. (Newmark, 1988b:83)
 Componential analysis: it means "comparing an SL word with a TL word
which has a similar meaning but is not an obvious one-to-one equivalent, by
demonstrating first their common and then their differing sense components."
(Newmark, 1988b:114)
 Synonymy: it is a "near TL equivalent." Here economy trumps accuracy.
(Newmark, 1988b:84)
 Through-translation: it is the literal translation of common collocations, names
of organizations and components of compounds. It can also be called: calque or
loan translation. (Newmark, 1988b:84)
 Shifts or transpositions: it involves a change in the grammar from SL to TL,
for instance, (i) change from singular to plural, (ii) the change required when a
specific SL structure does not exist in the TL, (iii) change of an SL verb to a
TL word, change of an SL noun group to a TL noun and so forth. (Newmark,
1988b:86)
 Modulation: it occurs when the translator reproduces the message of the
original text in the TL text in conformity with the current norms of the TL,
since the SL and the TL may appear dissimilar in terms of perspective.
 (Newmark, 1988b:88)
 Recognized translation: it occurs when the translator "normally uses the
official or the generally accepted translation of any institutional term."
(Newmark, 1988b:89)
 Compensation: it occurs when loss of meaning in one part of a sentence is
compensated in another part. (Newmark, 1988b:90)
 Paraphrase: in this procedure the meaning of the CBT is explained. Here the
explanation is much more detailed than that of descriptive equivalent.
(Newmark, 1988b:91)
 Couplets: it occurs when the translator combines two different procedures.
(Newmark, 1988b:91)
 Notes: notes are additional information in a translation. (Newmark, 1988b:91)

Notes can appear in the form of 'footnotes.' Although some stylists consider a
translation sprinkled with footnotes terrible with regard to appearance, nonetheless,
their use can assist the TT readers to make better judgments of the ST contents. Nida
(1964:237-39) advocates the use of footnotes to fulfill at least the two following
functions: (i) to provide supplementary information, and (ii) to call attention to the
original's discrepancies.

A really troublesome area in the field of translation appears to be the occurrence of

allusions, which seem to be culture-specific portions of a SL. All kinds of allusions,
especially cultural and historical allusions, bestow a specific density on the original
language and need to be explicated in the translation to bring forth the richness of the
SL text for the TL audience.

Appearing abundantly in literary translations, allusions, as Albakry (2004:3) points

out, "are part of the prior cultural knowledge taken for granted by the author writing
for a predominantly Moslem Arab [SL] audience. To give the closest approximation
of the source language, therefore, it was necessary to opt for 'glossing' or using
explanatory footnotes." However, somewhere else he claims that, "footnotes ... can be
rather intrusive, and therefore, their uses were minimized as much as possible"
(Albakry, 2004:4).

2.2. Strategies of translating allusions

Proper names, which are defined by Richards (1985:68) as "names of a particular

person, place or thing" and are spelled "with a capital letter," play an essential role in
a literary work. For instance let us consider personal PNs. They may refer to the
setting, social status and nationality of characters, and really demand attention when
rendered into a foreign language.

There are some models for rendering PNs in translations. One of these models is
presented by Hervey and Higgins (1986) who believe that there exist two strategies
for translating PNs. They point out: "either the name can be taken over unchanged
from the ST to the TT, or it can be adopted to conform to the phonic/graphic
conventions of the TL" (p.29).

Hervey and Higgins (1986) refer to the former as exotism which "is tantamount to
literal translation, and involves no cultural transposition" (p.29), and the latter as
transliteration. However, they propose another procedure or alternative, as they put
it, namely cultural transplantation. Being considered as "the extreme degree of
cultural transposition," cultural transplantation is considered to be a procedure in
which "SL names are replaced by indigenous TL names that are not their literal
equivalents, but have similar cultural connotations" (Hervey & Higgins, 1986:29).

Regarding the translation of PNs, Newmark (1988a:214) asserts that, "normally,

people's first and sure names are transferred, thus preserving nationality and
assuming that their names have no connotations in the text."

The procedure of transference cannot be asserted to be effective where connotations

and implied meanings are significant. Indeed, there are some names in the Persian
poet Sa'di's work Gulestan, which bear connotations and require a specific strategy
for being translated. Newmark's (1988a:215) solution of the mentioned problem is as
follows: "first translate the word that underlies the SL proper name into the TL, and
then naturalize the translated word back into a new SL proper name." However, there
is a shortcoming in the strategy in question. As it seems it is only useful for personal
PNs, since as Newmark (1988a:215), ignoring the right of not educated readers to
enjoy a translated text, states, it can be utilized merely "when the character's name is
not yet current amongst an educated TL readership."

Leppihalme (1997:79) proposes another set of strategies for translating the proper
name allusions:

i. Retention of the name:

a. using the name as such.
b. using the name, adding some guidance.
c. using the name, adding a detailed explanation, for instance, a footnote.

ii. Replacement of the name by another:

a. replacing the name by another SL name.
b. replacing the name by a TL name

iii. Omission of the name:

a. omitting the name, but transferring the sense by other means, for
instance by a common noun.
b. omitting the name and the allusion together.

