investigating translator positioning and subjectivity jeremy munday [email protected] translation...

Investigating translator positioning and subjectivity

Jeremy Munday [email protected]

Translation Research Summer School, London21 June 2013

21 June 2013

Register – situational variablesField

What is the text about? Subject matter, conveyed through denotational choices, transitivity…

TenorWhat is the communicative relationship of speaker-listener? > modality, pronoun choice, evaluative epithets

ModeForm of communication > cohesion and thematic and information structure

Invetigating translator positioning

Evaluation in language• Volosinov (1973)/Bakhtin: all utterances

have an evaluative orientation’; ‘intertextual freight’ of other utterances

• Grant (2007): ‘axiological accentuation’.... ‘the penumbra of unselected information’

• Martin (2004) ‘Sense and sensibility’

21 June 2013 Invetigating translator positioning

‘Evaluation’, ‘appraisal’…

“For us [...], evaluation is a broad cover term for the expression of the speaker or writer’s stance towards, viewpoint on, or feelings about the entities or propositions that he or she is talking about” (Hunston and Thompson 2000: 5)

Appraisal... “the global potential of the language for making evaluative meanings, e.g. for activating positive/negative viewpoints, graduating force/focus, negotiating intersubjective stance” (Martin and White 2005: 164)


21 June 2013

Appraisal resources (adapted from Martin and White 2005: 38)

Domain of appraisal

Parameter Value

Attitude AffectJudgementAppreciation

Feelings, emotionsOf ethics, behaviourOf things, phenomena

Graduation ForceFocus

Raise or lowerSharpen or soften

Engagement MonoglossHeterogloss

ContractExpand


21 June 2013

Appraisal resources (adapted from Martin and White 2005: 38)

Domain of appraisal

Parameter Example

Attitude AffectJudgementAppreciation

happy, sadwrong, bravebeautiful, authentic

Graduation ForceFocus

extremely unwisean apology of sorts

Engagement MonoglossHeterogloss

demonstrate, showclaim, nearly, possibly


Explicit (inscribed) or implicit (evoked/invoked) evaluation?

London is cosmopolitan, trendy and exciting, a truly wonderful place to visit. The city combines old-fashioned charm and cutting-edge fashion. Quiet courtesy and a great deal of fun.

All of these characteristics will be revealed as you wander from museum to gallery, down Victorian arcades and busy streets, across vast parks and along cobbled streets. The contrasts are endless: next to every historical sight, there’s a skyscraper gleaming with the wealth of modern life. Discovering these contrasts is one of the city’s great pleasures. (TimeOut/HSBC Miniguide to London)

Invetigating translator positioning21 June 2013

Evaluation in the ideational function…

But despite all the progress we have made, we know that there is more work to do. If there’s a child stuck in a crumbling school who graduates without ever learning how to read, it doesn’t matter if that child is a Hispanic from Miami or an African American from Chicago or a white girl from rural Kentucky – she is our child, and her struggle is our struggle.

Obama ’08 Latino Blueprint for Change


…ideational function…

Pero a pesar de cuánto hemos progresado, sabemos que aún queda más por hacer. Si hay un niño atrapado en una escuela ruinosa que se gradúa sin haber aprendido a leer, no importa si ese niño es un hispano de Miami o un afroamericano de Chicago o una niña blanca de la zona rural de Kentucky: es nuestro niño y sus problemas son nuestros problemas.

Obama ’08 Proyecto latino para el cambio


… in the textual function

The campus is compact, being less than half a mile across, but is attractively laid out using the natural contours of the land, to give a real sense of space. It is almost surrounded by stone-built terraced housing, much of which is available for rent to students in their second and final years.


