2 Chapter I: Phraseology as a branch of linguistics in literary works

Chapter III: The translation problems of phraseological units
in literary work

1. 
   Literary translation: different approaches and strategies
   

Literary translation is a type of translation where the source documents are fiction. Specialists in literary translation, working for polyglot, translate any kind of artistic works at a high level. Translation of literary texts includes:

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  literary translation of books, articles, stories and other types of prose,
  
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  literary translation of poetry,
  
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  translation of advertising materials,
  
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  translation of other texts that requires a creative and flexible approach. [5, 88]
  

Translation of literature is fundamentally different from other categories. This is because the main principle of literary translation is the dominance of poetic communicative function. It means that in addition to rendering information to the reader, literary translation also has aesthetic functions. The artistic image created in the particular literary work (be it the image of a character or nature) will certainly have an impact on the reader. For this reason the literary translator should take into account specific features of the text. It is the poetic focus of the text that makes this type of translation different from, say, texts of an informative type. When reading a story, poem or any other type of literary work translated from a foreign language, we perceive the text itself with its meaning, emotions and characters. It is quite a challenging task to achieve the main goal of the translation - creating a particular image for the reader. Therefore, literary translation might involve some deviations from the standard rules. A literal translation cannot reflect the depth and meaning of the literary work. A literary translator reproduces a non-literal rendition of the original text. It is all about how the translator perceives it. He/she rewrites the text from the beginning to the very end. This applies, for example, when an obvious expression is replaced by synonyms or the structure of sentences is changed.
Artistic translations play an important role in our translation agency because our approach to the source information allows us to provide the best quality of the rendered poetic text. Work is done by a concrete algorithm. The translator reads the text through, then allocates individual terms, divides the text into logical sections and translates these sections one by one. In addition, we pay great attention to the stylistic translation. The translated text is processed in several stages. [6, 34]
Literary translation requires a lot of skill. We should not forget that the translation of a book or a poem, perhaps, will be read by thousands of readers. This means that the text needs to be adequate and moreover - we need to focus on the fact that the translated document should create the same image as the original. Perfectly executed work often makes the translator famous. The guild of masters of literary translation determines the best translators of the year.
Literary translation has always been the matter of discussion among translation scholars. Some translation scholars state that that this special type of translation could be attempted somehow, provided that the literary translator, in addition to having linguistic knowledge of both source and target language and being familiar with the target culture, enjoys some literary creativity like that of the original author so that s/he can reproduce the flavor of the original in her/his translation. On the other hand, some scholars believe that this very particular type of translation – particularly when rhyme is involved – should not be attempted at all. According to these scholars, in order to enjoy and fully understand literary works, they should just be read in the original language. However, rarely does a translated literary work reach the level of the original in terms of conveying the original author’s intended meaning and more importantly in terms of conveying the music and flavor of the original.
Much has been written and said about literary translation, yet the term is mainly applied to translating fiction (poetry and prose). Meanwhile, fiction is but a moderate part of the great amount of texts that require bilingual literary processing. Every translator knows well the difference between processing a poem or a literary diary, although it will make difficulty to verbalize this difference. In practice, we consider them as different types of text to be perceived and translated, even if they use similar words and sentence structures. Usually and, mostly, aposteriori, we argue about such vague features as stylistic (pragmatic, communicative, etc.) adequacy, imagery, aesthetic or cultural acceptability, verisimilitude and apply a diversity of other criteria to the assessment of a translated text. From my own experience, I know that two independent critics may evaluate a translated poem (or any other literary work) with relatively or fundamentally opposite conclusions. These considerations have made me work on a sort of model for literary translation strategy. [6, 48]