Moreover, nine strategies for the translation of key-phrase allusions are proposed by
Leppihalme (1997: 82) as follows:

i. Use of a standard translation,

ii. Minimum change, that is, a literal translation, without regard to connotative or
 contextual meaning,
iii. Extra allusive guidance added in the text,
iv. The use of footnotes, endnotes, translator's notes and other explicit
explanations not supplied in the text but explicitly given as additional
information,
v. Stimulated familiarity or internal marking, that is, the addition of intra-allusive
allusion ,
vi. Replacement by a TL item,
vii. Reduction of the allusion to sense by rephrasing,
viii. Re-creation, using a fusion of techniques: creative construction of a passage
which hints at the connotations of the allusion or other special effects created
by it,
ix. Omission of the allusion.
3. Conclusion

Although some stylists consider translation "sprinkled with footnotes" undesirable,

their uses can assist the TT readers to make better judgment of the ST contents. In
general, it seems that the procedures 'functional equivalent' and 'notes' would have a
higher potential for conveying the concepts underlying the CSCs embedded in a text;
moreover, it can be claimed that a combination of these strategies would result in a
more accurate understanding of the CSCs than other procedures.

Various strategies opted for by translators in rendering allusions seem to play a

crucial role in recognition and perception of connotations carried by them. If a novice
translator renders a literary text without paying adequate attention to the allusions, the
connotations are likely not to be transferred as a result of the translator's failure to
acknowledge them. They will be entirely lost to the majority of the TL readers;
consequently, the translation will be ineffective.

It seems necessary for an acceptable translation to produce the same (or at least
similar) effects on the TT readers as those created by the original work on its readers.
This paper may show that a translator does not appear to be successful in his
challenging task of efficiently rendering the CSCs and PNs when he sacrifices, or at
least minimizes, the effect of allusions in favor of preserving graphical or lexical
forms of source language PNs. In other words, a competent translator is wll-advised
not to deprive the TL reader of enjoying, or even recognizing, the allusions either in
the name of fidelity or brevity.

It can be claimed that the best translation method seem to be the one which allows
translator to utilize 'notes.' Furthermore, employing 'notes' in the translation, both as a
translation strategy and a translation procedure, seems to be indispensable so that the
foreign language readership could benefit from the text as much as the ST readers do.

Minimax strategy
Introduction

Anyone who combines commercial translation activities with working as an

academic, involved in both translation studies (TS) research and training students to
become professional translators, will be acutely aware of how problematic it is to
formulate translation strategies for the benefit of translators. If you are in such a
position, you are used to feeling equally uncomfortable about what you hear at times
on the subject of strategies at academic conferences and professional translators'
conferences. You are familiar with dismissive remarks from practitioners who reject
wholesale the notion of any possible contribution of TS to the concrete resolution of
problems at the 'wordface,' to borrow Wagner's term (Chesterman and Wagner 2002).
Cross, for instance, deems Baker's Encyclopedia of Translation Studies to be
"interesting, but irrelevant" (1998:27, quoted by Wagner in Chesterman and Wagner
2002:1). The contention is usually that every problem/text/translation situation is
different, which means that generalizations, and therefore reusable strategies, are out
of the question. It is also argued that the concepts TS relies upon are so complex,
esoteric and remote from translation practice that translators could not even begin to
apply them to their tasks (for further arguments, see Robinson 2001:162-163). As
Wagner points out: "There can be few professions with such a yawning gap between
theory and practice" (Chesterman and Wagner 2002:1), a worrying situation for a
group of professionals who have a status and credibility problem, since they can still
practise without any formal qualification.

The ability to deliver strategies to practitioners lies at the heart of the tension within
TS itself between the so-called 'pure' and 'applied' branches of the discipline, with
many theorists going out of their way to distance themselves from any form of
prescriptivism. Chesterman points out how, for several decades, mainstream
translation theorists have taken the view that they "should seek to be descriptive, to
describe, explain and understand what translators do actually do, not stipulate what
they ought to do" (Chesterman and Wagner 2002:2); they "see themselves as studying
the translators, not instructing them" (id.). His outline of the current goals of
translation theory leaves no room for prescriptivism:

(a) to describe what translators do, what strategies they use and what
roles they play, under given linguistic and socio-cultural conditions;

(b) to explain why they do this, what norms they follow, what values
underlie these norms; and

(c) to assess the effects of translatorial actions, on readers and also on

cultures and intercultural relations more widely. (1997:48)

Theory seems to end where applied considerations start, with the possible implication
that applied TS has no theoretical component: "Applied research, or translator
training, naturally focuses on what translators should do, on what translations should
be like, prescriptively; but this is not the task of translation theory itself" (id., p. 52).
The formulation of translation strategies also bears on the relationship between TS
and related disciplines: what is the place of the conceptual tools and metalanguage
borrowed from linguistics, for instance, when it comes to providing translators with
strategies?

Against this background, the purpose of the present article is:

(a) to explore the nature of possible strategies aimed at the translator for the
translation from English into French of a problematic linguistic feature, namely
emphasis;

(b) at a more general level, and using emphasis as the main source of illustration for
the discussion, to reflect on how translation strategies aimed at translators might
usefully be formulated in order to meet their practical requirements, and how they
might differ from other translation strategies put forward by translatologists.

