Practising Translation, Reading Interpretation: Some Reflections on the Linguistic

Correlative

Adriana Neagu, Babe-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca

Abstract
The following is a comparative enquiry into the common linguistic and rhetorical
heritage the practices of translation and interpretation share. It seeks to revisit
the cognitive and narrative processes constitutive of these practices with a view
to reflect on the cognitive response and degree of language performance that
they entail. To this end in view, it examines seminal aspects regarding the orality
and performativity, inter- and inter-linguistic and narrative structures embedded in
the two processes, making a case for the relevance of rhetoric and narrative
theory to both translation and interpretation studies. Central to the investigation is
a consideration of they way in which processes of reading and composition are
implicated in translating and interpreting. As part of this, the study addresses
issues pertaining to meaning processing and interpretability, pointing to the way
in which translation and interpretation inform each other as manifestations of a
protean linguistic consciousness. In considering the linguistic correlative of
translating and interpreting, I am less concerned with the general notion of
linguistic diversity; the focus rather is on the forma mentis typifying translation
and interpretation, their cultural logic, commonalities and differentials. A collateral
objective is to sound a modest celebratory note on poststructuralism as an
enabling textual methodology that allows for an apt examination of dominants,
stereotypes and misconceptions within the fields of translation and interpretation.

It is a truism that by virtue of their dealing in language as the primary working

medium, mediating between linguistic systems, translation and interpretation are
inextricably indeed uncontrollably interrelated, closely bound as sister disciplines.
As well as generic linguistic performance, a contrastive analysis of the practice of
translation and interpretation yields to several central lines of enquiry: coding-

decoding-transcoding, conversion and transmission; rhetoric, verbalisation and

composition; meaning-making and processing; memory, textuality and narrativity.
It is the latter two areas of examination, particularly the interplay of textuality and
narrativity in translation and interpretation that interest the present enquiry.
As verbal acts, translating and interpreting are subject to rhetorical,
hermeneutic and compositional laws. Both negotiate between the intentions of an
original writer/speaker and the expectations of a target audience while at the
same time abiding by the principles of textual coherence, logic and clarity. But
whereas the principles of composition at work in translation and interpretation are
similar and transparent at all discursive levels, from macro- to micro-structure,
the rhetorical and narrative situation of translation and interpretation is an
alembicated site, making for one of the principal markers of distinction. In so far
as it is a written account, translation is a mode of representation, sharing with
other writing genres the condition of textuality, historicity and discursivity. As
such, it calls for a profound understanding of spatial and temporal relations, of
their ontological and gnoseological grounding. Unlike interpretation in which time
and space are conditioning agents, operating in the background, fulfilling
constrictive roles, translation is a structurally spatial and temporal art. It follows
that the principles of temporality and location are not just central to translation,
they are constitutive of it. Indeed the time-space framework in which translation is
cast makes of where and when the relevant questions to formulate in the act of
translating, as opposed to the predominantly who and what of interpreting. To
state the obvious, both translation and interpretation are temporally ordered
narrative sequences. However, whereas in interpreting, temporality is a principle
of exclusion, in translation, it functions as a structure of inclusion. Consequently,
with the significant exception of subtitling, in the strategies that they employ,
translators are for the larger part at liberty to elaborate, amplify or condense, as
the case may be, depending on the exigencies of the discourse field and text
type. In sharp contrast, by virtue of the specific condition of the practice, the
interpreter works invariably under the constraints of compression, literally caught
in the predicament of time. His/hers is an effort conducted extempore, benefitting

from the hindsight, yet not from the forethought of translation operations. While a
great deal of the translators linguistic skills are channelled into retrospection and
the reconstruction of the original design/intention of the author, under the
pressures of the fleeting act of interpreting, the interpreter invests a higher
energy in the flashforward, exerting to the full his/her flair for anticipation.
Moving between language systems, textuality and rhetoricity, translation
and interpretation are rhetorical and comparatist in filiation, working persuasively
and differentially and being inextricably bound up with disciplines such as
argumentation, comparative literature, contrastive linguistics and contrastive
rhetoric. Beside the common, genre-specific disciplinary heritage, this entails
elements of a common methodology, together with a topological and tropological
residual baggage. In other words, translation and interpretation are shaped in
various degrees by various types of intertextuality. They share with the above
disciplines texts as well as structures. From the point of view of the structural
intertextuality involved, a greater influence on translation is exerted by literary
intertextuality, whereas interpretation owes more to rhetorical intertextuality. In
written translation, it is both the topo and the tropo of the original text which
form the object of the translators attention; the two, are in fact as inseparable as
form and content, the tropes having a direct bearing on the themes. Formal
exigencies pertaining to the field of discourse are rather crucial in the rendition of
a text, be it a sonnet, a legal agreement or a user manual. In this respect, written
translation calls for a far higher degree of adaptation in textual register than oral
translation. Similarly, translation far exceeds interpretation in terms of the range
of intertexts, para-texts, and hypertexts, the latter being richer in terms of preand post-texts.
The art of bene dicendi, rhetoric is implicated in translation and
interpretation in both the reception and the production of the message. To the
extent that the figure of the rhetor can be understood as one of a skilful writer or
speaker both translation and interpretation presuppose (as well as a first and
second language medium and an audience), a rhetor. A speech genre, arguably,
closer to pre-literate culture, interpreting is governed by the norms of orality and

