A Psychological Approach to Translation

By Akbar Dehghan Ferdows

The proposed book titled A Psychological Approach to Translation is in fact a study that contains six parts. The first part describes the phenomena and events that motivated the researcher to think up and implement a semi-descriptive/ semi-experimental research, the problems that translation students and teachers encounter along translation courses and the specifically observed causes of failure in translating, the primary and secondary purposes of the study, and finally, the reasons for the process of delimiting the study so that the main direction and goal of the research could be stated and illustrated.

The second part is a rather extensive and careful survey of many past and current linguistic and sociolinguistic theories and approaches pertaining to translation as both product and process with abundant clear-cut examples and explanations.

Next, part three is another careful survey of theories and problems, this time psycholinguistic and purely psychological, pertaining to human learning as a conditioned behavior together with several arguments and exemplifications presented in support of the main assumption in the study: the impact of systematic extensive reading in TL on one's translating ability. This part also reveals the fact that the existing psycholinguistic literature seriously suffers from the lack of adequate scientific explanations for the phenomenon of translating as a psychological behavior.

Next, part four provides a description of step-by-step development, instrumentation, and implementation of the study based on the conventions of a regular research method. It also includes information about the selection of data, the subjects and their selection criteria, the type of the test they were given, and the kind of statistical analysis used to translate the results into figures (quantification).

The fifth part, fundamentally designed and intended to sum up the significant points discussed throughout the work, also indicates some pedagogical implications and constructive suggestions for future translator training programs recommending more extensive and more scientific studies of both longitudinal and cross-sectional types with factorial designs to investigate the effects of several independent variables at the same time and further contribute to the enrichment of the modern faculty known as Translation Studies.

Finally, part six constitutes a quick reference (handbook) for both translators and translation students to read or review some basic concepts in translation theory as well as the practical steps they should take in the act of translating. These steps are considered to be truly indispensible guidelines for the beginner who would often feel quite handicapped wondering what to do when faced with the task of translating a text for the first time. Their overall plan and logical order are based on the actual methods and techniques of translating learned and adopted from practical teaching experience by the author and followed by him to this day.

The book closes with a comprehensive bibliography, introducing a good number of both classic and new books on linguistics, language teaching and testing, psychology, translation studies, and other related subjects, which can profitably be used as authentic sources of reference in additional or supplementary studies.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Oct 17, 2014
• ISBN: 9781499062687

Akbar Dehghan Ferdows

Born 1953 in Urmia (now Orumiyeh), the center of West Azerbaijan Province in Iran, A.D. Ferdows went to elementary school in Tabriz and to high school back in Urmia. He joined the Air Force in 1971 and was trained as an aircraft technician in the United States and back home. In 1975, he took a teacher training course in the Iranian Air Force Language Training Center in the capital and soon began teaching general and technical English to military trainees including cadets and aviation students. He also authored two books – one on airplane structure and basic aerodynamics and another on Man’s history of flight. Later, he quit the military and was admitted to an open university in 1986 where he studied general and applied linguistics and majored in translation. He also completed an MA program in language teaching. For the past 30 years or so he has almost invariably been occupied in the business of teaching translation and language as well as translating and conducting amateur research work on a large number of his favorite subjects ranging from psycholinguistics to international relations, from economic geography to anthropology, and from globalization to disarmament.

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Copyright © 2014 by Akbar Dehghan Ferdows.

