The Importance of Analysis in Translation

The ability to analyze a source text linguistically, culturally, even philosophically or politically is of paramount importance to the translator. Wherever translation is taught, the importance of analysis is taught:

• Never assume you understand the source text perfectly.

• Never assume your understanding of the source text is detailed enough to enable you to translate it adequately.

• Always analyze for text type, genre, register, rhetorical function, etc.

• Always analyze the source text's syntax and semantics, making sure you know in detail what it is saying, what it is not saying, and what it is implying.

• Always analyze the syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic relationship between the source language (especially as it appears in this particular source text) and the target language, so that you know what each language is capable and incapable of doing and saying, and can make all necessary adjustments.

• Always pay close attention to the translation commission (what you are asked to do, by whom, for whom, and why), and consider the special nature and needs of your target audience; if you aren't given enough information about that audience, ask; if the commissioner doesn't know, use your professional judgement to project an audience. These analytical principles are taught because they do not come naturally.

A novice translator attempting his or her first translation is not likely to realize all the pitfalls lurking in the task, and will make silly mistakes as a result. When translating from a language that we know well, it is natural to assume that we understand the text; that the words on the page are a fairly easy and unproblematic guide to what is being said and done in the text. It is also natural to assume that languages are structurally not all that different, so that roughly following the source-text word order in the target language will produce a reasonably good translation. Natural as these assumptions are, they are wrong, and experienced translators learn to be wary of them — which inevitably means some form of analysis. Because this analytical wariness does not come naturally, it must be taught — by experience, or by a translation instructor.

Experienced professional translators will gradually move "beyond" analysis in much of their work, precisely by internalizing or sublimating it. It will seem to professional translators as if they rarely analyze a text or cultural assumptions, because they do it so unconsciously, and thus so rapidly. The analytical procedures taught in most translator training programs are not consciously used by professional translators in most of their work, because they have become second nature. And this is the desideratum of professional training: to help students first to learn the analytical procedures, then to sublimate them, make them so unconscious, so automatic, so fast, that translation at professional speeds becomes possible. At the same time, however, the importance of conscious analysis must never be lost. Rapid subliminal analysis is both possible and desirable when (1) the source text and transfer context are unproblematic and (2) the translator possesses the necessary professional knowledge and skills. It is not possible when the source text and transfer context are problematic; and it is not desirable when the translator's knowledge base and skills are inadequate to the task at hand. In these latter cases it is essential for the translator to shift into the conscious analytical mode taught in schools. In the ideal professional translation proceeds subliminally, at the unconscious level of habit (which comes to feel like instinct), as long as the problems faced are covered by the translators' range of experience. As long as the problems that arise are ones they have faced before, or close enough in nature to ones they have faced before that analogical solutions are quick and easy to develop, the wheel of experience turns rapidly and unconsciously; translation is relatively fast and easy. When the problems are new, or strikingly difficult, alarm bells go off in the translators' heads, and they shift out of "autopilot" and into "manual," into full conscious analytical awareness. This will involve a search for a solution to the problem or problems by circling consciously back around the wheel of experience, running through rules and precepts and theories, mentally listing synonyms and parallel syntactic and pragmatic patterns, and finally choosing the solution that "intuitively" or "instinctively is best. This is, an ideal model, which means that it doesn't always correspond to reality:

• The less experience translators have, the more they will have to work in the conscious analytical mode — and the more slowly they will have to translate.

• Even in the most experienced translators' heads the alarm bells don't always go off when they should, and they make careless mistakes (which they should ideally catch later, in the editing stage — but this doesn't always happen either).

• Sometimes experienced translators slow the process down even without alarm bells, thinking consciously about the analytical contours of the source text and transfer context without an overt "problem" to be solved, because they're tired of translating rapidly, or because the source text is so wonderfully written that they want to savor it (especially but not exclusively with literary texts).

Translate the following sentences paying attention to affixal coinages in italics:

1. Homer Wells kept his notes in one of Dr. Larch’s old medical school notebooks. Larch had been a cramped, sparse note taker — there was plenty of room.

2. Since 1944 there have been only 10 prosecutions under the act. If it is unenforceable, or at least unenforced, is there any point in replacing it with other legislation?

3. Yesterday’s international plan to set up a science and technology center in Russia (unemployed and eminently brain-drainable former scientists for the use of) has already been anticipated by free market- minded men.

4. Neil Kinnock has made some good conference speeches but today he needs to make a really special one. Making Labour electable, which happened fairly regular prior to 1979, is his undeniable achievement. But party members and electors are entitled to ask a question: electable to what purpose?

5. Peregrine Worsthorn, the tower of Kiplingesque conservatism at the Sunday Telegraph, in London, has taken to zapping his American neo-conservative cousins on the subject of hawkishness in foreign policy.(“NYTM”)

6. Why are being asked to read some 1,600 pages from the diary of an unknown writer? Who cares about Arthur Crew Inman? During the 1920s he published several volumes of forgettable verse, if the experts he quotes in his dairy are any indication. (“NYTBR”)

7. As a pagan, I see all life and nature as sacred, yet I live in a society which views the Earth as a plunderable resource. (“Ind.” May 27, 93)

8. Is Douglas Fairbanks Jr. the most clubable man of the 20th century? If membership in the world’s finest clubs was, by itself, the test of clubability, then Doug could claim preeminence. Clubability, however, presumes much more: the ability to tell spellbinding yarns, to wear suits well, to walk the fine line between being a character and an eccentric, and, above all else, to possess genuine good humour and bullet-proof equanimity. (“F.”)

9. t us toast Mel Brook’s “The Producers”, the world’s funniest film about the World worst musical. I sheer quotability “The Producers” gives “Hamlet” sleepless nights. (“G.”)

10. D.Peploe was not a joiner of clubs or coteries but enjoyed conversations on every imaginable subject, preferably not art.

11. It is a joy to re-encounter David Levaux’s production of “No man’s Land” by H.Pinter. Not even the coughers who haunt West End first nights can diminish Pinter’s twilit masterpiece. (“G.”)

12. In an interview with Ray Connolly in “The Times” tomorrow, Blunkett explained that at school he became a stirrer for good causes and led a delegation about the quality of the meals. (“T.”, Jan. 12, 90)

13. One of the reasons I am so impressed with him is that we parish pumpkin politicians do a lot of talking and little doing, but David is a doer and on that account I rate him very high indeed. (“G.”)

14. Other Arab leaders know that a deal crowning the butcher of Baghdad with saviorhood would increase his momentum and whet his appetite. (“IHT ” )

15. He used to buy Arrow shirts, at that time the nec plus ultra (=super) of shirtdom. (“NYTBR”)

Considering Language then as some mighty potentate, into the majestic audience-hall of the monarch ever enters a personage like one of Shakespeare’s clowns, and takes position there, and plays a part even in the stateliest ceremonies. Such is Slang, or indirection, an attempt of common humanity to escape from bald literalism, and express itself illimitably.

Walt Whitman, “Slang in America”

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