29.2662, Review: Discourse Analysis; Pragmatics: Munday, Zhang (eds.) (2017)

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Subject: 29.2662, Review: Discourse Analysis; Pragmatics: Munday, Zhang (eds.) (2017)

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Date: Mon, 25 Jun 2018 12:20:05
From: Daria Dayter [coocho at gmail.com]
Subject: Discourse Analysis in Translation Studies

 
Discuss this message:
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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/28/28-3334.html

EDITOR: Jeremy  Munday
EDITOR: Meifang  Zhang
TITLE: Discourse Analysis in Translation Studies
SERIES TITLE: Benjamins Current Topics 94
PUBLISHER: John Benjamins
YEAR: 2017

REVIEWER: Daria Dayter, Universität Basel

SUMMARY

“Discourse analysis in translation studies” is an edited volume that states
its aim as seeking to “consider the evolution of the use of discourse analysis
in translation studies (TS), to present current research from leading figures
in the field and to provide some pointers for the future” (p. 1). It was
originally published in 2015 as a special issue of Target 27:3 and has
justifiably found a new life in the Benjamins Current Topics series two years
later. With a contributors’ roster that includes, among other, Jeremy Munday,
Julianne House and Erich Steiner, this collection of eight papers (plus an
introduction) indeed presents an important source for the translation and
interpreting studies scholars interested in discourse analytic approaches.
Given the focus of the book, its target audience is first of all
linguistics-oriented researchers working in the field of translation. A rather
detailed presentation of the Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) flavour of
discourse analysis offered by the editors and several of the contributors 
also makes it useful to translation scholars who seek introduction into
linguistics-based methodologies.

In the Introduction (pp. 1-10), the editors position the volume as a successor
to Hatim & Mason’s “Discourse and the translator” (1990) and sketch out the
research landscape of discourse analysis-based scholarship in TS up until
present day. This is done by summarizing the main themes found in
contributions to eight international and ten Chinese journals in TS, tracing
geographical trends in authorship, quantifying the publication yield of the
field in terms of international and Chinese monographs, and reviewing the
relevant conferences organised by major associations. The eight papers in the
collection reflect the observed trends by bringing together international
scholarship from Europe, Australia, and Hong Kong/Macao, and touching on a
range of themes from well-established text analysis to new directions in
meta-analysis of translation activity.

The second paper by Kim & Matthiessen (pp. 11-26) takes the SFL approach to
the study of textual meaning in the domain of TS. It is a review paper, aiming
to “connect the dots created in existing studies” (p. 13) in regard to the
thematic progression in translation, and how it may differ from the original
due to translator’s choices or the constraints imposed by the
lexico-grammatical system of the target language. Kim & Matthiessen review
existing research on the topic and make a case for the use of the SFL model of
Theme, emphasising important implications of this choice that tend to be
neglected in TS. Recognising the difficulties associated with large-scale
manual discourse analysis, the authors call for the sharing not only of data,
but also of analyses themselves – an initiative which might be a game changer
in the field that so far primarily relies on small sample studies with
disparate theoretical foci and corresponding annotation range.

The third paper in the collection is, again, a review of existing research
with a specific angle on discourse analytic methods in translation by Steiner
(pp. 27-45). He summarizes the research efforts of collaborators at the
Saarland University in the analysis of cohesion in translation on the basis of
the GECCo corpus – primarily Kunz et al. (2017) and Kunz &
Lapshinova-Koltunski (2014). The findings of contrastive linguistic analysis,
which indicate that there exist not only systemic differences between English
and German, but also finer distinctions among registers and modes in how
cohesion is created, are brought to bear on translation and evaluation.
Steiner emphasises that to ensure high quality translation, these finer
distinctions in register-specific preference for patterns – something which
has “so far largely been a matter of good textual and translational
intuitions” (p.35) –  need to be brought to the attention of translators and
evaluators.

