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Translation and Relevance: Cognition and Context
... According to Gutt, [1] any product of translation ought to be tackled from a communicative point of view rather from any specific theory of translation. In doing so, Gutt draws on the work of [2] relevance theory. ...
... That process resembles de Saussure's notion of signifier and signified. The representations, the text is assigned to, is semantic representations which are the product of the mind [1]. Gutt maintains that these representations are not fully truth-conditional assumption schemas as they need to be processed in order to become as such. ...
... The idea of the expectations of the target readers is somehow similar to [3] assertions who claims that components in writings give "triggers" for the readers that make them expect what is to take after another. Moreover, Gutt explains that explicitly by saying "introductory words would guide the hearer in searching his memory for the intended referent and hence considerably ease his processing load" [1]. In [4] the authors says that information must be presented in changing sums of given and unused information -relative to what the writer sees the readers know already -to realize the adequate register and information flow. ...
تتناول الورقة البحثية الحالية تطبيق نظرية الربط ( Relevance Theory) لترجمة كتاب لوجستي معتمدة على كوت (1) وتبين أنّه من الممكن أن تُنجز عملية الترجمة دون الإعتماد على نظرية معينة في الترجمة وتناقش الدراسة كيفية تعريف العملية التأويلية للمترجمين وتعطي أولوية ذلك لترجمة كتاب لوجستي، وتقدم الورقة البحثية أمثلة عن الترجمة التي لا صلة أو ربط لها في كل التراجم المقترحة، وتسلط الضوء على الإختلاف بين ما يسمى بالمترجم المبتدئ والمترجم الخبير وكذلك تقدم الدراسة دليلاً عن كيف المترجمون المبتدئون يلجؤون إلى المعنى المعجمي الذي يعد معنا دلالياً بينما المترجمون المحترمون يلجؤون إلى المعنى السياقي والمعنى الإيحائي للكلمات، وتشرح الورقة البحثية كيف يمكن أن نترجم دون الإعتماد على نظرية معينة في الترجمة معتمدة على العملية التأويلية للمترجمين، وتستعمل الدراسة تراجم مقترحة من الكتاب اللوجستي كمصدر في الترجمة في مجال معين.
... They have gone further in their research when they have attempted shedding more light upon AVT to elucidate the recent change in the perception and practice of translation (Diaz Cintas-Ramel 2007 [15] ; Chiaro 2006 [10] ; Chiaro 2010 [11] ; Remael 2003 [31] ; ... etc.). On the social level, theories on humour communication and cognition from a cultural dimension have been initiated to underline that the reception of the translated humour matters because it surpasses the linguistic and the sematic interests (Sperber-Wilson 1995 [35] ; Gutt 2000 [19] ; Morreall 1987 [27] ; ... etc.). Due to the novel interest of the Netflix online streaming forum in the shows and the dramas of the Middle East region, in its attempt to attract more subscribers, there is an active process of translating the most famous and successful media shows into many other languages. ...
... They have gone further in their research when they have attempted shedding more light upon AVT to elucidate the recent change in the perception and practice of translation (Diaz Cintas-Ramel 2007 [15] ; Chiaro 2006 [10] ; Chiaro 2010 [11] ; Remael 2003 [31] ; ... etc.). On the social level, theories on humour communication and cognition from a cultural dimension have been initiated to underline that the reception of the translated humour matters because it surpasses the linguistic and the sematic interests (Sperber-Wilson 1995 [35] ; Gutt 2000 [19] ; Morreall 1987 [27] ; ... etc.). Due to the novel interest of the Netflix online streaming forum in the shows and the dramas of the Middle East region, in its attempt to attract more subscribers, there is an active process of translating the most famous and successful media shows into many other languages. ...
Humour is the infallible and never-outdated medium for creating intimacy and collective understanding among peoples of versatile interests and, sometimes, conflicting attitudes. It is the moment of catching the humorous effect that counts. Humour creation is not easy because the factors that would trigger laughter vary from one person to another. Creating humour on an international level demands distinguished abilities, as it is hard to accommodate all the factors that would motivate diverse peoples and social brackets to laugh at the same time for the same reason, due to national, historical and cultural factors. The hypothesis is based upon the assumption that the world societies speak the same language with the same dialect. Yet, the situation gets complicated if translation problems and techniques are considered, and it turns to exigently complex when the source dialect differs from that of the targeted audience. However, the latter case has never been a problem for the Egyptian drama, as the entire Middle Eastern societies can transcend the dialect barrier. Notably, the vernacular dialects in the Middle East region are fundamentally diverse to extent that they are, sometimes, incomprehensible altogether. Recently, along with the growing hegemony of the online streaming forums as well as their attempt to globalise the streamed content to attract more subscribers, an active process of subtitling and dubbing are initiated. In the process, all the problems of translation, subtitling and dubbing came to the fore. The article discusses the Netflix intralingual subtitling/dubbing of the Egyptian comedies from the Egyptian vernacular dialect into MSA with reference to the famous and hilariously comic Egyptian films “el-Limby” (2002)[20] and “Illy Baly Balak [You-Know-Who]” (2003)[21] starred by the Egyptian actor Mohamed S’ad. The article also seeks to underline the influence of the Netflix subtitled/dubbed MSA content upon the Middle East region.
... Relevance Theory is a cognitive approach to pragmatics and it aims to account for how the meaning is inferred in the actual use of language (Wilson and Sperber, 2002: 45-46). Gutt (2000) uses the theory to investigate translation, which he regards as a type of interlingual interpretive use of language (Gutt, 2000: 105). According to Gutt (2000), the goal of translation is to achieve interpretive resemblance, namely the resemblance between the explicatures and implicatures in the ST and those in the TT (2000: 40). ...
... Gutt (2000) uses the theory to investigate translation, which he regards as a type of interlingual interpretive use of language (Gutt, 2000: 105). According to Gutt (2000), the goal of translation is to achieve interpretive resemblance, namely the resemblance between the explicatures and implicatures in the ST and those in the TT (2000: 40). The explicatures refer to propositional enrichments of a logical expression of an utterance (Yus, 1998: 316), they are the information that readers could get by analyzing the text alone; the implicatures are contextual assumptions that readers need to recover in order to meet their expectations (Yus, 1998: 316), they are the information that readers could only get by inferentially analyzing the text together with the context (Gutt, 2000: 40). ...
