The essence of sociolinguistic concerns in translation studies and their solutions

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The essence of sociolinguistic concerns in translation studies and their solutions

Aleksenko S.

A.S. Makarenko Sumy State Pedagogical University

Abstract

Translation as a complex dual process incorporating linguistic and cultural transfer of the source text meaning and intention in the target text has come to be frequently recognized by researchers as inevitably bound up with a socially regulated practice and tradition. The article deals with those sociolinguistic concerns which came into the limelight with the development of a new disciplinary approach to translation studies - translation sociology. This interdisciplinary science focuses on delivering the impact of certain social factors (social status, social roles, gender, age, the place of origin, ethnicity) on language variation in different communicative situations.

There have been outlined the following major sociolinguistic concerns related to translation practice: the representation of social stratification of the source culture in the target text; the preservation of a source language set of socio-semiotic parameters of field, tenor and mode in the target language; adherence to certain social norms of translation as to society-generated stereotypical approaches to the allowed degree of adaptation of source texts. The demonstration of social realia of the source language is hindered by the discrepancy in the segmentation / hierarchy of the social order immanent in both cultures, the fact inducing dynamic (or communicative) translation as the most efficient tactic of a translator and drawing in functional analogues - as a translation technique. Sociolinguistic facet of translation as a communicative process embedded in a social situation presupposes interpreting a communicative act as an interplay of socio-semiotic parameters so as to keep up the tonality of the source text, the latter ensuing from the actants' roles balance and their being geared towards the addressee's expectations. The solution to the problem of social norms of translation is deemed arbitrary regarding an aesthetic translation tradition of a culture.

Keywords: translation sociology, sociolinguistic concerns, social factors, socio-semiotic parameters, social norm of translation.

СУТНІСТЬ СОЦІОЛІНГВІСТИЧНИХ ПРОБЛЕМ ПЕРЕКЛАДУ ТА ШЛЯХИ ЇХ ВИРІШЕННЯ

Алексенко С.Ф.

Кандидат філологічних наук, доцент

Сумський держаний педагогічний університеті імені. А.С. Макаренка

Переклад як складний дуалістичний процес, що інкорпорує лінгвістичний та культурологічний аспекти передачі значення та інтенції тексту мови оригіналу мовою перекладу, все частіше усвідомлюється науковою спільнотою як невід'ємна частина соціальної практики і традиції.

У статті окреслено ті соціолінгвістичні проблеми, які постали перед перекладачами у зв'язку з розвитком нового дисциплінарного підходу до перекладу - перекладацької соціології. Ця міждисциплінарна наука ставить у фокус дослідницької уваги питання відображення у перекладі впливу таких соціальних чинників, як соціальний статус, соціальні ролі, гендер, вік, місце походження, етнічна приналежність тощо на варіативність мовної реалізації у різних ситуаціях спілкування. Як основні соціолінгвістичні проблеми, що пов'язані із перекладом, окреслено такі: передача соціальної дійсності, втіленої у мові оригіналу, засобами мови перекладу; збереження у мові перекладу соціально-семіотичних параметрів поля, тональності та модуса мови оригіналу; дотримання певних соціальних норм перекладу як продиктованих певним соціумом стереотипних підходів до ступеня адаптації перекладачем текстів перекладу. Передача соціальної дійсності мовою перекладу перешкоджається розходженнями у соціальному членуванні / ієрархії, що наявні у двох культурах, у зв'язку з чим найефективнішою перекладацькою тактикою буде використання динамічного (або комунікативного) перекладу, а прийомом - підбір функціональних аналогів. Соціолінгвістична проблема перекладу як ситуативного комунікативного процесу передбачає розуміння комунікативного акту як сукупності соціально-семіотичних параметрів для збереження у мові перекладу тональності тексту оригіналу, яка визначається рольовими відносинами між актантами та установкою останніх на свого адресата. Вирішення перекладацького питання соціальної норми перекладу трактується як довільне, зважаючи на перекладацьку естетику нації.

