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Brainstorming: opinions on transferring ideology from source text to target text; CDA
Thread poster: adriana508
adriana508
adriana508
Bosnia and Herzegovina
TOPIC STARTER
Hm... May 13, 2020

But I do not understand why there have been a change of the person. In the original the person speaking is "I", and the connection between God and "me" is created: He takes me to the still pastures, he gives me peace, he lets me eat, blabla. However, in this translation for the deaf, it says: "A shepherd brings his sheep", "They eat enough", etc. This contributes to a different perspective in the target text. I am confused by this translation...

Samuel Murray wrote:

adriana508 wrote:
Is this a real quote from the Bible for the Deaf, this translation you provided?


Yes, though translated into English by me. It reads:
’n Herder bring sy skape na goeie weiveld,
hulle eet genoeg en hulle gaan lê.
Hy bring hulle na die water,
en daar gaan hulle lê en rus.

https://www.bible.com/versions/2-aba-bybel-vir-almal

Compare this to a literal translation of the original Hebrew:
In pastures // green // he makes me to lie down // beside // the waters // still // he leads me.



[Edited at 2020-05-13 08:33 GMT]


 
Samuel Murray
Samuel Murray  Identity Verified
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@Sadek May 13, 2020

Sadek_A wrote:
Michael Wetzel wrote:
What would it even mean to translate those books to the letter?

It would simply mean I never added to, removed from, or otherwise in whatever way changed an original message of the book.


But that is the whole point of critical discourse analysis, Sadek. The theory of critical linguistics is even if you never *deliberately* add to, remove from, or change the "original message", you may be doing it accidentally.

In your first post, you spoke about translating a Marxist text, but what Adriana meant was translating *any* text, in which either the author or the translator is e.g. a Marxist and/or is influenced by his own Marxism without realizing it. The issue is not about translating ideological texts, but about the author (and/or the translator) having an ideology, and the translator either making sure that that ideology is retained in the translation, or making sure that it is *not* retained.

In critical linguistics, what matters is not that the text is about Brahmans, but that the author may have been a Marxist, and then asking whether what he succeeded in writing as neutrally or factually as he had intended.

If you, the translator, discover that the author had allowed his Marxism to influence what he wrote about Brahmans (we're assuming that the author did not *intend* to write in a Marxist kind of way, but did so accidentally of subconsciously), should you then retain those Marxist subtleties, or should you remove them?

Michael Wetzel wrote:
You grasped every significance of every statement in the book.

Yes, because this is what you're supposed to be good at when you're claiming to be a translator.


Michael Wetzel wrote:
A translation begins as a faulty interpretation of something someone else wrote.

Maybe your translation, but not mine.


I'm afraid I'm with Michael on this one: a good translator will understand the first-level meaning of a text and even understand the secondary meanings of a text, but no translator (indeed, no reader) can ever understand the entirety of a text, and therefore no translation captures all of the original author's text. I would not have used the word "faulty" -- perhaps Michael meant "imperfect".


adriana508
Vera Schoen
 
Samuel Murray
Samuel Murray  Identity Verified
Netherlands
Local time: 16:24
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
@Adriana May 13, 2020

adriana508 wrote:
But I do not understand why there have been a change of the person.


It just so happens that I know the answer to this question. It doesn't have anything to do with sounds, however.

It has to do with some of the limitations that truly deaf people have in terms of understanding figurative speech. Figurative speech can't be avoided altogether (particularly in poetry), so the translator has to deal with it in various ways.

For example, the first verse does have "the Lord is my Shepherd", but it is followed by a footnote: A shepherd is the owner of the sheep, who cares for them and keeps them safe. The Bible sometimes says that the nation of Israel are the sheep of the Lord, and He himself is their Shepherd who protects them and cares for them. The translator has many tricks that he can use, to literalize figurative speech. The third verse (and the first half of the fourth verse) is personal again (using "I" and "me"), because it contains no figurative imagery. Then, the second half of the fourth verse contains figurative speech again, but this time the translator uses exposition instead of impersonalization: the well-known "thy rod and thy staff they comfort me" is translated as you protect me like a shepherd protects his sheep with his stick and his cane.

But this has nothing to do with sounds and the "tranquil waters", and the subconscious world view that we have due to the fact that we can hear sounds and were able to do so from when we were little children. You know that the cold feeling you get on your arms and face is due to the same reason why tree branches move up and down (even though they're just plants) and why long grass make rippling movements much like the sea (even though it's not a liquid), but that is because you can hear the wind and was able to make that connection long before you could even speak.


