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Register Analysis
Volume 7, No. 3
July 2003
A Chinese national, the author is
an Associate Professor in English
Language Teaching at Yanshan
University, Hebei, China. He
obtained his first MA degree in
ESP from Huazhong University of
Science and Technology, Wuhan,
China, and the second in English
Studies from the National
University of Singapore, where
he is currently enrolled as a fulltime PhD candidate doing
research in Translation Studies.
He has published more than 20
papers on translation and
language teaching in journals
and at conferences, both
international and national.
The author can be reached at
artp8402@nus.edu.sg.
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https://translationjournal.net/journal/25register.htm
Register Analysis as a Tool for
Translation Quality Assessment
by Liu Zequan (刘泽权)
National University of Singapore
This is a revised version of the paper under the same title which was presented at The
International Conference on Discourse and Translation held at Sun Yet-san University,
Guangzhou, China from 24-26 July 2002
1. Introduction
egister, or context of situation as it is formally termed, "is
the set of meanings, the configuration of semantic
patterns, that are typically drawn upon under the specific
conditions, along with the words and structures that are used in
the realization of these meanings" (Halliday, 1978:23). It is
concerned with the variables of field, tenor, and mode, and is a
useful abstraction which relates variations of language use to
variations of social context. Therefore, register analysis of
linguistic texts, which enables us to uncover how language is
manoeuvred to make meaning, has received popular application in
(critical) discourse analysis and (foreign) language teaching
pedagogy.
Regrettably, however, register
analysis has been paid little
attention to by the vast translation
scholarship in and outside China up
to the 1990s. The western, or
English-language, translation
scholarship has long been debating
upon the criterion of "equivalence"
and the illusory measures of it. In
China, controversy has been centred
on the three-character standard of "Faithfulness,"
"Communicability" and "Elegance" proposed by Yan Fu
(1894/1984) but never observed by him (Hung and Pollard,
1998:371). In view of this scenario, this paper proposes and
argues for the application of register analysis, especially that of
the Australian/Hallidayan tradition, for textual analysis of parallel
texts in question for the purpose of translation quality assessment.
This paper provides this argument, based, first, upon an
analysts are not just
interested in what
language is, but why
language is; not just
what language
means, but how
language means.
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From the Editor
Forty-Two Dog Years
Index 1997-2003
Translator Profiles
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News or Serendipity Strikes
Again... and Again... and
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German Children's and
Teenagers' Slang
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ATA Certification In Bosnian,
Croatian And Serbian
https://translationjournal.net/journal/25register.htm
Register Analysis
introduction of register theory per se, and second, upon the
relevance and applications of register analysis to translation
studies. But before we do that, the concept of equivalence will be
briefly reviewed because of its significance to translation quality
assessment.
2. Equivalence as Criterion
The area of translation quality assessment criteria is academically
one "where a more expert writer (a marker of a translation
examination or a reviser of a professional translation) addresses a
less expert reader (usually a candidate for an examination or a
junior professional translator)" (Munday, 2001:30). However, what
has long constituted the core and co-current concern of all debates
in translation studies is what should be held as the criterion for
translation quality assessment. Ever since the ancient thematic
controversy over "word-for-word" (literal) and "sense-for- sense"
(free) translation (ibid.:18-20), the history of translation theory
has seen the theme as "emerging again and again with different
degrees of emphasis in accordance with differing concepts of
language and communication" (Bassnett, 1991:42).
Notwithstanding the fact that there is no denying that the issue
"what is a good translation?" should be "one of the most important
questions to be asked in connection with translation" (House,
2001:127), "[i]t is notoriously difficult to say why, or even
whether, something is a good translation" (Halliday, 2001:14).
Throughout translation studies, theorists have attempted to
answer this question "on the basis of a theory of translation and
translation criticism" from various perspectives (House,
2001:127), and have proposed, apart from the aforementioned
opposing binary pair, formal and dynamic equivalence (Nida,
1964), textual equivalence and formal correspondence (Catford,
1965), etc. These dichotomies, despite their different perspectives,
seem to focus on a consensus in favour of "two basic orientations"
(Nida, 1964:159) or types of translation where "the central
organizing concept is presumably that of 'equivalence'" (Halliday,
2001:15).
