On the relationship between translation and pragmatics ozidi bariki department of modern european languages, university of ilorin
This paper examines the existing and interesting relationship between translation and pragmatics and argues that the translator who utilizes his knowledge of pragmatics could, through properly contextualized situations, capture and translate appropriately, the non-linguistic dimensions of verbal communication. Translation, being a communicative event, can draw immensely from the three related speech acts of locutionary act, illocutionary force and perlocutionary effect. Every translation passes through the first two phases as meaningful sentences and underlying intentions are translated. However, since speech acts do not have universal cross-cultural application, there may be pragmatic problems of translation for the translator. In a similar way, speech events differ cross-culturally just as social distance and closeness are often culture-specific. The translator is thus involved in using his knowledge of cross-cultural pragmatics to convey the message appropriately in the translated version without causing any offence. A close examination of illocutionary act and perlocutionary effect draws one naturally to a number of theories of translation, notably dynamic equivalence which is based on the principle of equivalent effect or response and “traduction interpretative” which insists on saying it the way the other language would say it. Both theories recognize the fact that speech acts and events differ cross-culturally and it behoves the translator to work towards achieving a cross-cultural pragmatic success.
Introduction
Translation is a discipline that enjoys interesting links with a wide variety of disciplines such as Linguistics, Comparative Culturology, Comparative Ethnology, Computer Science, Comparative Sociology, etc. Its relationship with Linguistics is particularly profound. In fact, such is the depth of the relationship that some (e.g. Newmark (1981) and Kwofie (1999)) have argued wrongly (in our view) that Translation is a sub-set of Linguistics. Proponents of such views regard Translation as part of Applied or Comparative Linguistics. We have argued elsewhere2 that this view which is influenced by the efforts of structuralists tends to negate the role of communication which cannot fit into most of the de-contextualized examples often cited by linguists.
Translation, by its interdisciplinary nature and character, draws immensely from many other disciplines without necessarily being part of them. One such discipline is Pragmatics. The relationship may appear obscure, but a close examination of the two disciplines brings out striking areas of interest. The main thrust of this paper is to bring out this relevance while clearly but briefly defining the two fields of study.
The American philosopher, C.S. Peirce and proponent of semiotics, stresses the communicative relevance of a sign: “the meaning of a sign consists of all the effects that may conceivably have practical bearings on a particular interpretant and which will vary in accordance with the interpretant” (Newmark 1981:5). Charles Morris further divides semiotics into syntactic, semantics and pragmatics. Pragmatics in this context refers to the relation between signs and their interpreters. The Leipzig translation theorists are apparently influenced by this and the talk of invariant and variant components of translation: The former is the cognitive (i.e. objective, physical and concrete) aspect of translation, while the latter operates at the pragmatic level of translation (i.e. subjective, mental and figurative).
The readiness of communicative translation (formulated by Newmark) to adapt and clarify the sociocultural context of the original message to the advantage of the target text reader fits into Leipzig School’s definition of “pragmatic” element. However, Newmark (1981:43) rejects this relationship and describes it as partial truth arguing that, while pragmatics as defined by Peirce and Morris is interested mainly in transmitters and receptors, communicative translation is pre-occupied basically with receptors only and “usually in the context of a language and cultural variety”. In our view, the crucial factors here are the context and cultural variety which have to be appropriately handled with a view to establishing the desired relationship between the locator and the interlocutor. While pragmatics does not concern itself with cultural variety only, it certainly is interested in it. Newmark, however, has a point when he says that the use of the adjective “pragmatic” could be confusing as it already exists in the context of translation. Translations that are nonliterary, technical and practical in nature are termed pragmatic translations.
Newmark’s appropriate observation notwithstanding, it should be remembered that pragmatics is a discipline which cannot be changed by translation. It suffices to stress, as Neubert and Kade (of Leipzig’s School) had earlier done, that “pragmatic” takes care of that aspect which makes translation a rather difficult art or craft (as Newmark prefers to call it).
This brief literature review should lead us to the definitions of pragmatics and translation.