Translation Toolkit

6. Formal Filter

In the previous tool kits, I addressed cultural issues and questions of full synonymy. The purpose here is to establish a series of other textual variables for which the ST can be screened. I shall begin with the smallest level at which a decision can be made about the use of language (the level of sound or letter segments) and move up to the larger level (intertextual and generic links between texts). The schema of textual filters can be viewed in Section 4: Schema of Textual Filters

Phonic / Graphic Level

This is the smallest level of detail or choice in composing texts, and represents choices made at the level of sound segments, phonemes, and letter segments, graphemes. Even at this level difference between meaning can be present; compare, for example, 'This nosy cook', and 'This cosy nook'. This level is most immediately relevant where sound or visual effects are apparent.

Onomatopoeias, words whose sound imitates their meaning, are culturally determined, as may be the range of applications of a particular onomatopoeia in any given language. One example is the case of English 'squeak', which gives a single noun to the noises made by doors, mice, and new shoes. In other languages what we perceive as the same group of sounds may be perceived differently, and not all of the nouns used will necessarily be onomatopoeic:

The use of onomatopoeia may be incidental to a ST; however, if its phonic / graphic level is a salient feature, it may pose a challenge for the translator. On such occasions, the translator may need to consider carefully whether, and how, to compensate for the loss of any salient onomatopoeia, perhaps by compensating with the addition of a sound effect through alliteration and assonance at the appropriate place. However, on occasion appropriate terms in both languages are fully or partially onomatopoeic; for example, búho (Spanish), Uhu (German), CoBa (Russian; transliterated), gufo (Italian), and hibon (French) are all onomatopoeic names; however, their English equivalent, (long-eared) owl, is only partially so.

Assonance (repetition of vowels for rhyme; recurrence of sound or letter clusters in the middle of a word) and alliteration (repetition of same sound or letter cluster at the beginning of a word) may also prove a challenge to the translator, as in the alliteration (bold) and assonance (italicised) of 'a swift snifter afterwards'. Where the use of phonic effects is a salient feature of a ST or its use is not incidental, such as to highlight specific thematic concerns, then a careful approach is necessary. Consider the phonic level in the first two lines of John Keats's ode, 'To Autumn' 1820 (full text here) in which alliteration is in bold, and I have italicized assonance:

As Hervey and Higgins (2002: 79-80) argue, the context is essential. The combination of the title and the word 'fruitfulness' evokes the colour of mature fruit and autumn leaves, yellow. The sun itself is likely to be such a colour, glowing like a mature fruit hanging low in the sky, and shining through the autumn haze. The m- alliteration of 'mists' associates it with 'mellow' and 'maturing', and - together with the previous image - it suggests a soft hazy mist rather than the cold and damp of wintertime. The -m in 'bosom' links it to 'mellow', 'mists' and 'maturing' so that the image of mellow fruits now seems linked to milk-filled breasts, as if the season, sun and earth were unified in maternal bountifulness. This suggestion is again reinforced through the assonance and alliteration of 'fruitfulness', and 'friend'. The phonic level here is manipulated to associate closely the key words in Keats's creation of images, and their prominence reinforces the thematic content of the lines and therefore would need careful attention in translation. Be ware that phonic effects are used quite widely by prose writers and are not the sole province of poets.

Prosodic Level

The prosodic level, on the other hand, is largely the domain of poetry, although metric patterns are very occasionally found in prose. The prosodic level concerns metric schemes relating to rhythm and stress, which vary greatly between languages and language groups. For example, in the modern Romance languages versification is syllabic, that is, based on syllable count, but the method of syllable counting varies between languages. English metre, on the other hand, mainly uses syllable and stress metre. Each line is defined in terms of the number of feet, which comprise a group of stressed and unstressed syllables in a specific order. The most famous English metric pattern is the iambic pentameter:

The cur/few tolls/ the knell/ of par/ting day/


  1	   2	     3	       4	  5     

This line has five feet (divided by slashes and numbered) and so is a pentameter. Each foot has two syllables, the first unstressed and the second stressed (in bold), and so is an iambic foot. Some modern English poetry uses strong-stress metre in which only the stresses count when describing the line. For an introduction try James Fenton, An Introduction to English Poetry (Viking, 2002). Certain fixed forms, like the sonnet and the haiku, enjoy international currency, the form of others varies between languages, such as the ballad, which seems to be a global poetic genre. In most languages which use rhyme, ballads tend to rhyme on even lines only. In English the ballad has four accented syllables in odd lines, and three in even lines. In contrast, syllabic languages tend to use an octosyllabic line.

