21Translation
Abstract: The topic of the chapter is translation and its relation with communication. It is possible to summarize the main characteristics of translation in some points. Translation concerns texts not phrases or words. Translation is a kind rewriting because it has the goal of building an image of a text, of an author or of an entire literary culture and to project them in a different reception environment. Translation changes cultures and has a central role in a communication system. Translation develops a central role in the building of identities and cultures because it brings into play the relation between language and ideology. It also brings into play as a consequence the idea of language as a constant movement, heterogeneous and polymorphic. Finally in translation, meaning does not remain unaltered when “traveling” from one culture to another.
Keywords: texts, rewriting, culture, ideology, identities
1Introduction
The last thirty years have been characterised by a dramatic surge of interest towards both literary and technical translation.
The literary and publishing industry have seen a shift in the perception of the role of the translator. Lawrence Venuti’s notion of the “invisibility” of the translator (1995) is no longer applicable as translators are starting to be acknowledged as contributors to the creation of a cultural product. The number of translated books compared against published book has definitely contributed to this change and has turned the translator’s role into one which cannot be ignored. Not only this: translators have also begun to reflect upon their own work and in fact translation has become a standalone research topic, which has broken away from linguistics and literature, acquiring its own tools and methodologies.
This change in the perception of the role of the translator is also connected to a deep transformation of the concept of translation. Until not long ago, was widely accepted that translation consisted in reproducing “the closest natural equivalent of the source-language message, first in terms of meaning and secondly in terms of style” (Mounin 1963: XII). Such interpretation tends to eliminate the fact that the translation process is the work of an individual who possesses, to a greater or lesser extent, his or her own subjectivity. However, by eliminating traces of subjectivity, one eliminates traces of the translator, because the fusion of the two texts make his or her translation invisible. In other words, the activities of reading and writing are eliminated; the process simply becomes an invisible hand which mechanically transforms words from one language to another and in this sense translation becomes a pure copy of the source text and not an expression of creativity. This has been the underlying ideology of translation for a long time, and to a certain extent translation is still view this way, as proven by the fact that until recently even the name of the translator was rarely – if ever – mentioned.
In recent years, people have begun to acknowledge – even in the publishing world – that translation performs a much more important role. It is pivotal in shaping the identity of a culture in the eyes of other cultures.
This new cultural approach has radically changed the identity of the translator. It is now understood that a translator’s abilities go beyond a mere professional contribution. The translator has now become a sort of emblematic figure of our multicultural and multilinguistic landscape.
But this change in perception has not only affect literary and editorial translation. Even so-called technical translation has undergone a profound transformation moving away from a less polished way of working to a more mechanised approach, based on the distribution of work and development of new technologies.
Naturally, our era is not the first to have experienced radical technological transformation in the fields of communication and translated communication. For example, no technological development has been more decisive for translation than the introduction of writing which brought translation from being an oral tradition to a written one. Even the invention of the book has had a great impact on translation and rewriting techniques. Anthony Pym (2000) highlighted the fact that the arrival of paper from the East coincided with the foundation of translation schools in Baghdad in the 9th century and in Toledo in the 13th century. Finally, the advent of movable type systems of printing was a determining factor for the affirmation of the concept of a definitive text and consequently a definitive translation.
The revolution of information therefore is only the latest in a long list of big transformations which have shaped the praxis and concept of translation. What are the features of these changes? First and foremost the means has changed: we have moved away from the fixed nature of printed pages to the fluidity of constantly updatable electronic texts. The impact of this is enormous and particularly significant in translation. Technical translators are frequently asked to work on single updates rather than on texts as a whole, which is the norm for printed works. Following a general trend which is affecting all activities of textual production, translators are now using databases, glossaries and electronic tools more and more often. We can therefore expect that in the future, the concept which has underpinned translation for such a long time, that is to say an equivalence between stable texts which are so to speak “objective” will be weakened.