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Table of Contents

A Psychological Approach To Translation

Acknowledgement

Preface

Some Functional Terms And Abbreviations

Part One:    Introduction

(1)   The Motive For Investigation

(2)   Organization Of The Study Report

(3)   The Problem Statement

(4)   The Purpose Of The Study

(5)   Reason For Delimitation

Part Two:    Translation In A Linguistic Perspective

(1)   Towards A General Theory Of Translation

(2)   Linguistics And Translation

(3)   General Threats To Meaning In Translation

(4)   Equivalence

(5)   Textual Equivalence And Meaning

Part Three:    Translation In A Psycholinguistic Perspective

(1)   Psycholinguistics And Translation

(2)   Translatological Psychology

(3)   Translation And Psychology Of Learning

(4)   Associationism And Translation

(5)   Translation And Cognitive And Behaviorist Psychologies

(6)   Translation And Parapsychology

Part Four:    Methodology

(1)   The Hypothesis And Its Development

(2)   The Experiment And Its Instrumentation

(3)   The Subjects

(4)   Material And The Test

Part Five:    Conclusion And Pedagogical Implications

(1)   A Short Review Of The Study

(2)   Some Problems Of Translation Students

(3)   Intensive Exposure To Tl Forms Thru Extensive Tl Reading

Part Six:    Translation Procedure (A Quick Reference For Translators And Students Of Translation)

Prologue

Introduction:   (The Process)

Step One:   (Message Analysis)

Step Two:   (Structure Analysis)

Step Three:   (Looking Up Meanings)

Step Four:   (Looking Up New Meanings)

Step Five:   (Looking Up Figurative Meanings)

Step Six:   (Eliciting Meaning From Structure)

Step Seven:   (Studying The Style)

Step Eight:   (Studying The Cohesion And Coherence)

Step Nine:   (The Role Of Pronunciation & Intonation)

Step Ten:   (Watching For Linguistic Interference)

Step Eleven:   (Shifts In Translation)

Step Twelve:   (Breaking & Joining Sentences)

Step Thirteen:   (Final Touches)

Step Fourteen:   (Trimming And Decorating)

Appendix (1)

(1) Samples Of Practice Exercises

(2) The Text Used In The Final Translation Test In This Study

(3) Statistical Analysis Report

(4) Author’s Biographical Sketch

Bibliography

A psychological Approach to Translation

The decision to write this book was triggered as a result of some eye-catching findings at the end of a self-motivated and self-imposed, rather long-term, study project conducted by the author following some eight years of teaching translation to his private students by correspondence. The study was taken up based on the hypothesis that there is a direct relationship or, in the language of statistics, a positive correlation between extensive reading in target language (TL) and one’s translating ability – even if the TL happens to be the translator’s mother tongue. It not only confirmed the hypothesis but even demonstrated that translating, being a complex psycholinguistic process, must also be investigated in areas such as cognitive science and neuroscience to unveil the true nature and function of so many sub-processes like observing, experiencing, imitating, repeating, remembering, learning, forgetting, associating, recalling, reproducing, etc., and verify the fact that no competent translator would manage to provide the most appropriate translation equivalents required unless they have personally experienced a tremendous variety of TL structures and idioms (forms and usages) through extensive exposure to them in various linguistic communication situations, especially through mass media.

It follows then that in any academic and formal translator training program and, for that matter, even in an informal self-teaching course of translation, systematic, extensive and conscious TL-text reading ought to be included as mandatory study-units in related syllabi. For most of the students of foreign languages and translation would rather read more material in the foreign language of their interest than in their own mother tongue, as the former (reading in the foreign language) often tends to sound more appealing and is usually considered a prestigious asset to be proud of or even boast about. So they hardly tend to read authentic texts in their native tongue which, more often than not, happens to be their target language in translation courses as well as in their future translation careers. And if by any chance or for the sake of studying other subjects they find themselves reading a text in the TL, they often tend to be more absorbed and occupied in learning and understanding WHAT has been said than HOW it has been said – hence the problem.

Akbar Dehghan Ferdows

To My Wife, Maryam (Mehrnoush) Keynoush

Whose higher self has much to say about mysteries of being – including psycholinguistics …

Acknowledgement

With translation still a rather novel area of linguistic and psycholinguistic studies, those who have dealt with it seriously and in an academic and scholarly manner to produce pedagogically applicable psychological theories and practicable methods for translator training programs are not many. In contrast, however, those who have made some invaluable contributions to translation theory from purely linguistic points of view are not few; and I must admit that I am greatly indebted to most of them, both foreign and Iranian.

