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.
Colegiul Tehnic ‘Ion Borcea’ Buhusi
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.
A Pragmatic Approach to Translating
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