The translation of poetry is particularly controversial, and this debate goes right to the heart of what poetry is really about: creating meaning or exploring form. As a consequence, in translating poetry it is particularly useful to focus on a very specific target audience: the needs of a student of the second-language, someone with an interest in a specific culture, and someone with an interest in poetry as an art form may be very different:

The first TT below Catullus's Latin is a literal TT, which is intended to convey the message content. In contrast, the second TT by Zukovsky and Zukovsky attempts a phonemic approach that aims to convey the rhythm and phonic effect of the Latin. The decision to use one of these strategies would need to be based on very careful consideration of the potential target audience for any such TT. There is, of course, a mid-point between these two approaches, and it is perhaps to be advocated in the majority of situations.

A communicative approach is one in which the translator pays careful attention to the formal structure of the poem in hand, perhaps taking into account differences in expectations about certain meters or rhyme schemes between source and target culture. The translator also pays careful attention to other salient features of the poem being translated, including other phonic features and content. Consider carefully as many of the versions of the first verse of Lewis Carroll's 'Jabberwocky' as you can, in which this is precisely the strategy adopted by the translators:

Grammatical Level

This concerns arrangements of words; such as the use of syntax, and word systems (a pattern of words with an associative, and meaningful, common denominator). An example of a meaningful arrangement of words can be found in the Magpie rhyme:

The pattern is built around a number followed by a preposition. In lines one to six a further pattern is built up around pairs of lines: lines 1 and 2 conclude with a pair of abstract nouns, which are antonyms; lines 3 and 4 conclude with an indefinite article followed by a pair of common nouns, again also antonyms; and lines 5 and 6 end with two mass nouns in an ascending series. The final line breaks this pattern in its length, and its structure as it follows the preposition with an indefinite pronoun, an abstract noun, and a relative clause:

The structure of the rhyme is clearly more important than the message content. For another example of elaborate grammatical arrangement see the quotation below from Tennyson's 'The Ancient Sage'.

Word systems also frequently appear in literary texts. The following example is taken from the novel Count Julian (Reivindicación del conde don Julián, 1970) by Spain's Juan Goytisolo. The author is concerned by the fact that, despite Muslims occupying a large part of what is now modern Spain from the 8th to the 15th centuries, Islamic culture is often held in low esteem in Spain, and the debt of Spanish, and, by extension, European culture to it overlooked. However, there is no need for the reader to have any familiarity with Spanish to observe that there is an obvious word system at work:

The key to the word system lies in the fact that many of the words in this extract begin with phonetic group al-, a clear indicator of a Spanish word's origins in Arabic. In fact, upon closer examination all of the italicized words have their origins in Arabic either etymologically, culturally or as technologies introduced by the Muslims. The extract lists what will be lost or destroyed if Muslim influence on Hispanic culture were to be eradicated.

This passage poses a particular challenge for the translator for a variety of reasons. English lacks the relationship of cultural debt to, but prestige over, Arabic that Goytisolo is attacking, so it is not possible simply to replicate the word system by replacing it with English words of Arabic origin. Many of the languages, such as French or Latin, from which English has borrowed words, phrases or concepts enjoy a relationship of high prestige in relation to English in British culture. Its mother language, Anglosaxon, is infamous for four letter words, and most English-language speakers are unaware of other specific areas of debt. The translator is left with three choices, it seems. The first is to replace the words comprising the word system with concepts drawn from languages of the former colonies, and whose contribution to British culture is not given the prestige they merit. The disadvantage here would be the replacement of specific Hispanic cultural terms derived from Arabic. The second is simply to translate the terms, without comment thereby giving rise to the loss of Goytisolo's point. The third is to use some kind of exegetical technique at some point in order to make explicit the relationship between the two cultures.

Sentential Level

The Sentential Level treats the sentence as a self-contained vehicle for communication, starting with one word comments, such as 'Go!', or 'Sorry'. At the sentential level the structure (or order of parts of speech) creates different assumptions about the sentence's particular communicative purpose through some of the following features:

Intonation or punctuation and typography

Clearly in speech the sentential level can be expressed through the manipulation of intonation and stress:

Whilst written texts lack this feature, they make use of punctuation, which has a much more limited range, to convey some of the purpose of the sentence. Like other features of language, punctuation norms differ between cultures and all translators should be familiar with the differences in punctuation usage between the languages (and even language varieties, including UK and US English) that they are translating. There is not space to consider this topic here; however, most good, advanced grammar books contain a useful section on punctuation. For English, consider reading Lyne Truss's Eats, Shoots and Leaves (2003), whose title is based on the famous joke about the gun-totting panda who has correctly interpreted a mispunctuated encyclopaedia entry about its own habits. Written and oral texts make use of a number of other features to convey meaning and purpose at the sentential level:

Sequential focus (marked word order to convey meaning)

In this series, the first sentence uses standard subject + verb + object structure. The second two sentences mark out the focus or theme that is being emphasized by placing it at the beginning of the sentence.