I wish, then, to express my sincere indebtedness to Roger T. Bell’s "Translation and Translating," Ahmad Sedarati’s Persian translation of J.C. Catford’s classic "A Linguistic Theory of Translation," Peter Newmark’s A Textbook of Translation and Approaches to Translation, Eugene Nida and Charles Taber’s classic work "The Theory and Practice of Translation," Dr. Mildred L. Larson’s "Meaning-based Translation," Juliane House’s Translation, Basil Hatim and Jeremy Munday’s Translation – an advanced resource book, Jeremy Munday’s Introducing Translation Studies, Dorothy Kelly’s A Handbook for Translator Trainers, and Joseph L. Malone’s "The Science of Linguistics in the Art of Translation" -— not to mention a large number of other authentic sources by foreign and local authors and scholars from which I have gained a great deal of precious insight into the problems of both translation and psychology of learning.

Also, I owe many heartfelt thanks to all the people who acted as my subjects (50 in the experimental group and another 50 in the control group) without whose selfless and frank co-operation, it would never have been possible to operationalize extensive TL reading as a variable and make the statistical comparison between extensive readers and non- extensive readers in a single population of translation students.

Akbar Dehghan Ferdows

Tehran, Iran

Key to Phonetic Symbols Used in Transliterations

Preface

The idea of making this study took shape and gradually evolved over the years when the author himself, already an English teacher and translator, was taking a translation course in university. Through serious and constant observation of the problems of both teachers and students involved in translator training programs, it was found that among a rather great variety of factors such as age, sex, job, place of birth and growth, mother tongue, local culture, educational background, IQ, real life experience, socio-political consciousness, marital status, attitude toward reading, general world outlook, etc., one significant element appeared to have a vital role in their work, directly and indirectly affecting and determining their relative success in terms of quality. This significant element turned out to be extensive reading in the target language, which in turn is so closely related to several other variables, age and general knowledge as real-life experience – based on socio-political consciousness in particular.

Then the purpose of the study was to find out whether such an assumption – apparently so obvious as to be taken for granted – could be testified by some statistical analysis with a fairly significant, i.e., reliable results. And, as the initial step in conducting the research, a tremendous amount of available literature on linguistics, psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, theories of translation, psychology of learning, etc., was carefully reviewed and consulted.

Equipped with scientific insights from the reviewed literature and from the thought-provoking observation results accumulated during many years of teaching translation to a good number of business managers, lawyers, physicians, engineers, government officials as well as university translation and non-translation students, the author came to the conclusion that a translator’s competence – that is, her/his ability to translate expertly – does not hinge upon their knowledge of source language (SL) and target language (TL) only. This is so because there are so many bilinguals and even polyglots who neither are translators nor can make good translators. Then it was hypothesized that what distinguishes a translator from other bilinguals or polyglots consists in their capacity to remember – via memory and association – and supply translation equivalents in the form of the most appropriate lexical items and syntactic structures together with their pragmatic conventions as experienced in past linguistic situations and events through living and reading.

Taking age as an index of wider real-life and linguistic experience, he took 50 people at random from among his own middle-age and pre-middle-age translation students whose knowledge of English was roughly equal to or even lower than that of young university students of translation. Then he took another group of 50 students and graduates, also at random, from among those who were studying or had studied translation as a formal academic BA program in university. His assurance that the first (experimental) group had been longer and more intensively exposed to the target language (Farsi) than the second (control) group was based on his actual knowledge of the fact that the members of the first group had read far more books, newspapers, magazines, etc. and had listened far more often to radio and TV news and commentaries in contrast to the members of the second group.

In order to test the hypothesis, namely the pre-knowledge that the first group would do better in recalling and reproducing Farsi equivalents, a history text composed of six paragraphs, rather heavily loaded with vocabulary and rich in its variety of grammatical constructions and socio-political terminology, was given to both of the groups to translate into Farsi. They were given plenty of time to do this assignment, but were asked to try to produce a target language text fully acceptable in its linguistic, pragmatic, and rhetorical aspects. Once collected, the translations were corrected quite painstakingly based on trajectional analysis and with so many features of written language and the art of writing in mind, including variety, repetition, unity, clause-to-clause and phrase-to-phrase conversions, ordering of theme and rheme, fronting, and other elements pertaining to literary devices, linguistic use and usage, etc. – as they are normally required in translating and accommodated both by the possible dynamics of the TL and by the writing and expressive flair of the translator. In addition, the subjects were scrupulously watched in their translations for any bilateral linguistic interference.