Developing Mailhac 1996a/b and Woolner 1998, the analysis will focus successively
on procedures, parameters and strategies, but first of all we must clarify the nature of
emphasis as a translation problem.

1. Emphasis as a translation problem

What constitutes emphasis is a notoriously thorny issue (Vautherin 1991:7, 47;

Cadiot 1991:19). However, one common form is intonational stress (or its
written representations as italics, bold, etc.) and this is the type we shall focus
on. When translating from English into French, such emphasis turns out to be
problematic for a number of reasons.

The first difficulty lies in detecting and interpreting correctly instances of

emphasis. Typographical conventions are not always applied, so it is not
unusual to find orally stressed words which are not indicated as such
typographically. For instance, the following example taken from a training
material script (end of an interview) did not indicate that in the English
recording the second Thank you in fact carried a stress on the pronoun: "Thank
you." "Thank you." This led to an erroneous rendering ("Merci." "Merci."),
instead of the more appropriate: "Merci." "C'est moi qui vous remercie."
(Mailhac 2000:415). Correct identification is all the more important since the
same structure can take on opposite meanings through emphasis (e.g. I thought
you were studying vs. I thought you were studying; Wood 1991:125).
Identifying stress in speech is also fraught with difficulties, given the subtlety
of the intonation patterns (Wood 1991) and the fact that the translator is not
normally a native speaker of the SL. Grammatical words (see below) offer a
particularly subtle continuum of possibilities in terms of emphasis (weak
forms, unstressed normal forms, stressed normal forms, etc.; Wood 1991:129).
Finally, written representations of speech will fail to reflect all the intonational
meanings relevant to the translator's decisions (Wood 1991:124).
Although French does offer the possibility of intonational stress, it is neither as
flexible nor as frequent as it is in English. Other types of resources tend to be
used to convey similar meanings. Volsik (1991) observes a very high
frequency of cleft constructions in the translation of emphasis into French. He
also points out how translation can substantially modify the distribution of
meaning. In the case of English-French translation, it can widen the range of
interpretations by introducing ambiguities (see Roubichou-Stretz 1991:115 for
a similar position), whilst in the other direction, it can shift what he refers to as
the 'centre of gravity of the utterance' (e.g. moving the emphasis away from
verbs to nouns or pronouns). Solutions often involve idiomatic equivalents
which are semantically very subtle. Not unlike other languages (Anderman
1999:36), French resorts to what can be described as particles: short words
such as donc, et, mais, bien, là, tiens, va, dis, enfin, aussi, alors, au fait. These
connectors operate in a different way when conveying meanings equivalent to
English intonational emphasis. They can lose their full logical value as part of
a process which Abraham (1991, referred to by Anderman 1999:36) calls
semantic 'bleaching.' The following illustrate possible contrasts of this nature
in French:

"Donc comment va John?" (full connector; = "Therefore how is John?")

"Comment va donc John?" ('bleached' meaning; = "How is John?")

"Alors c'est de ta faute!" (full connector; = "Then it's your fault!")

"Alors là, c'est de ta faute!" ('bleached' meaning; = "That's your fault!")

"Aussi est-ce de ta faute." (full connector; = "Therefore it is your fault.")

"C'est ta faute aussi!" ('bleached' meaning; = "That's your fault!")1

One of the translator's tools, the dictionary, turns out to be largely unusable for
two reasons. First of all, emphasis frequently applies to grammatical words
(Wood 1991:129-137) which one would not look up. Our analysis of the
translation by Philippe Rouard (1984) of the first 100 italicised words found in
Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass reveals that 65 occurrences concern
grammatical terms (all, am, are, at all, can, can't, could not, couldn't, did, do,
five, four, he, here, I, is, it, I'll, I've, like, me, must, my, never, not, ought, our,
shall, should, some, somebody, something, that, them, this, three, very, was,
would, you, your, you'd) with the following distribution in terms of most
frequent types: personal pronouns: 21; modals: 13; that/this: 11; possessive
adjectives: 7; to be: 5; negation: 5; do/did: 2; to have: 2. Secondly, renderings
involve very subtle pragmatic nuances which are heavily dependent on their
context and will not therefore appear in dictionaries, or grammars for that
matter. For instance, in the sentence John called Mary a republican then SHE
insulted HIM (Cadiot 1991:21), which is impossible to translate literally into
French, the meaning conveyed by the emphasised pronouns (i.e. that calling
 Mary a republican amounted to an insult), can only be retrieved and rendered
in terms of its specific context.

Because of the nature of the problem and the mismatch in the way meanings
are mapped in the SL and TL, emphasis is often not rendered adequately
(Wood 1991) and there is a clear risk of producing forms of 'translationese.'
Jakobsen (1986:104, quoted by Anderman 1999:40) refers to a "distinct
awkwardness of style" stemming from lower frequencies of modal particle use
in translated material. Considering the translation of certain types of emphasis,
Volsik (1991:79) even regards as inevitable the existence of an 'interlangue
linguistique' (linguistic interlanguage) exhibiting a degree of 'étrangeté
résiduelle' (residual strangeness) resulting from interference.

Having established the nature of the translation problem which will be used to
illustrate our discussion, we can now turn to procedures, parameters and
subsequently strategies to explore how these should be formulated for the
benefit of the translator and how they might differ from other translation
strategies found in TS. As indicated earlier, Woolner (1988) will provide the
starting point of our analysis as far as emphasis is concerned.