Translation is both an interpretive use of language and problem-solving activity. In his work, Ernst-August Gutt adopts a Relevance-Theoretic approach to unveil the inferential nature of translation as interpretive language use. He holds that in translating a translator aims to seek the interpretive resemblance between the ST (source text) and the TT (target text). However, Gutt does not explain how interpretive resemblance can be achieved when translation problems arise. Textual function refers to the intended cognitive effects that a text yields on the part of the readers. Considering that it is only when the textual outcome of a translation activity is both relevant and functional that it is a successful interpretive use of language, we propose Functional Relevance as a principle of translation problem-solving. Namely, a translator needs to strategize their solutions to translation problems by making the explicatures and implicatures of the TT resemblant enough both to justify its reader’s processing effort and to fulfill the contextualized textual functions of translation. This can be exemplified by two English translations of Chinese medicine pun poems in a pien wen, an archaic literary genre popular in China during the tenth century.
... Thus, relevance as a characteristic of inputs to cognitive processes is examined using the concepts of cognitive effects and processing effort (Wilson, 2000: 423; see also Wilson, 2012: 231). In cognitive pragmatics, Gutt (2000) uses ostensive comprehension heuristics as a foundation for his analysis of the translation process. By using the ideas of cognitive environment and mutual manifestness between translator and audience, he views translation as an illustration of interlingual construal of language usage. ...
... Por su parte, Carme Mangiron (2006) subraya en su tesis doctoral que las notas suelen ser el método más habitual para amplificar la información fuera del texto, en contraste con los glosarios (Mangiron, 2006, p. 576), y destaca que hay una mayor tolerancia con respecto a su uso en las traducciones literarias del japonés al castellano y catalán que con respecto al inglés, ya que las editoriales anglosajonas consideran que entorpecen el ritmo de narración y la lectura fluida de la novela (Mangiron, 2006, p. 628). Investigadores como Hobbs (2004) o Gutt (1991, citado en Venuti, 2000 377) coinciden con esta premisa de no sobrecargar al lector, que a su vez está en consonancia con la afirmación de Venuti de que las normas de traducción en lengua inglesa no suelen incluir notas porque rompen con la ilusión de que el texto es un original (Venuti, 1995(Venuti, , 1998. ...
El objetivo de este estudio mixto es, por una parte, investigar la tipología de las notas del traductor usadas en las traducciones del japonés al español de Takekurabe, de Higuchi Ichiyō y, en segundo lugar, discernir la idoneidad y aceptabilidad de dichas notas entre el lector meta mediante un análisis cuantitativo en formato de cuestionario a lectores. El análisis muestra que los encuestados tienen un alto grado de aceptabilidad con las notas independientemente de si son lectores frecuentes o poco frecuentes de literatura japonesa, y que las notas consideradas más necesarias son las metalingüísticas y las etnográficas. Así pues, los resultados de este análisis aportan datos objetivos que pueden servir de consulta a editoriales y traductores en activo en cuanto a la adecuación de las notas del traductor en traducciones de literatura japonesa.
... Certainly, Krein-Kühle (2014) acknowledged that translation is a "very confined activity" that takes place in a zone of conflict between two opposing ideals: faithfulness to the reality of the source text and allegiance to the demands of the target language. Furthermore, according to Gutt (1991), the ST's original receivers are generally expected to be familiar with its background, and thus should be able to complete the message that the poet intends on their own: "poetic effects arise essentially when the audience is induced and given freedom to open up and consider a wide range of implicatures, none of which are strongly implicated, but which take on a life of their own." As Boase-Beier (2017) points out, translated poetry necessitates more effort on the part of the reader to create a context that supports interpretation, and thus the translation process can be said to have "enhanced and intensified many of the poetic elements of the source text [...] stylistic study of translated texts might be expected to find that such texts possess. ...
The present paper translates the poem selected from Waray into English of the Chito S. Roño Literary Awards, and applies New Criticism in the textual analysis. It focuses on the translator's role as a linguistic and cultural interpreter in faithfully rendering the nuances of the literary text from Waray to English. Before developing a strategy for translating the source text into the target language, translators understand the relationship between the source language and culture. The translation of culturally specific items is central to the current study. Strategies are based on Newmark's semantic translation, Koller's formal expressive equivalence, Reiss' text types, and Vinay and Darbelnet's Model giving a domesticated or foreignized effect on the product of translation. In addition to transferring meaning, the text's cultural identity is emphasized as a pillar of the translation process. The collection of poetry talks about the universal themes of love and relationships, the essence of family life, life's journey and the dynamics of society while the images and objective correlatives effectively represent human conditions. Symbolisms and central metaphors reflect the values and human experiences of individuals. The poems do not have set rhymes and meter but are well-written in subtle, metaphorical lines, mirror life, and celebrate the Waray language, reveal the Waray sensibilities, and reflect the Waray ideals and values which are also universal ideals and values proving that the Waray language and culture are not inferior to the rest of the world.
... Al-Azzam (2005) is quoted as saying: "connotative meanings may differ from one community to another and even within the same community" (p.108). Similarly, Gutt (2000) maintains that, connotative meanings are encyclopedic by their nature and are assumed to be open-ended, allowing for the constant addition of new information. He argues that the translator will normally need to deal with the kind of information that is typically part of the encyclopedic entry of a concept: that is, information in some way associated with the concept, but not an integral part of it (p.135). ...
This study aims to investigate the translation of connotative meanings of insan in the Qur’an, from Arabic into English and Spanish. Connotative meanings pertained to insan in this religious text are negative and hold unfavorable implications such as denial, stinginess, weakness, and hastiness when talking about his behaviors. For ordinary readers, these negative connotations pass unnoticed in the source language and the target language. In Arabic, the link between insan and negativity is linguistically under-researched in Qur’anic and non-Qur’anic discourses; this study is conducted and is hoped to translationally fill a linguistic gap, with particular reference to Qur’anic examples. Because of the shortage of studies that refer to this particular link between insan and negativity, and because this connotative dimension has not been explored satisfactorily in Qur’anic and non-Qur’anic studies, representative Qur’anic verses are sampled, analyzed and discussed so as to uncover the difficulty of rendering the negativity, associated with insan and to suggest translation solutions. Four authentic and authoritative Qur’anic exegeses are selected to support the argument, and two translations (English translation and Spanish translation) of the Qur’an are selected to practically prove the failure of reflecting the negative link between insan and negativity in the selected samples.
... A second attempt at a formal conceptualization of translation is to be found in the work of Ernst-August Gutt (1991), who is a linguist engaged in Bible translation projects (much of his work has been done in Ethiopia). Gutt sets out to apply linguistic relevance theory to translation, focusing on the cognitive processes by which linguistic propositions are linked with contexts. ...
... Gutt, a student of Wilson, who applied relevance theory to translation in his book Translation and Relevance: Cogniton and Context, suggests that translation is an instance of interpretive use. Relevance theory is not only a cognitive theory, but also a communicative theory; Translation is a cognitive activity as well as a communicative activity; so the two have good compatibility (Gutt, 2004). However, Malmkjaer pointed out that Relevance translation theory does not give specific guidelines. ...
