Christoph Gutknecht and Lutz
J. Rölle, Translating by Factors,
Albany: State University of New York Press 1996.
The search for factors determining the translation process continues. In
a laudable attempt at charting a course through the maze, Christoph Gutknecht
and Lutz J. Rölle isolate twenty such factors, demonstrating their
applicability to the translation of modals from German into English and vice
versa.
The book falls into eight chapters, six of which deal with one specific
set each of what the authors term 'factor dimensions'. The introduction reviews
the relevant literature, provides a glossary of factor functions and defines
the notion of modality. Chapter 2 deals with the syntactical and morphological
aspects of modals. Chapter 3 provides an extremely detailed treatment of their
semantics that runs to 100 pages. With acute linguistic insight Gutknecht/Rölle
set out how problems of polysemy can be resolved through a sequential 'factor'
approach, devising flowcharts for the translation of English 'can' and 'may'. They
also undertake a highly enlightening study of the well-known suppletives of
'can' and 'may', treating them as semantic units in their own right and
demonstrating the non-congruence of the overall modal systems in English and
German. The fruitless debate between linguists over whether a particular use of
a modal comes within the scope of modality is convincingly shown to be a
non-issue from the translator's point of view. What matters, the authors
suggest, is correct identification of meaning. In arguing the case for an
isomorphic rendering of constructions containing modal adjectives or nouns (cf.
pp. 62 ff. and 103 ff., e.g. 'Es ist möglich, das Problem zu lösen'), the
authors seem to forget that textual (text-type) constraints and preferred ways
of putting things in different contexts may well take precedence over syntactic
considerations. Gutknecht's own rendering of the semi-prepackaged discourse
marker 'the same point can be made about ...' in an ESP text by 'über
Entlehnung läßt sich dasselbe sagen' (p. 104) is a case in point, with 'kann
gesagt werden' being excluded as an alternative because textual building blocks
of this kind are norm-governed (in Wilss's (1982) terminology, they come under
usage norm II, cf. also Wilss 1996, pp. 63-64 and 128 ff.). The sentence is
taken up again in chapter 8.1 (pp. 275 ff.), where Gutknecht/Rölle speak
somewhat vaguely of 'the factor of cultural conventions' as being of prime
importance in such cases.
Chapter 4 is about pragmatics. The authors look at illocutionary force,
perlocution, factuality, situation, permanent language varieties and culture as
factors bearing on translating activity. Most interesting here is the authors'
discussion of implied, implicit and explicit modality and factuality. It starts
from the well-known fact that English tends to use the modal can with verbs of perception where
German contents itself with the verb.
Chapter 5 deals briefly with the influence of the written and spoken
language on modal usage, pointing out differences and similarities between the
two. The authors discuss the relative frequency of forms, prosodic patterning,
punctuation and syntactic anticipation in simultaneous interpreting.
Chapter 6 offers a perceptive analysis of equivalence and of the vexed question
of translation units. Gutknecht/Rölle base their discussion on a linguistic
rather than a psychologically real notion of the unit of translation. In the
tradition of Catford and Diller/Kornelius they take the latter to refer to any
morpho-syntactically identifiable target-language stretch of text that can be
readily substituted for a comparable source-language entity. The value of this
discussion for the practising translator lies, among other things, in the
authors' insightful observations on emotive modality and on the obligatory use
of what might appear to be German 'modal pleonasms' (e.g. 'das Recht, sich
nennen zu dürfen') for such English constructions as 'the right to be known as'
or 'the possibility of visiting'. Gutknecht/Rölle usefully focus on the
presence of such cotextual elements as the adverb 'only' with negative 'must'
or affirmative 'could', a factor which forces the translator to expand the unit
of translation and leave the well-beaten path of habitual one-for-one
equivalence ('must not' equalling 'darf nicht'). Such findings could be
fruitfully incorporated into MT software.
Chapters 7 and 8 round off the discussion by considering some of the
age-old issues in translation, namely the translation situation and translation
theory. Throughout these closing chapters, the authors stress the importance of
the translation assignment, which must be carried out in accordance with the
client's wishes and needs. In tune with the broad thrust of current theorizing
on pragmatic and literary translation, they come out against disambiguation,
arguing in favour of preserving indeterminacy and the full range of
illocutionary gradience in the translation of modals. An aptly chosen
cautionary example for those who might think otherwise is to be found on pp.
