Didactics of Translation: Text in Context

The notion of text type and the design of a translation teaching curriculum

The first important question Hatim and Mason raise with regard to curriculum design relates to the basis on which “the selection, the grading, and presentation of materials for the training of translators could be made more effective” (Ibid: 179). They suggest that one way to do this is to adopt a textlinguistic approach, and more specifically, the notion of text type. This proposal is derived from their view that language use in general is seen in terms of rhetorical purposes. That is, any communicative activity is bound to involve language users in one of the following possible aims: to argue, to present information or to instruct. These goals are said to produce a set of text types which can be characterized as being predominantly argumentative, expository or instructive. Moreover, these text types are said to vary in the degree of their “evaluativeness” along a continuum ranging from “extremely detached and non-evaluative” (e.g. expository texts), to those which are “extremely involved and highly evaluative” (e.g. argumentative texts). In fact, even within a particular text type, the “arrangement of text forms reflects a gradation from least to most

evaluative” (Hatim1997 b: 180). Hatim & Mason define the notion of text evaluativeness as:

a textual orientation which is established and maintained by means of a variety of linguistic devices that singly or collectively signal a move from what has been referred to as a situation monitoring towards situation managing. (Hatim & Mason 1997: 182)
Having opted for the notion of text type as the major criterion for classifying and grading texts, Hatim and Mason attempt to relate this notion to the actual process of translation and the translator at work (Ibid: 181). The rationale for this procedure has to do with the relationship said to exist between text type and level of difficulty. Thus, the translation of an expository text type is less demanding than the translation of an argumentative text type. These different demands are ascribed to the different aspects of text constitution within each one of these types, i.e. differences in text structure and texture. The characteristics of expository and argumentative texts are represented by Hatim and Mason (1997: 181) (and adapted here) as follows:
Figure 3: The characteristics of expository and argumentative texts

Because of these different aspects of text constitution, the translator has to adopt a translation approach which “tends towards the literal” for the expository text type and another which “allows greater latitude” for the argumentative text type (Ibid).

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