Didactics of Translation: Text in Context

Componential analysis in relation to the psycholinguistics and pragmatics of translation.

Returning to the question raised in section 4. 6. 1. 1 above, namely, what translators should do in case “smooth reading and reverbalization are blocked”, Kussmaul maintains that combining the psycholinguistic model of comprehension and linguistic pragmatics with componential analysis is a highly productive procedure. In other words, after determining the function of a text, the resultant functional decisions should inform the translator about how to translate the meaning of words. According to Kussmaul,
there can be a synthesis of these seemingly opposing categories if we do not restrict ourselves to one model of linguistic analysis. Componential

analysis should be complemented by psycholinguistic approaches and by linguistic pragmatics. (Ibid: 87)

Kussmaul advocates the use of componential analysis, which involves decomposing the meaning of a word into its semantic features. This is because of the “strong influence of structural semantics on translation studies” and because “componential analysis is extremely valuable in providing a firm methodological basis for the solution of meaning problems” (p. 87). Structural semantics advocates that reality is not structured similarly in different language systems. Hence, the semantic features of the meaning of words in two different languages may not always completely coincide. That is, there may be a particular language for which the corresponding features in another language are lacking, leading to an overlapping situation. Given the importance of componential analysis in translation problem-solving, Kussmaul urges translation teachers to help students learn how “to unpack the meaning of words” as this would open their eyes to the fact that there cannot be always “equivalence at word level between two languages” (p. 93).
Thus, when faced with the translation of problematic words (i.e. words which are not known at all and whose meaning cannot be grasped from the context, or words which are known but unclear within a given context, or words which are used in an idiosyncratic way…), translators are advised by Kussmaul to pursue the following procedure:

1. 
   They should decompose the word into its semantic features.
   
2. 
   They should ask themselves: what is the function of the passage at hand and what are the relevant features of this word with respect to this function?
   
3. 
   They should guard against trying to preserve all the features of the meaning of a SL word in their translation if it is not necessary to do so. Instead, they should use paraphrasing.
   

Regarding the issue of paraphrase, Kussmaul maintains:
Now, for translators, and above all for students training to be translators, and even for some teachers of translation, there seems to exist an inviolable maxim which goes: try to preserve as many aspects / features, components of the meaning of a word as you possibly can. Translators seem to follow this maxim especially when they have to look up a word in a dictionary, and for the definition found in a monolingual dictionary they then try to find an optimally precise equivalent in the target language. Students, owing to their deficiencies in the foreign language very often find the above-mentioned maxim very attractive. (Ibid: 88)

He also suggests that in place of the above-mentioned maxim, a new maxim, which he calls “the maxim of the sufficient degree of precision”, could be adopted. This new maxim would incite translators to bring to the surface just those features of a word which are required in a particular context.

2.