TITLE Contexts in Translating [603624]

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TITLE "Contexts in Translating"
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ContextsinTranslating

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ContextsinTranslating
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ContextsinTranslating
EugeneA.Nida
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Table of contents
Preface
.What is translating?
.A new focus on translation studies
.Evaluation of potential translators
.Translating versus interpreting
.Translating and related studies
.The contents and structure of this volume
.Language and culture
.Similarities between language and culture
.Differ ences
.Interrelations between language and culture
.Wor ds in context
.The types and functions of contexts in understanding texts
.Range of vocabulary
.Relations between words
.Misleading grammatical terminology
..Referential grammatical classes
.Basic meaningful relations between words
.Translating texts
.Major organizational features of texts
.Major content features of texts
.Rhetorical features of a text
.Representative treatments of translating
.Developments in interlingual studies
.Illustrative examples of different treatments of translating
























Table of contents 
.Three major types of translation theories
.Theories based on philological insights
.Theories based on linguistic insights
.Theories based on sociosemiotics
Bibliography
Index






Preface
For a number of years I have been increasingly interested in the role of contexts
in understanding and translating texts, because failure to consider the contexts
of a text is largely responsible for the most serious mistakes in comprehendingand reproducing the meaning of a discourse. But contexts need to be under-stood as influencing all structural levels of a text: phonological, lexical, gram-matical, and historical, including events leading up to the production of a text,the ways in which a text has been interpreted in the past, and the evident con-cerns of those requesting and paying for a translation.
In order to indicate precisely the implications of the roles of contexts, I have
incorporated translations into English from French, Spanish, and German. Andas a way of describing some of the more significant, but less known, treatmentsof translation, I have summarized several of these in Chapter 6 and have addedChapter 7 in order to present the three major types of theories of translation interms of philological, sociolinguistic, and sociosemiotic principles.
I also wish to acknowledge the help that I have received from those who
have reviewed certain portions of the text or who have provided help in record-ing questions and discussions about Contexts in Translation during a series of
presentations of these concepts in ten universities in China during the Springof 1999: Mona Baker, Gavin Drew, Jiang Li, Johannes P . Louw, Heping Shi,Huang Ren, Tan Zaixi, and Zhang Jing-hao.

 
What is translating?
Is translating simply the act of transferring the meaning of a text from one lan-
guage into another or does it depend on some theory of similarities and con-
trasts between languages? In order to analyze and to direct such an activity, a
number of specialists in translating have elaborated numerous theories: lin-
guistic, sociolinguistic, communicative, free, literal, hermeneutic, semiotic,
relevant, skopos, Marxist, transformational, and even gender–to mention only
a few. But what seems even more strange is that for the most part the best pro-fessional translators and interpreters have little or no use for the various theo-ries of translation. They regard them as largely a waste of time, especially since
most professional translators regularly and consistently violate so many ruleslaid down by theorists.
One reason for rejecting certain theories of translation is the fact that they are
often too heavy in technical terminology and too light on illustrative examples ofwhat top-flight translators actually do. One of the most important journals
focusing on the translating of literary texts does not accept articles on theories oftranslating, while for Chinese translators Y an Fu’s triple principle of translation,
namely, “faithfulness, expressiveness, and elegance,” fails to say what is to be donewhen these three ideal principles are not equally applicable. But according to
Zhang Jing-hao this triple principle of translation advocated by Y an Fu and bymany other Chinese theorists was not meant to be a key to translation theory or totranslation practice. The three principles of faithfulness, expressiveness, and ele-
gance should be understood not as competitive but as additive factors: first, faith-
ful equivalence in meaning, second, expressive clarity of form, and third, attrac-tive elegance that makes a text a pleasure to read. But unfortunately too manyChinese translation theorists and practitioners have focused primarily on ele-gance and quite naturally they concentrated their efforts on literary texts. Much
the same development took place in the West, because many people assumed thatonly literary texts deserved or needed to be translated. As a result, most present-day theories of translation still focus on stylistics rather than on content.
What is even more discouraging is the fact that most students in programs
of translation find that courses on theories of translation are the least helpful,

especially when they are heavily fr ont-loaded in a curriculum by those who do
not realize that the processes and procedures in translating and interpreting are
basically skills, and not compilations of information in content courses, such asliterature, history, and philosophy. But this does not mean that a detailed andcomprehensive study of what translators and interpreters actually do is irrele-
vant. In fact, such scientific studies of the semantic and semiotic aspects ofinterlingual communication are extremely important, as is the study of anyand all types of human behavior. But the results of such studies need to be pre-sented in understandable language and carefully integrated into creative prac-tice. A clear understanding of the nature of interlingual communicationshould become general knowledge because so much of how we think andrespond to new developments in science and politics is influenced by what is
happening in the process of translating and interpreting. This is especiallyimportant for the success of the European Union in which all translations intoall the languages have theoret ically the same legal standing.
Too often textbooks on translation employ technical vocabulary that most
students cannot readily grasp, and the assigned passages for translating are usu-ally so short that students do not have the required contexts with which to makeintelligent decisions about correspondences in meaning. Frequently, however,courses in translation actually turn out to be courses in language learning since
university programs in foreign languages concentrate much more on literaturethan on the skills of listening, speaking, reading, and writing.
In translation programs students learn a great deal about foreign lan-
guages, but they usually do not learn how to use such languages in communica-tion. As a result they waste a good deal of time in courses that are poorly orga-nized for both language learning and for translating. In fact, relatively few stu-dents entering programs in translating have the necessary language compe-tence to begin translating. This is not the students’ fault, but the fault of the
educational system.
For professional translators what counts is the effective transfer of the
meaning because that is precisely what clients want and need. Their concern isnot the formal features but the content of the text. For example, in documentsfrom Spanish-speaking Latin America coming to the European Union the cus-tomary phrase cooperación económica is not rendered by Commission transla-
tors as “economic cooperation” but as “help” or “assistance,” because that is
precisely what is involved. Nevertheless, people preparing texts for theEuropean Union continue to use cooperación económica , because asking direct-
ly for economic help or support would imply that these countries are economi-Contexts in translating 

cally or politically inade quate, which of course they are, or they would not be
asking for financial help.
Accuracy of content should not be judged primarily in terms of “being
true” to the author, but in not causing misunderstanding of the message by
those for whom the translation is intended. As Jumpelt used to say about hisprinciple of translating for the aviation industry, “I want to make sure that noone will misunderstand my translation. ” What clients need and generally
demand is first and foremost accuracy. If a translated text can also be easy toread, this is indeed a plus factor, and if it can be culturally appropriate, the
translation is obviously a success.
If completely bilingual persons have a clear understanding of a text to be
translated from a source to a receptor (or target) language, they do not need to
instruct their brains about how to use a noun, verb, adjective, or participle torepresent a particular concept or to place a qualifying clause at the beginning or
the end of a sentence, all such decisions are largely automatic because ourbrains are excellently organized to carry out all such decisions in a largelyunconscious manner. The process of going from conceptual clarity to a verbaltext is almost automatic and should be regarded as essentially no different from
writing in one’s own mother tongue. Clarity in understanding the source text is
the key to successful translating into a receptor language. Translators do nottranslate languages but texts.
When, however, a text written in one’s own mother tongue must be trans-
lated into a foreign language, the focus of attention shifts radically. The transla-tor of such a text should have no difficulty understanding the text, unless it is
badly written, but almost inevitably the focus of attention shifts to the linguis-tic features of the translation, including the proper arrangement of words, sen-sitivity to the style, and the relevance of the translation for receptors.
Failure to understand clearly a source text often shows up in the puzzled
attempts of readers to make sense of a translation, particularly if the content isrelated to some new technical discipline, for example, electronics and atomic
power. A similar mastery of terminology is required for translating textsinvolving multinational contracts. Professional translators need not only anexcellent general vocabulary but also a mastery of technical terminology in two
or three expanding areas of international communication, for example, mer-chandising, computer technology, and environmental issues.
Some source-language texts inevitably leave their mark on a translation.
This is particularly true of legal texts in w hich there is a tradition of including
within a sentence far more than is done in ordinary speech so as to have all theWhat is translating?   

conditioning factors concisely combined. This is also true of many religious
texts in which the verbal utterances are often regarded as sacred and divinely
inspired, and therefore they must be preserved as sentence units.
Brilliant translators are, however, often surprised by the highly creative
solutions that seem to pop into their heads. Such creative translators are the
best examples of the fact that interlingual communication is essentially a spe-
cial skill that does not necessarily depend on long years of training, although itcan often be greatly enriched by studying how other translators have solvedtypical problems. In many respects creative translating is like portrait paint-
ing and artistic musical performance.
On one occasion I was chatting with a man seated next to me on a flight up
the Atlantic coast of the United States. He was rather embarrassed to admit thathe was a portrait painter after having been a successful stock broker on WallStreet for a number of years. I immediately inquired as to where he had studiedoil painting, and he admitted that he had never studied art. But when I furtherinquired about his background, he explained that during a period when hiswife was dying of cancer, he had to be with her constantly. But he felt that he
had to do something during those long tragic hours. And so he decided to buysome oil paints and paint his wife’s picture.
After her death a friend was so impressed by the portrait that he asked to
have his own wife’s picture painted. And so began a new career in which myfriend painted ten or a dozen portraits a year, but he said he was not interestedin painting faces but in portraying people. Therefore he would spend a week ortwo living nearby and getting acquainted with the person to be painted. For hisefforts he received some ten to fifteen thousand dollars for each portrait, butonly if people were completely satisfied.
Some outstanding musicians know nothing about the science of harmon-
ics, but they know how to play a piano with incredible skill, and new songs andsonatas seem to pour out of them, as though they had been stored for years insome deep recesses of the mind and were finally escaping.
Our ignorance of the ways in which our minds operate is impressive. Even
in the simple activity of speaking we find it almost impossible to believe that aseries of purely physical impulses, first, the air waves striking the ear drum,then, the oscillations of the tiny bones of the ear, the physical waves passingthrough the liquid of the ear and vibrating the cilia — all of which is purelyphysical — can become electro-chemical in the nerves leading ultimately to theconceptual area of the brain. How these electro-chemical physical features can
be transformed into concepts — possibly by means of neural templates com-Contexts in translating 

posed of complex patterns of synapses — is one of the two great mysteries of
life — the other, being the rapidly expanding universe in which we live.
Perhaps even more mysterious is the way in which our concepts are ulti-
mately dependent upon the clusters of sensory impressions or images of sight,taste, feeling, smell, and touch that come to us from outside of our bodies. Thesecombine with certain internal feelings of physical well being and self awareness
to make us what we are. Fortunately, we possess ways of symbolizing and under-
standing our experience by means of verbal sounds, and in this way we can try tomake sense of our experiences. A word such as lovemay represent a number of
images, and even clusters of images, suggesting such experiences as beautifulappearance, body fragrance, warmth, closeness, sexual attraction, and trust.
As Jakobson (1970, 1972) has pointed out, sociosemiotics, the science of
signs in human society, tells us a great deal about the relation of signs to mean-ing. The iconic signs bear a formal resemblance between the verbal or visualsymbol and the meaning, for example, the onomatopoeic words such as bow-
wow, cockadoodledoo, stutter and such metaphorical expressions as my father
was a tower of strength and history is looking back in order to look ahead .
Imitative magic is also based on similarities, for example, making an image of a
person that a voodoo priest wishes to destroy and then burning the image as
curses are muttered.
On the other hand, deictic or indexical signs depend on some type of con-
nection or association, for example, the distinction here, there, based on a spa-
tial relation to some object. A metony m is often based on a part-whole relation,
for example, all hands on deck! , a command for all sailors to be at their proper
places. Associative magic also involves deictic relations, for example, the use of
a lock of hair or even some uneaten food which can be used to cast a fatal spellon a hated victim. Most linguistic signs are, however, conventional, and theyneed to be if language is to be applicable to the endless sets of entities, activities,states, processes, characteristics, and relations existing in all the relevantaspects of human existence.
An increasing number of disciplines are also concerned with meaning, for
example, communication theory, informat ion theory, sociology, semiotics,
psychology, philology, linguistics, sociolinguistics, hermeneutics, and aesthet-ics. Some literary critics, however, regard any published text as “public proper-ty” and no longer a part of a particular communication event. Therefore such
texts are said to be open to almost any interpretation that any analyst wishes to
attribute to it. But semioticians such as Jakobson, Eco, and Sebeok regard anytext as a part of a communication process. And accordingly, all translating orWhat is translating?   

interpreting must involve some relevant relation between the text in the source
language and the text in the receptor language. At the same time, it should beclear that although this relation is never exact, there should be sufficient simi-
larity that it can be described as having some significant measure of equiva-lence, described either as “the closest natural equivalent,” or “as sufficientlysimilar that no reader of a translated text is likely to misunderstand the corre-sponding meaning of the source text.”
.
A new focus on translation studies
In view of the unsatisfactory nature of many translation programs and the fail-
ure of many translation theories to provide the kind of help that professional
translators can appreciate and that students can creatively employ, more and
more persons concerned with translating and interpreting are turning to trans-lation studies to form the empirical basis for a more creative approach to trans-lating and interpreting.
A recent article in an Air France publication offered to travelers contains a
fascinating interview in French with an English translation about StevenSpielberg, the famous motion-picture director. The French text uses the termnoirs (literally, “blacks”) to refer to the extras in the filming of Amistad, a film
about slavery in America, but the translator wisely rendered this term as African-
Americans , and in this way avoided a literal rendering with its negative overtones.
Similarly, the text speaks of Spielberg’s astonishing success in one film after
another as Incontestablement, Spielberg a la baraka , translated as “Spielberg is
undeniably on a roll,” which represents correctly the meaning of the Semiticexpression baraka (literally, “blessed”). Furthermore, on a roll fits the motion-
picture industry very effectively, since it is precisely the command that is oftenused to start the cameras functioning.
Although the French text has La MGM, Paramount ou Warner existent
depuis trois quarts de siècle, the English translation has MGM, Warner Bros. and
Paramount have been churning out movies for more than three-quarters of a centu-
ry. In this interesting correction of the French text the translator shows clearly
his greater knowledge of the American cinema industry and his close attentionto detail. First, he introduces the correct designation of Warner Bros , and places
it in the second position in line with the historical development of these produc-ers. He also correctly renders the French ouas and(rather than or) and changes a
generic existent to a critical judgment have been churning out, a judgment that isContexts in translating 

in line with other direct and indirect criticisms of the major producers.
The fact that not all language-cultures use similar terms for corresponding
positions of responsibility creates special problems for translators. For exam-
ple, the Spanish term Presidente refers to the president of the ruling party in
Spain, whose powers are correspondingly much fewer than those of thePresident of the United States. Actually, the Presidente de España functions
more as a prime minister, but this is not his title. Accordingly, translations fromSpanish into English may need a footnote to explain a curious difference in theuse of cognate terms.
Similarly, there were numerous misunderstandings about the role of Mao
Tse-tung, who was always addressed simply as “Chairman Mao,” but he had far
more political and economic power than any other head of state.
.
Evaluation of potential translators
There is a tendency to accept academic training as a criterion of expertness in
translating, since people think of translators as language professionals, and
professionalism is usually judged in terms of years of study. For the translationof a technical volume from French into English about textual problems in theHebrew Bible, the most promising translator appeared to be a complete
French-English bilingual who was an editor of a journal dealing with similar
subject matter. But the results were a $16,000 mistake because the translator, aswell as a close colleague, simply did not understand the nature of translating.
The translator matched the words but not the meaning.
On the other hand, one of the most creative translators I have ever known
is Herman Aschmann, a person of limited academic training, but one whobecame entranced by the cultural content and literary potential of T otonaco,an Indian language of Mexico. Instead of submitting one possible rendering ofa biblical expression, he usually had half a dozen different ways of representingthe meaning of the Greek text. Not only did he produce an exceptional NewTestament in T otonaco, but inspired local people to imitate his skill in discover-
ing more and more meaningful ways of communicating a message into anentirely different language-culture.
Top-notch translators need to have a significant aptitude for interlingual
communication, but they also need to be well grounded in the principles of
transferring the meaning of a source text into a receptor language. This
grounding can best be attained by experience in actual translating under theWhat is translating?   

guidance of expert teachers who can present the principles of translation in
terms of their own expert experience. Unfortunately, however, most institutes
of translating cannot afford to pay what good translators can make in translat-ing. And as a result, people with inferior training and experience end up teach-ing what they themselves have difficulty in doing.
If an agency that serves as a link between translators and clients wants to
evaluate a translator’s ability, it is wise to find out how three or more different
translators would render a particular difficult text. Then the translated results
should be judged by three or more professional translators. This may seem likean expensive procedure, but it is a far more successful assessment than accept-ing purely personal judgments that often fail to reveal the real underlying prob-lems. For example, one reviewer working in a translation agency involved inevaluating translations into Chinese did not let his employer know that he was
a speaker of Cantonese rather than Mandarin, and as a result his severe criti-cisms of translations by Mandarin speakers were seriously faulted. Similarly, anagency should not hire a Portuguese speaker to evaluate translations intoSpanish, or even an American to evaluate a translation into British English.
I have lectured on theories of translation in dozens of schools and insti-
tutes, but frankly I have not been satisfied with the results, despite the numer-ous practical examples of interlingual equivalence. For one thing, most peoplehave great difficulties in applying general principles to particular problems. Asa result, I have found that so much more can be accomplished by sitting downwith translators and helping them spot problems and test various solutions.
Many texts submitted for translation are extremely difficult to understand,
although not necessarily as the result of technical terminology or figurativemeanings. They are difficult to comprehend because they are so badly written.Frequently there are no indications as to the sequences of events or of ideas,and often there are predicate expressions without subjects. Such texts are manytimes the result of committee consultations with everyone wanting to insertsome of their own ideas and with no one having the responsibility of putting afragmented text into proper order. Learning to make sense out of nonsense is ahuge and seemingly unending task for translators who must deal with the aver-
age political, financial, or technical document. And even when translators areable to telephone the writers of a text about problems of comprehension, thetranslators are often told that they do not need to understand the text; rather,
they must simply translate it.
In fact, translators often need instruction and practice in rewriting bad
texts into a more understandable form, a type of intralingual translating.Contexts in translating 

Instruction in translating between two forms or levels of the same language
should be a regular part of a course in translating. For example, the following
sentence occurs in a document on translation theory, “The intercultural rela-tionship of translational issues are translated the way in which we view thetranslation process.” Before trying to translate this English statement directly
into another language, which still would not mean anything, it would be muchbetter to translate it into intelligible English.
Such intralingual translating also has a supplementary advantage in learn-
ing how to edit a text so as to make the meaningful relations between words andphrases as clear as possible. But most textbooks on translating avoid most ofthese common translational problems by introducing only well written texts.
In C hinese many of the difficult poetic texts are being translated into a
more modern form of language, even as Beowulf and the tales of Chaucer havebeen transformed into modern English.
.
Translating versus interpreting
Some problems arise because people think of translating and interpreting as
being two entirely different kinds of operations, one written and the other spo-ken. But both are part of the same act of producing in a receptor language the clos-
est natural equivalent of the source text, whether spoken or written. The signifi-cant differences are the speed with which an interpreter must make decisions, theenormous tension to keep up with the rapid flow of spoken language, the back-ground knowledge necessary for instant recall, and the willingness to produce
something that may not be “perfect.” In fac t, no interpretation is ever perfect.
Interpreting can, however, be an important plus for a translator, because it
immediately forces him or her to be up to date with respect to rapid develop-ments within any discipline, and it highlights the fact that listening to one lan-guage and speaking in another is a largely automatic process, something thatsome translators have failed to recognize.
At the former Maurice Thorez Institute of foreign languages in Moscow,
persons who had already demonstrated exceptional ability as translators could
also be tested for their possible ability to act as professional interpreters. Thetest consisted of an assigned topic, one minute to prepare, and one minute to
speak. The reason for this type of testing was the conviction that interpreting,whether consecutive or simultaneous, depended more on an ability to organize
information than on determining meaning.What is translating?   

.Translating and related studies
Many people assume that translating requires considerable training in linguis-
tics. But this is not true. Some of the best translators have no training whatso-
ever in linguistics, although some introduction to linguistics can make trans-
lating a much more meaningful activity. The essential skill of translators isbeing able to understand correctly the meaning of a source text. Knowledge oflinguistics is, of course, not a handicap, but a distinct asset in clearly distin-
guishing between the structures of a text and the understanding of a text.Linguists analyze texts, but translators must understand texts.
Translators need to know the meanings of words in particular texts, but not
necessarily all the meanings that are listed in comprehensive dictionaries.Similarly, translators do not need to analyze all the layers of grammatical struc-
tures if they can comprehend accurately the ways in which they relate to oneanother. The comprehension of a text as a whole is much more important to atranslator than outlining the structural levels, although in some cases identifi-
cation of the literary structures can provide insight for the correct understand-ing of a text.
Serious attention may also be required for evaluating the capacity of stu-
dents to use foreign languages, because most students entering programs oftranslation are usually not adequately prepared to translate, and as a result they
often acquire habits that are not easy to break. The real issue is the best use ofstudents’ time and energy in learning a foreign language in the most efficientmanner. Great advances have been made in the field of language learning, andprograms in language learning should be designed to take advantage of suchinsights and methods.
At some point in all programs of language learning some experience in
translating should be introduced, but not on the elementary level of simply try-
ing to make sense, but at more advanced levels in which translating can test theadequacy of vocabulary for certain types of texts. The translation of varioustypes of texts is particularly useful in highlighting the differences of style in dif-
ferent types of discourse.
Some programs in translation also try to provide students with extensive
information about such suppleme ntary fields as computational linguistics and
artificial intelligence, but such information is only marginal to the practicalconcerns of most translators and interpreters. Far more important is the need
to appreciate fully the importance of the intended audience. In fact, no transla-
tor should begin to work without first knowing who is the intended audience,Contexts in translating 

as determined by the publisher. For example, is the publication for children,
middle-school pupils, university level students, professionals, adults who areretooling for new or expanded careers, or golden-age retirees?
Translators also need to know if a translation would become more relevant
if the features of format (paragraphing, indentation, shifts in style, type face,spacing, and bullets) were adjusted to the meaningful elements in the text. Inaddition, the existence of previously published translations of a text inevitablyconditions people’s thinking about a revision or a new translation of such texts
as the Bible, Shakespeare’s dramas, and the Greek and Latin Classics. Duringthe process of translating a series of tests of the translation with representativegroups of the presumed audience can always be helpful.
.
The contents and structure of this volume
No book can possibly cover all the elements that influence the work of a trans-
lator or interpreter, but this volume at least tries to deal in a systematic waywith some of the principal issues. The following chapters attempt to answer the
question posed by this chapter, namely, “What is translating?” Accordingly,Chapter 2 is concerned with the relation between language and culture,because a language is always a part of a culture and the meaning of any textrefers directly or indirectly to the corresponding culture. Chapter 3 then takes
up the issue of translating words in context since the choice of particular wordsand their meanings depend primarily on various aspects of the context: othernearby words, the subject matter, the presumed audience, and especially themeanings of those words that so often do not mean what they say, for example,figurative expressions, indirect responses, and proverbs.
Chapter 4 focuses on the grammatical connections between words, and
Chapter 5 is concerned with the structures and style of discourse and how theseinfluence the translation of a text on all levels. Chapter 6 includes a number ofrepresentative treatments of translation, and Chapter 7 discusses three major
types of translation theories.What is translating?   

 
Language and culture
Language is a set of verbal symbols that are primarily auditory, but secondarily
written, now in more than 2,200 different languages with more than 400 ortho-
graphic systems for computer adaptation. Language also constitutes the most
distinctive feature of a culture, which may be described in a simplistic manneras the totality of the beliefs and practices of a society. And although a languagemay be regarded as a relatively small part of a culture, it is indispensable forboth the functioning and the perpetuation of the culture. Accordingly, compe-tent translators are always aware that ultimately words only have meaning in
terms of the corresponding culture. But while a language can usually be
acquired within a period of ten years, it takes a lifetime to understand andbecome an integral part of a culture.
In order to understand and appreciate the related roles of language and
culture as two interdependent symbolic systems, it may be helpful to describesome of their more relevant similarities, differences, and interrelations. Theirsimilarities can perhaps be best understood in terms of early acquisition, loss,collective activity, variability, change, bundles of features, and sociosemiotic
factors. The differences can also be described in terms of language as the mostdistinctive feature of a culture, a code that can speak about itself, lineararrangement, entities that have no measurable existence, and the underlyingforces that sustain and drive the culture. The interrelations between languageand culture can then be described in terms of reciprocal modifications, therates of change, the representation of culture by language, and the issues of
double causation.
An utterance normally means something, but speeches by politicians often
say nothing, and that is precisely why a group of translators at the UnitedNations unanimously agreed that the most difficult texts to translate or inter-
pret are those that contain no meaning. A translator or interpreter normallysearches for meaning because that is precisely the function of a discourse, butthere are speakers who have nothing to say or prefer to speak without sayinganything — a skill that some politicians seem to possess to a point of perfection.
Cultural practices may also be regarded as having meaningful purposes.