[Edited at 2020-05-13 20:28 GMT]


 
adriana508
adriana508
Bosnia and Herzegovina
TOPIC STARTER
Thank you, this is exactly what I meant. CDA as a main means of analysis. May 13, 2020

Samuel Murray wrote:
But that is the whole point of critical discourse analysis, Sadek. The theory of critical linguistics is even if you never *deliberately* add to, remove from, or change the "original message", you may be doing it accidentally.


Yes, exactly. For some reason, I noticed that some of the people here got a bit insulted or seemed to get involved into a heated argument about whether a translator is a good translator if they do not translate something "well" (relatively speaking), because in that case, according to some of the people here, that would mean they did not understand the text and that they are incompetent... But I was not really talking about incompetent translators.


In your first post, you spoke about translating a Marxist text, but what Adriana meant was translating *any* text, in which either the author or the translator is e.g. a Marxist and/or is influenced by his own Marxism without realizing it. The issue is not about translating ideological texts, but about the author (and/or the translator) having an ideology, and the translator either making sure that that ideology is retained in the translation, or making sure that it is *not* retained.


That is correct. My intentions were not to say that one ideology is better than the other, or that a translator should intentionally hide some aspect of the source text just because he or she is translating it to a different culture or point of view. Thank you for rephrasing me, I am glad that someone finally understands

If you, the translator, discover that the author had allowed his Marxism to influence what he wrote about Brahmans (we're assuming that the author did not *intend* to write in a Marxist kind of way, but did so accidentally of subconsciously), should you then retain those Marxist subtleties, or should you remove them?


Yes... This is still my question.


 
adriana508
adriana508
Bosnia and Herzegovina
TOPIC STARTER
:0 May 13, 2020

Samuel Murray wrote:

adriana508 wrote:
But I do not understand why there have been a change of the person.


It just so happens that I know the answer to this question. It doesn't have anything to do with sounds, however.

It has to do with some of the limitations that truly deaf people have in terms of understanding figurative speech. Figurative speech can't be avoided altogether (particularly in poetry), so the translator has to deal with it in various ways.

For example, the first verse does have "the Lord is my Shepherd", but it is followed by a footnote: A shepherd is the owner of the sheep, who cares for them and keeps them safe. The Bible sometimes says that the nation of Israel are the sheep of the Lord, and He himself is their Shepherd who protects them and cares for them. The translator has many tricks that he can use, to literalize figurative speech. The third verse (and the first half of the fourth verse) is personal again (using "I" and "me"), because it contains no figurative imagery. Then, the second half of the fourth verse contains figurative speech again, but this time the translator uses exposition instead of impersonalization: the well-known "thy rod and thy staff they comfort me" is translated as you protect me like a shepherd protects his sheep with his stick and his cane.

But this has nothing to do with sounds and the "tranquil waters", and the subconscious world view that we have due to the fact that we can hear sounds and were able to do so from when we were little children. You know that the cold feeling you get on your arms and face is due to the same reason why tree branches move up and down (even though they're just plants) and why long grass make rippling movements much like the sea (even though it's not a liquid), but that is because you can hear the wind and was able to make that connection long before you could even speak.


[Edited at 2020-05-13 20:28 GMT]



This is so interesting, I did not know this! I have never even thought about this. Perhaps I could explore this matter even more, it would certainly be something interesting to research and write about. Thank you!!


 
Sadek_A
Sadek_A  Identity Verified
Local time: 19:24
English to Arabic
+ ...
Samuel May 13, 2020

To kick-off my answer, it must be made clear that the starter of this thread, adriana508, never decisively stipulated that ONLY Critical Discourse Analysts or otherwise CDA-Majors were allowed to contribute. Had she done that, I wouldn't have answered her, and most likely no one would have answered her, since ProZ is the pub of supposedly hands-on, commercial linguists, not of theorists, as far as it's clear to me.

I had, and still have, zero interest in translation theories; I'm a
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To kick-off my answer, it must be made clear that the starter of this thread, adriana508, never decisively stipulated that ONLY Critical Discourse Analysts or otherwise CDA-Majors were allowed to contribute. Had she done that, I wouldn't have answered her, and most likely no one would have answered her, since ProZ is the pub of supposedly hands-on, commercial linguists, not of theorists, as far as it's clear to me.

I had, and still have, zero interest in translation theories; I'm a practitioner, and I answered her as such.

Samuel Murray wrote:
even if you never *deliberately* add to, remove from, or change the "original message", you may be doing it accidentally.


