Example Translation Essay

Translation from a major language into a minor one is very different from translating in the opposite direction.

INTRODUCTION

It has been suggested that minoritylanguages are not even acknowledged in many parts of the world, and whereacknowledgement does exist they are defined as uncultured, primitive,simple dialects because they have been suppressed by the more dominant,official languages. Lotman and Uspensky believe the structure of languagemust be at the centre of every culture for it to survive, describing languageas the heart within the body of culture and putting into perspectivethe distinctions between a language accepted as minor, and that which is aflourishing major language (Lotman and Uspensky 1978, Pages 211 - 32). Researchinto minor languages, however, reveals a taxonomic sophistication thatadequately expressed its speakers' cognitive requirements synchronically, buthas not evolved adequately to incorporate the plethora of technologicalterminology that dominant languages encompass with relative ease, resulting inmany loan words taken from the influence of adjacent major languages. Manyminor languages die out as their speakers age, but some undergo a revival asenthusiasts propound the benefits of their continued value.

The fundamental difficulty withinmany of the minority languages today, however, continues to be one ofterminology, described as a semiotic science of cognitive and communicativeorganisation of knowledge (Myking, 1997) and considered to be thecentral discipline or the common denominator for all the aspects of atranslator's work (Holljen, Translation Journal, 1999, January). Mostminority languages are often not particularly suited to adequate translation interms of modern concepts and technologies and are more inclined towardsmaintaining the socio-linguistic aspects associated with those languages, asrecognised by Holljen:

The scientific aspect of any languageis dependent on the vocabulary of that language. The possibility must beretained for people to be able to express themselves in any given field intheir mother tongue, no matter on which level of abstraction ( Holljen, Translation Journal, 1999,January).

Some of these minority languagegroups, such as the Nordic languages, are now utilising language planningtechniques to standardise their natural languages rather than indiscriminatelyincorporating loan words from technically advanced languages such as English.As a result, NORDTERM has spearheaded the campaign for a standardisationprocedure across Finland, Norway and Sweden, designated the 'NordicTerminological Record Format' (Holljen, Translation Journal, 1999,January), supported by theEuropean Charter for Regional or Minority Languages to 'protect and supporthistorical, regional

and minority languages in Europe' (Part I, Article 1, Council ofEurope, http://conventions.coe.int/Treaty/EN.htm).

DISCUSSION

Wecannot yet specify satisfactorily just what we mean by a 'perfect' language

(Aitchison,1991, pp. 214)

Toury noted that Translation is akind of activity which inevitably involves at least two languages and twocultural traditions (Toury 1978:200). Nida concurred, adding that, if thecultural and linguistic disparity was particularly great the socio-linguisticfacet would be more of a problem (Nida, 1964, Page 130). The potentialdifficulties in translating major languages into minor languages can beillustrated through the concept of the 'space of possibilities' upon whichutterances based on context provide a background for semantic representationsof inferred language that might be spoken or, equally, left unspoken and fromwhich linguistic form triggers interpretation rather than conveyinginformation (Winograd and Flores 1986, p.57), contributing to externalinfluences which, with memorised sequences and pre-cognitive learning (Gutt,1991, p.26), can all be attributed to a meaning's intertextuality, or allpervasive textual phenomenon (Hatim, 1997a, Page 29).

Newmark identifies cultural,technical or linguistic disparity that might require a translator to add extrainformation to maintain intelligibility (Newmark, 1988, Page 91) whilst Hatimconsiders intertextual information provides the various textual clues(Hatim, 1997b, Page 200). A translator initially needs to identify intertextualmarkers and then evaluate the implications for understanding by the targetaudience when translated, particularly difficult in cases of extreme culturaldiversity, or 'implicatures' in Baker's terminology (1992, Pages 71 - 77).Baker suggests translators may attempt literal translation, culturalsubstitution, elaboration and explication, translation by omission ortransliteration through retaining the source language within parts of the text.

Hatim and Mason's model of context takesinto account the context of culture with its aspects of ideology and sets ofvalues (Caldas-Coulthard, 2000a, Page 2), reinforced by Hoey's connectivepattern which highlights the more predominant points due to paradigmatic andsyntagmatic properties of lexical priming (Hoey, 1991: 82), established in theWest Greenlandic language, or kalaallit oqaasii (or kalaallisut) (Petersen,in Collis, 1990: 294), through the highly developed inflectional use of nominaland verbal paradigms (Fortescue, in Collis, 1990: 309) and which, with itsspelling and pronunciation alterations being contingent upon grammatical andlexical requirements, provides an excellent illustration. West Greenlandic isa deeply inflected, polysynthetic language, heavily influenced and dependentupon the concepts of theme and rheme, and reliant on the positions of Subjectand Object to develop an adequate semantic and pragmatic morphology (Fortescue,in Collis, 1990: 309).

The 'resource[for]makingmeaning' (Gerot and Wignell, 1995: 6) is notably, in West Greenlandic,realised through a very long string of words built up from bases and associatedaffixes whose meanings describe, very adequately, the sparse surroundinglandscapes in very accurate and specific terms, less appropriate, however, forevolving technology. These intertextual messages are a necessary preconditionfor the intelligibility of texts (Hatim and Mason, 1997, Page 219) withoutwhich only partial understanding could possibly be achieved. Intertextualreference provides a semiotic approach which can link previous text to definetenuous meanings although precedence should be intentionality overinformational content (Hatim and Mason, 1990, Page 136) maintainingsemiotic status and lexical devices in terms of cohesion and coherence toensure that translation continues to make sense, retains its originaltone/voice and engages the intended response from the target reader.