When a pers on buys a large home in an exclusive neighborhood, there may be
several alternative or overlapping meanings: a place to house a large family, a
way of showing off one’s wealth, a place for entertaining large numbers ofguests, and a good investment. Knowing the appropriate meaning of a nonlin-guistic event also depends on the context of who does what, when, where, andfor what reason, just as the meaning of the word rundepends largely on con-
texts: the dogs were running, the salmon are running, he is running into debt, his
nose is running . In fact, the term runcombines with a number of diverse con-
texts to provide distinct concepts.
.
Similarities between language and culture
.. Language and culture acquisition
Both language and culture are acquired at a very early age and in the largelyunstructured contexts of home and playground. Furthermore, both languageand culture seem to be frozen by upper adolescence, after which time mostpeople find it very difficult to learn a foreign language without a noticeableaccent. They also feel “more at home” in the culture of their upper adolescence,when most of the automatic patterns of behavior are seemingly accepted as the
most appropriate.
Children acquire a language at a much earlier age than most people imag-
ine. In one case an American family working for many years in Thailand need-ed to return to the United States for another assignment, but nine monthsbefore their return they had a baby girl. The parents were, however, so occupiedwith winding up numerous responsibilities that they were forced to leave the
baby girl with a Thai maid most of the time.
When the baby was nine months of age, the family returned to the United
States and three months later the baby began to speak, but she spoke Thai, notEnglish. During the months with the Thai maid the baby had learned the righttonal patterns, a vocabulary that fit her needs, and an arrangement of words
that showed a remarkable instinct for the grammar of Thai.
It is also interesting that children who have grown up speaking a local lan-
guage may seem to have completely forgotten it after a few years in a completelydifferent language-culture. But a return to the local area somehow prompts anamazing recall of the language. One member of a team of linguists going toMexico had lived in Spanish-speaking Latin America until the age of twelve,Contexts in translating 

but seemingly had completely forgotten Spanish. But within three months of
being in Mexico his Spanish came bouncing back, and he was accused of hav-ing deceived his colleagues about not knowing Spanish. Apparently, the mindnever forgets anything completely.
The skillful learning of a culture may also occur at a very early age. Most
children by two years of age know exactly how to pit their parents against each
another in order to get what the children want. They quickly learn the peckingorder of their culture, and they know whom they can hit without being hit back.
..
The loss of a language and culture
By not participating fully in a language-culture, people may also lose linguistic
skills. Many teen-age Navajos in large centers are gradually losing their facility
to speak Navajo, although they may still be able to understand what older peo-
ple say. When being interviewed on radio, they often express their regret in notbeing able to speak, and they usually blame their university studies for makingthem linguistically deficient in their mother tongue.
In some instances the loss of language proficiency may involve only one
aspect of a mother-tongue competence. For example, in most Protestant Spanish-speaking churches in New Mexico, the entire service is in Spanish, except for thereading of the Bible, which is usually done by laymen in English. The reason for
this partial deficiency in one’s mother tongue is due to the fact that Spanish is themedium of oral communication, while English is the primary language of writtencommunication: newspapers, magazines, signs, and advertisements.
Young people who pass upper adolescence in a foreign language-culture often
prefer to stay abroad. And even after advanced education in the language-cultureof their parents, they frequently prefer an overseas job because they seem to feel
more at home. This is precisely why American parents on overseas assignment areoften urged by their companies to have their children return to the “home coun-try” as soon as they complete their basic six or eight years of education.
..
Language and culture as collective activities
Both language and culture are collective enterprises, and no one person evercontrols completely a language or a culture. Furthermore, only a relatively
large group of people can transport a language or a culture from one place toanother. For example, a number of Indians along the Caribbean coast ofHonduras speak the Miskito language and live their lives like most otherLanguage and culture   

Indians along the coast, but in appearance many more closely resemble the
people of West Africa. This strange lack of agreement between language-cul-
ture and physical features can be explained by the fact that the West African fea-tures are due to the fact that most slaves who escaped from the islands of theCaribbean came one or two at a time in small canoes, entirely too few people to
carry with them their language or their culture. Accordingly, they intermarriedwith the local people and adopted their language and culture. In order to retain
a language and culture there must be a critical number of interacting people toform and maintain a language-culture.
Even a shaman’s chanting to heal a sick person usually depends on the pres-
ence of an extended family, who must confess their violations of tribal rules ortheir hidden jealousies in order to prepare the way for an act of healing.Language and culture are essentially collective enterprises, whether in talkingabout building boats with irregularly cut pieces of bread-fruit trees in mid-Pacific islands or in navigating across hundreds of miles of the Pacific Ocean in
outrigger canoes.
When indigenous people are first exposed to the outside world and to the
diseases for which they have no natural immunity, as many as one half to twothirds of the people may die before they acquire a degree of immunity or resis-tance. For example, the Paacas Novas people of eastern Peru and Western Brazildied off from a population of 300 to approximately 100 before the remainingfragments of the tribe decided to return to the jungle. The history of the nativepeople of Hawaii is similar, but there was no place to which they could escape.
..
Variability
Variability is the name of the game for both language and culture. In fact, the
voice print of each person is completely distinctive, and persons concerned
with identification of people insist that the voice print is even more distinctive
than finger prints. Furthermore, two pronunciations of the same phrase by the
same person are always somewhat different, in the same way that no two per-formances of the same dance are ever identical. And an expert cook never twiceprepares the same dish in exactly the same way. This makes home-cooking somuch less monotonous than restaurant fare.
One effective way to test variability in language is to employ a game involv-
ing twelve or more people who are asked to whisper in order a complex sen-tence of twenty words to the next person in line. An original sentence such as
“When they had all arrived, the chairman told them to forget about court pro-Contexts in translating 

cedures but to take an immediate straw vote on guilt or innocence” will proba-
bly end up as something like “When the chairman got there, the jury decided
that the criminal was guilty.”
Groups of people also adopt special ways of speaking, for example, the
medical and legal professions, as well as the Mafia of Europe and America andthe Triads of Asia. Geographical dialects of a language are typical of what takesplace when a language is spoken over an extended area for several centuries, forexample, the series Dutch, Low German, High German, and Switzer Dietsch
(the German dialect in Switzerland).
People speaking contiguous dialects can usually understand one another,
but not the people who are two or more dialects from one another. WithinEngland itself there are dialects of English that are much more diverse than themore or less standard forms of Hong Kong English, New Zealand English,Australian English, Philippines English, Indian English, South African English,
British English, and American English. Rather than such different forms of
English becoming more and more alike, they are actually becoming more andmore distinctive.
What is true of geographical dialects is equally true of sociolinguistic
dialects. Received English, the language of the exclusive secondary schools ofEngland, is being threatened by some people in the computer industry whoimitate American usage, and there are always those few snobs who want to puton airs by using outlandishly “exalted” language. T o my remark about an“unexpected rain” the night before in Southern California, my neighbor
replied, “Oh yes, a little unpremeditated precipitation.”
Different interpersonal contexts result in quite different forms of language.
These registers of language are typically on five different levels: ritual (the lan-guage of ceremonies and rites), formal (language used in speaking to peopleone does not know), informal (conversing with business colleagues), casual (ata sports event), and intimate (language used within a family), which Joos(1972) describes so effectively in a book entitled “Five Clocks.”
The culture also parallels these same five levels of language by having at
least five levels of clothing: tuxedo (also called “smoking”), business suit, sportsoutfit, beachwear, and bathrobe. The style of language used for a particularcommunication also differs greatly. Churchill could have warned the world
about the pain and suffering that World War II would bring by spelling out theloss of life, the sacrifices of labor, and the personal sorrow that the peoplewould experience, but he put it all into three short words, “blood, sweat, tears.”
Variability also exists in culture, perhaps nowhere better demonstrated thanLanguage and culture   

in the way people greet one another. In America exceptionally good friends of
the opposite sex kiss once and usually near the mouth but without touching thelips, while in Spain such people kiss twice, first on the right cheek and then onthe left cheek. In Belgium people normally kiss three times, right, left, and right,but in France people frequently kiss four times: right, left, right, left.
The system of traffic lights employing green, yellow, and red is quite similar
in various parts of the world, but frequently there are variations. In Moscow theyellow light normally occurs before and after a red light, and in some parts of
China an illuminated sign indicates the number of seconds before the traffic light
will change. In Argentina, however, drivers seem to pay little or no attention to
traffic lights. One Argentinean explained his lack of concern for stop lights by
saying, “A red light, when there is no car in sight, is an insult to my intelligence.”
At Chinese banquets in universities the honored guest is usually seated
opposite to the entrance to the dining room, and other persons seat themselves
according to their academic rank, but a government official, irrespective ofrank, takes precedence over all but the honored guest. In fact, in China govern-
ment officials have been traditionally referred to as “father and mother offi-cials,” a highly significant terminology in a Confucianist society
..
Change
Change in language is a corollary of its inherent variability. In some instances
the change seems to be particularly drastic, for example, the change from
Arabic to Roman orthography for writing Turkish, a clear symbol of Turkey’s
shift from a Middle East orientation to one facing Western Europe.
Shortly after the victory of the Communist leadership in China, many per-
sons in positions of political responsibility urged a change in orthography fromtypical Chinese characters to an alphabetic system, but such a change was regard-
ed as entirely too radical because it would cut off succeeding generations fromthe rich heritage of literature and calligraphic art. The leadership did, however,decide to employ simplified characters and even published a list of some 3,000characters in which all official business should be conducted and reported.
English is one of the major world languages and also the one that has prob-
ably borrowed the most from other languages. In fact, less than half of thevocabulary is Anglo-Saxon. Changes, however, may be only partial or affect
only certain aspects of a language. For example, Spanish has been very conserv-ative in keeping to traditional distinctions in verb tenses, but very open tochanges in spelling, while French has been intensively conservative in spellingContexts in translating 

but much more open to change in the use of the verb system.
These same seemingly arbitrary decisions with respect to change in lan-
guage also apply to cultural features. In Great Britain shifting from pounds,
shillings, and pence to a decimal system required considerable pressure over anumber of years, and the complete shift in America from yards, feet, and inches
to a metric system will require a number of more years. But some changes,
especially in culture, may be only cosmetic. Some communists in Europe usesocialist terminology as a means of hiding their ultimate purposes.
..
Bundles of linguistic and cultural features
Rarely does one particular feature of a language or culture occur alone. For lan-
guages there are almost always a bundle of features that combine to communi-cate a message. The most obvious of these features are the paralinguistic onesof voice quality, speed of utterance, loudness, hesitations, and stuttering — allof which carry along an additional message or impede communication. Forexample, excessively rapid speech may indicate that the speaker has far more to
say than the time allotted, but it can also mean an attempt to hide the real con-tent by speaking more rapidly than people can understand.
Constant interrupting of a speaker in a social setting is regarded as very bad
in most of northern Europe and America, but in the Mediterranean areas it is notonly an approved feature, but people defend their intrusions by saying that byinterrupting they show the speaker that they are interested in what is being said.
Language and culture often combine in a kind of symbiosis. In the United
States people normally stand about one arm’s length apart when conversing,but in the eastern part of the Mediterranean world people are usually not morethan half that distance apart. Accordingly, North Americans tend to react nega-tively to what seems to be aggressiveness by people in the Middle East, whilelocal people interpret the action of North Americans as being too standoffishand unfriendly.
In some societies the amount of time that a person must wait before
responding to what has been said is astonishingly long. When Tarahumara
Indians in northern Mexico are discussing an important issue, turn-taking
normally requires that a second speaker must not only wait for the first speakerto complete what he wishes to say, but he must continue to remain silent for at
least as long as the first speaker spoke. Only then is it polite to present a differ-ent viewpoint. Time spent waiting becomes a signal to the audience that thefollowing speaker has thoroughly considered everything said by the previousLanguage and culture   

speaker, but he still disagrees. Such discussions seem interminably long to
Americans, who expect a respondent to immediately jump to his feet.
Furthermore, among the Tarahumara gestures are regarded as particularly
offensive because they appear to represent physical threats.
Culture is also expressed by bundles of features. For example, in Brazil
clothing is a major element in marking class distinctions. And in proportion to
income Brazilians expend much more for attractive clothing than do NorthAmericans. But in England some of the richest persons seem to prefer their old
rumpled clothing as an inverted symbol of their status. In other words they
have so much money that they do not have to dress well to symbolize theirposition in society.
Sometimes a cultural feature may be so overdone that people need to find a
more practical solution. During banquets in China people enjoy series of toasts
to almost anyone and for almost every purpose. But this usually requires every-
one to stand up and reach out, even across a wide table, to clink glasses with eachperson. After a while this can be too much, and accordingly, more and morepeople are simply clinking their glasses on the revolving glass serving center.
American business letters are usually relatively short and right to the point,
but a literal translation of such letters into Spanish almost always gives LatinAmericans the impression that North Americans are unfriendly. On the other
hand, letters coming from Latin America to North American business men arefrequently so effusive with praise that the writers seem insincere. Intelligentbilingual secretaries soon resolve such problems by deleting effusive praise fromletters coming from Latin America and by adding expressions that will maketheir American bosses appear more friendly to business men in Latin America.
..
Sociosemiotic elements in language and culture
The most obvious sociosemiotic features of language and culture are iconic
(based on similarity), deictic (based on association), and conventional, with-out any formal connection between form and meaning.
One of the most common iconic features of language is the parallelism
between temporal and narrative sequences in history, novels, biography, andeven prophecy. The cultural iconic signs are even more obvious, for example, a
roadside sign of a knife and fork to indicate a restaurant in Europe and
America. Almost all designations for toilets include stylized pictures of a
woman wearing a skirt and of a man with full length straight pants.
Typical deictic signs are usually two-dimensional in English, here/there,Contexts in translating 

this/that but in Spanish there is an unusual three dimensional contrast: aquí
“here, ” allí“there,” and allá “there even further away.” Familiar cultural signs
include arrows to point the way, painted lines to mark traffic boundaries, and
painted piping to show the flow of various substances in chemical plants.
Most vocabulary of any and all languages is conventional, that is, there is
no one-to-one relation between the sounds and the meanings of words.Furthermore, the boundaries of meaning of practically all words in any lan-
guage are fuzzy and indefinite. For example, how thick must a thread be inorder for it to be called a string, or how thick does a string have to be before it iscalled a cord, or how thick is a cord before it is regarded as a rope. Governmentbureaus on weights and measures usually legislate such matters for the sake oftaxes and import duties, but for the general public all such words have veryindefinite boundaries of meaning.
But sets of words are not restricted to such obviously related series as
thread, string, cord, rope, etc. There are a number of different kinds of meaning-fully related sets of terms:
Clusters: run, walk, dance, jump
Inclusions: walk as including shuffle, amble, march, parade
Overlapping: love/like, dine/eat, chew/masticate
Reversives: tie/untie, brief/debrief
Direction of participation: borrow/lend, buy/sell
Positive/negative: yes/no, affirm/deny
Series
Infinite: one, two, three , etc.
Repeti tive: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, etc.
Grad ed: private, corporal, sergeant, lieutenant, major , etc.
Within a culture there are also important sets constituting cultural domains,
for example, eating, bathing, talking. The set involving eating relates to time,place, with whom, what, how and the order in which food is served and eaten.
..
Illogical features of language and culture
For the most part the systematic relations of meaning within semantic domains
seem to be quite logical. Some numerical systems are built on series of 10s, oth-
ers on 20s and still others on a so-called blanket system based on the process offolding cloth, but even in the decimal systems there are a number of unsystem-atic sets, for example, in English the numbers eleven and twelve are not consis-Language and culture   

tent with the following numbers ending in -teen, for example, thirteen,
fourteen, etc. In French the number system becomes irregular at several points,
for example, 70 is literally “sixty-ten” and 80 is “four-twenties.”
The meaning of compound words cannot always be determined by the
constituent parts, for example, in English a set-up and an up-set are distinctly
different although they contain the same verbal components. It is the arrange-ment that counts.
The ordinal and cardinal numbers of the months do not fit in English. For
example, the names of the last four months of the year, namely, September,
October, Nove mber, December contain the Latin numbers for seven, eight, nine,
and ten, but these are the ninth, tenth, eleventh, and twelfth months of the year.This anomaly occurred because Roman calendar-makers wanted the year tobegin at the time of the Roman Saturnalia festival when the sun began to returnnorth. People would rather live with an anomaly than alter the names.
There are also numerous anomalies in culture. For example, in order to
take advantage of longer days during the summer, it is much easier to turn backthe clock than it is to adjust to a presumably different time of day. In theWestern World people pay to have their fortune told, even when most of the
generalities never prove true. But in India a person can pay to have a guru tellthem the nature of their earlier reincarnations. First, a person’s finger print istaken and then presumably matched with an infinite number of existing fingerprints and at last a scribe reads off what has been written down on seeminglyendless rolls. As can be readily recognized, reading reincarnations is a muchsafer and easier profession than fortune-telling.
..
The location of language and culture
Many people wrongly assume that language and culture must exist in dictio-
naries, grammars, and encyclopedias, but this is obviously not true. Such
books are only limited attempts to describe some of the more salient features ofthese two interrelated patterns of behavior. The real location of language andculture is in the heads of participants.
There is a wide-spread account of Bloomfield’s answer to an inquiry about
how long it would take him to write a complete grammar of the English lan-guage. He is claimed to have said that if he had twenty well-trained linguisticassistants and twenty years, he could probably produce a fairly accurateaccount of the English language. But by that time the language would no doubthave changed significantly, and according he would never be able to catch up.Contexts in translating 

When any author reviews his own early publications, he soon realizes how
rapidly languages change, but also how tenacious are some of the awkward
illogical forms, for example, the irregular forms of the verb to be : am, is, are,
was, were, been as well as how quickly an abbreviation like Ms, as a compromise
between Missand Mrs, can be accepted.
.Differences
.. Language as a distinctive part of culture
Although language is clearly a part of culture, it is also one of its most distinc-
tive features. One night I was waiting for a plane in the Cairo airport, when incame a group of people speaking Japanese, but they did not behave likeJapanese. There was no tourist guide carrying a little flag, and the men did not
gather around a prestigious man, nor did the women gather around a presti-
gious woman. Furthermore, the people were noisy as they mixed freely, joked,
and laughed. In addition, they did not dress like Japanese tourists.
I became so curious about these people that I finally spoke to a woman who
appeared to be rather cosmopolitan in her behavior, and I asked in English,“Where do you come from?” to which she immediately replied, “Oh, we’re all
Americans from Hawaii.” The people had retained their language, but had so
radically changed their other patterns of behavior that they seemed to consti-
tute a cultural anomaly.
..
Distinctive elements of language
Language is not only a distinctive feature of a group of people, but it is also dif-
ferent from other codes in that it can be used to speak about itself. This meansthat language can be used to describe its own structures. Written codes,whether alphabetic, syllabic, or ideo graphic (as in the case of Chinese), are all
secondary in the sense that they are codes to represent language. The DNA,however, is also a primary code, but it is not able to be used to analyze itself.
Language is also structurally linear in that it moves in one spatial direction,
although it may combine with gesture codes (movements of face, hands, head,shoulders, and stance) to reinforce and even to negate the meaning of words, asin the case of a screamed utterance of “I love you!” while twisting the face into apicture of hate.Language and culture   

Although language is rightfully described as structurally linear, the under-
standing of language does not precede in merely one direction. The real mean-
ing of a word may depend on a context that occurs on a following page.Furthermore, fast reading of a text using a system described as “speed reading”
depends on assimilating the meaning of a passage by reading successively dif-ferent portions of a page containing three or four lines at a time. Moreover, inreading narrow-column texts, as in most newspapers and popular magazines, a
reader does not look back and forth for each line, but simply glides rapidly
down the text while concentrating on the content vocabulary and passing overmany formal markers, such as prepositions and conjunctions, since the mean-ing of such linking words is usually predictable from the contexts. At the sametime, however, close attention must be given to negatives and modals of proba-bility, for example may, could, possibly .
This process of reading is essentially based on the principle of reading by
contexts rather than by lines, since so frequently the meaning of words depends
on what follows rather than on what precedes.
Understanding oral language precedes very much the same way. In general,
a hearer does not tick off the meanings of words one at a time, but assimilates alanguage by chunks, as much as twelve seconds at a time. This process usuallyworks quite well as long as a person understands clearly the topic of the dis-
course. Otherwise, a series of comments, without a topic to which to relate the
comments, can be very frustrating.
..
The creation of cultural symbols
A culture creates and endows certain entities with important cultural signifi-cance. A path may become for some tribal people a way of explaining their tra-ditional way of life. As long as the people can remember, each generation haswalked the same path. For the Buddhist world, however, the wheel is the appro-priate symbol to represent constant change that always reverts to its originalposition, a kind of rotational reincarnation. Other cultures live in the shadowof a golden age, which was not really so golden, but it seems to constitute a goal
to recapture. But still other cultures place their trust in a messiah who will
come at the critical point in history and remake the chaotic world.
Perhaps the most unusual feature of culture is its capacity to treat as real a
number of entities and concepts that have no measurable existence, for exam-
ple, mermaids, unicorns, demons, jinns, angels, heaven, hell, reincarnation,horoscopes, clairvoyance, fortune telling, a rabbit’s foot, tea leaves, and lines ina person’s hand.Contexts in translating 

A culture may actually reinterpret a symbol. Classical Greeks regarded the
daimones as beneficent intermediaries between the gods and humans, but the
Christians largely transformed such spiritual entities into fearful demons.
.. Language as a four-level system
Language consists of four distinct levels of signs: sounds, words, grammar, and
discourse, with seemingly no one central cerebral region for integration or con-trol of verbal communication. But for culture there seem to be certain drives
that combine to make decisions favorable to each person: especially, self-preser-
vation, power, and belonging. Self-prese rvation seems to be one of the most
fundamental drives, even in circumstances in which death would seem to bemuch more advantageous. The concern for power, whether political, physical,
or monetary, is also a vital factor in making decisions, but many people place aneven higher price on the sensation of being accepted and belonging to others.
..
The use of language by culture
(1) providing information about the processes and the values of a culture (edu-cation is mastering the information regarded as essential for being a part of asociety), (2) directing the activity of a culture (traditionally described as the
imperative function), (3) establishing and maintaining a positive emotional
state for the participants within a culture (the emotive function), (4) ritualalteration in the status of participants in a culture, for example, marriage vows,sentencing of criminals, religious ritual, internment of the dead (the performa-tive function), (5) interpersonal relat ions (who speaks to whom about what
and in what manner), (6) cognitive activity (the most common use of languageis in thinking, although some thoughts are not necessarily expressed in words),(7) recreative (the use of language in games, for example, scrabble, crosswordpuzzles, word-guessing games on television, verbal challenges involving poetryand song), and (8) aesthetics, the use of languag e for aesthetic expression, espe-
cially in poetry and elegant prose.Language and culture   

.Interrelations between language and culture
.. Differences in culture mean differences in language
Because Hebrew, Greek, and Latin all had three distinct terms for body, soul,
spirit, people throughout the Middle Ages in Western Europe thought that there
must be three fundamental aspects or parts of human personality. Descartes,
however, insisted that in place of three features there are only two: the physicaland the nonphysical, a distinction that has largely dominated popular psycholo-gy until now. But more and more neurophysiologists and psychologists find no
way to separate the body and the spirit. The fact that fully 50% of diseases havecertain psychosomatic factors involved has seemed further evidence that people
do not consist of two parts, but only of one complex unity, as argued so effec-tively in the recent volume, “ Descarte’s Error” by Domasio (1994).
When a culture experiences radical change, the vocabulary also undergoes
corresponding alterations. For example, the cattle-raising Anuaks of the Sudan
and Ethiopia had thousands of technical terms for various colors, shapes, sizes,and ages of cattle, but at one time they had only one word for everything madeof metal. But after the arrival of small steam boats on the tributaries to the Nileand after airplanes began landing on the lakes made by the meandering rivers,the Anuaks starting living and working in a different technological world.Within a few years they created thousands of new terms for parts of motor
boats and airplanes, as well as for electric lights, flashlights, motors, and evencomputers. All of these changes have brought radical changes of wealth and
power for a society that has had a long tradition of belief in “limited good,” thatis to say, the existence of only so much “good” in the world, and anyone whoseems to have a disproportionate amount of possessions or power, must havetaken some of these “goods” away from others.
In the neighboring Shilluk tribe family members destroyed a young
orchard planted by a younger brother who was likely to become much richerthan any other member of the family. He would then have much more spiritpower than any one else, and this would destroy the family solidarity. Amongthe Hopi Indians of the Southwest United States something of this same atti-tude exists, and accordingly children hesitate to excel in school because thistends to disturb the sense of equality within a group.Contexts in translating 

.. The rate of change in language and culture
The rate of change within a language-culture depends on a number of factors.
But in almost all situations the change in culture appears to be faster than
change in language. This conservatism in language has an important implica-
tion for self-preservation, since the need to communicate effectively needs to besomething so conservative that people will have no doubts as to the meaning ofa sentence. But it does seem strange that languages also appear to change direct-ly proportionate to the density of communication. It would seem only naturalthat peripheral dialects would change more rapidly than a central dialect sincethey would be only on the edge of a speech community. Nevertheless, it is thedense center of language use that undergoes the greatest and the most rapidchange. In other words the language of Paris changes faster than the French of
Guadeloupe or New Caledonia. Similarly, the English spoken from Boston to
Washington DC is changing faster than the English of Memphis T ennessee or
Prince Edward Island in Canada.
High-school students in Iceland can read and understand Icelandic sagas
from 9th Century, while Americans have great difficulty trying to understandChaucerian English from the 14th Century.
..
Partial representation of the culture by language
Language represents the culture because the words refer to the culture, as the
beliefs and practices of a society, but the representation is never complete or per-fect. Changes in language inevitably tend to lag behind changes in culture, butthere are also aspects of culture that are so taken for granted that people simplydo not feel the need for terminology to talk about what is completely obvious.
For certain aspects of experience there may be a significant shortage of specific
terms. For example, the verb lie refers to saying or writing something that is not
true, and a person can use prevaricate (with the usual implication of oral lan-
guage) or falsify (often related to documents). But what about white lies (those
that generally do no harm to anyone, other than to the liar) and black lies (those
that are obviously untruths and harmful). But there are also exaggerations thatcross the line into lies, and there are understatements that do the same. There arealso political promises that everyone, including the speaker, realizes can neverprove true, and there is also slanted advertising, justified because it offers theaudience “a chance to decide for themselves.” Perhaps so much of modern life is alie that we are numbed to the distinctions that constantly assail us on television,bill boards, newspapers, magazines, internet, and books.Language and culture   

.. Double causation
In many parts of Africa violent death is usually attributed to double causation.
A man killed by lightning is first the victim of the lightning bolt, but most
African medicine men will also claim that someone must have been practicing
black magic so as to make sure that the man would be in precisely the placewhere the lightning would strike.
People who believe in horoscopes likewise believe in double causation,
because good luck or tragedy must be due in part to favorable or unfavorablepositions of the planets and stars at the time of a person’s birth. This is simplyastronomical predeterminism or predest ination. Those who find solace in tea
leaves or in crystals are likewise addicts of double causation. But perhaps thosewho attribute all good and evil fortune to saints, angels, jinns, or the spirits inthe caves are similarly to be pitied.Contexts in translating 