Like in any other descriptive research where two independent groups can be compared with each other by means of a t-test, the obtained data, i.e., the scores made by the first (experimental) group and those made by the second (control) group were statistically analyzed. The operations included calculation of the means and variances of both sets of scores and computation of a t-value to determine the difference between the means as well as to reject the null-hypothesis (the hypothesis that states there is no distinction between groups).

With the hypothesis confirmed by the striking results of data analysis at the end of this analytic-deductive study (analytic because the synthesis of several factors were broken down into constituent factors, and deductive because only one of them as being most likely to be related to the quality of translation was analyzed), one could find oneself in a comparatively firm position to declare that richer reading experience in the target language, normally with close relationship to age as an important variable, has a tangible impact on the process of translation and would play a vital role in any program of translator training. And, concerning the recurrent fiascoes met by most university translation students, it is recommended that systematic extensive TL-reading be formally introduced into their curriculum as an indispensable component part of their academic course in translation so that they could be massively and proactively exposed to as much variety of TL linguistic forms and pragmatic-communicative conventions as possible and see how things are said in a text, not just what the text says.

Akbar Dehghan Ferdows

Some Functional Terms and Abbreviations

Context: (1) Words that come before and after a word, phrase, or statement helping to show its meaning, (2) circumstances in which something happens or is considered

Control Group: A group used as a standard of comparison in a study

Dynamic Equivalent: A translation equivalent to which the receptors of the message in TL respond in substantially the same ways as the receptors in SL.

Experimental Group: A group whose behavior is compared against that of the control group in an experiment.

L1: (a) One’s first language or mother tongue and (b) the source language in translation or interpretation

L2: (a) One’s second or foreign language and (b) the target language in translation or interpretation

M1: (a) Message one, the SL message and (b) the mean score in the experimental group

M2: (a) Message two, the TL message and (b) the mean score in the control group

Non-language-specific universal semantic representation: An idea or meaning which can be conceived by all people even if they do not speak the same language.

Pragmatic convention: General agreement on the use of language in communication

R1: Original receptor or the SL reader of the SL text

R2: Final receptor, or reader, of the TL text

Semantic representation: meaning of an object, event or idea as perceived in the mind

Skewing: The changing of the functional role of a semantic unit when transferred to the surface structure

SL: Source language, language from which a translation is made

S-R: Stimulus-Response

Text: A piece of spoken or written language

Text writer: Producer of the SL text, the original writer

TL: Target language, language into which a translation is made

TL-equivalent: A TL form whose meaning is the same as a certain Sl form

Translating: The act of doing translating as a mental process

Translation: (1) a translated text and (2) the art or craft of translating

Translation model: Realization of a theory of translation

Translation theory: The study of translation as process – sometimes called translatology (a branch of applied linguistics)

Part One

INTRODUCTION

(1)   The Motive for Investigation

Many a translation student of university gets their so-called AA or BA degree and turns to the job market with a distressing suspicion or even a painful conviction that they’ll be denied any translator’s position they have eagerly been looking forward to for years on end. Apart from the fact that the four or more years of academic education are never entirely spent on learning the theory and practice of translation, even the limited number of study-units allocated for this subject generally consists in listening to the translation teacher’s often lengthy monologues on theories of translation or to the boring haphazard translations of miscellaneous sentences and short texts rendered by the class-mates. This is not, however, the only tragic flaw, so to speak, condemning the students of translation to an eventual frustration; for, according to the course and/or syllabus designers as well as the teachers, the students will be able to find their ways through soon after they get the job and while they are continually involved in translation activity. In this case, translation is apparently mistaken more or less for skills like steering a bike or flying a kite.

