Annavaleria Guazzieri
Tratto da Taylor, C., Language to Language, CUP, 1998, pp. 65-106
Lesson 4
Translating meaning
Some basic concepts will be discussed.
Semantics
It is the study of meaning. Although the concept of ‘perfect translation’ is not applicable to any text
of some complexity, it is possible for a good translator to convey meaning from one language into
any other language.
Reference
In lexis there are two types of words: function words and content words. The latter ‘refer’ to
abstract or concrete things. The notion of reference is still an unresolved one as the relation
between the referent and the referring expression is hard to pin down. Referential meaning is the
meaning that refers to an object [thing, action, event, quality] or a notion [opinion, meaning idea,
concept] outside the language, or that refers to an entity in the external world, so referential
meaning is extra-linguistic, situational meaning – the meaning that occurs in a particular context. It
is also called dictionary meaning.
Referential meanings must be understood in connection with the cultures. The same word may
have
different
referential
meanings
in
different
cultures.
http://www.ctu.edu.vn/coursewares/supham/ltdich/ch3.htm
Levels of translation
Roman Jacobson in his famous paper “On Linguistic Aspects of Translation” distinguished three
level of translation:
1. Intralingual translation: translation within the same language;
2. Interlingual translation: translation between two different languages
3. Intersemiotic translation: translation from the verbal to the non verbal
Level 1 concerns communication in general in a specific language. As Jacobson has pointed out, no
one can understand the word ‘cheese’ unless he has some acquaintance with the meaning that is
assigned to this word in English.
Level 2 is the level at which translators work and even if there might not always be full
equivalence, adequate interpretations are not difficult to find, although attention should be paid
when considering a higher level than grammatically-indicated chunks (the setting, the participants,
the subject matter, the purpose…). Usually the wider text (the entire dialogue, the entire script) will
provide clues for the translator to interpret the text as more than just a succession of grammatical
chunks.
Level 3 concerns, for example, filmic translation. Torop (TOROP P. La traduzione totale, ed.
originale, Total´nyj perevod. Tartu, Tartu Ülikooli Kirjastus [Tartu University Press], 1995), stated
that the main difference between film and literary work lies in the fact that literature is fixed in a
written form, while in a film the image (representation) is supported by the sound, in form of music
or words. Another difference that Torop highlighted concerns the written word and the pronounced
word. In films, the former is used rarely whereas dialogue is given much space.
If textual translation follows the principle according to which an original can possibly have many
different translations, all of them potentially accurate, such potentiality is even more developed in
inter-semiotic translation, to such an extent that any attempt to retranslate a filmic text into its
original language - hoping to recreate, as a result, the original text - is inconceivable.
See also http://www.logos.it/pls/dictionary/linguistic_resources.traduzione_en?lang=en by Bruno
Osimo.