... Translation theorists from a cognitive perspective, such as Gutt (1991), Bell (1991), Lörscher (1991), Kiraly (1995), Gile (1995), Wills (1996), Snell-Hornby (1988), Shreve & Koby (1997), Jakobsen (2002), Hurtado & Alves (2009), O'Brien (2006, and Alves et al. (2011), among others, consider translation to be a communicative act that involves cognitive, linguistic, and sociocultural aspects that allow translators to analyze and understand a message delivered in a source language and culture with the purpose of producing a target text (hereinafter TT) complying with conditions of production and reception. ...
This paper presents a methodological proposal that integrates the translation process into studying the cognitive effort with the use of three instruments. Data triangulation accounts for such phenomena. Translation process research has used Translog to approach mental activities, such as cognitive effort. However, authors such as O’Brien (2006) suggest the use of complementary methods to have a comprehensive understanding of what occurs while translating. This paper aims to present a data collection model that includes the use of Translog as the main instrument to record the indicators of cognitive effort (time and typing pauses) during a translation process, a screen capture software that records the screen’s output, as well as retrospective interview to obtain verbal information from its users. In order to establish a relationship between cognitive effort and the translation process, a triangulation data method was used with the information collected from the aforementioned instruments, alongside conducting a semantic content analysis.
... Por otra parte, Ernst-August Gutt (2000) señala que, tradicionalmente, la traducción se ha entendido como una actividad interpretativa, ya que su pertinencia solo consideraba lo que alguien decía, escribía o pensaba; sin embargo, actualmente la traducción tiene como propósito principal el tema en sí y, de esta forma, pasaría a ser productiva y discursiva. Estas propuestas tienen sentido al relacionarlas con el activismo debido a que en general, los activistas que buscan un cambio específico con sus acciones se centran en el tema y probablemente lo que en realidad les interesa difundir con sus traducciones es la información que no está disponible en su idioma dejando en un segundo plano la persona que lo dijo, escribió o pensó. ...
Resumen A partir de los estudios poscoloniales y ante la tradicional postura invisible y neutral de quienes ejercen profesionalmente en el área de la traducción, se comenzó a postular que se podría adoptar un papel más visible y asumir una participación activa en la sociedad para ofrecer cierta resistencia frente los modelos socioculturales dominantes. En este contexto, el presente artículo revisa el enfoque de traducción activista para visibilizar la necesidad de cambiar el habitus traductor en Chile y asumir uno más visible y activo, caracterizado por el empoderamiento ideológico y la valorización de la capacidad de acción. De igual manera, se reflexiona sobre cómo los aspectos éticos regulan la aplicación de este enfoque y se repasan los elementos que fundamentan el valor de la traducción como actividad social, ética y política y como herramienta ideológica. A partir de esta reflexión, se propone abordar el enfoque activista en las aulas, como primer paso para cambiar la idea tradicional sobre la traducción. Además, se destaca la importancia de un aprendizaje más autorreflexivo para que el estudiantado sea consciente de sus decisiones desde el inicio de su formación y logre desarrollar un habitus que le permita empoderarse y realizar activismo a través de su profesión. Palabras clave: traducción activista, capacidad de acción, habitus, ética, formación Abstract From postcolonial studies, and as a reaction against the invisible and neutral role traditionally assigned to translators, a more visible role and an active participation of them in society was promoted. In this context, this article reviews the activist translation approach to make visible the need to change the translator habitus in Chile, in order to assume a more visible and active one, characterized by ideological empowerment and the valorization of the agency of translators. It also reviews how ethical aspects regulate the application of this approach and the elements that underlie the value of translation as a social, ethical and political activity and as an ideological tool of resistance are summarized. Based on this reflection, the proposal seeks to address the activist approach in the classroom, as a first step to change the traditional idea of translation. Besides, the importance of a more self-reflective learning process is emphasized so that students become aware of their decisions from the beginning of their academic training and develop a habitus that allows them to empower themselves and become activists through their profession.
... According to Gutt's (2000) relevance-theoretic approach to translation, when the speaker and the audience communicate orally and share time and space, they may negotiate meanings, and clarify and modify their utterances as the need arises. This, however, is not possible with a written text, which carries information fixed in the language of the author into different cultures, places, and times of remote readers. ...
This study presents an analysis of conceptual metaphors in selected Polish and English fairy tales and their translations. The data chosen for analysis include tales from two Polish source texts – Bajarz polski (1853) and Legendy i tajemnice Krakowa (2008), and from two English source texts – English Fairy Tales (1890) and Stories from England (1954). The aim of this thesis was to examine the conceptual metaphors in the fairy tales through the lens of the Conceptual Metaphor Theory proposed by Lakoff and Johnson (1980), and to compare the metaphors with their equivalents in the target texts in order to find out whether a conceptual shift occurs between the metaphors of the SL and the TL. Another aim of the study was to determine which strategies are most common in translating metaphors in the selected fairy tales, based on three perspectives of metaphor translation: Van den Broeck’s (1981) descriptive theory, Newmark’s (1988, 1998) prescriptive perspective and Dagut’s (1976) cultural approach.
The first chapter focuses on fairy tales as a literary genre, as well as on the characteristics
of children's literature and its translation. Included in the chapter is a description of language and style in children's literature and in older and more recent fairy tales. The author also describes various strategies for translating children’s literature. The second chapter is concerned with the history of metaphor from antiquity to the present day. The theoretical background in translating metaphors is presented. The third chapter is devoted to the analysis of selected examples of conceptual metaphors from Polish and English fairy tales and comparing them with their equivalents in translation.
... The hearer wants to achieve maximum benefit (i.e., maximum contextual effect) at minimum cost (at the hearer's minimum effort). Gutt (1991) adopts the principle of relevance in the book "Relevance and translation" to explain how translation works or should work. He says that "the success or failure of translations depends on the consistency with the principle of relevance" (Gutt, 1991: 189), he means that TTs should offer identical contextual effects as the source text. ...