The next paper, “Global Englishes, discourse and translation” by House (pp.
47-62) picks up a more lexico-grammatically oriented kind of discourse
analysis. House uses a micro-diachronic multilingual corpus to extract all
instances of a specific kind of a linking construction, ‘an extraposed linking
construction’, and then qualitatively analyses them to establish whether
equivalent norms are used for the same communicative purpose in English and
German. Different connectivity devices are preferred in the two languages: the
extraposed linking constructions, such as “after all” or “in effect”, appear
to be typical of English, while German tends to create coherence with 
composite deictics integrated in different syntactic slots, e.g. “somit” or
“hierbei”. House interprets this finding as “confirming conventional
differences of interpersonal orientation versus content orientation” (p. 59).
The study, as well as the larger project “Covert Translation” of which it
forms a part, indicate that English discourse norms do not exert an
overwhelming influence on German despite the status of English as the dominant
lingua franca. The papers by House and Steiner are united by the corpus
linguistic approach and would be of particular interest to readers who look
for more linguistics-oriented translation research, since they both rely on
core lexico-grammatical foundations drawn from contrastive linguistics and
pragmatics. The fact that both studies are situated in the context of larger
projects makes the authors’ conclusions regarding language systems especially
convincing.

In a case study of SARS notices and their translations into English, Zhang &
Pan (pp. 63-81) once more resort to SFL framework in combination with Critical
Discourse Analysis to determine how the four basic speech functions (offer,
command, statement, question) are distributed in the notices by three public
health institutions in Macao. The preference for the more or less
authoritative language reflects the social status of respective institutions.
In translations, the coverage rates of “command” and “obligation” are
expanded, which Zhang & Pan take as evidence that translation amplifies the
voice of authority. They conclude that “translation, as a form of discourse
practice, is influenced by the sociocultural conditions and reinforces the
power across languages” (p. 79). This article exemplifies one of the key
extralinguistic themes identified by the editors in the introduction as trends
in discourse analytic research, namely that of ideology and power in relation
to language, and illustrates how SFL can open up new avenues in translation
studies by treating texts as social action.

The sixth paper in the collection by Munday (pp. 83-98) also draws on the SFL
model of language to investigate markers of translator/interpreter
positioning. Munday identifies a research gap in the study of the
interpersonal function of language in translation, and provides an overview of
the existing research that did adopt the SFL concept of “engagement”.
Reporting verbs that signal translator’s stance, deictic positioning, and
various linguistic manifestations of “graduation” are described and
illustrated in the following sections. The author offers a tentative
conclusion that “engagement resources may be modified in translation towards a
distancing from the deictic centre and, more generally, the intensity of
graduation of both attitudinal and engagement values may tend to be
downscaled” (p. 96).

The topic of positioning is taken up again in the contribution by Schäffner
(pp. 99-116), this time on the material of oral interpreter-mediated
interactions between politicians and journalists. Schäffner applies Weizman’s
(2008) model of role positioning to official transcripts of press conferences
from government websites (sometimes supported by video recordings) to
investigate how linguistic devices such as social deixis (e.g. German “du” vs.
“Sie”), forms of address (titles, first vs. first and second name), switching
between the second and third person to address the interlocutor, serve to
establish interpersonal relationships, and the behaviour of these devices in
translation. The role of interpreter appears to be quite subtle, and only
rarely does interpreter’s intervention lead to actual changes in the
positioning and representation of the speaker.

The distinction between stable and unstable sources in news translation is the
subject of the paper by Valdeón (pp. 117-130), who questions the clear
stability border between opinion columns and editorials vs. other journalistic
genres (Hernández Guerrero 2009). Based on an analysis of 18 opinion columns
in English and their translations into Spanish Valdeón demonstrates that in
the contemporary news landscape, translations do not always respect the
integrity of the source text – the content may be modulated to fit the target
culture and the frame of the news outlet. A first cursory look at the unstable
sources, such as international news items from the online version of BBC News,
suggests that their translations, in turn, may be more stable than expected.

The concluding contribution by Kang (pp. 131-148) departs from the rest of the
edited volume in that its material is not the primary level of original vs.
translated text but rather meta-comments on an existing literary translation.
The subject of the study is the debate about the Korean translation of
Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs in a South Korean online discussion forum.
Kang turns to the Goffmanian participation framework and the concept of role
to investigate how “translation readers’ online postings formulate discourses
about translation assessment and assessors” (p. 137). The findings indicate
that translation assessment is a risky and perhaps futile activity, since the
commenters act out not only the role of assessor who judges or describes the
quality of translation, but also the roles of expert-judge or even an
activist, which bring with them expectations and assumptions irrelevant for
quality control.

