April 28th text register in translation and text, genre and discourse shifts in translation

Units 10 and 11 are connected. They both relate to text from two perspectives, register and culture. Socio-linguistic varieties: language changes if the context/situation change. Translation must take into account all variations. G.B. Shaw Pygmalion: The flower girl: I am a good girl, I am. The flower girl: Aint no call to meddle with me, he aint.

The Flower Girl is a CocKney user, her variation is a dialect, it has geographic origins. Variations in the use of language are called registers. One person may use different registers.
Use-related varieties have to do with ones occupation and the situation in which language is used. So we have USE or USER dimensions.

Field, mode and tenor

These variables are important to remember: FIELD = for ex. legal, journalistic, scientific, literary etc. MODE = written or spoken language. TENOR = level of formality (style) which is the crucial aspect. Levels of formality: casual, informal, formal, frozen. Translate the following: CASUAL Coming down the pub? INFORMAL What about going to the pub? FORMAL You are invited to accompany me to the pub. FROZEN/FIXED PLEASE ORDER PUB LUNCHES AT THE FOOD COUNTER. Legal or scientific language for instance, can be expressed in different ways depending on levels of formality

To sum up schematically:
LEVELS OF FORMALITY (TENOR) FROZEN LAWYERS DOCTORS EFL TEACHERS THE THREE O N THE LEFT ARE FIELDS (REGISTER)

QUEENS BENCH DIVISION ENTRANCE I put it to you mlud

BLOOD BANK CAE PRACTICE CLOSED ON BANK MATERIALS ARE HOLIDAYS AVAILABLE AT CLA Scalpel! Stop writing now and put your pens on your desk. Say it again, Anne.

FORMAL

INFORMAL

Did you do it?

This wont hurt

CASUAL

His words are a These bloody You advanced? total basket case. radiographers are Fat chance! useless

How many registers do you usually use? List possible situations which make your use(s) of language different. Also within a single genre or text we can identify different uses of language. Exercise: Read pp. 78-79 in 10 mins. The situational setting is the same in all texts. Topic: Maastricht Treaty by the EU. Can you state that here we have ONE register? Try to highlight possible differences in terms of: - what is being communicated, by whom, to whom; - what is intended to be achieved; - what kind/genre of other texts you are reminded of while reading each of these texts.

Lets get back to Pygmalion

The cinematic version of P is My Fair Lady, starring Audrey Hepburn as Eliza Dolittle (the Cockney flower girl). The story revolves around a bet made by the male protagonist who wants to change Eliza into an educated and refined person. Translating social varieties and dialects is always challenging.

In English, beyond regional (geographic) varieties we have very marked social varieties. The British need one or max. two sentences to decide if their interlocutors belong to the upper class, middle class or the many other classes in between. Eliza Dolittle is a working class Londoner (two connotations, social and geographic). Her Cockney was rendered into Italian through a strange mixture of South Italian dialects and accents, without any precise belonging. The purpose was to highlight Elizas bad use of language and the fact that Prof. Higgins wanted her to speak a good language (upper class accent).

However, social class Englishes are English. A mixture of Neapolitan, Apulian and Sicilian are not Italian. So? Whats the problem with dubbing and meaning? Eliza, at the beginning, says to her prof. that she wont pay him much money because she already knows English. She only needs phonetic help. Thats why we have the famous sentence used all over the film to train her right pronunciation: THE RAIN IN SPAIN STAYS MAINLY IN THE PLAIN. This makes sense in English where she has to improve just her accent, but in Italian? Its not a question of accent only, but of dialect too. How is it possible to learn a good Italian by repeating over and over again the sentence: la rana in Spagna gracida in campagna?

