Pragmatics 1001: How do we translate You?

A lot of electronic ink is spent on how to translate 'difficult' words from God downwards, but some of the complexities of translating lie in very simple, basic words that are used even by young child translators. Unfortunately most of the 'translation scholars' are too preoccupied with higher things to bother about them.

One such word is the mundane English You.

The English–speaking child who is addressing an older relative to say You in French, German, Spanish or any of many other languages must decide whether to use either Tu, Du, etc. (the familiar forms), or Vous, Sie, etc. (the polite forms). No fudging; it's one or the other; and once the decision is taken it should be applied consistently – though it isn't always. These days the increased informality within families makes the familiar forms more likely, but once outside – at school for instance – the choice arises. It has little or nothing to do with the acquisition of vocabulary, because both forms are valid translations of You and have the same deictic meaning. English is indeed exceptional in having only one pronoun for it: masculine and feminine, singular and plural, polite and familiar.

So what does it depend on?

On the perceived relationship between speaker – in this case the translator/interpreter – and the addressee. A social relationship inculcated a an early age. A relationship that is recognised by linguists – and more especially by sociolinguists – as belonging to a field they call Pragmatics. The simple example of You essentially says it all. Whenever I speak French, for instance, to somebody I haven't met before, I have to consider it. My choice varies according to social factors. In Canada, for instance, if one uses Vous (polite) to somebody who expects Tu, one may give an unfortunate impression of coldness and distance. On the other hand, when I was a research assistant at the University of Montreal, I once asked my boss, the very Canadian professor Guy Rondeau, which I should use to him when we went to meetings together. His reply was:

"Between the two of us, of course use Tu. But when we are in meetings with outside people, I would prefer you to use Vous."

I remembered his advice when I was doing conference interpreting.

This doesn't mean the child, or adult for that matter, arrives at the decision by conscious reasoning. The social relationship is something we feel intuitively, and so is its linguistic expression. Something we feel every day at all ages.

Pragmatics is still, after 50 years of progress in Machine Translation, one of its weaknesses. MT software isn't endowed with feelng and intuition, though it may simulate them somewhat. Here's a little test you can apply. Ask the MT system of your choice to translate x met y at the station into French. Which French verb does it select? Recontrer (run into by chance) or accueillir (welcome)? Both are valid translations lexically but the implicatiions are different. The choice depends on pragmatics. I first happened on this example in 1970 when I was a structural linguist, and it opened my eyes. But that's another story.

Reference
Pragmatics (Linguistics). Wikipedia. 2015.

Image
Source: www.wydl.com.

Timothy Corsellis Prize Competition

The posts on this blog have been sparse of late, due to illness that hopefully won't last long. Meanwhile I'm posting something that has only a tenuous connection with translation. I do so at the request of an old friend, John Corsellis, as a tribute to his work as an interpreter in Europe at the end of World War II. For more about that, enter john corsellis in the Search box on the right. (It's important to include john in the entry because his wife Ann Corsellis is well known in translation circles.)

It's the Timothy Corsellis Prize Competition for young poets writing in English. The age limits are 14 to 25. Open to competitors world wide and funded for six years.

For full details, click here or go to http://www.youngpoetsnetwork.org.uk/2014/07/11/the-first-annual-timothy-corsellis-prize/

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Timothy Corsellis. Source: Young Poets Network.

Young Interpreters As Research Subjects

Followers of this blog are by now well acquainted with the pioneering work of the Young Interpreter Scheme (YI) to promote communal language brokering in British schools. If you are not, enter EMTAS in the Search box on the right. The latest issue of their bulletin, Young Interpreters Newsletter, is just out. It contains the usual cheery news about the expansion of the movement, However, one item stands out as different from the others because it involves research. It comes from the Institute of Education of University College London.

Do you have any young people in your school who interpret for family members? Would you be willing to let us into your school to study Young Interpreters activities?
The Institute of Education has been funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council to look at how Young Interpreters share cultural knowledge and how this influences their and sense of self. Researchers would like to observe some of your Young Interpreters while they do translation work and ask them to complete diaries about their interpreting lives. They would like to talk to Young Interpreters in Hampshire [the English county where the YI movement is centred].
If your school would be willing to take part or you would like to learn more about the study please contact either Sarah Crafter (s.crafter@ioe.ac.uk) or Humera Iqbal (h.iqbal@ioe.ac.uk).

To judge the likely value of this research, we would need to know more about its methodology, but it has striking features. One is that it comes from the UK, a country that lags far behind the USA in research on this area. And another is that it draws attention to the rich potential of YI as a source of data. It should be possible to follow many of the YI interpreters longtitudinally over several years as well as synchronically.


Term Note
Notice the use of communal language brokering above. A first according to Google. Language brokering is usually associated with a role played by individuals for and in their families. But a term is needed for when the same functions are performed by and in larger groups, as in the YI schools. Hence I propose this one.

