“On Linguistic Aspects of Translation”

MADE BY: INÊS BOSSEN (Nº 157799) & INÊS ALVES (Nº 156380)

SUBJECT: HISTORY AND THEORY OF TRANSLATION

TEACHER: ZSÓFIA GOMBÁR

Linguistics in Translation

“The linguistic oriented approach to translation finds the very essence of translation in the basics of the linguistic concept of translation, which is the fact that the process of translation is a language act in which a text from one language is substituted with an equivalent text from another, by making that substitution in accordance with the regulations of both language systems.”

- Tatjana Unlaska

Our study object

Pic. 1- Roman Jakobson

• Title of the text: “On Linguistic Aspects of Language”;

​

• Author: Roman Jakobson (1896-1982);

​

• Year and place of publication: 1959, On Translation (edited by Reuben Arthur Brower).

​

Main arguments

• 1^st Argument (conclusion?): “… no one can understand the word ‘cheese’ unless he has a nonlinguistic acquaintance with cheese” (Russell, p.113) Revue Internationale de Phylosophie
• Semiotics: Defined by one of its founders, the Swiss linguist, Ferdinand de Saussure, as the study of “the life of signs within society.”
• 2^nd Argument (conclusion?): “There is no signatum (meaning) without signum (the object, the sign)”

Pic. 2 – Bertrand Russell

An important question...

• “Does a word simply name the thing in question, or does it imply a meaning such as offering, sale, prohibition…?” (Jakobson, p.113-114)

​

​

​

​

​

​

Bachelor “Unmarried man”

Translation into another sign

Pic. 3 – Charles Pierce

Interpretetation of a verbal sign

Roman Jakobson distinguishes three different ways of interpreting verbal signs:

​

• Intralingual translation/rewording (interpreting verbal signs through other signs of the same language);
• Interlingual translation/translation proper (interpreting verbal signs through another language);
• Intersemiotic translation/transmutation (through a system of non-verbal signs. It requires a complete substitution of message in some other language.

​

​

​

“Equivalence in Difference”

The metalinguistic aspect of language

“…a faculty of speaking a given language implies a faculty of talking about this language.” (Jakobson, p.115)

Revisions and redefinition of vocabulary

Cognitive experience can be

translated and classified

Grammatical aspects in translation

Two topics:

​

• The lack of grammatical elements and the solutions (Lexical methods – Example: братья to “Two Brothers”);
• The importance that grammar has beyond the formal aspect;

“…the grammatical pattern of a language determines those aspects of each experience that must be expressed in the given language”. (Boas, p.116)

“I hired a worker” English to Russian

Pic. 4 - Franz Boas

Grammatical aspects in Translation (cont.)

• Importance on the “mythological attitudes of a speech community” (117):

​

• The ways of personifying or metaphorically interpret inanimate nouns are influenced by their gender

​

Tod (“Death” in German – masculine) to смерть (“Death” in Russian – feminine);

​

• Importance of grammar in Poetry

“in dreams (…) in poetry above all, the grammatical categories carry a high semantic import” (p.117) and it’s in these circumstances that “the question of translation becomes more (…) controversial. (p.117)

There will be losses...

“Greek (…) cannot always be reproduced identically, and that happens to each language being translated.” (p.117)

Earliest Slavic Work

Preface to the first translation of the Evangeliarium (860’s)

Verbal Equations and Poetry

• Principle of similarity and contrast;
• Autonomous signification.

Verb Dimension

“a constructive principle of the text.” (117)

• The pun/paronomasia Poetry as untranslatable and “Creative Transposition” as alternative

- Intralingual Transposition; Interlingual Transposition; Intersemiotic Transposition.

References

​

​

• Britannica, “Roman Jakobson: American Linguist.” [Consultado: 29/01/2022] https://www.britannica.com/biography/Roman-Jakobson

​

• Britannica, “Semiotics: Study of Signs”. [Consultado: 28/01/2022] https://www.britannica.com/science/semiotics

​

• Browner, Reuben (1959), “On Linguistic Aspects of Translation”, in Roman Jakobson (org.), On Translation. Massachusetts: Harvard University Press

​

• TRANSPOSITION. In: Cambridge Dictionary. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022. [Consultado: 29/01/2022]

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/pt/dicionario/ingles/transposition

​

• ScienceDirect (2015), “The Role of Linguistic Factor in Translation”. [Consultado: 29/01/2022]

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877042815024970

​

​

​