Abstract
During the translation process translators adopt linguistic strategies in order to make decisions that help to render a translated text suitable to the target language and culture. The translation modalities proposed by Aubert (105-10) constitute a tool that enables one to identify some of these strategies. In addition, they permit to measure the level of linguistic differentiation between a source text and a target text verifying the distance or the proximity of the target text to the linguistic and cultural issues of the source text. Thus, this paper aims to investigate the translation modalities in the short story “Dez de dezembro” (Saunders 204-38), a translation of the short story “Tenth of December” (Saunders 215-51). For quantifying the translation modalities in the translated text the noun phrases from the source text were selected and their counterparts in the target text were classified and annotated within Notepad++ software. The most recurrent translation modalities in the corpus were Literal Translation and Transposition, categories considered intermediate ones in the rank proposed by Aubert (105-10). Therefore, a relation of equivalence can be established between the target and the source texts.
Keywords
Translation modalities; Equivalence; Translation strategies
Resumo
Durante o processo de tradução, os tradutores adotam estratégias linguísticas de forma a tomar decisões que os auxiliem a produzir um texto traduzido adequado à língua e à cultura metas. As modalidades tradutórias propostas por Aubert (105-10) constituem-se como uma ferramenta que possibilita aos pesquisadores identificar algumas dessas estratégias. Ademais, permitem medir o nível de diferenciação linguística entre um texto fonte e um texto meta, verificando a distância ou a proximidade do texto meta com relação às questões linguísticas e culturais do texto fonte. Assim, este artigo visa a investigar as modalidades tradutórias no conto “Dez de dezembro” (Saunders 204-38), uma tradução do conto “Tenth of December” (Saunders 215-51). A fim de quantificar as modalidades de tradução no texto traduzido, os sintagmas nominais do texto fonte foram selecionados e seus equivalentes no texto meta foram classificados e anotados no programa Notepad++. As modalidades tradutórias mais recorrentes no corpus foram a Tradução Literal e a Transposição, categorias consideradas intermediárias na escala proposta por Aubert (105-10). Portanto, pode-se estabelecer uma relação de equivalência entre os textos meta e fonte.
Palavras-chave
Modalidades tradutórias; Equivalência; Estratégias de tradução
Introduction
In order to make translational decisions, translators adopt linguistic strategies during the whole translation process. The description of such strategies can constitute a resource for reflecting on how these decisions are made, and even for assessing translated texts. Drawing upon Vinay and Darbelnet’s model (84-93), Aubert (105-10) proposes the translation modalities that can serve to identify some of these strategies. Moreover, the description of these modalities enables one to verify the level of distance or proximity between source and target texts, and to help solve some specific linguistic problems.
As such, this paper aims to investigate the translation modalities in a small corpus composed of two short stories, namely, “Tenth of December”, by the American writer George Saunders (215-51), and its translation into Brazilian Portuguese, that is, “Dez de dezembro”, produced by José Geraldo Couto (Saunders 204-38). We reckon that the investigation of the translation modalities in this corpus can contribute to other findings on this topic, in addition to providing the readers with data that can stimulate reflection about the act of translating.
Considering the aim of this paper, there are research questions that guide the investigation, namely, (1) Which are the translation modalities found in the target text?, (2) How variable are they?, and (3) Is the target text closer to or more distant from the source text in terms of the investigation of these modalities? It is worth highlighting that the noun phrases from both texts were collected in order to carry out the analysis.
In addition to this Introduction, this paper has five more sections, that is, the theoretical framework, in which the translation modalities are defined; the methodology, which explains the methodological steps adopted in this paper; the results that show the analysis of the target text by also taking the source text into account; the final remarks that answer the research questions, and, the final section with the works cited.
Theoretical Framework
Translation modalities are a descriptive model proposed by Aubert (105-110) that allows to measure the level of linguistic differentiation between a source text and a target text considering a rank from one to thirteen, which determines the highest proximity or the lowest proximity of a target text to the source language and culture. This model permits to detect some strategies that are most used by translators when facing specific translation problems, especially in the case of culturally marked terms (Aubert 126).
The categories of translation modalities are based on the translation procedures proposed by Vinay and Darbelnet in 1958. Those focus on the functioning of the linguistic system. The goal is to present a translated text that would be fluent in other language, but not necessarily a literal translation. Thus the authors divided the translation procedures into categories of direct translation and categories of oblique translation (Vinay and Darbelnet 84-93). Aubert (105-10) adapted those categories in order to describe translation products and not translation processes, calling them translation modalities. Aubert’s model permits to describe translators’ choices as well as to quantify them.
