Text-Functions in Translation

Target ◽  
1995 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 261-284 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christiane Nord

Abstract As a text-type in their own right, titles and headings are intended to achieve six functions: distinctive, metatextual, phatic, referential, expressive, and appellative. Taking as a point of departure the hypothesis that translated texts have to "function" in the target situation for which they are produced by serving the purpose(s) they are intended for (which may or may not be the "same" as those of the source text), it is argued that the translator has to reconcile the conditions of functionality prevailing in the target culture with the communicative intentions of the source-title sender (= functionality + loyalty). The discussion of several examples from an extensive corpus of German, French, English, and Spanish titles and their translations shows how this methodological approach can be put into practice, establishing a model for the functional translation of other texts and text-types.

Babel ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Rędzioch-Korkuz

Abstract Translating children’s literature has been an object of interest researched from a number of vantage points, including the question of constraining factors. Scholars have highlighted mainly the question of dual readership or cultural adaptation, frequently without a global and systemic analysis of all impediments. This article examines the Polish translation of the German book for children, Katharina von der Gathen’s Klär mich auf, from a constraint-based framework. This article focuses on the reconstruction of the constraints in the translation process: the point of departure is the framework with three basic factors that constrain translation, i.e., the intention of the author/translator, text type, and the profile of the audience. The presented argumentation incorporates other formal impediments, such as the visual layer of the book and the semiotic make-up of the source text, language taboo and censorship or the literary polysystems. The analysis of the constraint framework helps to comprehend the translation in terms of the ST-TT relationship regarding their intended audiences, genre-related features, and the child-adult duality.


2012 ◽  
Vol 40 (3/4) ◽  
pp. 369-384 ◽  
Author(s):  
Terje Loogus

Translators as members of a certain culture, generally that of the target culture, base their translation-relevant decisions on their own culture, while the decisions are motivated by the (alien) source culture. In the translation process, cultural differences may lead to various decision-making conflicts and the translator has to find a compromise between the author of the source text, the target recipient and finally, of course, the translator him/herself. In this article, proceeding from functionalist approaches to translation, the discussion focuses on the decision conflicts related to translating culturespecific elements. Culture-related decision conflicts, as considered here, refer to the translator's inner indecision with reference to his/her goals, interests, values, beliefs, methodological approach, or any consequences thereof, attributable to the different cultural embeddings of the source text and the target text. In general, decision conflicts are perceived as subjective translation problems. The translator has to be able to  constantly act between separate perspectives, continuously see things from different viewpoints. The conflicts arise when the translator attempts to bring together two incongruent cultures without prejudice to any of the parties involved in the process. Acting within the interface of two different cultures, bearing in mind the interests of several participants, is what makes translation-relevant decisions a highly complex matter.


2011 ◽  
Vol 347-353 ◽  
pp. 426-430
Author(s):  
Da Lai Wang

This paper aims to account for sustainable development of different cultures in the context of globalization from the perspective of cultural functions of translation, which wield enormous power in constructing representations of the foreign culture and have far reaching effects in the target culture. According to cultural communication of translation, the major task of translation is to turn the cultural information in one language into another. Therefore, in the process of translating, the translator should try his utmost to allow his target language reader to acquire cultural information of the source text in order to promote mutual understanding between Western people and Eastern people and make different cultures co-exist peacefully and achieve sustainable development.


