E303B: English Grammar in
Context
Unit 23: Putting Grammar into
Translation
Presented By:
Marine Milad, Ph.D.
Introduction
In this unit, we will explore:
 the extent to which different structures of languages
cause the meaning-making process to vary across
languages, and
 how translators and interpreters draw on the resources of
different languages to convey roughly equivalent
meaning.
Introduction
 What are important issues facing all translators and
interpreters?
 An important issue facing all translators and interpreters is
whether the equivalent meaning will necessarily have the
same impact, both experiential and interpersonal, on a
culturally different audience- in other words equivalence of
function in context (Haliday, 1992, p.16).
 Related dilemmas facing the translator are the questions of
how important and how linguistically possible it is to convey
the relative markedness of the original author’s
lexicogrammatical choices when translating into another
language.
 There is also the challenge of recreating overall textual
cohesion when all the individual elements may have
changed.
Objectives:
By the end of this unit you will :
 Recognize how translator convey the relative
markedness of the original author’s
lexicogrammatical choices when translating into
another language.
 Consider how simultaneous interpreters use
grammatical cues to anticipate what is coming.
 get an insight into some of the ways in which screen
subtitlers handle the shift of mode from speech to
writing.
1. What happens when a text is
translated?
 When a text is translated, it is rarely, if ever,
possible to translate word for word between
languages…
Do Activity 2 Pages 51.
“Can I borrow your book reader tonight?”
How might you express this request differently if
you …………….
1. What happens when a text is
translated?
 Do Activity 3 Pages 52-54.
 Read the given texts (A- I) and decide which one of
them have been originally written in English.
 See comments section, pp. 15-17
1. What happens when a text is
translated?
 What is a translation? What is a back translation?
 A translation happens to be from source language (SL)
into target language (TL).
 However, back translation is in the reverse direction, i.e.
from target language (TL) back into source language
(SL).
 This means that back translations are a useful window
into the logical structures of other grammars- although
they read very oddly as English texts, for instance.
1. What happens when a text is
translated?
 What does Mona Baker propose about a good translation?
What is the paramount importance in translation?
 Mona Baker (1992) proposes that a good translation generally
matches the cultural expectations of the target audience,
not only in terms of its experiential content but also in terms of
its tenor relations and its overall coherence as a text.
 In other words, it strives for functional equivalence in terms of
meaning: experiential, interpersonal and textual.
 In Baker’s words, the paramount importance in translation is
the function of the category rather than the form it takes.
2. How are Experiential and Interpersonal
Meanings Communicated in Translation?
2.1 Lexical Choices
 Literal translation is so impractical. As Newmark (1995) says
translation is done at the level of smaller units (word and clause).
However, this is only the starting point. No successful translator
would be satisfied with stopping at this level for the following
reasons:
 Language is not simply a nomenclature (a system of words used in
a particular discipline).
 Each language articulates or organizes the world differently.
Languages do not simply name existing categories, they
articulate their own.
 What follows is that equivalence at the lexical level may simply
not be possible across a given pair of languages (e.g. men’s wear
is translated to suits, jackets and trousers).
2. How are Experiential and Interpersonal
Meanings Communicated in Translation?
2.1 Lexical Choices
 Even in linguistically related languages, words which look
superficially similar (false friends) may carry different
experiential or interpersonal connotations (e.g. Latinate terms
in English).
 Sandra Hale quotes a legal case where a Spanish-speaking
woman’s statement was translated literally as “he was
disposed to have a fight with him” which is not suitable for an
oral register.
 In such cases, corpus linguistics help the translator by
supplementing their intuitions, helping to distinguish senses by
collocation and semantic prosody.
 Activity 4, p. 59
2. How are Experiential and Interpersonal
Meanings Communicated in Translation?
2.1 Lexical Choices
 What are collocates? How can a translator reinforce the
patterns of collocates?
 Collocates are words that have a strong tendency to occur
side by side e.g. the word “new” collocates with the word “
world”.
 Baker states that a speaker or writer can reinforce the
patterns of collocation which already exist in the language by
adhering to them or create variations on an existing pattern.
 Baker also reminds that there are many collocations which
are marked in the language as a whole but which are typical
in specific registers for particular occupations or pursuits.
 Translators use inverted commas or the expression ‘so called’
to draw attention to a marked collocation.