In the English-language scholarship criteria of translation, the
concept of (translational) equivalence is "central" but
"controversial" (Kenny, 1998:77). According to Koller (1995:197),
it "merely means a special relationship—which can be designated
as the translation relationship—is apparent between two texts, a
source (primary) one and a resultant one." It is Jakobson
(1959/2000) who first dealt with "the thorny problem of
equivalence" (Munday, 2001:36) in translation between the ST and
the TT. Following the relation set out by Saussure between the
signifier (the spoken and written signal) and the signified (the
concept signified), Jakobson (1959/ 2000) perceived "equivalence
in difference" as "the cardinal problem of language and the pivotal
concern of linguistics" (p.114), which has become a "nowfamous... definition" from a linguistic and semiotic perspective
(Munday, 2001:37). For him, for the message to be equivalent in
the ST and TT, the code-units will be different since they belong to
two different sign systems (languages) which partition reality
(Jakobson, 1959/2000:114). Specifically, he succinctly pointed out
that there is no complete equivalence in the intralingual translation
of a word by means of a synonymy, just as "on the level of
interlingual translation, there is ordinarily no full equivalence
between code-units" (ibid.). This is so because "languages differ
essentially in what they must convey and not in what they may
convey" (p.116).
Ever since Jakobson's seminal approach to the concept of
equivalence, the question has become a constant theme of
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Medical Translation
SARS or ATP—a Misnomer in
Mainland China
by Yichuan Sang, Ph.D.
Translation Theory
La relevancia de la
documentación en teoría
literaria y literatura
Register Analysis
translation studies, especially in the 1960s (Munday, 2001:37),
and approaches to it "differ radically" (Kenny, 1998: 77):
Some theorists define translation in terms of
equivalence relations (Catford, 1965; Nida and Taber,
1969; Toury, 1980; Pym, 1992, 1995; Koller, 1995)
while others reject the theoretical notion of
equivalence, claiming it is either irrelevant (SnellHornby, 1988) or damaging (Gentzler, 1993) to
translation studies. Yet other theorists steer a middle
course: Baker [(1992:5-6)] uses the notion of
equivalence "for the sake of convenience—because
most translators are used to it rather than it has any
theoretical status."
comparada para los estudios
(Kenny, 1998:77)
de traducción
by Dora Sales Salvador
Register Analysis as a Tool
for Translation Quality
Assessment
by Liu Zequan
Interpretation
Memory Training in
Interpreting
by Weihe Zhong
Understandably, although the concept has been blatantly labelled
by Nord as "a static, result-oriented concept describing a
relationship of 'equal communicative value' between two texts or,
on lower rank, between words, phrases, sentences, syntactic
structures and so on (In this context, 'value' refers to meaning,
stylistic connotations or communicative effect)" (Nord, 1997:36), it
is still "variously regarded as a necessary condition for translation,
an obstacle to progress in translation studies, or a useful category
for describing translations" (Kenny, 1998:77). This thus explains
why the ad hoc criterion and the techniques for achieving it
"continues to be used in the everyday language of translation"
(Fawcett, 1997:65), even in the applications of register analysis
for translation quality assessment as will be presented shortly.
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Pedro Misner, 1939 - 2003
by D'Vonne Casadaban
Translator Education
Translation: Back from
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Alireza Bonyadi
Reflections of Prospective
Language Teachers on
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Adnan Biçer, Ph.D.