 
Wor ds in context
Anyone attempting to understand the meaning of words in context should
probably first consider some of the serious misconceptions about their mean-
ings, especially the idea that the words of any language constitute a rich mosaicof terms that fit together neatly into various semantic domains or fields. Thereare no neat verbal mosaics, because the meanings of words constantly overlapwith one another and the boundaries of meaning are fuzzy and poorly defined,
for example, the series love, like, adore, worship, be crazy about, be head overheals in love with. Even in the short series of sprint, dash, race there is consider-
able overlapping in referring to the act of rapid running. Sprintseems to focus
more on the rapid and effective movement of the legs, and race suggests com-
petition, while dash appears to emphasize simply fast movement in space,
without regard to style. The real clues to meaning depend on contexts.
In so me sets of terms there may be quite evident features of degree, for
example, work, labor, toil, slave , but the relative amount of effort involved can-
not be plotted mathematically because so much depends on the particular con-texts in which such words occur.
Most people assume that the meaning of nouns derived from verbs can be
easily recognized because they have pred ictable meanings, especially when a verb
occurs with the common suffix -er. But the word r unner does not always refer to
someone who runs. For example, runner may also refer to a long piece of metal on
which a sled or sleigh glides, or even to the blade of ice-skates. But runner may also
refer to a long, narrow rug used in a hall or to a slender stolon of a straw-berrybush, or even to a smuggler who must run blockades. This same suffix may alsooccur on stems that never occur in isolation, for example, carpenter , but as -orin
doctor and benefactor as well as -eurin chauffeur (borrowed from French).
Some people believe that knowledge of the true meanings of words depends
on knowing the history of their development, but etymology is often quite mis-leading. For example, most people assume that the component by- in bylaw,
byproduct, bypath refers to some type of subordinate or derived law, product,
path . Historically, however, the by-in bylaw is derived from burgh, that is, the
law of a town, not of a county or province, but its meaning has been reinterpret-

ed to refer to a law that is not a part of a constitution but is a supplementary doc-
ument defining more specifically some of the provisions of a constitution.
Conversely, most people assume that duck in he shot a duck and he tried to
duck a blow must represent an entirely different kind of word history. In reality,
however, the two occurrences of duck are historically related and are based on
the typical behavior of a water fowl that is famous for ducking under the sur-face of the water.
Although most people assume that languages are essentially unchangeable,
the truth is that all living languages are in the constant process of change.Sometimes the change is rapid and obvious, as when the English term gay
became primarily a designation of homosexuals. In Spanish the verb coger , a
very common term traditionally meaning “to take,” became a common expres-
sion for having sexual intercourse.
Because many languages form new words by adding words together, that is,
by compounding, as in breakwater, gaspipe, nonsense, gentleman , some people
assume that this is what always happens. But some words are the result ofshortening, for example, intercom for intercommunication system and photo for
photograph.
Many people also believe that dictionaries are the final authority and
depository of all the words of a language. There are, however, some words thatnever get into a dictionary, for example, short-lived adolescent slang andrapidly evolving technical terms of science. In fact, by the time a dictionary is
compiled and published it is almost always at least twenty-five years out of date,
especially in the listing of idioms.
In many instances dictionaries become so succinct that they do not help a
reader. For example, the relatively common term carbohydrate is defined as
“any of a class of organic compounds that are polyhydroxy aldehydes or poly-
hydroxy ketones, or change to such substances on simple chemical transforma-
tions, as hydrolysis, oxidation, or reduction.” If a person can understand thisdefinition, then he certainly doesn’t need to look up the word carbohydrate.
The definition is true but almost meaningless for the majority of people whowant information about the substances that make up a carbohydrate. Fortranslators encyclopedias are often much more helpful than dictionaries.
Many people assume that lists of synonyms provide all the words that
mean the same as a key term. In reality, however, there are no complete syn-onyms in the sense of two words having exactly the same designative (denota-tive) and associative (connotative) meanings. One dictionary lists as synonymsof form the following terms: mold, appearance, cast, cut, figure, shape, outline ,Contexts in translating 

but such terms approximate the meaning of form only in highly specific con-
texts. Other dictionaries list as synonyms of distress such words as anguish ,
which seems much more emotional in content, and hardship, which is much
less acute than distress. Actually, the listing of synonyms and antonyms is large-
ly misleading because the necessary contexts that would justify assembling
such terms into semantic domains or fields are not given.
Because both dictionaries and grammars seem to focus on the rules and
laws of a language, they suggest to many people that languages are essentiallyregular and competely rule governed. In fact some of the most interesting
aspects of language are swept away by some linguists as mere subcategoriza-tions. But for English even the regularities of the orthography largely mask theirregularities of the pronunciations. Past tense verb forms such as judged,
clipped, grabbed, picked are all monosyllabic, pronounced as jujd, clipt, grabd,
pikt, in which the final consonant is voiced or voiceless depending on the pre-ceding consonant, but a word such as landed consists of two syllables in which
the second syllable consists of a central vowel followed by a d. The doubling of
the medial consonants and the regularity of the written form of words (anaspect of graphemics, rather than phonemics) is probably an advantage for theaverage reader of English.
In comparison with a number of other languages in the Indo-European
family, English seems much more regular in its formations, but for some of its
most common words the changes in tense forms are extensive, for example,make/made, go/went, am/are/is/was/were/be/been . Such irregularities can only
be explained by the fact that these words are so common; otherwise, theywould have been leveled by analogy to regular formations.
.
The types and functions of contexts in understanding texts
.. Syntagmatic contexts
In determining the meanings of words the role of the context is maximized and
the role of any focal element is minimized, which means that the context actual-ly provides more distinctiveness of meaning than the term being analyzed (Joos.1972). Note, for example, the meaning of runin contexts such as the boy was
running and the horse was running. The movement of the feet is different for
bipeds and quadrupeds, but there are repeated instances in which no foot is intouch with the supporting surface. It is this distinction that provides a basis forWords in context   

distinguishing between runand walk . And although relative speed is an impor-
tant factor, it is not determinative because there can be stationary running or
running in place. Furthermore, some people can walk faster than others can run.
But what is to be done in applying this same definition to the running of a
crab along a beach. At least two feet are in touch with the surface at all times,
and with a snake running across the lawn there are no feet and the body is in
continuous contact with the supporting surface. All of these instances of fast
movement by an animate being seem to fit together into a type of running,although the different minor distinctions are certainly relevant. All of thesemovements do, however, seem to belong to the same general class of rapidmovement in space by an animate being. But even in these examples the con-cept of rapid movement in space depends on the combination of runand the
context of an animate creature.
In causative constructions such as he ran the horse in the second race , there are
two actions, what the person responsible for the horse actually did in getting the
horse entered into the second race, and what the horse did in doing the running.
What, however, is the best way to treat such expressions as the salmon are
running, the blue fish are running, the porpoises are running ? The physical con-
text is water, not land, and there are fins and flippers, not feet. In the statement
the salmon are running the wider context of what we know about salmon in the
Northern Pacific means that vast numbers of salmon are swimming upstream
to the very ponds where they were hatched some three or four years earlier.
There the salmon return to breed and die.
For the statement the blue fish are running, the usual implication is that
there are large schools of such fish and that they are biting, and although theporpoises are mammals, not fish, a statement that they are running is parallelto a reference about fish.
In analyzing a series of uses of a word such as runshould there be a differ-
ence based on the context of land versus water? Most speakers of Englishwould seem to agree that this would be significant, but no final decision can be
made until all different “uses of run in context” can be carefully studied,
because there are always marginal uses that do not neatly fit any classification.For example, Americans are very likely to say, she ran over to the neighbors to
borrow some sugar or he ran down town to get some more icecream because so
many more people came to the picnic. It would be extremely rare for either thewoman or the man to have actually run. The first statement focuses more on
the short period of time, and in the second sentence the man would presum-ably have taken a car to go to town. These two uses of runfocus on the briefContexts in translating 

period of time and not on the actual physical movement.
But runmay also occur in a number of additional contexts, for example,
the clock is running, his heart is running, the machine is running, the car is run-
ning. These sentences involve different types of internal, and usually mecha-nized, running, since even in the case of the last sentence, namely, the car is run-
ning, the reference is normally not to the movement of the car but to the move-ment of the engine left running.
In the context he ran the car down the hill there are also two activities, the
driving and the movement of the car, in which case the first may be regarded ascausative and the second as participational, but there are also other differentkinds of running, for example, the water is running, the faucet is running, his
nose is running, the flour is running out of the bag , in which there is a movement
of a mass, either liquid or dry. The use of faucet or nose is obviously an indirect
reference to a liquid mass.
For contexts about more or less scheduled transportation by vehicles, the
verb runhas been traditionally employed, for example, the bus runs between the
end of Manhattan and 125th Street, a fast train runs each day from Chicago to San
Francisco, a Cunard Line ship runs regularly between New York and Cherbourg .
But until twenty years ago most Americans in the Northeast spoke of commer-
cial airplanes as flying from one place to another. Gradually, however, people are
more frequently using the verb run, especially for frequent, scheduled trips, for
example, a plane runs every hour on the hour from New York to Washinton D.
C.
The verb runmay also refer to extension, for example, the play ran for three
months, the line ran off the page, the bill ran to sixty dollars, the rose bush ranalong the fence .” In all of these instances run combines with words to refer to
extent of time, space, or quantity. The final example, namely, the rose bush ran
along the fence , may refer either to a state or to a process of growth, but in all of
these typical uses of runthe meaning is a combination of run and the context.
And the context obviously contributes far more to the resulting concept than
the verb run . Accordingly, it would seem wise to regard the various occurrences
of run as instances of molecular meaning, rather than of atomic meaning.
Instead of treating the verb runas having a hundred or so meanings, with dif-
ferent words in the context pointing to the right meaning, it seems much betterto regard the appropriate lexical unit as consisting of the verb runplus the con-
text. In other words, instead of thinking of run and the context as two atomic
units, it would appear much more realistic to combine the verb run and the
context into a “semantic molecule.”
In addition to these frequently occurring examples of runin various con-Words in context   

texts, there are a number of minor types, for example, the dye is running, the
color is running (a reference to loss of color or discoloration), the boulder ran
down the hill, the loose hubcap ran into the ditch (movement caused by gravity
or thrust), he ran two thousand copies of the book (a matter of publication), they
ran him in the spring election (a process of being elected to a political position),
a run on the stock exchange (an overwhelming demand for liquidation of
assets), the cow ran dry, the well ran dry (a process of change of state), he ran
2,000 head of cattle on his ranch (a reference to pasturing), the business runs very
efficiently (management of an institution), her stocking is running, the sleeve of
his sweater has a run in it (a reference to the unravelling of knitted wear).
Although the above occurrences of run together with different types of
contexts are not exhaustive, they do illustrate certain important advantages
over the traditional tendency to consider a verb such as runas having an inher-
ent number of meanings and the contexts only pointing to the correct interpre-
tation. It is not only more relevant to recognize the important role of the con-texts, but especially for translators it is also more significant to consider both
the focal term and the contexts as constituting molecular units. It would be amistake, however, to insist that such a molecular approach to lexical meaning isthe only way to deal with multiple semantic uses of terms.
The verb run occurs in a number of partial and complete idiomatic struc-
tures with into and down (Makkai, 1972). In the statement John ran into the
house the component r an into may be understood in a completely literal sense if
John was physically running and ended up inside the house. But if the context
shows that John was in a car at the time he ran into the house, then into is not
used in its literal sense of being within an enclosure but indicates impact, inwhich the car would normally be more damaged than the house.
But it is also possible to say on the first day of the convention John ran into his
friend Jim in the publications section . The chances are that John was not actually
running but simply encountered his friend in unexpected circumstances. Since
the likelihood is that John was not actually running, the combination ran into
needs to be treated as a full idiom, because neither component of the phrase isto be understood in its normal sense.
In the statement he ran down the hill both components ran and down are no
doubt to be understood in their literal meanings, but in the sentence they ran
down the opposition with scurrilous propaganda the combination r an down is
clearly an idiom. On the other hand, the statement they ran down the criminal
may be a semi-idiom if the criminal was chased and finally caught, or a com-plete idiom if ran down refers merely to identification.Contexts in translating 

The verb run may also refer to extension in the context the road runs along
the ridge of the mountains, but this usage overlaps somewhat with the concept
of shape in talking about entities, for example, the road winds through the valley,the road follows the bends in the river, the road turns just beyond the bridge.
Some verbs, however, are primarily only markers of so-called “voice,” as in
the case of make used as a causative: the captain made the men run through the
woods, he made a liquid into a solid (cause to become or happen), he made a
good statesman (become), the ship made port (cause to be at an appropriate
place or state), make believe (cause to be considered true), make a speech (cause
to happen), make sense (cause to be meaningful in some context).
The context not only determines how a word is to be understood, but also
how it is to be translated. For example, in Chinese terms for “fish” and “water” donot “run.” When a “fish runs” it “disappears,” and when “water runs” it “leaks.”
Some people find it helpful to study distinctions in meaning in sets of
words having the same initial component, for example, the element out- in the
series outcast, outclass, outcrop, outdo, outline, outlook, outfit, outlast, outlaw,
outpost, outrank, outsell, outvote, outwit, in which there are two quite differentsemantic functions of out-: (1) beyond certain limits, either physical or socio-
logical, outcast, outcrop, outlook, outlaw, outpost and (2) beyond an expected
degree: outclass, outdo, outrank, outsell, outvote, outwit . But the terms outfit and
outline do not seem to fit either category.
Other people find it interesting and helpful to study series of phrases hav-
ing one component the same, but with quite different meanings for the keycombinations. An excellent set of examples of molecular units includes soft egg
(only partially cooked), soft music (low volume of sound), so ft touch (either
touching a surface lightly or a person who can be easily appealed to for help),
soft spot (an area that yields readily to touch), so ft drink (an effervescent, nonal-
coholic beverage), soft focus (a photograph with somewhat indistinct lines),
soft heart (generous attitude), soft pedal (to understate certain differences), soft
sell(selling without putting on pressure to buy), soft spoken (low volume of
speech), software (computer program), soft wood (wood from nondeciduous
trees, which may actually be harder than the wood of some deciduous trees).
These various types of syntagmatic contexts represent the principal means
by w hich most people learn the meanings of at least 95% of their active and
passive vocabulary. In fact, many people have a vocabulary of 25,000 words ormore, without ever having looked up a word in a dictionary. But these syntag-matic types of contexts are only one of several kinds of contexts that are rele-vant for understanding the meaning of a text.Words in context   

.. Para digmatic contexts
In many instances, however, it is important to determine the meanings of
terms on the basis of contrasts and comparisons with the meanings of related
words within the same paradigmatic set, for example, talk, whisper, babble,
murmur, stutter, sing, hum . These seven terms all belong to the domain of noise
produced by speech organs, but there are also very clear distinctions in mean-
ing, based on such features as verbalization, musical pitch, repetition, andvoicelessness.
The word talkis the most common term and may be characterized as verbal,
nonmusical, and alternating between voicing and voicelessness. But whisper
generally refers to speech in which the vocal cords do not vibrate, except in thecase of stage whisper (used in dramatic performances) in which there is a vibra-
tion of the vocal cords but also heavy breathiness that gives the impression oflack of vibration of the vocal cords. Babbling is a type of pseudoverbal perfor-
mance, with alternating voicing and voicelessness, while murmur is masked,
low-volume speech. The term stuttering designates a kind of speech in which
phrase-initial consonants or syllables are repeated several times and often themeaning of the utterance is largely masked. Singing, however, involves both ver-
balization and musical pitch, while humming is nonverbal but has musical pitch.
Various types of self-propelled movement, for example, march, dance,
walk, hop, skip, jump , may also be described in terms of certain distinctive fea-
tures. For example, march is walking rhythmically, usually in company with
other persons, while dance is also rhythmic, but involves a number of different
possible movements of the feet and legs (as well as torso, arms, hands, and headin some cultures). The meaning of walk implies various types of movement in
space by alternating movements of the lower limbs, although it is possible tomimic this movement by walking on one’s hands.
Hopping normally involves only one foot at a time, and skipping involves a
double forward movement, first with one foot and then with the other, andjumping may involve both feet at the same time or with a running start a single
foot in taking off and one or both feet in landing.
The analysis of meaningful distinctions between words within a single
domain can be very helpful in finding precisely the right manner to representthe meaning of a source-language text. But there are certain disadvantages inthat people do not realize that such meanings seem much more distinctive thantheir really are. The semantic boundaries of all meanings are fuzzy and indefi-nite (Nida, 1975).Contexts in translating 

.. Contexts involving cultural values
Differences of cultural value are also important factors in understanding a
series of related terms, for example, nigger, negro, colored, black and Afro-
American representing in each instance a desire to avoid or to employ expres-
sions that are culturally insulting. Unfortunately, however, in some instancessubstitutes are misleading. For example, janitors in universities are often called
building engineers so as to avoid depreciating the activity of people who some-
times make more money than do the professors. But the terminology can alsobe misleading.
The typical vocabulary of certain occupations also carries important infor-
mation about status and behavior, for example, the professional dialects oflawyers and doctors, who often seem to use words to reinforce their social sta-tus rather than to communicate important information to clients. But thedialects of the Mafia in Europe and the Triads in Asia have an added purpose ofnot being understandable to persons that are not a part of the group.
Dialects are often described as being horizontal if they refer to people living
in different areas, for example, Cockney vs. Midlands dialect in Great Britainand in New England B ah Hahbah for Bar Harbor . Such differences are often
employed in novels to highlight distinctions in social class.
In many respects the vertical sociolinguistic dialects are even more signifi-
cant since they carry so much information about the education and social classof participants. Compare, for example, southern Appalachian you’unz and y’oll
for you allin standard English. Sociolinguistic dialects are extremely important
in some novels since the deviations from standard usage often serve to markmore honest, reliable characters. In traditional American society farmers areusually regarded as more upright that city dwellers.
Correct technical terminology also serves to mark a statement as reliable and
the writer as knowledgeable, for example, terms in computer technology,enhanced mode, mouse, back-up files, cartridge fonts, antivirus, autoexec.bat files,
compressed drives, directory tr ee, doubleclick, erase command, floppy disks (even
when disks are no longer floppy), laptop, memmaker, menudefault, notepad, online
help, optimizing windows, program manager, scrolling, keyswap file . But correct ter-
minology also serves as a context for highlighting technical content and providinga basis for recognizing the possible technical meanings of other words.
Some terms may simply serve to suggest emotive responses. For example,
in American English such words as nation, apple pie, mother, stars and stripes
provide a positive emotional setting, while for most people words such asWords in context   

junky, garbage, bastard, punk, slut are emotively negative, but speakers may dif-
fer radically about the emotive values of such words as communism, socialism,
free enterprise, homosexual.
.. Contexts that favor radical shifts in meaning so as to attract attention
Figurative meaning is a frequent technique to attract attention. For example,
the term delicious in the phrase delicious idea has nothing to do with taste, but
with a pleasurable attitude toward some concept. Likewise, a travel agency in
Brussels attempts to attract customers by means of a sign Stop and Go .
Some contexts, however, require expressions to provide meaning without
stating precisely what is involved. When an investigator sought information from
the Sorbonne University in Paris about a professor from the Middle East who wassupposed to be extremely poor, the clerk in the department of personnel couldnot give a direct answer, because this would be ethnically unacceptable, and soshe remarked, “He has an apartment in the Continental Hotel,” which at thattime was the most expensive hotel in Paris. Nothing more needed to be said.
Most proverbs also occur in contexts that show that they should not be
understood literally. The West African proverb about “People who hunt ele-phants never sleep cold” is not about the benefits of firewood left by elephantsthat break down trees to feed on the leaves, but about undertaking difficulttasks so as to have many supplementary benefits.
..
The context of a source text
The meaning of a text may depend in large measure on some completely differ-
ent text, often spoken of as a process of intertextuality. For example, out
damned spot and to be or not to be immediately suggest Shakespeare, and verily,
verily and hallelujah sound like the Bible. The writer of the biblical books of
First and Second Chronicles obviously depended for much of the content onother Old T estament books, especially First Samuel through Second Kings.What is particularly interesting is the fact that in Second Samuel 24.1 it is the
Lord God who urged King David to number the people of Israel, but in 1
Chronicles 21.1 it is Satan who is responsible for this tragedy. Such a difference
has important theological significance, especially since the Books of theChronicles were written after the return from exile in Babylon.Contexts in translating 

.. The audience of a discourse as context
The audience of a discourse also serves as a context to highlight the meaning.
For example, the parable of the Father and Two Sons in the Gospel of Luke,
Chapter 15, there are two audiences: the repentant outcasts who gladly listenedto Jesus and the Pharisees who were suspicious of Jesus and had contempt for
the outcasts. The differences in the audience parallel closely the experiencesand behavior of the younger and older sons. The parable is really about thegoodness of God, which the outcasts ac cept, and about self-righteousness, that
is never reconciled to the God of the New T estament.
..
Different characters and circumstances in a discourse as contexts
for different language registers
The different registers employed in a discourse, namely, ritual, formal, infor-
mal, casual, and intimate, often serve as diagnostic devices to mark differentsociological relations between the characters of a novel or degrees of presumed
identity between speakers and audiences. Close friends rarely use formal lan-guage in speaking to one another, but as a plot develops a change in registerbetween persons can be a highly meaningful device.
In some cases, however, the level of language does not seem to match the
vocabulary of the presumed audience. The French newspaper Le M onde is gen-
erally leftist in its interpretation of the news and would seem therefore toappeal to the less educated segment of the French proletariat, but the high styl-istic level of language in both vocabulary and grammatical structures is decid-edly upper class. This disparity shows that in reality the newspaper is directedto intellectuals and not to the average French speaker.
..
The imprecise content of a text as the context for symbolic language
The symbolic language of lyric poetry and religious expression seems to be adirect result of the imprecise nature of lyric poetry, and especially so of reli-gious poetry. Note the following brief poem by Emily Dickinson:
My Life Closed Twice
My life closed twice before its close;
It yet remains to see
If Immortality unveil
A third event to me.Words in context   

So huge, so hopeless to conceive,
As these that twice befell.
Parting is all we know of heaven,
And all we need of hell.
.. The content of a text as a context for phonetic symbolism
The phonetic symbolism in words is a powerful device for reinforcing the
meaning of a text, and perhaps more than any other poet, Edgar Allan Poeemployed phonetic symbolism as a means of establishing a contextual relationbetween verbal sounds and semantic content. Compare, for example, the third,fourth, and fifth lines in The Raven.
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door —
“ `Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door —
Only this and nothing more.”
And in the first stanza of The Bells:
Hear the sledges with the bells —
Silver bells!
What a world of merriment their melody foretells!
How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,
In the icy air of night!
While the stars that oversprinkle
All the heavens seem to twinkle
with a crystalline delight;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells
From the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells —
From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.
Or consider the effective use of phonetic symbolism in the first and third sen-tences of The Fall of the House of Usher :
“During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year,
when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing
alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country, and atlength found myself, as the shades of evening drew on, within view of themelancholy House of Usher…I looked upon the scene before me — upon themere house, and the simple landscape features of the domain — upon theContexts in translating 

bleak walls — upon the vacant eye-like windows — upon the few rank sedges
— and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees — with an utter depression ofsoul which I can compare to no earthly sensation more properly than to theafter-dream of the reveler upon opium — the bitter lapse into everyday life —the hideous dropping off of the veil.”
Note the unusually high number of s-like sounds and the repeated use of nasal
consonants, as well as the frequency of dand r.
The preceding types of contexts are not exhaustive, but they may serve as
some of the more important ways in which a context may lead to certain types
of content and reinforce the meaning and form of a text.
.Range of vocabulary
.. The level of vocabulary required for translating texts in
B and C languages
As already noted in Chapter 1, a high percentage of young people studying to
be translators or interpreters have a serious lack of relevant vocabulary in their
B and C languages (their primary and secondary foreign languages) and someare inadequate even in their A language (their own mother tongue). As a result,students waste a great deal of time in taking courses in translating and inter-preting. In fact, some of the best schools make students pass stiff examinations
in such languages before permitting them to study translating, and in somecountries translating and interpreting are only graduate courses. Such schools
obviously produce much better graduates because they start with more quali-fied people and therefore do not need to spend a large amount of time in lan-guage teaching. Furthermore, programs in translating are not ideal ways tolearn a foreign language.
It is, however, impossible to indicate the size of vocabulary that a person
needs for translating, because so much depends on the contents of a text and theaudience for which a translation is prod uced. Some people claim that a transla-
tor must know a minimum of 50,000 words, but this does not say anything
about the active and passive knowledge. The only way to test lexical adequacy isto determine how many times translators need to look up the meanings of
words on a typical page of text. If, for example, people have to look up an aver-
age of six words per page such persons are clearly not ready to start translating aseither free-lance or in-house professionals. Their progress will be so slow thatWords in context   

they will never make a living out of their work, and the fact that they must look
up so many words means that they are very likely to make serious mistakes inunderstanding a source text. In order to translate efficiently and accuratelytranslators should not have to look up more than one or two words per page.
Whenever possible a translator should learn to dictate translations that can
then be transcribed by a secretary and later reviewed for content and form. Byusing an oral procedure many translators find that they can proceed morerapidly and often more accurately, since a well-trained translator can usually
handle texts with greater stylistic effectiveness in an oral process. Such a proce-dure, however, also requires considerable practice. But by employing an oraltechnique some translators can average as many as twenty-five pages of text per
day, especially if the contents are somewhat routine, as in the case of stock rec-ommendations or reports to stockholders, but merchandizing texts oftenrequire much greater creativity.
Most professional translators try to specialize in certain types of texts, for
example, technology, law, merchandising, drama, novels, and history, and they
do not hesitate to tell agencies or their employers the subject matter in whichthey are the more skilled. If an agency offers a text to a translator that is notwithin his or her area of special competence, the translator should explain that
he or she is not fully competent in such a genre, but that a particular friend orcolleague could no doubt handle such a text efficiently.
In general, people working in multilingual communication tend to be
either translators or interpreters, but some translators find that it is beneficialto also do some interpreting, since it provides excellent opportunities to keep
abreast of new developments in specialized fields. And likewise interpretersoften benefit greatly from translating since the precision that is required sharp-ens their interpreting skills.
..
Expanding a translator’s vocabulary
Since 95% of most people’s verbal inventory of their mother tongue is learned
from syntagmatic contexts, that is, from hearing or seeing words in actual texts,
students should follow essentially this same approach for vocabulary enrich-ment by learning the meanings of words through relevant contexts.
Most good writers provide meaningful contexts for the comprehension
and use of unusual terms that they need to employ, whether in technical or lit-erary texts. Carl Sagan’s book entitled Cosmos (1980) is an excellent source of
information about semi-technical vocabulary. A light-year is described as theContexts in translating 

distance light travels in a year, going at the rate of approximately 300,000 kilo-
meters a second, and a galaxy is described as composed of gas and dust and
stars — billions upon billions of star s, and at least some hundred billion galax-
ies, each with an average of a hundred billion stars.
On page 24 organic molecules are described as “complex microscopic archi-
tectures in which the carbon atom plays a central role,” and the rest of the page
describes how these molecules became the origin and evolution of life. Suchinformation is much more relevant than looking up the words organic and
molecules in a dictionary.
The expression artificial selection (p.26) is carefully explained and
described as the manner in which people have domesticated plants and ani-mals by controlling their breeding. This process is then contrasted with natural
selection, the process that has occurred in nature and has formed the basis for
the theory of evolution.
On page 31 deoxyribonucleic acid, DNA, is briefly described as the “master
molecule of life on Earth,” and this is then set in a context of biological muta-tion. Human DNA is discussed later as “a ladder a billion nucleotides long.”And then, after indicating that most of the possible combinations of
nucleotides perform no useful function, the text indicates that “only an
extremely limited number of nucleic acid molecules are any good for life-forms
as complicated as we.” Even so, the number of useful ways of putting nucleicacids together is stupefyingly large…probably far greater than the total num-ber of electrons and protons in the universe.
Choroplasts are also described on the same page as “tiny molecular facto-
ries…in charge of photosynthesis — the conversion of sunlight, water and car-
bon dioxide into carbohydrates and oxygen.” This is precisely the kind of infor-mation that most people need to know, in contrast with the Random HouseCollegiate Dictionary that describes chloroplasts simply as “a plastid containing
chlorophyll,” and then describes chlorophyll as being of two types, listed with
their complex chemical formulas. A well written text is normally far better thana dictionary for learning the meanings of words because a text is usuallydesigned to help people understand words in relevant contexts.
Viroids are discussed (p. 39) as “the smallest living things…composed of
less than 10,000 atoms. They cause several different diseases in cultivatedplants and have probably most recently evolved from more complex organismsrather than from simpler ones.” The text then follows with a description of
viruses and the smallest known free-living organisms, the pleuropneumonia-
like organisms (PPLO).Words in context   

