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Translation Universals (or laws, or tendencies, or…?)

Sarah Lind

Are translations different from non-translated texts? Is translation a “third code,” different from both the source text and native texts in the target language? This is the question that research on translation universals is attempting to answer. The idea that translated texts might share “universal” characteristics stems from the general impression that 1) translated texts differ from their source texts in regular ways that can’t be attributed to the interaction of the specific language pair, and 2) translated texts differ from non-translated texts in the same language in regular ways that, again, are not related to the interference of any particular source language.

Frawley proposed a model of the translation as a third code—a product of the negotiation of the translator between the first code of the source text, language, and culture, and the second code of the target language and culture, a product that differs not just in obvious ways from its source, but also from native texts of the “second code.” Others, especially Toury, have also proposed that there are particular laws operating in translating, particular not only because translating is a different activity from original text production, but also because translating produces a measurably different kind of text with features that identify it as a translation. Toury distinguishes between those features that are the result of conforming to (or deliberately flouting) culture-based norms and those that evince universal translation behavior.

Hypotheses about translation universals, then, posit the presence of various linguistic phenomena in translated texts that have a distribution different from what is found for the same phenomena in non-translated texts, whether those non-translated texts are the source text of the translation, or original texts in the target language. While much has been observed over the centuries about the nature of translations with respect to their source texts, those observations, and the evidence brought forward to support them, have lacked the statistical bulk necessary to give weight to hypotheses. Little attention was paid, furthermore, to how translated texts compare to non-translated texts in general (not just the source text).

Electronic Corpora

The investigation of both areas received a boost with the development of the academic field of Descriptive Translation Studies in the last quarter of the last century. Until the 1990s, however, individual studies lacked a consistent methodology and suffered from small data samples—any conclusions would need to be tested in complex quantitative and qualitative comparisons of a large body of texts in a variety of languages from a variety of cultures in order to have more than local validity.

The digitizing of texts, beginning in the 1960s, accelerated dramatically in the 80s and 90s, so that there are now large collections of electronic texts representing all sorts of genres, both translations, along with their source texts, and other non-translations. Just as important have been the development and continual refinement of tools to analyze them. These “e-corpora” or digitized collections of texts, have formed the basis of something that has the look of a field of its own—corpus studies—but is perhaps better regarded as a resource for a variety of disciplines, including linguistics, literature, and more recently, Translation Studies.

It is not possible to talk about research into translation universals without reference to corpus studies. In 1993, Baker outlined the potential of electronic corpora to supply the broad evidential base needed in universals research. Laviosa (2002) vividly demonstrates their contribution in a detailed discussion of results of work on universals before and after e-corpora. She concludes that corpus studies have allowed universals research 1) to develop the intuitive and vague notion of universals into clear, detailed operational research hypotheses; 2) to progress from small scale, manual, language pair and text genre specific to large scale, systematic, comparable, and target-oriented research; 3) to draw on more consistent and richer evidence; and 4) to take into account a wider range of factors involving socio-cultural elements such as the relative status of a language and the position of a literary genre within the general polysystem of literary production (75).

Universals research uses different types of e-corpora: parallel corpora are bilingual (or multilingual), and include source texts and their translations; comparable corpora are monolingual, and include translated and non-translated texts. Both types are needed to rule out or account for the influence of the source language and of target-language norms. Corpus design and quality, the fact that corpora are mostly limited to western languages, principles governing the alignment of texts, and methodologies for using corpora are the subject of much discussion. Articles in The Corpus-Based Approach, a special issue of Meta 43/4, 1998, examine different aspects of the use of corpora in Translation Studies. In the areas of universals research, Kenny describes methodologies involving parallel and comparable corpora; articles by Baker, Laviosa, and Zannettin discuss issues of corpus design. Many of the works listed in the bibliography grapple with the problem of the use of corpora (e.g., Paloposki, Bernardini & Zannettin).

Bernardini and Zannettin demonstrate that corpora are not always as comparable as first appears—they may contain different types of fiction, the direction of the translation may affect the predominance of different types of non-fiction, there may be different ranges of dates, differences in the prestige of works translated, and so on. They conclude: “corpus-based translation research does not only involve word counts and software development… designing a translational corpus implies researching the social context(s) in which translations are produced and interpreted, so as to provide a framework within which textual and linguistic features of translation can be evaluated” (Translation Universals, 60).