Book Review
The Hunt for Red October
Mark Hooker
Translators' Tools
3. Register Theory
In the Hallidayan (also called Australian) functional theory of
language (Hyon, 1996), "analysts are not just interested in what
language is, but why language is; not just what language means,
but how language means (Leckie-Tarry, 1993:26). Halliday
stresses the need for a look into the context in which a text is
produced while analyzing and/or interpreting a text. He points out
that the really pressing question here is "which kinds of situational
factor determined which kinds of selection in the linguistic
system?" (Halliday, 1978:32; original emphasis). Context here
relates to the context of situation and context of culture, both of
which "get 'into' text by influencing the words and structures that
text-producers use" (Eggins and Martin, 1997:232). While the
former is concerned with the register variables of field, tenor, and
mode, the latter is described in terms of genre. This part of the
paper is therefore devoted to a brief examination of the Australian
(genre) approach to texts, i.e. register analysis, and to a
discussion of what resources the register tool has to offer to
translation texts analysis. This examination first traces the
development of the register theory, and then presents a Hallidayan
definition of the three variables of register.
SDLX™ Translation Suite
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Web Surfing for Fun and
Profit
by Cathy Flick, Ph.D.
https://translationjournal.net/journal/25register.htm
3.1 From Firth to Halliday
The term "register" first came into general currency in the 1960s
(Leckie-Tarry, 1993:28). Following Reid's initial use of it in 1956,
and Ure's development of it in the 1960s (ibid.), Halliday et al.
(1964:77) describe it as "a variety according to use, in the sense
that each speaker has a range of varieties and chooses between
them at different times." This use-related framework for the
description of language variation (as contrasted with the userrelated varieties called dialects) (Hatim and Mason, 1990:39) aims
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Register Analysis
to "uncover the general principles which govern [the variation in
situation types], so that we can begin to understand what
situational factors determine what linguistic features" (Halliday,
1978:32).
De Beaugrande (1993:7) shows his sympathy for the concept of
register when he laments, "Throughout much of linguistic theory
and method, the concept of 'register' has led a rather shadowy
existence." The term did not make appearance in such
foundational works as those of Saussure, Sapir and Bloomfield.
This absence is explained by the fact that it "is hard to define" the
term as a(n abstract) language unit that might be "comparable,
say, to the 'system' of 'phonemes' of a language, or to its 'system'
of noun declensions or verb conjugations, and so on" (ibid.).
It is only when linguists showed interest in actual speech and
discourse that the term turned up in foundational linguistics works
like those of Firth and Pike. In Firth's (1957) work, register finds a
possible equivalent in the "restricted language," which he defines
as "serving a circumscribed field of experience or action" with "its
own grammar and dictionary" (p.124, 87, 98, 105ff, 112). He
emphasizes the use of practical methods in linguistic analysis, and
points out that a domain becomes easier to manage when the
linguist must draw abstractions from a whole linguistic universe
which consists of many specialized languages and different styles
(de Beaugrande, 1993:8). Firth considers science, technology,
politics, commerce, industry, sports, etc, or "a particular form of
genre," or a "type of work associated with a single author or a type
of speech function with its appropriate style or tempo" (Firth,
1968:106, 98, 112, 118ff.) as domains of "restricted languages."
He gives the notion of "collocation" a "prominent" (ibid.) position
when he suggests "studying key words, pivotal words, leading
words, by presenting them in the company they usually keep"
(ibid.:106 ff., 113, 182).
It is Halliday, a pupil of Firth, who, along with his (mostly
Australian) associates, "eventually gave currency to the term
'register' as such (de Beaugrande, 1993:9). For Halliday, register is
"the clustering of semantic features according to situation type,"
and "can be defined as a configuration of semantic resources that
the member of a culture typically associates with a situation type"
(Halliday, 1978:111). Seen this way, "the notion of register is at
once very simple and very powerful" and "provides a means of
investigating the linguistic foundations of everyday social
interaction from an angle that is complementary to the
ethnomethodological one" (ibid.:31, 62). The theory of register
thus derived "attempts to uncover the general principles which
govern" how "the language we speak or write varies according to
the type of situation" (ibid.:32). For Halliday, the central problem
in text linguistics lies in how "the 'register' concept can take
account of the processes which link the features of the text" "to
the abstract categories of the speech situation" (ibid.:62). He
warns linguists against "posing the wrong question" of "what
features of language are determined by register?" (ibid.:32) in the
process of seeking such a link. He tells us that we should instead
seek for the factors that determine the selection of language
(ibid.).