For persons who wish to expand their passive vocabulary, it is advisable to
begin with texts involving subject matter with which the reader is well
acquainted or in which he or she has great interest. In this way, the reader canconstantly provide contextual information in which such words fit. T echnical
texts are likely to have more unknown words, unless a reader is particularly well
informed about some technical subject
It may also be useful to refine one’s knowledge of lexical meaning by mak-
ing diagrammatic charts about occupational domains, for example, music, interms of various instruments (cornet, French horn, oboe, violin, cello, bass
viol, harp, drums), musicians (players, composers, mixers, singers, conduc-
tors), types of music (classical, rock, the blues, gospel, jazz), and locations of
performance (nightclubs, concert halls, auditoriums, festivals).
Another important technique for rapid expansion of a particular segment
of a lexical inventory is to assemble a number of words belonging to a particu-lar semantic domain, for example, verbal communication, which may containa number of sub-domains: (1) types of discourse: report, narration, summary,
speech, lecture, article, letter, joke , etc., (2) voice quality: yell, shout, grumble,
whisper, sing, murmur, hum, etc. ; (3) orthography: alphabetic, syllabic, ideo-
graphic, etc.; (4) publication units: book,, brochure, magazine, newspaper,
leaflet, etc.; (5) relations between participants in communication: converse,
argue, debate, entreat, pray, answer, interrogate, apologize .
One important means of testing proficiency in a foreign language and in
expanding a verbal inventory is to write an article in the language and have a
mother-tongue speaker go over it for lexical appropriateness, grammatical cor-rectness and style. Such written material should not contain grammatical
errors, but the choice of words may be inappropriate to the context and thestyle is likely to be bookish, rather than natural. Having one’s compositionscarefully scrutinized and corrected by competent users of a foreign languagecan be a tremendous advantage. One American teacher with advanced degreesin Spanish from an American and a Mexican university and with more thantwenty-five years of experience in Latin America never sends off an importantletter or article in Spanish unless it has first been checked by a Spanish speaker.He has never stopped learning Spanish.
Even though a translator may be able to find a rare term in a dictionary, this
does not mean that he or she is likely to discover the correct meaning for a par-
ticular context, because no dictionary ever contains all the range of usage ordefines meaning in completely precise ways. Most competent translators, how-ever, seldom use bilingual dictionaries, since monolingual ones are so muchContexts in translating 

more likely to provide more satisfactory contexts and define meanings in more
precise and helpful ways.
When people try to expand their vocabulary rapidly by reading texts in a B
or C language, they often depend too much on a dictionary to give them themeanings of unknown words. They should actually try to determine the mean-ings of words from the contexts, as may be illustrated by the following para-graph from page 76 of the French novel Je vous écris d’Italie…“I write to you
from Italy” by Mich el Déon (Gallimard, 1984). The italicized words are those
that the reader did not at first recognize, but which he tried to understand bytaking the total context into consideration.
“Beatrice secala dans son siège et eut un geste que Jacques n’attendait pas
d’elle: après avoir délacé ses espadrilles, elle posa ses pieds nus sur le tableau de
bord. Le ruban qui enlaçait la cheville avait laissé une marque plus claire sur la
peau mate bien qu’elle eût passé la journée à l’ombre de la tonnelle, à l’ombre
de son chapeau de paille qu’elle tenait maintenant serré contra sa poitrine,
jouant avec les primevères décousues par Diva. L’attitude désinvolte, inatten-
due de Beatrice troubla tant Jacques que, obsédé par ces pieds nus dont les
doigts s’agitaient avec drôlerie comme s’ils pianotaient, il pris mal un virage et
une deuxiéme fois manqua de verser dans le fossé.”
To understand this paragraph it is first essential to know something about what
has preceded. The text tells about an attractive woman with dark skin, namedBeatrice, who was responsible for the historical documents and art collection inthe Italian town of Varela, and about Jacques, a doctoral candidate who wasstudying the documents in order to reconstruct the life and history of this 16thCentury town. The two had just completed a visit to a farm and were on their wayback to Varela on a hot summer afternoon in Jacques’ small car. But instead oflooking up the underlined words in a dictionary, the reader tried to discover themeaning of the words by considering their contexts, consisting of the immediate-ly surrounding words and of the entire preceding part of the novel.
The verb se caler in combination with son siège “her seat” suggests “fitting
comfortably into her seat” or even “nudging herself into her seat,” since the
small size of the car has been mentioned ea rlier in the novel. The rest of the sen-
tence can be rendered as “did something that Jacques had not expected her to
do.” T he French word geste is often translated as “gesture,” but here the refer-
ence is clearly to an action that is not a mere gesture, but a particular act or deedthat has special meaning for Jacques — a frequent use of geste .
The context about the summer being hot, the trip being made to a farm in
the country, and the footwear being untied provides enough context to suggestWords in context   

that the espadrilles were probably a kind of “sandals,” especially when the fol-
lowing clause indicates that her feet were bare and that she propped them up
on the le tableau de bord , which could only refer to the dashboard.
The cheville , where the ribbon was tied, would no doubt be her “ankle,”
and the clear mark on her mate (“dark”) skin would be known from previous
contexts, but in view of the ribbon the color would no doubt be even lighter
than the skin exposed to the sun. The straw hat had to be held tight ( serré )
against her bosom or it would have blown away.
Beatrice continued to play w ith the primrose bouquet that had been
“messed up” (literally, “unsewn”) by Diva, the cat (a fact also known from a
preceding context).
The attitude that was unexpected of Beatrice and that troubled Jacques
must have been either extremely casual or relaxed (désinvolte ), because putting
feet up on a dashboard and giving the impression of playing a piano with thetoes is certainly not normal behavior.
Since the behavior of Beatrice caused Jacques to almost drive into a deep
hole, the term obsédé must imply a serious effect, for which the English term
“obsessed” (a cognate word) would be an appropriate equivalent. The term
drôlerie looks like the English word droll, that often refers to something that is
funny in an odd way, in which case the English and French cognates match.
As the result of using several different contexts to determine the meaning
or meanings of the underlined words, it is possible to have a correct under-standing of the complete text without having to look up all the doubtful orstrange terms. A reader can become more and more efficient in deducing themeaning from contexts and at the same time the meanings of the words aremuch more likely to be remembered in their appropriate contexts.
Furthermore, the portion of the text understood by this technique becomes an
additional part of the context which in turn can assist in clarifying furtherunknown terms.
A specialist in teaching English to foreigners always insists that people
should dispense with a dictionary if they can follow a text enough to makesense of what is happening. In this way, a person is much more inclined to keepon reading, because nothing is so fatal to a story than having to keep looking upfive or six words for every page. As a person reads more and more, the vocabu-lary makes more and more sense, and reading becomes a substitute for the con-stant hearing of a foreign language in realistic contexts.
The following Spanish text is from the first part of Miguel de Unamuno’s
philosopical novel Niebla “The Cloud” (Obras Selectas, pp. 855–992, Madreid,Contexts in translating 

Editorial Plenitud) As can be clearly noted, the vocabulary is much more
diverse and the grammatical structures considerable more complex than in thecase of the French text, but nevertheless, the contexts serve to make the mean-ing relatively clear. And as in the case of the French text, only italicized wordsare discussed.
Porque Augusto no era un caminante , sino un paseante de la vida. “Esperaré a
que pase un perro — se dijo — y tomaré la dirección inicial que él tome.”
En esto pasó por la calle no un perro, sino una garrida moza, y tras de sus
ojos se fue, como imantado y sin darse de ello cuenta, Augusto.
Y asi una calle y otra y otra.
“Pero aquel chiquillo — iba diciendose Augusto, que más bien que pensa-
ba hablaba consigo mismo…¿qué hará allí, tirado de bruces en el suelo?¡Contemplar a alguna hormiga, de seguro! ¡La hormiga, ¡bah!, uno de los ani-males más hipócritas! Apenas hace sino pasearse y hacernos creer que trabaja.Es como ese gandul que va ahí, a paso de carga, codeando a todos aquellos con
quienes se cruza, y no me cabe duda de que no tiene nada que hacer. ¡ Qué ha detener q ue hacer, hombre, qué ha de tener que hacer! Es un vago, un vago
como…¡No, yo no soy un vago! Mi imaginación no descansa. Los vagos son
ellos, los que dicen que trabajan y no hacen sino aturdirse y ahogar el pen-
samiento. Porque, vamos a ver, ese mamarracho de chocolatero que se pone ahí,
detras de ese vidriera, a darle al rollo majadero, para que le veamos, ese exhibi-cionista del trabajo, ¿qué es sino un vago? Y a nosotros ¿qué nos importa quetrabaje o no? ¡El trabajo! ¡El trabajo! ¿Hipocresía! Para trabajo el de ese pobre
paralítico que va ahí medio arrastrándose …Pero ¿y qué sé yo? ¡Perdone, her-
mano! — esto se lo dijo en voz alta…. ¿Hermano? ¿Hermano en qué? ¡Enparálisis! Dicen que todos somos hijos de Adán. Y éste, Juanquinito, ¿es tam-bién hijo de Adán? ¡Adiós, Juanquín! ¿Vaya, ya tenemos el inevitable automóvil,ruido y polvo! ¿Y qué se adelanta con suprimir así distancias? La manía de via-
jar viene de topofobía y no de filotopía , el que viaja mucho va huyendo de cada
lugar que deja y no buscando cada lugar a que llega. Viajar…viajar…Quéchisme más molesto es el paraguas… Calla, ¿qué es esto?”
Y se detuvo a la puerta de una casa donde había entrado la garrida moza
que le llevara imantado tras de sus ojos…
Although the terms caminante and paseante are often translated into English by
the same term, Unamuno clearly wanted to emphasize the difference between
caminante, suggesting vehicular, fast travel, and paseante, suggesting walking
and slower movement, as well as concern for life’s meaning, as indicated in theconte xt.
The term garrida is relatively rare, but in combination with moza “maid,” it
must refer to attractive appearance, for she is the person whom Augusto fol-Words in context   

lows for several blocks, as though magnetized ( imantado, derived from iman a
substance that magnetizes iron).
The meaning of gandul , often used in the sense of lazy loafer, is almost
defined by the following phrases that speak of such a person as a vago elbowing
(codeando ) everyone and actually having nothing to do. In fact, such people are
stunned, bewildered ( aturdirse) and smothered, choked ( ahogar ), while
Augusto’s imagination never rests.
The term mamarrachos is rare (it is not even cited in the lexicon of María
Moliner) but its meaning is made clear by the statement about such a person
being an exhibitionist, not a worker. He likes to show off by being in the frontwindow of a chocolate shop with a rolling pin to roll out candy. By way of con-
trast the text speaks of a poor paralytic who must drag himself along ( arras-
trándose).
Two words in this text were evidently made up by Unomuno, famous as a pro-
fessor of Greek and philosophy. The term topofobía , which is explained in the fol-
lowing clause as “fleeing from each place” ( huyendo de cada lugar ) and filotopía , as
“concern for each place to which one arrives” (cada lugar a que llega ).
Finally, the text returns to the umbrella as the most troublesome gadget
(chisme ) of all, and the first sentence of the next paragraph repeats the reference to
the attractive maid ( la garrida moza) and the magnetic attraction ( imantado ).
Although many authors attempt to suggest the meaning of rare words by
placing relevant terms in a context that precedes an unusual and crucial expres-sion, Unomuno uses almost exactly the opposite technique, namely, the rareexpression is later defined or explained by the following context (the same
order is used in a good deal of scientific writing). This means that languagelearners who think they must constantly look up in order every unknown termin a dictionary are largely wasting time and depriving themselves of the oppor-tunity to learn the meanings of words by means of contexts.
Rapid acquisition of the basic vocabulary of any language can be acquired
by concentrating on the syntagmatic contexts, whether oral or written, but
narrative texts are much more likely to have fewer highly specific meanings andthe relations between sentences are likely to express more evident relations ofcause-effect (“and so”), purpose (“in order to”), condition (“if…then”), con-cession (“although…nevertheless”), temporal sequence (“and then”), while
essays that occur in the editorial sections of newspapers are usually more diffi-cult to follow. For example, in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, p.7, March22, 2000 there is an interesting article about the issue of increasingly inade-quate supplies of water throughout the world.Contexts in translating 

As in the case of the French and Spanish texts, a student with a practical use
of conversational German for traveling in Germany was asked to mark the
number of words that were either unknown or dubiously recognized. The total
number of such words was 32, a proportion that is entirely too high for about
180 words of a text. In fact, the student indicated clearly that he was not able toread a newspaper in German. This means that the technique recommended for
the texts in French and Spanish could not be applied to this German textbecause the proportion of known words was too limited to apply to this news-paper essay. In such circumstances it is necessary to use a dictionary, but in ahighly selective manner.
First it is important to obtain a standard bilingual dictionary with both
definitions as well as glosses. A person should then write in the margins (or inbrackets in the case of an electronic text) the presumably correct interpretationof the specific words, but the entire text together with the necessary notationsabout meanings should be reviewed carefully each day for at least three or fourdays so as to help a person remember the previously unknown words. But thesemeanings must always be reviewed in terms of the meaning of each relevantcontext so as to benefit from the syntagmatic reinforcement of meaning.
The review of this same Frankfurter Allgemeine text by another person
indicated nine terms for which the meaning was unknown or doubtful, but forwhich the context seemed to provide adequate contextual assistance. Thesewords are italicized and numbered within square brackets and are discussed in
a following section.
Der Wert des Wassers
Das zweite Weltwasserforum in Den Haag
Die Bewohner vieler westlicher Länder leben so, als stünde ihnen eine
unendliche Menge Wasser zur [1] Verfügung. In der Dritten Welt hingegen
haben derzeit eine Milliarde Menschen keinen Zugang zu sauberem
Trinkwasser, und drei Milliarden müssen ohne ausreichende sanitäre
Einrichtungen leben. [2] Wasserknappheit herrscht in 26 Ländern, nach
Schätzungen könnten es im Jahr 2050 schon 66 Staaten sein. DieWeltwasserkommission, eine Gruppe von bekannten Politikern und [3]
Fachleuten unter der Leitung des stellvertretenden Weldbank-Präsidenten
Serageldin, spricht deshalb auch schon von einer weltweiten “Wasserkrise.”Wachse die Weltbevolkerung in den nächsten fünfundzwanzig Jahren um zwei
Milliarden, dann benötige man siebzehn Prozent mehr Wasser zur [4]
Bewässerung in der Landwirtschaft, zwanzig Prozent mehr für die Industrie
und siebzig Prozent mehr in den Haushalten, rechnet die Kommission vor.Das seien noch [5] zurückhaltende Schätzungen, heisst es in ihren jünstenWords in context   

Bericht. Hinzu kommt, dass viele Gewässer heute schon unbrauchbar sind,
weil sie von Industrie und Landwirtschaft verschmutzt wurden.
[6] Angesichts solcher Prognosen erscheint es verwunderlich, dass die
internationale Politik sich erst [7] allmählich für das Thema zu interessieren
beginnt. Wärend über andere globale [8] Umweltbelange schon seit längerem
Diskutiert wird, war Wasser bislang meist nur ein T eilaspekt. Das zweite Welt-wasserforum, das seit Freitag in Den Haag stattfindet, soll diesen [9] Missstand
beseitigen. Mehr als 3500 T eilnehmer, 158 Delegationen und 155 Minister ausaller Welt, trafen in der niederländischen Haupstadt zusammen, um überMöglichkeiten eines besseren Wassermanagements zu beraten.
1. Verfügung in this context that speaks of an “endless supply of water” must
suggest availability, for example “at their disposal” or “for their use,” in which
case the entire first sentence of the text may be rendered as “The inhabitants ofmany western countries live as though they had an endless supply of water attheir disposal.”
2. Even though a person may not recognize the meaning of knapp in the com-
pound Wasserknappheit as referring to something “scarce” or “barely suffi-
cient,” the contrast between the first and the second sentence and the fact that
the third sentence verifies the second, the term W asserknappheit must refer to
insufficient supplies of water. In fact, the term knapp may reflect a measure of
phonetic symbolism.
3. The commission for water throughout the world is described as consisting
of a group of political leaders and Fac hleute, who must be the experts, as in the
case of any important international convention — never representatives of thewell informed public. Furthermore, the component – leute is a common term
for people and Fach is often used for a specialty or profession.
4. Bewässerung is simply a nominal derivative of the verb bewässern referring
to the use of water ( Wasser ) for some purpose, for example, irrigation, as in this
context. Some people may be misled by the umlaut äin the verb construction.
5. The participial form zurückhaltende , based on the corresponding verb mean-
ing “to hold back” or “to withhold” relates to the evaluations ( Schätzungen), men-
tioned in the most recent notice, namely, that much of the available water is unus-able as the result of contamination by industry and agriculture.
6. The preposition angesichts, containing the noun G esicht “face,” is a com-
mon means of saying, “in view of” or “as the result of,” referring in this context
to the prognoses already mentioned in the first paragraph. In a number of lan-
guages such linking words seem difficulty to remember since they occur in soContexts in translating 

many different contexts and the referents are not so picturable.
7. The adverb allmählich refers to “slow, steady progress,” but such a begin-
ning of interest was obviously rather slow because of the apparent abundance
of water. Perhaps this is, however, a case of wishful thinking, because the histo-ry of concern for water would seem to be better characterized by the phrase am
Ende“at last.”
8. The Umweltbelange , a compound combining a well-known term Umwelt
“environment” and Be lange “the important aspects,” of which water was previ-
ously only one aspect or part ( Teilaspekt) of the environment.
9. The word Missstand looks like a typographical error, but it is derived from
Miss“bad, wrong” and S tand “position,” or in this context even “point of view”
is “set aside” (beseitigen ).
As should be quite evident from the above analyses of various German words
and their relation to contexts, some of the difficulties experienced by Englishspeakers occur because they are unaccustomed to the writing of semanticallyand grammatically complex compounds. The umlauting of certain vowels,especially in combination with suffixes containing a high front vowel such as i,
is also confusing, although the rules for such umlauting should have been read-ily noted at a much earlier stage in learning German.Words in context   

 
Relations between words
Professional translators are usually so concerned with the meaning of a text
that they seldom give much thought to the grammatical structures of source or
receptor languages, because their task is to understand texts, not to analyze
them. If, as already mentioned, translators thoroughly understand a sourcetext, they do not need to worry about whether to use nouns, verbs, and adjec-
tives in a particular order so as to represent the meaning. These decisions aremade almost automatically.
Similarly, when people wish to express some complex concept in their own
mother tongue, their brains quickly and in a largely automatic manner sort out
the appropriate kinds of words and arrange them in effective combinations. If atranslator adequately controls both source and receptor languages, translating
is essentially no different from writing.
As the result of inadequacies in their B and C languages, students of trans-
lation must struggle to find the right words and to arrange them appropriately.As a result, their translations frequently seem unnatural, awkward, or even
misleading. Such difficulties often result from misleading grammatical termi-nology and from grammatical systems that are largely unrelated to meaningfulrelations between words.
.
Misleading grammatical terminology
Traditional grammatical terminology is often more confusing than helpful. For
example, the so-called possessive construction in English seldom refers to
actual possession. Even in the case of his car the bank may own more of the car
than the one who is said to possess it. Essentially the same problem exists in thephrase his house , because the phrase may refer to any place that a person regu-
larly lives, whether owned or not and whether an apartment, a townhouse, or aduplex. The meaningful relations are even more complex in the case of his leg,which, though seemingly possessed, is act ually a part of the person and not
something that is regularly bought or sold.

The phrase his father involves a biological relation of direct descent of one
generation, and if anyone metaphorically possesses the other, then it would be
the father who possesses the son. But the phrase his wife suggests quite a differ-
ent relationship, especially in a monog amist society in which women have full
legal rights. Any person who does not distinguish clearly the different sociolog-ical relations between the components of his car and his wife will soon be on the
way to the divorce court.
The relation between a so-called possessive pronoun or noun and the fol-
lowing noun may be one of participation in an activity. For example, his work is
normally a reference to the fact that “1 does 2,” whereas the phrase his punish-ment means that “some one does 2 to 1.” Many expressions imply an unmen-
tioned activity, for example, his boss , in which “2 controls the activity of 1” or
his partner in which “1 and 2 are related in some joint activity.”
In fact, speakers of some languages refuse to translate literally a phrase such
as his God , because they insist that no one can own God, although they can
“worship God” or “trust God.” Some relations, however, are unusually complex.For example, in the case of his heir the relations may need to be explained as “1
has designated 2 as the person to receive something of value after the death of 1.”
The phrase his memory is ambiguous because it can refer to the contents of
the memory or to the faculty of remembering. But in some instances the headword qualifies an action, as in his folly “1 does something that proves to have
the characteristic of being 2.” But in some instances a phrase may be bothambiguous and obscure if the meaning of the head word is ambivalent, forexample, his party, which may refer to “a political party of which 1 is a member
or which 1 controls,” but it may also refer to “a social occasion paid for by 1 orarranged by others as a tribute to 1.”
But where does the information come from to make such decisions? As in
the case of the meanings of words, discussed in Chapter 3, such informationcan only come from the larger context. This often means that it is impossible tounderstand a sentence without considering the nearby paragraphs or even anentire text. For example, the phrase his old servant is essentially ambiguous
because oldcan refer to the age of the person who serves or to the length of time
that the person has served, or to both the age and the time of service. The actualmeaning within a particular text can only be resolved by knowing the way inwhich such words occur in the larger contexts.
In legal texts it is particularly impor tant to recognize inherent ambiguities
so as not to translate wrongly or in such a way as to create more problems. Forexample, the statement his recent title to the property may imply that the titleContexts in translating 

was only recently acquired or it may mean that a person had the title to the
property up to a recent point of time but no longer. Such ambiguities are thelife blood of the legal profession.
Such possessive constructions are, however, only a small part of the semantic
problems posed by inadequate terminology used to describe or refer to grammati-cal relations. For example, grammarians have traditionally treated subject-predi-cate constructions as meaning “1 does 2 to 3,” as in John hit Bill, John heard Bill .
The formula “1 does 2 to 3” is appropriate for John hit Bill , but not for John heard
Bill, because in the latter expression it is Bill who makes a noise that affects John.
But the statement John knew Bill had left implies that the statement Bill had
leftis the content of what John knew. Similarly the statements John said Bill had
left, John saw the bridge give way, and John felt the animal tremble are perhaps
best treated by considering the predicates Bill had left, the bridge give way , and
the animal tremble as the contents of the preceding verbs. It is then also possible
to extend this content relation to include predicate noun phrases, as in John
told the story, John heard the report, John knows the answer .
Traditional grammars of English speak of certain verbs as “main verbs”
and of others as “complements,” in such expressions as they began to work, they
stopped digging, they continued to explore the cave, but semantically the verbsbegan, stopped, continued are really only aspects of the semantically more rele-
vant verbs work, dig, explore . In fact, in many languages aspects of activities are
indicated by enclitics or affixes attached to verbs.
..
Referential grammatical classes
Many inexperienced translators think of grammatical classes of words as being
nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions, etc.
And they often assume that in translating faithfully they should match these
classes in the receptor language. Accordingly, nouns should be translated bynouns, verbs by verbs, and adjectives by adjectives, but such a procedurealmost invariably leads to unnaturalness and even perversion of meaning in areceptor language. These traditional grammatical classes are based primarily
on the forms of words and their distribution in sentences. In fact, much of thegrammatical terminology is derived from the way in which ancient rhetori-
cians described Greek and Latin.
But in order to understand the meaning of grammatical relations, it is more
important to consider the referential classes which reflect more closely theRelations between words   

semantic functions of the referents: entities ( boy, tree, house, lake, sky crowd ),
activities/events ( think, eat, talk, walk, ride, swim ), states ( dead, tired, sick, angry,
happy), processes, as changes of state and characteristics ( sicken, recover, grow,
widen, enlarge ), characteristics of the preceding classes ( tall, round, slow, recent,
small, perhaps, good ), and connectors, words that connect words to one another,
either coordinately, by means of conjunctives or disjunctives (and, or, but,
except ) and by means of transitionals ( nevertheless, moreover, accordingly ) or
subordinately by means of prepositions ( in, around, during, for, by through,
beyond) and conjunctions (because, in order to, although, where, when, if ).
This focus on the referential classes of words rather than on the formal or
distributional features is a great advantag e for translators since it forces them to
think in terms of what is actually happening in a text. For example, environ-
mentally damaging waste and congressionally guaranteed subsidy consist for-
mally of an adverb, a participle, and a noun. But the adverbs environmentally
and congressionally actually refer to entities, namely, the environment and con-
gress. The participles damaging and guaranteed refer to processes, and waste
and subsidy are entities, but the relations expressed by the two phrases are very
different. The phrase en vironmentally damaging waste means that “3 does 2 to
1” while in congressionally guaranteed subsidy “1 does 2 to 3.”
Analyzing grammatical relations in terms of referential classes is an impor-
tant tool for unpacking some of the complex combinations of words so that thecontent may be transferred to a language in which the same content may be
expressed by very different grammatical arrangements. Carl Sagan’s volume
Cosmos contains a number of examples of syntactically complex expressions
that become much more meaningful when analyzed in terms of referentialclasses. For example the semantically condensed expression the revivified
thought of ancient Greece may need to be unpacked in order to understand what
is meant. Merely looking in a dictionary for the word reviv ifyis not likely to be of
much help. One dictionary, for example, defines reviv ifyas “to live again, to give
new life to, to reanimate,” but that is not the sense used by Sagan, who writesabout thinking in essentially the same manner as the early Greek scientists, likeAnaximander of Miletus, who invented the sun-dial, Hippocrates, who estab-
lished the medical tradition, and Democritus, who was the first to talk aboutatoms. Sagan contrasts this early Greek thought with theological scholasticism,
the way theologians in Western Europe reasoned during the Middle Ages.
In some cases Sagan uses abstract forms of contrast to express more vividly
certain distinctions, as in the statement, schemes which have been accepted by
the credulity and welcomed by the superstition of 70 later generations of men . InContexts in translating 

order to understand who is doing what, it may be important to think in terms
of referential classes and to determine that the 70 later generations of men
include all those people who have lived on earth since then until now. These arethe ones who have stupidly accepted the false schemes of thought because oftheir own superstitions.
Some statements in Cosmos are so semantically condensed that they
require considerable expansion if their real meaning is to be accurately reflect-
ed. For example, the statement the evolution of life is a cosmic inevitability is
about the development of living creatures out of inorganic compounds asbeing something that is bound to happen time after time in the cosmos.Although cosmic is an adjective, it refers to the cosmos as an entity, and the
noun inevitability is actually a reference to an inevitable process. Without
restructuring the meaning on the basis of referential classes, the meaning of
this important statement can be easily overlooked.
Academic texts often require unpacking if the meaning is to be accurately
grasped. On one occasion a group of professional translators were asked to
consider the sentence, The reinforcing impacts of natural resource depletion and
human destitution are exemplified by trends in the world’s farm lands . This sen-
tence was the first in an article published by an international agency whose
avowed purpose was to provide Third World people with helpful information
about agriculture and the environment. But the sentence produced an unex-pected reaction among the translators. Those working primarily within Indo-
European languages insisted that they could translate the sentence, but they
also admitted that they did not know what it meant. Other translators workingpartially in non-Indo-European languages insisted that they would have tounderstand the meaning of the sentence and only then could they rearrange theconstituent parts in such a way as to make sense.
In terms of referential classes the article theis a characteristic of definite-
ness; reinforcing suggests repeatedness and causation, while impacts are states
resulting from the process of depletion and from the state of destitution . The
preposition ofrelates the phrases of process and state to the impacts.
The phrase natural resource depletion refers to the loss of resources existing
in nature, and the phrase human destitution refers to people being very poor.
These two phrases are combined by the coordinate conjunction and .
The passive verb phrase are exemplified by points to what follows as being
examples of what precedes. Trendsare only a series of events or states that occur
repeatedly, but there is no indication as to any quantitative or qualitative variable.
The preposition inserves to indicate where such events take place, while the world’sRelations between words   

refers to various parts of the world (there is clearly no possession implied). The
term farm indicates an activity, and lands are entities for farming. But even with all
this information it is not possible to determine precisely what the meaning is.
For example, are these impacts good or bad (from the immediate context,
probably bad)? And is the relation between depletion and destitution simply a mat-
ter of repetition, as suggested by the prefix re-of reinforcing or is it possibly recip-
rocal? But as in the case of the meaning of words, the clues to meaning depend on
the broader context. Only on the third page of the article does the author finally
explain that what is happening more and more in farm lands throughout the
world shows how the loss of natural resources results in greater poverty for the
people and how their poverty in turn results in increased loss of natural resources.
If translators really understand what a text means, they can usually render
it in ordinary language, but this may require technical knowledge and sensitivi-ty to the needs of the intended audience. Some knowledge of linguistics may be
useful, as described in the next Chapter, but linguistics is not indispensable,any more than it is for people who wish to write down their thoughts.Translators are communicators of texts, not analysts. If a translator fully under-
stands the meaning of a text, the process of translating it is largely automatic.Expert translators, therefore, let there brains do the work.
But the process of arriving at a fully intelligible understanding of a text may
depend not only on the words of an entire text, but also on what the author evi-dently considered to be the knowledge and concerns of his or her intendedaudience. Similarly, a translator must ultimately reckon with the presupposi-tions of those who are supposed to understand a translation. Translators arealways juggling several balls at the same time.
The diversity of grammatical constructions and the different ways in which
semantic relations between words are expressed often seem bewildering to lan-guage learners and even to beginning translators. It may, accordingly, be help-ful to shift attention from the details of grammar to some of the basic conceptsthat can be expressed in all languages, although often in quite different ways.
.
Basic meaningful relations between words
Linguists have described in a number of different ways the diverse semantic
relations between words on the grammatical level of structure. A translator,
however, is not concerned primarily with the nature of the grammatical sys-tem, but with the major ways in which referential classes relate to one anotherContexts in translating 

in texts. The majority of meaningful grammatical relations between words may
be described as attribution, participation, restriction, content, connection,repetition, proportion, and supplementation, but these same semantic rela-
tions are also relevant on the level of discourse.
These eight sets of semantic relations are not exhaustive in the sense of
including any and all types of relations, but they do represent a general guide tothe major types of meaningful relations, and they highlight the fact that thereare conspicuously fewer such sets of relations than many people have imag-ined. They also have a high probability of being widely applicable, even if notuniversal, in that translators working in several hundred different languages invarious parts of the world have not found grammatical relations that do notreflect, at least broadly, these eight sets of re lations, which in the following sec-
tions will be illustrated primarily by English.
..
Attribution
In English most attributive constructions consist of three components (1) a
subject, normally information shared by speaker and audience, (2) a copulative
verb, for example, be, become, seem, appear , (3) a predicate element indicating
state (they are tired), class ( she is a doctor), characteristic ( the shirt appears red)
or identity ( John Thompson is my colleague ). Apposition is also a type of attri-
bution, for example, my friend, Bill Jones and valleys in the mountains of the
brain, convolutions that greatly increase the surface area.
In a number of languages there is no need for a copulative verb, since the
subject and the predicate are linked by juxtaposition, as in Classical Greek andHungarian. And in some languages, as also in English, there may be an antici-
patory pronoun referring to a predicate clause, for example, it is a shame that he
left too early or a dummy subject, for example, there was trouble on 47th Street .
In both of these attributive constructions the implied purpose is evidently to
treat the entire predicate statement as new information.
..
Participation
Participation involves a nuclear activity, process or state, and a number of par-
ticipating satellites: actors ( John ran back ), causers, those who cause something
to happ en (John ran his horse in the second race ), affectees (the man was shot in
the back ), instruments (the key opened the door or they used a key to open the
door ), indirect affectees ( Jane was given a new car for Christmas). These satel-Relations between words   

lites may occur in multiple series and in various positions, for example, the
rioters shot the man and then poured gasoline on the car and set it on fire .
In many Indo-European languages the semantic relation between a verb
and different satellites has been traditionally marked by different suffixed case
endings, for example, nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, ablative, andvocative, but increasingly these semantic relations are indicated by word order
and by prepositions.
..
Restriction
The process of restriction involves the addition of words that semantically
restrict the range of reference of some head expression. For example, the term
men could potentially refer to some 40% of the world’s population, but the
addition of oldin old men significantly reduces or restricts the range of reference
of men. The further addition of preposed and postposed terms, as in the three
old men that talked with me yesterday radically restricts the phrase old men.
The process of restriction is one of the most common types of relations
between words, for example, walked fast (activity and characteristic), tired worker
(state and entity), the dish on the table (entity and location), if he works, he must be
paid (condition and activity), probably escaped (modal and activity), continued
training (aspect and activity), those who arrived late (entities and activity), came
to help her (activity and purpose), an attack late at night (activity and time). Some
linguists include all relations of participation as being restrictions.
In many languages expressions indicating restriction show agreement in
number and case with the head word.
.. Content
Expressions of content occur primarily with verbs of communication, percep-
tion, learning, and knowledge: he said he would return, he saw the thief enter by
the back window, the men felt a strange movement coming up through the base-ment, he learned how to whistle, they all knew that they were condemned to death.These relations of content may also be analyzed as restrictions, but regardingthem as various types of content seems not only structurally justified, but sucha classification is useful in treating certain parallel verb-object combinations:told the story, explained the joke, knew the lesson, sensed her agony of spirit .Contexts in translating 

