Translatability vs. Untranslatability

Translatability vs. Untranslatability

The problem of translatability or untranslatability is closely related to man’s understanding of the nature of language, meaning and translation. From the sociosemiotic point of view, “untranslatables” are fundamentally cases of language use wherein the three categories of sociosemiotic meaning carried by a source expression do not coincide with those of a comparable expression in the target language. Three types of untranslatability, referential, pragmatic, and intralingual ones, may be distinguished. On the understanding that the object of translation is the message instead of the carrier of the message, language-specific norms considered untranslatable by some linguists should be excluded from the realm of untranslatables. And since translation is a communicative event involving the use of verbal signs, the chance of untranslatability in practical translating tasks may be minimized if the communicative situation is taken into account. In a larger sense, the problem of translatability is one of degrees: the higher the linguistic levels the source language signs carry meaning(s) at, the higher the degree of translatability these signs may display; the lower the levels they carry meaning(s) at, the lower the degree of translatability they may register.

Catford (1965) distinguishes two kinds of untranslatability, that is, linguistic untranslatability and cultural untranslatability.

Linguistic untranslatability, according to Catford, occurs when there is no lexical or syntactical substitute in the target language for a source language item.  For example, the Danish Jeg fandt brevet (literally “letter [I] found the”) is linguistically untranslatable, because it involves structures that does not exist in English.

Cultural untranslatability is due to the absence in the target language culture of a relevant situational feature for the source text.  For example, the different concepts of the term for bathroom are untranslatable in an English, Finnish or Japanese context, where both the object and the use made of that object are not at all alike.  (Bassnett-McGuire, 1980:32) 

The controversy over the problem of translatability or untranslatability stemmed from the vagueness of the notion of meaning and a lack of consensus over the understanding of the nature of language and translation.

Three facets or dimensions of sign relationships may be distinguished: the relationship between signs and entities in the world which they refer to or describe is semantic; that between signs and their users (interpretants), pragmatic, and that between signs themselves, syntactic.  Corresponding to the three types of semiotic relationships are three categories of sociosemiotic meaning:

(a) referential meaning;

(b) pragmatic meaning (including identificational, expressive, associative, social or interpersonal, and imperative or vocative meanings);

(c) intralingual meaning (which may be realized at phonetic and phonological, graphemic, morphological/lexemic, syntactic, and discoursal/textual levels and is termed accordingly).

Referential meaning, pragmatic meaning, and intralingual meaning are all parts of an organic whole.  They combine to make up the total meaning of an expression or a discourse. 

Referential Untranslatability

Referential untranslatability occurs when a referential element in the source message is not known or readily comparable to a particular item in the target language. That is SL has different names for some kind of thing, but to the English speaker all these have but one name. Of course, circumlocution or description can often help to bridge the lexical gap. But awkward situation may emerge sometimes, as is evidenced in the following case:

In a translation into an Indian language of Latin America, ass, was translated as “a small long-eared animal”.  The effect was to suggest that Jesus entered Jerusalem riding on something which closely resembled a rabbit.  (Crystal, 1987:345)

Pragmatic untranslatability

Pragmatic untranslatability arises where some pragmatic meaning encoded in a source item is not encoded likewise in a functionally comparable unit in the target language, or where the exact pragmatic meaning(s) carried by the source sign is/are unclear or indeterminable due to historical reasons or to the intentional equivocation on the part of the author (as may be found in some theological and mystic writings).  Newmark (1988:114) notes that jolly in jolly good is mainly pragmatic, a slight middle-class intensifier, which can only be under-translated in German (ganz, vielleicht) ¾ both languages missing the connotation of social class.

  Intralingual Untranslatability

By intralingual untranslatability we mean any situation in which the source expression is apparently not transferable due to some communicatively foregrounded linguistic peculiarity it contains.  It differs from “linguistic untranslatability” as defined by Catford in that instead of including those conventionally followed rules of the language, it pertains only to those linguistic features that are foregrounded somehow in the context.  Intralingual untranslatability accounts for a majority of cases of untranslatability.