In this paper, we present a study in which we investigated the explicitation strategies of beginner, inexperienced and practicing, professional translators in sight translated texts (STTs). Research shows that translated texts (TTs) are longer than non-translated texts (non-TTs) and parallel texts. The reason for this is that translators explicate, i.e. they explain the hidden, implicit message of the text. The strategies of explanation, insertion, repetition, paraphrasing are used as explicitation strategies. One of the reasons for explicitation is that the target language reader has different cultural and professional backgrounds, consequently, they may not always know the background of the source language text, or the original message of the source language text may not be clear enough, therefore, the translator has to explain it. The other reason is that translators seek to be safe, so they will explain the implicit content even when it is not necessary. The study examined the sight translation strategies of beginner and professional translators, as it was assumed that both groups use explicitation strategies, and that they use the same explicitation strategies, since the use of explicitation strategies is a feature of all translations, regardless of the level of experience of the translator. Our research results supported our hypotheses, i.e. the same explicitation strategies appeared in the sight translated texts by beginner and professional translators. However, it has also been found, that beginner, inexperienced translators use more repetition and paraphrasing, which is explained by their inadequate translator competences.
... Almost 40 years have gone by since the publication of the Postface to Relevance: Communication and Cognition (2nd ed.), in which Wilson (1986/1995, 278) express their hope that novel studies "will lead to revisions, new insights, and, perhaps more important, new problems to investigate". Around that time, Gutt's (1990Gutt's ( , 1991 analysis of translation from a relevance-theoretical prospective was emerging, and has since then provoked a food of research. This research -now also encompassing interpreting -has witnessed a steady departure from theoretical studies in favour of implementing various types of empirical research in order to gain further insight into the process of interlingual communication. ...
If a particular situation calls for the assistance of a qualified and competent interpreter or translator, it is reasonable to ask how we define ‘qualified’ and ‘competent’. More generally, of course, we might seek to explain precisely how translation and interpreting work.
In the last three decades, scholars have been increasingly interested not only in the product of translation and interpreting, but also in the cognitive aspects of these processes. In this context, Relevance Theory (Sperber and Wilson, 1986/1995) is the only theoretical framework in the area of cognitive pragmatics that has been adopted to capture the complexity of translator- or interpreter-mediated communication. As Kliffer and Stroinska (2004, 171) state, “it may well prove to be the most reliable tool for handling the interpretive richness evinced by real-life data.”
This is the first book-length attempt - since Setton’s (1999) Simultaneous Interpretation: A Cognitive-Pragmatic Analysis - to illustrate the explanatory potential of Relevance Theory in providing a cognitively based account of translation and interpreting, and ‘getting closer’ to communicators’ intentions. It provides an overview of key concepts in Gricean and relevance-theoretic pragmatics, and showcases Relevance Theory-inspired research in a wide range of professional activities – from audiovisual translation to conference and legal interpreting. Further, it discusses applications of and charts future developments in the disciplinary relationship between translation and interpreting studies and Sperber and Wilson’s inferential model of communication. Special attention is given to the notion of ‘faithfulness’ and the development of a (meta)pragmatic competence. The first four chapters include many practical illustrative examples, as well as a list of recommended reading, questions, and exercises.
Firmly grounded theoretically and methodologically, and yet highly accessible, the book will be an essential reading for translation and interpreting academics, students, and practitioners, as well as for those working in the related fields of linguistics (in particular, cognitive pragmatics), communication and intercultural studies. By the end, readers will be ready to look in more detail at specific components of the central and expanding approach presented here, and come up with their own Relevance Theory-oriented strategies to achieve a pragmatically successful output in various contexts and across different languages and cultures.
... One of the central concepts of the theory is the cognitive environment, or as we have so far called it, the prior knowledge of the world of the translator or reader. According to Gutt (2000), a key issue for successful communication is how students select actual, speaking intentions from all possible suggestions that can be selected from the cognitive environment (cf. Gutt, 2000, p. 27). ...
The article presents the nature and legitimacy of translation studies; it examines the function of a translator, its role during the translation process and the generated linguistic product from the point of view of cognitive pragmatics. In the present study we are looking for the answer to what factors influence the translator in his/her activity, what aspects he/she keeps in mind, how relevance theory prevails in translation, what role the current context, target audience and readers’ prior knowledge have in interpreting the translated text. In order to answer the questions, in the first part we summarize the opinions published in the literature, then we examine our hypothesis with the method of structural discourse analysis in relation to three languages (English, German, Hungarian) in EU texts, according to which, despite the European Union’s language policy aspirations, similarities and differences can be noticed depending on what the translator considered relevant to highlight. In the examined texts we can find formal, semantic and pragmatic differences according to the levels of identity. In the course of the analysis, we have made an attempt to highlight the semantic and pragmatic similarities and the differences between the versions, the factors which may cause them, and also their connection with the cognitive context, relevance and the general context. As a first step, we identified the different parts of the texts, and then the reason for the differences was revealed during the analysis. The aim is therefore to support our hypothesis and to illustrate with linguistic examples that context and relevance are central to translation.
... Landers (2001: 7) considers style of the utmost importance in a literary translation, as he claims that the difference between a skilful translation and an artificial translation lies in its style, which constitutes "the soul" of the text. This is a general notion of style; however, since style is a broad and elusive concept, there have been many attempts at a comprehensive definition (see Gutt 1991;Toolan 1990;Boase-Beier 2012). The most prominent work in this field is Leech and Short's Style in fiction (2007: 9), in which style is defined as "the way in which language is used in a given context, by a given person, for a given purpose". ...
... It takes a cognitive-pragmatic view and draws upon a relevance-theoretic approach to examine the way in which puns and wordplay is rendered into the target language. Within the relevance-theoretic framework, translation is viewed as an "interpretive use of language" and the relation between source and target texts is based on interpretive resemblance rather than equivalence (Sperber & Wilson, 1986;Gutt, 1991). The analysis undertaken in the article is based on two English translations of Jinpingmei. ...
The novel Jinpingmei is rife with various forms of language play, which produces special stylistic or poetic effects and contributes to characterization. Language play in Jinpingmei gives rise to cognitive effects on the reader and poses a serious challenge to interlingual translation. However, it has hitherto received little attention from translation studies researchers. The issue of how different forms of language play are treated in English translations of Jinpingmei has not been touched upon. This article aims to fill the gap by analyzing and discussing the translation of puns and wordplay in Jinpingmei. It takes a cognitive-pragmatic view and draws upon a relevance-theoretic approach to examine the way in which puns and wordplay is rendered into the target language. Within the relevance-theoretic framework, translation is viewed as an “interpretive use of language” and the relation between source and target texts is based on interpretive resemblance rather than equivalence (Sperber & Wilson, 1986; Gutt, 1991). The analysis undertaken in the article is based on two English translations of Jinpingmei. Following Delabastita’s (1996) taxonomy of puns and transferring strategies, the article examines the translators’ translation strategies and assesses the degree of relevance and interpretive resemblance achieved in the two translations vis-à-vis the source text. Research results demonstrate that most puns and wordplay are lost or misconstrued in translation and that the translators exhibit different patterns in their approaches to translating wordplay in Jinpingmei. Moreover, the degree of interpretive resemblance achieved in the two translations differs significantly. The article concludes that the translators’ choice is influenced by translational skopos, the sociocultural context of translation and reception, and the (un)translatability of wordplay effected by the linguistic and cultural difference between Chinese and English.