The
2015 Translatology Competition for Child Translators
is at last open.

Text, rules and instructions can be downloaded from https://independent.academia.edu/BHARRIS/Papers, or by clicking here.

Age limit is 11 years old on 30 June 2015.

First prize is 400 euro.

Deadline is 30 June.

If you encounter any problem, please email translatology@yahoo.com with the subject line "Competition".

The scope of the competition this year is very limited because it's experimental. If it proves to be a success it will be enlarged.

A Professional Awakening

This blog has long contended that teaching translation should capitalise on bilinguals' natural ability by starting young, and has given plenty of examples of it. Young means much younger than the traditional university level. Now the current president of that highly professional organisation, the American Translators Association, has come out in favour of it, at least to some extent. Caitilin Walsh recently addressed academics at the Modern Language Association's annual meeting in Vancouver about the need for increased translating and interpreting offerings in education.

"She then made the case for increasing exposure in education because of significant demand in the industry... She went on to stress that schools would best serve their students with more offerings."

Her motivation is different from ours. She is concerned with the future of her industry, we with child language development. But the conclusion is the same.

Source
Redmond Reporter, 26 January 2015, www.redmond-reporter.com/community/289837911.html

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Caitilin Walsh. Source: Twitter.

2015 TRANSLATOLOGY COMPETITION
FOR CHILD TRANSLATORS

The competition announced for January has been postponed to February.

Adaptation versus Translation

A book I've been delving into (see Sources) and an article I'm composing myself both use the terms translation and adaptation. This obliges me to consider what the differences are between the two terms.

Amongst academics, the old study of translation has now been joined by a new branch, adaptation studies:

"In recent years, adaptation studies has established itself as a discipline in its own right, separate from translation studies. [But though] the bulk of its activity to date has been restricted to literature and film departments… it is, however, much more interdisciplinary."

At a superficial level, it can be treated as a matter of English collocation. We generally see, for example, stage adaptation (or version, which is a synonym of adaptation) or screen adaptation, often without a change of language, rather than stage translation or screen translation. (I myself once acted in a stage adaptation of Pride and Prejudice!) But of course there's more behind the words.

To start with, adaptation certainly is the appropriate word when there's a change of medium or genre, irrespective of language. Thus a screen adaptation is

"a cinematographic interpretation of a work from another art form – prose, drama, poetry, song or opera or ballet libretto."

Whereas translation requires a change of language. So the final product can be both a translation and an adaptation: a tradaptation (yes, the word exists!). There are examples of it my article.

An enduring example of genre adaptation is Charles and Mary Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare, written in 1807 and still in print in several editions (see Sources).

"The book reduced the archaic English and complicated storyline of Shakespeare to a level that children could read and understand."

It came to be regarded as a work of literature in itself, but of children's literature.

However there's still more that's important, and the most important of all is that the concept of adaptation allows for changes in the content and style of the original that would be unacceptable in a translation; in other words for a much wider difference between the two that goes beyond the wording, and hence for a far more radical and unchained intervention by the translator/adapters. A glaring example of this is the adaptation of Aladdin for the British Christmas theatre For over two hundred years now, since 1788, Antoine Galland's original French text (itself a translation from Arabic) has been variously translated and adapted for the stage, modern music and topical jokes added, transgender dressing introduced, etc. The pantomime is a mishmash parody of the original Middle Eastern folk tale.

In any case the boundary between translation and adaptation has shifted over the centuries. Chaucer recognised both of them in his famous 14th-century retraction at the end of The Canterbury Tales, where translacions contrasts with enditynges:

"Wherfore I biseke yow mekely, for the mercy Of God, that ye preye for me that crist have Mercy on me and foryeve me my giltes; and Namely of my translacions and enditynges of Worldly vanitees."

Yet all his many borrowings from French, Italian, etc. are adaptations in the modern sense. Indeed Chaucer often combined several sources in his re-tellings. Not that the concept of close translation didn't exist; but in Bible translation or legal documents, not literature. For his sake and for the sake of other adapters, we hope God forgave him.

Sources
Translation, Adaptation and Transformation. A collection of papers edited by Laurence Raw of Baskent University, Ankara. 240 pages. New York, etc.: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2012. Paperback US$43.

Charles and Mary Lamb. Tales from Shakespeare. London, 1807. Still in print.

Brunilda Reichmann Lemos (Universidade Federal do Paraná). Some differences between Boccaccio's and Chaucer's Tales of Griselda. No date.
http://ojs.c3sl.ufpr.br/ojs/index.php/letras/article/viewFile/19378/12656.

Aladdin. Wikipedia. 2014.

My own article, Translation and Adaptation for the British Christmas Theatre, will be available shortly on my academia.edu page.

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A stage adaptation from Orwell. Source: www.exurbe.com.