Proposed Universals

What are some of these proposed universal characteristics of translated texts? Most researchers conceptualize them in terms of processes or strategies of translation that may have any number of textual outcomes. Those outcomes—features of the text—are the data of investigation, usually assumed to be products of a particular translation process. Baker’s 1993 list, drawing from earlier studies on universals, has set the agenda for almost all ensuing research. The particular features of the primary strategies are still subject to verification. Some have found support in the corpora, some have been challenged, and in all cases it may be considered an open question whether the features actually are outcomes of one strategy or another.

1. Explicitation involves adding material in the target text that is implicit in the source text. Textual indicators of explicitation may occur in the form of lexical, syntactic, or semantic additions, expansions, or substitutions: for example, a higher ratio of function words to lexical items (lower lexical density) because function words make grammatical relations explicit, specific terms replacing more general terms, disambiguation of pronouns, increased grammatical and lexical cohesion, supplying of elided material, adding modifiers, greater sentence length or a longer text overall (always making allowance for morphosyntactic differences in the languages concerned). These types of explicitation are regarded as distinct from supplying information to compensate for cultural gaps, which is not in itself inherent in translation. Some explicitation studies include: Øverås; Olohan and Baker; Englund Dimitrova; Pym 2005; Pápai in Universals; Puurtinen in Universals; Cheong.

2. Simplification may also find expression lexically, syntactically, or semantically. Some textual features resulting from simplification may be just the opposite of explicitation—more general terms replacing specific ones, or a number of short sentences replacing a long one and lower average sentence length in general, omission of modifying phrases and words; or some may be exactly the same, e.g., lower lexical density (reducing the information load). Other types of simplification are the reduction and omission of repetition, a narrower range of vocabulary, and a related lower type/token ratio (that is, the number of distinct lexical items is lower relative to the total number of words than in the source text and in comparable original texts). Some simplification studies are: Blum-Kulka & Levenston; Ghadessy & Gao; Paloposki; Williams; Laviosa.

3. Normalization is the “tendency to exaggerate features of the target language and to conform to its typical patterns” (Baker 1996, 183) to the extent that the translated text’s conventionality exceeds both that of the source text and of target language texts. The shifts may involve punctuation or vocabulary or syntax. Just as some features may be explained as either explicitation and simplification, many normalization shifts could also be explained as simplification. Some researchers see simplification as a subcategory of normalization (e.g., Vanderauwera). Some normalization studies: Vanderauwera; May; Tirkkonen-Condit 2002; Jantunen.

4. Leveling out was a term applied by Schlesinger to “shifts that take place along the oral-literate or any similarly pre-defined continuum in either interpreting or translating.” That is, through the process of translation, oral-type texts acquire more written features, and written-type texts take on more oral characteristics. Leveling out is described more generally by Baker as “the tendency of translated text to gravitate towards the centre of a continuum” (Baker 1996, 184). Laviosa proposes the term convergence – “the relatively higher level of homogeneity of translated texts with regard to their own scores on given measures of universal features” such as lexical density or sentence length, in contrast to non-translational texts, which are more idiosyncratic, with a higher level of variance (Laviosa 2002, 73). In other words, translated texts, like converts, are more normal than normal.

One of the great benefits of corpus-based studies, as Laviosa points out, is that they allow a bottom-up approach to universal studies—starting from the data and working toward the theory, revealing regularities that may not be noticed otherwise. Type/token ratios, lexical density, and sentence length are not features that jump out at a reader, or a translator, or a reviewer. One would like to see a little more implementation of the bottom-up approach and less of a theory-driven approach. “We have theories enough; what we need are means of checking them on the micro-level” (van der Louw 2006a, 26). The explanatory categories sometimes seem to have the status of dogma and can get in the way of drawing meaningful conclusions.

But what does “universal” mean?

