Didactics of Translation: Text in Context

Intertextuality

Before addressing the concept of intertextuality, one has first to look at the concept of intertext. According to Haddad (1995: 92), an intertext is always associated with what has been called the “already read”; i.e. one or a number of texts which the language user (as a text producer or receiver) carries in the back of his mind and which he has to consult in order to make sense of the text at hand. In other words, as Haddad explains,
through very carefully and well placed clues, the text producer obliges the text receiver to reread the text in order to discover the unexpected dimensions of new and wide meanings which are not found in the surface meaning of the text and which arrive to the current text from echoes outside that text (Ibid: 102).
Thus, the right interpretation and the coherence of a message hinge upon the effort exerted by the text receiver to link the intertextual traces back to their original intertexts. Coherence is, in this sense, regarded by Haddad, quoting Fairclough (1992), not
as a property of text but rather as a property that is imposed on text by its interpreters… [It] depends on those assumptions which the interpreter brings along with him to the process of interpretation (Ibid: 106)
As a consequence, there could be no absolute coherent reading:
Since the text is dealt with by different interpreters including the producer himself, there could be a different coherent reading of one and the same text. (Ibid).

As for intertextuality, it is considered by Haddad to be

an operation of the mind that is obligatory for any textual decoding since the text reading is considered to be incomplete if the text receiver does not consult the related intertexts. (Ibid: 96)
This definition raises the issue of interdependence of texts, to which Hatim & Mason (1990: 241) referred and which they characterized as “a precondition for the intelligibility of texts”.
Hatim and Mason (1990: 132) suggest the elaboration of a “unified framework for analyzing intertextual reference”. This framework would consist first of a hierarchy starting with the word, phrase, clause and clause sequence, discourse and genre. Secondly, this framework would consist of a typology of intertextual signs.
Having defined the concepts of intertext and intertextuality, there is one important question concerning the function of intertextual elements within a given text. In connection with this issue, it has been argued that the inclusion of intertextual items in a given text is not unmotivated since a text producer may resort to the implementation of intertextual elements so as to attain certain goals which could be unlike those of the original:
A text is not merely an amalgamation of ‘bits and pieces’ culled from other texts. Nor should intertextuality be understood as the mere inclusion of the occasional reference to another text. Rather, citations, references, etc. will be brought into a text for some reason. The motivated nature of this intertextual relationship may be explained in terms of such matters as text function or overall communicative purpose. (Hatim & Mason 1990: 128)
In order to shed further light on this point of motivation, two types of intertextuality have first to be distinguished, namely, actual (horizontal) intertextuality and virtual (vertical) intertextuality (Haddad 1995: 109).
With regard to actual intertextuality, “reference is made to a specific text requiring the text receiver’s knowledge of that specific original text” (Ibid: 110). This type covers quotations, allusions, irony and plagiarism. Concerning virtual intertextuality, “the reference made is so general that it brings the sense of a whole genre, discourse or text type” (Ibid).
To give just an example of the most easily recognized case within actual intertextuality, one may refer to the use of quotations. The main functions of quotations are: the appeal to the authority function, the erudite function, in which the text writer cites the key ideas of the intertext and the ornamental function, in which the text writer exhibits his knowledge (Ibid: 113).

As far as virtual intertextuality (or intertextuality via genre, discourse and text type) is concerned, some text producers use these intertextual elements to achieve certain goals which are different from those found in the original texts. Thus, as Haddad argues,

… in order to achieve a subtle unchallengeable argument, and in order to convey an attitude, the language user resorts to a kind of intertextual generic hijacking. In other words, he hijacks some elements from one genre and infiltrates them in another completely different genre. Such a kind of virtual intertextuality can take place at the levels of phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, lexicon and/or structure and can be located at the rank of a word, a phrase, a sentence or a whole text. The hijacked intertextual signals invoke in the receiver’s mind, in addition to the relevant genre, the original social occasion where the relevant genre occurs, the original participants who play roles in the original social occasion, the goals of those original participants, the original meanings associated with the original genre (Ibid: 122).
She also adds that
the language user does more than hijack a genre; he artificially recreates a genre in order to colour the text with intelligently hidden attitudes of his own without directly imposing himself on the text. Presupposing counter strategies on the part of the text receiver before the debate takes place, he develops a more subtle, more effective and more convincing argument… The language user is there with conscious manipulative intentions, conveying information without really putting it in words and loading the text with extra meanings. More often than not, his aim is to recruit the maximal number of text receivers to share with him the same attitude (Ibid: 150).
Having examined the concepts of intertext and intertextuality, in addition to the types of intertextuality and their functions, it is appropriate now to embark on a brief discussion of how intertextual signals have been dealt with when translating. According to Hatim and Mason, there are two stages here: a recognition stage and a translation stage.
Concerning the recognition stage,
translators encounter first of all what we here term intertextual signals. These are elements of text which trigger the process of intertextual search, setting in motion the act of semiotic processing… Having identified an intertextual signal, translators embark on the more crucial exercise of charting the various routes through which a given signal links up with its pre-text. (Hatim & Mason 1990: 13)
They also add that

in tracing an intertextual signal to its pre-text, the semiotic area being traversed is what we have called the intertextual space. It is here that the text users assess the semiotic status of the intertextual reference (Ibid).

During the translation stage, the translator, according to Hatim and Mason, has to examine the different aspects of the intertextual sign and then decide on what aspects of that sign to maintain in the target language and what aspects to ignore. Reaching this decision, however, will depend on answering three crucial questions and setting up a hierarchy of preferences. The questions concern the “informational status of a given reference in the communicative translation (features of field, mode, tenor, time, place, etc.), the intentional status, and the semiotic status (the interaction of the intertextual sign with other signs)” (Ibid: 134).
As far as the hierarchy of preferences is concerned, they argue that the semiotic status comes first; the latter “by definition involves intentionality” since intention can be perceived only within overall interaction. The last item on the hierarchy is the informational status. Defending this hierarchical order, Hatim and Mason maintain that
the essential point of an intertextual reference is to analyze it in terms of the contribution it makes to its host text. In travelling from source to host text, the intertextual sign undergoes substantial modification of its code of signification (Ibid: 137).
They also add that
no intertextual reference can be transferred into another language on the strength of its informational purport alone. In fact, intentionality normally outranks information content as it is the basis of the general semiotic description of a given reference. After all, what actually gets transferred is a sign that has brought with it across semiotic boundaries its entire discursive history, including new sign values which it has gathered on the way.
Haddad (1995: 264) endorses Hatim and Mason’s approach to the translation of intertextual signs, in which as it has been seen above, priority is given to the semiotic status:
I have arrived at the conclusion that the pragma-semiotic model is the best to address translation problems in general and the problems encountered since it studies text in context taking into consideration the three dimensions (register, pragmatics and semiotics) and since it hence advocates the kind of translation which deals with signs and which endeavours to preserve their pragmatic as well as semiotic aspects.

She thus rejects all the other translation approaches such as the literal vs. free approach, the formal vs. dynamic equivalence approach, the register approach and the pragmatic approach. The literal vs. free and the formal vs. dynamic approaches are rejected because they deal with text out of context. The register approach alone is not adopted because it focuses on the communicative dimension of context (field, tenor and mode) and disregards the other contextual dimensions, namely, pragmatics and semiotics. Finally, the pragmatic approach alone is ruled out because it does not take into account the communicative and semiotic dimensions of context.

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