Ключові слова: перекладацька соціологія, соціолінгвістичні проблеми, соціальні чинники, соціально-семіотичні параметри, соціальна норма перекладу translation linguistic text

Translation as an interpretive activity is aimed at informing addressees of what someone else has said, written or thought in another language. Yet, the very nature of the translator and translation process itself has become subject to considerable influences on the part of the increasingly globalized world of today. Translation studies (hereafter TS), consequently, must tackle new theoretical foundations to tap its own discourses with a view to broadening the scope of the discipline.

Translation practice has existed for millennia, simultaneously incorporating and contributing to both linguistic and cultural transfer. Understanding by culture the entire ways of people - the patterns of their customs, traditions, social habits, values, beliefs and language varieties of society - we can then arrive at grasping translation as reproducing in the target language not only the intended meaning but also the intended effect albeit both may well be hindered by cultural differences.

The relevance of the research is determined by the necessity to identify the structure and contents of a theoretical framework for an emerging discipline of TS.

Since the discipline of TS witnessed its rise in the late 60's, there has been a sequence of paradigmatic shifts within the framework of its concerns, what with the various aspects and forms of communication shaping the issues dealt with in the sphere of TS and calling for TS expansion beyond disciplinary boundaries [1, p. 131]. However, for a quite long historical spell, the process of translation was considered immune to any impacts of social factors. It is only in the 1990s that the systematic study of translation from a sociological perspective came up and is currently moving towards the center stage of TS.

The aim of the article is to analyze the spectrum of the main sociolinguistic concerns within the current translation practice research by outlining the central questions of the comparatively new discipline - translation sociology.

Attaining this objective requires completing the tasks of: identifying the spheres of competence of Sociolinguistics in order to be provided with guidelines along which linguistic and cultural transfer may witness certain translation challenges; defining the zones of overlap between Sociolinguistics and TS; tackling translation-related sociolinguistic issues in terms of their content and problem points.

Results of the research. The view of translation as a socially regulated activity brings about changes in approaches to the reasons conditioning a translation process. Modern TS set great store by the influence exerted by the interlocutors' social status, social roles and their standing in society on the language and, which is more, on delivering that influence in another culture. Admittedly, social class, ethnicity, gender, age, place of origin and professional affiliation lead to language alterations in the variety we speak. Thus, sociology of translation recognizes that translation in the target language must adequately reflect through finely selected language items those multiple meanings that are negotiated by participants functioning in multiple roles within an environment of social and cultural dimensions. Sociology of translation shifts the focus from texts to the translators and their roles, on the one hand, and the social networks and their implications and profound effects on the language, on the other.

Sociolinguistics as a science is capable of providing us with both general translation theory and partial translation theories [2, с.212] "restricted according to medium (human vs. machine translation), area (specific linguistic or cultural groups), rank (focusing on specific linguistic levels, such as that of the word or the sentence), text-type (dealing with specific genres, for instance literary vs. business translation), time (dealing with particular periods of time) and problem (dealing with a specific translation problem, such as metaphor translation)" [3, p.1] Dwelling on the problems connected with the social nature of a language, its social functions, the mechanism of impact of social factors on the language and the role of a language in the life of society [4, p.176], Sociolinguistics is basically concerned with the effect of particular kinds of social situations on the language structure (e.g. language contact studies focusing on the origin and the linguistic composition of pidgin and creole languages); the uses of language as an activity in its own right (vocabulary or sentence structure induced by culture-specific values, norms of politeness, status); the specific patterns and social rules for conducting conversation and discourse (opening and closing remarks, the rules of conversational turn-taking etc); language management according to cultural backgrounds and goals of interaction (the study of mixed-gender vs single-gender conversations, language acquisition through child-caring, language change and neologisms). Thus, addressing the social aspects of translation, researchers traditionally draw on the problematic framework in question.