Translation modalities are a relevant tool to measure the typological proximity between languages as well as the fluctuations in the level of proximity between them caused by text typology. They can also allow to correlate the text typology to the translation typology verifying to what extent different types of text influence significantly on the occurrence of the translation modalities (Aubert 126).
According to Corrêa (104), the translation modalities enable one to rank types of translation and to demonstrate in numbers the linguistic proximity of a target text to a source text. Analyzing the level of proximity between the source text and the target text permits the verification of the translator’s options and creativity in search of transposing an element considered hard to understand in the target language and culture (Corrêa 99).
The categories of translation modalities as well as their description and respective examples were extracted from Aubert (105-10) and are presented in Portuguese along with the translation into English as follows. They are ranked from the modality closer to the source text up to the one more distant from the source text.
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1 – Omissão (Omission): terms of the source text and their information cannot be inferred in the target text. This may happen because of censorship, space limitation or irrelevance.
E.g.: in a translation into Portuguese from a report of an American bank to the Federal Revenue of Brazil it is not important to mention accounts in which the Brazilian bank had no relation with and did no money applications. So, this information can be omitted. Some categories are classified as Direct Translation:
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2 – Transcrição (Transcription): this can be considered the degree zero of a translation. It includes elements that belong to both languages such as numbers and formulas, expressions and words borrowed from the target language, or words from another language considered loans even in the source text.
E.g.: the expression Alea jacta est in an English text to be translated into Portuguese.
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3 – Empréstimo (Loan): a word of the source text reproduced in the target text. It is more common in cases of proper names, toponyms and ethnic expressions. When it becomes a word commonly used in the target language it is not considered a loan anymore. That is the case of the words office-boy and outdoor in Portuguese language.
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4 – Decalque (Calque): graphic or morphological adaptation of a word borrowed from the target language or a word that is not registered in dictionaries of the source language.
E.g.: corporativo, in business sense, in Portuguese.
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5 – Tradução Literal (Literal Translation): considered a translation word-for-word. It presents the same number and order of words, the same grammatical categories and synonyms. E.g.: the English sentence “Her name is Mary” translated into Portuguese as Seu nome é Maria.
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6 – Transposição (Transposition): the lack of one of the criteria mentioned in Literal Translation, that is, when there are morphological or syntax changes such as fusion, expansion, change of word order or of grammatical category.
E.g.: “I visited” translated into Portuguese as visitei
“kindergarten” translated into Portuguese as jardim de infância
“remedial action” translated into Portuguese as ação saneadora
“should he arrive late” translated into Portuguese as se ele chegar atrasado
Some categories are classified as Indirect Translation:
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7 – Implicitação (Implicitation): elements explicit in the source text can be inferred in the target text and become implicit. E.g.: the omission of the following explanation in a translation from English to Portuguese: Brasilia – the Federal Capital of the country.
Explicitação (Explicitation): information implicit in the source text becomes explicit in the target text. Considering the example mentioned before, in the translation from Portuguese to English that explanation should be added.
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8 – Modulação (Modulation): expressions having a partially different signification but expressing same meaning.
E.g.: the expresssion “deaf as a doornail” translated into
Portuguese as surdo como uma porta
the expression “it’s very difficult” translated into
Portuguese as não é nada fácil
the term “corporal imbecility” translated into Portuguese as impotência
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9 – Adaptação (Adaptation): cultural assimilation with partial meaning equivalence.
E.g.: “hobgoblin” translated into Portuguese as Saci-Pererê
“sheriff” translated into Portuguese as delegado de polícia
10 – Tradução Intersemiótica (Intersemiotic Translation): reproduction of images, coat of arms, illustrations and logos as textual material, especially in juridical translations.
E.g.: in a translation of a document from Canadian English into Portuguese the following information should be written: [No canto superior esquerdo, brasão da Província de Ontário].
Some categories are not classified neither as Direct nor Indirect translation. These are:
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11 – Erro (Error): obvious errors. It does not include unsuitable translation solutions.
E.g.: the sentence “only 20% from the schools make the grade” translated into French as 20% seulement des écoles conduisent leurs élèves au succès.
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12 – Correção (Correction): improvement of the target text in relation to the errors of the source text.
E.g.: the sentence “the current US deficit amounts to several hundred of million dollars” translated into Portuguese as o déficit atual dos EUA monta a centenas de bilhões de dólares.