263 ff. Gutknecht/Rölle then proceed to demonstrate that specific factor sets
pre-determine particular target-language renditions. Factors are shown to
entail each other in a non-arbitrary rank order, with the client being the
ultimate arbiter of factor ranking. Interestingly, in this context
Gutknecht/Rölle also acknowledge the usefulness of the hitherto neglected
relevance theory for explaining decision-making in translation (cf. Gutt 1991,
cf. Siepmann 1996: pp. 13 ff.).
It should be clear from the foregoing that the book under review is an
outstanding feat of linguistic scholarship that will repay close study. Straying
occasionally from their charted course, the authors have sprinkled their study
with a host of observations revealing their thorough research into the niceties
of modality in English and German (cf. e.g. their remarks on 'Bringschuld' with
respect to covertness and overtness of modality, p. 86, or their observations
on epistemic 'must not', p. 163, of whose equivalence with 'cannot' in American
English I was unaware). There is very little to quarrel with here, except
perhaps for some overly optimistic claims regarding the practical implications
of the factor approach.
It is, in fact, rather doubtful whether the transfer from linguistic theory
to pedagogic application is as smooth and easy as Gutknecht/Rölle make out
(p.2: 'The same factors are expedient (sic!) to be imparted in the training of
translators and interpreters'). This is because their study, somewhat
reminiscent in this respect - if not in its precision and explanatory power -
of earlier studies in comparative stylistics, is beset by a fundamental
problem, namely that the notion of factor, like that of 'translation
procedure', is a retrospectively devised tool for linguistic analysis with no
predictive power rather than an aid assisting the translator in the complex
decision-making involved in his or her everyday work. The use of the passive
voice in such sentences as the following is symptomatic of this deficiency:
'If, however, the modal and its fixed idiomatic use ein Muss is decided to
be (sic!) the invariance factor, one would have to employ the compensation
factor of shifting the numeral three onto another noun' (my emphasis). The
reader is left wondering who the decision-maker is ... This also means that the
factor approach cannot act as 'an objective yardstick' (my emphasis) for
translation quality assessment, as the blurb would seem to suggest. What it can
do - and this is another major achievement of this study - is provide a set of
criteria and a metalanguage which will promote consistency and precision in
translation criticism and translation teaching.
In places the authors appear oblivious of the virtues of English usage
and style[1]. Although somewhat unfortunate, such minor defects never disrupt the
reading process and should be easy to remedy with a view to future editions.
A fitting note on which to end this review is the authors' anecdote
about an American farmer, who, asked what he intended to do with his fruit
harvest, replied: 'We eat all we can, and what we can't we can'. A linguist's
delight, just like 'Translating by Factors'! This remarkable study can provide
a basis for renewed and intensified cross-fertilization between linguistics and
translatology on the one hand, and European and American translation studies on
the other.
Bibliographical Notes
Catford, J.C., A Linguistic Theory
of Translation. Oxford 1965.
Diller, H.-J./Kornelius, J.,
Linguistische Probleme der Übersetzung.
Tübingen 1978.
Siepmann, D., Übersetzungslehrbücher: Perspektiven für
ihre Entwicklung. Bochum 1996.
Wilss, W., The Science of
Translation. Problems and Methods. Tübingen 1982.
Wilss, W., Übersetzungsunterricht, Tübingen 1996.
[1] Cf. e.g. the following lexical and
grammatical mistakes: 'translation factors existing / in the section following'
(pp. 9 / 91, read: which exist / follow), 'ascribing permissive MAY greater
formality' (p. 36, read: ascribing greater formality to permissive MAY), 'this
topic also threads the literature on translation' (p. 54, read: pervades), 'as
might seem' (p. 68, read: as it might seem), 'as we could formulate more
precisely' (p. 71), 'differentiating a translation rule' (p. 76, read:
refining), 'its said connotation' (p. 102), 'to an extent of appearing' (p.
110, read: to such an extent that) and the following stylistic infelicities:
'turning to the German rendition situation' (p. 54), 'to take a case in point'
(p. 62), 'which we recommended to be translated as' (p. 66, read: for which we
suggested the following translation), 'needs some relativization' (p. 77, read:
'needs to be qualified somewhat'), 'how do we go about interrelations ...' (p.
90), 'equipped with this background knowledge' (read: 'with this in mind' or
'against this background'). The list could be extended.