But without a shadow of doubt, the most innovative linguistic technology is the invention of automated translation. The idea that a machine can translate for humans is very appealing because it eliminates the main issue encountered by everybody who has travelled abroad to a country whose language they not speak. However, so long as this kind of technology remains limited to specialists or technicians who use what is called Computer Assisted Translation software – a set of tools which are essential for technical translation – then its impact is not so significant. But just think about how fast the use of automated translators among everyday users has spread on computers, smartphones and tablets. This type of software has not been developed to perfection, but it becomes more and more sophisticated as time goes by. It is a technological revolution which may question our shared notion of translation. Just think that the word “translator”, when used in this context, is referred to as an app and not a person. In this sense, the “translators” we have on our IT devices adhere to an ideology of translation which goes in the opposite direction to the recent affirmation of creativity and independence of the human translator. So long as automated translators remain unsophisticated, the contrast will not be striking. However, technological research is making enormous progress and we will more than likely have to face significant changes in the near future.
What is therefore the space occupied by translation in the contemporary world? In the 2005 communication of EU dedicated to multilinguism is written:
It has been estimated that the world’s top 20 companies providing translation services employ over 10,000 people and have an annual revenue of over A1,200 million; around two fifths of this activity is estimated to take place in the European Union. (http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:52005DC0596:IT:NOT)
Furthermore the document adds:
The language-related industries include translation, editing, proofreading, précis-writing, interpreting, terminology, language technologies (speech processing, voice recognition and synthesis), language training, language teaching, language certification and testing and research. These industries are rapidly evolving in most European countries. Furthermore, the language professions are becoming less clearly defined, with linguists, translators or interpreters being called upon to do a range of multifaceted jobs that involve language expertise. Some universities are putting on specialist courses in “Language industries”. A good command of foreign languages is also necessary for sales, logistics, subtitling, public relations, marketing, communication, cinema, advertising, journalism, banking, tourism and publishing.
In any case, there is also another reason – one which is not so directly linked to professions – that explains the relevance of translation. One of the reasons is that translation reminds us of the fragility of the instruments we use to build our individual and collective identity. We feel Italian or German or French because we share inside our group some cultural conventions among which stand out language or languages we learned when we were children. Language constitutes, and at the same time represents, the framework of values which we feel as our home. Language therefore is probably the most powerful identity-forming instrument. It permits us to know who we are, marking out a boundary between us and the others who speak, have a behaviour and think differently from us. In essence, translation concerns our relationship with others and the way in which a culture creates its own identity (see Gambier 1994) in a process which sees us compare our differences and similarities in an attempt to create a connection between ourselves and others.
The main aspects this research has focused on revolve around these assumptions and have led to the following realisations. First of all, translation concerns texts and therefore complex cultural products. Secondly, translation is a form of rewriting, that is to say a textual production which departs from another text, like paraphrasing, parody and summary. Because translation entails rewriting, a translation changes the original text; it is a sort of “manipulation”, a word introduced into this field by André Lefevere (Lefevere 1992a). It is a manipulation which takes into consideration the expectations and requirements of the target culture but which can sometimes modify it. It is a kind of manipulation also because we translate texts departing from certain assumptions for certain purposes. Assumptions and objectives mould the approach of the translator, influence their translating style and are influenced by the predominating ideologies. All of this tells us that translating is not merely a matter of transposing meaning which remains unaltered from one language to another. This transfer of meaning undergoes transformations which in some way are of a cognitive nature.
2Translating texts
The beginning of the Seventies in Linguistics meant the passage from sentence to text analysis and this had consequences also in translation.
From this perspective we can consider the work of Katharina Reiss (1976), who tried with the Skopostheorie to build a typological framework used to evaluate translation. These ideas have been stressed in a later work written in collaboration with Hans J. Vermeer (Reiss and Vermeer 1984), in which the two authors assert that between source text and target text it is necessary to find a sort of inter-textual coherence which is the real translation fidelity. What is characteristic of this position is that the concept of equivalence concerns texts and is intended as a concept that has different levels. So, more than to try to find an equivalence that is difficult to define, it is important to conceive translation as an attempt to put into dialogue two texts by identifying functions and text types.
