Proceedings - Translation Concepts

MuTra 2005 – Challenges of Multidimensional Translation: Conference Proceedings
Jan Pedersen
could be assumed to be known in both the SC and the TC (e.g. ‘7-Eleven’ (As Good As It
Gets: 32.03)) and/or belongs to a third culture (e.g. ‘Jacques Cousteau’ (Anaconda: 7.53)).
5.1.2 Monocultural ECR
A Monocultural ECR causes a translation crisis point, which arises when the referent of an
ECR can be assumed to be less identifiable to the majority of the relevant TT audience than it
is to the relevant ST audience, due to differences in encyclopedic knowledge.
5.1.3 Microcultural ECR
A Microcultural ECR is bound to the Source Culture, but it could not be assumed to be within
the encyclopedic knowledge of neither the ST nor the TT audience, as it is too specialized or
too local to be known even by the majority of the relevant ST audience (e.g. ‘19, Cranberry
Street, Brooklyn’ (Moonstruck: 1.16.29)). In these cases, reference must instead be achieved
through the context or the co-text. There would of course be a few potential members of the
ST audience who would know the ECR (people living on Cranberry Street in Brooklyn, for
instance), but that is not the point. The point is that the number of people who know the ECR
is negligible compared to the total relevant ST audience. This difference can be ascertained by
analyzing the way in which the ECR is treated in the ST.
The level of Transculturality of a specific ECR varies with some of the other
influencing parameters, such as that of the assumed knowledge of the target audience, so that
what is a Transcultural ECR in one text may be a Monocultural ECR in another text.
5.2 Extratextuality
This parameter has to do with whether an ECR exists outside the ST or not. If it does, it is
Text External. If it does not, it is Text Internal. Thus, a Text External ECR is an ECR that
exists in some culture, independent of the text at hand. Transcultural ECRs and Microcultural
ECRs, as well as Monocultural ECR are always Text External. Conversely, an ECR is Text
Internal if it is constructed for the text (or series of texts) at hand. A Text Internal ECR may
be virtually indistinguishable from a Microcultural ECR (e.g. ‘Lancaster Square’ (Truman
Show: 28.39)). This is unproblematic from a translation point of view, as both Microcultural
ECRs and Text Internal ECRs must attempt to achieve reference intratextually. These two
categories are purely referential and cannot have any sense or connotation beyond what can
be established within the text (or series of texts) or through the intralingual sense of the words
making up the ECR. This means that they are fairly unproblematic from a translation point of
view, as the subtitler would have no impediment from the Text External world to limit his or
her choice of translation strategy.
An originally Text Internal ECR may become a Transcultural ECR through the process
of intertextuality, if it is very successful. An example of this would be ‘James Bond’ which is
Text Internal when he introduces himself in Goldfinger (11.31), but Text External (and
Transcultural) when a character compares himself to Bond in Notting Hill (1.45.41). This
shows that Text External ECRs may very well be fictional, as long as they do not have
existence in the text at hand.
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