3.2 The Australian Perspective
Halliday (1994) points out that, in order to make sense of a text,
"the natural tendency is to think of a text as a thing—a product"
while "see[ing] the text in its aspect as a process" (p.xxii). The
nature of text of the systemic genre theorists is lucidly summed up
by Kress (1985:18):
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Register Analysis
Texts arise in specific social situations and they are
constructed with specific purposes by one or more
speakers or writers. Meanings find their expression in
text—though their origins of meanings are outside the
text—and are negotiated (about) in texts, in concrete
situations of social exchange.
Whereas interaction between text and context is seen in the form
of the nexus between language and society (Leckie-Tarry,
1993:33-34), social contexts comprise two different levels of
abstraction, i.e. genre and register, which are respectively
described in terms of context of culture and context of situation
(Eggins, 1994:32), and which "are the technical concepts
employed to explain the meaning and function of variation
between texts" (Eggins and Martin, 1997:234).
3.2.1 Context of Culture: Genre
Context of culture in the Australian tradition "can be thought of as
the general framework that gives purpose to interactions of
particular types, adaptable to the many specific contexts of
situation that they get used in" (Eggins, 1994:32). It provides "a
precise index and catalogue of the relevant social occasions of a
community at a given time" (Kress, 1985:20). Whereas the
conventionalised forms of such situations or occasions determine
the conventionalised forms of texts, texts derive their meanings
not only "from the meaning contained within the discourse
(systems of meanings arise out of the organisation of social
institutions), but also from the meanings of genre, or the
meanings about the conventionalised social occasions from which
texts arise" (Leckie-Tarry, 1993:33). Therefore, "texts belonging to
the same genre can vary in their structure," while "the one aspect
in which they cannot vary without consequence to their genreallocation is the obligatory elements and dispositions of the GSP
[genre specific potential]" (Hasan and Halliday, 1985:108).
3.2.2 Context of Situation: Three Register Variables
"Following the functional-semantic tradition pursued by Firth"
(Eggins, 1994:52), Halliday (1978:64) finds the concept of register
"a useful abstraction linking variations of language to variations of
social context" and suggests "that there are three aspects in any
situation that have linguistic consequences: field, mode, and
tenor" (Eggins, 1994:52). According to him, field refers to "what is
happening, to the nature of the social action that is taking place,"
mode concerns "what it is that the participants [of a transaction]
are expecting language to do for them in that situation," and tenor
has to do with who are taking part in the transaction as well as the
"nature of the participants, their status and roles (Hasan and
Halliday, 1985:12). These three register variables delineate the
relationships between language function and language form. In
other words, a register is constituted by "the linguistic features
which are typically associated with a configuration of situational
features—with particular values of the field, mode and tenor"
(Halliday, 1976:22). For example, the tenor of a text, which
concerns the relationship between the addresser and the
addressee, can "be analysed in terms of basic distinctions such as
polite-colloquial-intimate, on a scale of categories which range
from formal to informal" (Hatim and Mason, 1990:50). In the
same vein, the mode of an interaction which manifests the nature
of the language code being used can be distinguished in terms of,
among other things, spoken and written.
3.2.3 Metafunctions of Language and Register Variables
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Register Analysis
Halliday (1994) also perceives meaning as the fundamental
component of language when he observes that "all languages are
organised around two main kinds of meaning, the 'ideational' or
reflective, and the 'interpersonal' or active" (p.xiii). He further
envisages these two meaning components as "metafunctions," that
is "the two very general purposes which underlie all uses of
language"—whereas the former aims "to understand the
environment" [of language use], the latter is intended "to act on
the others in it" (ibid.). Together with these two metafunctional
components, Halliday sees a third, i.e. the "textual," "which
breathes relevance into the two" (ibid.), and which is also called
"the enabling metafunction" because it "is the level of organisation
of the clause which enables the clause to be packaged in ways
which make it effective given its purpose and context" (Eggins,
1994:273).