2. Procedures

A procedure is defined here as a means of translating a particular element as

part of a strategy (e.g. cultural borrowing, calque, cultural substitution and
definition are amongst the procedures available for the translation of cultural
references). Some procedures are limited in scope (like the ones just
mentioned), others can apply to wider units, including a whole text (e.g.
exoticism with minimum/maximum presence of the translator in the case of
cultural references; see Mailhac 1996a). A procedure is thus a tool to be
exploited in the broader context of a strategy in order to solve a translation
problem. In that sense, it is more akin to what Chesterman (1997, ch. 4) labels
a 'strategy.' To the extent that the properties of a tool are determined by its
intended use, procedures are goal oriented and, being part of the translational
output, they are visible (e.g. one can see whether a culture-specific term has
been borrowed, defined in a footnote, etc. in the translation).

In her dissertation on emphasis in translation, based on the general approach

adopted by Mailhac (1996a) for cultural references, Woolner (1998) assesses
the positions of Vinay and Darbelnet (1960), Astington (1983), Hervey and
Higgins (1992) and Grellet (1993) in order to define a framework which is then
applied to a corpus including two French translations (Papy, 1961; Parisot
1979) and two German translations (Teutsch, 1989; Enzensberger, 1998) of
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Woolner's findings cannot be assessed in
detail here, however a brief evaluation is necessary.

First of all, her sources do not include the special issue of Palimpsestes (1991)
devoted to emphasis. In spite of the proposed theme (emphasis in terms of
French/English translation or contrastive linguistics), some of the articles in
this volume do not really seem to address the question (Berman, Chassigneux,
Cadiot); some just touch upon it (Nice, Roubichou-Stretz); some deal with
aspects which are not directly related to the kind of emphasis we are examining
here: pauses, hesitations, etc. (Leclercq), the representation of action and
activity (Guillemin-Flescher). However other contributions (Volsik, and
particularly Wood) are directly relevant to our focus.

Looking more specifically at Woolner's study, the number of procedures (and

parameters) she arrives at, irrespective of the inevitable limitations associated
with her corpus (e.g. as a nineteenth-century written corpus, it does not contain
any contemporary colloquial spoken language which might yield different
results), is much more significant than what was gleaned initially from the TS
literature reviewed. However, the demarcation line she proposes between
lexical and syntactic procedures should be modified to avoid having 'lexical
sequences' which include additional clauses (e.g. en ce qui me concerne... / il
est vrai que...). Some minor reorganisation of the presentation order she adopts
will make it possible to regroup items which are conceptually similar (e.g.
additions). It seems preferable to use the term 'deletion' rather than 'omission'
for cases where not rendering the emphasis is deliberate rather than accidental.
The addition of particles could be incorporated in the list of lexical additions,
since they represent a common solution. One should also add two types of
procedure. The first one is phonetic (vowel/consonant lengthening; Wood
1991). The second could be described as 'descriptive label.' Although it is not
present in the TS sources or the corpus, it is available in principle and is
equivalent to 'descriptive characterization' (Mailhac 1999:135) which can be
used to render marked speech. It involves adding metalinguistic comments in
order to enlighten the reader. A statement in which emphasis conveyed surprise
could thus be accompanied, if pragmatically feasible, by a description
explicating the nuance (e.g. "...she replied, sounding surprised" or as a stage
direction in the case of a play). The pragmatic constraints associated with it
make it different from other forms of addition.

Allowing for these points, the following amended list of procedures can be put
forward, regrouped into 10 types (as opposed to Woolner's 8):

(1) - Lexical procedures

- lexical repetition (It's very good > C'est très, très bien)

- use of lexical superlative/diminutive (I love > J'adore)

- addition of noun (hers > celle de Jane)

- addition of adverb or adverbial phrase (bel et bien)

- addition of interjection (pardon, voyons, par exemple, diable, etc.)

- addition of particle (va, dis, etc.)

- addition of adjective or adjectival phrase (one > seul et unique)

- addition of verb (but all he said was > mais il se contenta de demander)

- addition of conjunction (Who are you? > Et qui es-tu, toi?)

- addition of lexical sequence

- focus (Pour ma part / A mon avis)

- surprise (Quelle idée)

- lexical harmonisation (use of an idiomatic expression appropriate to the

context: This time there could be no mistake > Cette fois il ne pouvait plus y
avoir l'ombre d'un doute [= ... there could not be the shadow of a doubt])

(2) Syntactic procedures

- syntactic reprise (ante- and post-position: I know what you want : Ah, toi, je
sais bien ce que tu veux! [literally: Ah, you, I know what you want])

- adding a clause (en ce qui me concerne)

- cleft sentences (I did it > c'est moi qui l'ai fait)

- change of sentence type (to exclamatory, negative, interrogative, etc.:You

would tell Olivia ... > Qu'est-ce que tu avais besoin de dire à Olivia...? [= Why
on earth did you have to tell Olivia...?])

