How to obtain information about text function

The most important source of information is, again, the text environment, since designations like "operating instructions" or "anecdote" call on the receivers' reading experience of the text type in question and build up a specific expectation as to text function(s). It is obvious that these "labels" can be misleading if they are used inadequately by the author or sender (whether intentionally or unintentionally). On the other hand, it may be assumed that in normal communication such designations are in fact intended as a guideline for the receiver.

If there is no genre designation, the text function or functions have to be inferred from the configuration of the external factors. This is why text function should be analysed last when as much information as possible is available. As was illustrated by the example of literary texts, the intention of the sender and the expectations of the receiver are the crucial dimensions in this respect. However, other factors may also narrow the range of possible functions, such as sender (e.g. a candidate for presidency), medium and place (e.g. a public speech in the market place of a mountain village), time (e.g. shortly before the general elections), and motive (e.g. an election campaign).

The pragmatic relationships between sender, receiver, medium, and motive, provide the translator with a number of pre-signals announcing a particular function, which will be either confirmed or rejected by the subsequent analysis of the intratextual features. If the translator finds his or her expectations confirmed, s/he has reason to believe that s/he has elicited the correct function - if not, there are two possible explanations: either the author has intentionally violated the norms and conventions of the text type, or the translator has interpreted the pre-signals wrongly and therefore has to go through the process of eliciting the text function on the basis of pragmatic pre-signals again.

Checklist

The following questions may help to find out the relevant information about text function:

1. What is the text function intended by the sender? Are there any hints as to the intended function in the text environment, such as text-type designations?

2. What clues as to the function of the text can be inferred from other extratextual dimensions (motive, medium, receiver, intention)?

3. Are there any indications that the receiver may use the text in a function other than that intended by the sender?

4. What conclusions can be drawn from the data and clues obtained about text function as regards

other extratextual dimensions (sender, intention, receiver, medium, time, place, and motive), and

the intratextual features?

The interdependence of extratextual factors

The checklist questions suggested in connection with the extratextual factors illustrate the interdependence of the extratextual factors on the one hand, and of the extratextual and intratextual factors (which have so far not been specified), on the other. Data and clues about a single factor can be derived from the data and clues obtained about the other factors.

The most important principle, however, is that of recursiveness. This type of analysis is no one-way process, but contains any number of loops, in which expectations are built up, confirmed, or rejected, and where knowledge is gained and extended and understanding constantly modified. This applies not only to the analysis of the text as a whole and to the individual text factors but also, if the analysis and translation of microstructures leads incidentally to new discoveries requiring previous transfer decisions to be corrected, to the processing of smaller text units such as chapters or even paragraphs.

The interdependence of the extratextual factors is illustrated by a diagram (Figure 5), in which arrows are used to show the course of the analytical procedure. Those steps which yield reliable data are depicted by a continuous line, while the steps which merely lead to clues are represented by a dotted line.

2. “Intratextual Factors in Translation Text Analysis”

Lecture 1. Basic notions

It is the verbal elements (lexis, sentence structure and the suprasegmental features, i.e. the "tone" of the text) which are most important for conveying the message. In both written and spoken texts suprasegmental features serve to highlight or focus certain parts of the text and to push others into the background. All these elements have not only an informative (i.e. denotative), but also a stylistic (i.e. con-notative) function.

The intratextual features are influenced to a large extent by situational factors (e.g. the geographical origin of the sender, the special requirements of the chosen medium, the conditions of the time and place of text production, etc.), but they can also be determined by genre conventions or by the sender's specific communicative intention, which affects the choice of the intratextual means of communication. We also have to account for the fact that stylistic decisions are frequently interdependent. If, for example, the sender decides on a nominal style in the area of lexis, this will naturally affect the choice of sentence structure.

We distinguish eight intratextual factors: subject matter, content, presuppositions, composition, nonverbal elements, lexis, sentence structure, and suprasegmental features. In practical analysis it has proved effective to deal with the factors in the order in which they appear here. However, there is no real reason why this cannot be changed, since the principle of recursiveness again allows any feedback loops which may be deemed necessary.

In the practical application of the model it may not always be necessary to go through the whole process of intratextual analysis step by step. Some translation briefs will be such that merely a cursory glance at the intratextual features is sufficient (just to find out, for example, whether or not the framing of the text corresponds to genre conventions), whereas others may require a detailed analysis right down to the level of morphemes or phonemes.

Example

If a strongly conventionalized text, such as a weather report, has to be translated in such a form that the target text conforms to the target-culture conventions of the text type, there is no need to analyse all the intratextual details of the source text, once it has been stated that they are "conventional". Since the intratextual framing of the TT has to be adapted to TC conventions anyway, the intratextual framing of the ST may be regarded as irrelevant for translation.

When we analyse the linguistic features of a particular text, we soon realize that they all have to be evaluated in a different way, depending on the function they have in the text. There are features that depend on situational conditions which cannot be controlled or modified by the sender (e.g. pragmatics of time and space, geographical or socio-cultural background of the sender himself) or features that may have been determined by a decision taken prior to text production (e.g. choice of medium or addressee orientation). Then, there are other features which are dictated by social norms (e.g. text-type or genre conventions and so on). During the process of analysis, therefore, the translator constantly has to go back to factors which have already been analysed (= principle of recursiveness). Lastly, there is a type of feature which depends on the sender deciding on one out of several alternative means of expression, a decision determined by the intention to produce a certain effect on the receiver.

