“Octavio Paz claims that translation is the principal means we have of understanding the world we live in. The world, he says, is presented to us as a growing heap of texts, each slightly different from the one that came before it: translations of translations of translations. Each text is unique, yet at the same time it is the translation of another text. No text can be completely original because language of itself, in its very essence, is already a translation – first from the nonverbal world, and then, because each sign and each phrase is a translation of another sign, another phrase.” (Bassnett and Trivedi 1999: 2-3)
Life is a constant (re)production. Birth can be seen as the beginning of life. What is (re)produced by birth is the baby, the baby takes after her/his parents and grandparents and grandparents and all her/his ancestors to a certain extent. The extent of the resemblance, however, is birth-specific; baby A from parents B and C might have many similarities with them, whereas baby Ç from parents D and F might have less. Nevertheless, however the extent of the similarities might be, the baby is a reproduced form of her/his parents.
As soon as the baby comes into existence, s/he begins to think. And most children make their first translation as of the moment they are borne: their first cry. The cry is in fact the signifier of the pain they are suffering from, as a result of the first meeting of their lungs with oxygen. As they grow up, they make more and more translations, they translate their happiness into laughs and smiles, whereas they translate their pain and suffering into cries and screams. Thanks to these translations, they communicate, and make others know how they are feeling, what they are thinking, and make others know if they need something. In most cases, the mother is the most efficient reader of the simple language the baby translator uses in her/his target language, and she helps her/him learn a more complex language so that in the future s/he can communicate with other people to express her/his needs.
Some mothers and parents make their children learn more than one language at an early age, because they believe, as multilinguals they can become more successful in life. Some parents prefer sending their children to schools where they can learn a second and even a third language. The last two are the cases generally observed in countries where the natural language used in everyday life or the official language is not English, which is the most dominant (even if not the most spoken) language of our time.
“The passion for English knowledge” penetrates almost every part of these countries (cited by Arrojo, 1999:141). People with different social backgrounds can be observed using English words in their sentences, and this might be seen as a result of English’s being “the language of prestige and power” (Prasad 1999: 47). On a chat program over the internet, even a letter of the alphabet of the natural language can be substituted by “w” which is a letter of the English alphabet, for the one who uses “w” instead of “v” in her/his sentence is deemed more “trendy”. S/he signals that s/he belongs to a class which is capable of using (at least some) elements of the language of prestige (Prasad 1999:47). This kind of usage certainly does not stem from a need to ease the language, because, as Dyson argues “a true bilingual would have perfect control over two or more linguistic systems and manage to keep them separate from each other” (cited by Prasad 1999:46). Then it can be seen as another kind of need, which is psychological: the “dominated” people’s desire to turn into the dominant. By way of using the elements of the dominant language, they might be unintentionally attempting to gain the prestige of the people who belong to and/or own the most dominant culture of their time, or they might be unintentionally feeling as if they were one of the people of the “dominant” culture. The dominant culture, then, can argued to be the dominated culture’s “subject presumed to know” (Arrojo 1999: 142, 152). “The person in whom” one presumes “knowledge to exist thereby acquires” one’s “love” (cited by Arrojo, 1999: 143). It can be argued that the child who is subject to “the alluring foreignness of the dominant English” (Arrojo 1999:142) translates his admiration for this language into sentences in her/his mother tongue which include English elements.
On the other hand, from the viewpoint of the “dominant”, the dominated needs to be explored and explained, otherwise it cannot be known and understood: the explanation of the dominated is dependent on the dominant. Commenting on Lispector, Cixous says: “I would never have another seminar if I knew that enough people read Clarice Lispector... So I continue to accompany her with a reading that watches over her” (cited by Arrojo 1999:153). In a sense, what Cixous does not tell about her relationship with Lispector here is the fact that she is Lispector’s “subject presumed to know”, and Lispector can be “read” by “enough people” only if Cixous expresses in her own words what Lispector tells. Lispector is only reachable through Cixous’s translation, which she deems produced as result of “a careful word for word translation strategy...” (Arrojo 1999:148). The powerful one here is not Lispector, but Cixous (ibid 1999:153), and Lispector “has to be ‘saying’ precisely that which Cixous needs and wants to hear” (Arrojo 1999:153).