(3) Morphological procedures

- stressed personal pronoun forms (moi, toi, lui, etc.); use of reinforcement
(vous-même/vous autres)

- demonstrative pronouns (e.g. celui-ci/là)

- demonstrative adjectives (e.g. ce/cette ... -ci/là)

(4) Phonetic procedures (vowel/consonant lengthening: Dreadfully old-

fashioned > Terrrriblement démodés (Wood 1991:128))

(5) Punctuation (commas, suspension points, dashes, exclamation marks,

inverted commas)
 (6) Typographical marker (e.g. bold, italics, underlining)

(7) Descriptive label (...she replied, sounding surprised)

(8) Compensation (e.g. transfer of emphasis from that to a reinforced

negation—du tout—in the following example: Oh, I shouldn't like that! > Oh!
je n'aimerais pas ça du tout!; see Harvey 1995 for the concept of compensation
and Wood 1991:137-138 for examples related to emphasis)

(9) Combination of procedures (e.g. morphological + typographical: As if I

would talk on such a subject > Comme si moi, j'allais parler d'une chose
pareille!)

(10) Deletion (I have tasted eggs, certainly > J'ai certainement goûté à des
oeufs: the emphasis on the auxiliary is not actually rendered because of the
presence of certainly)

Faced with the task of selecting an appropriate procedure, the translator must
consider the range of relevant parameters which will determine choices.

3. Parameters

A parameter corresponds to any factor which needs to be taken into account

when choosing a procedure (e.g. communicative/pragmatic function and
readership are among the parameters to be taken into account when translating
culture-bound references). Parameters can apply to a small unit (e.g. word) or a
larger unit (e.g. whole text). Given their role in the selection of procedures,
parameters also act as evaluation criteria, since any factor relevant to the
choice of procedures must be relevant to translation-quality assessment.
Parameters will normally combine and interact with each other requiring the
translator to assess their relationship in order to reach a decision about the most
appropriate procedures.

The parameters having a bearing on emphasis are frequently ignored by

authors who often stop short of making them explicit. Woolner's list (1998:32-
34) includes five of them (type of word emphasized, sentence type, pragmatic
function, presence of other emphasizing element, text type). Leaving aside
points of detail and external factors (e.g. the translator's brief), and bearing in
mind that what follows does not claim to be exhaustive, a number of additions
could be made: linguistic medium, pragmatic context, readership, level of
speech, linguistic frequency norms, style. Overall, the amended list includes 11
parameters, ranging from parameters which may obtain for the whole text to
some which are more specific:

(1) Linguistic medium (spoken vs. written: this will affect the possibility of
rendering intonation by intonation as opposed to some written equivalent)
 (2) Pragmatic context (e.g. the existence of a narrator or the option of stage
directions would make the use of descriptive labels possible)

(3) Nature of the text (e.g. one would expect options to be more restricted in a
sonnet than a novel)

(4) Readership (e.g. there could be the possibility of slightly different use of
typographical conventions for emphasis in children's literature)

(5) Style (e.g. nineteenth-century English prose; Carroll's highly frequent use
of emphasis)

(6) Level of speech (e.g. colloquial language would alter the range of lexical
and syntactic options in French; see Wood 1991:128)

(7) Linguistic frequency norms concerning various means of conveying

emphasis in the SL and TL (e.g. the much higher frequency of cleft
constructions in French compared to English; Volsik 1991:86)2

(8) Pragmatic function (e.g. expressing contrast, surprise, confirmation,

challenge, contradiction, impatience, suggestion, order)

(9) Sentence type (e.g. the use of the interjection diable in exclamatory or
interrogative sentences).

(10) Nature of word emphasised (e.g. emphasis on personal pronouns would

often result in a morphological procedure; see Wood 1991:125)

(11) Presence of other emphasizing element (e.g. the presence of certainly in

the following example makes it possible not to render the emphasis on the
auxiliary without any real loss: I have tasted eggs, certainly > J'ai
certainement goûté à des oeufs)

Having clarified the nature of procedures and parameters, it is now possible to

address the question of strategies.

4. Strategies

As a term, 'strategy' is conceptually broader than 'procedure,' hence its use here to
refer to a method employed to translate a given element/unit (including a whole text)
making use of one or more procedures selected on the basis of relevant parameters. A
strategy thus links procedures with the conditions which obtain when they are used,
these being specified in terms of parameters. It can be either ad hoc, and be restricted
to a specific context, or more general, and be reusable in a range of contexts, the
latter type being naturally of greater interest to TS. When generalizable, a strategy
can be construed as a rule, with the intrinsic ambiguity which characterizes this
concept, as well as others such as 'norm' or 'law' (Mailhac 2006).
In its descriptive sense, 'rule' refers to some observed regularity ("X is what normally
happens/As a rule, X happens."; cf. French epistemic use of il est de règle que +
indicative). In its prescriptive sense, it refers to a norm to be followed ("You must do
X./The rule is to do X"; cf. French deontic use of il est de règle que + subjunctive).
The two senses are obviously connected ("X is what normally happens, therefore you
must do X"). However, not every descriptive rule/norm/law can be associated with a
prescriptive counterpart (the Archimedes principle is purely descriptive; physicists do
not admonish particles to act according to the laws which characterise their behavior,
etc.). This raises the question, which will be addressed later, of the relationship
between descriptive and prescriptive strategies. Given that they are oriented towards
the resolution of translation problems, strategies, be they descriptive or prescriptive,
are teleological in nature.

