Translation Universals.pdf - ymerleksi - home

Corpora, universals and interference 67
studies, but raises new issues. One of them is whether it is desirable or indeed
possible to try to erase interference from translations.
Given that translation is a language contact situation, we might expect
cross-language influence. It has been fairly well established that languages in
contact generally influence each other (see, e.g. Thomason 2001). For example,
Ellis (1996) points out that cross-linguistic influence appears to be present
even at high levels of bilingual ability, and Grosjean and Soares (1987) have
argued that when bilinguals speak one of their languages, the other language is
rarely totally deactivated, even in completely monolingual situations. It is thus
reasonable to assume, even without conclusive evidence, that transfer occurs in
translation because translation involves a contact between two languages and
is a form of bilingual processing. At a lower level of abstraction, more specific
hypotheses can be posited, for instance concerning the levels of language where
it is most influential (is it likely to affect syntax more than lexis or the level of
discourse), to what extent it is local and textual (i.e. text-specific) and to what
extent is it systemic (i.e. residing in the characteristics of the two language
systems)? So far, it seems that transfer has been found in lexical, syntactic,
pragmatic and textual phenomena, and thus all levels of language appear
to be influenced. However, anecdotal evidence goes around among literary
translators that it is the syntactic level that the SL most easily slips through. On
the other hand, an earlier study (Mauranen 1999a) on translating existential
themes suggested that translators typically sacrifice ST word order in favour of
maintaining informational focus and TT textual flow.
The notion of interference itself appears somewhat vague, as currently used
in translation studies. It sometimes seems to refer to SL influence on translations
wholesale, that is, be roughly synonymous with, ‘transfer’. But occasionally
it is distinguished from transfer (e.g. Toury 1995: 252), which is taken to be
the positive face of interference, which then is perceived as negative. It appears
that “positive” transfer or just plain ‘transfer’ is more acceptable than “negative”
transfer or interference. In fact Toury says himself that positive transfer
is virtually indistinguishable from normal target language. The question therefore
arises whether there is any reason (apart from possible theoretical ones)
to deal with positive transfer? In a normative sense, we might simply accept its
manifestations as ‘good translation’. I shall return to this below.
For theoretical purposes, if transfer and interference are supposed to
manifest the same underlying process, we naturally need to demonstrate that
they are similar, and in turn distinguishable from ‘non-transfer’ translation. If
we fail to do this, the concept of (positive) transfer loses its significance and
becomes simply coextensive with ‘translation’.