2. How are Experiential and Interpersonal
Meanings Communicated in Translation?
2.2 grammatical possibilities and constrains
 All languages differ in the possibilities and constraints offered by their grammars
as well as the social patterns. There are three major areas:
 Word order: English, for example, is known for its’ relative lack of morphological
inflection and hence its reliance on word order to reflect grammatical
relationships.
 English does not possess a high degree of flexibility in the area of element order.
In order to compensate for this, English has developed a small but useful
number of devices (page 61):
 inversion accompanied by ‘there’,
 inversion not accompanied by ‘there’,
 double inversion for emphasizing the subject,
 clefting via the pronoun ‘it’,
 passivisation, and
 pseudo clefting.
2. How are Experiential and Interpersonal
Meanings Communicated in Translation?
2.2 grammatical possibilities and constrains
 Terms of address: in many languages, there is a formal grammatical
system for indicating the relative intimacy or formality of an
utterance, usually through the second person pronoun e.g. the
familiar (thou/ thee) and the more formal (you/ ye).
 If these grammatical means are absent, an alternative means
needs to be found. For example, some of the main ways of
indicating intimacy as opposed to formality in English is
 the use of first names or terms of affection as opposed to family names,
and
 the use of contractions and colloquial words as opposed to more
formal registers.
 Activity 5, p. 62
2. How are Experiential and Interpersonal
Meanings Communicated in Translation?
2.2 grammatical possibilities and constrains
 Grammatical Gender: Some grammatical choices which are
optional in one language are obligatory in another.
 A third set of features falls somewhere between the obligatory and
the optional.
 For one thing, Hebrew requires the adjective to be marked for
gender but this is not the case in English.
 Another thing, there is no equivalent polysemic lexical item for some
words e.g. dark.
 See the table, page 62.
2. How are Experiential and Interpersonal
Meanings Communicated in Translation?
2.2 grammatical possibilities and constrains
 How is meaning closely associated with choice according to
Baker?
 Baker summarizes the whole issue of grammatical choice by
saying that a linguistic element carries meaning to the extent
that it is selected.
 Meaning is closely associated with choice; so that the more
obligatory an element is, the less marked it will be, and the
weaker will be its meaning and vice versa.
 For example, adjectives have to placed before a noun in
English (obligatory/no choice).
 However, time and place adverbials can be placed at the
beginning of a clause carrying more meaning (by choice).
2. How are Experiential and Interpersonal
Meanings Communicated in Translation?
2.3 Pragmatic preferences
 What is pragmatics? How is it relevant to translation?
 It is more a matter of recognizing how things are achieved through
particular languages- an approach known as pragmatics- the study of
language as it is used in a social context or the study of language use.
 For example, imperative verbs in English are rendered by passive
structures in Arabic (e.g. Wella-Shampoo)
 In summary, the target text should ideally produce an
analogous/equivalent pragmatic effect on the audience as the source
text.
 Hickey (1998) explains that any translation must be capable of
potentially affecting its readers in whatever way the source text was
capable of doing to its readers. Therefore the task facing the translator
is a challenging one.
2. How are Experiential and Interpersonal
Meanings Communicated in Translation?
2.3 Pragmatic preferences
 What does untranslatability mean?
 Here comes the idea of untranslatability i.e. incapability
of putting into another form, style or language.
 Therefore, the impact of the source language would be
lost in translation (e.g. idioms).
3. How is Textual Meaning Created in
the Course of Translation?
Activity 7, p.66.
 What makes a good translator?
 According to Baker, the notion of equivalent meaning
needs to be understood not only at the level of words
and phrases, but also at the level of the whole text.
 A good translator does not begin to translate until s/he
has read the text at least once and got the gist of the
overall message.
3. How is Textual Meaning Created in
the Course of Translation?
 How is textual meaning created?
 Textual meaning is created through textual cohesion and thematic
progression.
 3.1 Textual cohesion differs across languages.
 On the textual aspect, a good translation establishes meaning through two
major ways; the explicit cohesive devices (lexical repetition, grammatical
repetition, anaphora, synonymy, ellipsis, and patterning) and the explicit
and/or the implicit devices of coherence (thematic progression, use of
discourse markers, terms drawn from a single lexical field and logical
relations between parts of the text.
