Reframing Realities through Translation

Figures

Figure 3.1. An overview of heteroglossia (Martin and White 2005: 134)

Figure 3.2. An overview of attitude: affect, judgement and appreciation (adapted from Martin and White 2005: 49–56)

Figure 3.3. An overview of graduation (Martin and White 2005: 154)

Figure 3.4. The graphic conventions adopted in analysis

Figure 3.5. An overview of deictic positioning (adapted from Chilton 2004)

Figure 3.6. Appraisal analysis 1

Figure 3.7. Deictic positioning 1

Figure 3.8. Appraisal analysis 2

Figure 3.9. Deictic positioning 2

Figure 5.1. Caricature of Elie Saliba published on Al Watan, Qatar, 28 September 2014, cited in MEMRI’s Special Dispatch No. 5855

Figure 6.1. Screenshot of concordance lines featuring as a matter of fact

Figure 6.2. Screenshot of concordance lines featuring in fact

Figure 6.3. Screenshot of the interpreted discourse (re)contextualized on The Washington Times website

Figure 9.1. Nida’s (1964) levels of lexical adaptation and Pym’s (2010a) types of equivalence

Tables

Table 6.1. Established items and expressions in both subcorpora

Table 8.1. Characteristics of food labelling, adapted from Niva et al. (1998: 321–327)

Table 9.1. Salient aspects of Igbo Bible translation

Table 9.2. The representation of “heaven” in Igbo Bible translations

Table 9.3. The translation of “hell” in Igbo Bible translations

Introduction: Translation as a Set of Frames

Setting the scene

Just as other people consciously and subconsciously rely on certain cognitive frames to organize complex phenomena into coherent, understandable categories to make sense of them (Kaufman et al. 2003), translators also use these cognitive frames to interpret the world around them by using interpretive frames, and then represent that world to others by using representing frames. As such, translation can be seen as a set of frames, whether interpretive (activated at the stage of understanding) or representing (activated at the stage of re-expression or re-formulation).

Before going deeper in analysing the types of frames, the term frame itself needs to be defined and clarified. Following Goffman (1974/1986), who developed symbolic interactionist ideas on how the self is constructed interpersonally, van Hulst and Yanow (2016: 94) state that frames “guide the ways situational participants perceive their social realities and (re)present these to themselves and to others”, adding that “a frame reflects actors’ organizing principles that structure those perceptions”. From a cognitive standpoint, frames are defined by Lakoff (2004/2014: xi–xii) as “mental structures that shape the way we see the world”. Frames not only “shape the goals we seek, the plans we make, the way we act, and what counts as a good or bad outcome of our actions”, but they also “shape our social policies and the institutions we form to carry out policies” (ibid.). In this regard, Lemmouh (2008: 219) holds that what makes up the language user’s worldview is his/her relationship with society and the institutions that form that society:

This world view is underpinned and strengthened by a language use which is affected by the ideology of the society. Consequently, the ideology in discourse is something ←1 | 2→natural to an ordinary uncritical reader who has already been socialized into his/her society’s mode of thinking.

Therefore, when we come across a system of beliefs, assumptions, worldviews and experiences that are inconsistent with our own, we become aware, in one way or another, of these differences and we may act accordingly. This is in line with Goffman’s (1974: 345) view that not only do we perceive frames, but we take actions based on how these frames are perceived by us. Our actions can be easily identified when we translate a text containing systems of beliefs and assumptions which are different from our own, in particular when we reframe realities differently. This is because people in general, including translators, tend to construct frames differently, activating some interpretive frames that feed into their accumulated value systems, and blocking others that seem irrelevant or counter-intuitive. Similarly, certain representing frames are activated while others are excluded, thus reframing realities and reproducing knowledge in different ways, despite the fact that we talk about the same events, participants, and circumstances.

The same event(s) encoded in the original text can be framed in different ways, thus promoting “competing narratives, with important implications for different parties to the conflict” (Baker 2006: 107). As devices injected into a text by the language user in order to evoke a certain image, frames are a dynamic conscious operation of constructing reality. In this context, it is not only the language user’s linguistic competence that may affect how people understand the world around them and how they talk about it, but also many external factors. This is consistent with the view stated by Lemmouh (2008: 219) that the “appropriateness of forms of language is established by societal factors outside the control of the language users, and the process of choosing an appropriate form of langue is governed by socialisation”. In order to make this point clear, let us consider the following BBC news item quoted along with two translations suggested by translation students (Almanna 2014: 61–62):

Frames are used by some individuals as tools to rationalize their attitudes towards what exists in the real world and to engage as many people as they can when representing the event to their audience. To bring more people to their cause, translators need to give full consideration to others’ “conceptual and/or emotional setting or viewpoint in relation to which a situation is experienced” (Watzlawick et al. 1974, in Kaufman et al. 2003: online), which they do by knowing the recipients of their texts and trying their best to live up to their expectations.

