Didactics of Translation: Text in Context

3.2.2.4.1 Parallel texts

According to Neubert (1981: 143), the biggest challenge for translation scholars and practitioners is “how to achieve a target [text] which can serve as an adequate replica of the source text” or, to quote Chesterman, “how to avoid the problem of translated texts that betray themselves as translations” (Chesterman 1989: 141). To overcome this challenge, Neubert suggests resorting to the insights of textlinguistics. One of these main insights is the recognition that
the source text is textually different. It is a different text. It is couched in a different world of discourse because it is syntactically, lexically and stylistically rooted in the communicative matrix of the source language community: it is structured and functionally efficient with regard to the communicative needs in typical communication situations. Its linguistic layout corresponds to the source speaker or reader’s pattern of expectation.
In the light of this, translating texts, according to Neubert, is similar to a transplant operation since a ST belonging to a particular body of texts is transplanted, (i.e. translated), into a different body of texts leading to the possibility of rejection because of incompatibility. Target readers in general are not unaware of this incompatibility phenomenon and the uneasy feeling that it generates. This vague feeling may be attributed to the flow of information being hampered. Concerning this particular point,
Baker (1992: 112) says that
a text has features of organization which distinguish it from non-text, that is a random collection of sentences and paragraphs. These features are language and culture-specific just like collocational and grammatical patterning. Each linguistic community has preferred ways of organizing its various types of discourse. This is why target readers can often identify what appears to be a lexically and grammatically “normal” text as a translation, or as “foreign”.

Consequently, Baker adds that

the translator will need to adjust certain features of source-text organization in line with preferred ways of organizing discourse in the target language… The ultimate aim of a translator in most cases is to achieve a measure of equivalence at text level rather than at word level or phrase level.
For Neubert, following textlinguistic insights such as those by Van Dijk (1977) and (1981), the incompatibility feeling can be accounted for by directing attention to “those supra-sentential macro-structures that are responsible for textness” in a particular language (Neubert 1981: 149-150).
Translating, therefore, for Neubert consists of
carrying out a continual decision process which proceeds as a sequence or rather sequences of options along segments of texts which can be identified as so-called units of translation. These all-important units stand in a very characteristic functional relationship to the textual superstructure. They are derived from it. Solving the problems of bilingual mediation, then, comes down to isolating just those subtextual units which can serve as starting blocks for a successful carry-over of discrete or relatively discrete items of information. Those units are certainly larger than words or phrases. They may coincide with sentences but very often they transcend sentence boundaries. It is exactly at this point where the macrostructures discussed earlier fall into place in the process of translating or interpreting. Failure to identify macro-structures as units of translation produces an inadequate target text. (Ibid)
In the same vein, Neubert points to how “the lack of original impact of a target text compared to its original turns out to be the incompatibility of a translation in relation to the textual naturalness of all real possible sets of texts in the target language. (Ibid: 144). By placing the incompatibility of a translation in its relation with “the textual naturalness of all real and possible sets of texts in the target language”, Neubert brings in the concept of intertextuality. Like Hatim and Mason who define intertextuality in terms of how “texts depend on one another, this being a precondition for textual intelligibility” (Hakim & Mason 1990: 241), Neubert refers in general terms to the relatedness of texts to one another within the same language and across languages as in translation. As alternative terms to ‘intertextuality’, Neubert uses the concept of background texts and parallel texts:
Background texts stand in paradigmatic relation to a particular (source) text… It is produced and understood in terms of this larger paradigm of discourse. (Neubert 1981: 146)

Thus, the source text is thought of as a text that is both embedded in and differentiated from background texts. Similarly, the target text is also thought of as a text that is related by target language receivers to the set of target language background texts. But here the relation is made by reference to a particular class of texts, called parallel texts by Neubert.

These refer to
the instance of a type of discourse that readers and listeners of the target language are used to expect under identical or similar communicative conditions and form that group of background texts with which translations strive in vain to compete. (Ibid: 147)
It is when translating into the foreign language (active translation) rather than into the mother-tongue (passive translation) that the importance of the concepts of “background texts” and “parallel texts” becomes clear (Ibid). In active translation, the translator has to deal with target language textual conventions much more consciously, taking into consideration the background and parallel texts of the target language. In passive translation, however, there is, generally, a less conscious effort by translators given their supposedly general textual competence in the mother tongue. The exception here concerns certain fields of technical or official discourse in which translators’ textual competence may not be adequate.
To close this first section on the application of textlinguistics in the field of translation as viewed by Neubert, it would be worthwhile commenting on the author’s position concerning the translation process. According to Neubert, the translation process should be regarded as an intertextual operation:
the treatment of the translation process and its results as intertextual strategy can serve to improve language mediation itself and above all, to make the teaching and interpreting more effective (Ibid: 149).
More importantly, he even suggests that translatability can be equated with intertextuality:
From the point of view of textlinguistics, the key notion of translatability is in fact synonymous with intertextuality… Training in translation and interpreting, then, is training in awareness of intertextuality (Ibid: 154).
The present study adopts the semiotic concept of intertextuality, as discussed by Neubert here and by Hatim and Mason (1990), especially when dealing with genre as a macro-sign.

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