Stavros,
thanks for your thoughtful comments.
on 18.03.2003 21:09 Uhr, Stavros Assimakopoulos at stavros@ling.ed.ac.uk
wrote:
> 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. ... 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.
This is of course the problem that Gutt belabours to point out: that there
are contextual gap problems which are quite distinct from translation
problems arising from linguistic properties.
Direct translations can be successful only if the target audience can equip
itself with the original context. The translator needs to think about
strategies how to bridge the contextual gap, and needs to distinguish these
from strategies to solve linguistic or stylistic problems.
> 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.
Ernst-August Gutt explained it to me (and others) in the following way:
direct translation in terms of a translation that intends to interpretively
resemble the original completely is the only kind of translation that is
definable in absolute terms. Not every instance of interlingual interpretive
use is accepted as a translation: there are some which interpretively
resemble the original to very small degree and no one will accept these as
translations. But there is no agreement on the cut-off point; indeed,
preferences of translators as well as the target audience play a large role
in this.
>
> 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.
What you describe seems to me to be a strategy of bridging the contextual
gap rather than a feature of direct translation that needs to be accomodated
for in it's definition.
> 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.
Would you mind sending me a (preferrably electronic) copy of your thesis? It
sounds very interesting.
>
> ...>
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Stavros Assimakopoulos
> PhD Student
> University of Edinburgh
> Department of Theoretical & Applied Linguistics
>
Best,
Christoph
----------------
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