Moreover
There are some songs sung by Eliza which have been dubbed into Italian. The problem is that this Italian is perfect also at the beginning of the film when she cant speak properly. Another problem relates coherence. During a horse-race, Eliza answers the question Will it rain do you think? by using the famous sentence the rain in Spain pronounced in a perfect way. Obviously, in the Italian version this would make no sense, theres no connection between Pensate che piover? and la rana so this part has been deleted. The problem is that the scene goes on with other similar tongue-twisters uttered by Eliza and the result is hilarious in English, while in Italian we dont understand why people around her laugh.

30 April

Discourse in translation and intertextuality

Discourse is the way in which language is used socially to convey broad historical/cultural/political (etc.) meanings. It is language identified by the social conditions of its use, by who is using it and under what conditions. Language can never be 'neutral' because it bridges our personal and social worlds."

Unit 10 = context of situation Unit 11 = context of culture/discourse Texts are means to express and convey sociocultural meanings. In this area the concept of intertextuality is central. I. is the mechanism through which textual elements convey meaning by virtue of their dependence on other texts.

Intertextual references can be horizontal and vertical (Mikhail Bakhtin) H. I. is the concrete, real reference or quotation from other texts. V. I. is not a real quotation but allusion. Allusion means an echo effect, when we read / listen to something and we think of other texts (biblical style, Shakesperean tone etc.) NO REAL QUOTATION SOMETHING IN THE TEXT REMINDS US OF SOMETHING ELSE (RECALLS)

For example, film adaptations, that is retellings of a famous stories taking only some aspects and not the real words, are examples of V. I. All the contemporary retellings of Shakespeares plays through films - such as 10 Things I Hate About You, loosely based on Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew and She's the Man, based on his play Twelfth Night. The film Last Action Hero which also features an action retake on Hamlet uses intertextuality throughout.

example
Holiday high jinks (baldoria) at 5am land Euan in more trouble (Daily Telegraph, August 18,2000) You dont probably catch the intertextuality here, but many British people would. In this newspaper headline referring to Euan Blair, Tonys son, the word Euan, especially when used in conjunction with trouble, for many British people in the summer of 2000 would have recalled images of a fun-loving teenager constantly causing embarrassment to his famous father.

Newspaper headlines are full of V.I. Silence of the damned (from Silence of the Lambs) (headline about a humanitarian crisis in West Africa) Blame in Spain (from Rain in Spain) (headline about a friction between Britain and Spain) The first headline could be easily translated in Italian with..? Il silenzio dei dannati (the Italian version of the movie is Il silenzio degli innocenti, theres only the replacement of one word). And the second? Blame Rain ???? Rana

Prince takes arms against bad English Can you see intertextuality here? Prince here refers to the prince of Wales, but what follows are references to Shakespeares Hamlet.

What about dantes inferno?

Dantes Inferno has as a primary character Virgil, the Augustan-era author of the Aeneid. Similarly, as Dante and Virgil descend through the circles of Hell, they encounter various characters from ancient literature, many of which are represented in Book 4 of the Aeneid, in which Aeneas visits the Underworldfor example, Cerberus, the three-headed dog and Medusa, the snakyhaired gorgon, just to name a few.

WHATS THE VERTICAL INTERTEXTUALITY HERE? Pepsi Cola created this advertisement based on The Godfather. There are probably very few people who have not heard about or seen the movie, The Godfather. This epic movie has become a part of our culture. Nearly everyone remembers the quote, "I made him an offer he couldn't refuse," and the scene with the horse's head. While watching this commercial, we immediately understand, as soon as the little girl starts talking, that she is imitating a scene from the movie, The Godfather.

PEPSI COLA COMMERCIAL

Other examples of V.I.

Videos: Simpsons parody (X Files), parody of Titanic, Madonnas Material Girl (Gentlemen prefer blondes), Hitchcocks shower scene from Psycho. T.S. Eliots The Burial of the Dead What are the features (visual, auditory, written etc.) that make you think of other texts, people, situations etc.?

In day-to-day practice, however, the professional translator will not always have time to find creative solution and, unless inspiration comes, he/she will have to settle for more pragmatic and many times, less effective strategies.