In modality choices…

Nixon's meeting with Mao appeared inexcusable -- and yet it surely helped set China on a path ...

la reunión de Nixon con Mao parecía inexcusable, pero no hay duda de que ayudó a llevar a China por un camino…

it perhaps comes as no surprise that people fear the loss of what they cherish in their particular identities

no debería sorprendernos que la gente tema perder lo que aprecia de su identidad particular

For when we don't [follow the rules], our actions appear arbitrary Pues cuando no lo hacemos, nuestros actos pueden parecer arbitrarios

Barack Obama, Nobel Prize acceptance speech, 10 December 2009


Critical points of evaluation in specific situations (Munday 2012)• Simultaneous interpreting

• Professional technical translators – interviews and online forums

• Literary drafts and correspondence

• Multiple (student) translations of the same text

• Crowdsourced subtitles (Munday 2012a)


Where does variation most occur in simultaneous interpreting?

Barack Obama, inaugural address, 20 January 2009


Classification of Attitude

Affect – especially +/- securityThe trust you’ve bestowed (4); gathering clouds and raging

storms (8)

Judgement – capacity, tenacity, proprietyOur capacity remains undiminished (51); enduring

convictions (92); humbled (3); a new era of responsibility (143-4)

Appreciation – reaction, composition, valuationGrandest capitals (89); narrow interests (52); set aside

childish things (31); choose our better history (32)

Barack Obama, inaugural address, 20 January 2009Invetigating translator positioning21 June 2013

Variation in evaluation in translation

• Variation in linguistic realization rather than in category of evaluation/appraisal

• More variation in verbal processes and evaluative epithets than nouns

• Some omission of interpersonal markers• Variation in Graduation including reduced

intensification of non-core words (‘slip out’>‘leave’, ‘harness’>‘use’)


Graduation above all may be lessened

• Well understood (omitted by TT2, TT3)• far-reaching network of violence and hatred (omitted by TT2, TT3)• badly weakened (omitted by TT2)• fail too many (algunas [‘some’] TT2)• for far too long (por mucho tiempo [‘for a long time’] TT1, TT2,

omitted by TT3)• demand even greater effort [...] even greater cooperation (omitted

by all TTs)• our spirit is stronger (comparative omitted by TT1)• old hatreds shall someday pass (change of point of view TT1,

omitted by TT2)

Barack Obama, inaugural address, 20 January 2009


Provoked and associative evaluation

- in non-core vocabulary and metaphorFor us, they toiled in sweatshops and settled the

West, endured the lash of the whip and plowed the hard earth

- by association

For us, they fought and died... in places like Concord and Gettysburg, Normandy and Khe Sanh.


Cline of explicit and implicit evaluation

Explicit Implicit

Inscribe – true to our founding documents; our capacity remains undiminished

Evoke – provoke: toiled in sweatshops; gathering clouds and raging storms

– associate: our patchwork heritage; Concord, Gettysburg, Normandy, Khe Sanh

– ideational token: the keepers of this legacy


Critical points of ideological difference

Earlier generations faced down fascism and communism (92)

To those..... who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history... but that we will extend a hand... if you are willing to unclench your fist. (117-119)


Critical point of evaluation

For we know... that our patchwork heritage is a strength... not a weakness.


Patchwork semantic prosody

“If you refer to something as a patchwork, you mean it is made up of many different parts, pieces or colours. The low mountains were a patchwork of green and brown” (Collins Cobuild Dictionary)

- Confusing, feudal, hopeless, laborious, strange, unjustified, unruly, unwieldy.......... elegant, vivid patchwork

- Hugely complex patchwork of pricing and regulatory systems

- The EC has proposed sweeping away this patchwork of national restrictions


Potentially contested concepts

oude Kunst

old artold Masters antique artfine art

Those values upon which our success depends – honesty... and hard work, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism -- ... these things are old.... These things are true...


Disambiguation requiring negotiation or interpretation

anspruchsvoll: sophisticated, complicated, discerning, discriminating

Das Hotel hält 13 anspruchsvoll eingerichtete Doppelzimmer und 4 klimatisierte Suiten für die Gäste bereit.