Semantically prominent phonetic and phonological elements (known with some scholars as “phonaesthetic morphemes”), e.g. alliteration (“kith and kin”, “time and tide”, “might and main”, etc.) and rhyme, are frequently untranslatable.  That is perhaps one reason why Robert Frost asserts that “Poetry is what gets lost in the translation.” One case of phonological untranslatability may be found in homophonous puns, e.g. the advertisement put up by a tire manufacturer: “It’s time to retire”.

Difficulties may occur with the translation of morphological meaning and lexemic meaning (or morpheme-level and lexis-level intralingual meanings).  A few years ago, the Apple Computer set up a division called “Apple PIE”.  The PIE in the name is really the acronym of “(Apple Computer’s) Personal Interactive Electronics” (Personal Computer World, Nov., 1993, p.286).  Although this name may be put into Chinese as “(Pingguo Jisuanji Gongsi de) Geren Jiaohushi Dianzi Shebei Bu” (Apple Computer’s Personal Interactive Electronics Division), the punning effect of the acronym PIE would still be lost.

A much quoted example of intralingual untranslatability at the lexical level is derived from Shaw’s play Augustus Does His Bit:  

 

The Clerk (entering): Are you engaged?

Augustus: What business is that of yours?  However, if you will take the trouble to read the society papers for this week, you will see that I am engaged to the Honorable Lucy Popham, youngest daughter of ¾

The Clerk: That isn’t what I mean.  Can you see a female?

Augustus: Of course I can see a female as easily as a male.  Do you suppose I’m blind?

The Clerk: You don’t seem to follow me somehow.  There’s a female downstairs: what you might call a lady.  She wants to know can you see her if I let her up.

Augustus: Oh, you mean am I disengaged.  Tell the lady I’m busy.  (My emphases) 

 

The comic effect of the dialog derives from the “witty puns” (puns in which both members of the word-pun bear meaning in the context) used by Shaw: “engaged” means both “busy”  and “under a promise to marry somebody”, and “see” means both “meet” and “discern”.  It is very difficult or flatly impossible to find Chinese expressions which may suggest the same meanings as carried by the two English words in this context. 

 

If referential and pragmatic untranslatabilities are relative, intralingual untranslatability is usually “absolute”, since languages differ from each other more in their structure (which, as we have come to see, may generate intralingual untranslatables if deliberately manipulated by the language user) than in the communicative functions they may be employed to perform. 

 

According to sociosemiotics, language is a signifying system which uses audio-vocal signs for human communication; and translation is a communicative event involving the use of verbal signs and taking place across linguistic and cultural boundaries.  Just like any other sort of communication, translation has its own purpose. The process of translation is therefore dynamic instead of static.  The thing to be carried over in translation is the message, not the carrier of the message, i.e. the linguistic elements served as functional units in the transmission of a message.  This understanding leads to several relevant conclusions about the problem of translatability and untranslatability: 

Many elements considered untranslatable just do not need to be translated.  But the syntactic feature is not the object of translation; what is to be translated is the meaning of the sentence.  Since the same meaning may well be conveyed by different grammatical devices in different languages. This so-called “untranslatable” (according to Catford) linguistic feature just does not need to be translated.  Thus at least part of the “untranslatables” which Catford and other theorists place under the category of linguistic untranslatability simply do not exist.

Those who claimed the impossibility of translation were wrong in their understanding of the nature of translation, which they regard fundamentally as, in Newmark (1988:225)’s words, a “state”; what they are trying to deny is actually the possibility of perfect translation.  But translation (or, to be exact, translating) is more of a process than of a state (Just consider the practice of translating and re-translating famous literature throughout the ages!).  Only a state can be perfect.  translation is but a process in which the perfect or, to be more exact, the optimal solution ¾ the maximum equivalence of the translation to the source text (Ke, 1995:50) ¾  is (and should be) ever pursued by the translators.

Hence, viewed from the sociosemiotic vantage point, translatability or untranslatability is more of a problem of quantity than of one of quality.  The higher the linguistic levels the source language signs carry meaning(s) at, the higher the degree of translatability these signs may display; the lower the levels they carry meaning(s) at, the lower the degree of translatability they may register.  And from a long-term point of view, the more meaningful, interesting, or worthy a source expression or text is, the more translatable it is or will be.