The contributions of German scholars Reiss and Vermeer and, generally speaking, the approach of the German functionalist school of thought, are at the basis of the development of Nord’s functionalist theory (Nord 2010), which was created in an attempt to create a link between two stances which were being re-suggested in those years. Nord’s functionalist theory is the product of two theories: if, on the one hand, the supporters of the Skopostheorie places the function of translation at the forefront (the function of the target text in its social and cultural context), on the other, those who opposed this theory continued to stress the importance of faithfulness of the source (Cinato, Kather and Lucia 2011: 19).
Nord on the one hand welcomes Reiss and Vermeer’s Skopostheorie, acknowledging the importance of the role of the target text in the translation process; on the other hand, she enriches the Skopostheorie with the principle of loyalty to the source text, giving back importance to the original text and the functions performed by it. The combination of these two elements leads to the two main pivotal points of her theory, Funktionsgerechtigkeit + Loyalität (function + loyalty), a principle which highlights the duplicate responsibility of the translator towards the producer of the source text and the receiver of the target text.
3Rewriting and manipulation
To translate is a matter of texts, but what happens when we translate texts?
As Skopostheorie has shown, translating means to adopt strategies that are from time to time different in relation to the readers and the context of reception. This induced André Lefevere (1981) to speak explicitly of translation as manipulation and rewriting. To translate is to manipulate and rewrite because translation has a lot of things in common with other kinds of interpretation and textual production, as historiography, literary criticism, and editing. All these activities, in fact, have the goal of building an image of a text, of an author or of an entire literary culture and to project them in a different reception environment. The history of translation, and for example the history of Bible translation, is precisely the history of a community in relation to others. In this sense, to rewrite is to rethink a text in relation to its own cultural coordinates.
In regard to this, it is important to see how the perception of literary property or even the very notion of faithfulness in translation have developed in time. It has been observed that this notion has changed significantly throughout the course of history, in that a translation deemed faithful in a certain period is considered to be unfaithful in another (Lefevere 1985).
4Translation and culture
Translation changes cultures: what does this mean?
To understand the role of translation in this context and how it changes cultures, we must remember what Antoine Berman (1984, 1999) said when talking about ethnocentrism in translation.
“Ethnocentric” is the approach according to which a culture tends to interpret a connection with other cultures by placing its own at the center and seeing the foreign culture as being something to refuse or to adapt and camouflage within the target culture. An ethnocentric approach inevitably leads to a position in translation, which is “Hypertextual”. With this term, Berman intends all the texts generated from an existing text. For example parody, adaptations, etc.
Ethnocentrism in translation first appeared in the Latin works of Cicero. Berman stresses that for Cicero translation is essentially grasping an original meaning which goes beyond the form. If the objective of translating is to grasp the original meaning, we must necessarily detach ourselves from the body of the text; faithfulness to the meaning cannot be faithfulness to the words (which aren’t original).
But Berman realized that faithfulness to the original and unfaithfulness to the foreign language is, nevertheless, faithfulness to one’s own language, the receiver of the translation. The original meaning is grasped in one language and this is the receiving language and therefore it is deprived of everything that cannot be transferred into it. According to Berman, the pre-eminence of meaning is inevitably expansionist. Meaning cannot be released into a pure language and therefore the ideology of the pre-eminence of the original text becomes the ideology of the language into which the text has been translated.
Such an ideology gives language the status of a semiotic means which is privileged and untouchable. Meaning should enter the language without doing any damage. According to this stance, foreign works should be translated in a way in which translation is not “perceived”; the product has to give the impression that it is what the writer would have written had he/she been writing directly in the translated language. Berman stressed how this desire leads to certain “deforming tendencies” underlying translation ideology in the Western world.
Such deforming tendencies are: rationalization, clarification, expansion, ennoblement vulgarization, qualitative impoverishment, quantitative impoverishment, homogenization, the destruction of rhythms, of underlying meaning, the destruction of textual systematisms, of vernacular linguistic networks, of locutions and idiomatic expressions, of superposition of languages.
