Studying translation product and

process

Presenter: Radhia Remalli

E-mail:. remalliradhia@yahoo.com
 Objectives:

 Vinay and Darbelnet’s model

 Catford and translation ‘shifts’
 Option, markedness and stylistic shifts in
translation
 The cognitive process of translation.
 Ways of investigating cognitive processing.
 Vinay and Darbelent’s model

Jean-Paul Vinay and Jean Darbelnet are

the two French scholars investigated the
linguistic aspects of translation in 1950s.
They held a stylistic analysis comparison
between English and French. comparing a
texts in both languages, noticing the
differences and they came up with two
strategies and seven procedures.
 Vinay and Darbelent
Tow main strategies and seven procedures:

 Direct translation  Oblique translation

 Borrownig  Transposition
 Calque  Modulation
 Literal translation  Equivalence
 Adaptation
 Direct Translation

 Borrowing: transfer the word without transalation. his procedure is

used in all the langauges to fill the sematic gap in the target language.

 Calque:This ‘a special kind of borrowing’ where the source language

expression or structure is transferred in a literal translation.

 Literal translation: word-for-word translation. this procedure is

common languages of the same family and culture.
 Oblique translation

 Transposition: a change of one part of speech for another without

change the overall meaning of the sentence.
 Modulation:This changes the semantics and points of view of the SL.it
changes the word or a phrase in the SL to a different word or phrase in
the TL to convey the same idea.
 Equivalence:describe the same situation by different stylistic or structura
means. Equivalence is particularly useful in translating idioms and
proverbs
 Adaptation: changing the cultural reference when a situation in the
source culture does not exist.
 Vinay and Darbelent
Supplementary Translation procedures

 Amplification:The target language uses more words.

 False friends: similar structure ,different meaning.
 Loss, gain and compensation:when all the ST nuances cannot be
preserved in the TT.
 Explicitation: Implicit information in the ST are made explicit in the TT.
On the grammar level this may occur.
 Generalization: more general word is used in TT.
 Vinay and Darbelent
Levels of translation
 The lexicon: the vocabulary of particular language ,field ,social
class,person etc….

 Syntactic structure:the grammatical structures of sentences.

 The message:the utterance and its metalinguistic situation or context.

 Vinay and Darbelent
Analytical steps:

 Identify the units of translation.

 Examine the SL text, evaluating the descriptive, affective and
intellectual content of the unit.
 Reconstruct the metalinguistic context of the message .
 Evaluate the stylistic effects.
 Produce and revise the TT.
 The difference between servitude and option described
by Vinay and Darbelnet :

 Servitude: refers to obligatory transpositions and modulations due to

a difference between the two language systems.

 Option: refers to non-obligatory changes that may be due to the

translator’s own style and preferences, or to a change in emphasis.
 Catford and translation shifts

 Catford (1965:73) defines translation shifts as

the departures from formal correspondence in the
process of going from source language to target
language. Catford follows the Firthian and
Hallidayan linguistic model, which analyses
language as communication, operating
functionally in context and on a range of different
levels and ranks.
 Catford
Translation shifts

Level Shifts Category shifts

Intra-system
shifts
Structural Unit
shifts Class Shifts or
shifts rank
shifts
 Catford classified translation shifts into:

 1) Level shifts : Level shift occurs when an item at one linguistic level in
SL has its translation equivalent at different level in TL.

 2)Category: shiftscategory shift refers to some shifts which share a

particular feature – departures from formal correspondence in translation.
 (a) Structural shifts: a shift in grammatical structure.
 Continued

 b) Class shifts :These comprise shifts from one part of speech to

another.
 ( c) Unit shift or rank shifts: These are shifts where the translation
equivalent in the TL is at a different rank to the SL.
 (d) Intra-system Shifts: these are shifts that take place when the SL
and TL possess approximately corresponding systems but where ‘the
translation involves selection of a non-corresponding term in the TL
system.
 Option, markedness and stylistic shifts in
translation:
 Jirˇi Levy introduced litrary aspect of the ‘expressive function’, he
sees literary translation as both a reproductive and a creative labour
with the goal of equivalent aesthetic effect.

 The mix of authorial and translatorial message is the result of conscious

and unconscious decision-making from the translator. This mix, is
conveyed in the linguistic choices that appear in the TT.
 Continued
 Translational stylistics’: the ‘linguistic fingerprint’ of the translator by
comparing ST and TT choices against large representative collections
of electronic texts in the SL and TL.
 Markedness relates to a choice or patterns of choices that stand out
as unusual and may come to the reader’s attention.
 The markedness functions to draw the reader’s attention to the
advert and to illustrate that it is an unusual and challenging job.
 The cognitive process of translation

 Describing the constitution of translated product by

comparing the source text and the target text can limitedly
tell us about the actual cognitive process of translation.
 other models choose a different approach based on the
observation analysis and/or explanation of the cognitive
processes of the translators themselves. For example
‘interpretive model’ of translation that onwards by Danica
Seleskovitch and Marianne Lederer.
 Seleskovitch and Lederer explain translation
as an (overlapping) involving the following
three-stage process:

 1) Reading and understanding: grasp the sense of the

source text by using the linguistic competence and ‘world
knowledge’.
 2) Deverbalization: transfer the sense not the words to
avoid transcoding and calques.
 3) Re-expression: constitute the target text based on the
deverbalized sense.
 4)Verification: evaluation and revision of the target text by
the translator. (added byJean Delisle)
 Ways of investigating cognitive
processing:

 Think-aloud protocols (TAPs): this experimental method it

was created Ericsson and Simon 1984. the translator is asked to
verbalize his/her thought processes while translating or immediately
afterwards. often with no prompting on content.

 More recent methods have ‘triangulated’ think-aloud protocols with

technological innovations.
 Technological innovations include:

 The video recording and observation of the subjects.

 Use of pre- or post-test interviews and/or
questionnaires.
 The use of Translog software that records the key-
strokes made by the translator on the computer
keyboard
 continued

 The use of eye-trackers that records the focus of the eye on the
text. The length of such fixation points, and the dilation of the pupil,
may indicate the mental effort being made by the translator. .
Thank you