Unlike procedures, strategies are not directly visible as part of the observable
translation output. In principle, they fall into three categories: they can be conscious,
potentially conscious (e.g. instinctive automatized translational behavior may be
accessed through introspection, if required), or totally subconscious (e.g. as would be
the case with undesirable strategies such as the ones resulting in various forms of
translationese).3 Whenever strategies are not directly accessible through the
translator, they need to be hypothesized from the available data.

As a discipline, TS operates across a range going from the non-applied to the applied.
The non-applied level is concerned with the description, explanation and prediction
of phenomena, and therefore translation strategies pertaining to this level have an
essentially descriptive, explanatory and predictive role; they contribute to our
understanding and knowledge of translation as an activity. They need to satisfy the
usual requirements of descriptive and explanatory adequacy, verifiability,
falsifiability, economy (accounting for the largest possible number of phenomena
with the smallest possible number of explanatory facts), etc., and will normally be
probabilistic. Their formulation is conditioned by their functions and a highly abstract
and complex conceptual apparatus would be perfectly in order if it proved necessary
to achieve the right level of adequacy.

At the other end, applied TS seeks to provide translation strategies to guide the
translator in his/her task and offer a framework for quality assessment and developing
translation skills. Such strategies will be prescriptive in nature rather than descriptive
and explanatory as such (even if they contain an explanatory dimension, their
function goes beyond explanation); they constitute decision-making tools based on
choices and contribute to translation know-how. They will normally be probabilistic
and acquired as explicit knowledge before some of them, at least, are internalized and
applied instinctively by the translator. In this respect, they are very similar to the
grammatical rules which the learner of a second language needs to memorize,
internalize and apply. This similarity can assist in clarifying the nature of the criteria
which need to be met for a prescriptive translation strategy to be usable.

When addressing the question "What criteria influence the level of difficulty learners
are likely to experience in acquiring grammatical features as explicit knowledge?",
Ellis (2002:28) puts forward the following six criteria (provided here without the
examples which illustrate them):

Criteria Definition
1. Formal The extent to which the structure involves
complexity a single or many elements.
2. Functional The extent to which the meanings
complexity realized by a structure are transparent or
opaque.
3. Reliability The extent to which the rule has
exceptions.
4. Scope The extent to which the rule has broad or
narrow coverage.
5. Metalanguage The extent to which the rule can be
provided simply with minimum
metalanguage.
6. L1/L2 A feature that corresponds to an L1
contrast feature is easier than a feature that does
not.
'

Mutatis mutandis, this framework can be applied to explore what criteria influence
the level of difficulty trainee translators are likely to experience in acquiring
translation strategies as explicit knowledge. In practice, this amounts to discovering
the features which prescriptive translation strategies should ideally possess to be
translator-friendly, and this is what we will attempt in order to contrast them with the
properties exhibited by non-prescriptive strategies of the type formulated within non-
applied TS.

Formal complexity corresponds to the extent to which the strategy involves a large or
limited number of procedures and parameters. The more numerous they are, the more
difficult it becomes to apply or memorize strategies, particularly in view of the fact
that procedures may combine with each other, as may parameters, thus multiplying
the number of theoretically possible permutations. Unlike non-prescriptive strategies,
prescriptive ones must therefore remain below a certain level of formal complexity to
fulfil their function.

In our example, the association of 10 procedures with 11 parameters will clearly

result in a fair level of complexity (higher than Woolner's who only had 8 and 5,
respectively). This would reduce the chances of providing usable strategies. If the
detail of the procedures and parameters which are categories
(lexical/syntactic/phonetic procedures, pragmatic meaning, etc.) is provided in the
formulation, then the level of complexity is significantly increased with the total
number of items coming into play rising by an additional 24. This will result in a
considerable multiplication of possible combinations; it is nevertheless possible to
simplify formulations by adjusting the scope (see below).

On the positive side, some of the parameters hold for the whole text (e.g. linguistic
medium, overall pragmatic context, nature of text), which means that, once factored
in, and unless there are strong reasons to depart from them, they automatically apply
to individual occurrences which makes their application easier.

Semantic complexity (the term 'semantic' is preferable to 'functional' in the context of

translation) can be defined as the extent to which the meanings involved are
transparent or opaque. In the case of emphasis, some of the meanings are particularly
subtle, varied and difficult to identify in English, both in terms of the intonation
pattern which expresses them and their actual semantic nature (Wood 1991).
Similarly, French equivalents can be difficult to label and extremely idiomatic (e.g.
particles). In order to retain their practical usefulness, strategies must refer to
meaning types which are characterized by a reasonable degree of transparency, a
constraint which does not apply in the same way to non-prescriptive strategies.
Meanings referred to in non-applied theories must be clear too, but a modality which
is so abstract that it could only be expressed through complex logical symbols, for
instance, would not be of any practical use to a translator.

Reliability corresponds to the extent to which the strategy has exceptions. In view of
the nature of the translation process, rules will normally be probabilistic and carry a
number of exceptions. For example, not all instances of English prosodic stress will
result in lexicalisation and statistical information about possible correlations between
factors and procedures would be helpful to prioritize recommendations. On this
particular criterion, prescriptive strategies remain close to their non-prescriptive
counterparts, since, even at the non-applied level, claims about descriptive rules can
only be made if the number of exceptions remains below a certain level.