2016 ◽  
pp. 91
Author(s):  
Reginaldo Francisco

http://dx.doi.org/10.5007/1980-4237.2014n16p91O teórico e crítico de tradução francês Antoine Berman afirma que as traduções literárias em suas formas tradicionais e dominantes representam um ato culturalmente etnocêntrico, isto é, que traz tudo à sua própria cultura, às suas normas e valores, buscando fazer com que se esqueça que se trata de uma tradução. Para se opor a essa prática dominante, o autor propõe uma tradução que não esconda o elemento estrangeiro na obra traduzida, e que para isso seja fiel à “letra” (lettre) do original. Essa oposição é muito conhecida também nos termos utilizados pelo teórico norte-americano Lawrence Venuti, que fala em “domesticação” (domestication) e “estrangeirização” (foreignization) para se referir respectivamente às práticas tradutórias que ocultam as diferenças culturais, adaptando tudo à cultura de chegada, e àquelas que mantêm a estranheza do texto original e da cultura de partida. Interpretações mais radicais das ideias desses autores podem levar a pensar a tradução como dividida nessas duas possibilidades, e muitas vezes à escolha de uma delas como ideal e a outra como condenável. Entretanto, assim como com dicotomias mais antigas (literal x livre, equivalência formal x equivalência dinâmica, etc.), também estas não são duas categorias estanques, podendo haver diferentes combinações de ambas na tradução de um mesmo texto, além de estratégias híbridas ou soluções que não representam nem uma nem outra posição. Neste trabalho discuto a problematização dessa dicotomia, incluindo exemplos de minha tradução do italiano para o português do livro infantojuvenil O diário de Gian Burrasca, de Luigi Bertelli (Vamba).ABSTRACTFrench translation theorist and critic Antoine Berman states that in their traditional and dominant forms literary translations represent a culturally ethnocentric act, which adapts everything to its own culture, standards and values, seeking to make readers forget that they are reading a translation. To oppose this dominant practice, the author suggests a kind of translation that would not hide the foreign element in the translated work, one that is faithful to the “letter” (lettre) of the original text. A similar opposition to that / to Berman’s is also well-known through the terms “domestication” and “foreignization” as defined by American theorist Lawrence Venuti, who uses them to refer to translation practices that on one hand conceal cultural differences, adapting everything to the target culture, and on the other keep the strangeness of both source text and culture in the translation. Radical interpretations of these authors’ ideas may lead to the misconception that translation is divided into those two possibilities, and often to the judgement that one of them is ideal and the other condemnable. Nevertheless, as with other older dichotomies (literal vs. free translation, formal vs. dynamic equivalence, etc.), these are not clearly distinguishable and opposed categories. There may be different combinations of them in the translation of a text, as well as hybrid strategies or solutions that do not represent either one of them. In this paper I discuss the problems of such dichotomy, drawing examples from my translation of Luigi Bertelli’s book Il giornalino di Gian Burrasca from Italian to Portuguese.Keywords: foreignization; domestication; dichotomy.


1999 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 211-229 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tony McEnery ◽  
Richard Xiao

This paper uses an English-Chinese parallel corpus, an L1 Chinese comparable corpus, and an L1 Chinese reference corpus to examine how aspectual meanings in English are translated into Chinese and explore the effects of domains, text types and translation on aspect marking. We will show that while English and Chinese both mark aspect grammatically, the aspect system in the two languages differs considerably. Even though Chinese, as an aspect language, is rich in aspect markers, covert marking (LVM) is a frequent and important strategy in Chinese discourse. The distribution of aspect markers varies significantly across domain and text type. The study also sheds new light on the translation effect by contrasting aspect marking in translated Chinese texts and L1 Chinese texts.


Author(s):  
Ming-yueh Shen

Abstract This study aimed to determine as to whether or not the text type and strategy usage affect the EFL learners’ lexical inferencing performance. The participants were comprised of 87 first-year English majors at a technical university. Data were collected from (1) a lexical inferencing test with excerpts of narrative and expository texts, for which both multiple-choice and definition tasks were designed, respectively, and then (2) the responses from the learners’ self-reported strategy usage. The quantitative analyses demonstrated that the text types significantly affected the EFL learners’ lexical inferencing performance, in which the EFL learners performed better for the narrative excerpt than for the expository texts. However, significant coefficients between the strategy use and the lexical inferencing performance were not found in this study. The results further implied that the text structure and the lexical inferencing strategies should be explicitly taught to the EFL learners.