It so happened that when the author took up such a course in university almost two and a half decades ago, he had already written and translated books and articles and enjoyed a fairly recognized competence in translation prior to being introduced to even the slightest amount of linguistics, not to mention translation theory. Besides, he had taught both general and technical English for about eleven years and was more or less familiar with the numerous problems of language teachers and language learners. It is obvious then that his enthusiasm for theories of language development, second language learning, applied linguistics, error analysis, contrastive analysis, teaching methodology, etc., was blended with a keen interest in watching analytically and critically the operation of the whole syllabus offered by the university. This self-created drive to observe that educational environment gradually led to a number of discoveries and assumptions in various areas including the methods of teaching English as a foreign language, of teaching translation and interpretation, and of teaching advanced writing. Although these discoveries were merely the results of conscious and passionate observations of linguistic phenomena and some methodological aspects rather than the scientific findings of well-designed descriptive or experimental research projects, they were actually utilized and exploited by the author in his own programs of teaching English and translation to different people from different age-groups, educational backgrounds, social and professional positions, political slants and views, etc. Of all the phenomena observed, however, the problem of teaching translation and the difficulty of learning how to translate proved to be the most inviting and the most challenging.

(2)   Organization of the Study Report

This report contains six parts. The first part describes the phenomena and events that motivated the researcher to think up and implement a semi-descriptive/ semi-experimental research, the problems that translation students and teachers encounter along translation courses and the specifically observed causes of failure in translating, the primary and secondary purposes of the study, and, finally the reasons for the process of delimiting the study so that the main direction and goal of the research could be stated and illustrated.

The second part is a rather extensive and careful survey of many past and current linguistic theories and approaches concerning translation as both product and process, and of many diverse aspects of translation including the various types of translation and translation equivalents, types of meaning and threats to meaning, as well as some practical issues in translation from merely linguistic and sociocultural perspectives.

The third part is an attempt to look at translation as process not just from a psycholinguistic point of view, but even from purely psychological perspectives. It is a relatively detailed discussion of psychological theories and approaches pertaining to human learning as a conditioned behavior together with several arguments and exemplifications presented in support of the main assumption in the study: the impact of systematic extensive reading in TL on one’s translating ability. This part also reveals the fact that the existing psycholinguistic literature seriously suffers from lack of adequate scientific explanations for the phenomenon of translating as a psychological behavior, in terms of what really goes on in the mind of the translator and how she comes up with relevant vocabulary items and grammatical constructions to successfully perform a task of translation.

Next, Part Four provides a description of step-by-step development, instrumentation, and implementation of the study based on the conventions of a regular research method. It also includes information about the selection of data, the subjects and their selection criteria, the type of the test they were given, and the kind of statistical analysis used to translate the results into figures (quantification).

The fifth part, fundamentally designed and intended to sum up the significant points discussed throughout the work, also indicates some pedagogical implications and constructive suggestions for future translator training programs, further recommending more extensive and more scientific studies of both longitudinal and cross-sectional types with factorial designs to investigate the effects of several independent variables at the same time and further contribute to the enrichment of the modern faculty known as ‘Translation Studies’.

Finally, Part Six constitutes a quick reference for both translators and translation students to read or review some basic concepts in translation theory as well as the practical steps they should take in the act of translating. These steps are considered to be truly indispensable guidelines for the beginner who would often feel quite handicapped wondering what to do when faced with the task of translating a text – be it as small as an affix or a long stretch of discourse - for the first time. Their overall plan and logical order are based on the actual methods and techniques of translating learned and adopted from practical experience by the author and followed by him through to this day in his teaching sessions.

The book closes with a comprehensive bibliography introducing a good number of books on linguistics, language teaching and testing, psychology, translation studies, and other related subjects, which can profitably be used as authentic sources of reference in additional or supplementary studies.

The biographical sketch of the author that precedes the bibliography is included in the work on the ground that it, too, might provide an additional insight into why he took up such a controversial topic for his research and if, on its own, it is really an important piece of data that merits closer consideration by some distinguished and academically more professional scholars in their analysis of motives that lead to language learning and development of translating ability.