Scope represents the extent to which the strategy has broad or narrow coverage. Here,
there seems to be a trade-off in terms of usability. Compare the following possible
formulations: (a) "When..., lexicalize"; (b) "When..., use an adverb"; (c) "When...,
use précisément." It could be argued that (a), which has the broadest scope, is more
usable, to the extent that it can be applied more frequently. However, it can also be
argued that it is of less assistance to the translator compared to (c), for it does not
offer a specific solution in the way (c) does (option (b), is clearly in the middle in
terms of what it provides). In other words, the more general the strategy, the more
usable it may prove in terms of potential frequency of use, but the less usable it may
turn out to be if its broader coverage correlates with a greater lack of precision.
Similarly, narrow scope may turn out to be helpful in yielding specific solutions, but,
by nature, these will be very limited in their application.

As hinted earlier, varying the scope from specific equivalents to broader categories
may constitute a means of simplifying strategies, reducing them to broad principles
which may prove particularly helpful if combined with reliable frequency
information (e.g. "When ..., the most frequent types of procedures to render English
emphasis into French are, in order:....). Again, on this criterion, prescriptive strategies
remain close to their non-prescriptive counterparts, as the descriptive and explanatory
power may well weaken as coverage expands.

The extent to which a strategy can be formulated simply with minimum

metalanguage will obviously be crucial to its acquisition and application. The
terminology Woolner resorts to remains simple and, with the exception of the term
'deontic,' does not extend beyond basic grammatical labels. Although it examines a
different type of emphasis from the one we are focusing on here, Cadiot's article
(1991) provides a perfect example of the kind of linguistic metalanguage which may
be required for descriptive and explanatory purposes, but would be highly
problematic if used systematically in the formulation of applied strategies:
détachement sans rappel, dislocation, détachement thématique, aboutness, apodose,
protase, horizon thématique ouvert par le constituant détaché, topicalisation,
acquis/given, statut sémantique et référentiel, clivage, référence déictique/générique,
modalité constative/injonctive, diathèse passive/neutre, ancrage référentiel,
rhématicité globale, biprédications, pronoms topiques, propositions incolores, bloc
référentiel figé, mécanismes inférentiels, extériorité syntaxique, liberté référentielle,
kairos, energeia, indexation situationnelle, déjà-là, cadrage de l'énonciation, etc. It is
interesting to note that the author's analysis is very much a linguistic one, with very
little said about translation as such. This example also illustrates how the possible
contribution of linguistics to applied TS is constrained by the degree of technicality
of the conceptual and terminological apparatus borrowed. The same problem would
not arise with non-applied TS since, whenever necessary, its formulations can make
use of a highly abstract and complex conceptual apparatus.

In theory, Ellis's L1/L2-contrast criterion could be reformulated in terms of SL/TL

contrast: a SL feature that corresponds to a TL feature is easier to translate than a
feature that does not. However, closer scrutiny reveals that the existence of a
corresponding feature does not necessarily simplify the translation process. Both
English and French can express emphasis through intonational stress, yet we have
seen how problematic the translation of this linguistic feature can be. Also, the
distance between languages and the resulting mismatch in the way meanings are
mapped are not necessarily synonymous with difficulty. If we consider translation
into English of what French tends to use to convey what would amount to prosodic
stress in English (lexical/syntactic/morphological/phonetic/typographical resources,
punctuation, descriptive label), being able to render all these by prosodic stress (or its
written equivalents—italics, etc.) is quite economical: a whole range of very disparate
French elements can be handled by a single English procedure. In other words, the
SL/TL contrast has to be interpreted in terms of the number of possible procedures
involved in rendering the corresponding SL problem (a stressed word in our case) in
a given translation direction. Consequently, in the case of translation strategies, the
SL/TL contrast will automatically correlate with the number of relevant procedures,
which means that it will be subsumed within the formal-complexity criterion
mentioned earlier and can be dispensed with as a separate criterion.

A further criterion to be added here concerns the order of terms in the formulation.
Whereas descriptive characterisations could be formulated as "Procedure X is used
when...," prescriptive statements should mirror the order of the actual translating
process, starting with the conditions and ending with the choice of procedure: "When
..., select procedure X."

The criteria identified so far add up to what could be described as a 'minimax

principle' of minimum effort for maximum usability to the translator, 4 and the need
for simplicity which they specify should be qualified to allow for the distinction
between memorizable and consultable know-how, given that the latter can be more
substantial and complex than the former. However, these criteria are not enough in
themselves, since initially one has to ensure that the recommended strategy is actually
a desirable one. It ought to meet certain quality standards in order to guard against the
spread of undesirable translational behavior (e.g. interference, stylistic flattening,
over-explicitation, etc.; Chesterman 1997:152).