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13 – Acréscimo (Addition): addition of terms that are not implicit in the target text, such as explicit comments done by the translator about a piece of information that the reader could not infer.
E.g.: in a text treating the Iron Curtain as a policy of the present days the translator could include the word “ex” or an explanation note.
According to Aubert (110), the translation modalities can occur isolated or in a hybrid form. In the latter case, they can be computed in a separate category. However, if the number of hybridisms is elevated, it is better to compute them as simple categories. Therefore, they should be included in the category most distant from the source text according to the sequence described previously.
Methodology
The short story “Tenth of December” focuses on two characters, namely, Robin and Eber. Robin is a boy who dreams of a newly arriving girl at his classroom. He drifts away by talking to creatures called Nethers, which live in the woods. For that reason, he thinks he is a hero. Eber is a middle-aged man who fights against cancer. Most of time, the story passes through the characters’ mind, while they recall or imagine events. The setting is a forest, in which there is a frozen lake, where the action takes place. According to Cowles, “Tenth of December” establishes a tone of hope at the end, despite the fact that the characters are permeated by fantasies. The short story was written by an acclaimed American writer named George Saunders. It was first published in 2013. It was translated into Brazilian Portuguese by José Geraldo Couto, and “Dez de dezembro” was first published in Brazil in 2014. Couto, in a personal communication, said that translating the book that includes the short story “Tenth of December” was very challenging, because of its sophisticated narrative focus.
For investigating the translation modalities (Aubert 105-10) of the corpus, the noun phrase was chosen as a unit of analysis. According to Castilho (451), noun phrases are syntactic constructions that present a noun or a pronoun as a nucleus. The main reasons for choosing the noun phrase as a unit of analysis were: (1) the noun phrase is a more sophisticated structure than a single word, (2) it is a rather small structure that makes the identification and classification of the translation modalities easier, and (3) it is a recurrent object of study in Linguistics. It is worth highlighting that all noun phrases from the source text were identified and their counterparts in the target text were selected and classified, even if the former were translated into a distinct category in the target text (e.g., a noun phrase from the source text rendered as a prepositional phrase + a noun phrase in the target text). It is also worth highlighting that only the main noun phrases from the source text were taken into consideration for the sake of selection, that is, other phrases within the main noun phrases were not considered.
In order to classify the translation modalities (Aubert 105-10), it was necessary to annotate the corpus. Corpus annotation refers to the addition of extra information in the corpus (McEnery and Hardie 13). As such, tags with the abbreviations of the translation modalities categories were created. They are presented in Portuguese along with the translation into English as follows.
Tags were then annotated between angle brackets on a XML file within Notepad ++ software. Tags without forward slashes were put soon before the noun phrases, and soon after these ones, the tags including the forward slashes were put to make the quantification possible. In order to generate quantitative data it was necessary to open the XML file in the same folder where the template format file (i.e., XSL file) was located. Combined with the template format file, the annotation of the translated text presented the total amount of each category analyzed in the corpus on a HTML file. This allowed us to achieve absolute numbers, and to proceed to the results that can be seen in the next section of this paper.
Results
The short story “Tenth of December” has 2094 noun phrases, which were extracted and after classified and analyzed in the target text according to the translation modalities proposed by Aubert (105-10). Table 2 presents the total amount of occurrences of each category found in the target text.
Total amount of occurrences of each category of translation modalities in absolute numbers and in percentages
The most recurrent translation modality in the corpus is the Literal Translation. The great amount of pronouns is common in a narrative story, especially in one written in English. Since this language does not permit the elision of pronouns (Swan 428) this may be the reason for the elevated number of this category. An example of Literal Translation <TL> is presented as follows.
Example 1 presents the same number of words in the same word order with the same grammatical category and synonyms. However, despite being grammatically right in Portuguese it can be uncommon to place the adjective before the noun. Though, according to Castilho (521), in a noun phrase the adjective can be placed before the noun. This suggests that the bond was singular and mysterious, having a different semantic effect in the translation from one with changing of word order such as tinham um vínculo estranho com ele, which denotes something weird.
Transposition <TP> is the second category with more occurrences. Some examples of this translation modality are presented as follows.
Example 2 presents the fusion of the words “little” and “face” into the single word rostinho since diminutives in Portuguese are formed with the suffix –inho/inha. It also presents a change of word order due to the position of the adjective into the noun phrase. This is to make the noun phrase suitable in the target language for sardento rostinho would not sound natural in Portuguese.
