Pragmatic Translation Problems

Pragmatic Translation Problems

Pragmatic Translation Issue

So, before we are discussing some Pragmatic Translation Problems that known as the great problem for most of translator, we have to know the basic knowledge about what is pragmatic first. Pragmatic is a subfield of linguistics that learn about the context of the meaning. Since pragmatics is known as the subfield of linguistics that has big role in someone’s life; especially in guessing meaning. As result, it is essential for us, especially as the translators to know some problems that may occur and happen among us while translating another language. Besides, as a translator it will be happy for us to know that the readers are able to get main idea easily. Hence, pragmatic becomes the key point that is able to help you in getting and even giving appropriate message that effective and efficient. So, here we go! Let us see together some problems that we have to get rid of in translating another language.

Misuse of Phrase

It becomes a big job for us, as the translators to give the correct phrase that best for the sentences, especially in minimalizing Pragmatic Translation Problems. Besides, if you are doing some misuse of the phrase it will cause the wrong or even incorrect meaning to the readers. As result, as the translators who are deeply committed to give the correct word and translations, you have to select some categories that you think best to represent the meaning. Therefore, you do not need to repeat some not useful words; such as, more and more that actually used to say increasingly. Furthermore, you also have to be able to diminish the misuse of formal or even official register. It means, the translations errors that are related to the formality, emotional tone, and even generality of the text.

Less Coherent and Cohesive

The second one that you can do in minimalizing the Pragmatic Translation Problems is to be careful in arranging and even choosing the words, especially while you are translating another language that you know it has different cultures and perception. Therefore, one of the way that you can do in keeping away the problem of pragmatic translation is to make your translation fit in the standard phrases and even forms. For examples, you have to make the great opening and close it with great closing too, so it may give you the coherent sentences. Moreover, you also have to make your sentences into cohesive one. It means that your translations should has good and clear transition one among another.

Read Also : A Pragmatic Approach to Translating

In brief, by giving the best results of the translation you have to make sure that you are able to do your work based on those points. If you are able to make the correct one, it will help the readers to get the information easily. So, keep in mind that wonderful result starts with great efforts, especially by keeping away Pragmatic Translation Problems.

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Translation Thesis

Translation Thesis

Politeness Pragmatic Research Thesis Translation

“Politeness Aspects in translation English Screenplay Movie into Indonesian on “The Pursuit of Happyness” and “The Holiday”” (A Case Study of Pragmatic Translation). An unpublished research of An Undergraduate Thesis. 2008

ABSTRACT

Mushallin, “Politeness Aspects in translation English Screenplay Movie into Indonesian on “The Pursuit of Happyness” and “The Holiday””; (A case Study of Pragmatic Translation) Thesis. Faculty of Letters. English Literature. Undergraduate Degree. Gunadarma University. Jakarta 2007.
Advisor 1, Drs. Hendro Firmawan, MMSI Advisor 2, Dra. Endang Purwaningsih, Mhum.
Keywords: politeness aspects, translation, pragmatic, screenplay movie.
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This thesis is a study of pragmatic translation of Politeness Aspects from English Screenplay movie into Indonesian. The movies entitled “The Pursuit of Happyness” and “The Holiday” selected as data. The word “Happyness” is truly movie title which the title was grammatically wrong, but this title is originally from film industry where the movie explained about the word “Happyness” in the scene. The objective of the study is tried to examine politeness aspects based on the conversation in the screenplay English movie and the translation in Indonesian. Besides examines the relation to politeness aspects that applied in pragmatic translation in Indonesian and also examine the conversation that has no applied pragmatic translation in Indonesian which show violation, ignorance, impolite, irrelevant, inappropriateness and inconsistence in pragmatic translation.