.. Connection
Connection involves the use of transitionals, conjunctions, and prepositions,
in order to link words and groups of words together into larger units.
a. Transitionals
Transitional expressions such as nevertheless, furthermore, moreover, therefore,
next, finally, to conclude are often semantically equivalent to an entire sentence.
For example, the transitional furthermore suggests “in addition to what has
already been said, it is important to consider the following.” Even a word such as
next at the beginning of a sentence calls attention to what has been said, as well
as to the following comment. The transitional finally also links the preceding
with what follows and marks what follows as the end of a series. The relation of
transitionals to what precedes and to what follows is essentially coordinate.
b. C onjunctions
Conjunctions are of two principal types: coordinating and subordinating. The
coordinating conjunctions in English are
and(additive)
John and Mary
rock and roll
John was in the basement and Mary was in the kitchen
or(alternative)
Mary or Jane
they will finish the work, or at least they will try to finish
but, except (adversative or disjunctive)
he will try but is unlikely to succeed
all but Philip were delighted with the results
Some coordinating conjunctions occur in couplets: both…and, either…or,
neither…nor
Some of the principal subordinating conjunctions in English are so that, in
order to, if, although, because, when, while , for example,
he left money so that she could travel
they founded a new company in order to expand into a new industrywe will do it if you pay the costalthough he was sick, he insisted on continuing the journeyno one was drunk when we were thereRelations between words   

The clauses introduced by subordinating conjunctions are all restrictive.
c. Prepositions
Prepositions not only connect sets of words to one another, but they also indi-
cate a wide range of associated meanings: time ( the noise during the night),
space ( the ball under the couch ), agency (gi ven by a wealthy donor), cause ( a
flood because of spring rains ), extension (a journey through Egypt ), purpose
(money for a new car). All of these types of prepositional phrases are restrictive.
.. Repetition
Repetition generally implies emphasis and in English it may be complete or
partial:
Yes! Yes!
I like it, I like it
Jane did not go yesterday, she went today .
She wrote the entire poem, not just a part .
In Bahasa Indonesia, however, the repetition of a word normally indicates plu-
rality, but it is written as a numeral 2 at the end of a word.
.. Proportion
Expressions of proportion are quite common in all languages, but the structure
of such expressions is often quite different. Many depend on contrastive com-
parative degrees in positive-negative statements. In English comparison isindicated by two related statements of comparative degree, for example, the
more, the better and the more he talks the less I believe him . In some languages,
however, comparison consists of a negative-positive set, for example, John is
not friendly, Jim is friendly , meaning John is less friendly than Jim.
..
Supplementation
Nonrestrictive pronominal clauses and parenthetical additions are typical ways
in which supplementary information may be added to a text without its beingstructurally related, although it is semantically related. Such expressions areusually set off by punctuation marks in writing and by pause-pitches in pro-nunciation, for example,Contexts in translating 

My friend, who hated to sail, nevertheless agreed to go with us through the
Caribbean.
Social relations between ethnic groups (this is particularly true of minorities in
Europe ) are exceptionally complex .
In general the greater the amount of formal marking of grammatical relations
for such features as case, gender, number, and dependency, the freer the wordorder, and conversely the fewer the formal indicators of grammatical relations,the more rigid is the word order, since so much depends on varying types ofword order and juxtaposition.
These eight major types of relations between words are, however, of limit-
ed application without considering some of the specific ways in which a trans-lator can analyze some of the intricately organized phrases in a language suchas English, in which the limited grammatical marking provides a basis for con-siderable obscurity and ambiguity. Some of these relations can perhaps be bestunderstood by examining some of the most common structures, for example,noun-noun, adjective-noun, and adverbial phrases.
Noun-noun phrases
Some noun-noun phrases are both long and re ferentially complex, especially if
the nouns are nominalized verbs, as in the phrase acid precipitation assessment
program, in which the terms precipitation, assessment , and program refer to activi-
ties and not to entities. The referential class of program is a series of activities, the
purpose of which is to assess or evaluate how acid (a mass entity) is precipitated .
Some semantically complex noun phrases may include an adjective, which
may actually refer to an entity, for example, U nited States coronary heart disease
deaths. The United States is a collective entity, and although coronary is formal-
ly an adjective, it refers to entities, namely, the arteries in the heart. The termdisease is a state, and in this context deaths is a process. An unpacked restate-
ment of this phrase can be formulated as “deaths of people in the United Statescaused by disease affecting the arteries of the heart.”
In some phrases the same term may occur in quite different combinations,
for example, influenza virus, influenza vaccine, influenza infection . The phrase
influenza virus refers to the virus that causes the state of influenza , but in the
case of influenza vaccine it is the vaccine that prevents influenza , while in
influenza infection the influenza is the infection.
A seemingly very simple phrase may, however, be completely ambiguous.
For example, fluid transport may refer to ways in which a fluid can be moved
from one place to another, for example, by rail, boat, or pipe, but the phraseRelations between words   

can also refer to the tr ansport of objects by means of a fluid, for example, float-
ing logs down a river or piping coal particles mixed with water.
Some noun-noun phrases appear to be descriptions of entities when in
reality they are names of a particular type of entity. For example, mountain lau-
rels, the name of a medium sized bush growing in the eastern part of North
America and in Cuba, is neither a laurel nor is it restricted to mountains.
The phrases forest grasses (grasses that typically grow in forests) and crown
fires (fires that burn in the crowns of trees) represent a relation of “1 is the place
of 2,” but in battle site, customs house “2 is the place of 1.”
Compare also astronomy satellite and tennis racket, in which “2 is an instru-
ment for doing 1,” but in microscope observations and X-ray telescopy “1 is an
instrument for doing 2.” Similarly, in mercury concentrations and kidney disor-
ders “2 is the state of 1” while in low-density fires and mass production “1 is the
state of 2.”
For translators trying to understand a source text the real issue is the source
of information to provide an understanding of what is involved. Professional
translators almost immediately sense the semantic relation in terms of their
own background experience, but beginning translators must look to wider
encyclopedic sources in order to comprehend the necessary background data.
But as already indicated in Chapter 1 a high percentage of those who pro-
duce texts to be made available on political and economic issues for theEuropean Community do not themselves understand the meanings of the doc-
uments that they themselves produce. When questioned about the meaning ofcertain sentences or paragraphs, the common response is “Y ou do not need to
know what the text means, just translate it.”
In many instances such texts are simply compilations of existing docu-
ments in which the meaningful relations between the sections are both obscureand misleading. But this is precisely what translators constantly face, even inthe case of texts produced by scientists. One large scientific company foundthat they had to provide courses for their scientists on how to write accuratelyand clearly.
Adjective-noun phrases
In some scientific texts adjectives may be semantically very complex. For exam-
ple, the phrase paleontological surprise occurred in a text referring to the sur-
prise experienced by persons who had found fossils associated with a particularpaleontological stratum. But the problems of ambiguity are more difficult tohandle without special attention being paid to the wider context. For example,Contexts in translating 

stellar knowledge may refer to remarkable knowledge or to knowledge about the
stars, in which case, only the wider context can resolve the ambiguity. But in
other instances an adjective may represent a subtle and purposeful oxymoron,as in patterned chaos , which is technically a contradiction.
Although some persons assume that the term kind in the phrase kind per-
sonis simply a quality or characteristic of an individual, it is usually a reference
to the manner in which a person relates to other people by being kind to them,
and in many languages such behavior must be expressed by a verb phrase, forexample, “by helping others.”
Since adjectives so frequently indicate an essential quality of the following
head word, it may be difficult for some persons to realize that often the adjec-tive actually refers to entities, for example, human needs are the needs that
humans experience, and ecological shock refers to what happens to the ecology.
In many instances, however, the attributive adjective may refer to the means of
doing something, for example, mathematical analysis and chemical treatment.
In some texts an adjective may refer to entities that engage in certain activi-
ties, for example, interdisciplinary competition is a reference to the way in which
people in different disciplines compete, but in many cases an adjective refers to
particular kinds of entities that experience the result of activities contained inthe adjectives, for example, herbivorous dinosaurs “entities that eat only plants”
and carnivorous animals “entities that eat only meat.”
Literal translations of some adjective-noun phrases can be laughably
wrong, for example, molecular biologists and atomic physicists . The biologists
are not molecules nor are the physicists atoms, but in each case “2 studies orworks with 1.”
Unusual roles of adverbs
Translators from English into other languages are so accustomed to adverbs
qualifying events and characteristics, that they sometimes overlook other spe-cial relations, as in intellectually advanced teenagers meaning “3 is 2 with respect
to 1,” in other words, “teenagers who are ahead of other young people with
respect to intellectual abilities.” But the phrase biologically aggressive role refers
to “activity that proves harmful to other biological species.” This phrase sum-
marized the activity of a particular species of birds that greatly diminished thepopulation of another competing species.
Many adverbs qualify complete sentences, for example, unfortunately, he
bled to death and paradoxically, such double bonds of fatty acid prove to be less
susceptible to oxidation. In both instances, the initial adverb indicates theRelations between words   

nature of the following event. And in many languages it is essential to use a dif-
ferent means of referring to such complete utterances, for example, he bled to
death, this was unfortunate or such double bonds of fatty acid prove to be less sus-
ceptible to oxidation — something quite contrary to normal expectation.
Translators do not need to become linguists in order to become first-rate
translators, although some study of linguistics can certainly be helpful. But
translators must be sensitive to the broader contexts in which words may com-
bine into more and more intricately related sets of grammatical relations. Theanswer to most problems of meaning come from extended contexts, whetherwithin the text in question or in other texts produced by the same writer or in
texts produced by other writers on the same subject, for example, articles in
encyclopedias. In the same way that most problems of word meaning dependon the meanings of related words, the meaning of particular grammatical con-structions depend on the meaning of related grammatical constructions inother or similar contexts.Contexts in translating 

 
Translating texts
Many people have the impression that words are marked by spaces, that gram-
mar is limited by periods, and that discourse refers to the contents of para-
graphs. But lexical units may involve entire phrases, for example, a first-come-
first-served arrangement . Grammars include pronouns that refer backward or
forward across sentence boundaries, and discourses may consist of a singleword su ch as Damn! or they may even extend to a set of books, for example, the
four volumes by Max Gallo on the life of Napoleon. Overlapping the bound-aries of words, grammar, and discourse is the name of the game, but the focusof attention for a translator is texts because these are the basic and ultimateunits that carry meaning.
Many translators, however, regard features of discourse as being irrelevant
to their task as translators, because they think that all they must do is to repro-
duce the sentences more or less word for word and any problems of the dis-course will be automatically accounted for. But this is not the way accurate
translating is done. For example, a literal translation of the proverb, “They
locked the barn door after the horse had been stolen” would be meaningless inmost of the local languages in the equatorial band across Africa. Few peoplehave horses, barns, or locks, but they do have a more clever and sophisticatedproverb referring to the chief’s son, “They built a bridge over the stream afterthe chief’s son fell in the water.”
Some books on translation, however, give the impression that translating
means translating languages, rather than texts. They describe the meanings ofdifferent semantic domains, list the corresponding grammatical structures,and analyze the distinctive stylistic devices in the respective languages, but thisis essentially the linguist’s task who analyzes a language from the outside, whilea translator needs an insider’s view that cuts through the formal differences anddeals directly with the meaning of a text to be translated. The foreign words aretransformed into concepts, and these concepts become the basis for a transla-
tor’s producing essentially the same meaning in another language.
Frequently there is a serious error in a text submitted for translation. In a
recent report prepared in English by a commission investigating the possibility of

Rumania entering the European Union, there was a reference to a document, pre-
sumably prepared by the Rumanian government, in which Rumanian officials
were demanding certain reforms in the European Union. The translator of the
English document into French readily sensed the inconsistency in the wording.Instead of demanding changes in the European Union, the original document list-
ed changes that the Rumanian government was ready to make in order to becomea member of the Union. Accordingly, after discovering what was undoubtedly thereal meaning of the document, he adjusted his translation to represent correctly
the intent and purpose that lay behind the garbled English text.
Some translators, however, insist that correcting errors is not their busi-
ness, because their task is to translate what a document says. They insist that if atext is poorly written, they should simply reflect the poor style of the original.
Most professional translators, however, either correct obvious mistakes or at
least call attention to such matters in a note directed to those responsible forhaving the translation made.
Most expert translators actually impro ve the style and organization of a
discourse in the process of translating, because they are almost always moreproficient in stylistic matters than are the original writers of the documentssubmitted for translation. For example, when executives in the translation pro-gram of the European Union have occasion to compare the same document in
various languages, they often find that in one language the form of the docu-ment is conspicuously inferior to what it is in the other languages. In such cir-cumstances, the stylistically inferior document is almost always the original.
Mistakes in translation can be readily made if a translator has not read an
entire text before undertaking to translate a part. A translation into English ofan important lecture in French ended a series of comments on one subject withthe statement that the subject deserves further “study and consultation,” whichthe translator assumed referred to the next page. Accordingly, he translated, “asmay be noted in what follows.” But the translator had obviously not read thenext page, which dealt with an entirely different subject.
Unfortunately, many translators are not fully aware of the extent to which
well written texts reflect important structural features. The following first
paragraph of an article in the Wall Street Journal about kreteks in Indonesia
illustrates some of the complexity and intricacies of discourse structure:
Kreteks Are Big Business
The kretek is the incense of Indonesia. It is the fragrant haze that chokes visi-
tors as soon as they step off a plane. It is the gray cloud that seems to resonate
from the gongs of Javanese gamelan orchestras. It is the strong, aromaticContexts in translating 

smoke that fills the lungs of cabinet minister and taxi driver alike. It is the spicy
fog that blurs the edges of Indonesia.
Although the explanation about the nature of kreteks (cigarettes made with
local tobacco and tiny pieces of hot-burning cloves) is left for the followingpage, the headline about “big business” will immediate catch the attention ofthe readers of the Wall Street Journal, and perhaps even more so because theydo not know what kreteks are.
The four major sentences are organized in accordance with the temporal
sequence in which a person is likely to visit Indonesia: first arriving and beingchoked by the fragrant haze, then hearing the percussion orchestra that always
meets international flights, later noticing the smoke that fills the lungs of everyone,and finally seeing the spicy fog on the edges of Indonesia as his plane flies away.
In addition to the temporal sequence there is also the spatial sequence of
the plane, the terminal, the streets, and the edges of Indonesia. The repetitionof certain related semantic classes, for example, the series of atmosphericterms: haze, cloud, smoke, fog, as well as the distinct odors: incense, fragrant,
aromatic, spicy, emphasize the unity of the text.
The parallelism of the four sentences beginning with it ismay seem to some
readers as being overdone, but the clever unity of this paragraph, marked by
the word I ndonesia at the end of the first sentence and again at the end of the
paragraph highlights the unity of the paragraph. The more readily translatorssense the organizational elements of a text, the more relevantly these featurescan be evaluated and incorporated into a translation.
.
Major organizational features of texts
The major organizational features of most texts include time, space, class, con-
nectivity, gradation, dialogue, and literary formulas, constructed out of fre-quently recurring formal structures. The rapid recognition of such featuresand their roles in discourses can be a distinct help to translators, who may findthat what is excellent for one language-culture does not fit easily into the pat-terns of other language-cultures. For example, many traditional novels and
short-stories in Chinese have unhappy endings, and some publishers of suchstories into English have actually changed the endings to make them happyones, something Americans generally prefer.
Similarly, many discourses in the languages of the Orient do not employ
initial topic-paragraphs that state the purpose of a discourse. In fact, topic sen-Translating texts   

tences and topic paragraphs are often regarded as impolite, because they start a
section by introducing the conclusio n. This seems presumptuous in some cul-
tures, in which speakers or writers first prefer to give all the evidence or reasons
for certain conclusions, with the hope that the readers or listeners will come tothe proper point of view. But this organization of a discourse seems to manyWesterners as simply beating around the bush and disguising one’s real intent.
..
Time
All references to time are essentially linear (time moves only in one direction)and relative, in the sense that time is always being determined by past andfuture time. Calendrical time is usually based on some important event, forexample, the birth of an important person (e.g. AD and BC), a culturally
important event (the Hegira for Islam), the period of a particular dynasty(especially in the Orient and in the Midd le East), or some great cataclysm, for
example, floods or famines.
Good writers and story-tellers are, however, never satisfied with linear
time. They insist on flashbacks to fill in a knowledge of important prior events,and they like flash-forwards to suggest that something significant is going tohappen later. For this purpose they use such expressions as “as will soon benoted” or “as has happened even until this day,” in which the time of a pastevent is related to the time of the verbal account.
..
Space
Physical space is normally regarded as consisting of three dimensions: height,breadth, and depth, but in some languages there are other spatial relations thata treated like dimensions, for example, above, below, behind, in front of, near,
around, etc. Discourse space is generally treated in relation to a communicator,but it may also be related to the position of a dominant character in an account,for example, the location of Jesus in some of the Gospel accounts.
References to space may also occur with verbs of movement, e.g. come, go,
arrive, leave, return, enter, exit , and the range of meaning in any context may
depend on the meaning of still other words. In Hellenistic Greek the verberchomai may mean “come” or “go,” but if the verb hupago “to go ” is in the
same context, then erchomai can only mean “to come.”
Lexical space may depend largely on context. Note, for example, the fol-
lowing English expressions indicating either space or time: first in line, first toContexts in translating 

arrive; in front, in time; throughout the land, throughout the night , as well as
verbs and nouns referring to space or time: approach the village, approach noon;
end of the hour, end of the journey .
Languages may also have spatial systems. In the ancient world of the
Middle East the sky was a dome, the earth was flat with a great river encircling
it, and the land was supported by subterranean water, but usually with the help
of some mythic entity, for example, a huge turtle, a strong hero, or massivecolumns. The gods inhabited the heavens or tall mountains, and hell or Hades
was down because the dead are normally buried in the earth. But spatial orien-tations may depend largely on local ge ographical features. For example, Doleib
Hill near Malakal in the Sudan is only about three feet higher than the sur-
rounding plain, but it is just high enough never to be inundated by the Nile.
Accordingly, it must be a “hill.”
Extensive distances must usually be calculated in terms of time, for exam-
ple, “light years,” but in some cultures even short distances are reckoned interms of time. For example, a particular town may be so many days away, that
is, the number of days it takes to walk the required distance. In Switzerland thedistance between two points along trails is given in hours and minutes, but inGermany similar spatial distances are given in kilometers.
Nevertheless, translating expressions for space, as well as for time, may
involve serious problems if the numbers have symbolic values. The 12,000 sta-dia of the symbolic New Jerusalem in the Apocalypse is equivalent to about1,500 miles, but in Judaism and Christianity the number 12 has importantmeaning, for example, the twelve tribes of Israel and the twelve disciples in theGospel accounts. Also the 144 cubits (12 x 12) for the height of the wall of theNew Jerusalem has important symbolic meaning. But transposing all these
symbolic numbers into present-day measurements of space can seriously robthe text of much of its figurative meaning, and for the Apocalypse the figurativevalues are what count. For such relations some type of footnote is usuallyrequired if readers are to understand what is actually involved.
..
Class
As already noted in the discussion of discourse features of the paragraph about
kreteks, the classes of fragrances and atmospheric conditions proved to be sig-nificant ways of indicating unity. In addition the use of specific rather thangeneric language, for example, the reference to government officials and taxi
drivers as a way of speaking about people in general is important, because termsTranslating texts   

that are more readily “picturable” always carry more impact.
New types of contexts may, however, change the traditional patterns of
grouping entities into classes. For example, in the past a high percentage of
people in the Western World made out grocery lists on the basis of the types of
objects people wished to buy, for example, meat, fish, vegetables, fruit, bread,etc. At present, however, many people make out lists in terms of the space uti-lized by shoppers as they go up and down aisles toward the check-out counters.
Some texts, however, purposely violate class expectations in order to
describe events symbolically. For example, the first few pages of ClaudeSimon’s novel, Le Vent “The Wind” are almost unintelligible because of the
broken sentences, the unusual grammar, and the mixed up word order. Butsoon a reader begins to realize that this is a description of the effects of a whirl-wind. The chaotic grammar becomes a metaphor of the contents of the novel.
..
Connectivity
The connectivity of events is a particularly important feature of narratives, his-tory, and biography, for example, condition, (if this, then that ), concession
(although this, nevertheless that ), purpose (do this in order to do that ), result
(because of this, therefore that). In many texts, however, sequences appear toviolate normal patterns of connectivity. For example, Kafka’s remarkable novel
The Castle describes the experiences of a man who must visit the owner of a
castle, but he is never able to accomplish his goal. Each episode is almost fright-eningly realistic, but the transitions do not make sense. Nevertheless, this isprecisely the kind of existentialism that Kafka wished to portray, namely, therealism of experience but the ultimate meaninglessness of life.
The ordering of concepts, as in argumentation, philosophy, and scientific
inquiry is even more complex than the sequencing of events. An excellentexample of conceptual ordering is found in Sagan’s volume Cosmos , p. 69.
Newton discovered the law of inertia, the tendency of a moving object to con-
tinue moving in a straight line unless something influences it and moves it out
of its path. The Moon, it seemed to Newton, would fly off in a straight line, tan-gential to its orbit, unless there were some other force constantly diverting thepath into a near circle, pulling it in the direction of the Earth. This forceNewton called gravity, and believed that it acted at a distance. There is nothing
physically connecting the Earth and theMoon. And yet the Earth is constantlypulling the Moon toward us. Using Kepler’s third law, Newton mathematicallydeduced the nature of the gravitational force. He showed that the same forceContexts in translating 

that pulls an apple down to Earth keeps the Moon in its orbit and accounts for
the revolutions of the then recently discovered moons of Jupiter in their orbitsabout that distant planet.
The first six words neatly state the content of the paragraph, and the rest of
the sentence, together with the following sentence, indicates why Newtonbecame concerned with the apparent anomaly involved in the continual cir-cling of the Earth by the Moon. The third sentence is the core of the concept,while the following sentence emphasizes the lack of any physical connection.And the next sentence reiterates what the Earth does, despite the lack of a
physical connection.
The last two sentences provide the mathematical basis for gravity and show
the practical implications of gravity for ordinary people and an explanationabout the new discovery of moons circling around the planet Jupiter. This typeof ordering of concepts is what makes Sagan’s writing so clear and convincing.
The conceptual world of a particular culture may include hundreds of pre-
suppositions that significantly order the manner in which people reason, andmany of these underlying cultural concepts seem almost nonsensical to peoplein other cultures, for example, the possibility of people turning themselves intofierce animals, the use of black magic to kill a personal enemy, foretelling thefuture by looking into crystals, guaranteeing the help of the gods by humansacrifice, believing that dishes need to be first washed and then rinsed in watercontaining fresh cow dung, or determining what a person should do on a par-
ticular day by reading one’s horoscope in the daily paper.
Some people also have very special ideas about different types of discourse.
Many M alayalam speakers in India and Dinka speakers in the Sudan are
intrigued with epic poetry, and in some churches in the Philippines, known asIglesia ni Cristo , sermons are accompanied with an emotive dramatization by
choruses of weeping women, while in Haiti religious texts about healing can be
torn up and made into tea as a cure for any illness.
Some presuppositions, however, seem much more reasonable. For exam-
ple, saving up for one’s old age, chewing the bark of an African yohimbine treeto increase sexual potency, regarding one’s reputation after death as one sure
kind of immortality, and becoming more and more skeptical about progress ina world that is rapidly outgrowing many of its natural resources. Without theknowledge of the beliefs and practices of other cultures, a translator’s perspec-tive of the world is tragically restricted. And it is not surprising that the mostserious mistakes in translation are made because of ignorance about the viewsand values of other cultures.Translating texts   

.. Gradation
Gradation is a process of increasing or decreasing the intensity of some aspect
of a text. For example, a short-story or novel usually contains a series of events
in which the characters are faced with increasingly difficult circumstances. Butfinally, when at the apex of a narrative the hero makes a crucial decision or actsto resolve the crisis, the story unwinds until a new steady state is reached.
Scientific texts may also exhibit series of gradations, often spoken of as
“peeling the onion.” For example, in the Scientific American the first section of
an article often describes in more or less ordinary language the importance ofsome new discovery or technique. A following section describes essentially thesame subject matter but in considerably more detail, and frequently there is afinal section written primarily for specialists.
Descriptions of landscapes often follow much the same type of gradation
but in terms of greater detail and specific features. This type of description,which moves from the broad picture to more intricate elements, is typical ofmany book reviews and descriptions of personality traits. But the order mayalso be reversed, and a description may begin with minor details and thenmove gradually to the larger features.
..
Reference
Reference consists of two major types: (1) pronominal reference, either refer-
ring back (anaphoric) or referring to something ahead (cataphoric), and (2)
naming reference, identifying entities and activities by means of proper names.
In place of the traditional triple reference to first, second, and third persons
in communication, Navajo has a fourth person, that is, the next third person
mentioned in a text. Many languages also distinguish between inclusive andexclusive first person plural, that is, an inclusive wereferring to the speaker and
his audience in contrast with an exclusive wethat includes the speaker and his
associates, but excludes the audience. The wrong use of inclusive and exclusivefirst person plural has led to many serious problems in litigation.
Proper names are also aspects of reference, because they normally only
“refer” rather than “name” classes. But in some languages the same person may
have several names, depending on the degree of intimacy between the speakerand the referent. This type of problem often shows up in translations ofRussian novels, in which one and the same person may be referred to by four or
five different names.Contexts in translating 