What do all these have in common? Rationalization reorganizes sentences according to a certain idea of what is considered to be the correct order of the passage. Clarification is a consequence of this, making clear what does not appear to be in the text or specifying what is not specified in the text. A typical example of this is the transformation of metaphors into similes. Expansion is also linked to clarification and rationalization, in that it explains the text. Naturally, explaining or untangling a text means that the source is considered to be tangled up and therefore not clearly readable; again, this is where metaphors tend to be substituted by similes. Berman considers ennoblement to be the final point of Platonic translation. The translated text is better than the source, it is more elegant or “poetical” in places where the source was less refined. Of course, also the opposite can occur by using a pseudo-jargon which hides the text.
Qualitative and quantitative impoverishment means that, in the first case, expressions of the original are substituted with words of lower iconic value, and in the second case, lexical dispersion occurs. With homogenization, all the levels of the original are unified to some extent. The destruction of rhythm for example impacts on punctuation. The destruction of the significant networks eliminates the underlying connections between key signifiers which do not appear on the surface, but which are fundamental in the economy of the text.
So by destroying systematisms you add or eliminate elements and the text becomes domesticated and is made readable. Finally, the destruction of the vernacular networks, the destruction of locutions and the elimination of the superposition of languages conceals and standardizes the translated text making it a usable product for the reader of the language into which the text is being translated.
The identification of these deforming tendencies is not done to suggest an alternative methodology. It is done rather to show that these are common in any Western translation and correspond to a precise cultural choice.
With Berman, in relation to the role that translation play in cultures, we need to remember the contribution of the school of Tel Aviv, whose main representatives are Itamar Even-Zohar (1990) and Gideon Toury (1995) and who, within the framework of the Polysystem Theory, highlighted the heterogeneous cultural conditions in which a translation is carried out. The concept of polysystem is an attempt to define all the activities which are considered to be literary within a culture. In this sense, the polysystem is a system of heterogeneous systems which make up literature, literature being conceived as a system in movement with transformations and continuities. From this point of view, literature is not only considered in an abstract way but is also connected to the judgments of value which belong to a specific historical period. Furthermore, literature is never isolated and is never pure, because it always comes into contact with other literatures creating continuous interferences. These interferences cannot be eliminated in the contacts between cultures and are usually unilateral because literature is a source, it performs this role thanks to its prestige and the fact that the importing system needs to find models which it does not find in itself.
In this sense, a series of oppositions have an important role: the existence of canonical texts and non-canonical texts; between the center and periphery of the system, between innovation and tradition.
The concept of a canonical text is fundamental to understand how certain cultural categories are passed down in a given society. In the case of texts, the pertinence to the canon depends on the legitimacy of the dominating cultural groups. In relation to the concept of canonization, there is the distinction between center and periphery. The center of the literary system is inevitably occupied by canonical texts, in other words, those which have been introduced by the official culture and which have achieved legitimacy of the institution. Also the opposition between tradition and innovation is in relation to the problem of accepting a given work at a precise time. The tradition, that is to say the fixed repertoire which makes it up, is a secondary system, its texts will be in some way predictable and any attempt to compromise this instability will be perceived as an aggression. On the contrary, the innovator is a sort of primary system in which new elements intervene and where a repertoire becomes defined. A system can be stable or unstable, depending on its ability to handle changes and assimilate them.
Translated literature follows the same reasoning and can become primary or secondary depending on the specific conditions operating in the polysystem. In this sense, translated literature is a system within the literary polysystem. The receiving system selects the foreign literature accepting the literary conventions of the same polysystem. This filter will be applied in relation to the conditions of the receiving polysystem: a fixed polysystem will try to impose its models on translations; on the contrary, a weak polysystem will be subject to the influence of the models it imports. Specifically, translation, if we consider that it is first and foremost a cultural exchange, has a central role in a language in three social situations: when a literature is young or is in the process of being established; when a literature is peripheral or weak; when a culture is undergoing a crisis. In the first two cases, the translated literature is needed to fill in the gaps of the polysystem and it also creates a dependence of the weak or peripheral literatures compared to the central ones. In the third case, translated literature can have a primary function also in central literatures.