The research used a qualitative method, because the data of the research are row in words such as words, expressions or speeches, the research data are words, expressions or speeches from English screenplay movie and the translation into Indonesian that contain and unapplied aspect of politeness in the pragmatic field, and all data are verbal language or discourse. And the subjects of the research are two screenplays movie “The Pursuit of Happyness” and “The Holiday”. In analyzing data the writer has adopted the framework developed by Miles and Huberman to describe the major phases of data analysis: data reduction, data display, and conclusion drawing and verification
This study utilizes a number of theories which have been identified eclectically as follows;
The Cooperative Principle which consist several conversation maxims by Paul Grice,
The Principle of Politeness, which consist in several maxim in maximize and minimize conversation by Geoffrey Leech, Politeness Strategy which consist some strategy in making polite communication by Brown and Levinson, Politeness Scales by Leech, Brown and Levinson, and Robin Lakoff, and Indonesian supporting book and several translation journals, linguistic journals, and some online journals and articles were utilized to support this research.
This study showed that 9 (nine) data principle of politeness on the “The Pursuit of Happyness”, and 22 (twenty two) data of principle of politeness on the “The Holiday”,
And the writer found 6 (six) data on the “The Pursuit of Happyness” and 15 (fifteen) data on the “The Holiday” based on Brown and Levinson theory. And all data found are founding no problem with pragmatic translation.
This study also showed that 13 (thirteen) data from two movies the first is “The Pursuit of Happyness” and the second is” The Holiday”, which violated, ignored, impolite, rude and inconsistence in applying the pragmatic in the translations. In this case, politeness aspects which are related to pragmatists theories. In this problem, the writer tried to give hints as a solution for the unapplied meaning with pragmatic problem. To show more objective of the research, the writer added an expert views of the problem. In this case the writer asked two experts’ judgment and an overview that have varieties comment on that.

Read also Goal of Translation 

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A Pragmatic Approach to Translating

A Pragmatic Approach to Translating

Politeness Pragmatic Translation

By; Prof.grad I Mariana Sava
Colegiul Tehnic ‘Ion Borcea’ Buhusi

In the last two decades there has been an increasing interest in approaching translation from a pragmatic perspective, as both pragmatics and translation are concerned with communicative situations. Roughly speaking, pragmatics studies how utterances have meaning in speech situations or the ability to use language effectively so as to fulfil intentions and goals. Speakers and writers plan and fulfil goals as they use language, which is a matter of choice. They choose their goals and they choose appropriate language for their goals, and the outcome of the effort of processing this particular ‘language’ (whether expressed linguistically, or non- linguistically) will enlighten the addressee with regard to the message intended by the author through the relationship between the protagonists.
Of the variety of notions that are central to approaching any instance of communicative discourse from a pragmatic perspective, I have chosen a few which I believe to be particularly helpful in exploring the question of ‘making sense’ and in highlighting areas of difficulty in cross-cultural communication.

These are:
[1] aspects of the speech situation (Leech, 1980):
addresser/writer/speaker(s), addressee/translator/reader/hearer/(h) and the
relationship between them;
the context of an utterance – any background knowledge assumed to be shared by
s and h and which contributes to h’s interpretation of what s means by a given utterance; it includes ‘relevant’ aspects of the physical or social setting of that utterance;
the goal(s) of an utterance/ the ‘intentional state(s)’.
The same aspects might be applied when analysing the dramatic text as a coherent chain of utterances as well as when translating it into another language for a readership with a cultural background different from the one the source text is set against. Pragmatics, as the study of ‘language in action’, will prove a helpful tool in the hands of the translator. His/her decisions are governed by the choices made in the process of decoding the message at the utterance and, ultimately, at the discourse level.

[2] conversational principles such as:
the Cooperative Principle (CP) (Grice, 1975) and its maxims: the maxim of quantity (‘give the right amount of information’), the maxim of quality (‘try to make your contribution one that is true’), the maxim of relation (‘be relevant’) and the maxim of manner (‘be perspicuous’);
the Politeness Principle (PP) (Leech, 1980; Grice, 1975) and its maxims: tact maxim (‘minimize cost to other; maximize benefit to other’), generosity maxim (‘minimize benefit to self; maximize cost to self’’), approbation maxim (‘minimize dispraise of other; maximize praise of other’), modesty maxim (‘minimize praise of self; maximize dispraise of self’’), agreement maxim (‘minimize disagreement between self and other; maximize agreement between self and other’) and sympathy maxim (‘minimize antipathy between self and other; maximize sympathy between self and other’)
the Irony Principle (IP) (‘minimize, other things being equal, the expression of impolite beliefs; maximize, other things being equal, the expression of positive beliefs’).pragmatic inference: implicature and presupposition
Implicature, according to Grice (1975), refers to what s means rather than what he or she literally says. Pragmatic or conversational implicatures can be conveyed by flouting any of the conversational maxims. Working them out depends on h’s ability to assess the target readers’ range of knowledge and assumptions about various aspects of the world and to strike a reasonable balance between fulfilling their expectations and maintaining their interest in the communication.
Pragmatic or extralinguistic presupposition (Levinson, 1983) refers to the social and cultural aspects, allusions, quotations, parodies, etc. It is here that there are frequently gaps between what the authors assume to be knowledge that they share with their readership and the socio-cultural background of the readers of the original texts coming from other cultural backgrounds or the readers of the translated texts. It is up to translators to explicitate, adapt or omit the otherwise opaque presuppositions of the source. When dealing with them, translators may often run the risk of overtranslating (explaining the obvious) or undertranslating (leaving their readers in the dark as to issues that are alien to them).