The status of literary translation There is a widely spread conviction that literary translation is ‘free’ as opposed to documentary translation that is ‘exact’. The conviction is none but delusion, a common misconception, which, to a certain extent, has been generated by critics and translatologists who persuade us that literary translation is ‘an art’ whereas documentary translation is ‘a craft’ (nowadays, they use the term ‘industry’, yet more technical and impersonal). I think, the opposition has always been somewhat artificial since art is but an advanced degree of craft and as such requires even greater adherence to strict norms and strategies. The misconception has been further developed in the arguments of theoreticians and translators themselves about style (literary quality) of the text as something external towards meaning. In fact, this hypothetical meaning consists of many meanings, some of which are very far from the dictionary or common grammar and are perceived (or not) and interpreted (or not) in human processing the text as information. From this point of view, meaning is information, that is, an impact of the text on our senses, which does not concern only reason but also feelings, imagination, experiences. To stir up those areas, the text may be straight and simple or vague and intricate; unpretentious or sophisticated and the impact will vary depending on the parlance and the receiver. In this attitude, the literary work differs from the documentary text by its informational capacity. A document appeals to reason and is intended for logical perception as a clear-cut subject matter. To avoid entropy as much as possible, its informational capacity is limited to the purport, which is why the parlance is strictly determined to be unambiguously perceived. The level of determination and, accordingly, the restrictions of ambiguity may differ in different cultures and require different linguistic means to follow the purport but the samples are considered equivalent irrespective of the language. What is required from the documentary translation is the steady knowledge of such samples in the appropriate areas. [23, 37]
Literary translation is still considered as a secondary activity, for this particular type of translation is said to be (and in fact in many cases) inferior as compared to the original. One reason for that is the lack of creativity in many of the translations of literary works where the process is kind of mechanical and artificial which is only aimed at conveying the meaning. As a result, many literary translations fail to achieve the fame and quality of the original. This becomes even more problematic when the literary work to be translated is versified – such as poem – where its music and rhythm is as important as its content, if not more important. Accordingly, in the act of literary translation, reproducing the music of the original in the translation is as crucial as reproducing the poet’s intended meaning, for if a poem is stripped off its rhythm and music, little there remains for its audience.
Considering that words in a literary work carry a special energy and extra load other than that found in other types of texts, it could be stated that those translators who translate just using their linguistic knowledge of source and target language, and fail to include in their translations the creativity, rhythm and nuances of meaning one finds and feels in the original poem, cannot provide their readers with a work which is a good representative of the original. It is indicative of the fact that even if a literary translator succeeds in rendering the original’s intended meaning and conveying rhythm and music of the original in his translation, the translation of a literary work almost never reaches the level of the original.
Literary translation has always been the matter of discussion among translation scholars. Some believe that this type of translation cannot and should not be attempted, for it will never reach the level of the original. According to these theorists’ views, any literary work should only be read in the original language in which it has been written. Some other translation theoreticians, on the other hand, suggest that this very special type of translation could be done somehow – though with some loss of original author’s intended meaning, and more importantly with loss of the beauty and flavor of the original. But there is another aspect which needs to be taken into consideration as well; a literary translation has the ability to elevate an original work in terms of its audience.
According to Geoffrey, there are four main types of translation: literary, scientific and technical, commercial and business and interpreting. Yet, these four main translation types could include some subcategories such as philosophical (a branch of literary translation), legal (a branch of technical translation) etc. These main types of translation and their subcategories vary in terms of content and difficulty. If legal translation be considered as the type of translation in which the translator burdens most liability – due to the very fact that even the smallest deviation from the original text (say, a contract for instance) may cause great financial loss or disastrous consequences for the factory, institution, or the person receiving the translated text1 – literary translation (as many translation scholars argue) can be called the most difficult type of translation – for it entails the translator to have capabilities beyond those found in other types of translation. [26, 82]