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Humour is the infallible and never-outdated medium for creating intimacy and collective understanding among peoples of versatile interests and, sometimes, conflicting attitudes. It is the moment of catching the humorous effect that counts. Humour creation is not easy because the factors that would trigger laughter vary from one person to another. Creating humour on an international level demands distinguished abilities, as it is hard to accommodate all the factors that would motivate diverse peoples and social brackets to laugh at the same time for the same reason, due to national, historical and cultural factors. The hypothesis is based upon the assumption that the world societies speak the same language with the same dialect. Yet, the situation gets complicated if translation problems and techniques are considered, and it turns to exigently complex when the source dialect differs from that of the targeted audience. However, the latter case has never been a problem for the Egyptian drama, as the entire Middle Eastern societies can transcend the dialect barrier. Notably, the vernacular dialects in the Middle East region are fundamentally diverse to extent that they are, sometimes, incomprehensible altogether. Recently, along with the growing hegemony of the online streaming forums as well as their attempt to globalise the streamed content to attract more subscribers, an active process of subtitling and dubbing are initiated. In the process, all the problems of translation, subtitling and dubbing came to the fore. The article discusses the Netflix intralingual subtitling/dubbing of the Egyptian comedies from the Egyptian vernacular dialect into MSA with reference to the famous and hilariously comic Egyptian films الليمبي“El-Limby” (/ɪlˈlɪmbɪ/)(2002) andاللي بالي بالك “Elli Bali Balak (/ɪˈlɪ ˈbalɪ ˈbælək/) ([You-Know-Who]” (2003) starred by the Egyptian actor Mohamed S’ad. The article also seeks to underline the influence of the Netflix subtitled/dubbed MSA content upon the Middle East region.
A relatively broad perspective on the notion of 'intertextuality' is adopted which recognises both an 'internal' and an 'external' discourse dimension to this textual feature, Intertextuality is manifested by a gradient of verbal and non-verbal possibilities that may be distinguished according to the factors of 'correspondence: 'salience: and 'relevance: These criteria are then selectively applied to the 'Great Banquet' parable (Lk 14: 15-24\. first in relation to its internal intertexts within the gospel itself. Intertextuality is then examined externally in terms of pertinent passages of Scripture and also with reference to aspects of the non-verbal 'contextual' setting. Attention is next shifted to a south-central Bantu world/life-view and the hermeneutical effect of pretexts potentially generated by this milieu. The influence of a comparatively 'literal' Bible translation, a 'paratext: on the ongoing process of interpreting this seemingly straightforward parable pericope is also considered.
This exploratory research investigates linguistic and cultural challenges in English and Arabic translations of Brazilian writer Paulo Coelho’s novel, Eleven Minutes, which was originally written in Portuguese. This study raises the following questions: (1) How does the functional-pragmatic model of House prove to be advantageous to the contrastive analysis of translations of Eleven Minutes? (2) To what extent are the translators whose work is examined in the current research faithful to the ST? (3) How intensely are linguistic-textual elements prioritized over cultural aspects in the conveyance of the ST message in either translation? This work employs Juliane House’s model of translation quality assessment to make a comparative analysis of the source text with both translations and to highlight the relationship of linguistic components with the relevant communication process. Furthermore, the techniques adopted in both translations are examined through excerpts taken from each of the three versions of the book. The registers of the source text and those of the target texts are analyzed and compared based on the register analysis of House’s model. Consequently, the study demonstrates how the conceptual and interpersonal functions of language are affected in the target texts. The outcome of this qualitative analysis leads to the identification of the methods adopted by the translators, mainly referring to overt and covert translation methods. Overall, it is concluded that the English translation is significantly linked to the source text by pragmatic equivalence, in contrast, the Arabic translation is connected to the source text by significant functional equivalence that highlights the cultural filter used in the text.
Diplomatic Interpreting has been an outstanding activity throughout history. Diplomatic Interpreting and interpreters have always played major roles in facilitating communication between nations and peoples. In this respect, Diplomatic Interpreting shaped the course of history during a wide range of periods ranging from the signing of ancient agreements to colonization and modern time negotiations. With a historical perspective, interpreters have made a tremendous contribution to international relations and ensuring accurate communication between the peoples and cultures. This study aims to delve into the interplay between the renowned Relevance Theory, as a leading communication theory which was on many occasions studied mostly within the scope of Translation Studies, and also intends to contribute to the filling of a vacuum in Interpreting Studies by adapting this theory to Interpreting Studies. It tries to find an answer to the research question of ‘How can the Relevance Theory be applied to Diplomatic Interpreting?’ This study will accordingly focus on the interplay between Relevance Theory and Diplomatic Interpreting. The study avoids reaching any final judgements as regards the scope that Relevance Theory can be applied to Diplomatic Interpreting as this study is part of an ongoing PhD dissertation. Besides, the study limits itself with studying the possible impacts that the Theory has on interpreting practice at a diplomatic setting; in other words, applying the theoretical assumptions of Relevance Theory to Diplomatic Interpreting.
This paper explores the challenges of non-equivalence at the grammatical categories in the Kĩkamba Bible translation. Translation involves rendering a source text message into the target text by using the register, background knowledge, and other language resources to meet the intended purpose. The process is hampered by non-equivalence, which occurs when a lexical item or an expression in the source language lacks an equivalent item to translate it into the target language. A descriptive research design was used to obtain information from a sampled population. The Bible is divided into two sections; the Old and the New Testament. It is further categorized into seven groups. Purposive sampling was used to select one book from each category and one chapter from each book to form the sample for the study. Data was collected through careful study of the English Revised Standard Version Bible to identify non-equivalences at the grammatical category level and the Kĩkamba Bible to analyse how it is handled, guided by Equivalence theory proposed by Nida and the Relevance theory (Sperber and Wilson). The study established four categories of non-equivalences at the grammatical category level; gender, number, person and case. According to the research non-equivalence at the grammatical level such as the third person singular and plural, the second person and pronouns in both subjective and objective case pose a challenge when the target language lacks a distinctive expression that is present in the source text, but appropriate strategies such as unit change, explicitation and specification meet the goal of translation. The study recommends that the translator needs to interpret what the categories represent in the context as a whole before translating the separate verses. It is hoped that the research will be a contribution to applied linguistics in the area of translation, specifically on non-equivalence.