Every writing including translation is rewriting (Tymoczko 1999:41), and every rewriting tacitly includes information inter alia about the relationship it establishes with its predecessor. A writing which is used as a point of departure in another writing can mean something not at all/slightly/completely different from what is being retold, and the choice is made for a specific purpose. In most cases, asymmetrical relations of power can help determine what the purpose is.
References:
1- Bassnett and Trivedi (1999) “Introduction: of colonies, cannibals and vernaculars” in Post-colonial translation: theory & practice, ed. Susan Bassnett and Harish Trivedi, Routledge.
2- G. J. V Prasad (1999) “Writing translation: the strange case of the Indian English novel” in Post-colonial translation: theory & practice, ed. Susan Bassnett and Harish Trivedi, Routledge.
3- Rosemary Arrojo (1999) “Interpretation as possesive love: Helene Cixous, Clarice Lispector and the ambivalence of fidelity” in Post-colonial translation: theory & practice, ed. Susan Bassnett and Harish Trivedi, Routledge.
4- Maria Tymoczko (1999) “The Metonymics of Translation” in Translation in a Post-colonial Context, St. Jerome.
3 Aralık 2007 Pazartesi
26 Kasım 2007 Pazartesi
ON “TRANSLATION AS EMPIRE” IN TRANSLATION AND EMPIRE
As Robinson (1997:48-49) points out, Herodotus (c.484-430/20 B.C.) deals with the issue of translation in the second book of his Histories, written in the mid-fifth century B.C. Robinson’s emphasis on translation in the intercultural communication between the Egyptians and the Ionians and Carians is striking:
Herodotus tells the story of the Egyptian king Psammetichus, one of the twelve kings who had made a mutual non-aggression pact: when he accidentally fulfilled an oracle saying that whoever drank from his helmet would become sole monarch of Egypt, the other eleven stripped him of his powers and banished him to the marsh country. Burning with resentment, he plotted revenge but could not act until a company of sea-raiders from Ionia (Heredotus’ country) and Caria were forced by bad weather to land on the Egyptian coast. Psammetichus made friends with the raiders, using their help to defeat and depose the eleven kings. Thus far the story is a fairly familiar one from the annals of empire: the banished king finds foreign allies and returns to overthrow his enemies at home. Because the foreign allies must somehow be rewarded, and the reward must be in proportion to the king’s regained throne, the result is the salutary breakdown of isolationist boundaries and the establishment of intercultural communication that leads to translation.(ibid 1997:49)
This is one of the first intercultural communications in written history, which leads to translation. Psammetichus granted land to his allies in return for their military help, and in addition to that, he sent Egyptian boys with them back home; they were assigned with the task of learning the language of the Ioanians and Carians: Greek. In those times, Greece can said to have been “quite primitive” (ibid 1997:49), and these boys, who would become the first Egyptian interpreters were the first to affect Greek culture.
This is an example from ancient times, which shows that a culture affects another culture through language, and when this kind of communication takes place, the significance of translators and interpreters can never be underestimated. This can also be seen as an example showing the power of translation. Psammetichus might have been grateful to his allies, but was that the only reason why he sent Egyptian boys to be put at their service? He had already given them land. Given the facts that he was a king, thus a man of politics, and that he had managed to regain his throne after having convinced the Ionians and Carians to help him, it can be argued that putting these boys at their service was a clever move to learn more about them, which would lead to taking advantage of their presence, in other words, one of the first examples of the desire to colonize in history (Robinson 1997:49).