(3)   The Problem Statement

In the first place, both during the years that the author himself was studying translation in an open university in Tehran and during the years when he was teaching translation to his own private students, it was observed that some men and women above the age of college students, with roughly equal knowledge of English, did better and sometimes faster in translating from English into Farsi than most younger university graduates of four-year translation courses. Secondly, it was realized, in the course of time, that there was no specific explanation of the problem either in linguistic literature or in translation theories then available. Factors such as age, sex, social status, economic conditions, personality trait, aptitude, urgent or future needs, etc., all seemed to have been fully treated in teacher-based, material-based, and learner-based approaches to language learning and teaching, to the exclusion of the needs and motives of the translation students seeking the art of and/or a career in translating.

With further observation, it was revealed that translation students did not actually have to be at a higher age in order to learn better and or do better in the subject of translation. For, rather younger boys and girls were found capable of grasping the basics of the theory in a fairly short period of time and producing relatively acceptable texts of translation with scores much higher than those of the older students. Some of the members of the former group were not even translation or English students. They were either non-university students or students of non-translation and non-language training programs personally interested in learning how to translate.

For a while, it also seemed that those who displayed more practical interest in mastering the art and made relatively fast progress in it virtually enjoyed a talent or flair for it – something which could not be generated or enhanced through any experimental treatment.

Finally, though, the signs and symptoms characteristic of a good and qualified translator gradually began to surface and betray, so to speak, the secret of the success of those who made better and, in some cases, rather remarkable scores in both oral and written translation. What were these signs and symptoms, anyway? They were the spontaneously and properly chosen fairly appropriate TL equivalents used by those ‘successful’ students of translation. At first glance, of course, this proper and spontaneous choice of translation equivalents may seem to be too natural and obvious a quality of an able translator and be deemed to be taken for granted. Nevertheless, when examined psychologically, it does fall into a category of complicated mental phenomena rightfully deserving more patient observation and deeper scientific investigation.

But, now, let’s go back to the idea of translation equivalence. In a nutshell, a TL equivalent is said to be any unit of discourse in the receptor language to which the receptors of the message respond in substantially the same way the receptor in the source language would respond to the same message in their own language. Definitely, this would require the translator to take into account a whole range of lexical, syntactic and pragmatic adjustments together with notional, functional, and communicative aspects and socio-cultural norms and peculiarities necessary for the comprehension by the TL receptors of the SL message. In other words, this would require the translator to have full, or almost full, knowledge of both languages on the one hand, and of the sociolinguistic, discourse-analytic, and cultural characteristics of the text, on the other hand.

Take the sentence ‘What is your name?’, for example. This, in Russian, is KAK BAC 3OBYT? (Pronounced: kʌk vʌs zʌvut?) – It literally means: ‘What do they call you?’ – While in Spanish, the same function is rendered via the question COMO SE LLAMA USTED? (Pronounced: komo se ya:mʌ usteth ?), literally meaning: ‘What do you call yourself?’ Obviously, the translator is required to already possess all such knowledge of the target language syntactic structures besides the appropriate lexical items needed to make up any particular well-formed grammatical sentence for meaningful utterance and comprehensible communication.

Yet, in trying to render some pieces of discourse containing more complicated idiom such as metaphors, proverbs, and the like, she/he is further expected to be aware of the socio-cultural and historical connotations of the lexical or structural items in both languages, TL and SL. The last two lines of the 13th stanza in the late Azerbaijani poet, M. H. Shahryar’s masterpiece, ‘Hail Haydar-baba’, would be a case in point, no matter if an Iranian translator is turning it into English or an English-speaking person is attempting to figure out what the poet is driving at.

The lines phonetically transcribed:

beheshtimiz jahannam olmʌkhdʌdər

Zihajjamiz maharram olmʌkhdʌdər

The lines translated literally:

Our Paradise is turning into Hell.

Our (month of) Zihajje is turning into (the month of) Moharram.

The entire poem being an apostrophe,