Dear Nancy,
It is my view too that even though Gutt has made excellent points on
translation as an act of communication in 'Translation and Relevance', his
argumentation on the distinction between direct and indirect translation could
be easily misinterpreted. If you wish to use a spelled-out criticism in line
with your problem with Gutt's account you can refer to Fawcett (1997:135-139)
His idea as I perceive it, is that in translation you have a choice of whether
to use the original context or adapt it to achieve minimal processing effort
and larger cognitive effects. Generally speaking, translation being an
instance of interpretive use of the language, the distinction between direct
and indirect translation is mainly a distinction between employing the
original context and modifying it to achieve a more easily processed effect.
The plateau upon which Gutt makes a distinction deals with mental
representation, and the use of the original context does not necessarily
exclude the use of equivalent expressions in the TL; albeit expressions that
are employed in the same context as the ones in the ST do. Accordingly,
indirect translation allows for deviations from the original context. My
problem with direct translation is that it is too strict as regards the level
of resemblance of the ST with the TT (complete resemblance). How can the
original context be kept intact since the SL audience and the TL audience
might leave in largely different contextual situations. In a discussion I had
on the topic with Deirdre Wilson, she assumed that even though Gutt had a more
flexible idea of direct translation he worded it in such strict terms
basically to account for the translation of religious texts, which are in
effect the texts he is mainly interested in.
My idea of this issue would be that ideally a translation should aim at what I
call "optimal possible resemblance" between the ST and the TT, following the
argumentation on resemblance Sperber & Wilson put forward in their chapter in
Kempson's 'Mental Representations' (1988). I made this point with a view to
the translation of drama (2002), but I think -and Wilson agreed with me- that
it holds for other types of translation as well. Basically one cannot expect
an audience of a translated ancient Greek play with no knowledge of ancient
Greek traditions to understand why Antigone went through what she did just
because she buried her brother and of course while watching the play one
cannot stop and look that information up. Thus, a slight adaptation will lead
closer to the original context and will provide the audience with necessary
cognitive effects that were originally presupposed by the audience of the ST.
However, this adaptation will not be an instance of indirect translation in
the sense that the original context will be kept intact: drachmas will not be
converted into dollars, since we are still in a 'context of Ancient Greek
time'(even though in some cases additional adaptations can be made to an
actor's reaction to say 'I paid 1000 drachma' to communicate that this is a
large or small amount of money)... I hope that helped.
Best wishes,
Stavros Assimakopoulos
Assimakopoulos, S. (2002) Drama translation and relevance. MA thesis (ms):
University of Surrey.
Fawcett, P. (1997) Translation and Language: Linguistic Theories explained.
Manchester: St Jerome Publishing.
Wilson, D. & Sperber, D. (1988) ‘Representation and Relevance’, in Kempson,
R.M. (ed.) Mental Representations: The Interface between Language and Reality.
Cambridge: CUP 133-153
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Stavros Assimakopoulos
PhD Student
University of Edinburgh
Department of Theoretical & Applied Linguistics
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