7. Contrastive rhetoric and translation studies

7. Contrastive rhetoric and translation studies

Summary

Originally embedded in linguistic theory, both contrastive rhetoric and translation studies have expanded their goals and research methods. While doing so, each discipline has been interdisciplinary, drawing on linguistics, psychology, pragmatics, and literary studies, among other disciplines. But there are inescapable dissimilarities, as, for example, in the concept of “transfer.”

Toury: “Being members of the target culture, or tentatively assuming the role of ones, translators are more or less aware of the factors which govern the acceptability of texts and textual-linguistic features in that culture, or certain sector thereof.” (1993, 16)

Ulla Connor

Toury’s model allows one to look at existing translations from two perspectives: as approximations of their source texts and as genuine members of the target literary systems, as texts among other texts in the target culture.

As a result of these two perspectives, translations are said to possess varying degrees of two qualities, “adequacy” and “acceptability,” the two theoretical poles of the continuum in which all translations can be found. For a translation to be acceptable, it is not enough merely to be adequate.

"Adequacy" and "acceptability" have much to offer for contrastive rhetoric research. The concept of acceptability by the target audience is an important issue. Students need to learn to write for different genres in discourse communities with varying norms.

Text linguists’ or text revisers’ points of view reveal the level of adequacy but not of acceptability.

Issues in common: theories of “acceptability” and “adequacy” in translation

Theories of translation in both Europe and the United States used to be source-text oriented.

Toudry criticized these models because they prescribe aspects of translation in advance, on the bases of the source text and its environment alone, and do not provide a framework for describing existing translations against the background of the target language and culture.

Troudy points out that transfer, as it is used in L2 studies, has characteristics that set it apart from the kind of transfer that takes place in translation:

all knowledge of the source language is thought to be activated when a second language speaker produces target language utterances. In translation, on the other hand, only a translatable utterance is the object of transfer.

The difference is between the language system as the object of transfer in second language acquisition and the utterance in translation.

Transfer in contrastive rhetoric and translation theory

In the procedure of “transfer,” a language user activates both languages. Accordingly, it has been claimed that “transfer” applies similarly to both translation and contrastive studies.

Toury (1986):

'Translating is a mode of speech production in one language where another language is necessarily involved. The very presence of two distinct languages in any act of translating leaves no room for doubt that, at least in principle, transfer may accompany translating, too, as is the case with any other mode of speech production by bilingual speakers.'

So, both CR & T involve the processing of two languages at the same time

Both seem to agree on the basic distinction between “literal” and “free” translation. They agree that there is a need for free or communicative translation instead of literal translation, depending on the purpose of the translation.

The field of translation studies in the past decade has experienced changes similar to those that have occurred in contrastive rhetoric. An expansion of influences from related disciplines has contributed to new emphases in the methods of translation studies; a trend toward empirical work is strong, and an interdisciplinary emphasis has evolved.

Development of theories of translation studies

German translation scholars have been more interested in developing theories and models of translation than Anglo-American scholars.

Translation studies in Europe

and the United States

Translation studies in Europe, spearheaded by German translation theorists, and translation studies in the United States have taken different directions.

German theorists have led the academic, “scientific” tradition of translation scholarship, whereas “Anglo-American scholars of translation have tended to adopt a much more praxis-oriented approach to the theory and teaching of their subject.”

What's chapter 7 about?

This chapter addresses three broad issues:

1) current theories and practices of translation;

2) the issue of “transfer” in contrastive rhetoric and translation theory; and

3) the potential of translation theory to contribute to the solution of some of the outstanding problems in contrastive rhetoric.

Contrastive theorists

& Translators

• Both are unfamiliar with theories and developments in the other's field
• This mutual ignorance is curious considering the many goals and research methods these two disciplines have in common:
• Both are applied rather than theoretical;
• Both deal with first language and second language processing;
• Both benefit from the same literature on language acquisition;
• Both have experienced changes in methodology as their individual theories were supplemented with relevant hypotheses, and methods of literary study, education and cognitive science.