 When English favors the use of pronouns and synonyms to refer back to
participants; other languages such as Arabic, Hebrew, Farsi, Greek and
Portuguese favor lexical repetition.
3. How is Textual Meaning Created in
the Course of Translation?
 How is textual meaning created?
 3.2 Thematic progression or thematic structure also differs across languages.
Whereas the high frequency of I as theme helps to maintain a sense of
continuity in English, thematization of processes as expressed in verbs gives the
Arabic sense of continuity e.g. ‘saw-I’, ‘occupied’, and ‘pleases’.
 Thus thematic continuity is achieved in Arabic, not through a series of identical
themes (I, I, I…) but rather the frequent thematization of processes).
 3.3 information flow differs in English where information is usually presented in
small chunks, whereas in Arabic it is presented in large grammatical chunks.
 languages differ in the way the logic of their information flow is indicated.
 Sentences in Arabic tend to be longer than English and logical connection tend
to be looser than English.
 There is a richer range of conjunctions in English than Arabic
4. How does an interpreter Manage the
Flow of Meaning?
 How is an interpreter different from translator?
 Unlike the translator, who generally has time to polish a
written translation, the task of the interpreter must be
accomplished in something close to real-time.
 In other words, the interpreter must commit to a
particular reading of the speaker’s meaning before the
whole text is available.
 This requires the interpreter to be aware of the functions
of particular discourse markers in the two languages
concerned, so the act of translation remains loyal to its
goal of being an act of communication.
4. How does an interpreter Manage the
Flow of Meaning?
 What are important issues an interpreter needs to be aware
of?
 The interpreter also needs to alternate easily and fluently
amongst different styles of English and be able to recognize
the implied meanings regardless of the grammatical forms.
 Interpreters cannot simply render themselves invisible.
Explain.
 In summary, oral interpreters, unlike written translators, cannot
simply render themselves invisible.
 Whether they choose to be or not, they are inevitably
participants in an interaction.
4. How does an interpreter Manage the
Flow of Meaning?
4.1 Interpreting textual meaning:
 The interpreter has to identify the pragmatic force of the first part of an
utterance, i.e. the intended impact of the utterance.
 Some of the difficulties involved in interpreting come from the fact that the
topics which interpreters are asked to translate are usually highly sensitive.
 They normally deal with political, economic, medical, scientific, legal and similar
topics which require specialized knowledge and related precision.
 In addition to translating words and utterances, the interpreter often finds that
s/he needs to replicate the speakers’ tone of voice in order to convey their
intended attitudes or the ‘pragmatic force’ of the intended message.
 Moreover, the interpreter finds that s/he has to anticipate/ predict how the
conversation will proceed in order to determine what to say next and how to
say it.
 The interpreter needs to be constantly aware of the functions of the discourse
markers in the two languages concerned to be able to anticipate what comes
next.
4. How does an interpreter Manage the
Flow of Meaning?
4.2 Conveying interpersonal meaning:
 While translators of written texts often choose to make themselves
unrecognizable, interpreters do not have the same advantage because their
identity, character and translation skills cannot be masked.
 In this regard, part of the training of an interpreter should be about oral
expression of intonation and stress; recognition of hidden meanings of different
participants; recognition of different accents; and perhaps understanding and
replicating facial expression and body language especially in liaison translation
(between two persons in their presence). Most of these issues do not arise in
translation written texts.
 To acquire advanced skills, an oral interpreter should also be trained to
alternate easily and fluently between the styles of the participants. ‘It may feel
artificial or patronizing, for example, to speak to one moment in the voice of a
high-court judge and at the next moment in the voice of a relatively inarticulate
person in the witness box’. (p. 71)
 Such difficulties raise serious doubts regarding the feasibility of the whole
process of interpreting.
5. The Particular Challenges of
Subtitling
 Subtitling is the action/activity of providing written statement
or fragment for oral discourse on the movie or television
screen, either in the same language of the oral discourse or in
another language, that of the targeted viewers.
 Intralingual subtitling:
 If the subtitles are in the same language of the oral discourse,
the process involves putting in writing the main features of the
verbal message, called monolingual subtitling.
 This is done for the benefit of the viewers who are deaf or hard
of hearing but who are literate. The programs could be news
or with a local concern and in the local language.
5. The Particular Challenges of
Subtitling
 Interlingual subtitling:
 It is bilingual translation from a ST to a TT. This is observed in the film industry
and in documentaries.