.. Dialogue
The organization of conversation is primarily a matter of dialogue, in which
participants interact in a yes/no, a question/answer , or a granted/but contex t. In
many instances, however, a speaker tries to anticipate the response of an inter-locutor and introduces “anticipatory feedback,” consciously answering theobjections that are likely to come from an audience.
The stream-of-consciousness type of utterance is typical of a person who
speaks to himself or herself, and it often contains considerable amount ofanticipatory feedback, in which a person tries to answer himself or herself.Such speech is difficult to analyze structurally because it is often impossible to
fill in the gaps. Psychiatrists, however, make extensive use of such speech sinceit indirectly reveals much that concerns a patient and which is so personal as toinhibit a person’s supplying such information in a more logical form.
Some people who talk to themselves employ well organized utterances
designed to test ideas in front of an imag inary audience. In fact, some people even
introduce into their speech possible objections from an imaginary audience.
Prayer is a very special kind of dialogue, in which speech is directed to a
supernatural entity, but there is usually no apparent immediate response,although some people insist that God does immediately and audibly answertheir prayers by telling them what is to happen and what they must do.
..
Literary formulas
All cultures have developed ways in which the basic relations between sets of
words are organized into a number of general literary formulas, e.g. narratives,
conversation, proverbs, puns, epic accounts, animal tales, and poetry (with
measured lines and rhythm), and some cultures have a number of specific liter-ary forms, for example, history, short-stories, scientific essays, business letters,contracts, prophecy (speaking about the future and/or on behalf of God), apoc-
alyptic (prophecy about an increasingly bad future until everything is altered bya messiah), and sonnets (the most elaborate and condensed literary form).
Christina Rossetti’s poem Remember is one of the finest representatives of a
centuries-old tradition of sonnet poetry in Western Europe. Note the 14-line
pattern in which the first eight lines pose the problem and the last six lines sug-gest an answer, especially highlighted in the last two lines. The rhyme pattern isalso carefully structured as abbaabba and cddfcf. The word remember occurs
three times in the first eight lines and twice in the six line response, which alsoTranslating texts   

includes two occurrences of forget . A literal translation of this type of highly
structured text would never have precisely the same literary character as the
original, but the theme could be reworked into a corresponding sonnet inanother language, as a type of “variations on a theme,” occurring frequently inmusic.
Reme mber
Reme mber me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land;
When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go, yet turning stay.
Reme mber me when no more, day by day,
You tell me of our future that you planned;
Only remember me; you understandIt will be late to counsel then or pray.
Yet if you should forget me for a while
And afterwards remember, do not grieve,
For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,Better by far you should forget and smileThan that you should remember and be sad.
Some poems have such a “loose” structure that early critics denounced such
productions as not even being poems. Carl Sandburg’s poem entitled Grasswas
particularly criticized for its lack of rhyme, its irregular rhythm, and the proseinsert in lines 7–9, but these lines carry a powerful impact, because it suggeststhat most people are completely unaware of some of the great tragic battles inmodern history.
Grass
Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.
Shovel them under and let me work —
I am grass; I cover all.
And pile them high at Gettysberg
And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun.
Shovel them under and let me work.Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor:
What place is this?
Where are we now?Contexts in translating 

I am grass.
Let me work.
The translation of highly structured literary productions is always a problem
because the very process of translation seems to require a rather high degree ofparallelism in both form and content. Ezra Pound’s translations of Chinesepoetry were more like musical “variations on a theme” rather than actual trans-lations, but Pound’s artistry with words produced results that attracted consid-erable praise. But some poetry simply defies close or even loose translation. Oneprofessional translator of Japanese literature into English was asked to translateall of the poems of a noted Japanese poet, but he refused. He did, however, offerto translate all the poems that could be poems in English, because he recognized
that many of the cultural allusions could not be satisfactorily translated intoEnglish, and introducing extensive notes about cultural differences woulddestroy the remarkable poetic character of the original poems.
Essentially the same problems exist in translating some Arabic and Chinese
poems into English. Translators of poetry from Arabic into English have beenconspicuously more successful than translators of poetry from Chinese into
English, perhaps because the poems in Arabic have seemed to be closer to theWestern World as the result of centuries of culture contact. But some transla-
tors of Chinese texts into English have felt constrained to communicate some-
thing of their distinctive cultural heritage by means of translated poetry, and asa result many translations of Chinese poetry have been much less successful.Poetry is not the medium for communicating cultural distinctiveness, and
recently there has been a marked shift in Chinese thought about such issues,
due in considerable measure to the literary journal Re nditions, published by the
Chinese University of Hong Kong.
.
Major content features of texts
In addition to organizational features of time, space, class, etc., texts also have
important features of content: completeness, unity, novelty, appropriateness, and
relevance, which in various ways and in different proportions make texts effective.
Completeness normally means that a text appears to cover the entire sub-
ject suggested by the title or by the topic paragraph that defines the range ofcontent. Readers appreciate an article that seems to cover a subject adequately.
In some cases, however, a text seems to drag on too long, as at the end of
Tolstoy’s War and Peace.Translating texts   

In addition, however, there needs to be some sense of unity. The beginning
and the end need to be somehow related. As already noted, even in the short
paragraph about kreteks, the occurrence of Indonesia in the first and last sen-
tence helps to provide this sense of unity.
If an author is going to hold the attention of readers, a text must also include
something novel and unexpected. A short-stor y, and especially detective novels,
must include events that are not anticipated by readers. If the end of a book is
almost predictable from the beginning, it will soon be neglected by readers.
Texts also need to be appropriate for the setting in which they are commu-
nicated. A lecture and a sermon may have somewhat the same purpose, that is,to significantly influence the thought and behavior of listeners, but the con-
tents of a lecture or of a sermon are based on quite different sources of informa-
tion and respond to quite different sets of presuppositions. Lecturers normallycite important new discoveries, while preachers refer to divinely inspiredancient writings. Furthermore, the language registers for lectures and sermonsare quite distinct. On one occasion, for example, a visiting preacher greeted dif-ferent members of a congregation after the benediction, and a small boy said tothe preacher, “That was sure a nice talk.” The boy’s mother immediately inter-vened and insisted, “That was a sermon, not a talk,” but the boy replied, “It
wasn’t a sermon, because he made us all laugh.”
Relevance for receptors of communication is a major factor in communi-
cation, but relevance depends on a number of factors: the intelligibility of thecontents of a text, the extent to which a receptor thinks he or she can benefit
from the contents, and the physical and psychological proximity between thereceptor and the contents. A notice about the death of more than 10,000 per-
sons drowned in a tidal wave and flood in Bangladesh may seem much less rele-vant than the armed robbery of a house next door, unless, of course, a familymember happens to have been in Bangladesh at the time.
.
Rhetorical features of a text
In order to enhance the impact and appeal of a text, all languages employ a
number of formal and semantic features. The number and distribution of such
features differs widely in different kinds of texts and in different languages.
The principal formal features include unusual word order (placing the
subject at the end rather than at the beginning of a sentence), repetition of
words or phrases (for emphasis), embedding of one idea within another, theContexts in translating 

incorporation of parenthetical information (usually in parenthesis or set off by
commas), measured lines (as a part of poetic structures), parallelism (widely
employed in liturgical and political texts that frequently include responses
between speaker and audience), a telegraphic style (e.g. Hemingway) in con-trast with elaborate rhetorical structures (Faulkner), back-flashes and for-
ward-flashes (information that is not in a normal temporal sequence), paral-lelism and chiasm (the order abcabc in contrast with abccba), rhyme (previ-ously regarded as indispensable for poet ry , but more recently considered
somewhat pedantic and artificial), rhythm (either in terms of various types offeet: iambic, trochaic, spondee, anapest, and dactyl, based on stress contrasts,length of syllables, and even on tone patterns in Classical Chinese), highlight-ing (emphasizing some feature of the content by order of words or by theamount of information employed to characterize some entity), purposefuldeletion ( if you do that, I’ll…! in which case the lack of a specific threat may be
more forceful than an actual threat), ungrammatical arrangement of words tocall special attention to certain aspects of a text (technically called, ana-coloutha, for which E.E. Cummings was rightly famous). For example, note his
following four-line poem:
since feeling is first
who pays any attentionto the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you
Some of the more important semantic features of texts include plays on the
meanings of words (puns), purposeful ambiguity or obscurity (especially indetective stories), irony and sarcasm, understating (litotes) and overstating(hyperbole), euphemisms (using acceptable ways of speaking about somethingbad or taboo), specific reference in contrast with generic reference, indirection(saying one thing while actually referring to something else, for example, indi-cating the wealth of someone by saying that he has a ten room apartment onPark Avenue at 61st street in New Y ork City), oxymorons as means of calling
special attention to some entity or features (for example, s quare circle, chaotic
silence), figurative language (for example, Sandburg’s use of throwing confetti
and blowing horns to characterize life and in the dust…in the cool tombs to
describe death).
Many people associate figurative language almost exclusively with literary
texts, especially poetry and novels, but scie ntists often need figurative expres-
sions to explain some of the remarkable aspects of science. Note the followingTranslating texts   

statements from the introduction to The Lives of a Cell by Lewis Thomas:
“Evolution is still an infinitely long and tedious biological game, with only the
winners staying at the table, but the rules are beginning to look more flexible.
We live in a dancing matrix of viruses that dart rather like bees, from organism
to organism, from plant to insect to mammal to me and back again, and into
the sea, tugging along pieces of this genome, strings of genes from that, trans-planted grafts of DNA, passing around heredity as though at a great party.”
The following figurative uses of language are taken from a series of articles
in Science News (July 3, 1999), but they represent only a few of the relatively
wide range of semantic “oddities.”
1. In an article about the discovery of sharpened stone points found in theneck bone of a wild ass that died some 50,000 years ago, the discovery is calledan archeological smoking gun since the manufacture of such weapons by
Neanderthals has been generally denied.
In this same article a key paragraph ends with the statement stone points
added a deadly edge . The name of the article also contains an interesting seman-
tic shift: N eanderthal Hunters Get to the Point .
2. An article on the ways in which malaria disrupts the immune systemspeaks about the T-cells as the workhorses of the immune system and insists
that dendrite cells, as an area of investigation, are hot right now .
3. An article entitled Outta sight! A crafty peek at the sun’s back is about studies
of the far side of the sun. The first sentence ends with the statement astronomers
are no longer in the dark , since they can pick up the location of an ultraviolet hot
spot by equipment in the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory.
4. An article entitled Amino acid puts the muscle in mussel glue about the
unusually strong adhesive used by mussels to attach themselves to wave lashed
rocks describes the cross-linking protein strands that have to kick in in order for
the adhesive to perform .
5. An article entitled If Mom chooses Dad, more ducklings survive presents evi-
dence that a female mallard duck that gets to pick her mate has ducklings thatare more likely to survive. The researcher is herself surprised at the results,which are summarized in the statement, The mothers build the nest, the motherssit on the nest, the kids feed themselves, but the daddies hang around. We don’t getit.
6. The article on the manner in which the DNA of some bacterias are trans-
formed into crystals when a food source is strictly limited is highlighted by aclever parody, when the going gets tough, the tough stop growing .Contexts in translating 

7. An important article entitled Stop-and Go Science about the problems of
traffic in cities around the world describes how scientists are trying very hard to
cram more vehicles onto existing roadways without putting highway speeds into a
nose-dive . But the number of theories about traffic flow include a whole zoo of
models. No one, however, seems to understand how cars suddenly slow down
to the same speed and jell into a type of unified, moving mass.
8. A fascinating article about the extent of carbon-dioxide in the environ-ment during the last 10,000 years is threatening to upend ideas about how muchof this greenhouse gas filled the atmosphere before the industrial revolution. But
the study of carbon-dioxide in birch leaves from an ancient Dutch bog gets a
chilly reception from ice-core researchers .
9. An article about the Secret Lives of Squirrel Monkeys describes a male
Pacino monkey in Surinam as an animal who brawls hard and dirty, and he sto-
ically takes his licks. Constant no-holds-barred battles have left wicked scars on hismouth and nose…the undisputed champ of daily tooth-and-claw clashes But the
social arrangements of Pacino and his terrorized troop in Surinam are as differ-ent from those of Costa Rican squirrel monkeys as the street gang’s code of con-
duct is from Amish etiquette. Moreover, Peruvian squirrel monkeys take anotherpath altogether, emphasizing what some might call “girl power .”
None of the above underlined expressions is particularly obscure in meaning
for a person who has a reasonable command of English, but the extent to whichsuch figurative expressions can be translated directly into another languagedepends on the creativity of the translator and on the presumed knowledge ofthe intended readers. Most readers are likely to know a “street gang’s code ofconduct,” but they may not know anything about “Amish etiquette,” and a
footnote about the Amish people might seem overdone, although it might beuseful to employ in the text “the behavior of those who refuse to employ forceto defend their rights.” Here is precisely where the knowledge and judgment of
translators are crucial, and this is precisely why exceptional translators produce
unusually good translations.
Wor king out a set of rules for adapting figurative expressions from one lan-
guage to another is usually a waste of time because no two situations are everreally the same. The purposes of a publication, the intended audience, the ways
in which a text will be used, and the special skills and knowledge of the transla-tor are all factors that vary radically from one text to another. But in order to
become more sensitive to what professional translators actually do, it is essen-tial to study translations by expert translators. This can perhaps be best done byTranslating texts   

asking three fundamental questions concerning additions, deletions, and
changes in form and meaning.
1. What are the specific differences between the source and receptor texts? 2.What are the apparent contextual reasons for such differences? 3. What soci-
olinguistic factors seem to justify or question such differences?
In order to indicate more precisely what is involved in studying texts and
their translation an illustrative paragraph has been selected from a bilingualpublication in French and English, published for air travelers by Air France.The title of the article is “Spielberg, the Phoenix of Hollywood” by FrançoisForestier, October, 1998 (the translator is, however, not named). But in order
to examine a number of features of the translation, the various differences are
indicated by corresponding numbers in square brackets preceding the corre-sponding expressions.
French text:
[1] Pour 139 dollars par semaine, Spielberg [2] loue alors un deux-pièces à Los
Angeles. [3] Très rapidement, [4] il se voit confier la réalisation d’épisodes télé:
il tourne Eyes avec Joan Crawford. La star, [5] réalisant que le jeune cinéaste n’a
aucune expérience, [6] pique une colère. [7] Spielberg tient bon. [8] On lui con-fie un épisode de Colo mbo, et deux ou trois autres petits jobs. En 1972, il se lance
dans un long métrage [9] bizarre, un truc intitulé Duel , [10] qui dure 74 min-
utes. [11] L’odyssée d’un conducteur poursuivi par un camion anonyme, sansraison apparente. [12] Le patron de la chaîne de télé NBC voit le film, demande:
[13] “Qu’est-ce que c’est que ça? [14] et laisse faire.” Spielberg en profite pourprésenter le film dans des festivals, dont celui d’Avoriaz. Un an plus tard, [15]Duel sort sur les écrans, [16] rallongé à 85 minutes. C’est la sensation. [17]
Tourné pour quelques dizaine de milliers de dollars, le film décuple la mise. [18]
“J’ai décidé de passer au cinéma,” déclare alors Spielberg. Il a vingt-quatre ans.
English translation :
Spielberg [2] rented a two-room, [1] $139-a-week apartment in Los Angeles.
[3] He [4]was asked to direct episodes for TV series and made Eyes with Joan
Crawford. The star [6] flew off the handle [5] when she found out that the
young man didn’t have any experience, [7] but Spielberg stood his ground. [8]
He was asked to do an episode of Colombo as well as two or three other small
jobs. In 1972 he made his first full-length feature, [9] a bizarre thriller calledDuel . [10] Seventy-four minutes [11] about a faceless, psychopathic truck dri-
ver who tries to run a motorist off a California highway for no apparent reason.
[12] When the head of NBC saw the movie he asked, [13] “What the hell isthat?” [14] but gave it his seal of approval. Spielberg took advantage by pre-Contexts in translating 

senting Duel at several festivals, including Avoriaz. One year later [15,16] an
eighty-five minute version hit the screens. It was a sensation. [17] The film,
which cost only a few tens of thousands of dollars to make, paid back its invest-
ment tenfold. [18] “That’s when I decided to leave TV for the movies,”Spielberg says. He was twenty-four.
The English translator of the French text is exceptionally qualified in matching
the journalistic style of the French text, particularly in the appropriate corre-spondences in idiomatic words and phrases, many of which are not mentionedin the following notes. From the various modifications and additions made inthe translation, it is evident that the translator is much more knowledgeableabout the motion picture industry than the writer. But the following analysis ofthe similarities and differences does not include all of the minor details norevery time some such feature recurs, for example, the use of different English
tense forms for the journalistic present tense in French.
1. The English text begins typically with the personal subject, rather thanwith an adverbial phrase.
2. The French text employs primarily present-tense forms, but these are gen-erally recast into appropriate past tense expressions in English.
3. The French text says nothing at this point about the speed with which
Spielberg progressed in the motion picture industry, but there are numerousreferences to this in other parts of the French article, and apparently the trans-
lator believed that this would also be an appropriate place to repeat this theme.
4. The French text has a complex reflexive verb phrase with voir “to see,” that
functions like a passive, and accordingly, the English text employs was asked .
5. The participial phrase construction between the subject and the main verb
is typical in French, but unusual in English. In fact, a literal translation wouldhave made the English text sound more like a legal document. Accordingly, theEnglish text moves directly from the subject to the idiom expressing anger, andthe cause of the anger occurs in the predicate of the English translation.
6. The French idiom pique une colère literally, “sting an anger” is appropriate-
ly rendered in English as “flew off the handle,” although the translator could
have used a number of different expressions, “got angry,” “became furious,”“showed her temper.”
7. The French idiom tient bon , literally, “to hold well,” is a common expres-
sion for “standing firm” or “refusing to yield” or “refusing to give in.”
8. The French phrase with an impersonal subject, the dative pronoun, andTranslating texts   

the verb confier is somewhat more formal than the English translation, but the
English passive was asked is a typical way of representing the impersonal
French expression.
9. In the French text the term bizarre qualifies the noun métrage , a French
equivalent of a full-length feature. But in English the adjective bizarre goes
much better with the following term truc , a popular term for a thriller.
10. The French text places the clause about “lasting 74 minutes” at the end of
the sentence. But the English text breaks the text at this point and combines thephrase “Seventy-four minutes” with the following sentence. This change insentence content makes a better transition and helps to explain somewhat thetranslator’s unusual addition.
11. Whereas the French text only speaks about “the trip of a driver pursued bya nameless truck without reason,” the translator evidently felt that such adescription of the motion picture did not do justice to a film that had such animportant impact on Spielberg’s career. The statements in the two texts are notnecessarily contradictory, but certainly the English text contains a substantiveaddition.
12. In the French text the writer evidently thought that it was necessary to
identify the NBC as a television company, but to the translator such an additionapparently seemed unnecessary. In the French text the two parts representstructurally two different sentences, although semantically they are logicallyrelated. According, the English translator made this connection evident by
translating, When the head of NBC saw the movie, he asked ,
13. Although the French text has only the literal statement, “ What’s that!” the
context certainly suggests something more surprising and unusual. The
English translator evidently felt it was important to translate in terms of thecontext, not merely in terms of the words.
14. The French text has only a phrase meaning literally “and let it be done,” butthe context suggests much more. In the case of expressions marked as 13 and14, the English translator has evidently tried to make the text more realistic bytranslating what was evidently implied by what was said.
15, 16. These two segments of the French text and the English translationneed to be treated together because of a complex problem of order. In theFrench text the expression Duel sort sur les écrans is a perfectly natural ways of
talking by releasing a film to theater chains. But in view of the fact that the pic-ture proved to be a sensation, it apparently seemed to the translator that some-Contexts in translating 

thing like “hit the screens” would be more appropriate.
In the French text the statement rallongé à 85 minutes, literally “lengthened
to 85 minutes” would perhaps depreciate the value of what was added.
Accordingly, the English translation has simply an eighty-five minute version.
17. In French the participial phrase that precedes the main part of the sentence
is typical in French (in fact, such constructions were also popular with Ciceroin ancient Rome). But a literal translation into English would be particularlyawkward. It is for this reason, that the English translation begins with the sub-
ject and is then followed by a restrictive clause.
18. The French text means only “passing to motion pictures” or “changing to
motion pictures,” but the English translator evidently believed that it wasimportant to indicate that Spielberg was giving up work on television showsand would be working completely for the movies. This is simply an edition tomake the text more explicit and clear.
This type of study of what expert professional translators actually do is the best
way to learn how to translate. Such an approach is far better than attempting tomemorize rules about embedded clauses, figurative meanings, and stylisticequivalences. A translator needs to develop a “feeling” for what is appropriatefor different types of texts being translated for different kinds of audiences whowill no doubt use the translation for different purposes. What translators need
most of all is judgment, and this can only be acquired by seeing what compe-tent translators have done and by experimenting with different kinds of texts
for different types of audiences. Personal guidance by competent teachers is farbetter than any textbook on translating , because translating is essentially a skill,
and skills are best learned in an apprenticeship context. This, however, alsomeans that teachers of translation need to be expert translators.Translating texts   

 
Representative treatments of translating
The basic principles of translating are not as diverse or as intricate as many per-
sons think. In most instances their apparent differences largely reflect differentkinds of content, diverse audiences, and distinct purposes. Accordingly, it maybe useful to look more carefully at various books on translation, especially
because the practice of translating and interpreting in the 20th Century hasincreased much more rapidly than at any other time in history. The expansionof world trade, the development of multinational corporations and interna-tional entities, such as the United Nations, NATO, the European Union, andregional groupings in Southeast Asia and Africa, inevitably increase the need
for translation and interpretation.
The need for such cooperative efforts is highlighted by the fact that popula-
tions are rapidly outgrowing natural resources, especially water, and some irre-sponsible dictators still rattle atomic w eapons. But fortunately, our electronic age
now makes possible interlingual communication on a level never dreamed ofbefore. Email and internet are making the world a multi-language community.
.
Developments in interlingual studies
In order to match the need for interlingual communication, the teaching of
foreign languages is rapidly increasing, and in Europe alone there are at least
seventy-five institutions concentrating on teaching the principles and practiceof translating and interpreting. In addition, many university departments offoreign languages are introducing courses in interlingual communication.
There are now more than forty academic journals dealing with the issues of
translation and interpreting, and during the 20th Century more than 300
books have been published about problems and solutions to interlingual com-munication. The number of professional translators has grown enormously. In
the European Union there are some 2,500 in-house translators, while in HongKong alone there are some 6,000 full-time free-lance and agency translators.
The Professional Translators Society of China has a membership of more than

40,000 translators, and the total number of people in the world spending either
most or all of their time translating or interpreting probably exceeds 300,000,but they cannot keep up with the demand.
A number of commercial firms are also investing heavily in programs for
translating. Already there are more than eighty-five sets of languages for which
there is at least some automated system for translating, and there are more than400 orthographic systems for computer use. Internet translating and interpret-ing represents a thirty billion dollar a year market that is growing at the rate of14% percent a year.
In a number of academic institutions translating and interpreting have evi-
dently become academic disciplines in their own right, especially if one regards
the development of technical vocabulary as an index of professional status.Consider, for example, the following representative English terms employed in
speaking and writing about translating and interpreting: conceptual paradigms,
polysystems, skopos, poststructuralism, c omputerized corpora, postcolonializa-
tion, globalization, subspecialties, cultural studies, literary theory, culturally ori-
ented research, competing paradigms, conceptual and disciplinary divisions,
abstract category of verbal communication, minimal processing effort, Hallidayanlinguistic theory, interpersonal pragmatics, audiovisual synchronization, system-atic loss of politeness phenomena, computerized corpora, explicitation hypothesis,sanitization, computer-discovered regularities in translation strategies, poststruc-turalist translation theory, discursive self-definition, confrontation with alien dis-courses, transdiscursive texts, the rhetoricity of language, gendering, Griceanmechanism. If specialized vocabulary is a sign of a separate, emerging disci-pline, there is no doubt that translating and interpreting are creating a gooddeal of academic autonomy, static, and status.
Professional specialization has become so extensive that some people insist
on separating translating and interpreting into two distinct disciplines of inter-lingual communication. As already noted, interpreters need considerablygreater immediate knowledge about the subject matter being communicated,
and they must also make more rapid decisions and be less nervous about theirown limitations. But interpreters and translators deal with essentially the same
problems of textual correspondences.
One important reason for skepticism about the need for more books on
translation is that some people seem to have a special gift for interlingual com-
munication, and without any formal training in translating they become first-
rate translators. They appear to have an exceptional aptitude for effective inter-
lingual communication, and they simply do not need years of training. In fact,Contexts in translating 

it is often said that particularly competent translators and interpreters are
born, not made.
More and more evidence seems to point to the fact that highly creative
translating and interpreting are largely inherent skills similar to what occurs in
the fields of music and graphic art. Almost anyone can learn to draw pictures ofa landscape or play music in an amateurish way, but people must have unusualinnate aptitudes if they are to be professionally successful.
Perhaps the description of the training and experience of two real persons,
purposely named Marcos and Guillaume respectively so as not to reveal theirtrue identity, may be helpful in understanding the nature of interlingual skill incommunication.
Marcos grew up in a strictly monolingual context of Spanish, but he had
the advantage of an excellent education in Latin and Greek and went on tolearn French, German, and English, although he never learned to speakGerman or English because he had no opportunity to live in countries wherethese languages were spoken. As a part of his teaching Classical Greek andLatin, he did a considerable amount of translating, and a number of his trans-lations of Latin and Greek authors, as well as books translated from French,German, and English, were published in Spanish. In fact, he ultimately wroteseveral books on the history and practice of translating and was honored by hisacademic colleagues for unusual competence in translating.
By way of contrast, Guillaume was educated in a trilingual setting of
German, French, and English, and spoke all three languages without noticeableaccent. His university training was exceptional and because of his languagecompetence he became a translator in companies in the United States doing
business with affiliates in Europe. Because of extensive experience as a trilin-gual translator, he was hired by a New Y ork firm to handle all translations ofdocuments and correspondence involving English, French, and German.
His translations were not regularly reviewed, but gradually responses from
affiliates in Europe indicated that they had evidently not accurately understoodthe translations in German and French. In fact, after a few months one affiliatewrote confidentially to say that it would be much more satisfactory if commu-
nications could be sent in English, because people in Europe were confusedand were wasting too much time trying to figure out the meaning of letters anddocuments in French and German.
Guillaume had no psychological blocks in speaking foreign languages,
because he spoke them freely, but he had evidently not understood that translat-ing means correct communicating, and as a result his word-for-word writtenRepresentative treatments of translating   

renderings were often misleading. In fact, it seems incredible that a competent
trilingual speaker could so seriously misunderstand the nature of translating.
Some people, however, seem to never overcome the serious mistake of thinking
that translating means representing consistently the dictionary meaning ofwords. His speech never betrayed such word-for-word correspondences, but in
translating he was intellectually blind to the nature of his task as a translator.
Skill in translating is not a common commodity. For example, from time
to time the European Union sends out a notice about an examination for peo-
ple wanting to be in-house translators of the EU. Frequently, more than 15,000persons will apply, but the total number of persons who are permitted to take
the examination is greatly reduced on the basis of language experience and aca-demic training. As a result a typical number of persons actually taking anexamination is approximately 5,000, but the number that are successful in
passing the examination is normally less than ten. As already noted inChapter 1, the aptitude for special competence in interlingual communication
is about as restricted as it is for music and art.
Competence in translating and interpreting may be meaningfully dis-
cussed in terms of the position of people on a bell-curve with the typical twodimensions: the horizontal dimension indicating the degree of competencefrom practically no ability to extremely creative ability and the vertical dimen-sion indicating the approximate number of persons at each point along thecurve. Such curves are useful devices for grasping certain important concepts,even when it is impossible to assign numerical values to the numbers of per-
sons and the degrees of competence.
Persons on the left of such a curve will generally be inadequate for effective
translating, and up to a point near the top of the curve most people should
probably not be encouraged to become professional translators or interpreters,although they may be good mathematicians, expert clothing designers, or first-rate administrators. At the same time, it is essential to recognize the impor-
tance of motivation in all such situations, because high motivation can com-pensate to some extent for lack of inherent ability.
Those with competence near the top of the curve and down the major part
of the right hand side of the curve can certainly learn to translate various typesof largely routine documents, such as letters, newspaper articles, businessagendas, political speeches, and government notices. These are precisely thepersons who can benefit significantly from courses in translating offered byuniversities and institutes with intensive programs lasting three or four years.But for texts with considerable figurative language, legal terminology, mer-Contexts in translating 

chandizing, and scientific content, it is important to have persons who are
especially competent in understanding the source text and in reproducing the
content and the style in another language. Even some of the most gifted trans-
lators can and do profit from a study of what other first-rate translators actuallydo. Such realistic studies of translation principles and practice can greatlyenrich their own work.
The description and classification of texts on the basis of form and content,
and therefore of interpretation, may be useful in speaking about types of trans-lation problems. For the most part, it is possible to characterize five different,but somewhat overlapping, types of texts, although some of the following texttypes may have overlapping features:
1. T exts in which the words, grammar, and discourse structure represent theordinary day-to-day experience found in personal letters, news reports, agen-das, commercial advertising, business notices, daily progress reports, andmany short stories. Such texts generally contain well known words and exceptfor common idioms, they employ few figurative expressions.
2. T exts with relatively well-known words (although often with highly specif-
ic meanings) and complex grammar so as to include a number of restrictivefeatures within sentence units, for example, laws, constitutions, bylaws, wills,and contracts.
3. T exts with highly technical vocabulary having very specific meanings and
relatively clear grammatical constructions, for example, books on science,
technical journals, instructions for engaging in scientific processes.
4. T exts with unusual figurative meanings of words, for example, cult histories,elaborate mantras, translations of the Koran and the Bible, and memorizedtexts of secret societies.
5. T exts with numerous idiomatic expressions and types of content thatrequire figurative interpretation, for example, myths, parables, proverbs, lyric
poetry, songs, operas, and symbolic novels
To this list of five basic text types, it may be useful to mention another impor-
tant, but highly restricted text type, namely, political documents prepared for
international bodies about rapidly developing events. Such documents mustbe factually true, or the leaders will be severely criticized. Nevertheless, thesedocuments usually cannot tell all the truth, since reference to or even indirect
allusions to such matters could serious damage future developments. Politicalleaders and their speech writers, as well as their translators, must be sensitive toRepresentative treatments of translating   

both the content of reports and the possible emotive responses of audiences. As
a result, some political leaders feel constrained to talk but to say little or noth-ing, and translators are under great pressure to do the same.
Translators and interpreters must also be constantly aware of different types
of audiences: school children, sports fans, retirees, and professionals with theirown jargons. They must also be aware that texts may have different purposes.
Some are simply for amusement and enjo yment while others are crucial for
what people want to do, for example, how to assemble a complicated machine
Many translators enjoy the challenge of literary texts, even those that are
almost on the margin of intelligibility, for example, the highly figurative writingof James Joyce. Others like the complexity of Faulkner’s sentences, and they mayeven believe that a strictly word-for-word translation communicates certain hid-
den concepts that freer translations overlook. For example, Buber andRosenzweig made a literal translation of the Hebrew Bible so as to give German
readers a “feeling” of how ancient Hebrew speakers might have understood the
text. Chouraqui has attempted to do this in French, and a comparable word-for-
word translation of Genesis 1.1–2 into English would be: “Heading, Elohim was
creating the heavens and the earth, the earth was tohu-bohu, darkness was on thefaces of the abyss, but the breath of Elohim spread out over the faces of the water.”
Other translators find the greatest challenge in the intellectual task of com-
municating significant information so as to produce important responses in
the activity and beliefs of people in other language-cultures. Their concern isfor the ways in which receptors understand, appreciate, and respond to a trans-lation. They regard translating and interpreting as communication, and whatcounts for them is the correctness with which the messages are received.
.
Illustrative examples of different treatments of translating
The generally negative reaction of students to books about principles of trans-lating are due in part to fact that they have not had enough practice in translat-ing to be able to evaluate or criticize such books in a relevant manner. In addi-tion, many of the textbooks appear to use a vocabulary designed to impresseducators that translation is a legitimate academic discipline. But what puzzlesstudents most is that the various books are really not that different. They allseem to be saying much the same things but with different illustrative data,diverse technical vocabulary, and prescriptive advice without explanations ofthe empirical sources of such principlesContexts in translating 