[The hotel holds 13 ‘anspruchsvoll’ equipped/appointed double rooms and 4 air-conditioned suites for the guests ready]

There are 13 fastidiously furnished double rooms and 4 suites available for our guests


Newly-coined terms or collocations

• blue-sky exploration potential

> optimistisches Förderpotential [Gmn]

• the bleeding edge of web design

> nova tecnología (não aperfeiçoada) > vanguarda absoluta

• new-fangled features

> recém-criadas > inovadoras > modernas > novissimos > novas firulas > de última geração


Constraints and participant roles

“In this domain of discourse, translation scholars have thus focused on the constraints placed on the translation process by the sociocultural context of communication. The ideological and cultural background initiated in the text by the author and read off by both reader and translator governs the way in which the overall meaning potential is realized at both ends of the communicative channel. Furthermore, the way in which a reader constructs a representation of the text and relates this to the real world seems to be of crucial importance in dealing with discoursal meanings.” (Hatim 2009: 91)


Different readings

By a tactical reading we refer to a typically partial and interested reading which aims to deploy a text for social purposes other than those it has naturalised; resistant readings oppose the reading position naturalised by the co-selection of meanings in a text, while compliant readings subscribe to it.

(Martin and White 2005: 206)


Hall (1980) reading positions• Compliant = dominant-hegemonic position:

Reader reproduces “preferred” meaning• Resistant = oppositional position: Reader

recognizes but opposes expected reading• Tactical = negotiated position: Reader

recognizes expected reading but re-interprets through alternative frame


What position does the translator adopt?

?21 June 2013 Invetigating translator positioning

Deictic positioning (Chilton)

Other/remoteness

Modality/wrongness

Time past

Deictic centrehere/now/I/we/rightness

Time future21 June 2013 Invetigating translator positioning

Deictic positioningOther/remoteness

Evaluation: Attitude &

Time past Graduation


Time future


Deictic positioning (translator)

Translator’s identity positioning (Engagement?)

Attitude & Graduation: Translator’s evaluative

Translator’s spatio- positioning

temporal positioning?



Keys and others

Evaluative keys – “patterns of occurrence and co-occurrence which are conventionalised in a given discourse domain”

Voice – e.g. ‘reporter’, ‘correspondent’, ‘commentator’, [‘writer’]

Stance – “[more local] reconfigurations which we predict will be recurrent across a range of texts and a range of authors in a given discourse domain”

Signatures – ‘idiolectal reconfigurations’, personal style

(White and Martin 2005: 164-69; Bednarek 2006: 208)


The position and voice of the interpreter?

The question neither is if the market is a force... we know that... the power of.. the desire to generate money is clear, but this crisis has made us see that the country cannot prosper if it favors only the prosperous... Also he speaks about those sectors that remain on the margins of prosperity this is the surest way to common good, says Barack Obama, he makes reference to the economic crisis, to greed and in these moments we reject... we reject to have to choose between our ideas and national security (76-84)

Barack Obama, inaugural address, simultaneous interpretation III, 20 January 2009


Some referencesChilton, Paul (2004) Analysing Political Discourse: Theory and practice, Abingdon and New

York: Routledge.

Grant, Colin (2007) Uncertainty and Communication: New theoretical investigations, Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan.

Hall, Stuart (1999 [1980]) ‘Encoding, decoding’, in Simon During (ed.) (1999) The Cultural Studies Reader, London and New York: Routledge, 507-17.

Hatim, Basil (2009) ‘Discourse analysis’, in Mona Baker and Gabriela Saldanha (eds) The Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies, Abingdon and New York: Routledge, pp. 88-92.

Hunston, Susan and Geoff Thompson (eds) (2000) Evaluation in Text, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Martin, Jim R. (2004) ‘Sense and sensibility: Texturing evaluation’, in Joseph Foley (ed.) Language, Education and Discourse: Functional approaches, London: Continuum, 270-304.

Martin, Jim R. and Peter R. R. White (2005) The Language of Evaluation: Appraisal in English, London and New York: Palgrave.

Munday, Jeremy (2012) Evaluation in Translation: Critical points of translator decision-making, Abingdon and New York: Routledge.


investigating translator positioning and subjectivity jeremy munday [email protected] translation...

Documents

appraisal resources

change invetigating

white girl

intersubjective stance

evaluative meanings

utterances grant

language volosinov

busy streets