Community translation and interpreting occur regularly in a variety of contexts when people who do not share a common language need to communicate. In the past several decades, scholars have taken a keen interest in understanding translator and interpreter cognition of bilinguals engaged in community translation and interpreting. A few terminological distinctions are necessary to situate scholarship on cognitive translation and interpreting studies and bilingualism given the range of profiles exhibited by community interpreters and translators. An important element of expertise in translation is the question of metacognition or monitoring, wherein translators are able to self-reflect on their practice in order to make decisions based on previous knowledge or experience. An untapped area of scholarship that bridges bilingualism, community translation and interpreting, and cognition is the role that language potentially plays in mediating decision-making and ethical behaviors.
Bringing together scholars from a range of disciplines, this book explores the analysis of crime-related language. Drawing on ideas from stylistics, pragmatics, cognitive linguistics, metaphor theory, critical discourse analysis, multimodality, corpus linguistics, and intertextuality, it compares and contrasts the linguistic representation of crime across a range of genres, both fictitious (crime novels, and crime in TV, film and music), and in real life (crime reporting, prison discourse, and statements used in courts). It touches on current political topics like #BlackLivesMatter, human (child) trafficking, and the genocide of the Kurds among others, making it essential reading for linguists, criminologists and those with a general interest in crime-related topics alike. Covering a variety of text genres and methodological approaches, and united by the aim of deciphering how crime is portrayed ideologically, this book is the next step in developing research at the intersection of linguistics, criminology, literature and media studies.
The cementing of mediation as an integral part of the 2020 CEFR/CV (The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages/ Companion Volume) and, consequently, of adequate assessment processes, sets the task of rethinking the Romanian language test for foreign medical students at the UMFVBT (The “Victor Babeș” University of Medicine and Pharmacy Timișoara). Mediation should be addressed with a view to integrating it into the comprehensive learning, testing and evaluation process. The paper points beyond a summative form of assessment and argues in favour of adding formative, dynamic forms of assessment during the language course on specific written mediation competences. Within this framework, we plead for partially restricting the overall authority of the teacher in matters of assessment and for involving the students in the very assessment of the mediation competences they are to acquire and develop. In order to avoid messy progress and to ensure a systematic, methodical and beneficial process, assessment requires careful preparation and monitoring. To this end, the paper suggests a hybridisation of learning and assessing, and lays out a coherent series of learning tasks adding up to a complex task suite, a multi-stage task designed to directly involve the students in as many learning and assessment stages as possible.
Translation is not only a place where previously separated cultures come together, it is also a place of multiplicity and dialogue; a place of inequality and conflict. Translation is a cultural transfer that entails a process of deconstruction and reconstruction in order to render a new text for a new readership in a new socio-cultural milieu. This paper investigates translation as a rewriting, focusing on a comparative analysis of For Bread Alone, the translation of
, a novel by the Moroccan writer Mohamed Choukri. My objective is to show that translation has shifted from being a mere linguistic operation to being a process of selection, omission, and reconstruction of meaning. Therefore, the questions this paper addresses include the following: What happens to a text when it is transferred from one socio-cultural milieu into a different one? What types of problems do translators face when the source language and the target language belong to different linguistic, cognitive, and cultural environments? How can translation be an act of rewriting? Can a translator be considered a traitor or a creator?KeywordsSource languageTarget languageCultureText deconstructionText reconstruction
This study looked at the role of pragmatics in English-Dari translation as well as the difficulties and problems that translators confront on a daily basis. Since pragmatics has recently attracted attention and growth from various academics and linguists, this study deemed pragmatics to be a factor of substantial relevance in translation processes. This growth is cause for concern. The objectives of the study were met by using the analytical descriptive approach, which also helped to identify the problems and difficulties faced by translators. Five questions were included in each of the two parts of a questionnaire test about the value of pragmatics in translation as well as the obstacles and hurdles that translators encountered while attempting to translate pragmatic ideas from English into Dari. This probe involved the twelve Dari translators. The results of the study show that pragmatics is very important when translating between English and Dari. The results of the first part of the questionnaire showed that 90% of the responses and an overall average of 3.5% out of 4% supported the use of pragmatics in translation. With a response rate of 90% and an overall average of 3.5% out of 3% for the five questions in the questionnaire's second section on the existence of pragmatic issues and challenges faced by translators, the findings also illustrated the significance of understanding pragmatics for successful translation.
Chapter 2 tackles aspects of cognitive processing that can be observed in the course of a translation task, from the moment a translator begins to read a text-to-be-translated until the translation has been finalized. It begins by recording the historical development of research into the translation process and how the task of translation has been modelled. It moves on to examining how advances in methodological approaches have contributed to the development of early models, providing empirical evidence from verbal reports, keylogging and eye tracking. Contemporary translation process research focuses on text reading, segmentation and production; and advances in computational linguistics have enhanced descriptions and identification of translation units, attention, production and alignment.
Chapter 1 discusses the nature of theory, how theory can be applied, and the interaction among theories. The last issue is especially important for a discipline like translation studies, which interacts in a variety of ways with other disciplines, as Part III highlights. The chapter takes us from St Jerome in his study at the end of the fourth decade of the Christian Era, when he was commissioned by Pope Damasus to revise the existing Latin translation of the Old Testament, through early and towards contemporary theories of the translation endeavour, and towards the terminology that has been developed along the way, to pinpoint the discipline’s important concepts, considerations and approaches.
In this book, Stanley E. Porter offers a unique, language-based critique of New Testament theology by comparing it to the development of language study from the Enlightenment to the present. Tracing the histories of two disciplines that are rarely considered together, Porter shows how the study of New Testament theology has followed outmoded conceptual models from previous eras of intellectual discussion. He reconceptualizes the study of New Testament theology via methods that are based upon the categories of modern linguistics, and demonstrates how they have already been applied to New Testament Greek studies. Porter also develops a workable linguistic model that can be applied to other areas of New Testament research. Opening New Testament Greek linguistics to a wider audience, his volume offers numerous examples of the productivity of this linguistic model, especially in his chapter devoted to the case study of the Son of Man.
Assessing the quality of translation is never straightforward and rarely objective. Context, audience, text type, function and lexis are only some of the criteria that need to be taken into account. In the case of constrained intersemiotic translation, subtitling being a prime example thereof, determining universal criteria for assessment is particularly testing. Often referred to as “necessary evil”, audiovisual translation (AVT) needs to avoid distracting the audience, while aiding their comprehension of the audiovisual message. This is particularly the case for additive AVT, for instance subtitling, where the translation does not replace the original, but coexists with it. Relevance Theory, a controversial but flexible approach to communication, may provide a viable framework for gauging subtitling quality. The interplay between relevance, communicative intention and processing effort can help explain the rationale behind the process of decision-making in the practice of AVT. This paper provides a theoretical foundation for the application of Sperber and Wilson’s Relevance Theory to interlingual subtitling, followed by an analysis of selected examples from a large corpus of mostly English-language movies, series and documentaries streamed on Netflix with Polish subtitles. Though the corpus is Polish-centred, the research conclusions are intended to be universal enough to apply regardless of the language pair.