Among the major sociolinguistic concerns related to TS it's worth mentioning the following:

· translation as the reflection of the social world in the process of cross-cultural communication;

· translation as a socially determined communicative act;

· social norms of translation [5, с. 17].

The first problem is characterized by such two aspects as the delivery in the target text (hereafter TT) the source language sociocultural realia and the representation of the social stratification of the source culture through target language sociolinguistic variables. The preservation of social realia of the source language is quite often challenged by the discrepancy in the very segmenation of a fabric of society whose culture is to be transferred into the target language: its class structure, the number of regional dialects, the repertoire of professional and group lects, the weight of gender factor in the general layout of social interaction etc. Hence, a question of pragmatics of translation arises which has been variously treated by scholars involved in TS.

Understanding by the adequate translation the ability to maintain the communicative effect of the source text (hereafter ST), a famous American translatologist Eugene Nida argues that what is attained in the result is conveying the ST message in the TT as naturally as possible [6]. The scholar calls this translation procedure "dynamic equivalence" opposing it to "formal equivalence" whose result is the TT resembling the ST in both form and content. In Peter Newmark's terms Nida's "dynamic equivalence" is replaced by "communicative translation" which concentrates on effect [7]. The author stresses that communicative translation looks towards the needs of the addressees, thus trying to satisfy them as much as possible unlike "semantic translation" that looks back at the ST and tries to retain its characteristics. In this respect, communicative translation tends to undertranslate and be smoother, more instant and easier to comprehend. In relation to expressing in the target language means those linguistic varieties that deviate from the norm, i.e. sociolects and dialects, communicative translation seems to be invariably traced to spotting functional analogues. The range of social facets reflected in a language and faced by a translator may include socially marked units such as abbreviations, various sociologemes, ergonyms, equivalent-lacking words, socially marked phraseology (adages and sayings) etc. Researchers who have delved into the realm in question [8; 9; 10; 11; 12] claim that in many cases the translator has to resort to a variety of compensation techniques while interpreting and translating foreign cultures, thus performing cultural translation rather than a translation as a strictly linguistic tool.

As vivid evidence for the stated above, the social dialect of Cockney and ways of its rendering from English into Ukrainian might come in handy. Cockney is a language variety of a lower social rank with its own pragmatic and linguistic peculiarities, expressive potential and situation-induced occurrence. Being a sociolinguistic phenomenon, Cockney bears a lot of extralinguistic information, whose delivery is even more vital than that of linguistic features proper [13, с. 186]. Thus, while picking up appropriate equivalents for those language units which carry with them sociocultural loading a translator cannot but be focused on the efficient ways of overcoming hindrances related to the culture gap. The latter can be attained through utilization of the social markers that unequivocally signal in the target language means lower ranks of society yet by no means are capable of getting across the idiosyncrasy of the sociolect discussed. For instance, certain deviations from lexical and grammatical norms of Standard English which manifest themselves in Cockney (such as the misusage of the possessive pronoun "my" in the form of "me"; or that of the negative forms "isn't", "am not" as "ain't"; or functioning of past participles instead of the past simple form of verbs) can only be redressed at the expense of the following compensation technique - the delivery of the original through the counterpart sociolects (lower social rank lects) in the target language. Thus, the resulting translation is admittedly sure to abound with dialect forms and ways of expression, colloquialisms, vulgarisms, lexical units of phatic communication peculiar for the Ukrainian vernacular language.

The second problem which stems from treating the process of translation as a socially determined communicative act can well be dealt with if we apply Michael Halliday's approach to the written language in linguistics. With the introduction of the term "social semiotics" into linguistics, any language has come to be understood as a set of resources whereby the speaker operates in a particular social context [14]. Thus, according to the scholar, situation is interpreted by means of a conceptual framework comprising the terms "field", "tenor" and "mode", where "field" stands for the whole complex of social actions taking place between interlocutors under certain circumstances (who is exchanging meanings, where, when and for what purposes); "tenor" describes the type of roles' relations and their structure (social relationship between the interactants: that of power, formality, affection etc); "mode" reflects the way the speech is utilized, including medium and the rhetorical mode (expository, instructive, persuasive, etc). As a corollary of the above, the multidimensionality of language being embodied in the functional style (register), genre, language and speech norms of social interaction, none of these parameters can be changed in translation because, ultimately, they make up the functional force of the text, so important from the point of view of pragmatics. Disregard of the style or register produces a strange impact upon the receptor.