Another characteristic of literary translation is that in this type of translation, unlike technical, scientific, legal, … translations, the translator should make relationship with the ST and source author, while in other types of translation there are just some technical and specialized terms that – though difficult they may be for the translator – do not entail the translator to make any specific relationship with the original author or be familiar with his culture and his other works. It goes without saying that in other text types, having the linguistic knowledge of the specialized terms in the text is enough, but in literary genre it does not seem to be enough. In fact, since there is no limitation in a literary writer’s use of creative language, no boundary for his imagination, having the linguistic knowledge of the two languages does not seem to be enough for producing a successful literary translation. That is especially more crucial when rhyme and/or rhythm is involved as well as in poetry translation. There have been cases where a literary translator had had a trip to the source author’s homeland and lived there for quite a time to become familiar with the culture of the original so as to be able to produce a translation similar to the original. However, the more familiar a literary translator is with the original author’s style of writing, the more close his translation would be to that of the original. An example of this is such cases is Najaf Darya Bandari’s preface to his translation of Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea which is an attempt to make the readers familiar with Hemingway’s world, through which the comprehension of his book became easier for Persian readers. It goes without saying that Darya Bandari could not have written such a comprehensive preface on Hemingway if he did not know Hemingway thoroughly. [18, 26]
Translation plays an important role in increasing awareness and understanding among diverse cultures and nations. Literary translations in particular help these different cultures reach a compromise. The increasing interest in the literature of other languages has required a more studious regard for the problems of literary translation. A translator deals with a text which involves linguistic, pragmatic and cultural elements. Such factors often pose problems to target readers. More often than not, translators pay more attention to linguistic and cultural elements than to the pragmatic aspects of a source text. Blatant disregard for these pragmatic features should result in pragmatic problems in the target text.
Literary translation, at least in the English-speaking world, faces a difficulty that texts originally written in English do not: resistance by the public to reading literature in translation… In technical translation, for example, style is not a consideration so long as the informational content makes its way unaltered from SL to TL… In literary translation, the order of the cars – which is to say the style – can make the difference between a lively, highly readable translation and a stilted, rigid, and artificial rendering that strips the original of its artistic and aesthetic essence, even its very soul.
Literary translation is a type of translation which is distinguished from translation in general. A literary translation must reflect the imaginative, intellectual and intuitive writing of the author. In fact, literature is distinguished by its aesthetics. Little concern has been devoted to the aesthetics of literary translations because these translations are popularly perceived as unoriginal summarizes the characteristics of literary translations: [26,75]
- expressive
- connotative
The Pragmatic Approach
- symbolic
- focusing on both form and content
- subjective
- allowing multiple interpretation
- timeless and universal
- using special devices to ‘heighten’ communicative effect
- tendency to deviate from the language norms
Moreover, literary translations must reflect all the literary features of the
source text such as sound effects, morphophonemic selection of words, figures of speech …etc. [26, 75]
A writer’s style is known “from the words he chooses or the way he constructs his sentences”. According to Savory, literal translation of a literary work does not reproduce the effect of the original. Because literature allows multiple interpretation, there should be freedom in literary translations to consider a wide range of implicatures. Thus, rendering the equivalent effect of the original requires freedom to explore different interpretations. That approach is meant to achieve relevance in translation. Basically, translation consists of transferring the meaning of the source language into the target language. That process is done by changing the form of the first language to the form of the second language. Thus, it is meaning which is being transferred and must be held constant. But what type of meaning a translator should transfer! Generally, linguists distinguish different types of meaning. When it relates language to events, entities, etc., it is called referential / denotative meaning. When it relates language to the mental state of the speaker, it is called attitudinal / connotative / expressive meaning. If the extra-linguistic situation affects the interpretation of text, it is called contextual / functional / interpersonal / situational meaning. Larson adds organizational meaning to the list to refer to the grammatical structure of a text such as deictics, repetition, groupings, and information organization that form a coherent text. Any level in language has its own significance because it plays a role in the total meaning, e.g. phonetic, lexical, grammatical, semantic and pragmatic meanings. In semantics the word "mean" can be applied to words and sentences in the sense of ‘equivalent to’. In pragmatics it can be applied to speakers in the sense of "intend". This study is concerned with pragmatic meaning in literary translation. Pragmatic meaning is the utterance meaning or the speaker meaning as opposed to the sentence meaning. [25, 32]