Robinson argues that Horace and Cicero have usually been interpreted out of context (ibid 1997:50); however, what they had not said have usually been seen as what they had said. In order to understand what they really meant, without doubt the era they lived in has to be taken into consideration:
Throughout the history of translation theory, especially but not exclusively in Europe, later thinkers would quote Cicero and Horace out of context in order to consolidate what was gradually becoming dominant – indeed ultimately the only acceptable – approach to translation: translating the meaning of whole sentences, not of individual words. The Ciceronian and Horatian catchphrases, “I did not hold it necessary to render word for word, but I preserved the general style and force of the language” (Cicero) and “nor trouble to render word for word with the faithfulness of a translator” (Horace), are quoted or alluded to in virtually every treatise or passing remark on translation in Europe until our own day – and almost invariably in a context alien to the thrust of Cicero’s and Horace’s own arguments. (ibid 1997:50-51)
What they advised was not to translate word-for-word; nevertheless, many have tended to come to the conclusion that this meant just the opposite; “to translate sense-for-sense”, a term coined by Jerome, who lived more than 300 years after Horace and Cicero. To make things clear what we need is “a larger context of Horace’s remarks”(Robinson 1997:50):
It is a hard task to treat what is common in a way of your own; and you are doing more rightly in breaking the tale of Troy into acts than in giving the world a new story of your own telling. You may acquire private rights in common ground, provided you will neither linger in the one hackneyed and easy round; nor trouble to render word for word with the faithfulness of a translator. [...] (cited by Robinson 1997:51)
Here, two questions are important: who the addressees of Horace’s text are, and what he is really focused on. Horace is addressing story tellers - not translators - who tell mythological stories of the old times. “In this context Horace is specifically warning writers not to stick too closely to the original” (Robinson 1997:51). Although Horace’s addressees are not translators, he is talking about something which a translator would be interested in: two different cultures. Greek and Roman cultures are what he refers to as “common” and “own” respectively. “He is calling upon Roman writers not only to establish their originality vis-a-vis the original text but to appropriate Greek culture for imperial Rome”(ibid 1997:51). What they are called upon to do is reproduce Greek stories through replacing Roman elements with those which are Greek. In order to become the new super power in cultural terms as well as in military terms, Romans strive for taking advantage of the cultural elements of the previous super power. As Robinson puts it, “What was once Greek and ‘common’ will now become Roman and ‘private’ – the private property of a Roman writer who is thus no longer indebted to the perceived superiority of Greece” (ibid 1997:51). In other words, as a result of the “Roman Appropriation”, the Greek would be alienated from the stories their own culture had once produced. According to Copeland, the Roman respect for Greek culture was nothing but a result of “the desire to displace that culture, and eliminate its hegemonic hold, through contestation and hence difference” (cited by Robinson 1997:52).
Horace and Cicero were the first writers in the “postcolonial project” of appropriating “Greek culture, literature, philosophy, law”, but this “Ciceronian/Horatian tradition” was followed by many others such as Pliny the Younger, Quantilian and Aulus Gellius. Nevertheless, Quantilian and writers who lived centuries after him such as Augustine and Jerome were focused on something else: “The importance of appropriating (or colonizing) Greece for Latin culture remained, and in fact was expanded in the Christian Middle Ages to a concern with appropriating ‘pagan’ Greece and Rome for the ecclesiastical Latin culture of the medieval church” (Robinson 1997:53). This would be possible through injecting Christian elements into a non-Christian text as if it were written by a Christian writer. Any work by any writer regardless of the time he lived in (in Christian or non-Christian times) would be “appropriate” to this end. Works of Ovid, Plato, Virgil or Homer could be turned into works of Christian writers (ibid 1997:53). As Robinson has stated, “a good example of this concern with the medieval Christian reader’s doctrinal needs, rather than with the author’s intention or source text meaning its historical context, is the fourteenth century French work Ovid Moralisé [...]”(ibid 1997:53). From an objective point of view, to moralize Ovid means to turn Ovid into a writer who is a devoted protector of the ecclesiastical church, to moralize Ovid means to take advantage of Ovid in order to justify the moral values of Rome and Christianity. How Jerome describes this process of translation is worth attention:
“Time would run out if I were to mention all those who have translated according to this principle. Here it is sufficient to notice Hilary the Confessor as an example of the rest. When he turned some homilies on Job and several Psalms from Greek into Latin, he did not bind himself to the drowsiness of literal translation, or allow himself to be chained to the literalism of an inadequate culture, but, like some conqueror, he marched the original text, a captive, into his native language.” (cited by Robinson 1997:55)
In his letter to Pammachius, due to the fact that talking about all religious people who are immensed in their studies of appropriating Greek culture would cause “time to run out”, Jerome just gives the example of a priest (a confessor, to be exact) who, just like the others, is against word-for-word translation from Greek into Latin. Jerome finds the other culture inadequate, and they just use what they deem necessary from that inadequate culture. Translating in order to captivate the other culture is the skopos of all Roman religious men in those times, and Jerome’s way of describing this process enables us to see how translation can be used in order to captivate the other, and how the translator was considered a soldier to march and gain victory over the other culture.