The entire system of meanings of a language, expressed by
grammar as well as by vocabulary is defined in Halliday's (1994)
term "the semantic system" (p.xvii), as opposed to lexicogrammar,
the "complex semiotic system composed of multiple levels, or
strata," "include[ing] both grammar and vocabulary" (p.15). As for
the relationship between semantics and lexicogrammar, Halliday
perceives it as being "natural, not arbitrary" (p.xix). In fact, he
sees "no clear line between semantics and grammar" (ibid.) since
the "systems of meaning engender lexicogrammatical structures"
(p.xviii). As far as the interrelationships of semantics,
lexicogrammar, and register variables are concerned, Halliday
(1978) asserts that while register is "recognisable as a particular
selection of words and structures," it must be defined in terms of
meanings because "it is the selection of meanings that constitutes
the variety to which a text belongs" (p.111). In Halliday's term,
the relationship between the language components (the ideational,
interpersonal and textual metafunctions) and the context variables
(field, tenor and mode) is called "realisation," i.e. "the way in
which different types of field, tenor and mode condition ideational,
interpersonal and textual meaning" from the perspective of context
(Eggins and Martin, 1997:241).
To be specific, the ideational metafunction, which is concerned with
mapping the reality of the world around us (i.e. who is doing what
to whom, when, where, why, how), reflects differences in field
which are realised through both transitivity selection and lexical
choices. In the same way, differences in tenor are realised through
mood and subject, and modality plus appraisal choices which in
turn construct the social relationships played by interactants, i.e.
the interpersonal metafunction. And finally, the register variable of
mode manifests the textual metafunction which is realised through
nominalisation and Theme choices. Hence a picture can be drawn
of the triadic relationships of the three register variables, the
lexicogrammar, and three meanings and metafunctions, of
language use. Tabulated below is the relationship between context
of situation and language systems in the Hallidayan model adapted
from Eggins and Martin (1997:242)
Table 3.1 Relationship between context, strata, and systems in the
systemic functional model
Context
Register
variable
https://translationjournal.net/journal/25register.htm
Type of
meaning
"at risk"
Language
Discoursesemantic
patterns
(cohesion)
Lexicogrammatical
patterns
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Register Analysis
Field
Ideational
Lexical
cohesion
Transitivity
(case)
Conjunctive
relations
Logicalsemantic
relations
(taxis)
Tenor
Interpersonal
Speech
function
Exchange
structure
Mood,
modality,
vocation,
attitude
Mode
Textual
Reference
(participant
tracking)
Theme,
Information
structure
Nominalisation
Apart from metafunction, i.e. the organisation of the content strata
(lexicogrammar and semantics) in functional components, Halliday
(2001:15) identifies two more "vectors" that are "most relevant" in
construing the parameters of language, that is, "stratification" and
"rank." For him, stratification refers to the organisation of
language in ordered strata: phonetic, phonological,
lexicogrammatical and semantic—and one or more contextual
strata outside of language proper (ibid.). Rank, on the other hand,
involves the organisation of the formal strata (phonology and
lexicogrammar) in a compositional hierarchy (ibid.). These three
vectors, according to him, provide language users with "a round of
choices and operations (a 'system-structure cycle') at each rank,
with clause choices realised as clause structures, realised as
phrase/groups choices, realised as phrase/group structures and so
on" with the benefit that "the higher-rank choices in the grammar
can be essentially choices in meaning without the grammar
thereby losing contact with the ground" (Halliday, 1994:xix).
4. Relevance of Register Analysis to Translation
Regrettably, however, the register approach has not found much
application in translation studies until the 1990s. And this comes
only when translation theorists realised the nature of translation as
"a textual thing" (House, 1981:65), a cross-cultural
communication which is both "socially and culturally necessary and
useful" (Gregory, 2001:19). Since then there has been an
increasing acknowledgement of the relevance of the notion of
register, and of the model of register analysis, to a translationoriented analysis and assessment of texts (Marco, 2001:1). By
way of illustration and substantiation of this point, both Halliday
and his followers' contribution to the development of registeredbased translation criteria are introduced in the forthcoming
section. This introduction is also intended as a justification of the
use of register analysis as a tool in translation analysis, a theme
proposed in this paper.