Sorry, not me nor any honest translator. I approach the source material with a neutral mind, with no interest to manipulate the source message.

Samuel Murray wrote:
you spoke about translating a Marxist text.


I simply used the same example she provided.

Samuel Murray wrote:
but what Adriana meant was translating *any* text


adriana508 wrote:
Thank you for rephrasing me, I am glad that someone finally understands


You're now both forcing me into a corner here, as I have no choice but to wonder as to how you know what she really meant and didn't say, and as to why she kept silent about it so far until you "rephrased" it!

Samuel Murray wrote:
either the author or the translator is e.g. a Marxist and/or is influenced by his own Marxism without realizing it.


The author has every right to be so, but not the translator.

And, this very thread is only interested in how a translator is allowed to transfer the message. Honestly, I say!

Take this from me: what is said is what MUST be transferred.

Not my problem, if it's a Brahman posing as a Marxist, or a Marxist posing as a Brahman.

I, the translator, am neutral, with no business injecting my own viewpoints into the work of others.

If I want to express my own viewpoints, I start my own book, paper, study, or whatever.

Samuel Murray wrote:
making sure that that ideology is retained in the translation, or making sure that it is *not* retained.


I confirmed this before in several instances and sentences, the translator is a messenger with no right to alter source message in any way.

Samuel Murray wrote:
In critical linguistics, what matters is not that the text is about Brahmans, but that the author may have been a Marxist, and then asking whether what he succeeded in writing as neutrally or factually as he had intended.

If you, the translator, discover that the author had allowed his Marxism to influence what he wrote about Brahmans (we're assuming that the author did not *intend* to write in a Marxist kind of way, but did so accidentally of subconsciously), should you then retain those Marxist subtleties, or should you remove them?


Again: what is said is what MUST be transferred. A translator doesn't complete the author's thoughts, nor reduces them

Samuel Murray wrote:
I'm afraid I'm with Michael on this one


Okay, you've told me, and us, what you're siding with Michael on; now, how about you tell me, and us, what you're siding with me on (that is, if any, of course)? Given that I said a lot so far? Anything?

Samuel Murray wrote:
the first-level meaning of a text and even understand the secondary meanings of a text


See? Now, you're provoking my inquisitive nature again like Michael did. What are (first&second)-level meanings? Who coined them, and where? What are their definitions? How is it decided which is which?

Samuel Murray wrote:
no translator (indeed, no reader) can ever understand the entirety of a text, and therefore no translation captures all of the original author's text.


That's only if the author, translator, or both weren't good enough at expressing the source message.

Anyway, I provided my answers on a professional topic, in my capacity as a "translator," and I'm definitely not looking to be dragged into any feud by anyone, whatever their reason(s) might be.

Thank you and good luck.
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Michael Wetzel
Michael Wetzel  Identity Verified
Germany
Local time: 16:24
German to English
I apologize. May 14, 2020

First of all, I apologize for being a jerk and for trying to make my point by disparaging yours. It was unpleasant, rude and unproductive, and I am sorry.

What I was trying to say is that, whenever someone writes a text, they and their readers understand it in the context of a bunch of other texts and ideas and perspectives floating around in other forms ("conversations"). I specifically thought the religious example was helpful, because that seems like a case where it is particular
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First of all, I apologize for being a jerk and for trying to make my point by disparaging yours. It was unpleasant, rude and unproductive, and I am sorry.

What I was trying to say is that, whenever someone writes a text, they and their readers understand it in the context of a bunch of other texts and ideas and perspectives floating around in other forms ("conversations"). I specifically thought the religious example was helpful, because that seems like a case where it is particularly clear that the simple act of transferring a statement from one language and one religious and broader cultural context to another unavoidably has to add to and detract from and change the original statement. Whenever we use target religious concepts (or "discourses," because significant concepts rarely have a fixed and uncontested meaning) to help readers understand what source religious concepts (or discourses) mean, it is going to lead to very imperfect understanding.

The same would apply to the naturalist: The way we observe nature and particularly the way we write and talk about it is significantly a product of the way we have learned to look at it. When authors write books, they are interested in a few things and not interested in the vast majority of things and they have certain ways of communicating their ideas to their readers and all of that varies across time, culture, language, etc.

I do not generally want to adapt the source text's "foreign" view to my target audience (outside of the context of advertising or entertainment) because, like you wrote, that is the whole point of giving people access to foreign ideas. However, I feel it is often impossible to avoid doing so: Where we disagree is about whether this feeling is an excuse for my incompetence or an expression of self-awareness. I feel like I need to worry about what my reader thinks, but there are a lot of people, like you, who argue this orientation is wrong.