REFERENCE: Douglas Robinson, Translation and Empire, St. Jerome Publishing, Manchester 1997.
Herodotus tells the story of the Egyptian king Psammetichus, one of the twelve kings who had made a mutual non-aggression pact: when he accidentally fulfilled an oracle saying that whoever drank from his helmet would become sole monarch of Egypt, the other eleven stripped him of his powers and banished him to the marsh country. Burning with resentment, he plotted revenge but could not act until a company of sea-raiders from Ionia (Heredotus’ country) and Caria were forced by bad weather to land on the Egyptian coast. Psammetichus made friends with the raiders, using their help to defeat and depose the eleven kings. Thus far the story is a fairly familiar one from the annals of empire: the banished king finds foreign allies and returns to overthrow his enemies at home. Because the foreign allies must somehow be rewarded, and the reward must be in proportion to the king’s regained throne, the result is the salutary breakdown of isolationist boundaries and the establishment of intercultural communication that leads to translation.(ibid 1997:49)
This is one of the first intercultural communications in written history, which leads to translation. Psammetichus granted land to his allies in return for their military help, and in addition to that, he sent Egyptian boys with them back home; they were assigned with the task of learning the language of the Ioanians and Carians: Greek. In those times, Greece can said to have been “quite primitive” (ibid 1997:49), and these boys, who would become the first Egyptian interpreters were the first to affect Greek culture.
This is an example from ancient times, which shows that a culture affects another culture through language, and when this kind of communication takes place, the significance of translators and interpreters can never be underestimated. This can also be seen as an example showing the power of translation. Psammetichus might have been grateful to his allies, but was that the only reason why he sent Egyptian boys to be put at their service? He had already given them land. Given the facts that he was a king, thus a man of politics, and that he had managed to regain his throne after having convinced the Ionians and Carians to help him, it can be argued that putting these boys at their service was a clever move to learn more about them, which would lead to taking advantage of their presence, in other words, one of the first examples of the desire to colonize in history (Robinson 1997:49).
Robinson argues that Horace and Cicero have usually been interpreted out of context (ibid 1997:50); however, what they had not said have usually been seen as what they had said. In order to understand what they really meant, without doubt the era they lived in has to be taken into consideration:
Throughout the history of translation theory, especially but not exclusively in Europe, later thinkers would quote Cicero and Horace out of context in order to consolidate what was gradually becoming dominant – indeed ultimately the only acceptable – approach to translation: translating the meaning of whole sentences, not of individual words. The Ciceronian and Horatian catchphrases, “I did not hold it necessary to render word for word, but I preserved the general style and force of the language” (Cicero) and “nor trouble to render word for word with the faithfulness of a translator” (Horace), are quoted or alluded to in virtually every treatise or passing remark on translation in Europe until our own day – and almost invariably in a context alien to the thrust of Cicero’s and Horace’s own arguments. (ibid 1997:50-51)
What they advised was not to translate word-for-word; nevertheless, many have tended to come to the conclusion that this meant just the opposite; “to translate sense-for-sense”, a term coined by Jerome, who lived more than 300 years after Horace and Cicero. To make things clear what we need is “a larger context of Horace’s remarks”(Robinson 1997:50):
It is a hard task to treat what is common in a way of your own; and you are doing more rightly in breaking the tale of Troy into acts than in giving the world a new story of your own telling. You may acquire private rights in common ground, provided you will neither linger in the one hackneyed and easy round; nor trouble to render word for word with the faithfulness of a translator. [...] (cited by Robinson 1997:51)
Here, two questions are important: who the addressees of Horace’s text are, and what he is really focused on. Horace is addressing story tellers - not translators - who tell mythological stories of the old times. “In this context Horace is specifically warning writers not to stick too closely to the original” (Robinson 1997:51). Although Horace’s addressees are not translators, he is talking about something which a translator would be interested in: two different cultures. Greek and Roman cultures are what he refers to as “common” and “own” respectively. “He is calling upon Roman writers not only to establish their originality vis-a-vis the original text but to appropriate Greek culture for imperial Rome”(ibid 1997:51). What they are called upon to do is reproduce Greek stories through replacing Roman elements with those which are Greek. In order to become the new super power in cultural terms as well as in military terms, Romans strive for taking advantage of the cultural elements of the previous super power. As Robinson puts it, “What was once Greek and ‘common’ will now become Roman and ‘private’ – the private property of a Roman writer who is thus no longer indebted to the perceived superiority of Greece” (ibid 1997:51). In other words, as a result of the “Roman Appropriation”, the Greek would be alienated from the stories their own culture had once produced. According to Copeland, the Roman respect for Greek culture was nothing but a result of “the desire to displace that culture, and eliminate its hegemonic hold, through contestation and hence difference” (cited by Robinson 1997:52).
