A fact about translation is that translating the words as the original has them does not mean the intention of the text will come across in the new language and culture. Text types, according to Katharina Reiss, are one way to evaluate the original text for its intention.
Advertisements are meant to convince an audience, so translating them as advertisements (rather than as historical documents) requires adjusting them to a new context.
THREE TEXT TYPES
In the 1970's Katharina Reiss (1923-2018), a German linguist and translation scholar, developed a theory of the function of language in the context of three text types. She was building on the work of Karl Bühler (1879-1963), who had defined the text types as:
Informative
(scientific paper, encyclopedia entry)
language whose function is to deliver information
Expressive
(poem, play)
language whose function is to express a point of view
Appellative
(sermon, political speech)
language whose function is to convince the reader/listener
Reiss theorized that each of Bühler's text types necessitates a different approach to translation and that a translation will be judged by how successfully it transmits the predominant function of the original.
Text Types in Translation
Informative Translation:
Reiss argued that the translation for informative texts will succeed if it accurately represents the facts that the original intends to communicate. It is less important whether the translation also captures style and form, though many informative texts assume a certain form (encyclopedias are not especially lyrical). A matter of fact style in a certain context is in fact often how we know we are reading an informative text.
Appellative Translation:
Reiss argued that since an appellative texts exist primarily to convince an audience, the success of the translation can be measured by whether it is similarly convincing to its new audience. We sometimes translate appellative texts as historical documents (e.g. Machiaveli's The Prince), but then they cease to be appellative. In translating, say, an advertisement, the ability to convince is still central. In pursuing this end, appellative translations readily allow adaptations: changing names, forms, symbols, approaches to better appeal to a new audience.
Expressive Translation:
With expressive texts, the translation will often focus on the voice, style, mood, sound, and subjective expressiveness of the original text. Reiss argued that in order to achieve this, the translator must, as much as is possible, inhabit the mind of the original author. Translations of the expressive text type are the most subjective and varied.
Assessing the original work for its primary text type helps us better set our expectations for the possible intentions and strategies of the translation.
An ancient example
In 42 BCE, Cicero wrote about translating the speeches of Greek statesmen and orators, Aeschines and Demosthenes, from Greek to Latin, in a short treatise called "De Optimo Genere Oratorum" (On the Best Kind of Orators), which is one of the earliest discussions of translation theory.
When discussing his approach, Cicero writes:
"I translated the most famous orations of the two most eloquent Attic orators, Aeschines and Demosthenes, orations which they delivered against each other. And I did not translate them as an interpreter, but as an orator, keeping the same ideas and the forms, or as one might say, the “figures” of thought, but in language which conforms to our usage."
Converti enim ex Atticis duorum eloquentissimorum nobilissimas orationes inter seque contrarias, Aeschinis et Demosthenis; nec converti ut interpres, sed ut orator, sententiis isdem et earum formis tamquam figuris, verbis ad nostram consuetudinem aptis.
Note that the latin word for "I translated" is "converti." Note also Cicero's use of "interpreter" as a kind of translator that he does not want to be. Today, interpreter and translator are two distinct professions requiring two different skillsets
Based on his approach to translating them, Cicero saw the texts by Aeschines and Demosthenes as primarily what text type?
most texts are nuanced
What is the primary text type of a newspaper profile of a politician to be translated from Portugese to English?
What is the primary text type of a "Stay Healthy!" poster for a doctor's office to be translated from Bengali to German?
Expressive Translations grapple with the subjectivity of language
[An ancient pond!] is a well-known haiku by Matsuo Bashō (1644-1694) and has been translated by dozens of poets and scholars. Each translation attempts to capture an expressive aspect of the poem.
Japanese Original:
古池や
蛙飛びこむ
水の音
Transliteration:
furu ike ya
kawazu tobikomu
mizu no oto
The old pond;
A frog jumps in —
The sound of the water.
Tr. R.H. Blyth (1898-1964)
The old pond, yes, and
A frog-jumping-in-the-
Water’s noise!
Tr. G.S. Fraser (1915-1980)
pond
frog
plop!
Tr. James Kirkup (1918-2009)
Breaking the silence
Of an ancient pond,
A frog jumped into water —
A deep resonance.
Tr. Nobuyuki Yuasa (b. 1932)
Old pond
leap—splash
a frog.
Tr. Lucien Stryk (1924-2013)
The old pond,
A frog jumps in:
Plop!
Tr. Alan Watts (1915-1973)
An old pond —
The sound
Of a diving frog.
Tr. Kenneth Rexroth (1905-1982)
old pond
a frog jumps into
the sound of water
Tr. Jane Reichhold (1937-2016)
Because the effects of a poem are so compressed inside the language, emanating from the rhythm and sound as much as the connotations and evocations of individual words, translating a poem requires an equally wild sense of creativity in the new language. Each translation finds some new aspect of the poem in its original language.