And Samuel was right that I wrote a melodramatic "faulty" where I really meant "imperfect."

Regarding the "black hole": I think it is correct and sometimes very helpful to be aware of these issues, but my actual practice of translation may not be all that far from yours. I think our differences of viewpoint would sometimes actually lead us to translate something differently, but I think the disagreement is probably mostly academic.

I think the difference between artworks passively emerging in German and their actively being created in English is actually ideologically significant. The "great man" theory of art (solitary geniuses who make stuff independently of any context) is a real issue in the discussion of art and then you also have Hegel or Marx etc., where art is the expression of a historical process, and then there are all of the theories very broadly grouped under Postmodernism, where art is a product of contexts defined in varying ways. In short, something that looks as purely linguistic and insignificant as a choice of verb and passive voice can strongly push conversations in particular directions and have ideological implications. On the other hand, while that all sounds very plausible when we only look at two languages and cherry-pick examples, it might suddenly seem very implausible if we looked at ten and tried to discern an ideological pattern.

Regarding the other question: If an author looks at Hindu religious teachings or its caste system in a specifically Marxist way, I certainly think this viewpoint should come through in the translation, regardless of its intended audience, unless a client specifically asks for some kind of adaptation. If it were a Yugoslavian author writing in the 1980s and it were a matter of specific terms that can be effectively and easily adapted and are not directly relevant to the actual significance of the text, then I might recommend to my client that there should be some adaptation. If it were a novel (or an aside in a non-fiction text) and someone uses a culturally specific Marxist reference widely known in the source culture and not in the target culture, then I would certainly adapt it or not according to the same cost-benefit analysis of local color vs. impenetrability that I would apply to any other culturally specific reference (such as songs or films or books widely known in one culture, but not in the other).

PS: I hope your post does not get removed, because it was certainly no less rude than mine. I promise not to complain about it and hopefully ProZ does not allow third parties to step in and feel offended on behalf of others.
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neilmac
neilmac
Spain
Local time: 16:24
Spanish to English
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'Proz, when the walls fell' May 14, 2020

Ooft. That discussion ended up a bit Darmok.



Michael Wetzel
adriana508
 
Samuel Murray
Samuel Murray  Identity Verified
Netherlands
Local time: 16:24
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
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@Sadek, @Michael May 14, 2020

Sadek_A wrote:
[If Adriana had stipulated that] only critical discourse analysts ... were allowed to contribute ... most likely no one would have answered her, since ProZ.com is the pub of ... hands-on, commercial linguists, not of theorists....


Yes, that is very true.

[All honest translators] approach the source material with a neutral mind, with no interest to manipulate the source message.


In my opinion, that approach to translation assumes that the source text is well-written and already suited for consumption by the intended target reader, which is often true in commercial translation.

In fact, as translators we should educate clients that they should give us text to translate only when the text is "ready to be translated" (i.e. authored, edited and proofread, and approved for its intended use). If I get a text that is not yet ready to be translated, then my options are (a) take initiative and adapt the text during translation or (b) tell the client to fix the text first.

I think that "critical discourse analysis" is one method that a translator can use to determine whether the entire text is ready to be translated.

(For the record, I would not apply "critical discourse analysis" myself when doing translation. The theory assumes that the translator is able to objectively determine that he is unable to be objective, and that is something for translation students to ponder about while they're still at college.)

I provided my answers on a professional topic, in my capacity as a "translator," and I'm definitely not looking to be dragged into any feud by anyone.


Neither do I. Please regard my comments about what you said as neutral remarks and not as criticisms of anyone personally.

Michael Wetzel wrote:
If an author looks at Hindu religious teachings or its caste system in a specifically Marxist way, I certainly think this viewpoint should come through in the translation, regardless of its intended audience...


I have great respect for translators who are able to achieve this. I'm not.

Even if a source text was very clearly written by a feminist, I would not be able to make my translation sound like it was written by a feminist, except for the first-level semantic clues that would have to be translated anyway. Even if it is not clear that the text was written by a feminist, and the author or client specifically brings this to my attention, I'm afraid it would not affect the way I translate it.

I can translate less formally or more formally, but I can't translate less bigotrously or more bigotrously. That is not a skill I have.


[Edited at 2020-05-14 10:06 GMT]


Michael Wetzel
 
Sadek_A
Sadek_A  Identity Verified
Local time: 19:24
English to Arabic
+ ...
Hopefully, my last contribution to this thread May 14, 2020

Michael Wetzel wrote:
First of all, I apologize for being a jerk and for trying to make my point by disparaging yours. It was unpleasant, rude and unproductive, and I am sorry.