Horace and Cicero were the first writers in the “postcolonial project” of appropriating “Greek culture, literature, philosophy, law”, but this “Ciceronian/Horatian tradition” was followed by many others such as Pliny the Younger, Quantilian and Aulus Gellius. Nevertheless, Quantilian and writers who lived centuries after him such as Augustine and Jerome were focused on something else: “The importance of appropriating (or colonizing) Greece for Latin culture remained, and in fact was expanded in the Christian Middle Ages to a concern with appropriating ‘pagan’ Greece and Rome for the ecclesiastical Latin culture of the medieval church” (Robinson 1997:53). This would be possible through injecting Christian elements into a non-Christian text as if it were written by a Christian writer. Any work by any writer regardless of the time he lived in (in Christian or non-Christian times) would be “appropriate” to this end. Works of Ovid, Plato, Virgil or Homer could be turned into works of Christian writers (ibid 1997:53). As Robinson has stated, “a good example of this concern with the medieval Christian reader’s doctrinal needs, rather than with the author’s intention or source text meaning its historical context, is the fourteenth century French work Ovid Moralisé [...]”(ibid 1997:53). From an objective point of view, to moralize Ovid means to turn Ovid into a writer who is a devoted protector of the ecclesiastical church, to moralize Ovid means to take advantage of Ovid in order to justify the moral values of Rome and Christianity. How Jerome describes this process of translation is worth attention:
“Time would run out if I were to mention all those who have translated according to this principle. Here it is sufficient to notice Hilary the Confessor as an example of the rest. When he turned some homilies on Job and several Psalms from Greek into Latin, he did not bind himself to the drowsiness of literal translation, or allow himself to be chained to the literalism of an inadequate culture, but, like some conqueror, he marched the original text, a captive, into his native language.” (cited by Robinson 1997:55)
In his letter to Pammachius, due to the fact that talking about all religious people who are immensed in their studies of appropriating Greek culture would cause “time to run out”, Jerome just gives the example of a priest (a confessor, to be exact) who, just like the others, is against word-for-word translation from Greek into Latin. Jerome finds the other culture inadequate, and they just use what they deem necessary from that inadequate culture. Translating in order to captivate the other culture is the skopos of all Roman religious men in those times, and Jerome’s way of describing this process enables us to see how translation can be used in order to captivate the other, and how the translator was considered a soldier to march and gain victory over the other culture.
REFERENCE: Douglas Robinson, Translation and Empire, St. Jerome Publishing, Manchester 1997.