EVALUATION

This volume aims to provide a snapshot of the new developments in the
applications of discourse analytical methods to the study of translation.
While the collection is up to date and references interesting research, which
should make it a necessary update to any TS bibliography, its strong focus on
Systemic Functional Linguistics could put off readers unfamiliar with this one
particular flavour of discourse analysis (significantly more widespread in
Australia and Great Britain than, for example, in the linguistic tradition of
continental Europe). Such readers might wish to see other strands of discourse
analysis represented alongside SFL. At the moment, these are limited to
Steiner’s and House’s contributions that combine microlinguistic analysis with
the understanding of translations as texts, i.e. purposeful uses of language
(House, p. 48). However, it is exactly the SFL focus that makes the collection
cohere and can indeed be viewed as the strong selling point that defines a
clear target audience for the volume.

The volume combines reports on new research with review papers, which flow
together uniquely to illuminate the subject matter – advances in discourse
analytic research in translation studies – both in terms of theoretical
developments and methodological steps. Global issues of power and ideology are
tackled with the help of Goffmanian communication theory and the tools of
Critical Discourse Analysis in the three papers by Zhang & Pan, Valdeón, and
Kang. Detailed accounts of the applications of SFL, with the accompanying
introduction into the intricacies of this framework, are provided by Kim &
Matthiessen and Munday. Schäffner zeroes in on methodological aspects of the
discourse analytic approach to interpreting, including issues of unreliability
of official transcripts (with video recording of interpreting events often
unavailable to the researcher). Corpus-based discourse analysis is represented
by contributions from Steiner and House, the former drawing on a large corpus
and quantitative textual findings, the latter on a smaller custom-made corpus
and a qualitative analysis of retrieved examples. In contrast, studies by
Zhang & Pan, Valdeón, and Kang rely on very small, impressionistic samples,
which highlight the unique strengths of discourse analysis in dealing with
this kind of data.

All in all, “Discourse analysis in translation studies” is an “update” volume
in its field that would appeal to specialists, but also to instructors looking
to illustrate the uses of discourse analysis methodology in translation
studies courses. Given the type of data in six out of eight articles, the book
would be most relevant to academics who study written translation rather than
interpreting. Of particular interest to those working on discourse analysis of
translated language, this volume is proof of applicability of the paradigm,
and how it allows us to tackle research questions that earlier remained
outside the scope of translation studies.

REFERENCES

Hatim, Basil and Ian Mason. 1990. Discourse and the translator. Harlow:
London.

Hernández Guerrero, Maria Jose. 2009. Traducción y periodismo [translation and
journalism]. Bern: Peter Lang.

Kunz, Kerstin and Ekaterina Lapshinova-Koltunski. 2014. Cohesive conjunctions
in English and german: Systemic contrasts and textual differences. In Recent
Advances in Corpus Linguistics: Developing and Expanding Corpora, eds. Lieven
Vandelanotte, Kirstin Davidse, Caroline Gentens, and Ditte Kimps, 229-262.
Amsterdam: Rodopi.

Kunz, Kerstin, Degaetano-Ortlied, Stefania, Ekaterina Lapshinova-Koltunski,
Katrin Menzel, and Erich Steiner. 2017. GECCo – an empirically-based
comparison of English-German cohesion. In Empirical Translation Studies. New
Methodological and Theoretical Traditions, eds. Sutter, Gert De, Lefer,
Marie-Aude, and Isabelle Delaere, 265-312. Berlin: de Gruyter.

Munday, Jeremy and Meifang Zhang, eds. 2015. Discourse Analysis in Translation
Studies. Special issue of Target 27(3).

Weizman, Elda. 2008. Positioning in media dialogue. Amsterdam: Benjamins.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Daria Dayter is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Basel,
Switzerland. She specialises in English linguistics as well as interpreting
studies. Most of her work is in the areas of linguistic pragmatics,
computer-mediated communication, and corpus-based language analysis. She is
currently working on a project that applies quantitative methods to a parallel
corpus of Russian-English conference interpreting in order to answer questions
about interpreting strategies and the description of “third code”. She is the
author of the monograph “Discursive Self in Microblogging. Speech acts,
stories and self-praise” (Amsterdam: Benjamins, 2016).





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