General considerations on the concept of style

In order to be able to understand a stylistic signal or sign, the receiver has to be equipped, like the sender, with a knowledge or command of stylistic patterns and of the functions that they are normally used for. This knowledge is part of text competence and will enable the receiver to infer the intentions or attitudes of the sender from the style presented in the text. It is based on the fact that most communicative actions are conventionalized and that text producers almost always proceed according to a given pattern. In ordinary communication an intuitive, unconscious, or "passive" knowledge of stylistic patterns will be more than sufficient to ensure the comprehension of the text. However, the receiver/translator cannot manage without an active command of such patterns of expression both in SL and TL, since it enables them to analyse the function of the stylistic elements used in the source text, and to decide which of these elements may be appropriate for achieving the target function and which have to be changed or adapted.

Subject matter

How to obtain information about the subject matter

As was mentioned above, the conventions of certain text types seem to dictate that the title or heading or the title context (comprising main title, subtitle(s) and the like) represent a kind of thematic programme. An example of this is the following title of a linguistic article: "Understanding what is meant from what is said: a study in conversationally conveyed requests" (Clark & Lucy 1975).

Where the information is not given by a thematic title like this, the subject matter of a text can be formulated in an introductory lead, as is very often the case, for example, in newspaper articles (cf. Liiger 1977: 49ff.) or in the first sentence or paragraph which can then be regarded as a kind of "topic sentence" paraphrasing the thematic essence of the text.

Example

The Soviet Disunion

UNITED IT STANDS ...DIVIDED IT FALLS

While 1989 was the year of eastern Europe, 1990 may be the year of the Soviet Union. Confronted by growing nationalist unrest and economic mayhem, the empire is beginning to come apart at the seams. James Blitz in Moscow reports on the crisis in the Kremlin (...). (The Sunday Times, 1 January 1990, p. A l.)

Example

Title: Ford Is Rebuffed By Mazda Sub-title: No Chance Seen For Larger Stake

TOKYO - Mazda Motor Corp. said Monday that it saw no opportunity for Ford Motor Co. to enlarge its stake in the Japanese company and that Mazda had no plans to raise funds by issuing new shares, warrant bonds or convertibles. (...) (InternationalHerald Tribune, 9 January, 1990, p. 9)

This applies not only to titles which are a shortened paraphrase of the text, but also to descriptive titles, e.g. of literary works.

Example

The original title El sigh de las luces ("The Age of Enlightenment") indicates the subject matter of the novel, while the titles of the English and the German translation (Explosion in A Cathedral Explosion in der Kathedrale) use the name of a picture that plays a symbolic part in the story. The reader, however, cannot recognize it as such and will probably interpret it as an indication of the subject matter or content. This may lead to a (wrong) classification of the book as a kind of thriller.

If the subject matter is not described in the title or title-context, it can be elicited by reducing the textual macro-structures to certain basic semantic propositions or information units, which constitute a kind of resume or "condensation" of the text. Occasionally, the translator is even asked to produce a short version of the text (i.e. a summary, abstract, or resume) in the target language. In translation teaching, the production of summaries can be used for checking text comprehension.

Condensing and summarizing, however, does not in all texts lead to an elicitation of the real subject matter, since in some cases this is obscured by a "false" subject occupying the foreground of the text. In these cases it is the analysis of other intratextual factors, mainly of lexis, which may lead to success.

The crucial concept in the analysis of the subject matter at the level of lexical items is that of isotopy. Isotopic features are semes shared by various lexical items in a text, thus interconnecting the lexical items and forming a kind of chain or line of isotopies throughout the text. The lexical items linked by isotopy are referred to as the "isotopic level", which may indicate the subject matter(s) of the text. There can be various isotopic levels in a text, either complementing each other or hierarchically subordinate to one another.

Checklist

The following questions may help to find out the relevant information about the subject matter of the text:

Is the source text a thematically coherent single text or a text combination?

What is the subject matter of the text (or of each component of the combination)? Is there a hierarchy of compatible subjects?

Does the subject matter elicited by internal analysis correspond to the expectation built up by external analysis?

Is the subject matter verbalized in the text (e.g. in a topic sentence at the beginning of the text) or in the text environment (title, heading, sub-title, introduction, etc.)?

Is the subject matter bound to a particular (SL, TL, or other) cultural context?

Do the TC conventions dictate that the subject matter of the text should be verbalized somewhere inside or outside the text?

Content

General considerations

Where the translator has a good command of the source language and is fully conversant with the rules and norms governing text production, s/he will usually have little or no difficulty in determining the content of a text. Even so, it would still be useful to have some means of checking this intuitive understanding. It would be even more useful, of course, to have some guidelines available in translator training, where competence in this area is still inadequate.

Paraphrase as a procedure for content analysis

By "content" we usually mean the reference of the text to objects and phenomena in an extralinguistic reality, which could as easily be a fictitious world as the real world. This reference is expressed mainly by the semantic information contained in the lexical and grammatical structures (e.g. words and phrases, sentence patterns, tense, mood, etc.) used in the text. These structures complement each other, reduce each other's ambiguity, and together form a coherent context.

Therefore, the starting point for the analysis of content has to be the information carried by the text elements linked on the surface of the text by the text-linguistic linking devices, such as logical connections, topic-comment relationships, functional sentence perspective, etc.

Since at this stage the external analysis of the communicative situation has been completed, the meaning of the text can be elicited, as it were, "through the filter" of extratextual knowledge.

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