Grice distinguishes those two types of meaning as non-natural meaning and natural meaning. The attention given to pragmatic facts and principles in the course of translation can enhance the understanding of the text and improve the quality of translation. A good translation is not simply concerned with transferring the propositional content of the source language text (SLT), but also with its other pragmatic features. The study focuses on such neglected aspects of translation as speech acts, presuppositions, implicatures, politeness and deictic expressions in literary translation. Those features will be explained below in a simple way.
In fact, translation is a complex entity, which involves a large number of variables other than reproduction of meaning. In this regard, in the process of translating a text the translator should know not only the languages involved, but also their cultures and rhetorical traditions. Being receiver and producer of text, the translator “has the double duty of perceiving the meaning potential of particular choices within the cultural and linguistic community of the source text and relaying the same potential, by suitable linguistic means, to a target readership”. Baker believes that “no approach, however sophisticated, can provide the answer to all the questions raised in the discipline” . She views the different approaches as “complementary rather than mutually exclusive”. Newmark argues that “a general theory cannot propose a single method (e.g. dynamic equivalence), but must be concerned with the full range of text-types and their corresponding translation criteria, as well as the major variables involved”. Thus, the study does not present a general theory of translation. Rather, it introduces a pragmatic approach to translation. [9, 5]
Different theories and models can be counted in the field of translation. Bell distinguishes between the theory and the model. He shows that a theory explains a phenomenon and is communicated to others in the form of a model. A model is “an attempt at a description rather than an explanation”. The term "approach" might be more appropriate. Vinay and Darblent recognize two types of translations:[17,59]
1- Direct translations where the linguistic features of the SLT are replaced by their equivalents in the TLT, and
2- Oblique translations where complex methods are used to render certain stylistic effects.
According to Jakobson there are different kinds of translation. He differentiates three ways of interpreting a verbal sign:
1- Intralingual (rewording): a verbal sign is interpreted to another within the same language.
2- Interlingual (translation proper): a verbal sign is interpreted to another in a different language.
3- Intersemiotic (transmutation): a verbal sign is interpreted to a nonverbal sign.
Nida distinguishes three theories of translation:
1-Philological
2-Linguistic
3-Sociolinguistic [17, 60]
Two centuries ago Tytler set up a series of do’s and don’ts – which act as general laws of translation that teach translators what they ought and ought not to do. Then, linguistics emerged with its descriptive type. According to Bell, most translation theorists except Nida, Catford and few theorists follow the prescriptive thinking of the past. The sociolinguistic theory differs from the linguistic theory in that it adds a communicative dimension and a functional perspective to translation. According to Nida, the nature of the message determines the types of translations. A translation depends on the degree of focus on the form or the content. Two types of translations are distinguished:
1- a formal equivalence translation in which the form and content of the original message is to be preserved, and
2- a dynamic equivalence translation which focuses on creating an equivalent effect in the TLT. [14, 66]
Nida and Taber direct the attention towards the receptor of the message not the form of the message. In other words, the relationship between the TL receptor and the message should be dynamic to be similar to the relationship between the original receptor and the message.
According to Larson, there are two types of translations: [19,74]
1- form-based or literal translations which transmit the form of the SLT, and
2- meaning-based or idiomatic translations which “communicate the meaning of the SL text in the natural forms of the receptor language”. This type of translation has been developed by Beekman and Callow. Then, Newmark presents a pair of terms:
1- a semantic translation in which the SLT semantic and syntactic structures are rendered in the TLT, and
2- a communicative translation which creates an equivalent effect in the receptor language.
It seems that Nida’s formal translation, Larson’s literal translation and Newmark’s semantic translation focus on the form of the text. Nevertheless, literal translation ignores context. Similarly, Nida’s dynamic translation, Larson’s idiomatic translation and Newmark’s communicative translation seek one goal; that is, finding an equivalent effect. This fact has been affirmed by Gutt. Gutt finds that the dynamic translation resembles the idiomatic translation. Both convey the message of the original text to the receptor audience and are equivalent to the original text in a dynamic way. [19, 74]
