Didactics of Translation: Text in Context

APPENDIX E LECTURE ON GENRE

In addition to the contextual category of register for establishing the register membership of a text, another category is needed to explain deeper similarities between texts. This is the category of genre, which according to House (1997) is superordinate to register.

The question now is: how do we know that some texts share certain similarities and thus belong to a particular genre? In other words, what characteristics or features make them similar? The answer is that similar texts will manifest a particular structure pointing to a particular genre; i.e. they will manifest the presence of some obligatory elements which occur in a highly predictable sequence and which control the participants’ interactions (Haddad 1995: 34-36).
A particular genre is then marked by a particular structure. It is furthermore characterized by the following features:

1. 
   stability of register, especially in highly conventionalized genres such as birth, death, marriage announcements and wedding invitations; i.e. each of these genres has its own relatively stable types of utterances (Bakhtin 1986).
   
2. 
   surface level features; i.e. certain phonological characteristics and certain graphic representations
   

Genre and Register:
The relationship between genre and register can be stated as follows: generic choices are realized by register choices which in turn are realized by linguistic choices. For example, a children’s story is realized by certain register choices concerning field, tenor and mode, and these materialize through appropriate language forms.
Some genres are highly conventionalized and allow little or no variations in their register. These genres are stable. Some other genres allow a certain variation in their registers. For example, the genre of greeting can move from the familiar to the formal. The recipe also, as a genre, can have a variety of potential realizations. This variety within a

given genre is the outcome of the writer’s / speaker’s relationship to the text’s subject matter and to the intended reader / listener.

Genre and Areas of Human Activity:
According to Bakhtin (1986), there are diverse areas of human activity which call for the use of language. As a result, the forms and nature of this language will mirror through vocabulary, grammar and structure the specific situations and goals of any given area.
More importantly, according to Bakhtin (Ibid), each of these areas of human activity “develops its own relatively stable types” of language forms or utterances. These language forms or utterances he refers to as SPEECH GENRES.
In fact, a given sphere of activity may include a number of speech genres which go on expanding and differentiating as the sphere of activity evolves (Ibid).
Speech Genres in Everyday life:
For Bakhtin (1986), language users communicate through definite genres which, as it has been noted, are marked by their relatively stable linguistic forms. In other words, in the act of communicating, a speaker’s intended meaning is moulded into a particular speech genre which could be the genre of greeting, leave-taking, recipes, wedding invitations, academic abstracts, death announcements, story-telling… These speech genres are unconsciously handed down to us by our parents and elders through everyday verbal exchange since early childhood, that is, even before the period of schooling. It is therefore not surprising that speakers use them so successfully without being even aware of them.
The Psychological Reality of Genres: do genres have a real existence?
Genres do have a psychological reality; i.e. language users are aware of them, usually at an unconscious level, and make use of them. For Bex (1996: 169): “Genres have a real existence because they serve to orient readers as to what type of text they are dealing with”. He further adds that “such orientation can never take place in a vacuum; i.e. in the act of reading, readers make predictions as to what type of text they are dealing with, primarily because they are familiar with previous texts which manifest similar selections of particular linguistic features”.

Definition of Genre:

According to Kress (1985:19) genres are: “conventionalized forms of texts which reflect the functions and goals involved in particular social occasions as well as the purposes of the participants in them.”
Genre and Culture:
Genres link texts to culture in that they “refer to the staged purposeful social processes through which a culture is realized” (Martin and Rotherby (1986: 263).
The Relevance of Genre to Translation:
Genre has a major role to play in translation. For Hatim (2001: 141), “genre can be seen as a macro-sign which provides translators with a framework with which appropriateness is judged and the various syntactic, semantic, pragmatic and semiotic structures are handled”. He further adds that “so-called cultural gaps, and even grammatical or lexical errors encountered in translation, may be textual in essence and can therefore be explained more adequately in terms of a failure to appreciate the conventions governing such macro-structures as genres”. (Ibid: 212)
The Translation of Genre: Overt and Covert Translation
The notion of equivalence is related to the preservation of meaning across two different languages. There are three aspects of that meaning that are particularly important for translation: a semantic aspect, a pragmatic aspect and a textual aspect.
However, the notion of equivalence as the preservation of meaning across two different languages needs to be further refined in relation to two types of translation: overt translation and covert translation.
According to House (1997), translation has a double-binding relationship both to its source and to the communicative conditions of the receiving linguaculture. Therefore, House distinguishes two types of translation: an overt translation and a covert translation. An overt translation is source-text focused and a covert translation is target-text focused. Thus, instead of the one-sided concern with the reception of translation in the target culture, House takes account of both: the original and the target text.
In overt translation, the purpose of the translation is to enable its readers (TL readers) to have access to the function of the original in its original linguacultural setting through another language; i.e. in this type of translation, STs are merely transplanted into a new environment with no considerations for the readers’ norms of expectations.

The source texts that require an overt translation, according to House (1997), are those which have “an established worth or status in the source language community”. She divides these texts into two groups:

1. 
   Historically-linked source texts which are associated with a particular social occasion: a sermon, a political speech, a wedding invitation…
   
2. 
   Timeless source texts: i.e. works of art and aesthetic creation.
   

Following this classification of the source texts requiring an overt translation, House urges translators not to look for approximate equivalents for the historically linked source texts because, she argues, these texts « have the status of a document of a historical event in the source culture »; instead, she suggests keeping these culture-specific items as they are in the TT and providing explanatory notes to the TT readers.
In a covert translation, the translator takes into consideration the differences between the ST culture and the TT culture and thus uses a cultural filter that will cater for the expectations of the TT readers by introducing the necessary shifts and changes to the TT. Those texts which, according to House (Ibid), require a covert translation are: scientific texts, economic texts, tourist information booklets and journalistic texts.
The decision to opt for either an overt or a covert type of translation is, however, not always straightforward, according to House. This decision is sometimes subjective depending on the way a given text is viewed by the translator; i.e. is the source text conceived of as the product of a specific culture, or as a product which is non-culture specific? If it is the first case, an overt translation will be necessary; if it is the second case, a covert translation is required. Fairy-tales and the Bible are cited by House as texts which may undergo either the first or second type of translation.
Beyond this subjectivity element in the translation decision, House draws attention to the fact that one or the other way of translating may also be dictated by the goal of the translation.
Summary:
Culture is realized through genres because genres reflect the functions and goals involved in particular social occasions as well as the purposes of the participants in them.
Since different languages manifest different cultures through their genres, it becomes clear that translation will have to deal with the conventions governing the SL and TL genres.

Given the fact that the main function of translation is to preserve meaning across two different languages through the concept of equivalence and in view of the fact that translation could be considered as a double-binding operation, source-text focused or target-text focused, the notion of equivalence has to be refined so as to accommodate this view of translation. Thus, a source-text focused translation which is concerned with the particular features of the ST genres (especially, historically-linked source texts and timeless source texts) will necessitate an overt type of translation, giving the TT reader access to the function of the original in its original linguacultural setting; i.e. without applying a cultural filter.

At the end of the lecture, the students were given some exercises in which they had to translate some texts either overtly or covertly. These exercises were carried out and corrected in class and were followed by very interesting discussions during which they asked some very pertinent questions. Below are two sample exercise texts for which the students had to apply either an overt or a covert translation.