4.1 Halliday's Perspective of Equivalence
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Register Analysis
To begin with, Halliday (2001) contrasts the linguist's interest in
translation theories (which involves "how things are") and a
translator's interest in a theory (which concerns "how things ought
to be") (p.13), refines the questions and sets them in a wide
context of reflection on language, thus offering thought-provoking
comments on system, equivalence and value in respect of
translation assessment (Steiner and Yallop, 2001b: 6). With
reference to the process of translation, Halliday (1967) suggests
that,
translating proceeds by three stages: (a) item for item
equivalence; (b) reconsideration in the light of the
linguistic environment and beyond this (it is almost an
afterthought) to a consideration of the situation; (c)
reconsideration in the light of the grammatical features
of the target language where source language no
longer provides any information.
(Newmark, 1991: 65).
As far as translation quality assessment is concerned, Halliday
(1967) rightly points out that,
The equivalence of units and of items is lost as soon as
we go below the sentence; the further down the rank
scale we go, the less is left of the equivalence. Once
we reach the morpheme, most vestiges of equivalence
disappear. The morpheme is untranslatable...
(Newmark, 1991:67)
In respect of the register variables field, tenor and mood in
translation, Halliday (2001:17) emphasises the importance of
contexts in deciding the "value" of different strata. As a guideline
for translators to follow, he stipulates what can be seen as "a
principle of hierarchy of values" (ibid.) when he (ibid.) lucidly
observes that,
[E]quivalence at different strata carries differential
values; ...in most cases the value that is placed on it
goes up the higher the stratum—semantic equivalence
is valued more highly than lexicogrammatical, and
contextual equivalence perhaps most highly of all; but
...these relative values can always be varied, and in
any given instance of translation one can reassess
them in the light of the task.
And finally, Halliday (2001) justifies his interrogating of translation
equivalence by asking: "equivalence with respect to what?" (p.15).
Equivalence, he asserts, should be defined in respect of the
metafunctions (ideational, interpersonal, textual) (ibid.: 16). For
him, although "in any particular instance of translation, value may
be attached to equivalence at different ranks, different strata,
different metafunctions," it is "usually at the higher
lexicogrammatical units" in rank, and "typically" at the highest
stratum within language, i.e. that of semantics in strata, that
equivalence is most highly valued (ibid.:17). As far as With regard
to the three metafunctions proper, Halliday thinks that "high value
may be accorded to equivalence in the interpersonal or textual
realms—but usually only when ideational equivalence can be taken
for granted" (ibid.). In this juncture, Halliday (ibid.) concludes:
[A] "good" translation is a text which is a translation
(i.e., is equivalent) in respect of those linguistic
features which are most valued in the given translation
context and perhaps also in respect of the value which
is assigned to the original (source language) text.
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Register Analysis
4.2 Register-based Equivalences
Following Hallidayan linguistics, especially the Australian tradition
of genre and register theories (see Ghadessy, 1993; Hyon, 1996),
theorists concentrate themselves on (offering) ways to tackle
translation equivalence in terms of functional perspectives. Among
these, Newmark, Marco, House, teamworkers Hatim and Mason,
and Baker deserve mention here.
Newmark is fascinated with Halliday's (1994) seminal work An
Introduction To Functional Grammar, especially with the chapter
on the equivalent representations of metaphorical modes of
expressions (i.e. "Beyond the clause: metaphorical modes of
expressions"). Here, Halliday supplies good examples illustrating
how choices are made when representing metaphors. Newmark
(1991) recommends this chapter highly, claiming that it "could
form a useful part of any translator's training course where English
is the source or target language" (p.68).