The paper aims to investigate how a Chinese heroic legend was reconfigured for Western viewers through the English-dubbed versions of a case-study film, Monkey King: Hero is Back (2015). The ultimate goal of the study is to shed new light on how dubbing practice may better cater to Western target audiences. Based on two macrolevel translation theories, three translation models, and the two microlevel translation strategies, this paper discusses the most commonly used film translation strategies for English dubbing in the case-study film and their implications for the effectiveness of translation. The findings suggest that driven by the target-audience orientation, English-dubbing strategies often use standard language constrained by linguistic and cultural disparities as opposed to dynamic, adaptive Chinese dubbing.
This paper aims to identify, compare and analyse conceptual orientational metaphors in the Quran and their translations. It attempts to find out the similarities and differences in the metaphorical conceptualization of space between English and Arabic. The paper discusses upward movement versus downward movement within the context of religion. The paper asserts the pervasiveness of metaphors in religious discourse. The verses of the research sample and their translations support the claim that orientational metaphors are generally regarded as universal due to the common cognitive basis shared between Arabic and English. The conceptual metaphor can generate a wide range of meanings, primarily in terms of binary opposites. The researcher adopts the corpus-based approach suggested by Deignan (1999) and collected a number of metaphorical verses to construct the linguistic corpus for the study. The findings of the study reveal that Arabic and English share many conceptual metaphors and their surface linguistic realizations.
یُعدُّ تقییم جودة الترجمة أَحد المعاییر الصالحة لتقییم واتخاذ قرار الحکم على جودتها، وطرح منظِّرو الترجمة أُنموذجات عدیدة لتقییم جودة الترجمة، ولکن المشکلة الرئیسة هی کیفیة اختیار وتطبیق أُنموذج لتقییم النوع الأَدبی، ولذلک سیتم التحقُّق من هذا المجال الإشکالی من خلال هذه الدراسة. یهدف البحث إِلى استکشاف قابلیة تطبیق أُنموذج هاوس (٢٠١٥) على تقییم جودة الترجمة من حیث تناول ترجمتین لروایة نجیب محفوظ "اللص والکلاب" (١٩٦١)إِلى الإنجلیزیة التی قام بها ثلاثة مترجمین: إلیاس (١٩٧٩) وبدوی ولو غاسیک (١٩٨٤) الَّتی نقحها رودنبیک (١٩٩٠). وتفترض الدراسة أَنَّ أُنموذج هاوس (٢٠١٥) لتقییم جودة الترجمة قابل للتطبیق لتقییم ترجمة روایة محفوظ "اللص والکلاب"، ویکشف عدم التطابق بین نص المصدر والنصَّان المترجمان عن المشکلات الرئیسة التی تشوِّه نوع النص الأَدبی، وأَنَّ الجانب البراغماتی للمعنى هو أَخطر أَنواع مشکلات الترجمة مقارنة بالجوانب النحویة والدلالیة، وکشفت الدراسة عن وجود عدم التطابق لهذین المتغیرین من الأَبعاد الثلاثة لوظیفة التعبیر، (موضوع النص، وفحوى النص، وأُسلوب النص) والنوع الأَدبی للنص، وقد أَدَّت حالات عدم التطابق إِلى حدوث تغییر فی المکون الوظیفی بین الأشخاص والمکون الفکری. کما تبین أَیضًا أَنَّ أُنموذج هاوس (٢٠١٥) کان مُعقَّدًا إلى حد ما، ولکن قابل للتطبیق، وقد تحققت الاستنتاجات من صحة فرضیات هذه الدراسة، واقترحت تعدیل أُنموذج هاوس (٢٠١٥) لتقییم جودة الترجمة.
The study argues for the translation principle of “adapting to the audience’s cognition” in the context of metaphor translation and aims to demonstrate the correlation between this principle and our idea of adapting to the audience’s cognitive environments in political discourse. While a Chinese authoritative political publicity document Xi Jinping: The Governance of China II shows strong presence of nominal metaphors, the research into such metaphors in Chinese political discourse has received relatively little interest. By classifying the nominal metaphors in Xi Jinping: The Governance of China II, the study puts forward five methods of translating nominal metaphors together with a tentative model based on the insights from the relevance translation theory. They are respectively domain preservation, domain elimination, domain substitution, explanation, and domain preservation with annotation. It is also found that the intra-discourse factor and the outer-discourse one influence the choice of those methods.KeywordsNominal metaphor translationXi Jinping: The Governance of China IIRelevance Translation theory
This paper investigates the linguistic gaps in the English- Kiswahili translation of agropesticide texts in Tanzania. The Kiswahili translation of such information enables farmers to be familiar with the proper ways of controlling and managing pests and diseases. Different agropesticide texts were collected from farm input shops and analysed, and informants were interviewed based on the words, phrases, and sentences from the texts. The data were then analysed through thematic analysis. The translation of such information faces some challenges including coinage in the source language, meaning distinction in the source language, formal differences between English and Kiswahili, lack of Kiswahili equivalents for the names of some Kiswahili diseases and pests, and the traditional agricultural practices. Given the genealogical and typological differences between English and Kiswahili, translating through descriptions would overcome non-equivalence between the two languages at the word level. Translating agropesticide texts in Tanzania has implications for proper farming practices among farmers. Directions on the proper use of agropesticides are meant to make farmers practice productive farming. The challenges facing the translation between the two languages can be mitigated through descriptive equivalence and borrowing which is adapted to the morphological and phonological patterns of the target language.
Contributions to translation reception often examine the readers' responses to binary translation solutions (e.g. foreignisation and domestication). Scant attention has been paid to the ethical causes of readers' acceptance of translated foreignness. This quasi-experimental study attempts to illustrate how a heterogeneous readership engages with varying degrees of translator intervention to handle foreignness. It offers insights into the ways in which trust relates to translation reception. Empirical evidence indicates that what readers tend to accept is not any deterministic, textual solution but rather a set of options that are deemed ethically trusted. Readers might refuse a norm-conforming, fluent translation because they feel manipulated. On the other hand, a literal translation of foreign elements may be accepted if the text is regarded as "authentic" or as "objective". This article conceptualises translation reception using a trust-based compromise model, in which readers calculate losses and gains within mediated, intercultural communication.
