1.3. Some Aspects of the Activity of Translation
1.3.1 Translation Problems
This section is a general account of translation problems, the
main area in which translation competence is at work. It aims to demonstrate
the complexity of translation task, as a permanent problem solving and decision
making process. On the light of these aspects, it addresses the unlikelihood of
acquiring translation competence, along with the required knowledge in a
four-year time course, when the would-be translator does not possess basic
linguistic and cultural knowledge at the beginning of the course.
1.3.1.1. Translatability
The huge conceptual gap between languages and cultures
engendered pessimistic views (Humboldt, 1909; Sapir, 1921). The term
translatability implies a doubt as to whether or not a text, a
structure, an idea or a reality could be translated. This led to the emergence
of the
counter-concept of "untranslatability". It points to
"the [...] impossibility of elaborating concepts in a language different
from that in which they were conceived" (De Pedro, 1999, p. 546). This
approach is referred to as the monadist approach to translatability
(ibid.). There is a belief, for example, that poetry is untranslatable
as its value is based upon its phonological features, which presents
insurmountable difficulties in translation (Firth, 1935).
This concept, though controversial and too pessimistic,
reflects the inevitable loss that translation causes to the original text. This
is quite comprehensible when one considers translation difficulties and
problems.
According to Catford (1965), the difficulties, and sometimes
the quasi-impossibility, of translation belong to two main categories:
linguistic and cultural. The translator is faced, in the former, with the task
of rendering structures usually specific to a language into a different
structural system of another. In the latter, the mission is to convey
nonlinguistic realities from a culture to another. He, nevertheless, did not
assume absolute untranslatability in this regard.
Catford (1965) explains linguistic untranslatability as
follows: "failure to find a TL equivalent is due entirely to deerences
between the source language and the target language"
(p. 98). De Pedro (1999) mentions ambiguity and plays on words as
examples of this type of untranslatability (p. 551).
As to cultural untranslatability, Catford (1965) describes it
saying that it arises " when a situational feature, functionally relevant
for the SL text, is completely absent from the culture of which the TL is a
part" (p. 99). De Pedro (1999) gives for this category the examples of the
names of clothes, food and abstract concepts (p. 552).
Mounin (1968 and 1971), on the other hand, talks about
lexical, syntactic and stylistic difficulties, all of which emerge from
cultural and worldview differences. He believes that untranslatability is
relative, and that it is the translator's task to reduce it in a text. This may
be achieved through a scientific analysis of the constituents that make the
effect of what seems untranslatable (Mounin, 1967).
Talking about translation problems was part of almost every
published work in translation studies. Here, follows an account of a scheme
suggested by the semiotician Peeter Torop, and which he named "Scheme of
Culture Translatability" (2000). It appears to be a relatively comprehensive
and brief summary of translatability issues existing in the literature. Torop's
(2000) classification will be presented, accompanied with relevant explanation,
commentary and illustration from different sources.
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