Example 3 presents the expansion of the word “entryway” to the words porta de entrada, an equivalent term in Portuguese
Example 4 presents a change of word order necessary in Portuguese since the translator chose to translate “their” as deles. “Their” could be translated as suas – ele simplesmente cuidava das suas feridas. However, in Portuguese suas could refer both to the second and to the third person both in singular and plural. So this option avoids ambiguity.
Example 5 presents a change of word order as well as a change of grammatical category of the adjective “proper” into the adverb apropriadamente. It would be possible to translate the noun phrase as um adeus apropriado so “proper” would be translated as an adjective. The latter noun phrase seems to express a distant and cold way to say goodbye. However, the option of using an adverb seems to express a more sentimental farewell.
Implicitation <IM> is the third category more recurrent in the corpus. In most of the cases this translation modality presented the elision of the subject in the target text. According to Castilho (289) in Portuguese the noun phrase represented by a pronoun may be excluded. This option is not grammatically accepted in formal English, though (Swan 428). An example of Implicitation is presented as follows.
Example 6 presents the elision of the subject “we” which is equivalent to nós in Portuguese and is represented in the verb temos. Thus in Portuguese it is hardly ever necessary to use the pronoun since it can be inferred from the verbal desinence.
Loan <EM> is the fourth category more recurrent in the corpus. In the short story analyzed it is present in onomatopoeias such as “wham” and “blam.” In proper names as “Suzanne”, “Allen” and “Molly” for in formal Portuguese these names would not be written using double “n” or double “l.” The names “Geezmon”, “Kip”, “Jodi” and “Sasquatch” are also loans since they are not common proper names in Portuguese. There are also the occurrence of toponyms such as “Lexow Hill” and “Fresno’s.”
The slangs “cunt” and “kant” were also borrowed from the source text. The translator José Geraldo Couto, in a personal communication, said that he intended to keep the homophone expressed in the source text. According to him, “cunt” has two possible meanings: a vagina or a swearing, especially referring to a woman. These meanings are explained in a footnote in the target text.
The fifth category more recurrent in the corpus is the Modulation <MO>. In most of the cases this translation modality is related to idioms translated with an equivalent meaning into the target language. An example is presented as follows.
The literal translation of the noun phrase presented in Example 7 would be um grande fedor. It is an idiom also in English and would not make sense in Portuguese if translated literally as para que ela pudesse fazer um grande fedor.
Adaptation <AD> is the sixth category more recurrent in the corpus mainly due to the elevated number of occurrences of the name Ínferos, an adaptation of the name “Nethers.” An example of Adaptation is presented as follows.
Example 8 presents the conversion of the temperature from degrees Fahrenheit to degrees Celsius, the equivalent system of temperature in Brazil.
The seventh category with more occurrences in the corpus is the Superposition of Categories <SC>. In most of the cases it is represented by Transposition <TP> and Loan <EM>, since there are a great amount of noun phrases with changes of word order or of number of words that presents a name or a toponym borrowed from the source text. An example of Superposition of Categories is presented as follows.
Example 9 presents a change of word order <TP> so as to make the noun phrase suitable in the target language as well as the loan <EM> of the word “Gzeemon.”
Other occurrences of Superposition of Categories involve Transposition <TP> and Adaptation<AD>, Transposition <TP> and Explicitation <EX>, Transposition <TP> and Modulation <MO>, and Literal Translation <TL> and Loan <EM>.
Explicitation <EX> is the eighth category with more occurrences in the corpus. An example of this translation modality is presented as follows.
Example 10 elucidates the information óculos escuros (“sunglasses”) implicit in the noun phrase of the source text despite being inferable. If this information was not added in the target text and the noun phrase was translated literally as aqueles malucos aviadores the meaning would be totally different in Portuguese since it would seem to refer to an aviator, that is, a person who flies aircrafts.
The ninth category more recurrent in the corpus is the Addition <AC>. One example of this translation modality is the footnote explaining the word cunt added by the translator with information that could not be inferred by the readers.
Transcription <TC> is the tenth category with more occurrences in the corpus. Examples of this translation modality are the toponyms El Cirro and Santa Fé both terms from Spanish language.
Other category found in the corpus but with only one occurrence is the Omission <OM>. The example of this translation modality is presented as follows.
Example 11 presents the omission of the term “wadded-up.” Thus, in Portuguese it is not possible to know how the blanket was placed inside the truck tire.
The graph thar follows presents the total amount of each category of translation modality in percentage. Aubert (105-10) proposes fourteen categories. Only four of them were not found in the corpus.