5Ideology
Is there a relation between translation and ideology? No, if we think that translating means to reproduce the original message in all its functions. Yes, if we consider that in many translation projects it is necessary to take decisions and solve complex problems with imagination, experience and cleverness. Ideology is present in every intellectual work, consequently also in translation.
The topic of ideology has an important role to play in post-translation studies. In point of fact Susan Bassnett (1991; Bassnett and Lefevere 1990) already proposed the theme of ideology, identity and culture as a center of interest for translation just at the beginning of the second decade of Translation Studies. The new direction replaced traditional categories such as “source text”, “target text”, and “fidelity” with an expressed interest in the historical, cultural and ideological conditions which determine the translator activity. Similarly and already in the Eighties, André Lefevere (1992a; 1992b) proposed the topic of ideology as a center of interest for Translation Studies. The perspective of Lefevere resembled that of Michel Foucault for whom discourses constitute a complex and unstable system in which they can be an instrument and an effect of power.
Some years later Peter Fawcett (1998), in the article on “Translation and Ideology” published by Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies, pointed out that institutions and individuals use their beliefs to motivate and affect translation. The author stressed that it is possible to find an ideological approach to translation in many ancient testimonies. In the same direction, Christina Schäffner in 2003 reminded us that translations are inevitably ideological because ideology always lies behind the selection of a source text and the use to which a target text is put. The interests, scopes, and goals of individuals and institutions shape the work and product of translation. Also Christiane Nord in Translation as A Purposeful Activity (1997) noted the same thing: decisions about the process of translation are taken, consciously or unconsciously, on the basis of ideological motivations. This means that ideology is determinant in the definition of goals but also in establishing translating strategies and norms.
At the beginning of the nineties an important book by Tejaswini Niranjana (Siting Translation. History, Post-structuralism and the Colonial Context [1992]) addressed the relationship between translation ideology and identity. For Niranjana translation is one the most important fields of study for scholars who want to understand how relationships between cultures are established on the basis of a series of asymmetries. Every culture is the bearer of a whole inventory of implicit values that constitute its ideology. These values are present in the process of translation. We find here a form of dissimulation: concepts like fidelity claim to transform a particular perspective into something considered objective. Derrida would speak in this case of a lie. For example translation has developed a decisive role in building a fixed image of Asian, an image that is foundational to the relationship that the Western world has established with Asia.
In 2003, Maria Tymoczko researched the position of the translator. Translation for Tymoczko places itself in a special space that is the space where existence is defined as “existence in between” two cultures, two ideologies, two languages, two worldviews, and so forth. In this “in between” space we find a blend of linguistic acts of the source text with the linguistic acts of the target context. Ideology shows itself precisely in the space between these two moments.
Translation obliges us to reconsider the role of ideology in the building of identities and cultures. In this sense, translation brings into play the relation between language and ideology. It also brings into play as a consequence the idea of language as a constant movement, heterogeneous and polymorphic.
6Meaning
Often, in Translation Studies, the concept of ‘equivalence’ of meaning is mentioned, and it is maybe the most discussed issue concerning translation.
In the topic of equivalence a special role has been played by Eugene Nida (1964, 1982; Nida and Taber 1969; Nida and de Waard 1986) is particularly important because in his model he has recognized the non-linguistic specificity of the issue. Of special relevance is his distinction between a formal and dynamic equivalence. While formal equivalence pays attention to the correspondences between form and content, the dynamic one is achieved when in the target language are created the same communicative relations existing between message and receiver in the source language. In this way Nida redefined the concept of fidelity rediscussing the terms of the problem. What is interesting in Nida is that the concept of equivalence has many levels and particularly the 3 levels that Charles Morris developed in his theory of signs: pragmatic, syntactic and semantic.
Nida was a genius, but his perspective reveals what we have called with Berman the ideology of translation in the Western framework. It is present here the idea that the meaning can be saved in the original sense after it has been deprived of its “body”.