Thank you, accepted.

And, sorry for having pushed back in a way I, personally, am not fond of, but I was left with no choice.

Michael Wetzel wrote:
something that looks as purely linguistic and insignificant as a choice of verb and passive voice can strongly push conversations in particular directions and have ideological implications.


True, but then again, translation is not a conversation, and contrary to the on-the-fly choices in a conversation the translator is given both time and chance to choose carefully without straying from intended source message.

Michael Wetzel wrote:
PS: I hope your post does not get removed, because it was certainly no less rude than mine.


You're now confusing action with reaction.

As educated adults, I think we can all agree that all ***fair*** laws grant the person the right to defend themselves in the face of an attack that already took place, let alone that it was a totally unsubstantiated one.

I've already requested in my earlier response to your unsubstantiated attack that neither of our ***unedited*** posts gets removed. And, I'm repeating my request again that they wouldn't be removed.

Michael Wetzel wrote:
I promise not to complain about it and hopefully ProZ does not allow third parties to step in and feel offended on behalf of others.


I never complained about yours, nor about any similar unsubstantiated attack by anyone else in the past.

Samuel Murray wrote:
Neither do I. Please regard my comments about what you said as neutral remarks and not as criticisms of anyone personally.


Noted.

Lastly, a translator is like a "language mailman", the mail could be an envelope, a package, etc., with varied colors, sizes, stamps, even emotional effects, etc., but the contents of that mail can't be tampered with.

A mailman that intentionally tampers with mail is not incompetent, they are a criminal. Incompetence is a totally different matter.


 
Lincoln Hui
Lincoln Hui  Identity Verified
Hong Kong
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Member
Chinese to English
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Purpose May 15, 2020

For example, let's say you read a text in which there are some subtle Marxist views, however, the text is actually about some general values of society, and now you have to translate it to a Catholic community of young people. This is just an example, BTW, and it is not a real problem that I am facing

Now, should the translator adapt the text to its audience, since the point of the text is just to talk about some general social values, and the author might as well be even subconsciously including some Marxist views since they belong to that time frame/culture/society? Or should the translator be aware of the ideology and this specific discourse and translate it as the discourse it is?

Then the material is a discourse on general values of society from a moderately Marxist perspective. Un-Marxing it would materially defeat the purpose of the text in the first place.

For example, talking about some protests, a certain newspaper article may use lexis associated with fire: "The riots engulfed the city" or "Police had to extinguish the flame of the protests", etc. Now, to a mind of a reader, protesters are associated which something that might be violent and harsh and it should be "extinguished".

However, this same discourse might mean something completely else in a society where fire is perceived as something nice and peaceful and they may not get the same feeling when reading this. They will of course understand what happened and how there were some strong protests, but they may not be under this kind of "discourse" influence.

Then the material is a discourse on the protests from an opposition perspective, and yes, it would in fact be necessary to use a different expression in order to be faithful to the text.
Now the aggressive and destructive nature of fire is fairly universal, so it's perhaps not an ideal example. But this sort of thing happens all the time - people who were counting chickens in English start counting raccoon hides in Japanese. And I once caused Menschen-Freund became "Son of Man", because there was no way to make a direct translation not sound like "Man's Best Friend".

The concept of equivalence is the first lesson in any translation studies course, and should be implicitly understood by any competent translator. Certainly there are cases where it would be unfaithful to the purpose or material nature of the text to be pedantic, which is different from making changes that affect such purpose or nature.


I just had a translation of a video game script pass through my hands. It was perfectly accurate, and therefore entirely unsuitable for any purpose. I did a full rewriting of about 70% of it, and in doing so eliminated some utterly cringe-inducing dialogue that didn't sound natural in the source text to begin with, never mind in the translation.

GIGO, yes, but sometimes the job description includes taking a pile of garbage and trying to make something non-garbage out of it.

[Edited at 2020-05-15 04:11 GMT]


Jan Truper
 
Michael Wetzel
Michael Wetzel  Identity Verified
Germany
Local time: 16:24
German to English
From Marx to Freud ... May 15, 2020

As in Freudian slip ... what I meant to say was "no more rude than mine" ... and I wrote exactly the opposite. My apology was genuine and it was not just a set-up to take everything back again in the final lines.

While my original post may (or may not) have been somewhat lacking in open belligerence, it certainly made up for it in snideness.


 
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Brainstorming: opinions on transferring ideology from source text to target text; CDA







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