Sapir recognised the disparitybetween individuals' cognitive environments, commenting that No twolanguages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as representing thesame social reality (Sapir, 1956, Page 69). This recognition thattranslation is not just a transfer of information between languages, but atransfer from one culture to another (Hervey et al, 1995, Page 20)controversially requires translators to acquire adequate understanding andempathy of a particular culture to enable the necessary intertextual cues to berecognised and available for transfer into language use. Modern German hassixteen forms for 'reiten', whereas Old English had thirteen forms of 'ridan'[both meaning 'to ride] (Coates, 2004). Over time these inflections becamelost which added to the flexibility of language used, e.g. nominalisation;additions of pre- or -suffixes, and word-blending, e.g. the Norse word 'rein'meaning 'deer' added to the Old English word 'deer' meaning 'animal' giving aliteral meaning 'deer-animal'. Evidence of this concept is still apparent in theinnumerable lexemes associated with the concept of snow in West Greenlandic

The vastly controversialSapir-Whorf hypothesis also recognises these constraints that can be placed oncommunications within the concepts of cognitive experiences, according to principlesof linguistic determinism and linguistic relativity, with subscription tolanguage being utilised in order to discern differences between agents. Lexicaland grammatical devices add to the flexibility of language used, e.g.nominalisation, with additions such as suffixes or post-bases, inflectionalendings and portmanteau verbs contributing to the rich diversity of thislanguage's morpho-syntactic adaptability. Strong determinism associated withthe Arctic traditions evolved from man's close proximity to nature which, inturn, shaped their concept of language realised through cognitive thought (Maclean,in Collis, 1990: 164). The difficulty in translation, however, occurs throughthe Sapir-Whorf hypothesis which acknowledges everyday word usage taking arather flexible position in a typical Kalaallit sentence, with markers toidentify their relation to other lexemes (Maclean, in Collis, 1990: 164).These Kalaallit characteristics can be explained through the theory ofreference in relation to the semantic relation between an element in thetext and some other element that is crucial to the interpretation of it(Halliday and Hasan, 1976: 8), with 'lexical priming' (Crystal, 2003:162) providing the cohesion that displays an expectancy relations betweenwords (Eggins, 1994: 101) in accordance with Nunan's model whereby randomsentences are distinguished[through]the existence of certaintext-forming, cohesive devices (Nunan, 1993: 59).

West Greenlandic relies on the staticnature of word-internal morphemes. If their order was changed, the utterancewould lose its full impetus and implications. The implications of local andglobal meanings are revealed through code-switching, i.e. switching thepositions of over 400 post-bases and 300 inflectional endings to achieveconnotational and denotational meanings, the 'signals for retrieval'(Caldas-Coulthard, 2000: 5) which can be demonstrated through reference in theform of an exophoric or endophoric context within an utterance where cohesionlies in the continuity of reference (Halliday and Hasan, 1976: 31). Thesyntax of this language reveals a major problem when translating languages suchas Kalallit into major languages. Fortescue suggests that A particularlycharacteristic trait of the language is the recursiveness of its morphologyitsword-order is fairly free; it is a 'non-configurational language (citedin Collis, 1990: 311) resulting in a 'global freedom' which can, converselycreate a strong cohesive bond between lexical items[that]coherewith a preceding occurrence even with different referents (Haliday andHasan, 1976: 283), a feature Hoey describes as the 'study of patterns oflexis in text (Hoey, 1991: 10). Stoddard explained the coherence factor exhibitedthrough cohesive devices which might be expected to occur most frequentlymight also be expected to exhibit the most fruitful network patterns...[and the] types of cohesion which are global in nature might be expected toexhibit the most common patterns (Stoddard, 1991: 32), especiallypertinent to the syntax of Kalaallit.

A particularly interesting concept intranslation that reveals the ethos between translating from any minor languageinto a major language and vice versa is the translation of poetry, recognisedby Bassnett (1991, Page 101) who describes a gulf betweencultures throughdistance in time and space. Thai poetry, for example, reveals therepresentation of 'jai', or 'mind' of the writer, lacking appropriatemorphemes to provide a suitable translation, explained as just prettywords, nice sounds to show you that the words are feeling words (Conlon,2005). The translator needs to decide whether to maintain the ethos of thetarget language, or to aim for literary significance, described by Bassnett asmodernisation as opposed to archaisation (Bassnett, 1991), or to follow Luke's principleof maintaining comprehensibility by providing a chain of signifiers in thetarget language (Luke and Vaget, 1988: 121).

CONCLUSION

This essay focused on thedifficulties associated with translation from a major language into a minor onewhich is a very different concept from translating in the opposite directionfor various reasons, not least the differences between cultures[which]may cause more severe complications for the translator than do differences inlanguage structure (Nida, 1964:130). The socio-linguistic aspects oftranslation are more profound when a major language is being translated into aminor one, evidence of which can be observed through the cognitive-conceptualsignificance of Kalaallit which, together with its specific connotation anddenotation, is directly associated with their dependence upon survival in aninhospitable terrain. This factor has contributed to the highly specialiseddifferentiation of its morphological characteristic, utilising aswitch-reference system in preference to the development of a moresyntactic-based language (Petersen, in Collis, 1990: 294), a feature that isoften present in minor languages through the dependence of their speakers onever-changing features of the landscape for survival, requiring an awareness oflanguage planning according to Holljen (1999, January, Translation Journal).

Whilst there are various difficultiesassociated with translating from a minor language to a major one, these aremainly represented through expressing elusive cognitive meanings into thesemantics of more prosaic terminology. However, major languages arerepresentative of fairly well documented cultures whose ways of life, whilstnot necessarily familiar, do not represent totally unknown and incomprehensibletraditions and, coupled with well-established linguistic understanding, makesthe task of translating an abstract concept from a minor language less arduousthan attempting to establish sufficient empathy to adapt technologicalterminology from a major language into a more fundamental vocabulary.