“Universals are absolute; translation is probabilistic.” (Frawley, 167)

Rationalization, clarification, expansion, ennoblement, qualitative impoverishment, quantitative impoverishment, destruction of rhythms, of underlying networks of signification, of linguistic patterning, of vernacular networks, of expressions and idioms… When Berman (1985) elaborated this list of “translation deformations,” he called them “universals of deformation inherent in translating as such”—part of a system “that operates in every translation”—and found them all abominable. At the same time, they were not ahistorical, but “the internalized expression of a two-millennium-old tradition.”

It was before the wolf-pack pursuit of translation universals, but Berman unwittingly expressed a crucial difficulty facing that pursuit—unwittingly because when Berman said “universal” it seems he meant “Western,” and so was not bound to demonstrate true universality. But the difficulty is a central challenge for identifying translation universals: What distinctive features of translation, if any, could be said to result from the translation process per se, in contrast to those features that result from all the particular forces in play in a translation (e.g., the specific source language/target language pair and direction of translation, attributes of the translator, the norms that govern writing and translation in the culture, institutional requirements, editorial intervention, communication situation, market pressures)?

Translation Universals: Do they exist? is the title of a 2001 conference and the subsequent published volume of papers. That question expresses the uncertain status of the subject in Translation Studies and the exploratory nature of the research. The range of papers in the volume offers an excellent introduction to issues that the research must face, beginning with the general conceptual essays by Toury and Chesterman, attempting to pin down what the term universal might mean in the context of translation.

Conditions

Toury, while reluctantly accepting the term universal, prefers law, “not merely because the notion has the possibility of exception built in, but mainly because it should always be possible to explain away seeming exceptions with the help of another law, operating on another level.” He agrees with Frawley that regularities in translation involve probability and not absolute determinism, so promotes the concept of conditioned universals, essentially in the form “If conditions a, b, c, etc., are true, then there is a greater likelihood that X will happen.” It’s a theory of likelihoods—what translation is likely to involve, under different sets of conditions—that recognizes the incredibly complicating fact of the myriad variables in actual translation situations (Translation Universals, 26-29). Toury is also inclined to simplify the list of universals to two general concepts that are in tension with each other: the law of increasing standardization, and the law of interference from the source text.

Chesterman offers a parallel to Toury’s dichotomous model of translation regularities in the form of “S-universals,” that is, differences between translations and their source texts, regardless of language (e.g., interference, standardization, explicitation); and “T-universals,” that is, differences between translations and comparable texts in the target language (e.g., simplification by less lexical variety, lower lexical density, under-representation of TL-specific items). This distinction recognizes the importance of the fact that the hypotheses make claims about translated texts both with respect to their source text and with respect to original texts in the target language. If it were only one or the other, the claims would lose their universal punch.

Like Toury, Venuti doesn’t dismiss the research on universals as unproductive, but at the same time cautions that “a careful contextualization of translation practices, distinguishing universals from both contemporary and past norms, becomes crucial in describing any tradition.” The same sentiment is echoed by virtually all those involved in the research. “The accumulation of coherent and reliable data for the detailed description of the third code is however, Baker argues (1998), only a spring board for investigating wider issues concerning the product and process of translation, such as the study of the specific pressures, constraints and motivations under which translated texts are produced within a given social and cultural context.” (Laviosa 2002)

In fact, assessing the impact and interplay of all possible conditions is a requirement that severely challenges the search for universals. Snell-Hornby, an advocate of Translation Studies as an “interdiscipline,” strongly reproaches the “regression” to a linguistic approach represented by universals research, although almost all universals research emphasizes the importance of taking cultural factors into account. Nevertheless, the most recent research relies heavily on electronic corpora, which are unavoidably decontextualized. Tymoczko (2005) agrees with Snell-Hornby, stating flatly that Translation Studies “should give up the search for universals” because it is at odds with the nature of the object of study—translation is a “cluster concept”—such that “Not all conclusions of research are applicable to all translation types or all translation contexts” (• 49).

Snell-Hornby adds that, as with linguistics, most studies are in relation to English and other Western languages—the same problem that linguistics in general and linguistic universals studies contended with. Furthermore, for any language used as a lingua franca, but especially for English (because of its dominance in the e-corpora), there is the question of what exactly a non-translated text versus a translated one is—“what about Midnight’s Children as a postcolonial hybrid text…or the UN text on Morocco, based on French material but intended to function as a source text?” she asks. “And what about the flood of English-language texts on the Internet…abounding in interferences?” (157).

