Академический Документы
Профессиональный Документы
Культура Документы
Juliane House
jhouse@uni-hamburg.de
http://www.uni-hamburg.de/fachbereiche-einrichtungen/sfb538
Structure
I
II Analytical Procedure
and Analysis
III Some Results
Parallel texts
texts on comparable topics, which belong to
the same genre and fulfil the same function
Covert translation
the function which a source text has in its
discourse world is maintained in the
translation through the use of a "cultural
filter (House1977,1997), with which culturespecific source language norms are adapted
to the norms holding in the "receiving"
language community
General assumptions
German (French, Spanish, later Persian,
Chinese) textual norms are adapted to
Anglophone ones
Adaptations can be located along a limited
set of dimensions of culturally determined,
empirically established communicative
preferences (e.g. preferred foci on
interpersonal or ideational function, on
informational vagueness or specificity)
The Corpus
about 650 texts (over 800 000 words)
Texts reflect a sphere of production and
reception which is of pervasive, global
socio-cultural influence
Covert Translation
PRIMARY CORPUS
ENGLISH TEXTS
German
Translations
French Translations
Spanish Translations
GERMAN TEXTS
English
Translations
FRENCH TEXTS
SPANISH TEXTS
VALIDATION CORPUS
Interviews
Background Documentation
Corpus
English-German originals and translations (French and Spanish
control texts)
Method
Combination of qualitative and quantitative
methods
Qualitative: House Translation Evaluation
Model
Quantitative: Frequency Counts
Renewed qualitative analysis
Genres
Popular Science: articles from Scientific
American and National Geographic,
UNESCO Courier
(External) Business Communication:
annual reports, letters to shareholders,
visions" and missions", product
presentations
Computer Instructions: software manuals
Superordinate Features:
Field, Tenor and Mode
Field of Discourse: nature of the social action in
the text, field of activity, content, degree of
lexical generality and specificity
Tenor of Discourse: author and his personal
stance vis--vis the content, relationship
between author and addressees (social power,
distance, affect)
Mode of Discourse: cohesion, coherence,
degrees of "spokenness" and "writtenness"
Genre
A socially established category
characterised in terms of occurrence of
use, source and a communicative purpose
or any combination of these
Links a single text to a class of texts united
by a common communicative purpose
Reflects language users' shared
knowledge about nature of texts of the
same kind
Cultural Filter
Functional equivalence in covert translation
achieved through changes on the levels of
Language/Text and Register
Text is adapted to target culture norms
Translator looks at source text with the eyes'
of target text readers and acts accordingly
Most imortant are changes to a texts
interpersonal functional component for which
values along dimensions of Tenor and Mode
are crucial
Analytical Process
1. Analysis of English original along the
dimensions Field, Tenor and Mode
- Setting up a text-profile on the basis of
analytical findings on lexical, syntactic
and textual levels that reflect the
individual textual function
2. Analysis of translation along the same
dimensions
3. Comparison of source and translation
Didactic tenor
of German translations
Translators may have assumed a lack of
knowledge on the part of the reader
In the English texts, the addressees are drawn into
the text to make them personally involved
Addressees of English texts are "invited" to identify
with the persons depicted in the texts discourse
world through the use of various linguistic means
I
1 Suppose you are a doctor in an emergency
room
2 and a patient tells you she was raped two
hours earlier.
3 She is afraid she may have been exposed to
HIV, the virus that causes AIDS
4 but has heard that there is a "morning-after
pill" to prevent HIV infection.
II
1 Can you in fact do anything to block the virus
2 from replicating and establishing infection?
English texts
Mental processes are used to establish a
personal relationship with the addressee
A texts Field is made familiar to addressees
Further linguistic means: mood switches,
dramatisation of scientific reports
Strong cohesion through extensive use of
repetition, structural parallelism, linguistic
routines, deliberate framing of a text
German texts
Feature only relational and material processes
(in the sense of Halliday) in different distributions
Lack of mental processes
No offer of identification to addressees
Syntactically more complex structures (left
branching pre-nominal modification, absence of
rhetorical mechanisms such as parallelism)
Less macro-cohesive, more micro-organized
Summary of Findings
Reduced emotional engagement in German texts
Less persuasive attitude
Reduced conviction on the part of the text
producer that scientific research is successful
Generally more "neutral" lexis
Fewer "emotive" connotations and intensifiers
More negative connotations
Orientation towards persons reduced in favour of
orientation towards institutions, things, concepts,
abstract phenomena
Subjectivity
A speakers ability to represent and constitute
himself in and through language as a
subject
Related in systemic-functional theory to
Stance (Biber 2004):
- "epistemic stance" relating to the speakers
assessment of the truth of the proposition
- "attitudinal stance" referring to the authors
personal attitude, his value judgements and
expectations
(3) Explicitation
Older German translations:
explicitations particularly on meta-level via
text commenting devices ("Es muss an dieser
Stelle betont werden BT: It must be stressed
at this point) as well as explanations (didactic
function).
Newer German translations:
addressees' knowledge often presupposed,
however still: systematic enrichment with
additional details
Mood
Newer letters to shareholders: increased use
of interrogatives and imperatives (effect:
simulated interaction between author and
addressee
Striking: linkage of imperatives with direct
address of readers, often with requests,
warning, threat, announcements
Modality
Modal verbs preferably used in final
paragraphs (announcements of further
action, Bttger & Bhrig 2003)
Narrative Sequences
Much greater frequency in newer texts
Narratives replace Reports and
Descriptions (Bttger & Probst 2001)
(1) Deixis
12
10
8
6
4
2
0
E
D
D
1978-1982
1999-2002
(2) Modality
Particles
120
100
80
60
40
20
0
Modal words
D
D
1978-1982 1999-2002
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
D
D
1978-1982 1999-2002
100
D
50
0
1978-1982
1999-2002
(4) Connectivity
And / Und
Pronominal adverbials
D
D
4
2
0
1978-1982
1999-2002
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
E
D
D
1978-1982
1999-2002
Modified hypothesis
Changes in German text conventions
through contact with English texts take
place through register-specific variation of
the use of certain linguistic means, which
are reflected in a changed function of the
text as a whole
The X Factor:
Universal Impact of Globalisation