34.634, Review: Translation, Dutch, English, French: Schoonjans (2021)
The LINGUIST List
linguist at listserv.linguistlist.org
Wed Feb 22 00:20:20 UTC 2023
LINGUIST List: Vol-34-634. Wed Feb 22 2023. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.
Subject: 34.634, Review: Translation, Dutch, English, French: Schoonjans (2021)
Moderator: Malgorzata E. Cavar, Francis Tyers (linguist at linguistlist.org)
Managing Editor: Lauren Perkins
Team: Helen Aristar-Dry, Steven Franks, Everett Green, Sarah Robinson,
Joshua Sims, Jeremy Coburn, Daniel Swanson, Matthew Fort,
Maria Lucero Guillen Puon, Billy Dickson
Jobs: jobs at linguistlist.org | Conferences: callconf at linguistlist.org | Pubs: pubs at linguistlist.org
Homepage: http://linguistlist.org
Hosted by Indiana University
Please support the LL editors and operation with a donation at:
https://funddrive.linguistlist.org/donate/
Editor for this issue: Maria Lucero Guillen Puon <luceroguillen at linguistlist.org>
================================================================
Date: Wed, 22 Feb 2023 00:20:08
From: Natalie Operstein [natacha at ucla.edu]
Subject: Schwierige Wörtchen leicht übersetzt!
Discuss this message:
http://linguistlist.org/pubs/reviews/get-review.cfm?subid=36867917
Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/33/33-1991.html
AUTHOR: Steven Schoonjans
TITLE: Schwierige Wörtchen leicht übersetzt!
SUBTITLE: Modalpartikeln und sinnverwandte Ausdrücke im Deutschen, Englischen, Niederländischen und Französischen
PUBLISHER: Böhlau Verlag
YEAR: 2021
REVIEWER: Natalie Operstein,
SUMMARY
“Schwierige Wörtchen leicht übersetzt” by Steven Schoonjans aims to fill a
gap: the lack of a state-of-the-art yet user-friendly overview of German modal
particles, existing publications being either incomplete, outdated, too
lengthy, or too specialized to be of practical use to a non-expert. This
compact volume, intended for students and teachers of languages, translation,
and interpreting, introduces German modal particles through their counterparts
and other translational equivalents in three other languages: Dutch, French,
and English.
Chapter 1 briefly introduces the reader to the subject of modal particles by
highlighting some of the difficulties that these “little words” from the title
pose for language teachers and learners, translators, and interpreters. The
author emphasizes that the difficulties arise not only when the source
language is particle-rich and the target language particle-poor, but also when
both languages in the source/target pair are particle-rich. From the viewpoint
of the size of their inventories of modal particles, the languages in the
study form the approximate scale German > Dutch > French > English, with
German and Dutch located on the particle-rich end and French and English on
the particle-poor end of the scale.
Chapter 2 introduces the multiplicity of terms under which modal particles are
known in the literature and discusses their functions, formal properties, and
how to delimit the category of modal particles. As a point of departure for
the discussion the chapter uses German, the most particle-rich language of the
four, drawing on other languages as needed (e.g., when discussing the typical
placement of particles in English and French in §2.3.3.2). For more detailed
information, the reader is referred to Thurmair (1989), Diewald (2007), Müller
(2014), and Schoonjans (2018).
Modal particles are defined as elements that add non-propositional information
to a message, such as the speaker or writer’s attitude toward its objective
content or attempt to anticipate the addressee’s response. Schoonjans
emphasizes that modal particles are not the only means by which such shades of
meaning may be expressed in German, as shown by the examples in (1a)-(1c)
below (p. 23): the meaning signaled by the particle <ja> in (1a) – the
speaker’s expectation that the propositional content of the utterance is known
to the addressee – is expressed with the adverb <bekanntlich> in (1b) and is
paraphrased with <wie du weiβt> in (1c). This example and the surrounding
discussion also serve to introduce the proposition that languages less endowed
than German with modal particles are nonetheless capable of expressing
comparable shades of meaning by drawing on other resources.
(1a) Ich empfehle <ja> nur Produkte, die ich auch selbst nutze und von denen
ich überzeugt bin.
(1b) Ich empfehle <bekanntlich> nur Produkte, die ich auch selbst nutze und
von denen ich überzeugt bin.
(1c) <Wie du weiβt>, empfehle ich nur Produkte, die ich auch selbst nutze und
von denen ich überzeugt bin.
The formal properties of modal particles are divided into their inability to
be inflected, negated, or qualified; unstressability; placement;
combinability; semantic scope; and their status in the sentence (as revealed,
e.g., by their inability to be replaced with pro-forms). The difficulty
inherent in attempts to delimit the category of modal particles is due in part
to the failure of many of the candidates to fulfill all of the formal criteria
of particle-hood (e.g., some particles are stressed or may be qualified).
These non-particle-like properties derive from the origin of particles in
words belonging to other parts of speech (e.g., <ruhig>, of
adverbial/adjectival origin, can be qualified, as in <ganz ruhig>). Other
difficulties derive from regional differences in the use and meaning of
particles or the open-ended possibility of the ad hoc use of words as modal
particles. At the end of this discussion, Schoonjans warns the reader that an
exhaustive list of German modal particles cannot be given, and explains that
the book will limit itself to the most widely used modal particles whose
status as such is uncontroversial (p. 50).
