Didactics of Translation: Text in Context

Linguistics, Culture and Beyond: Munday (2001)

In his book, Introducing Translation Studies, Munday gives a brief survey of many of the most important translation studies. He proceeds following a chronological order from pre-twentieth century theory to the systematic linguistic-oriented theories.
Munday devotes one chapter on work before the 20^th century, and then deals systematically with a number of central topics, illustrated by key writers: equivalence, shifts, functional theories, discourse and register, culture and gender, translator’s visibility and philosophical theories.

1. 
   Pre-twentieth century theory:
   

For Munday, this period focuses on the issue of the “literal” vs. “free” translation dichotomy:
The distinction between “word-for-word” (i.e. literal) and sense-for-sense (i.e. free) translation goes back to Cicero (first century BCE) and St. Jerome (late fourth century CE) and forms the basis of key writings on translation in centuries nearer to our own. Up until the second half of the twentieth century, translation theory seemed locked in a “sterile” debate over the “triad” of literal, free and faithful (Munday 2001: 19)
Citing Susan Bassnett (1980; revised edition 1991: 42), Munday makes the point that this recurring theme of literal vs. free emerges from time to time in history with “variable degrees of emphasis in accordance with differing concepts of language and communication”. The author further suggests that from the late 18^th century to the 1960s, translation was also used as a tool of foreign language learning in many schools. It was eventually called the grammar-translation-method and concentrated on, “the rote study of the grammatical rules and structures of the foreign language.” According to Munday,

These rules were both practised and tested by the translation of a series of usually unconnected and artificially constructed sentences, exemplifying the structures being studied. This approach persists even nowadays in certain countries and contexts. (Munday 2001: 8)

2. 
   Linguistic-oriented theories:
   

The central topics of the linguistic-oriented theories enumerated by Munday are given below in chronological order:

1. 
   1950s-1960s: Translatability
   

x Equivalence
x Shifts

2. 
   1970s-1980s: Functional theories
   
3. 
   1990s: Discourse and register
   

1. 
   1950s-1960s: Translatability
   

As mentioned in section 2. 4. 2. B above, this period is marked by the issue of translatability. Thus, Nida embraces the view that solutions need to be ethnological, whereas Jakobson introduces a semiotic reflection on the subject. But for Munday, this period marks, above anything else, a phase during which theoreticians start “to attempt some systematic analysis of translation” (Munday: 35)

x Equivalence:

For Munday, in addition to the issue of translatability, the concept of
equivalence is also “a constant theme of translation studies” in this period as evidenced by Nida’s (1964) and Nida & Taber’s (1969) works, where the triad “literal”, “free” and “faithful” are substituted by the important concepts of formal equivalence and dynamic equivalence. In fact Nida’s dynamic equivalence concept, according to Munday, has introduced a receptor-based direction in translation studies which eventually influenced translation theorists such as Newmark and German translation theorists such as W. Koller, Wolfgang Wilss, Otto Kade, Albert Neubert and Katharina Reiss. It would be worthwhile here to consider briefly the works of P. Newmark and W. Koller.
Concerning Newmark’s work (1981), Munday says that although he is influenced by Nida, he does not adhere to his principle of equivalent effect since this effect is “inoperant if the text is out of TL space and time” (Newmark 1981: 69). Newmark proposes instead a new dichotomy, semantic translation vs. communicative translation, to replace formal and dynamic translation respectively. Communicative translation, according to Newmark,
attempts to produce on its readers an effect as close as possible to that obtained on the readers of the original.
As for semantic translation, it
attempts to render as closely as the semantic and syntactic structures of the second language allow, the exact contextual meaning of the original. (Newmark 1981: 39)
In short, Newmark argues against Nida’s definition of dynamic translation, that is producing the same effect on the TT reader, and uses instead the phrases as close as possible and as closely as. Munday, however, does not elaborate on the other features which distinguish the communicative from the semantic translation. Thus, whereas communicative translation is directed to the second reader in such a way as to make it easy for him/her to understand, the semantic translation remains “within the original culture” and does not remove any cultural obstacles for the second reader. Moreover, while communicative translation is likely to be more readable and simpler and more general, semantic translation tends to be more complex, less readable (awkward) and much more specific (Newmark 1981 in Munday 2000: 45).
For Newmark nearly all texts necessitate a communicative and not a semantic translation. Such texts cover “most non-literary writing,

journalism, information articles and books, textbooks, reports, scientific and technological writing, non-personal correspondence, propaganda, publicity, standardized writing and popular fiction” (Newmark 1977 in Chesterman 1989: 125). Texts which require a semantic translation, on the other hand, encompass literary and religious text varieties where the expression or the peculiarities of the text form are significant (Ibid).

As for W. Koller (1979 b), Munday draws attention to the important distinction between the concepts of correspondence and equivalence (4), then he tackles the five different types of equivalence proposed by Koller. According to the latter, this equivalence typology can be helpful for translators. Regarding this point, he states:
With every text as a whole, and also with every segment of text, the translator… must set up a hierarchy of values to be preserved in translation; from this he can derive a hierarchy of equivalence requirements for the text or segment in question. This in turn must be preceded by a translationally relevant text analysis. (Koller 1979b/89: 104)

• 
  Shifts:
  

This period, according to Munday, is also characterized by an effort to categorize the translation process; the suggestion of various taxonomies. One of the linguists who embarked on this task is Catford (1965) for whom shifts refer to the changes that occur at several linguistic levels and categories while translating (Catford 1965 in Chesterman 1989: 71). Catford provides a detailed account of lexical and grammatical shifts in translation (5).

2. 
   1970s - 1980s: Functional theories
   

According to Munday, this period marks the start of “a move away from the static linguistic typologies of translation shifts and the emergence and flourishing in Germany of a functionalist and communicative approach to the analysis of translation” (Munday 2001: 73). Translation is now considered as an act of intercultural communication.
Among the pioneers of this new move are Katharina Reiss (1977) in her important work on text types and language function, Holz-Mänttäri’s translation action model (1984), J. Vermeer’s Skopos theory (1989) and Christine Nord’s (work on text analysis 1988). Reiss’s model draws a link between language function, text type, genre and translation strategy. It is later on merged with Vermeer’s Skopos theory. Nord, for her part, incorporates detailed text-analysis into her function-oriented model.
Concluding his discussion of the functional approaches in translation, Munday states that although these approaches may assist the translator,

they fall short of giving a full account of the link between culture and language (Munday 2001 : 86).

3. 
   1990s: Discourse and register
   

According to Munday (Ibid: 89), discourse analysis which emerged in the 1970s, was first used in applied linguistics long before it came to be used in translation. Very important works in translation in the 1990s, such as those by Hatim and Mason (1990), (1997), Mona Baker (1992) and Juliane House (1997) were to a great extent inspired by Halliday’s systemic functional grammar insights. Hatim and Mason, however, broke fresh ground when, building on these insights, they considered the pragmatic and semiotic dimensions of translation.
In a way, discourse analysis is similar to the translation text analysis line of research initiated by Christian Nord (1988) in that both are concerned with describing language beyond the sentence level. However, Munday draws an important distinction between the two:
While text analysis normally concentrates on describing the way in which texts are organized, discourse analysis looks at the way language communicates meaning and social and power relations. (Munday 2001: 89)
For Halliday, meaning, which is the central concern of translation in general, should be considered by looking at the speaker’s or writer’s linguistic choices in their relation with a broad socio-cultural context, in view of the fact that there is a strong link between the two.
To conclude, discourse analysis models “serve as a useful way of tackling the linguistic structure and meaning of a text” (Ibid: 101).
CHAPTER III