[3] the Communicative Principle of Relevance 
(Sperber and Wilson, 1986; 1995), which contributes to the explanation of the cognitive mechanisms underlying human communication, be it speech act proper or translation work (‘Every act of ostensive communication, e.g. an utterance, communicates a presumption of its own optimal relevance’). Consequently, an utterance may be interpreted by building contextual assumptions about its overall propositional form. Relevance can be seen as depending on a balance between effects and effort, or on the ‘gains’ from a certain stimulus and the cognitive energy it takes to retrieve those gains. The weightier the gains are, the more relevant the stimulus becomes; the less effort is required to achieve those gains, the more the relevance of the stimulus is enhanced. In other words, because s asks for the attention of h, the latter is entitled to assume that the former is trying to be relevant and therefore interprets an utterance according to this expectation. If we consider the hypothesis that all instances of human translation can be accounted for as instances of ostensive-inferential communication, the success of the communication/translation depends on how well it meets the basic criterion for all human communication, which is consistency with the principle of relevance.

Assuming that the speech acts are governed by standard conversational maxims, the power dimension and the speech act dimension can be combined in four different ways:
• The speaker is high status (the one in power) and the hearer is low status (the subordinate) (s > h);
• The hearer is high status and the speaker is low status (s <> s);
• The high status is a third ‘entity’ and the hearer is low status (e > h). In the last two cases, the third person can be a real person or an impersonal power, the so-called ‘power of evidence’ (fo instance, with modals in epistemic use, e.g. You must be insane to do a thing like that (where you is h). The objects of the power relations are the actions that are salient in the speech act situation. For a power relation to be effectuated, i.e. the low status does what the high status expects, the low status must know the attitudes of the high status towards the salient action. Even if there is always some form of power relation between two interlocutors, these will not result in any linguistic utterances as long as their expectations are well matched. It is only when the relevant expectations clash or are unknown that linguistic communication is necessary to achieve the appropriate actions. By definition, the high status can demand that his expectations about the salient action be fulfilled by the low status, he has the right to impose his perspective on the low status, while the low status can never demand anything, but possibly negotiate with the high status that he be let off doing the action.
However, the participants in a speech situation do not always see eye to eye. Simon Winters (1998) distinguishes between three levels of expectations about attitudes towards an action p:
• s’s attitude towards p;
• s’s expectation about h’s expectation towards p;
• s’s expectation about h’s expectation about s’s attitude towards p.

If some of the expectations are not fulfilled, the incongruence will normally result in some linguistic utterance on the part of the one whose expectation is violated. The cognitive structures of the participants in a speech situation may generate, for instance, modal expressions as grammatical and semantic markers of stance (i.e. personal feelings, attitudes, value judgments, or assessments).
“Translating must aim primarily at reproducing the message. To do anything else is essentially false to one's task as a translator” (‘Traddutore traditore’, as it were) (Nida and Taber, 1969). Therefore, a translation should convey the same information as the original, but how can this be done?. The conversational principles are not in the least universal, as they seem to reflect directly notions which are known to be valued in the English-speaking world (e.g. sincerity, brevity, and relevance). They do not necessarily have the same value in other cultures, nor should they be expected to represent any ideal basis for communication. In some translation contexts, being polite can be far more important than being accurate. A translator may decide to omit or replace whole stretches of text which violate the reader’s expectations of how a taboo subject should be handled, if at all, in order to avoid giving offence. Despite this lack of universality, the addressee/ translator should bear in mind that all discourse, in any language, is essentially co-operative and that the phenomenon of implicature (rather than the specific maxims suggested by Grice) is universal. In other words, the interpretation of the maxims may differ from one linguistic community to another, but the process of conveying intended meaning by means of exploiting whatever maxims are in operation in that community will be the same. Readers in general, and therefore readers of translated texts too, are prepared to accept a great deal of change and a view of the world which is utterly different from their own provided they have a reason for doing so and are prepared for it.

With this framework in mind, we shall have a look at the way utterances are used in communicative situations (translation work included) and the way we interpret them in context.

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