According to Neubert, four approaches of translation can be distinguished out of seven: [19, 86]
1- Linguistic
2- Communicative/functional
3-Psycholinguistic
4-Sociocultural
Abdel-Hafiz differentiates 3 approaches:
1- Linguistic
2- Pragmatic
3- Cultural
Christiane Nord adds two new terms: "documentary" vs. "instrumental" translations. Documentary translations preserve the original exoticizing flavor of the SLT. An instrumental translation conveys the SL message in a new communicative action in the TL. Nord’s difference between documentary and instrumental translations has already been utilized by House when she differentiated between "overt" and "covert" translations. Literary translation is seen as a type of documentary translation. [24, 85] By and large, types of translation are radically diverse but depend mainly on a central concept, that is, equivalence. Therefore, many translation theorists define translation in terms of equivalence relation; relation between the SLT and the TLT. The translator’s objective and the text type determine the type of equivalence used in the process of translation. Equivalence is a relationship of equality between the SLT and the TLT. In fact, the concept is encompassed by vagueness. Historically, it was perceived in terms of accuracy and fidelity. Vinay and Darblent deal with the methods of creating equivalent texts. Jakobson also identifies equivalence as “the cardinal problem of language and the pivotal concern of linguists”. As Hartman and Stork summarize the concept, "texts in different languages can be equivalent in different degrees (fully or partially), in respect of different levels of presentation (equivalent in respect of context, of semantics, of grammar, of lexis, etc.) and at different ranks (word-forword, phrase-for-phrase, sentence-for-sentence)". [25, 54]
With regard to equivalence, translation theorists range from proponents that define translation in terms of equivalence to opponents that reject equivalence.
According to Sager, pragmatic equivalence and functional equivalence are widely used in the recent time. Sager points out that pragmatic equivalence is used to modify the content (addition and reduction) while functional equivalence is used to preserve the purpose of the original; “a writer intention” and “a reader expectation”. [15, 49] Thus, both constitute a dynamic view of translation. It is worth pausing for a moment to wonder which type of equivalence should be given priority. Translation theorists answered this question differently. Vinay and Darblent believe that if there is no synonymy in the bilingual dictionary, the translator has to resort to what they called “situational equivalence”; creating a new situation in the target context. Then, Jakobson introduces the term “equivalence in difference”. It depends on his semiotic approach to translation; it “involves two equivalent messages in two different codes”. Leonardi notes that both and “recognize the limitations of a linguistic theory” because they licensed the use of non-linguistic methods such as loan-translation and neologisms. [15, 62]
Nida introduces two types of equivalence: formal and dynamic; the former focuses on the form and content of the message while the latter on producing equivalent effect. Then, Catford differentiates between formal correspondence and textual equivalence. He offers “departures from formal correspondence” because of the grammatical and lexical shifts that occur at the different levels and in the different categories. Widdowson presents three types of equivalence: structural, semantic, and pragmatic. The first accounts for the formal similarity between surface forms of sentences. The second relates different surface forms to a common deep structure. The third relates surface forms to their communicative function. Then, Newmark distinguishes a semantic equivalence from a communicative equivalence which concerns an equivalent effect on the TL reader. According to El Menoufy, it is useless to choose between semantic and communicative equivalence in translation because the translator first starts with the semantic (replacing in the TLT the invariant core of the SLT), then resorts to the communicative. According to Baker, equivalence is sought “for the sake of convenience”. A certain type of equivalence is given priority to other types in a certain situation. She comments, “the ultimate aim of a translator, in most cases, is to achieve a measure of equivalence at text level, rather than at word or phrase level”. She advocates textual equivalence. [15, 98]
Baker emphasizes that the job of the translator is to be concerned with “communicating the overall meaning of a stretch of language”. Baker's view does not mean that equivalence at word level should not be sought in some contexts. But at the morpheme level there is no equivalence. The more a translator seeks equivalence at a higher level the more successful s/he is. One has to move from lower levels (micro levels) to higher levels (macro levels). That has been approved by Halliday and termed “a principle of hierarchy of values”. On the contrary, there is a recent trend that denies equivalence. It defines translation not in terms of equivalence, but in terms of difference. While equivalence works to reduce linguistic and cultural differences, this trend elevates the notion of difference between the original and the translation.

2.