 Because the source text is of multi-media nature, subtitling covers only the
main or core verbal part. Though the entire verbal text may be transferred
for the target audience, frequently; however, due to time factor (where
picking up a message by eyesight is slower than following aurally following
the oral message), translators have to provide writing that does not lag
behind the sound presentation in the source message.
 Much of the redundancy in the original message is not translated; similarly,
whatever can be gathered from the visual context is also left out.
 Interlingual subtitles, therefore, are more condensed in content than the
source text.
 The above also leads to the loss of thematic cohesion in the target form.
5. The Particular Challenges of
Subtitling
 Activity 9, p. 72
 The translation also involves reducing syntactic complexity for the purpose of
keeping pace with the oral speed of presentation. This inevitably leads to
change in the themes and their elements.
 Furthermore, because subtitles are by definition a written form, there is a
change in the mode of the message from the spoken to the written, although
the original may be formal spoken discourse.
 On the other hand, it may not be; this way the formality-informality distinction in
the source text may be maintained in the target text. The loss of some informal
features may lead to some change in the goal of the original message.
 Finally, much of the interpersonal meaning in the source text is conveyed by
non-verbal features, such as facial expression. These can be partially observed
by the target audience because they would be concerned more with the
written form. On top of that, meaning that is conveyed by tone of voice would
be totally lost unless the translator puts that in some verbal description, e.g.
Shouted at…’ or in a sarcastic tone said…
5. The Particular Challenges of
Subtitling
 What are the constraints that govern subtitles?
Constraints that govern subtitles are:
 Technical constraints: space, time, presenting issues.
 Textual constraints: oral-aural processing
 Linguistic constraints: the way grammar and especially
word order are used differently in different language as
well as with issues of cross-cultural shift.
5. The Particular Challenges of
Subtitling
 Differences between Intralingual and Interlingual:
 Redundancy
 Thematic structure
 Thematic Cohesion
 Changes in features of a character’s speech
5. The Particular Challenges of
Subtitling
 Technical constraints on subtitling (see pp. 46-47 in
Readings)
 Space on screen is limited
 Time for reading the subtitle is limited by the time of
spoken material.
 The viewers’ perception of action on screen is limited.
 The technical limitations in terms of font, font size and
style.
6. The Use of Multilingual Corpora
 Development in corpus linguistics and machine translation has led to
increase in the use of multilingual corpora in translation work. A distinction is
often drawn between comparable corpora and parallel corpora
(translation corpora).
 Comparable corpora are sets of naturally occurring texts in two or more
languages, and are similar to any other well-selected corpora, in that ‘like
should be compared with like…’
 Parallel corpora are original texts and their translations. They are commonly
referred to as translation corpora. They may include examples of
tanslationese, where lexicogrammatical features are transferred from one
language to another.
 They are large banks of problems in translations and decisions of
professional translators, together with the evidence they had for those
decisions.
Conclusion
What is good translation?
 It conveys roughly equivalent meaning.
 It should produce the same impact; equivalent effect e.g.
pragmatic effect; tenor (e.g. politeness), lexical/ shared context.
 A good translation should not strike the reader as a translation (see
examples pp. 52-54). It needs to be a text in its own right.
 In literature, translators may have a good reason to want to
preserve a sense of ‘otherness’ in a text; foreignize a text.
 … to strike a balance between accuracy and naturalness (Mona
Baker, 1992)
 … match the target language expectation e.g. repetition …speech
7 times
 … produce a natural sounding text in target language.
Conclusion
What is good translation?
 Translator of a written text aims to become invisible, unlike oral interpreter.
 It creates the same impact on the receivers as that in the source form in the field,
tenor and mode.
 It has rich idiomatic style
 It gives the insider’s cultural references on the points. Extra-linguistic cultural
experience in the ST is transferred to the TT.
 It reflects the natural lexicogrammatical features of the appropriate register in the TL.
 Concordancing can be of great help to translator to distinguish senses by collocation
and patterns of meaning (semantic prosody)
 It matches the cultural expectations of the target audience not only in terms of its
experiential content but also in terms of its tenor relationships.
 According to Baker, the notion of equivalent meaning needs to be understood not
only at the level of words and phrases, but also at the level of the whole text.
 Gives the functional equivalence in the experiential, interpersonal and textual
aspects.