Developments in cognitivist studies on the concept of meaning also highlighted that meaning is not something which can travelled unaltered from one language to another. New research which developed inside Cognitive Linguistics have put meaning at the centre of the attention of linguists, re-establishing a tradition which has always considered language in function of meaning and which does not separate that from other aspects of cognition. According to Cognitive Linguistics, linguistic ability is not essentially ascribed to an innate potential but it derives from the interactions and contexts in which linguistic abilities are acquired and developed. Therefore, language cannot be isolated from other cognitive abilities; behind language, there is a wide range of cognitive resources which involves infinite connections and coordinates a lot of information.
The new cognitivist approaches can offer new possibilities to the broad area of studies on translation, above all in the direction to go beyond some of the limits of the discipline. So the explosion of semantics in the cognitive studies and the idea that metaphors structure our world perception can permit us to go beyond these limits and encourage a possible rethinking of translation studies founded on a wider consideration of the kind of facts which are connected with translation. For example concepts like domain, frame, profile, mental spaces, and similarity can be very productive in this area. The distinction between profile-frame and dominion is particularly useful in order to understand the nature of phenomenon such as the semantic differences between words and their apparent equivalent in other languages. Or to understand in which sense synonyms are different. In this case it is useful to cast light upon difficulties of translation that depend on the differences of profiling certain concepts.
Another contribution of cognitivist studies is the fact that the old theory of linguistic relativism has been revisited in the light of the new cognitive research. In this sense, many of the differences which exist between languages derive from a different way of conceptualising the world. So, just as metaphors imply different conceptualisations, different cultures structure their cognitive universes differently. What implications does this idea have on translation? Are these different conceptualisations compatible or incommensurable? How do we negotiate them? Do we have to force the differences or highlight them?
A response to this series of questions is, as many scholars have done, to go back to Schleiermacher (1993: 153) who wrote there are only two possible options in translation: the translator either leaves the writer well alone and moves the reader towards him, or he leaves the reader well alone and moves the author towards the reader. For example Berman (1984, 1999) is in favor of an approach which highlights the difference, and which therefore moves towards the foreign text.
This refusal of the “annexation” approach can be found also in Henri Meschonic (1973, 1999) who stresses that usually, faced with the choice of showing the translation for what it is or hiding it, he much rather prefers the second option, and therefore prefers to look for as many devices as possible to obtain a natural sounding effect in the target language.
In line with Schleiermacher is Lawrence Venuti who distinguishes between domestication and foreignization. Domesticating means creating a translation which tries to avoid giving readers the impression they are reading a foreign text; therefore a fluid and transparent style is adopted. Foreignizing means deliberately violating the rules of the target language, and therefore the translator highlights the source of the text clearly identifying the source language and culture, in order to maintain some of this diversity.
7Conclusion
Translation is a special experience. Using the word experience means that translation does not concern an object or a relation among objects. This is a crucial point because it has consequences for the theory and practice of translation. A lot of thoughts on translation concentrate on entities such as a single concept or words, on their equivalent in different languages, or on the relations of the translated text, for example with the original, with other environments of destinations, with receptors, etc. These entities are like objects that are studied “per se” or in relation to other objects. Totally different is the perspective if we consider translation as experience.
If instead we think of translation as an experience, it concerns a process and not a series of objects. It is something which is done during this process ad which transforms the surrounding environment. The act of translating creates a new text but in a certain way it also changes the departing text, highlighting certain aspects and values. As a matter of fact, a text is already a diverse plurality, it’s the product of other texts, of other “originals”. Therefore the chronological connection between the source and translated text is not the most important; what matters is a sense of reciprocate debt, and for this reason, speaking of equivalence makes no sense. Translation foresees the incessant movement of texts, it is not about static relationships but dynamic ones.
Thus, traditional categories through which we have tried to describe translation, such as equivalence, faithfulness, comparison, etc. referring to products are not enough to appreciate the movement of meaning generated through the act of translation.
Translation is also characterised by two aspects: Similarities and Differences.
Similarity
Umberto Eco (2003a) has written that he would like to define translation as: to say the same thing but he concludes correctly that this is impossible. At the most, he adds, translation means to say almost the same thing. Therefore, as Eco says, it is necessary to understand how “even knowing that we are not saying the same thing, it is possible to say nearly the same thing” (Eco 2003: 9–10).
