Mar

15

Event Structure as Problem in Translation of Narrative

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It is impossible to talk about rendering a text in translation without referring to a particular literary text that is the subject of translation. Such a text will be viewed as an indivisible whole. One cannot consider only a small fragment or an excerpt thereof. Nor can one talk about a literary piece without referring to a particular language that is a material form which the entire text is made.
There are a lot of so-called “technical problems” arising during the analysis of a translation since whatever one wants to say about the translation has to be illustrated with the entire piece as a whole, and this usually tends to be rather lengthy.
Describing a translation may not be as hard as describing a language. One has to be equipped with a certain conceptual or notional apparatus that is based on a selected theory of language. E. Tabakowska uses the theory of cognitive linguistics, which provides its own terminology that is not necessarily available in Polish; in fact, most of the terms used by cognitive linguists haven’t been translated into Polish.
The framework of cognitive linguistics may offer a wide range of instruments for both the theory of and the practical application in translations.
This, of course, doesn’t mean that every translator should be a full-time linguist. An absurd notion.
But applying linguistic instruments in the initial stage of the translation process may become very helpful with what is called equivalence in translation.
The cognitive theory of language, which is user friendly, may come very handy while reflecting upon a translation. It seems that criteria used for assessing a translated piece may be more tangible and more precise if the critics use more precise and more objective tools, referred to as ‘dimensions of imagery”, a term introduced by Langacker.

What are dimensions of imagery?

Langacker (1991) identifies several dimensions of imagery that play a significant role in
construal. Included in his survey are the imposition of a profile on a base; level of
specificity; scale and scope of predication; salience of a predication’s substructures; and
perspective, which includes such factors as vantage point, orientation, and subjectivity
vs. objectivity
The term is potentially misleading, for it does not refer specifically to “imagery” as the term is often used in literary studies, or to sensory imagery, as it is used in psychology. So generally these days I
speak instead of “construal”, our ability to conceive and portray the same situation in alternate ways. Linguistically important dimensions of construal include the ability to portray the same situation at different levels of specificity (granularity), to confer different kinds and degrees of prominence on aspects of a situation, and to apprehend a situation from different perspectives. It is claimed that all linguistic elements and expressions incorporate a certain way of construing situations as a crucial part of their conventional meanings. I would not necessarily say that they are similar. One might say, instead, that using imagery of any sort to describe a situation is an
instance of construal, for the simple reason that the situation could also be described using alternate imagery (or none at all, to the extent that one believes that a neutral or literal description is
possible in principle).
Description of a language that takes into account dimensions of imagery is based on the premise that grammatical structure of that language have a symbolic nature. This is true for even the smallest grammar particles, morphemes that are part of a literary work. All of the smallest parts are combined in a single unit, a literary text.

In a non-literary language, one can define narrative as an account of events that are properly sequenced and somehow related.
Talmy claims that at the heart of narrative there lies progression. All events, orderly sequenced and set in time and space, form a single entity on a higher level, which can be called an event unit, a fundamental unit of narrative. Langacker uses the same term to describe a cognitive experience. .
Talmy defines an event as an entity residing in objective reality as a conceptual construct. It is a cognitive construct shaped by conceptualization. The world as we know it consists of a continuum of events, a stream that is not divided into smaller pieces. The segmentation of this continuum is done in the mind of a beholder.
Langacker states that an event is a bundle of interactions in temporal proximity that are perceived as a whole (as gestalt).
Setting is very often referred to as context.
An entity called Agent affects in a certain way another entity called Patient. The action performed by the Agent is signified by the thick arrow. The Patient affected by the action undergoes some change, which is represented by the wavy arrow in the diagram. The setting and the action is seen by an Observer.

Narrative could be construed from a number of canonical event models, but it hardly ever is, because a literary text cannot follow any strict model, hence comes its literariness .
All of the events however, whether canonical or not, have a pretty similar structure: there is a certain configuration that makes up a setting. All participants, who are mobile and dynamic, take certain actions in this setting, which doesn’t have to be physical, it can be imaginary.

The entire configuration of elements in an event has a number of different aspects, which combined make up a whole. This is what Langacker refers to as dimensions of imagery.

The so-called imagery is a term known to literary critics. Perrine defines literary imagery as “the representation of sensory experience through language“
Tabakowska believes that at some greater level of generalization the two terms show a certain degree of similarity. Literary critics say that such a representation may refer to the imagination or sensory experience of a sender, an author or a narrator.
Cognitivists would say that the sender is just a reference point in such a representation.
Conceptualization of an event may also comprise a number of sub-events, which may co-occur or occur in a sequence. This may have some serious repercussions when it comes to the use of grammatical structures and grammar in general, not only in a translation. Such conceptualization is represented by a form that is a conventionalized linguistic structure. This process spreads over a number of layers and it refers to the selection of lexical items, which may show various degrees of specificity.
The structural level of an event also depends on such a key element as profile determination. A speaker should decide whether the event will have a temporal character, that is to say whether it will
progress through time, or whether it will be atemporal, expressing some state not governed by time.
Dividing semantic content into figure and ground (terminology borrowed from gestalt psychology) is a basic dimension of conceptualization. In cognitive semantics the opposition between the figure and the ground is expressed by the opposition between trajectory and its reference point (landmark). Langackerian landmark allows the reader or listener to properly locate what is happening in time and space.
The way reality is perceived or how a setting is constructed differs from observer to observer, but is also limited by conventionalized language. Very often, the observer functions as a generalized observer, sacrificing his creativity on the altar of convention and conventionality to gain a better understanding among those who look at the world in a generalized way too. The range of structures used in a communication process set as a social contract is what forms the grammar of a language. These structures are fully conventionalized in various ways and on different levels.
Convention also requires that we label some fragments separated from an ongoing experience in our surroundings. If we want to separate some entities having autonomous status from the continuum of events, we must name them, usually by using nouns. If we want to separate some processes , we will choose verbs. Then we ll must agree that such selected categories we will use in a certain way, conventionalized way.

Metonymy
A figure of speech consisting of the use of the name of one thing for that of another of which it is an attribute or with which it is associated (as “crown” in “lands belonging to the crown”) (Merriam Webster)

Metonymy as a cognitive mechanism is typical in conceptualizing events. An instance of metonymy may include:
Taking the whole for a part. We say “We had an egg for breakfast” without ever mentioning the fact that we cut it in half and then into quarters. We don’t mention that we put each piece in our mouth.
Taking a part for the whole – Lands belonging to the crown.

Separate elements of an event involving metonymy may coexist or occur in a sequence. Usually, instances of metonymy are motivated pragmatically.
Generally, the focus is on the final product of a process, hence so many verbs are telic. People usually want to achieve a certain goal and very often they would speak of the whole event just
referring to its final stage. They would say “I came to Gdańsk” without introducing such redundant details as “I got on the train, I found a seat, I traveled for six hours”.

Conclusion:
The mood of a narrative is built from a number of grammatical structures that may pass unnoticed by the reader. Grammatical structure has a symbolic character. A literary critic would same “this story has a peculiar mood”. A theoretician of translation studies would say “equivalency requires that the mood be also rendered in the target language”. A translator must know how to find the anatomy of a text” before he could ask “how to accomplish that”.


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