Author(s):  
Magdalena C. De Lange

Recent technological advancements in Bioethics have been rapid and incremental, leaving little time for Christian ethicists to reflect or develop a coherent methodological approach. To assess the situation in the Reformed Churches in South Africa (RCSA), a bioethical questionnaire was developed and administered during the synod in 2009. Three practical questions served as point of departure, viz. which bioethical issues confronted ministers in their work environment, which value judgement trends are evident when counselling members of their congregations and what theoretical frameworks or resources do they call upon when reflecting on these difficult situations? The survey consisted of 19 questions with several subquestions that sought demographic information to determine the population and information about bioethical issues confronting them, methodological strategies they apply and how they think they can contribute to the resolution of any such bioethical dilemmas. The results were tabulated and it was concluded that recent advancements in biotechnology cannot be ignored or dealt with in a piecemeal fashion any longer, either by the RCSA or its ministers. The need for clarity and analysis of the principles underlying those theories that guide or should guide their decision-making and pastoral care in dealing with bioethical dilemmas was emphasised. The findings highlighted the need for appropriate courses in Bioethics to be taught during initial theological training, as well as the need to keep the debate alive by offering workshops, seminars and short courses for practicing ministers to enhance awareness and allay fears and uncertainties in this very dynamic and morally challenging field of human and scientific endeavour.


Target ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 203-224 ◽  
Author(s):  
Isabelle Delaere ◽  
Gert De Sutter ◽  
Koen Plevoets

With this article, we seek to support the law of growing standardization by showing that texts translated into Belgian Dutch make more use of standard language than non-translated Belgian Dutch texts. Additionally, we want to examine whether the use of standard vs. non-standard language can be attributed to the variables text type and source language. In order to achieve that goal, we gathered a diverse set of linguistic variables and used a 10-million-word corpus that is parallel, comparable and bidirectional (the Dutch Parallel Corpus; Macken et al. 2011). The frequency counts for each of the variables are used to determine the differences in standard language use by means of profile-based correspondence analysis (Plevoets 2008). The results of our analysis show that (i) in general, there is indeed a standardizing trend among translations and (ii) text types with a lot of editorial control (fiction, non-fiction and journalistic texts) contain more standard language than the less edited text types (administrative texts and external communication) which adds support for the idea that the differences between translated and non-translated texts are text type dependent.


2017 ◽  
Vol 141 ◽  
pp. 235-244
Author(s):  
Juri Kijko

Im vorliegenden Beitrag handelt es sich um eine kontrastive Analyse von Bauprinzipien in den deutschen und ukrainischen informationsbetonten Paralleltextsorten aus fraktaler Perspektive anhand renommierter gleichrangiger Tageszeitungen. Je nach der Textdimension lässt sich Zwei- bzw. Dreifraktalstruktur in den untersuchten Textsorten unterscheiden. Meldungen weisen α- und ω-Fraktale, Nachrichten und Berichte noch φ-Fraktal auf. Darüber hinaus stehen diese drei Textsorten in fraktaler Relation zueinander. Es dürfte also angenommen werden, dass Selbstähnlichkeit ein universales Bauprinzip in informationsbetonten Textsorten ist. Bedingt ist solch eine Baustruktur vor allem durch extralinguale Faktoren, wobei Zeit- und Platzmangel eine entscheidende Rolle spielen.Fractality in German and Ukrainian news text typesThe present paper focuses on a contrastive analysis of the structural principles in the German and Ukrainian news text types from a fractal perspective based on the material from the equivalent quality daily newspapers. Depending on the text size two- or three-fractal structures may be singled out in the news texts under study. The text type note has α- and ω-fractals, news articles and reports have additionally φ-fractal. Furthermore, these three text types are in a fractal relation to each other. It might be assumed that self-similarity is a universal building principle in news text types. Such a structure is caused especially by extralinguistic factors, where time and space play a crucial role.


Author(s):  
Finn Frandsen

The present paper gives a critical introduction to the theory of text types or text sequences elaborated by the French text linguist Jean-Michel Adam. The first part of the paper presents the overall theoretical framework for Adam’s research within stylistics and text linguistics. The second part of the paper gives a more detailed discussion of Adam’s answers to what may be defined as the four most crucial questions within text type research, that is: a) the number of text types which can be identified (the classification problem), b) the relation between text types within individual texts, c) the relation between text types and linguistic features and d) the relation between text types and their communicative function (the interaction between form and function).L’objectif de la linguistique textuelle est simple : poursuivre l’analyse lin-guistique au-delà de la phrase complexe et des seuls couples de phrases et, si difficile que cela paraisse, accepter de se situer aux frontières du linguistique dans le but de rendre compte de l’hétérogénéité de toute composition textuelle.


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