Because of the reaction of many students who bring up such issues during
discussion periods following lectures, it may perhaps be useful to characterize
briefly some of the more insightful books. But I have included primarily thosebooks that state principles of translation and follow these up with plenty ofuseful examples. Some of these volumes are, however, pedagogical textbooksdesigned to teach students step by step how to translate various kinds of texts.The order of presentation of these volumes is based on dates of publication.
1. Zielsprache by Fritz Guttinger (1963) is a delightfully written book that
begins with the controversial and negative statements by Ortega y Gasset, Goethe,
Schleiermacher, and Benjamin, but ends with a fascinating collection of some ofthe most important statements about translation in the 19th and early 20thCentury. The titles of the chapters indicate quite clearly the down-to-earth char-acter of the volume: “Translating (more or less) literary texts,” “Everything that isuseful for a translator,” “Five sources for making mistakes,” and “When translat-ing is the same as writing.” The range of problems dealt with is excellent, andalthough the text is in German, most of the illustrative examples are from English.
2. Toward a Science of Translating by Eugene A. Nida (1964) attempts to apply
to translating the relevant insights from linguistics, sociolinguistics,
sociosemiotics, cultural anthropology, lexicology, and communication theory.
The principal source of illustrative data is Bible translations, and the prospec-tive audience was the several thousand persons engaged in translating theScriptures into more than a 1,000 languages.
Unfortunately many people assumed that my concepts of translation
developed as a result of working on biblical texts, but my ideas about translat-ing were formulated years earlier while a Greek Major at the University ofCalifornia at Los Angeles. I was introduced to the writings of such persons asSapir, Bloomfield, Pedersen, and Malinowski. I therefore saw no reason whythe everyday Koine Greek of the New T estament should not be translated intothe everyday level of languages spoken throughout the world.
The volume To ward a Science of Translation reflec ts a number of different
insights from diverse disciplines because no single discipline or theory can pos-sibly provide the necessary insights to deal satisfactorily with the many facetedaspects of interlingual communication.
3. Introducción a la Traductología by Gerardo Vázquez-Ayora (1977), with a
subtitle of Basic Course in Translating, is a systematic course for translating from
English into Spanish based on linguistic principles and divided into nine princi-
pal chapters: Preliminary analysis of a text, The application of linguistics to trans-Representative treatments of translating   

lating, Style, Frequent syntactic and lexical differences between English and
Spanish, The application of linguistics and metalinguistics to ambiguity andredundancy, Discourse, T echnical procedures in translating, and General proce-
dures in translation — all with consistent attention to equivalence and context.
The section on style deals extensively with optional and obligatory distinc-
tions, and the treatment of anglicisms is unusually extensive. Most of thelonger texts, however, come largely from literary sources. References to theviews of other specialists in translation are extensive and well documented, and
the sections on translation procedures are often quite practical, but the techni-cal terminology used to explain translation principles is translated literallyfrom English in such a way as to profoundly disturb Spanish speakers, whogenerally dislike technical terms that are not properly formed on traditionalmodels. Nevertheless, Georgetown University Press is to be congratulated forpublishing a book that has been so helpful to many Latin Americans.
4. Traduire: théorèmes pour la traduction , by J-R Ladmiral (1979) deals with a
number of basic translation issues from a psychological perspective. The first
chapter “What is translation?” is a rapid review of developments in the field of
interlingual communication. The second chapter on translation and teaching
programs deals with a wide range of issues: from the correct understanding of thesource text to the sociological implications of translating. The third chapter alsoconsiders a broad series of issues, from the philosophy of language to the nature
of literature. The fourth chapter treats issues of stylistics, connotations, sociolin-guistic problems, and the various ways in which translations may be effectivelycritiqued. Chapter five is a particularly effective analysis of semantics and semi-
otics, and a final Chapter 6 analyzes the practical application of basic translationprinciples. The Appendix also continues an insightful analysis of psychoanalyti-cal discourse. The range of Ladmiral’s interests and competence thoroughly jus-tifies his criticisms of polemical, historical, and theoretical arguments againsttranslating. While his interesting, clear style of writing makes this important
book a real pleasure to read, his profound knowledge and insight about translat-ing makes a reader see translation in a much broader frame of reference.
5. The Science of Linguistics in the Art of Translation by Joseph L. Malone
(1988) has a very useful section on technical vocabulary about linguistic factors
in translating and departs from most other analyses of translation by introduc-ing dialogue as a fundamental factor in translating. The book is divided intothree parts, with several chapters in each part. Part One deals with equationand substitution, divergence and convergence, amplification and reduction,Contexts in translating 

repackaging, reordering, and trajection, while Part Two is concerned primarily
with systematic and formalistic techniques, taxonomies, syntactic representa-
tions, and bridge techniques. Part Three treats phonetics, phonology and poet-
ic form, rhyme, alliteration, paranomasia, and parallax.
Although the technical vocabulary may seem somewhat overwhelming,
the consistency with which the terms are used and the relevance of the relatedconcepts are so important that a reader soon appreciates the important under-
lying distinctions. There is also a very useful range of different types of textsand languages, for example, English, French, German, Latin, Irish, Yiddish,Norwegian, Japanese, Greek, Hebrew, Accadian, Chinese, Bengali, Russia, and
Spanish. This is not a book for beginners, but it can be of great help for peoplewith a good linguistic background, because it explores in a systematic manner
some of the most common problems of translating. Chapter 10 on zeroes isespecially important since the absence of correspondence is so consistentlyoverlooked by many teachers of translation. The Bibliography and the Index of
Persons and Translation Resources are unusually valuable.
6. Translation Studies, an Integrated Approach by Mary Snell-Hornby (1988)
is an excellent short book for any translator or teacher of translation. Chapter 1treats translation studies as an independent discipline, and Chapter 2 focuses
on translation as a cross-cultural event. Chapter 3 analyzes translation fromvarious orientations, for example, linguistics, text analysis, speech acts, thedynamics of meaning, and interlingual relations. Chapter 4 treats translation
from the wide range of “special languages” to literary translation.
This small book of only 163 pages contains an amazing amount of signifi-
cant information about the principles and practice of translating, written indown-to-earth language about a wide range of constantly recurring issues. Thediagram on page 89, representing the translational equivalents on page 88, is anespecially effective way for dealing w ith types of speech acts, participant status,
grammatical structure, and vocabulary. Other diagrammatic representations
of this type could do a great deal to provide structured ways of imaging the rele-vance of various linguistic structures.
7. Discourse and the Translator by Basil Hatim and Ian Mason (1990) is an
excellent treatment of eleven topics that are crucial to the theory and practice
of translating: issues and debates about translation studies, important relations
between theory and practice, the role of context in translating, the significanceof discourse, the pragmatics of context, the semiotic dimension of context,intertextuality and intentionality, text types as a focus for translators, textRepresentative treatments of translating   

structure. discourse texture, and the translator as a mediator.
The linguistic orientation of this vol ume is Hallidayan functional linguistics
with special emphasis on socio-cultural contexts. The authors make an impor-
tant distinction between actual and virtual problems of translation and explain
the lack of interest in linguistics by professional translators as the result of undueemphasis on formal structures rather than on meaningful relations. Languagevariation in the form of registers and dialects plays a major role, but the princi-pal issues relate to the nature and role of discourses in a broad semiotic sense.
8. Translation and Relevance by Ernst-August Gutt (1991) is an application of
relevance theory to the issues of interlingual interpretation of texts, first, in
terms of style, as ways in which thoughts are expressed, and second, the related
communicative clues consisting of semantic representations, syntactic proper-
ties, phonetic features, semantic constraints, formulaic expressions, ono-
matopoeia, the stylistic value of words, and the sound-based poetic features.
Gutt focuses primarily on the inferential nature of communication, that is,
the mental faculty that enables people to communicate with one another bydrawing inferences from all kinds of human behavior.
Gutt’s concern is not so much with the details of interlingual communica-
tion but with offering a different approach to tricky problems. A valid defini-tion of translation in the relevance-theoretic framework is given as “A receptorlanguage utterance is a direct translation of a source language utterance if andonly if it purposes to interpretively resemble the original completely in the con-text envisaged for the original,” but a number of words in this definition also
require further refinement and specification. This volume does not attempt to
illustrate the broad range of difficulties faced by translators, but Gutt has madean important contribution to translation studies by pointing out a differenttheoretical approach to the issue of communicative resemblance.
9. In Other Words by Mona Baker (1992) is exactly what its subtitle indicates,
namely, “a course-book on translation.” The titles of the major chapters indi-
cate quite clearly the linguistic Hallidayan approach to different levels and
types of structures and texts: equivalence at word level, equivalence above the
word level, grammatical equivalence, textual equivalence (thematic and infor-
mation structures), textual equivalence, and pragmatic equivalence.
This volume is particularly appropriate for students beginning to study the
problems of translating. The terminology is carefully explained and consistent-ly used to describe translators’ difficulties (there is also an excellent glossary).Many differences between languages such as English, German, Italian, andContexts in translating 

Russian are carefully noted, and distinctions between various levels of English
are consistently illustrated. Semantic fields and lexical sets are explained and
their relevance to translation is repeatedly indicated in a consistent manner.
The introduction of numerous translational differences between English
and Arabic (the author’s mother tongue) is an important plus. And suggestionsfor further reading occur at the end of each chapter. Mona Baker is both a lin-guist and a teacher.
10. Les Fondements Socio-Linguistiques de la Traduction by M aurice Pergnier
(1993) is a delightfully written book that serves to bring the first edition of 1978
up to date. The excellent range of topics includes chapters on the general theoryof language, variables in language and speech, parameters of a text, translationbetween languages in contact, sense and signification, linguistic and sociolin-guistic points of view, idioms as sociolinguistic features, analysis and exegesis,and translation and language universals, followed by a section on conclusionsand perspectives. A final annex deals with mirages and realities of certain tradi-tional concepts that may be used to measure methods and translational equiva-lences (the annex is well worth the price of the book)
The French language makes it possible for Pergnier to make some impor-
tant terminological distinctions, for example, between language, langue and
parole as well as between signe, signifié and signification. Translation is recog-
nized as essentially a branch of semiotics, and accordingly, translators mustrecognize that discourses always have more than one possible meaning. But in
order to determine a possible meaning, it is essential to understand the con-texts of both encoding and decoding. Although the basic theoretical distinc-
tions are sociolinguistic and sociosemiotic, the working terminology and ori-entation represent essentially Saussure’s basic insights.
Some of the explanations of special translation problems may seem some-
what lengthy and even overdone, but the elegance of the style and the clarity ofanalysis are so convincing that a reader finds the explanations to be windows forlearning rather than dark academic corridors leading nowhere. Pergnier is agenius in taking a simple English statement such as I go to school as a means of
pointing out how the context can produce several different meanings. Pergnieralways distinguishes clearly between a text as a discourse and a text as a message.
This volume is not a textbook for classes in translating, but rather, a source
of brilliant insight about the nature of language and meaning.
11. Traducción: Historia y Teoría by Valentín García Y ebra (1994) is an unusual
book by an unusual person. The first part describes in an effective way the his-Representative treatments of translating   

tory of translation beginning with the early Sumerians, Accadians, Hittites,
Ugarites, and Egyptians and mentions esp ecially the legend of Gilgamesh that
shows up in various forms in different languages, including Hebrew. The trans-
lation of Greek literature in the education of the Romans is clearly described,but especially important is the history of translation of Greek texts into Arabic,
and their later translation from Arabic into Latin for people in Western Europe.
Translations made in Spain are divided into three epochs: the reign of Juan
II, the Golden age of early Spanish literature, and translations made toward theend of the 20th Century, including especially the experience of Pierre DanielHuet and of Y ebra himself, who is not only a first rate translator of Greek, Latin,
German, English and French, but a prolific writer and editor. The section ontheory and criticism deals with the basic concepts that must guide all transla-tors, but especially those translating into and from other romance languages,
such as French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese. The last two sections on thevariety of texts and translations and on the critical analysis of translation theo-ries are particularly important, but the most interesting chapter describes
Yebra’s personal experience as a translator.
12. Basic Concepts and Models for Interpreter and Translator Training by Daniel
Gile (1995) is particularly important in that it combines translating and inter-preting as intimately related means for interlingual communication. Six chap-ters deal with both translation and interpretation but focus on various related
factors: the theoretical components in training, communication and quality,fidelity, comprehension, knowledge acquisition, and literature on training.One chapter analyzes a sequential mode l of translation, while three chapters
deal specifically with certain features of int erpreting: the effort model of inter-
pretation, coping tactics in interpretation, and language issues in conferenceinterpreting, which in many respects also applies to translating.
On the issue of whether translators are born, rather than made, Gile rightly
insists that formal training is not mandatory but it can help individuals to fullyrealize their potantial, something that no one would seriously dispute. Gile also
sees great practical advantages in theoretical concepts and models, and appliesthese aspects of translation and interpreting to issues of professional loyalty (asubject that few books treat in a serious manner), because interpreters oftenserve purposes that are strictly marginal or even contradictory to their personalattitudes and roles.
Gile also pays a great deal of attention to full comprehension because trans-
lators and interpreters not only need to understand the language, but in manyinstances must have specialized knowledge about intricate relations betweenContexts in translating 

various forms of the same entity or state. The chapter on coping tactics for inter-
pretation is especially useful since it clear ly reflects actual practice, for example,
delaying a response, reconstructing meaning from the context, getting helpfrom someone else in the booth. But trying to read a script and interpret simul-taneously at the same time is extremely difficult, specially when speakers sud-denly depart from a script to emphasize some particularly important point.
13. Descriptive Translation Studies and beyond by Gideon T oury (1995) begins
with an introduction in which T oury describes the basis for Descriptive
Translation Studies. This first part consists of a thorough and convincing expo-
sition of the need for descriptive studies, as proposed by some of the earlier cre-
ative insights of Holmes. The following three parts are subdivided into twelvedifferent chapters: that focus attention on such themes as the target culture,norms in translation, methods for descriptive studies, coupled pairs, an exem-plary study of descriptive studies, a Shakespearean sonnet, indirect translation,literary organization, interim solutions, the development of a translation(Hamlet’s monologue in Hebrew), translation of specific lexical items, andexperimentation in translation studies.
Some excursus are particularly interesting: 1. pseudo-translations, texts
that pretend to be translations, but are not, for example, the portions of theBook of Mormon that come from the King James Bible, and similarly so-calledoriginal texts that are actually translations, and 2. the procedures involved in abilingual person becoming a translator, a study of nature vs. nurture.
Part Four is particularly important in that T oury deals with the basic issue
of “Laws of Translational Behavior” as probabilistic generalizations that consti-tute the foundation for his focus on Descriptive Translational Studies.
14. Interpretation and Translation by Elena Croitoru (1996) is designed pri-
marily for Rumanians interested in present developments in translation stud-
ies and in learning how to handle various forms of English for different pur-poses, for example, English for academic purposes, English for specific purpos-es, and English for science and technology. The text is divided into five princi-pal sections: 1. The interpretive processes required for effective translating, in
which issues of text types, cultural input, and translational equivalence are pri-mary considerations, 2. Translating texts representing different types ofEnglish usage (especially English for Special Purposes), 3. Discourse analysisviewed from the perspectives of cohesion, coherence, texture, and contextual
elements, 4. Difficulties encountered in dealing with texts employing Englishfor science and technology (as a way of talking about text types), 5. TranslationRepresentative treatments of translating   

competence in terms of communication strategies and different levels of com-
petence in translating.
As in many practical situations language learning is combined with various
aspects of translation since the learning of English is directly related to its use in
translation. University programs in learning foreign languages can be justified
more readily if the practical application to translating can be incorporated,even though theoretically and practically people should have a high level of
language competence before they undertake to study translation principles andpractices. This same problem, however, exists in a number of countries inEurope, Latin America, and Asia.
15. Knowledge and Skills in Translator Behavior , Wulfram Wilss (1996) is a
wide-ranging treatment of eleven different aspects of translating: translation
studies in terms of scope and challenges, theoretical and empirical aspects oftranslation studies, translation as knowledge-based activity, context, culture,
compensation, translation as meaning-based information processing (includ-
ing gradience, complexity, conventionality, schematicity, economy, and pre-dictability), the translation process and translation procedures, the role of thetranslator in the translation process, discourse linguistics, decision making and
choice, translation teaching, and human and machine translation.
In a text of only 232 pages Wilss has included an amazing range of prob-
lems and creative suggestions, including an incisive analysis of Chomsky’s fail-ures and the recognition of the creative implications of cognitive linguisticsadvocated so effectively by Langacker and others. Wilss’ comments on text lin-guistics and translation form the core of his theoretical approach to languageand translation, but his chapter on Context, Culture, and Compensation pro-vides much of the substance that must go into the process of translating. Words
and actions only have meaning in terms of linguistic and cultural contexts, andcontrolled compensations involve the basic adjustments required to commu-
nicate essentially the same source message in a target text.
16. Manual de traducción, Inglés/Castellano by Juan Gabriel López Guix and
Jacqueline Minett Wilkinson (1997) contains ten chapters on the themes of the
role of translators, the philosophy of language, the genius of language and its
importance for translation, different syntactic features of English and Spanish,
morphological differences in English and Spanish, differences of punctuationin English and Spanish, the significance of different theories of translation, dif-ferent systems for analyzing texts, translat ion procedures, and dictionaries and
other sources of help in translating. The chapter on the philosophy of languageContexts in translating 

cites almost all of the major contributors, including Bertrand Russel,
Wittgenstein, Austin, Searle, Grice. Sapir, Whorf, Quine, Frege, and Coseriu.
The chapter on grammar and universals seems to rely considerably onChomsky, but the implications of transformations are largely abandoned.
The fourth and fifth chapters on differential features between English and
Spanish are very well developed with a wide range of examples, and the eighthchapter on the analysis of texts is one of the most perceptive. Chapter nine con-
cerning translation procedures is the core of the volume. This volume describes
and illustrates numerous differences between Spanish and English on the basisof borrowings, traditional idioms, tr anspositions, modulation, equivalence,
adaptation, expansion, reduction, and co mpensation. But as in many books on
principles of translating, a reader obtains the impression that a translatortranslates languages, that is, develops a typology of linguistic contrasts as a
means of understanding and reproducing the contents of texts. This, however,is a false concept of translating, which is not concerned with interpreting thestructures of language but in reproducing the meaning of texts.
17. My father taught me how to cry, but now I have forgotten: the semantics of reli-
gious concepts with an emphasis on meaning, interpretation, and translatability ,
by Kjell Magne Yri (1998) does not appear to be a book about translation, but it
is a very remarkable study of the meanings of two sets of words representing two
of the most significant concepts in religion, namely, salvation and perdition.The long history of such words and the vicissitudes of diverse meanings in alengthy historical series of translations points very clearly to the importance ofcognitive linguistics (developed by Langacker, Lakoff, and Geeraerts) as a fun-
damental component of any scientific approach to semantics and translation.
As a missionary Bible translator of the Scriptures into the Sidaamo Afo, a
Semitic language of Ethiopia, Yri was constantly confronted with the issues ofthe appropriateness of two sets of diametrically opposed concepts: (1) save,
savior, salvation , and (2) perish, destroy, be destroyed , that exhibit a fascinating
history in which innovation occurred repeatedly in the creative use of languageby one individual after another. Accordingly, Yri rejects prototype semantics
that depends on social phenomena. For Yri religious language is simply humanlanguage used to talk about religious matters. Yri also has some very importantobservations about expert and folk categories
Terms for salvation are studied first in their contexts of the Hebrew Bible,
then in Classical Greek and in the Septuagint translation of the Hebrew Bibleinto Hellenistic Greek. The next stage is the use of these terms in the Greek NewTestament, followed by developments in the Latin Vulgate, and for Yri’s ownRepresentative treatments of translating   

background and that of other Norwegian missionaries in Ethiopia, namely, the
rendering of these same concepts in Old Norse as well as in modern Norwegian.
But the story must also include the special problems of correspondence in
Sidaamu Afo, in which the metaphorical meaning of forgiveness is dominant.
The Hebrew words for loss, perdition, destruction are also traced through the
long line of figurative meanings, and each stage of development is summarizedby some excellent diagrams that indicate historical developments and degrees of
semantic sameness by the thickness of lines enclosing different semanticdomains. Yri also has some very valuable comments on the role of interpreta-tion in translation, especially indivi dual versus so-called objective meaning.
Yri contends that so-called “lexical meaning” is a linguistic illusion
abstracted from communicative intension and interpretation. Accordingly, it islargely irrelevant to talk about the “same concept” in the source text and in thetarget text. The book ends with a definition of language in relation to transla-tion: “language is the composite internal neural enterprise that enables oneindividual to communicate with another,” to which he should probably haveadded “by means of oral sounds.”
For beginning translators who would like to read some of the above books as a
help to understanding more about translating, I would recommend starting
with the following series, listed by authors and beginning with books that are
likely to be more easily understood: Mary Snell-Hornby, Mona Baker, ValentinGarcia Y ebra, and Daniel Gile.
Even a rapid glance at the above brief descriptions of various treatments of
translating will soon reveal that despite considerable differences in vocabulary,
the essential elements in translating and interpreting are very much the same,namely, an accurate understanding of the source text and an effective represen-tation of the meaning in another language. Any one of the above statements ofprinciples and procedures in interlingual communication can be the basis forsatisfactory translating. And on the basis of such books a number of teachershave had real success in helping students to understand texts more thoroughlyand to reproduce their meaning effectively.
In some of these discussions of the underlying principles and practices of
translating, there is, however, a constantly recurring failure, namely, the treat-
ment of translating as essentially a matter of translating languages rather thantranslating texts. No one says so specifically, but the implication is that transla-
tors need to have a broad understanding of the structures of the respective lan-
guages in order to understand what is happening in the processes of translating.
This intrusion of linguistics and sociolinguistics into the theory and prac-Contexts in translating 

tice of translating is the direct result of the fact that so many persons without an
adequate knowledge of their A, B, and C languages want to learn how to trans-late. And in order to help such students, teachers have turned to linguistics,sociolinguistics, and even to sociosemiotics as a means of helping studentsunderstand some of the broader implications of what translating involves. As aresult, teachers are required to teach languages and translating at the same
time, when they ought to concentrate first on language learning by using themost modern and effective techniques and then on teaching translating, inwhich the focus can and should be on texts. Then translating becomes more
and more like writing in one’s own mother tongue. In fact, translating is noth-ing more than understanding correctly the meaning of a text and then repro-ducing this meaning in another language in such a manner that the stylistic fea-tures of the source text are adequately represented directly or indirectly.
I have great personal sympathy for teachers of translation who must try to
do the impossible, namely, endeavor to teach translating to people who do notknow the respective languages thoroughly. Unfortunately, most secondary anduniversity programs do not teach languages, but teach about languages. Forexample, when I first visited Belgium some fifty years ago, I knew all the irregu-
lar forms of the French verb system, but I did not know how to exchange dollarsfor Belgian francs.
Instead of books that combine a study of linguistic structures and translat-
ing principles, what translators need most is a discovery procedure that willenable them to determine the meaning, the meanings, or the non-meaning of atext on the basis of relevant contexts. Such a procedure would concentrate
attention on what concerns translators most directly and practically. Such acourse would simply make explicit what expert translators constantly do in the
process of translating.
Perhaps some of the following statements about becoming a translator
may be of help:
a.
Learning to translate
1. Acquire excellent competence in one or more foreign languages.
Unfortunately many foreign language programs in universities focus on learn-
ing about languages rather than learning to understand and effectively speak
and/or write such languages. Special language-learning programs, such as theGoethe Institutes, are expensive, and as a result students wishing to learn a lan-guage often apply to government sponsored programs teaching translating andinterpreting. Ideally, most such institutes should dedicate the first two-thirdsRepresentative treatments of translating   

of the program to intensive language learning and then introduce techniques of
translating and interpreting for the final period, but educational authorities in
some countries are still unaware of what can and should be done to improveforeign language efficiency.
2. Analyze the meaning of a source text on the basis of concepts rather than
the meanings of particular words because the concepts are the units that mustform the basis for finding equivalent expressions in the receptor language.Since many documents are poorly written, it may be useful to rewrite certain
portions of a text in order to ascertain more accurately what the original writ-ers had in mind, especially if it seems clear that the persons preparing a text donot have an adequate grasp of the language in which they are writing.
3. Pay close attention to stylistic features of a source text since these so often
reveal the subtle associative (connotative) values being communicated by the
writer.
4. Translate a text only after having clearly understood its designative and
associative meanings. This makes translating essentially a process of writing, inwhich the selection and arrangement of words is done more or less automati-cally.
5. Improve the style of a translation by reading it over out-loud (even several
times for some texts). Ears are much more sensitive to stylistic features thaneyes, since human beings have been hearing languages for hundreds of thou-
sands of years, but have been reading them for only a few thousand.
6. Try to translate texts in which you have adequate background knowledge
or keen interest. Nevertheless, extending the range of competence can be aninteresting and personally rewarding challenge.
7. Since translating is essentially an interlingual skill, competence increases
rapidly with practice, especially if there are sources of help in dealing with spe-
cial problems, for example, teachers in schools of translation, directors of agen-cies responsible for translation services, local societies of translators who oftenmeet on a monthly basis to discuss common problems, and personal friendswho are sensitive to problems of verbal communication.
8. If possible, become an in-house translator of an organization in whichthere are different teams of translators working in different sets of languages,for example, German-Arabic, English-Chinese, and French-Russian and indifferent areas of technical specialization, for example, computer technology,merchandising, industrialization, law, and medicine. Such programs provideunparalleled opportunities to learn.Contexts in translating 