7 Ekim 2007 Pazar
On Popovic’s “Shift of Expression”
On Popovic’s “Shift of Expression”
“... Translation by its very nature entails certain shifts of intellectual and aesthetic values.”[1]
This sentence explains what translation really is: It is the reproduction of form and content in another language, and the target text can not be expected to bear the same intellectual and aesthetic values with those of the source text. Popovic makes an invaluable remark on the deep rooted prejudice against translation: “The differences in language are unavoidable and cannot be considered significant, as they are the result of disparity and asymmetry in the development of the two linguistic traditions.” Translation is apropos of two different languages, as well as two different cultures. It would not be advisable to say that a translator can be reduced to a mirror reflecting a certain text. Due to the different nature of languages, the translator needs to make decisions on which units of the source text to transfer. What about the units s/he has decided not to transfer, or those s/he has decided to transform? “All that appears as new with respect to the original, or fails to appear where it might have been expected, may be interpreted as a shift.” As Gideon Toury argues, the translator’s decision process is governed by norms. Owing to these restricting factors, certain units of the source text do not appear in the target text, and certain units become subject to modulation. At this point, it would be more than useful to state that shifts are not a result of the translator’s desire to change “the essence”, or “the semantic appeal” of the source text. In fact, it is exactly the opposite: As Popovic argues, in doing so, the translator “strives to preserve the ‘norm’ of the original.” Therefore the translator needs shifts for the sake of the “faithful” rendering of the source text in another language. What the target text addressee sees as a shift is in fact the preservation of the source text, or at least the endeavour to do so. In my opinion, the concept of shift of expression is parallel to that of faithfulness. What’s more, as long as the translator sees the source text as a point of departure, and on the other hand take into consideration the norms of the target culture, s/he will have acted in a responsible and faithful way towards the source text – and the target culture, to which the target text belongs. In fact, one could dare say that this is as faithful as a translator could get. Another kind of faithfulness as romantics argue, does not belong to the world we live in. We can by no means expect the product of two different languages belonging to two different realities, two different systems, two different cultures to be exact matches. Let’s see how Popovic explains this:
He [The translator] resorts to shifts precisely because he is endeavouring to convey the semantic substance of the original in spite of the differences separating the system of the original from that of the translation, in spite of the differences between the two languages and between the two methods of presenting the subject matter.
There are different layers then: Two different cultures, two different languages, and the last but not least – two different writers. Translation is proof that differences can be turned into harmony. As two different peoples can live in peace, two languages can come together, talk about similar things and celebrate their differences. Translation is not a clash of languages - it is the meeting of these differences, or in Akşit Göktürk’s terms, it is the language of languages. Different languages talk to one another via translation.
According to Vermeer, there are six rules of translation. We can summarize them as follows:
1- A target text is determined by its skopos
2- A target text is an offer of information in a target culture and target language concerning an offer of information in a source culture and source language
3- A target text does not initiate an offer of information in a clearly reversible way
4- A target text must be internally coherent
5- A target text must be coherent with the source text
6- The five rules above stand in hierarchical order
The target text to be produced will belong to the reality of the target language and culture, then it is important that its norms and conventions be taken into consideration. On the other hand, since the point of departure is the source text, we do these changes bearing the semantic substance of the source text in mind, in other words for the sake of faithfulness to the original. Therefore, a resemblance between the approaches of Popovic and Vermeer can be taken into consideration. The target text and the source text are offers of information; nevertheless, the target text is not an information which is clearly reversible. In the production of the target text, the translator takes advantage of shifts so as to make it internally coherent. What is less important -not to mean, not important- is the coherence between the target text and the source text. The hierarchical order is followed for the sake of the transfer of the semantic substance which is perceived by the translator; and because the target text is seen as a reality of the target culture, more importance is placed on it. Deducting from what Popovic says, we can think of his skopos of reproducing a target text on the basis of semantic and aesthetic features of the source text, in other words the function of the kind of translation is invariant. This can argued to be what he means by “functional faithfulness”.
Popovic’s approach can be described as descriptive and comparative. What he suggests is “the objective classification of differences between the translation and the original. The structural identification of each stylistic means in the two texts is an important step towards an evaluation of the nature of equivalence from the point of view of translation theory”. In addition to his approach’s being descriptive and comparative, it could be argued that it is also target-oriented, for he mentions “functional faithfulness”, in other words, an interpretation of semantic and aesthetic values set forth in the source text from the point of view of the target culture and language.
ALAZ PESEN
[1] Popovic, Anton “The Concept ‘Shift of Expression’ in Translation Analysis”, The Nature of Translation: Essays on the Theory and Practice of Literary Translation, (ed.) James S. Holmes. Mouton: Slovak Academy of Sciences, 1970. All quotations used in this response paper are excerpts from the article of Anton Popovic.