Illocutionary particles (innit? H'mmm, don't you think? alas)

These short words and phrases do not fit into syntax proper but simply mark the sentence as having a particular communicative purpose, and help guide the reader / listener as to how to take the utterance. They are discrete elements added for affective force not for their literal meaning:

Careful consideration should be given to STs that have features conveying meaning or purpose at the sentential level since they may well require compensation.

The Discourse Level

This level is concerned with the cohesion and coherence of the ST.
Cogency is the degree to which text hangs together; that is, its thread of intellectual interrelatedness. Cogency is expressed in coherence (implicit thematic development) and cohesion (explicit and transparent linking of sentences through discourse markers and linguistic anaphora). The importance of cogency can be illustrated by examining the following text:

As an account, this narrative is coherent since, although it is not explicitly marked, the events depicted show a tactic but discernible development, and it seems to have an implied chronological structure. However, its limited cohesion is supplied through repetitions. Now consider another version of the same account:

Here the account is coherent and cohesive. The cohesion derives from the use of discourse connectors (in bold at the beginning of some sentences) to set up links between them. They also act explain or comment on the speakers actions (all the bold sections). In addition, the repetition is replaced by grammatical anaphora (in italics). Anaphora is the replacement of previously used words and phrases by expressions referring back to them: it replaces 'the kitchen', and there, 'the ground floor'. Needless to say, different languages have different degrees of tolerance for the use of anaphora. Languages with gendered noun systems often have sets of appropriate, gendered demonstrative pronouns which are in common use, and whose usage tolerance is higher than for 'it' and 'them' in English.

Organization at the discourse level may introduce a progression (similar to that discussed at the sentential level) of patterns or themes between sentence types:

This extract from Alfred, Lord Tennyson's The Ancient Sage uses two long sentences, both starting at the beginning of lines with the words, 'Thou canst not prove...' (in bold), and using enumeration. There is a marked decrease in length of these two sentences. They are contrasted with the final sentence which Tennyson opens mid-line with the discourse connector, 'Wherefore...' (also in bold), which introduces his conclusion. The patterning is used for rhetorical, and climatic effect.

Intertextual Level

This refers to any meaningful relationship the ST bears to another text (cultural artefact); such as its genre membership, or imitation, parody or pastiche; quotation or allusion. For example, individual chapters of David Lodge's The British Museum is Falling Down pastiche the work of specific authors, whilst in James Joyce's Ulysses they pastiche specific textual genres. Since the intertextual level often contains culturally-specific content, it may require special attention, and some compensation may be called for. For a useful discussion of intertextual techniques, see Peter Hutchinson, Games Authors Play (London: Methuen, 1983).

Some intertextual references enjoy widespread knowledge; such as the sign above the entrance to Hell in Dante's Inferno:

The translator would need to be making a special point in opting for TT1, a rather literal rendering of the well known words, and not the more familiar version which appears as TT2. The translator would, of course, need to be sure that the phrase was actually a quotation or allusion, and - where more than version exists - to decide which to use.

Christiane Rochefort's La Porte du fond (1988; discussed by Hervey & Higgins, 2002) offers a particularly interesting illustration of these questions. One section of the book is headed: 'Vous qui entrez' (ST1), a structure more common in French than English, and consequently not overly marked. French readers may not, in fact, associate this phrase specifically with Dante. It soon becomes clear, however, that the novel focuses on hellish events: the narrator's sexual abuse by her father. Eventually she tells us that she pinned a notice above her parent's bedroom, Vous qui entrez / Perdez toute esperance (ST2), and chillingly that her father later said to her, 'perds l'espérance ma petite' (ST3). Suspicions that ST1 is an allusion to Dante are now well founded. The translator is then in a difficult position since it is only the later context that makes this allusion clear. To translate ST1 as 'Ye who enter here' would reveal the subtext very early on, and the cumulative strength of the allusion would be diminished in comparison with the ST: even 'You who enter' may give too much away too early. Yet alternative translations, such as 'Those coming in' lose a vital cohesive element in the thematic structure. There is bound to be loss; the translator has decide which solution is less unacceptable.