Next comes Marco (2001) who contributes to register analysis in
the field of translation quality evaluation by specifically justifying
the use of register analysis in literary translation. He points out
that such a tool "provides the necessary link between a
communicative act and the context of situation in which it occurs"
(p.1). For him, register analysis is "the most comprehensive
framework proposed for the characterisation of context," and has
the advantage of "provid[ing] a very limited number of variables
on the basis of which any given context may be defined" (ibid.).
Like Marco, teamworkers Hatim and Mason (1990, 1997) also
employ register analysis as part of their overall account of context
in translation. Despite their claim that there are other contextual
factors, i.e. pragmatic and semiotic ones, which transcend the
framework of register, they
continue to assume that identifying the register
membership of a text is an essential part of discourse
processing; it involves the reader in a reconstruction
of context through an analysis of what has taken place
(field), who has participated (tenor), and what
medium has been selected for relaying the message
(mode). Together, the three variables set up a
communicative transaction in the sense that they
provide the basic conditions for communication to take
place.
(Hatim and Mason, 1990:55; original emphasis)
Also noteworthy in the application of register analysis for practical
translation studies are House (1981, 1997) and Baker (1992) who
not only adopt Halliday's model of register analysis but also
develop substantial criteria whereby both the ST and TT can be
systematically compared. House (1981) rejects the "more targetaudience oriented notion of translation appropriateness" as "far too
general and elusive" and "fundamentally misguided" (p.1-2).
Instead, she advocates a semantic and pragmatic approach.
Central to her discussion is the concept of "overt" and "covert"
translations. In an overt translation like that of a political speech,
House asserts, the TT audience is not directly addressed and there
is therefore no need at all to attempt to recreate a "second
original" since an overt translation "must overtly be a translation"
(ibid.:189). By covert translation, on the other hand, she means
the production of a text, for instance, a science report, which is
functionally equivalent to the ST, and which "is not specifically
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addressed to a TC (target culture) audience" (ibid.: 194).
Significantly, House claims that ST and TT should match one
another in function, with function being characterised in terms of
the situational dimensions of the ST (ibid.:49). Based upon the
Hallidayan model of register analysis, she proposes what she calls
"the basic requirement for equivalence of ST and TT," and asserts
that "a TT, in order to be equivalent to its ST, should have a
function—consisting of an ideational and an interpersonal
functional component—which is equivalent to the ST's function"
(House, 1981:Abstract). To measure the degree to which the TT's
ideational and textual functions are equivalent to those of its ST's,
House develops a model (see Figure 1 below) as the scheme for
systematic comparison of the textual "profile" of the ST and TT
(1997:43) in terms of both functions in question. This schema,
though "draw[ing] on various and sometimes complex taxonomies"
(Munday, 2001:92), can be reduced to a register analysis of both
ST and TT according to their realisation through lexical, syntactic
and "textual" means. By the last term, House (1997:44-45) refers
to: (1) theme-dynamics (i.e. thematic structure and cohesion), (2)
clausal linkage (i.e. additive, adversative, etc.), and (3) iconic
linkage (i.e. parallelism of structures).
Baker, on the other hand, albeit using the term equivalence "for
the sake of convenience" (1992:5), extends the concept to cover
similarities both in ST and TT information flow, and in the cohesive
roles ST and TT devices play in their respective texts, both of
which she collectively calls "textual equivalence." She also
examines equivalence at a series of levels: at word, above-word,
grammatical, and pragmatic levels (Baker, 1992).
To wrap up our look at the Hallidayan approaches to translation
equivalence, it seems fair to say that the Hallidayan register
models have "become extremely popular" and fruitful "as a useful
way of tackling the linguistic structure and meaning of a text" in
"linguistics-oriented" translation studies (Munday, 2001:101). At
the same time, however, these models have their weakness. First
of all, they are "over-completed in [their] categorization of
grammar and [their] apparently inflexible one-to-one matching of
structure and meaning" (ibid.). Secondly, they are, for the most
part, English-language oriented in nature. It can be argued that
the analytical frameworks developed in these studies "become
problematic with other languages, especially in the analysis of
thematic and informational structures," for instance, in some
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European language with a more flexible word order and subjectinflected verb forms (ibid.).