As an example, we offer to consider the way the specific mode, namely professional IT jargon, and the tenor of formality have been rendered from English into Ukrainian in the following extracts: "This includes inline content, pop-ups, information bars, off-site marketing, and more" - "Це може бути внутрішній контент, попапс (спливні вікна, інформаційні блоки, позасайтовий маркетинг і багато іншого", the Ukrainian version being characterized by the extended structural pattern due to the added explicatory word combination "спливні вікна" to the transliterated "попапс" that may confound non-conversant readers, although such an addition may seem somewhat redundant taking into account the target readership of "The CISCO Preparation Manual for the Certified Testing". Professional IT jargon as a language code tightly tied to a rigidly defined domain of human activity manifests itself mainly in the expository or instructive rhetorical modes which are amply displayed in the passive constructions in the English language, the latter being rendered by means of the indefinite personal sentences in Ukrainian, for instance: "This technique can also be used if you are not satisfied with the video quality" -- "Цей метод також можна використовувати, якщо ви не задоволені якістю відео".

The third problem is tied to the conceptualization of translation as a social practice and related to such "under-researched fields of study as institutions of translators' training, professional institutions and their impact on translation practices, working conditions, questions of ethics in translation, political aspects of translation, and many more" [1, p. 133]. Social norms of translation present the cumulation of the most general rules vital for the implementation of certain translation strategies. These rules reveal those restraints that are imposed on a translator by a culture. A prominent scholar in TS Andre Lefevere claims translations to invariably be a form of some transformation and rewriting, likening them to a sort of the afterlife of the original as well as attributing to them the ability to introduce new ideas, concepts and perspectives [15]. In terms of the possible translation strategies to be pursued there exists a hypothetical continuum, at one end of which there is an approach pinned down by Lawrence Venuti: "Translation is the forcible replacement of the linguistic and cultural differences of the foreign text with a text that is intelligible to the translating-language reader" [16, p. 14] while at the opposite end - a tendency to foreignization of the "final product" so that readers could feel the alien touch and exoticity to the full. The solution to the problem remains arbitrary resting on an aesthetic translation tradition of a culture and the issue itself pertains to the ever-lasting paradoxical requirements to the products of translation, namely to be felt as both the original and the translation version simultaneously.

Conclusions

Having gradually developed for over two decades, sociology of translation has finally occupied its deserved central place in TS. As a result of this disciplinary shift, sociolinguistic aspects of translation theory are now tackled through the prism of socially determined communicative acts, social norms of translation and the translation process reflecting the social hierarchy of society. The objects of study encompass various types of pragmatic factors that impact on the essence of translation as a communicative process: pragmatics of the ST, pragmatics of the TT, the former being represented in its functional style while the latter - levelled at the receptors' cultural expectations; the translator's bias towards the target audience; the pragmatics of ST and TT language units which correlates with social and situation stratification of the source lexis. The paradigm in question faces certain challenges in its further development such as elaboration of terminology and research methods. In summary, sociology of translation poses a new perspective to TS and enriches the theoretical framework of the discipline.

Список використаних джерел

Wolf M. The Sociology of Translation and Its "Activist Turn". Translation and Interpreting Studies. 2012, 7(2), pp.129-143.

Шадрин В.И. Социолингвистический аспект теории перевода. Филологические науки. Вопросы теории и практики. Тамбов: Грамота, 2015. №12. Ч. 4. с. 212-214