In Nudge (2009), behavioral economists Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein distinguish between Econs, the economic subjects posited by rationalist neoclassical economists who assume that the economy is rational because Econs all make exclusively rational decisions, and Humans, the economic subjects studied by behavioral economists who assume that Humans are not only irrational but irrational in systematic ways. This paper applies behavioral economics to the rhetoric of translation first by noting that when Econs translate their work is not rhetorical. For this rationalist model there simply is no rhetoric of translation. There is only the translation of rhetoric: the accurate reproduction of the source text’s rhetorical devices in the target language. In a behavioral-economic purview, however, it should be obvious that at the very least the Human translator interacts rhetorically with the source author and target reader as counterfactual projections—specifically, in what Aristotle would call a pathos-based rhetorical engagement, by projecting counterfactual emotions onto them. For what Kenneth Burke would call the translator’s counterfactual ethos-pathos identification with the source author, those counterfactual emotions would include authority, seriousness, playfulness, sincerity, etc.; and for the translator’s counterfactual ethos-pathos identification with the target reader, they would include belief (the feeling of being persuaded), cognitive comfort (the feeling of comprehending, being at home in the text), cognitive arousal (the feeling of being interested/challenged), awe (the feeling of pleasurable aesthetic stimulation), and so on.
Aiming at explicating structural prolepsis, and how temporality of reading and living are related, the study was conducted on Tell Me Your Dreams (1998) and its respective Amharic translation (Hilimishn Achawichgn-ህልምሽን አጫውችኝ, 2009).The English novel is anticipation of retrospection. The structural prolepsis propels the story without excursion. But the Amharic translation is not; there is no structural prolepsis. The present is constructed retrospectively and reveals that the best of times is yet to come in the English novel; the future has a retrospective significance of meaning to the present. There is a hermeneutic circle between the presentification of reading the English novel and the depresentification of real life present. The present of the English novel and the lived present of real life are experienced in preterite form in relation to a future to come. The future of real life and the English narrative are the same for both are unknown and imagined. The A and B philosophy of time solidified the literariness of the English narrative, but temporal becoming is emphasized in the Amharic translation. The past has just been, and so is not; the future is to be, and so is not yet. Thus, its literariness can’t be sensed.
The present paper discusses the rhetorical/pragmatic dimensions and levels of verbal irony through the example of a famous La Fontaine ’s Rat-fable. Verbal irony performs a pragmatic function, making use of a potential contrast between expected and experienced events. This makes verbal irony generally funnier, more criticizing, more expressive of a difference between expected and ensuing events and more protective of the speaker than literal remarks. This paper also proposes a study of verbal irony, as purely pragmatic phenomenon, in order to provide a plausible analysis of the allegoric ‘ironicalness’. In this case study of La Fontaine ’s Rat retired from the World, I will argue that pragmatic enrichment processes have effects on translation. The translator, as a communicator, may translate not what was linguistically encoded in the original text but rather what was propositionally communicated. This will result in discrepancies in style between source and target texts. Enrichment done on cultural/contextual grounds can modify the source to a greater extent, and its motivation is more subjective, justified only on the translator ’s choice and judgment.
Neste artigo, discute-se o processo de tradução/revisão de textos de pessoas surdas, produzidos em português escrito como segunda língua, por profissionais tradutores e intérpretes de Libras-português (TILSP), por um lado, e, por outro, por revisores que não dominam a Libras. A questão foi proposta a partir da constatação empírica de que a tradução/revisão de textos escritos por pessoas surdas, muitas vezes, é solicitada aos TILSP, os quais costumam não se considerar devidamente habilitados para essa tarefa. Diante disso, considerou-se relevante analisar como se dá a atuação de TILSP e de revisores durante o processo de tradução/revisão dos textos de surdos. Para tanto, utilizam-se os dados de rastreamento ocular (eye tracking) decorrentes de um experimento-exploratório conduzido com esses dois grupos. O objetivo foi verificar qual grupo de profissionais despenderia maior esforço cognitivo, refletindo-se sobre as características da atividade e suas possíveis implicações para o profissional que a executa. Por fim, concluiu-se que a atividade, ao ser desempenhada pelos tradutores e intérpretes ou pelos revisores, assume uma natureza distinta e, por sua vez, implica demandas cognitivas e comportamentais diferentes.
Postmodernism and translation: The concept of untranslatability in
postmodern discourse
Abstract
This article aims to reveal what the concept of untranslatability is, what its conceptual and theoretical
implications are, and how important postmodern translation approaches are, as holding a dominant
position in the translation history of the millennium in terms of translation practice. In this article,
in the light of Derrida’s deconstructionist/deconstructionist translation approach, which is the
representative of the postmodern/poststructuralist discourse that determines today's translation
theories, the idea of the indeterminacy of meaning and therefore the (im)possibilities of translation
are discussed. For postmodern discourse, which emphasizes uncertainty/indefiniteness,
difference/otherness and pluralism in every sense, the content in the Babylonian myth and the theme
of languages being confounded emerge as a privileged site; as of yet, Babylon is an extension of both
the realisability and destructibility of human/inter-communal communication and cultural exchange
as well as a location that reveals the antagonistic nature of relations between texts, languages,
traditions and cultures. Translation, like postmodern discourse, is faced with this antagonistic
situation of "in-betweenness” and indeterminacy, thereby mediating the meaning between the source
text and the target text so that one can recognize the other. Translation is always a “hybrid” by
character and both translation and postmodernism produce discourse on the instability and
inscrutability of signification in language and therefore of translation. In their discourses, the
emphasis is placed on the intertextual context and it is underlined that the translated texts, which are
claimed to always carry the traces of other texts and contexts, are actually autonomous formations.
Translation has thus come to be conceptualized within the contemporary postmodern discourse as a
rewriting, not as a reproduction of the "original. According to this situation, which means reading the
texts from new perspectives, as predicted by the Derridean deconstruction strategy, there emerges a
state of infinity of meaning and new layers of meaning are constantly appearing. Every effort to
resolve the impasse in the transfer of the emerging layers of meaning also corresponds to a situation
of untranslatability. In this study, which aims to illuminate the place of the concept of
untranslatability in postmodern discourse, the concept of postmodernism is firstly discussed and
then the effect of postmodern discourse on translation is tried to be determined. At the end of the
study, it is revealed that the concept of untranslatability is in close relationship with the postmodern
discourse, which reveals that the meaning is postponed forever, that it never remains fixed, and that
it is redefined and reconstructed in each reading according to different political and cognitive
backgrounds.
Keywords: Translation, untranslatability, postmodernism, deconstruction, Derrida
ResearchGate has not been able to resolve any references for this publication.