9. Gradually formulate your own set of principles and procedures of translat-
ing and share these insights with others
b.Teaching translation
1. Have plenty of personal experience in translating so that advice and help to
students will be genuine and realistic. Never try to teach a skill in which youyourself are not competent.
2. Go over assigned texts with students and show them how to spot problemsand anticipate solutions. Psychologically this is a great advantage for teachers,since it shows students that teachers really want to be helpful rather than mere-ly judgmental.
3. T exts assigned for translation by students should be about recent events or
ideas and should be long enough for students to find most of the answers fromthe contexts.
4. T each students how to correct badly written texts as a kind of intralingual
type of translating. Professional translators are constantly required to correct
poorly written texts, and students need to learn how to treat such problems bydealing realistically with what they must frequently do professionally.
5. Spend at least half of each translation session pointing out creative solu-
tions made by students. Unfortunately, too many teachers spend entire class
hours finding fault with what students have done. Such a procedure is bothfrustrating and largely ineffective, because people do not like to remembertheir mistakes but will remember their successes very positively.
6. From time to time encourage students to work together in groups of three
or four on a joint translation. Talking about the meaning of a text is an excellentapproach to seeing multiple possibilities of meaning.
7. Distinguish clearly between traditional principles and actual practice of
translating by studying translations made by professional translators in terms
of (1) differences in form and content, (2) evident reasons for such differences,and (3) the validity of the differences in terms of effective communication.
8. T each students how to analyze and grade each other’s translations.
Students usually pay much more attention to the judgments of school matesthan to teachers, and different judgme nts can form the basis for realistic evalu-
ation of principles.
9. Undertake commercial translating. Most people learn much more from
the real world than from the academic world. Money is much more convincingthan grades.Representative treatments of translating   

 
Three major types of translation theories
As yet there is no one generally acce pted theory of translation in the technical
sense of “a coherent set of general propositions used as principles to explain a
class of phenomena,” but there are several theories in the broad sense of “a setof principles that are helpful in understanding the nature of translating or inestablishing criteria for evaluating a particular translated text.” In general,however, these principles are stated in terms of how to produce an acceptabletranslation.
The lack of a fully acceptable theory of translation should not come as a
surprise, because translating is essentially a very complex phenomenon, andinsights concerning this interlingual activity are derived from several differentdisciplines, for example, linguistics, sociolinguistics, psychology, sociology,cultural anthropology, communication the ory, literary criticism, aesthetics,
and sociosemiotics. The fact that there is no generally accepted theory for anyone of these behavioral disciplines should be a sufficient reason for people torealize that there is nothing basically inadequate about translating simply
because those who translate cannot always explain by means of some compre-hensive theory precisely why they do what they do.
The various sets of principles and rules about translating can be helpfully
discussed in terms of historical developments, which Snell-Hornby (1988) hasdone very succinctly and effectively, or these principles may be discussed in
terms of various disciplines that have significantly influenced the ways in which
translators and interpreters have proceeded to do their work. The formulation
of theories of translation has taken place primarily in the Western world and inChina, where an ancient tradition of faithfulness, smoothness, and elegancewas recognized as additive, not competitive.
The ancient Romans discussed at length the principles of translation
embodied in the translation of Greek literature into Latin, and during theMiddle Ages a great deal of translating took place in the Arab world where the
ancient Latin and Greek manuscripts were translating into Arabic, many ofwhich were in turn translated into Latin for the sake of people living in Western
Europe during the Renaissance.

There are, however, certain difficulties involved in trying to discuss transla-
tion theories on a strictly historical basis. In many instances the differences
about principles of translation only reflect changing fashions about literature,and in some instances heated arguments about how to translate seem to reflectlittle more than personal prejudices and literary rivalries.
Too often the differences in theories of translation depend on extreme
positions, for example, the contention by Ortega y Gasset (1937) and Croce(1955) that translation is really impossible. Mounin (1963) has shown howmarginal such discussions have been, and Güttinger (1963) has remarkedabout how inconsistent such authors have been in wanting to have their writ-ings translated.
Because the Bible or at least portions of it, have been translated for a longer
period of time and into more languages (2,233 as of the beginning of the year2000), it is not strange that some of the conflicts about principles of translationhave focused on how one can legitimately translate a book that is regarded asdivinely inspired. The answer to this problem in the Arab world was to decidethat the Koran should not be translated, and as a result most translations of theKoran have been done by non-Muslims. In Christianity, however, translating
flourished in the first few centuries (including Latin, Coptic, Syriac, Ethiopic,Armenian, Old Church Slavonic, Gothic, and Georgian) and again during the
Reformation, but the arguments about literal or free translations reflected the-
ological presuppositions more than linguistic concerns.
Jerome was in serious trouble for having rendered the Bible into ordinary
Latin (the Biblia Vulgata), and Luther had to defend his views of translatinginto the every-day language of the German people. But in many respects hisviews about translating had a major influence on freeing local languages in
Europe from the heavy hand of ecclesiastical Latin. Campbell (1789) defined
and illustrated a number of basic principles of translation in an introduction tohis own English translation of the Four Gospels, and these principles wereapparently expropriated by Tytler (1790) in a volume that is still cited as havingmade a major contribution to the theory of translating.
Despite several important recent contributions to the principles of transla-
tion by those concerned with Bible translating, the actual practice of such trans-lating has often been far less innovative and creative than the translations of theGreek and Latin Classics in the Loeb series because over-riding theological con-
cerns often prevented more creative and meaningful sets of correspondences.
A more useful approach to the study of the diversity of translation theories
is to group together variously related theories on the basis of the disciplinesContexts in translating 

that have served as the basic points of reference for some of the primary
insights: 1. philology, although often spoken of as “literary criticism” or “liter-ary analysis,” 2. linguistics, and esp ecially sociolinguistics (language used in
communication), and 3. semiotics, particularly socio-semiotics, the study of
sign systems used in human communication. This order of disciplines reflects asomewhat historical development, but each of these orientations in translatingis endorsed and favored by a number of present-day scholars. At the same timeit is important to recognize some of the important contributions being made totranslation by other related disciplines, for example, psychology, information
theory, informatics, and sociology.
There are, however, two fundamental problems in practically all approach-
es to theories of translating: (1) the tendency for advocates of a particular theo-ry to build their theory on a specific discipline and often on its applicability to a
single literary genre or type of discourse and (2) the primary or exclusive con-cern for designative (denotative) rather than associative (connotative) mean-
ings. This is particularly true of those theories of translation that depend onsome form of propositional logic to provide the categories for establishingequivalence, degrees of similarity, and acceptability.
.
Theories based on philological insights
Philology, the study and evaluation of written texts, including their authentici-
ty, form, meaning, and cultural influence, has for more than 2000 years been
the primary basis for discussing translation theories and practice. In generalsuch texts have been literary productions because they seemed to be the onlytexts that warranted being translated into other languages.
In the Classical Roman world Cicero, Horace, Catullus, and Quintilian dis-
cussed primarily the issues of literal vs. free translating. Was a translator justi-fied in rendering the sense of a passage at the expense of the formal features ofword order and grammatical constructions? Also, should a choice metaphor be
sacrificed for the sake of making sense of a passage? For the most part, Romanwriters opted for freedom in translating, but the practice of translating and
concern for principles of effective interlingual communication largely died out
during the early Middle Ages.
With the intellectual explosion of the Renaissance Les Belles Infideles “the
beautiful unfaithful ones” dominated the new trend in translating the Classicsinto the vernacular languages of Europe. And although Cowley’s translation ofThree major types of translation theories   

Pindar’s Odes (1656) was by no means an extreme example of freedom in
translating, Cowley was strongly criticized by Dryden (1680), who proposed a
theory of translating based on three major types: metaphrase, paraphrase, andimitation. By metaphrase Dryden meant a literal, word-for-word rendering ofa text, and by imitation he meant radical departures, including additions andreinterpretations. Accordingly, paraphrase was designed to represent the logi-
cal compromise between rigid word-for-word renderings and unlimiteddepartures from an original.
In this triple approach to problems of translating literary texts, Dryden was
supported by Pope (1715), but more than a century later Matthew Arnold(1862) reacted against Dryden’s position and insisted on preserving the form ofan original, even though the spirit and the meaning of the text were both likelyto suffer. In order to illustrate the significance of his theory, Arnold translated
the Iliad and the O dessey into English hexameters. Because such attempts at lit-
eral translating proved largely unacceptable, some philologists insisted thattranslating is simply impossible. Nevertheless, the position of Arnold, as well as
the support of a number of theologians, resulted in the translation of theRevised Version of the Bible (1885), to be followed by the American Standard
Version of 1901, that largely dominated Bible translating in major languages
for more than fifty years.
Beginning with the twentieth century, philology experienced an infusion
of new life through the recognition of insights to be gained from linguistics,especially from Russian structuralists, the Prague school, British functional-ism, and anthropological linguistics in the United States. The focus of philolo-gy shifted from formal features of particular literary texts to the role of lan-
guage as a code, a system for communication, and an integral part of culture.This new orientation as it relates directly to translation is well illustrated in thevolumes on translation by Brower (1959), Steiner (1975) and Fowler (1977).
Perhaps the most important contribution of linguistics to philology has
been in the area of text linguistics, the study of how texts are organized formallyand thematically into a number of distinc t types, often called “genres,” for
example, narratives, conversations, discourses, arguments, jokes, riddles,
genealogies, sermons, lectures and lyric poetry. Some of the principal contri-butions to text linguistics have come from such scholars as Jakobson (1960),Halliday (1970), van Dijk (1975) and Beaugrande and Dressler (1981).
In the twentieth century philology has also been influenced by a number of
French existentialist semioticians, especially Lévi Strauss (1951), Greimas(1966), Barthes (1966), and Derrida (1981). The result of this contribution toContexts in translating 

philology has been the acceptance by many persons of the separation of a text
from the context out of which it has developed. Every literary text is thought tohave a life its own (a kind of autonomous existence) and its interpretation neednot be related to the setting out of which it arose. This approach means thatinterpretation depends totally upon what the reader of such a text reads into it.
This orientation has resulted in some extreme views about translating, but
semioticians such as Pierce, Jakobson, Eco, and Sebeok insist that a legitimateinterpretation of a text cannot take place apart from the total setting of bothlanguage and culture.
.
Theories based on linguistic insights
Several scholars have approached the issues of translating from the viewpoints
of linguistic differences between source and target texts. Some of the moreimportant contributions include Vinay and Darbelnet’s comparative analysisof French and English as a basis for a method of translating (1958), Catford’svolume, A Linguistic Theory of Translating ( 1965), T oury’s book In Search of a
Theory of Translation (1980), Larson’s textbook M eaning-based Translation
(1984), and Malone’s transformational-generative approach The Science of
Linguistics in the Art of Translation (1988).
As in the case of the philological orientation to translating, linguistic theo-
ries have also been influenced and enriched by a number of developments,
including cultural anthropology, philoso phical approaches to semantics,
information and communication theories, computational linguistics, machinetranslation, artificial intelligence, psycholinguistics, and sociolinguistics.
A major set of insights for translating have been derived from the study of
lexical semantics by linguists involved in cultural anthropology, for example,Goodnough’s work on Trukese semantic categories (1951), Lounsbury’s analy-sis of the Pawnee kinship system (1956), the description of key semanticdomains in Hopi by C. F. and F. M. Voegelin (1957), and Conklin’s work in
botanical taxonomies (1962). Many of these insights have been summarizedand enlarge by Weinreich (1966) and Lehrer (1974). The cultural dimension intranslating forms a major component in publications by Nida (1964, 1975),
Nida and Taber (1969), and Snell-Hornby (1988), who entitles one chapter
“T ranslation as a Cross-cultural Event.”
Philosophers interested in their distinctive types of linguistic analysis have
made primary use of various forms of propositional logic to define meanings onThree major types of translation theories   

the basis of certain distinctive distributions. Katz and Fodor (1963) attempted to
construct a semantic theory based on binary sets of distinctive features in order
to treat semantics as essentially a projecti on of transformational-generative
grammar. Bolinger (1965), however, showed how impossible this is in view of the
fuzzy boundaries of meaning and the overlapping domains.
Snell-Hornby (1988) has effectively described how a number of translation
theorists in Germany pushed the idea of equivalence to the point of insistingthat semantic differences can and should be rigorously distinguished. In factthey went so far as to insist that true translating can only apply to nonliterary ornonfigurative texts, since they considered literary texts as structurally marginaluses of language. Fortunately, Newmark (1981) has never hesitated to saybluntly what many others have thought, namely, that when a theory becomesso arbitrary or restricted as to exclude some of the most creative and meaning-ful aspects of language, it is essentially useless.
Information theory, as formulated primarily by Wiener (1948, 1954) and
Shannon and Weaver (1949) has had a very useful role in helping translatorsrecognize the functions of redundancy. Communication theory, which is an
enlargement of information theory, has helped translators see the importance
of all the many factors that enter into interlingual communication: source, tar-get, transmission, noise (physical and psychological), setting, and feedback(immediate and anticipatory). Computational linguistics is especially reward-ing as it clarifies and systematizes lexical and syntactic properties of language.
Communication theory has had considerable influence on the work of
Kade (1968) and Neubert (1968), and especially on the insightful studies of
Reiss (1972, 1976), whose breadth of approach has been unusually effective.
Research in machine translating has also helped translators appreciate
more fully the striking differences between the routine correspondencesbetween texts and those that require creative innovation. In Wilss’ volume The
Science of Translation (1982) communication theory and machine translation
figure prominently.
The linguistic orientation in translating has been especially enlarged by
work in sociolinguistics, in which the emphasis is not on language as a struc-
ture but on the role of language as used by speakers and writers.Sociolinguistics has called attention to the function of levels and registers inlanguage, linguistic dialects, the roles of power and solidarity in language usageand in the systematic character of what some linguists in the past have treatedas mere accidental variation. For translators the research of Labov (1966),Hymes (1974) and Lakoff and Johnson (1980) are particularly significant.Contexts in translating 

.Theories based on sociosemiotics
The most pervasive and crucial contribution to an understanding of transla-
tion is to be found in sociosemiotics, the discipline that treats all the systems ofsigns used by human societies. The great advantage of semiotics over otherapproaches to interlingual communication is that it deals with all types ofcodes and signs. No holistic approach to translating can exclude semiotics as a
fundamental discipline in encoding and decoding signs.
Semiotics is as old as the writings of Plato and Aristotle, but its present-day
formulations depend in large measure on the unusual insights of Peirce (1934),the systematization of these in Eco (1979), and the practical implications ofthese in Sebeok (1976, 1986).
One distinct advantage of a semiotic approach to meaning is the equal
attention that must be given to designative and associative meanings, becausesigns of all types must be understood in terms of all the other verbal signs with-in a text or in related texts. This focus has been particularly significant in deBeaugrande’s treatments of poetic translating (1978) and in his article onschemas for literary communication (1987). Paul Friedrich has also providedimportant insights in his volume The Language Parallax: Linguistic Relativism
and Poetic Indeterminacy (1986), which effectively illustrates the indetermina-
cy of ordinary speech and of poetic language. As an anthropologist, linguist,and poet, Friedrich is in an unusually strategic position to deal with linguisticrelativism and poetic indeterminacy, with which the professional translator
must wrestle each day. The continuum of order to chaos is the ultimate chal-
lenge to communication.
For an increasing number of sociologists, for example, Geertz, Sperber,
and Mary Douglas, knowledge is essentially a semiotic of culture, and life is asemiotic experience, whether on the level of DNA and RNA or on the level ofawe in watching a majestic aurora borealis. Because translators are constantly
required to communicate knowledge and experience by means of symbols that
involve varying degrees of distortion, they may find Hofstadter’s concept ofisomorphs helpful in dealing with problems of information preserving andinformation altering symbols.
As noted in Chapter 2, Wittgenstein’s view of language use as essentially a
game in which the parties negotiate for personal or collective advantage may
provide important insight about ways of avoiding dull compromises and offinding fresh ways to express equivalences. Game theory seems to be a usefulconcept for translators, because language both reveals and hides, because thereThree major types of translation theories   

are always sociosemiotic factors that involved various degrees of parallax.
Game theory highlights the sociological functions of language in establishingand maintaining a person’s status and roles in society. This means saying theright thing at the right time to the right persons in order to maximize power
and solidarity.
Game theory seems to be especially ap plicable to some types of literature
and especially to detective stories, in which the author and readers play a con-stant game in trying to reveal and at the same time to hide the identity of theperpetrator of a crime. In a novel the author reveals just enough to increaseconstantly the reader’s interest until the climax of the story is reached, at which
time crucial decisions and actions resolve the crisis and a new steady stateresults. In good expository writing an author always tries to anticipate objec-
tions from readers and in this way negotiates for a significant advantage, whilelively conversations are also an excellent example of negotiating for effectivepresentation and acceptance of a particular set of ideas.
Undoubtedly, one of the most effective means of learning how to translate
involves a close study of what expert translators have done. A few hours ofdetailed investigation of the foll owing translations and underlying texts can do
a great deal to open new vistas to the nature and practice of translating: the dra-mas of Aristophanes by B.B. Rogers in the Loeb Classical Library, One Hundred
Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez and translated by Gregory Rabassa
(Avon Books), The Name of the Rose, by Umberto Eco and translated by
William Weaver (Warner Books), Nig ht Flight by Antoine de Saint-Expery
translated by Stuart Gilbert, and anyone of a series of articles in German pub-
lished in Dimensions and translated by A. Leslie Willson.
Translators will also find fascinating insights about translating in the jour-
nal Translation Review, published by the University of T exas at Dallas. Each
issue highlights the experience of some outstanding translator who shares,usually in the form of an interview, his or her philosophy of language andimportant principles of translation. This hands-on approach to the successesand failures in translating is extremely helpful, because theories are alwayschasing practice in order to explain what has already been discovered.Contexts in translating 

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A
active and passive knowledge 41adjective-noun phrases 65adverbs, roles of 65-66Air France publication 6
ambiguous terminology 54Anaximander 56
Anuaks of Ethiopia 26
attracting attention 38attribution 59audience 40
B
Baker, M. 96-97Bible 38
Bible translating, early Christianity 108
Bloomfield L. 22Buddhist symbols 24
bundles of features 19
C
causation, double 28change 18, 26
Chinese 18Chinese translators 1, 8, 69chorus with sermons 73
Churchill W. 17class 71competence in foreign languages 27
competence in translating 88-90
completeness 77
compounding 30, 35
conjunctions 61
connection 61
connectivity 73
conte nt 60
conventional signs 5creative solutioins 4Croitor u, E. 99
cultural symbols 24culture, features of 20culture, represented by language 27
D
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E
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F
falsification 27figurative uses of language 80-81Five Clocks 17format 11Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 48
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French text with English translation 82-85
G
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Garcia Y ebra, V . 97-98German to English 49-51Index

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grammatical terminology 53
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HHatim B and Mason I 95-96
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Indonesia 68
intertextuality 38
J
Jakobso n 5
Japanese Americans 23
K Kafka 72
kissing 18
L
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M
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Malone J. L. 94-95
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Nneural templates 2Nida, E. 93
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P
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paradigmatic contexts 36parallelism 69participation 59-60Perg nier M. 97
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35
prayer 75prepositions 62proportion 62proverbs 38
R
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source text 3, 38
space 70Spanish text 2, 7. 44, 47styles of discourse 79supplementation 64symbiosis of language and culture 19 symbols without measurable referents 24synonyms 30syntagmatic contexts 31, 48
T
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technical terminology 39
textbooks on translation 2, 3, 93-102
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texts, features of 69
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translating into English 45
translating, opposition to 108
translating vs. interpreting 9
translating texts vs. languages 67
types of texts 91-92
UUnamuno 47-48
unpacking complex phrases 52uses of language 25
V
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WWilss, W 100
words in contexts 29
YYri, K. L. 101
Z
Zhang Jing-hao 1Index 

In the BENJAMINS TRANSLATION LIBRARY the following titles have been published
thus far or are scheduled for publication:
1. SAGER, Juan C: Language Engineering and Translation: Consequences of automation,
1994.
2. SNELL-HORNBY, Mary, Franz PÖCHHACKER and Klaus KAINDL (eds): Translation
Studies: An interdiscipline. Selected papers from the Translation Congress, Vienna, 9–12
September 1992. 1994.
3. LAMBERT, Sylvie and Barbara MOSER-MERCER (eds): Bridging the Gap: Empirical
research on simultaneous interpretation . 1994.
4. TOURY, Gideon: Descriptive Translation Studies — and beyond . 1995.
5. DOLLERUP, Cay and Annette LINDEGAARD (eds): Teaching Translation and Inter-
preting 2: Insights, aims, visions. Selected papers from the Second Language InternationalConference, Elsinore, 4–6 June 1993. 1994.
6. EDWARDS, Alicia Betsy: The Practice of Court Interpreting . 1995.
7. BEAUGRANDE, Robert de, Abdulla SHUNNAQ and Mohamed Helmy HELIEL (eds):
Language Discourse and Translation in the West and Middle East. Selected and revisedpapers from the conference on Language and Translation, Irbid, Jordan 1992. 1994.
8. GILE, Daniel: Basic Concepts and Models for Interpreter and Translator Training . 1995.
9. REY, Alain: Essays on Terminology. 1995.
10. KUSSMAUL, Paul: Training the Translator . 1995.
11. VINAY, Jean Paul and Jean DARBELNET: Comparative Stylistics of French and English:
A methodology for Translation. 1995.
12. BERGENHOLTZ, Henning and Sven TARP: Manual of Specialised Lexicography: The
preparation of specialised dictionaries. 1995.
13. DELISLE, Jean and Judith WOODSWORTH (eds): Translators through History. 1995.
14. MELBY, Alan with Terry WARNER: The Possibility of Language. A discussion of the
nature of language, with implications for human and machine translation . 1995.
15. WILSS, Wolfram: Knowledge and Skills in Translator Behavior . 1996.
16. DOLLERUP, Cay and Vibeke APPEL: Teaching Translation and Interpreting 3. New
Horizons. Papers from the Third Language International Conference, Elsinore, Denmark 9–11 June 1995. 1996.
17. POYATOS, Fernando (ed.): Nonverbal Communication and Translation. New perspec-
tives and challenges in literature, interpretation and the media. 1997.
18. SOMERS, Harold (ed.): Terminology, LSP and Translation. Studies in language engineer-
ing in honour of Juan C. Sager. 1996.
19. CARR, Silvana E., Roda P. ROBERTS, Aideen DUFOUR and Dini STEYN (eds): The
Critical Link: Interpreters in the Community. Papers from the 1st international conferenceon interpreting in legal, health and social service settings, Geneva Park, Canada, 1–4 June
1995. 1997.
20. SNELL-HORNBY, Mary, Zuzana JETTMAROVÁ and Klaus KAINDL (eds): Transla-
tion as Intercultural Communication. Selected papers from the EST Congress – Prague1995. 1997.
21. BUSH, Peter and Kirsten MALMKJÆR (eds): Rimbaud’s Rainbow. Literary translation
in higher education. 1998.
22. CHESTERMAN, Andrew: Memes of Translation. The spread of ideas in translation
theory. 1997.

23. GAMBIER, Yves, Daniel GILE and Christopher TAYLOR (eds): Conference Interpreting:
Current Trends in Research. Proceedings of the International Conference on Interpreting:
What do we know and how? 1997.
24. ORERO, Pilar and Juan C. SAGER (eds): Translators on Translation. Giovanni Pontiero.
1997.
25. POLLARD, David E. (ed.): Translation and Creation. Readings of Western Literature in
Early modern China, 1840–1918. 1998.
26. TROSBORG, Anna (ed.): Text Typology and Translation. 1997.
27. BEYLARD-OZEROFF, Ann, Jana KRÁLOVÁ and Barbara MOSER-MERCER (eds):
Translator Strategies and Creativity. Selected Papers from the 9th International Conference
on Translation and Interpreting, Prague, September 1995. In honor of Jirí Levi and Anton
Popovic. 1998.
28. SETTON, Robin: Simultaneous Interpretation. A cognitive-pragmatic analysis. 1999.
29. WILSS, Wolfram: Translation and Interpreting in the 20th Century. Focus on German.
1999.
30. DOLLERUP, Cay: Tales and Translation. The Grimm Tales from Pan-Germanic narra-
tives to shared international fairytales. 1999.
31. ROBERTS, Roda P., Silvana E. CARR, Diana ABRAHAM and Aideen DUFOUR (eds):
The Critical Link 2: Interpreters in the Community. Papers from the Second International
Conference on Interpreting in legal, health and social service settings, Vancouver, BC,
Canada, 19–23 May 1998. 2000.
32. BEEBY, Allison, Doris ENSINGER and Marisa PRESAS (eds): Investigating Translation.
Selected papers from the 4th International Congress on Translation, Barcelona, 1998. 2000.
33. GILE, Daniel, Helle V. DAM, Friedel DUBSLAFF, Bodil MARTINSEN and Anne
SCHJOLDAGER (eds): Getting Started in Interpreting Research. 2001.
34. GAMBIER, Yves and Henrik GOTTLIEB (eds): (Multi) Media Translation. Concepts,
practices, and research. 2001.
35. In preparation.
36. SCHMID, Monika S.: Translating the Elusive. Marked word order and subjectivity in
English-German translation. 1999.
37. TIRKKONEN-CONDIT, Sonja and Riitta JÄÄSKELÄINEN (eds): Tapping and Map-
ping the Processes of Translation and Interpreting. Outlooks on empirical research. 2000.
38. SCHÄFFNER, Christina and Beverly ADAB (eds): Developing Translation Competence.
2000.
39. CHESTERMAN, Andrew, Natividad GALLARDO SAN SALVADOR and Yves GAMBIER
(eds): Translation in Context. Selected papers from the EST Congress, Granada 1998. 2000.
40. ENGLUND DIMITROVA, Birgitta and Kenneth HYLTENSTAM (eds): Language
Processing and Simultaneous Interpreting. Interdisciplinary perspectives. 2000.
41. NIDA, Eugene A.: Contexts in Translating. 2002.
42. HUNG, Eva (ed.): Teaching Translation and Interpreting 4. Building bridges. 2002
43. GARZONE, Giuliana and Maurizio VIEZZI (eds): Interpreting in the 21st Century.
Challenges and opportunities. n.y.p.
44. SINGERMAN, Robert: Jewish Translation History. A bibliography of bibliographies and
studies. 2002.