oratory as well as by the mode of conversational storytelling. Given that the

interpreter performs before an audience s/he inhabits the role of rhetor more
directly and immediately than the translator. As a form of public speaking,
interpreting is geared towards the principles of eloquent, effective and persuasive
utterance. The prevalence in the performance delivery of the interpreter of the
classical stages of rhetoric, invention, dispositio, elocutio, memoria, pronuntiatio/
action inevitably renders the interpreter the profile of a more dialogic type of
communicator. The paradox of the interpreters rhetoric situation is that despite
finding him/herself in the pursuit of a persuasive outcome, the interpreter cannot
afford the luxury of stylistic refinement, style being an expendable commodity in
the process of interpretation. Doubtless, clarity, concision, accuracy and
completeness of message take the front seat in interpreting, style being a liability.
Another paradox characterising the interpreters position is that, for all the
prescriptive norms against redundancy, formulaic repetitions form the very fabric
of interpretation, embedded as they are in the orality of its structures. A
potentially prolific question to pose here, the proper consideration of which would
however require a full-fledged, in-depth analysis regards textual intervention,
namely whether the marked rhetorical dominant of the act of interpretation results
in a higher degree of textual interpolation, indeed in a greater tendency to inflect
the original text.

As it follows from the brief expos on the embedded narrativity of

translating / interpreting above, as representational modes, before fulfilling a
specific communicative role, translation and interpretation are mimetic and
diegetic means of verbal expression, dealing in mono- and polylingual discourse.
Relative to the fiction or non-fiction narrations that they represent, they involve
principles of mimesis and of diegesis. Prolific in binary thinking, the study of
translation and interpretation has engendered a profuse series of polarities.
Across the decades, the vocabulary of translatology has as a result acquired a
host of by now established pair concepts such as: art versus technique; linguistic
versus literary; process versus product; literal versus free; formal versus

dynamic; semantic versus communicative, word-for-word versus sense-forsense, to name but a few. It is outside the scope of this enquiry to embark upon a
deconstructive reading of these categories, or contribute to an already abundant
list of polar opposites. Suffice it to say that, upon preliminary enquiry,
interpretation profiles itself as primarily mimetic, in that it is a mode of showing
based on emulating. In contradistinction, translation appears as pre-eminently
diegetic as it entails a heightened degree of elaborating, adapting, of reworking
and restructuring of the source text. While a clear-cut categorisation of the like
may run the risk of proving myopic or reductive, it is commonplace knowledge
that the translator is to a larger extent a co-creator of meaning, a form of aptitude
on which translators pride themselves.

Structuralism and poststructuralism have left an indelible mark on our

insights into the differential mechanisms of language, text typologies and families
of culture, shared patterns and tale types. In our post-Babel, postlapsarian
context, one that seeks to move beyond the limitations and misappropriations of
translation as a mere copy, second-hand and second best, or a surrogate or
substitute emerging out of a transparent pursuit of equivalence, the
poststructuralist/deconstructive turn deserves more than a mention. After all,
phonocentrism, as the inherent superiority of speech or sound over writing,
dominated, among other, views on interpretation until not so long ago. With the
impetus of the Derridean revolution, speech and writing are no longer viewed as
forming a binary opposition, a development of major consequence to our
understanding of the relationship between translation and interpretation that may
alone constitute itself in a comprehensive comparative approach. For the
purposes of this reflection, we content to suggest that a productive line of enquiry
into linguistic performance in translation and interpretation one finds in two
categories introduced by French literary theorist and semiotician, Roland Barthes
in his seminal study S/Z (1970) as well as in his essay From Work to Text
(1977). Speaking from a poststructuralist perspective, one that construes the text
as a discursive actualisation of acts of reading, here Barthes distinguishes

between works and texts based on the active/passive mode in which they
engage the reading process. He thus advances the notions of scriptible (writerly)
versus lisible (readerly) modes of writing, positing that whereas
modernist/postmodernist texts are scriptible par excellence, in that they invite
active participation in the production of meaning, classic realist works remain
lisible, engendering but a passive response to and absorption of ready-made
meaning. Along this discursive line of analysis, translating/interpreting can be
made analogous to a closed versus open field of discourse. To the extent that
both translating and interpreting are modes of representation that depend on
reading and interpretive processes in the various choices their practitioners
make, it is worth exploring their behaviour in terms of the writerly/readerly
dissociation traced by Barthes.

One of the mantras of translation studies that tends to bastardise thinking

on the discipline, is that translation bridges a gap between us and the outside
world, helping overcome language barriers, that it goes across existing linguistic
and cultural boundaries in the transmission of a message. While an extensive
body of translation/interpretation scholarship has over the decades concentrated
on the study of equivalence, context, typology of meaning, etc, the time has
perhaps come to return to the hermeneutic and poetic origins of translation and
I am using here the term in its broadest acceptation, to cover both oral and
written forms and interrogate these categories anew, and do so by way of
valorising the poststructuralist lessons on speaking- writing, reading-interpreting
with a view to re-routing our theoretical framework of analysis, and in the
process, rethink the linguistic correlative.

Works Cited
Barthes, Roland. S/Z. Paris: ditions du Seuil, 1970.
- - -. From Work to Text. Image, Music, Text. Trans. Stephen Heath. New York:
Hill and Wang, 1977.