Translation Toolkit

9. Generic Filter

Different STs require different strategic priorities. In establishing these, the translator has always to consider the purpose of both the ST and the TT. In doing so, he or she also raises the question of the kind of texts the ST and TT are. This relates to the much debated question of genre or text-type - that is the category to which, in a given culture, a given text is seen to belong and with which it seems to share to a type of communicative purpose - to which the ST and TT are affiliated.

Oral and performative genres as realized in the vocal medium, and are usually (except radio) accompanied by visual clues that play a role in colouring their meaning. Oral TTs must therefore obey the 'rules' of spoken language first and foremost. The degree of spontaneity may significantly differ between oral genres but most of them convey the illusion of spontaneous vocal utterance however practised or memorized they may be. Typically oral genres are translated through bilateral, consecutive, and simultaneous translation. Film, theatre, and opera may also require sub- or supertitling, as well as written translation, and film may be subject to dubbing. These are all highly specialized skills, which there is not space to examine here.

Written texts can usefully be thought of as belonging to five generic types:

• literary / fictional genres, which are about imaginary worlds and characters not controlled by the physical world outside but by the imagination of the author: the tool kits have focused principally texts of this type.
• religious / devotional genres imply belief in the existence of spiritual world, differing from fictional genres in the author's attitude to the subject matter as lying outside his own imaginative processes
• theoretical / philosophical genres explore a world of ideas taken to exist independently of the individual minds that think them. These genres have a great deal in common with religious / devotional genres, and differ in that reasoning and not faith constrains them.
• empirical / descriptive genres purport to deal with the real objective world as experienced by specialist observers. They aim to give an objective account of physical phenomena
• persuasive / prescriptive genres aim to influence readers or viewers in textually prescribed ways

These categories are useful for translators since differences in the approach to the generic subject matter entails differences in the ways in which these genres are formally constructed. So generic difference corresponds to characteristic differences in the use of the textual variables discussed here, and presented diagrammatically in the schema of filters. For example, in modern empirical / descriptive texts it would be inappropriate for an author to exploit the phonic level or connotative meaning on the semantic level. A sense of genre characteristics in the SL and the TL enables the translator to help formulate a suitable strategy for dealing with the STs salient properties, and helps with the necessary planning, including becoming familiar with the ST genre and identifying whether a similar TL genre exists; if it does, establishing any differences in TL and SL expectations about generic content; and, if not, coming up with a suitable solution to the problem.

 

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