Results support Bastianetto (99-120) whose investigations on neologisms in literary translation show that Literal Translation, Transposition and Modulation are the translation modalities more used. However, researches related to culturally marked terms point Modulation, Explicitation, Loan and Adaptation as the translation modalities more recurrent (Aubert 151-72; Martins and Camargo 118-32).
The translation modalities more recurrent in the corpus analyzed – Literal Translation and Transposition – represent 71% of the total amount of occurrences and are placed in a middle position in relation to the proximity to the source text. According to the rank proposed by Aubert (105-10) they occupy the fifth and the sixth positions respectively. Therefore, it is possible to infer that the corpus analyzed from the perspective of the noun phrases presents certain equivalence between the source text and the target text.
Literal Translation is the translation modality with most occurrences (43%). This may indicate a tendency to the proximity of the syntax of both texts, although it did not make the translated text less natural in the target language. However, it is important to note the Loan – forth modality more recurrent in the corpus (7%) – which allows to identify the text as a translation from a different culture and to determine more proximity of the target text to the source text.
Thus, it seems that there is a search for the equivalence between the texts, languages and cultures. As the translator himself said in a personal communication his agenda followed two paths. The first was the attempt to make the American culture, in which the characters are inserted, closer to the reader of the target text. The second one was the pursuit for equivalence in the linguistic and cultural systems in Portuguese. According to the results his goals seem accomplished.
Final Remarks
This paper aimed to investigate the translation modalities in the short story entitled “Dez de dezembro” that is a target text in Brazilian Portuguese, and whose translator is José Geraldo Couto (Saunders 204-38). The source text is the short story “Tenth of December” written by the American writer George Saunders (215-53).
Among the fourteen translation modalities proposed by Aubert (105-10), ten categories occurred in the target text, namely, Literal Translation, Transposition, Implicitation, Loan, Modulation, Adaptation, Explicitation, Addition, Transcription, and Omission. Besides, a category created to illustrate cases in which more than one category occurred simultaneously, namely, the Superposition of Categories, was also present in the target text. Only four translation modalities did not occur, that is, Calque, Intersemiotic Translation, Error, and Correction.
As can be seen, there was a high variability of translation modalities in the target text, which shows the translator’s ability of using several strategies. Furthermore, Literal Translation, Transposition, Implicitation, and Loan were the most frequent translation modalities in the translated text. All of them correspond to Direct Translation except for the category Implicitation that pertains to Indirect Translation (Aubert 110). This reveals that the target text is in balance between its proximity to and distance from the source text, since most of these categories are considered to be intermediate ones. Hence, a relation of translational equivalence is established between the target and source texts.
These findings corroborate in a certain way previous studies on the translation modalities. For instance, Literal Translation is one of the most recurrent translation modalities used in other types of literary text, as can be verified in Bastianetto (99-120). Moreover, for example, Loan is one of the most found translation modalities when it comes to investigations focusing on culturally marked terms (Aubert 151-72; Martins and Camargo 118-32).
This paper is a case study that investigates the translation modalities in a small corpus of short stories. Even though it is not possible to make generalizations, we hope that this case study can encourage reflection on everyone who is interested in the translation of literary texts.
References
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- ______.“Traduzindo as diferenças extralinguísticas: procedimentos e condicionantes.” Tradterm, no. 9, 2003, pp. 151-72.
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- Cowles, Gregory. “‘Tenth of December’ by George Saunders.” The New York Times 1 Feb. 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/03/books/review/tenth-ofdecember-by-george-saunders.html?pagewanted=all 17 Oct. 2014.
» http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/03/books/review/tenth-ofdecember-by-george-saunders.html?pagewanted=all - Martins, Elisângela Fernandes; Camargo, Diva Cardoso de. “A tradução de marcadores culturais em Sargento Getúlio à luz da linguística de corpus.” Revista Horizontes de Linguística Aplicada, vol.7, no. 2, 2008, pp. 118-32.
- McEnery, Tony; Hardie, Andrew. Corpus Linguistics: method, theory and practice Cambridge UP, 2012.
- Saunders, George. Tenth of December Random House, 2013.
- Saunders, George. “Dez de dezembro.” Translated by José Geraldo Couto. Companhia das Letras, 2014.
- Swan, Michael. Practical English Usage Oxford UP, 2009.
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Publication Dates
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Publication in this collection
May-Aug 2017
History
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Received
05 Oct 2016 -
Accepted
28 Dec 2016