Causes

In his critique of the universals canon as he sees it set forth in Baker, Pym (2007) plays the role of the boy declaring that the emperor has no clothes. While he goes too far in caricaturing Baker’s ideas, he does point to a weakness of the research: it has lacked conceptual sophistication and explanatory power. The work in the last five years or so has gone some way to remedy that situation, as the studies in the bibliography demonstrate. Baker herself states that corpus studies are only the point of departure for universals research, and that no amount of description will be useful unless it leads to hypotheses about causes (Baker 1998), also a concern of Chesterman.

Halverson attempts to provide such an explanation in terms of bilingual cognitive processing. Paloposki raises the possibility that the processes said to be universal for translation—simplification, explicitation, normalization—may be typical of text-processing in general, and therefore not distinguishing characteristics of translation at all.

Exploring what overarching motivation might unify Toury’s opposing “laws,” Pym proposes “that the tendency to standardize and the tendency to channel interference are both risk-averse strategies, and that their status as possible laws thus depends on the relative absence of rewards for translators who take risks. It follows that future possible laws might be found in the dynamics of risk management.” (Pym 2007, 1). In other words, translators tend to prefer to avoid risks—they will conform to target norms (through explicitation, or simplification, or other means) when that is where the rewards lie (clear communication), and they will allow the interference of the source text (through literal translation, for example) when that is where the rewards lie (in the case of a high status source text such as the Bible, for example).

Importance for Translation Studies

Research into translation universals has already had an important impact on Translation Studies. Through its recent focus on using e-corpora, corpora and corpus methodologies have been scrutinized and improved. Furthermore, whether the results of corpus research can be labeled “universal” or not, the identification of regularities in translated texts vis-à-vis other texts can provide insight into translation processes. The intent of the endeavor is “to discover more and more facets of the nature of translated text and translating and raise awareness about the complex, reciprocal relationship that links language to culture” (Laviosa 2002, 77). The accumulation of comparative data can certainly enrich our understanding of translated texts and perhaps serve as a stimulus, if not support, for improved hypotheses.

In the area of biblical studies, T. van der Louw has investigated the usefulness of the concept of universals, along with other approaches in Translation Studies, for Septuagint studies. He found that one of its most helpful applications is for describing how translators tend to develop over time. Helgegren also carried out this kind of comparative study, albeit on the “Harry Potter” corpus rather than that of the Psalms. Following van der Louw’s lead, Raija Sollamo will present a paper at this summer’s International Organization of Septuagint and Cognate Studies XIII Congress in Ljublana, looking for common ground between translation technique in the LXX and universals research.

Usefulness for Translation Practice

“While the non-evaluative stance of Descriptive Translation Studies has indeed been a valuable move within translation research, there is no reason why textual investigations should not be of use to practising translators, as long as the latter also realize that there is as much to be learnt from insights into the many possibilities and constraints that operate on translation as there is from rigid prescription and definite answers.” (Øverås) The contribution of universals research so far may be those micro-level observations that have come out of corpus studies—observations of tendencies that are not at all evident to the reader, but help determine the shape of the text. Bringing unconscious choices to the conscious level at least raises the translator’s awareness of translation decisions and strategies and “should lead to a greater understanding of how to produce translations that have more desired effects and fewer unwanted ones.” (Chesterman 2000).