As far as House's model is concerned, although it seems to be
much more flexible than that of Catford's, it sill raises the doubt
that whether the model is able to recover authorial intention and
ST function from register analysis (Gutt, 1991:46-49). Even if it is
possible, it is further argued, the basis of House's model is to
discover "mismatches" between ST and TT (ibid.). Regarding
Baker's framework, she obviously assigns new adjectives to the
notion of equivalence (grammatical, pragmatic, textual, etc.), thus
adding to the plethora of recent works in this field. Importantly, by
putting together the linguistic and the communicative approach,
she offers a fresh, and more detailed list of conditions upon which
the concept of equivalence can be defined. Unfortunately, however,
she fails to provide an operatable checklist against which degrees
of equivalence can be established at the various ranks she
proposes. In respect of Hatim and Mason's studies, "their focus
remains linguistics-centred, both in its terminology and in the
phenomena investigated (lexical choice, cohesion, transitivity, style
shifting, translator mediation, etc.)" (Munday, 2001:102).
5. Conclusion
As the equivalence criterion, "a concept that has probably cost the
lives of more trees than any other in translation studies" (Fawcett,
1997:53), lives on, the concept of equivalence develops from a
mere translation typologising standard to a rank- and meaningclassifying criterion. While earlier works on equivalence, like that
of Catford (1965) and Nida's (1964), focus on macro mappings
between the ST and TT and divide translations rigidly into two
broad types, recent theorists who maintain that translation is
predicated upon some kind of equivalence narrow down the level
of equivalence to the more tangible aspects of rank, i.e. word,
sentence/clause, and text. The rise of this trend can mainly be
attributed to the general realisation among translation theorists of
the nature of translation as "a textual thing" (House, 1981:65).
Thus, to study texts entails looking into the social context within
which texts are embedded. Such a study "provides evidence of
ongoing processes, such as the relationship between social change
and communicative or linguistic change, the construction of social
identities, or the (re)construction of knowledge and ideology"
(Schäffner, 1996:1). Ideology, with its various definitions, is here
considered as "basic systems of fundamental social cognitions and
organising the attitudes and other social representations shared by
members of groups" (van Dijk, 1995:243). As "a more abstract
contextual dimension" of the systemic approach, ideology denotes
"the positions of power, the political biases and assumptions that
all social interactants bring with them to their texts" (Eggins and
Martin, 1997:237). Hence, all texts embody certain ideological
perspectives which have functional motivations: "they tell us
something about the interests of the text-producers" (ibid.).
Whereas "there is widespread agreement that language and
language use, i.e. discourse and/or social interaction, are of major
relevance to the study of ideologies," "it has been stressed that
ideologies find their clearest expression in language, and at
different levels" ranging from the lexical-semantic level to the
grammatical-syntactic level (Schäffner, 1996:3-4). It is in this vein
that register is envisaged as an ideologically particular, situationspecific meaning potential. After all, the codification of meaning
appropriate to a situation is ultimately a function of the ideological
formation.
Translation, which is recognised as an ideology-laden rather than a
neutral or ideology-free activity (Hatim and Mason, 1997:145),
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consists of "the ideology of translating" and "the translation of
ideology" (ibid.:143). These are two inter- and intra-related issues.
While the extent of the translator's mediation affects (the fidelity
of) his translation, the intention or function of the text to be
translated impinges on the degree of his integrity as a translator.
While Bassnett and Lefevere (1990) offer evidence of ideology at
work in literary translating, both Barnard (1999) and Chang
(1998) show the consequences of translator's "ideological filter" in
operation in translations of a political nature. This said, we can
now delineate the tripartite relationship of ideology, genre and
register in the systemic functional tradition with Figure 2 (adapted
from Eggins, 1994:113).
We have presented a model for register analysis of the ST and TT
in order to establish the textual profiles of both for the purpose of
translation quality assessment.
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