-
Text Analysis in Translation
You
have
been
translating
for
years,
you
arrive
in
class
armed
with
examples,
and
experience,
communicative methods, didactics and dialectics,
and soon your students
are floundering
in a sea of disparate problems, competences and
skills. Some kind of
life
raft
is
needed,
for
both
teachers
and
students.
Christiane
Nord's
model
of
translation-oriented
text
analysis,
translated
and
adapted
from
her
Text
analyze
und
?bersetzen of 1988, is a
very useful raft in such situations. Designed for
application
to all text types and
language pairs, Nord's approach aims to provide
classification
of
texts
for
translation
classes,
and
some
guidelines
for
assessing
the
quality of the
translation
box-and-arrow diagrams, and
coffins around the key statements that students
tend to
underline anyway. It should be
of extreme interest to anyone seeking a solid
basis for
the training of translators.
The
book
has
five
sections.
Part
one
outlines
a
series
of
theoretical
principles
relating source-text analysis to German
Skopostheorie. Part two describes the role of
source
text
analysis.
Part
three
then
runs
through
the
extratextual
and
intratextual
factors
involved
in
the
analysis.
Part
four
discusses
the
didactic
applications
of
the
model. Part five applies
the model to an analysis of three texts and their
translations.
The approach is nothing
if not systematic.
Nord's adherence to
what German knows as
Skopostheorie
目的论
means she ranks
target-text
purpose (the
Nord,
the
skopos
is
more
or
less
explicit
description
of
the
prospective
target
situation
the
person
for
whom
the
translator
is
working
(not
to
be
confused
with
authors
or
readers, although authors and readers
may become initiators). The skopos is in a sense
the pragmatic content of the
initiator's instructions. As such, Nord's use of
the term
differs from
previous usages in Vermeer, for whom
the translator fixes the skopos
on
the
basis
of
the
initiator's
instructions.
Nord
does
not
accord
the
translator
the
freedom
to
decide
such
things
alone.
For
her,
the
skopos
remains
to
the
initiator's
decision
and
not
to
the
discretion
of
the
translator
(p.
9).
Although
no
reasons are given for this variant on
other versions of Skopostheorie, one suspects that
the
relatively
subordinate
position
of
Nord's
translator
is
due
to
the
classroom
situation for which she is writing.
Perhaps her translator is ultimately a student. At
this
point Nord negotiates at least one
theoretical problem. If the main factor
determining
a
translation
is
the
target-
text
function
as
fixed
by
the
initiator,
why
should
any
translator
engage
in
extensive
source-text
analysis?
Surely
it
would
be
enough
to
analyze
the
prospective
target-text
function
and
then
take
whatever
elements
are
required from the source text. Indeed,
if the two texts are to have different functions
anyway
(Nord
argues
that
equivalence
or
functional
invariance
is
merely
an
exceptional ase), why venture into the
previous function of the source text at all? This
argument is not entirely perverse for
those of us who have had to translate texts that
are so badly written as to be
inadequate even to their ascribed source-culture
functions.
And
yet
Nord,
here
differing
from
Holz-M?
ntt?
ri,
excludes
free
rewriting
from
the
domain of translation
(p. 28), without asking if it is something we
should nevertheless
be teaching.
Although Nord justifies this exclusion on the
basis of
concept
of
translation
that
I
have
grown
up
with
(p.
28),
her
position
is
also
strategically
necessary
for
a
source-text
analysis
aspiring
to
a
reliable
foundation for each
and every decision which the translator has to
make in a particular
translation
process
truly dominant,
how
can source-text
analysis
also be sufficiently dominant
to
make
translation
an
entirely
determinate
process?
An
Aristotelian
might
accuse
Nord
of
opting
for
both
initial
and
final
causation
at
the
same
time.
Nord's
solution
to
this
problem
is
to
insist
on
a
specifically
mode
of
text
analysis.
When establishing the function of the
source text, the translator
the
(prospective)
'function-in-
culture'
of
the
target
text
required
by
the
initiator,
identifying
and
isolating
those
source-text
elements
which
have
to
be
preserved
or
adapted
in
translation
(p.
21).
The
most
concrete
illustration
of
this
method
is
a
three-column
table (p. 143) in which the various text-analysis
categories are applied
to the source,
the target, and the moment of transfer as a
comparing of functions. By
filling in
the three columns the student should discover the
changes to be made. All
practical and
theoretical problems are thus solved.
Or
are
they?
Consider
the
effort
required
for
anyone
to
work
through
Nord's
categories. The model
incorporates 17 levels or factors; her checklists
present some
76 questions to be asked
in order to produce a text profile, and all this
should perhaps
be done for at least two
of the three columns. Nord cannot be accused of
having left
much
out.
The
problem
is
rather
that
she
has
put
everything
in.
As
useful
as
76
questions
might
be
the
first
time
around,
students
also
have
to
be
trained
to
work
quickly. The model's main virtue is
thus that it can eventually lead to some kind of
global
awareness
that
texts
carry
out
functions.
Consider,
too,
the
way
the
theoretically
dominant
role
of
the
initiator's
purpose
gradually
disappears
as
Nord
advances
into the practical aspects of source-text
analysis. This shift first appears in
the idealist postulate that there must
be
and
target-text
functions
if
translation
is
to
be
possible
at
all
(p.
29).
We
then
discover
that,
given
this
compatibility,
translator
must
not
act
contrary
to
the
sender's
intention
(p.
48).
And
when
analyzing
the
final
examples
of
literary
translation we find
that
All
these
statements
go
against
the
absolute
primacy
of
initiators'
purposes
and
the
theoretically exceptional nature of
equivalence. Further, they are all explicitly
located
as norms of
and
even, lest anyone suspect this
cultures'
the prevailing
norms. There is little question of translators
changing these norms in
the
name
of
some
higher
or
future
rationality.
As
in
Snell-Hornb/s
approach,
forgetting the
initial theorizing about specific initiators and
the exceptional status of
functional
invariance. She is a teacher after all.
Although the nature of translation
norms is mostly intuited in this book, Nord's
more recent
work (1993) uses
the case of translating titles in
order
to
indicate how