People adhering to different political systems and religions, with their different beliefs and assumptions, tend to view the other through a set of characterization frames that can be positive or negative. When they are positive, the self will be influenced by the other relatively easily. However, ←3 | 4→when they are negative, the self will see the other as a threat by virtue of an identity frame, whereby people view themselves as having a certain identity in the context of specific conflict situations (Rothman 1997). This frame leads individuals to criticize the others and consider them outsiders, focusing on pieces of information and views that forcibly feed into their own identity and reinforce affiliations with like-minded groups. In this respect, van Dijk (1998: 33) states that when we talk about good acts, “OUR people tend to appear primarily as the actors”, but in the case of bad acts, they are assigned to THEIR people. This is because one of the main functions of group ideology is the representation of ours and theirs as two opposing extremes, whereby good acts are highlighted and linked to the “in-group”, while bad acts are underlined and linked to the “out-group” (van Dijk 1998; Lemmouh 2008). The following example, from the Saudi Arabia Al-Riyadh Newspaper, published on 3 April 2015, illustrates the point:

Being influenced by their own accumulated value systems and/or certain conventions and norms formed over time for selecting, producing and consuming news items, the news producers opted for certain lexical items and expressions that feed into their own identity and reinforce affiliations with like-minded groups. Hence, while good acts and relations such as نصرة [support] and إخوان [brothers] are linked to the in-group, bad acts and qualities such as فئة باغية منحرفة [a deviant aggressive group] and استئثار باليمن [to seize Yemen] are ascribed to the out-group. Let us compare the above news item with another version, this time offered by Al-Sabah Al-Jadid Newspaper, published in Iraq also on 3 April and referring to the same event:

In Chapter 1, issues such as adaptive creativity, restructuring meaning and identity are discussed in direct relation to the translator’s work. Joaquim Martin Capdevila holds the assumption that translators are agents who bridge gaps between cultures and, accordingly, translation is a culturally informed interpretation sieved through the prism of very individual perspectives. The moment these cross-cultural differences need to be tackled, the process of translation at the micro level becomes an act of adaptive creativity used by translators to reshape one contextually constructed meaning into another.

The analysis of translations that deal with the (perceived) identity of immigrants can cast light not only on the attitude of the source culture towards these people, but also on how this attitude may change when the text is mediated for a different culture through translation. In Chapter 2, Claudia Alborghetti lays emphasis on the growing number of immigrants reaching Italy and argues that, despite the fact that European ←5 | 6→governments have strived to integrate minority populations into the national life, the question of national identity versus foreign immigration is open to debate. After analysing a number of representative examples taken from two Italian novels, Il treno del sole (Reggiani 1962, translated by Creagh 1966) and Nel mare ci sono i coccodrilli (Geda 2010, translated by Curtis 2011), Alborghetti suggests that the less mediation, the more shared knowledge is expected from the target public, who are thus invited to learn about the other and understand more about the problems related to immigration.

In Chapter 3, Valeria Reggi discusses the dynamics of identity negotiation in institutional communication, with particular reference to the implicit and explicit use of national stereotypes in second language production (self-translation). She presents a pilot study on the speeches in English of the Italian ex-Prime Minister Matteo Renzi and discusses his use of clichés and references to Italianness as a means to embody and reproduce the myth of the nation. The data for analysis were collected by sampling two videos of speeches in English that Renzi delivered to a general audience at Georgetown University in 2015 and Harvard in 2016. The author applies Munday’s model for evaluation in translation to foreground the evaluative stance of the speaker while testing some methodological integrations. The study reveals the complex interplay of rhetorical resources that Renzi used to construct the prototype of Italianness, and his appeal to emotions to naturalize the myth of the nation. Indeed, despite his iconoclastic message, the view of Italy that emerged from his rhetoric was traditional and stereotypical. This was particularly noticeable in the speeches that he delivered in English to a “lay” audience, when he frequently improvised and was not supported by interpreters. Although his culturally loaded message may have been caused by the self-perpetuating, change-resistant nature of stereotypes in general, he may have deliberately played with clichés and commonplaces to build shared knowledge and reinforce a comforting nationalistic tradition.