“... Translation by its very nature entails certain shifts of intellectual and aesthetic values.”[1]
This sentence explains what translation really is: It is the reproduction of form and content in another language, and the target text can not be expected to bear the same intellectual and aesthetic values with those of the source text. Popovic makes an invaluable remark on the deep rooted prejudice against translation: “The differences in language are unavoidable and cannot be considered significant, as they are the result of disparity and asymmetry in the development of the two linguistic traditions.” Translation is apropos of two different languages, as well as two different cultures. It would not be advisable to say that a translator can be reduced to a mirror reflecting a certain text. Due to the different nature of languages, the translator needs to make decisions on which units of the source text to transfer. What about the units s/he has decided not to transfer, or those s/he has decided to transform? “All that appears as new with respect to the original, or fails to appear where it might have been expected, may be interpreted as a shift.” As Gideon Toury argues, the translator’s decision process is governed by norms. Owing to these restricting factors, certain units of the source text do not appear in the target text, and certain units become subject to modulation. At this point, it would be more than useful to state that shifts are not a result of the translator’s desire to change “the essence”, or “the semantic appeal” of the source text. In fact, it is exactly the opposite: As Popovic argues, in doing so, the translator “strives to preserve the ‘norm’ of the original.” Therefore the translator needs shifts for the sake of the “faithful” rendering of the source text in another language. What the target text addressee sees as a shift is in fact the preservation of the source text, or at least the endeavour to do so. In my opinion, the concept of shift of expression is parallel to that of faithfulness. What’s more, as long as the translator sees the source text as a point of departure, and on the other hand take into consideration the norms of the target culture, s/he will have acted in a responsible and faithful way towards the source text – and the target culture, to which the target text belongs. In fact, one could dare say that this is as faithful as a translator could get. Another kind of faithfulness as romantics argue, does not belong to the world we live in. We can by no means expect the product of two different languages belonging to two different realities, two different systems, two different cultures to be exact matches. Let’s see how Popovic explains this:
He [The translator] resorts to shifts precisely because he is endeavouring to convey the semantic substance of the original in spite of the differences separating the system of the original from that of the translation, in spite of the differences between the two languages and between the two methods of presenting the subject matter.
There are different layers then: Two different cultures, two different languages, and the last but not least – two different writers. Translation is proof that differences can be turned into harmony. As two different peoples can live in peace, two languages can come together, talk about similar things and celebrate their differences. Translation is not a clash of languages - it is the meeting of these differences, or in Akşit Göktürk’s terms, it is the language of languages. Different languages talk to one another via translation.
According to Vermeer, there are six rules of translation. We can summarize them as follows:
1- A target text is determined by its skopos
2- A target text is an offer of information in a target culture and target language concerning an offer of information in a source culture and source language
3- A target text does not initiate an offer of information in a clearly reversible way
4- A target text must be internally coherent
5- A target text must be coherent with the source text
6- The five rules above stand in hierarchical order
The target text to be produced will belong to the reality of the target language and culture, then it is important that its norms and conventions be taken into consideration. On the other hand, since the point of departure is the source text, we do these changes bearing the semantic substance of the source text in mind, in other words for the sake of faithfulness to the original. Therefore, a resemblance between the approaches of Popovic and Vermeer can be taken into consideration. The target text and the source text are offers of information; nevertheless, the target text is not an information which is clearly reversible. In the production of the target text, the translator takes advantage of shifts so as to make it internally coherent. What is less important -not to mean, not important- is the coherence between the target text and the source text. The hierarchical order is followed for the sake of the transfer of the semantic substance which is perceived by the translator; and because the target text is seen as a reality of the target culture, more importance is placed on it. Deducting from what Popovic says, we can think of his skopos of reproducing a target text on the basis of semantic and aesthetic features of the source text, in other words the function of the kind of translation is invariant. This can argued to be what he means by “functional faithfulness”.
Popovic’s approach can be described as descriptive and comparative. What he suggests is “the objective classification of differences between the translation and the original. The structural identification of each stylistic means in the two texts is an important step towards an evaluation of the nature of equivalence from the point of view of translation theory”. In addition to his approach’s being descriptive and comparative, it could be argued that it is also target-oriented, for he mentions “functional faithfulness”, in other words, an interpretation of semantic and aesthetic values set forth in the source text from the point of view of the target culture and language.
ALAZ PESEN
[1] Popovic, Anton “The Concept ‘Shift of Expression’ in Translation Analysis”, The Nature of Translation: Essays on the Theory and Practice of Literary Translation, (ed.) James S. Holmes. Mouton: Slovak Academy of Sciences, 1970. All quotations used in this response paper are excerpts from the article of Anton Popovic.
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