But also this softened definition doesn’t find the agreement of all.
I think that Eco’s definition should be integrated with the concept of similarity.
In the field of Translation Studies, it was Andrew Chesterman (1996, 2007) who suggested substituting the concept of equivalence with that of similarity, observing that there are at least two types of similarities: a converging and diverging one. The first is when similarity is reciprocate: e.g., two sisters who look similar; the second is the one for which a thing is similar to another (A is similar to B) but B is not similar to A: we can say that a daughter looks like her mother, but it would be strange to say that a mother looks like her daughter because in a chronological sense this would be false. These two different types of similarity are also the ways in which the translator and the reader consider translation. While a translator sees it as a kind of diverging similarity, the second sees it as a converging similarity.
To define similarity in a way that can be helpful for translation we can adopt a semiotic perspective. It is possible to say that there is similarity between two expressions if there is someone who guarantees and stipulates it.
Peirce writes that an interpreter, (who translates orally) is: “Who says that a foreigner says the same thing which he himself says” (CP 1.553, 1867). The difference is clear: Peirce doesn’t know if the the interpreter or the translator says the same thing of the foreigner, he knows only that the translator claims to says to say the same thing and we have to trust that it is true. Eco’s perspective has two speech acts and their similarity, which is, so to speak, a matter of fact. In Perice’s version, on the contrary, it is possible the similarity between two speech acts if there is someone that guarantees it. This second perspective connects a quality (similarity) with two speech acts thanks to a norm. The similarity in this case is the presupposition of a relation, not the relation. Also in this case, we understand how the norms of similarity can change because they depend on a cultural context, on values and ideologies which circulate in a certain period of time, and which in some way modify the type of guarantor ruling upon the degree of similarity.
Difference
Similarity is not sufficient. There are many other texts that have many kinds of similarities. In fact we cannot speak of translation between two texts if there is not also a specific kind of difference. The most obvious example is that the first text is in one language and the second in another. But what is the specific feature of the difference which manifests itself in translation?
This is less banal than it seems. If similarity can be establishing solely from an external measurer, the differences do not only concern the relationships between texts, but especially those between cultures in which texts circulate. It is useful to quote Eco again. After having stated that translating could mean “nearly saying the same thing” he adds that once this definition has been given, it is necessary to understand what that “nearly” means.
In fact, in what sense do we “nearly say the same thing”? There are those who say that that “nearly” is sufficient to consider a text a translation and not a completely different text. Obviously an objective criteria seems impossible – we said that throughout history, texts that we would now consider to be translations were considered independent texts and vice versa. Or when Eliot’s X quartet translates entire texts of Juan de la Cruz, is this translation or an independent text? Eco again:
How flexible is that “nearly”? Establishing flexibility, the extent of the “nearly”, depends on certain criteria which is to be negotiated in advance. To say “nearly” the same thing is a procedure which is at the basis of negotiation (Eco 2003: 10).
But what is the matter that has to be negotiated? The translator besides negotiate the texts has also to think about the possible mutual prejudices, and these are not linguistics issues but more generally cultural issues. If the linguistic code difference shows itself as a barrier of intelligibility, the cultural difference shows itself as a barrier of acceptability and confidence.
In other words, the difference in translation has many semiotics levels which implies an incessant work of mediation (Chesterman 2003, s.p.).
The concept of mediation introduces an important aspect on which I would like to end. Mediation is a form of communication which is necessary to manage conflict, it foresees differences and provides solutions of the differences through a negotiation carried out on behalf of a mediator. It is a process in which there is a change in the behaviour of the parties involved which can be explained only with the intervention of a mediator (Greco 2011). If we think of translation as mediation and the translation as a mediator, we can interpret the translation process as a real process of argumentation in which the two speakers are not physical people but two cultures confronting each other (see Rigotti and Greco 2005) in which the two parties are subjected to a relationship which could also be a conflictual one (Baker2006). Therefore translation is an epic role, it becomes the place in which these conflicts try to find a solution, in which cultures do not clash but attempt to communicate (see also Pym 2012: 143 sgg).
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