Chapter 3 addresses some of the issues one encounters when faced with the
challenge of translating modal particles. These are divided into several
categories: the absence of a direct translational equivalent in the target
language, the fact that the meaning contributed by the modal particle is often
hard to paraphrase, and the polysemy (multiple senses) and heterosemy
(multiple syntactic uses) that characterize many of these forms, owing to
which it is often unclear whether a given form is intended as a modal particle
or, e.g., as an adverb. Each of these challenges is discussed in turn and
illustrated with examples, most often drawn from translations of literary
texts. In this connection, Schoonjans emphasizes the disambiguating power of
intonation and nonverbal means of communication, and stresses the challenge
presented by their absence in written texts. For instance, on page 61
(including footnote 4) it is explained how the prosodic information, if only
it had been available to the translator, would have clarified the intended
meaning of <nur> in (2a) – as a focus particle or a modal one – and the
translator’s choice, in (2b), to treat it as the former and not as the latter.
(2a) Warum schämst du dich <nur> vor mir?
(2b) Pourquoi n’as-tu honte qu’avec moi?
The question “Wie übersetzt man denn nun Modalpartikeln?” in the title of the
closing section of this chapter is met with the advice to strike a golden mean
between the extreme of not translating modal particles at all (which would
impoverish the message) and the extreme of translating each and every one
(which may yield an unreadable one). The overall message of the chapter is
that cross-linguistic differences in the availability of modal particles do
not preclude precise cross-linguistic translations but merely invite
experimentation with how to achieve comparable effects with the means
available in the target language, be they lexical, structural, prosodic, or
even nonverbal.
Chapter 4 gets to the heart of the matter and forms roughly half of the book
by page count. Here, the most important German modal particles are presented
through the lens of their translations in Dutch, French, and English, with
occasional forays into other languages. The presentation is organized by
function rather than particle, with some of the particles discussed in more
than one place, and reflects the nature of contemporary research into the
translation of modal particles, which is skewed toward literary texts. The
examples in (3b) through (3d) below will give a flavor of the suggested
translational solutions when a direct translation – in this case for the
particle <doch> – is not available (pp. 78-79).
(3a) Kann die Anna dir nicht helfen? – Anna? Die ist <doch> derzeit in
Spanien!
(3b) Can’t Anna help you? – Anna? Isn’t she in Spain at the moment?
(3c) Can’t Anna help you? – Anna? But I thought she’s in Spain at the moment,
isn’t she?
(3d) Can’t Anna help you? – Anna? You know she’s in Spain at the moment!
EVALUATION
This very readable and tastefully presented book delivers what it promises,
and more. In about 160 pages from foreword to index, it packs an incredible
amount of theoretical and practical information about a range of forms which
are notoriously slippery to translate and paraphrase, and of which “foreign
students of German are painfully aware” (Arndt 1960: 329).
The most useful part of the book are the actual examples, with the meaning
paraphrased in relation to context and various possibilities for translation
offered, often with a discussion of the pros and cons of the different
translational solutions. The explanations are practical and non-technical, and
are often explicitly marked as such (e.g., footnote 7 on page 29 discloses
that the explanation given in the text is somewhat simplified). Even in the
theoretical chapters – Chapters 2 and 3 – the discussion never loses sight of
practical issues, e.g., by emphasizing the importance of prosody and nonverbal
cues and by noting such points as frequent non-translation of one or more
particles when they occur in combination (p. 38). Each individual section of
Chapter 4 reads like an extended dictionary entry, with carefully discussed
peculiarities of the particles and possibilities for rendering their meanings.
Occasionally, echoes of scholarly discussion do make their way into the book,
more often than not through footnotes. Such strategic use of footnotes helps
to keep the body of the book streamlined while incorporating various tidbits
of specialist information; e.g., footnote 14 on pp. 45-46 addresses, with
references, the status of <eigentlich> and <langsam> as modal particles.
Follow-up reading on various issues is suggested, and the bibliography (pp.
154-166) is divided into thematic sections and conceptualized as a chapter in
its own right.
Above and beyond its intended practical uses, the book provides a compact and
enjoyable introduction to the world of modal particles, enriching along the
way the reader’s appreciation for the art of translation and the expressive
possibilities of language.
REFERENCES
Arndt, Walter. 1960. “Modal particles” in Russian and German. Word 16:
323-336.
Diewald, Gabriele. 2007. Abtönungspartikel. Handbuch der deutschen Wortarten,
Ludger Hoffmann (ed), 117-141. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
Müller, Sonja. 2014. Modalpartikeln. Heidelberg: Winter.
Schoonjans, Steven. 2018. Modalpartikeln als multimodale Konstruktionen. Eine
korpusbasierte Kookkurrenzanalyse von Modalpartikeln und Gestik im Deutschen.
Berlin: De Gruyter.
Thurmair, Maria. 1989. Modalpartikeln und ihre Kombinationen. Tübingen: Max
Niemeyer.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Natalie Operstein's research interests center on language change, phonology
and language contact. Her publications include ''The Lingua Franca:
Contact-Induced Language Change in the Mediterranean'' (2022), ''Zaniza
Zapotec'' (2015), ''Consonant Structure and Prevocalization'' (2010),
''Valence Changes in Zapotec'', ed. with A.H. Sonnenschein (2015) and
''Language Contact and Change in Mesoamerica and Beyond'', ed. with K. Dakin
and C. Parodi (2017).
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
*************************** LINGUIST List Support ***************************
The 2019 Fund Drive is under way! Please visit https://funddrive.linguistlist.org
to find out how to donate and check how your university, country or discipline
ranks in the fund drive challenges. Or go directly to the donation site:
https://iufoundation.fundly.com/the-linguist-list-2019
Let's make this a short fund drive!
Please feel free to share the link to our campaign:
https://funddrive.linguistlist.org/donate/
----------------------------------------------------------
LINGUIST List: Vol-34-634
----------------------------------------------------------
More information about the LINGUIST
mailing list