Bibliography

Translation universals have been the focus of a number of conferences, or sections of conferences, notably:
“Research Models in Translation Studies,” UMIST/UCL Conference (2000, Manchester, UK). Abstracts and some papers at http://www.art.man.ac.uk/SML/ctis/events/Conference2000/Conference_Programme.htm;
“Translation Universals: Do they exist?” Conference (2001, Savonlinna, Finland) devoted to subject, resulting in the volume of the same name.
The panel “Beyond intervention: Universals in translation processes,” at 2nd IATIS conference (2006, Cape Town). Abstracts at http://www.iatis.org/content/iatis2006/ (file panels.pdf).
Baker, Mona. 1993. “Corpus Linguistics and Translation Studies: Implications and Applications.” In Text and Technology: In Honour of John Sinclair, M. Baker, G. Francis and E. Tognini-Bonelli, eds., 233-250. Benjamins.
——. 1995. “Corpora in Translation Studies: An Overview and Some Suggestions for Future Research.” Target 7/2:223-243.
——. 1996. “Corpus-based Translation Studies: The Challenges That Lie Ahead.” In Terminology, LSP and Translation. Studies in Language Engineering in Honour of Juan C. Sager, H. Somers, ed., 175-186. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
——. 1998. “Réexplorer la langue de la traduction: une approche par corpus.” Meta 43/4, 480-485. http://www.erudit.org/revue/meta/1998/v43/n4/001951ar.html
Baroni, M., and S. Bernardini. 2006. “A New Approach to the Study of Translationese: Machine-Learning the Difference between Original and Translated Text.” Literary and Linguistic Computing 21/3, 259-274.
Berman, Antoine. 2000. “Translation and the Trials of the Foreign.” Lawrence Venuti, tr. In The Translation Studies Reader, L. Venuti, ed., 284-297. Routledge. Originally published as “La traduction comme épreuve de l’étranger.” Texte 1985, 67-81.
Bloch, Ilan. 2005. “Sentence Splitting as an Expression of Translationese.” Seminar paper, Translation Studies Department, Bar Ilan University. http://www.biu.ac.il/hu/stud-pub/tr/tr-pub/bloch-split.htm
Blum-Kulka, S., and E. Levenston. 1983. “Universals of Lexical Simplification.” In Strategies in Interlanguage Communication, C. Færch and G. Kasper, eds., 119-139. Longman.
Cheong, Ho-Jeong. 2006. “Target Text Contraction in English-into-Korean Translations: A Contradiction of Presumed Translation Universals?” Meta 51/2, 343-367. http://www.erudit.org/revue/meta/2006/v51/n2/013261ar.html
Chesterman, Andrew. 2000. “A Causal Model for Translation Studies.” Paper presented at UMIST/UCL Conference: Research Models in Translation Studies, 28-30 April 2000, Manchester, UK. Published under the same title in Intercultural Faultlines. Research Models in Translation Studies I. Textual and Cognitive Aspects, M. Olohan, ed., 15-27. St. Jerome.
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——. 2004. “Hypotheses about Translation Universals.” In Claims, Changes and Challenges in Translation Studies, 1–13.
——. 2006. “Interpreting the Meaning of Translation.” http://www.ling.helsinki.fi/sky/julkaisut/SKY2006_1/1FK60.1.1.CHESTERMAN.pdf
Claims, Changes and Challenges in Translation Studies: Selected Contributions from the EST Congress, Copenhagen 2001. 2004. G. Hansen, K. Malmkjær, and D. Gile, eds. Copenhagen Business School / Middlesex University / Université Lumière Lyon 2.
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Ghadessy, Mohsen and Yanjie Gao. 2001. “Simplification as a Universal Feature of the Language of Translation.” Journal of Asian Pacific Communication 11/1, 61-75.
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Sollamo, Raijo. Forthcoming. “Translation Technique and Translation Studies.” Paper to be presented at the IOSCS XIII Congress in Ljublana, 13-14 July 2007.
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A. Chesterman, Beyond the particular, 33–49
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A. Mauranen, Corpora, universals and interference, 65–82
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J. H. Jantunen, Untypical patterns in translations: Issues on corpus methodology and synonymity, 101–126
P. Nilsson, Translation-specific lexicogrammar? Characteristic lexical and collocational patterning in Swedish texts translated from English, 129–141
V. Pápai, Explicitation: A universal of translated text? 143–164
T. Puurtinen, Explicitation of clausal relations: A corpus-based analysis of clause connectives in translated and non-translated Finnish children’s literature, 165–176
S. Tirkkonen-Condit, Unique items — over- or under-represented in translated language? 177–184
P. Kujamäki, What happens to “unique items” in learners’ translations? “Theories” and “concepts” as a challenge for novices’ views on “good translation,” 187–204
R. Jääskeläinen, The fate of “The Families of Medellín”: Tampering with a potential translation universal in the translation class, 205–214
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——. 2005. “Trajectories of Research in Translation Studies.” Meta 50/4. http://www.erudit.org/revue/meta/2005/v50/n4/012062ar.html
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Source: ubs-translations.org