The Translator's Dilemma - Implicatures and the role of the translator
Understanding utterances is not simply a matter of knowing the meanings of the words uttered and the way in which they are combined. It also involves drawing inferences on the basis of non-linguistic information and the assumption that the speaker has aimed to meet certain general standards of communication. In this article, we discuss the question of writer-reader, translator-reader problem of proper communication, and investigate the concept of faithfulness in translation and its manifestations in loyalty to the original text as well as loyalty to the target audience and the prospective readers of the translation. To reach an understanding of this dilemma and suggest solutions to it, an extract from
Othello is examined along with its translation into Arabic.
Proper communication is assumed to take place in a situation where a writer, or a speaker, transmits a message, via a channel—writing or speaking—to a reader or a hearer. If the hearer or reader gets the messages the same way as the speaker/writer had in mind, then there is proper communication. However the quality of the message, the channels through which the message is conveyed and other situational factors may lead to a distortion of the message in the minds of the readers/hearers. The problem is more complicated when applied on translation in which a reader (translator) is asked to read and understand the message of a writer, and at the same time, or afterwards, transmits what s/he understood of this message to another audience who may be totally different from the readership the original writer had in mind.
De Beaugrande and Dressler (1981:84) define a meaningless or nonsensical text as "one in which text receivers can discover no continuity (of senses), usually because there is a serious mismatch between the configuration of concepts and relations expressed and the receivers' prior knowledge of the world." The complexity of the translator's work, as Abdellah (2002) points out, arises from the fact that misconception or misinterpretation in the reading comprehension stage will surely lead to deviant and disfigured representations of the original in the minds of the target readers. In this article, the problem of standards of communication between translators-readers and its relationship with shifts in coherence will be discussed.
Blum-Kulka (1986: 304) understands coherence as "the realization(s) of the text's meaning potential." She assumes that texts may "lose their meaning potential through translation" and differentiates between two types of shifts in coherence: text-focused and reader-focused. Writers may have certain types of readers in mind when they write their pieces, and accordingly—especially in literature—they may sometimes seek to make their message ambiguous or complicated in order to convey certain implications and create certain impressions. It is reported that Chekhov once confessed that "not once had either one (the directors of his plays) read through my play carefully" ( Bristow 1977, my bracketing). In doing so, writers are consciously violating Grice's(1975) cooperative principle and its maxims. The cooperative principle states that one's conversational, or otherwise, contribution should be " such as required "(1975:45). Derived from this general principle are the maxims of Quantity, Quality, Relevance, and Manner.
1 Baker (1996:238) concludes that "these maxims are not universal," but "the interpretation of a maxim or the maxims themselves may differ from one linguistic community to another." What can be a universal is the "the phenomenon of implicature" which refers to "what the speaker means or implies, rather than what s/he literally says." (223).
Each language has a preference for a coherent device which is mainly used to convey meanings and impressions that are not literally stated in the text. These devices are not necessarily the same in both the target and source languages. The duty of the translator in this case is multifold; first s/he needs to read and comprehend what the source text says literally, then figure out what is implied by certain expressions or stylistic devices- such as dramatic questions, lexical repetition, word order,..—only to start a new process which is mainly transmitting the literal as well as the implied meanings in the target language using the devices that are preferred by this latter language rather than the original one. In doing so, a translator has a license to reword, add, omit, provide a footnote, or an introductory sentence, or rephrase certain pieces in order to convey the sense that the original writer wanted to show.
Grice (1975) lists some factors that contribute to the success or failure in working out implicatures. These include the cooperative principle—which is equivalent to Blum-Kulka's "explicitation hypothesis"—and its maxims, context, background knowledge, and the availability of all these to writer and reader. Enkvist (1985) distinguishes three levels of inferences that help in understanding messages and achieving successful communication: the intertextual level which is centered around the text, the illocutionary level which is centered around the situation, and the interactional level which is centered around the receiver's judgment.
In the following extract from Shakespeare's
Othello, Iago deliberately violates Grice's maxims, certainly the maxim of relevance, in order to convey certain implicatures. Othello recognizes the violations and tries to get Iago to spell out what he means.