In principle, desirable strategies could be construed as being simply the ones used by
competent translators. In his discussion of what he calls 'normative laws,' i.e. laws
"descriptive of the behavior of competent professionals" "who set the professional
norms," Chesterman (1997:73-74) mentions possible criteria which might be used to
identify this subset of translators. Amongst them are peer recognition and years of
experience, "In other words, translator competence (on this view) is defined socially,
not linguistically." If desirable translational behavior is identified as being simply
what competent translators defined in this manner actually do, there is no guarantee
that it will deliver quality because the criteria are not directly linked to the merits of
the translation output and it assumes that such translators are generally unlikely to
perform in a manner which is open to criticism. There is also a clear danger of
circularity in Chesterman's position if translational competence is identified on the
basis of the presence of certain behaviors, e.g. explaining culture-bound terms, to use
his example: How do we know that a translator is competent? Because (s)he explains
culture-bound terms. How do we know that such behavior is a sign of quality?
Because that is what competent translators do.

It would therefore be more appropriate to determine what represents desirable

strategies by applying empirically verifiable criteria. One could demonstrate for
instance that, for a relevant set of readers, a given strategy to deal with cultural
references has removed a degree of opacity which would have interfered with the
communication of the message or, to use our example of emphasis, that the strategy
applied has successfully conveyed the intended nuance (e.g. surprise) whilst
satisfying other essential parameters. Woolner's study yields another example: 28%
of cases of identified emphasis were not translated (1998:25-26). In order to establish
whether we are dealing with a recommendable amount of deletion, a high level of
undesirable omissions, or something in between, one could apply a combination of
criteria amongst the ones which were identified (linguistic frequency norms, nature of
text, pragmatic context, etc.).

It should be pointed out that prescriptive strategies need not correspond to attested
translation strategies as a quality prerequisite. For instance, if no occurrence of the
procedure we called 'descriptive label' has been identified in existing studies, it does
not necessarily follow that using such a procedure, and therefore formulating a
strategy based on it, would be inappropriate, since it could merely reflect the fact that
it happened to be absent from the corpus or corpora used or, alternatively, that no one
had thought of using it in spite of its obvious merits in certain contexts. Flexibility is
necessary here to accommodate the possibility of new translation procedures and
strategies.

At this point of the discussion a few remarks are called for concerning the way in
which some of the notions used in our analysis relate to the concept of norm. We
shall restrict ourselves to issues which are directly relevant to the kind of strategy we
have been focusing on.

Given that strategies are rules, they share the ambivalence linked to this notion with
the concept of norm in so far as both can exist in descriptive and prescriptive forms.
Anything prescriptive, be it a strategy or a norm, will need to satisfy the desirability
and minimax-principle criteria and anything described as a 'norm' must be based on a
statistically significant volume of data. It follows from this that a descriptive norm of
the type which would stipulate the procedure(s) selected when certain conditions are
fulfilled in terms of relevant parameters would only differ from the corresponding
descriptive strategy with regard to the statistical significance of the data on which it is
based. A strategy (whether descriptive or prescriptive) can be based on a limited
corpus, whilst a norm, by definition, cannot. It also means that, in practice, when a
descriptive/prescriptive strategy is grounded on data which is statistically significant,
it amounts to a descriptive/prescriptive norm.

As far as the relationship with parameters is concerned, certain norms can operate as
parameters in view of the fact that they constitute factors which are relevant to the
decision-making process. One example would be Chesterman's expectancy norms
which are "established by the expectations of readers of a translation (of a given type)
concerning what a translation (of this type) should be like" (1997:64). These
expectations may cover: "text-type and discourse conventions, (...) style and register,
(...) the appropriate degree of grammaticality, (...) the statistical distribution of text
features of all kinds, (...) collocations, lexical choice, and so on." (id.).

Conclusion

On a first level, our analysis has enabled us to explore what makes the translation of
intonational emphasis from English into French problematic, to identify 10 possible
procedures and 11 parameters, and to comment briefly on some of the issues relating
to relevant strategies.

On a second level, we have tried to demonstrate that prescriptive strategies, whose

function is to guide the translator in his/her task and offer a framework for quality
assessment and developing translation skills, should ideally comply with a minimax
principle for the translator (minimum effort for maximum usability) and meet the six
criteria which underlie this principle: the formal and semantic complexity, as well as
the metalanguage, should be such that they do not interfere with the formulation; the
number of exceptions to the rules should be limited and the scope as broad as
possible; the order of formulation should mirror the translation process and start with
the conditions to end with the choice of procedure. In addition, a desirability
requirement, to be assessed by objective empirical criteria, should be satisfied in
order to ensure quality.

Strategies put forward by the non-applied branch of TS differ from prescriptive

strategies in a number of ways. Their function is to describe, explain and predict
translational phenomena and therefore contribute to our understanding and
knowledge of translation, as opposed to practical translation know-how. They do not
need to meet the desirability and minimax-principle criteria (apart from the reliability
and scope criteria) and, as a result, have a different relationship with neighboring
disciplines such as linguistics, since borrowing highly complex concepts from them
may well be appropriate at times.

Given the differing properties of descriptive and prescriptive strategies,

translatologists should be clear about the nature and function of the strategies they
endeavor to reconstruct and should not attempt to blur the differences between them,
since this would undermine their specificity and, with it, the extent to which they can
fulfil their respective functions.

Critics, such as Cross quoted above, who seemingly reject wholesale the contribution
of TS to the work of the translator fall into the trap of a monolithic and reductionist
view of TS which does not correspond to the reality. Applied TS can and does make a
contribution to the practice of translation and it does so by exploiting, whenever
appropriate, the findings of non-applied TS research.