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Table Of Contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• About the author(s)/editor(s)
• About the book
• This eBook can be cited
• Contents
• Introduction
• Part I: Language, culture and cognition
• 1 The interplay between metaphor and culture (Zoltán Kövecses)
• Introduction: Cultural meaning-making
• Metaphor and folk models
• Metaphor and folk theories
• Metaphor and expert theories
• Fluid in a container and large size
• Unity
• Natural force (storm, wave, flood)
• Metaphorical universality and variation
• Metaphor and context
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• 2 Memory, imagination, translation (Elżbieta Tabakowska)
• Preliminaries
• Memory: Psychology, cognitive linguistics, translation studies
• Memory and imagination
• Translation
• Can we teach translation?
• Bibliography
• Sources
• 3 Metonymic hiding and cross-cultural communication (Wojciech Wachowski)
• Introduction
• Metonymy: A conceptual phenomenon
• Metonymic hiding
• Metonymic hiding: Universality
• Metonymic hiding: Variation and context
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Websites
• 4 Between text and silence: Ellipsis as a linguistic phenomenon and a case of English–Polish translation (Anna Lesińska / Jacek Lesiński)
• Introduction
• Cohesion
• Ellipsis
• Types of ellipsis
• Nominal ellipsis
• Verbal ellipsis
• Operator ellipsis
• Out in the hall Alex met Grace
• Verbal lexical ellipsis
• Verbal operator ellipsis
• Nominal ellipsis
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Part II: Languages in contrast
• 5 On “paying attention”: The objectification of attention in English and Polish (Marcin Trojszczak)
• Introduction
• Attention
• Metaphorical conceptions of attention
• Cognitive corpus-based approach to metaphor
• Findings
• Paying attention is having a physical object-attention turned in the direction of something
• Paying attention is relocating a physical object-attention closer to something
• Paying attention is having a physical object-attention taken in possession by something
• Conclusion and further research
• Bibliography
• 6 Syntactic structures as carriers of emphatic expression in literary translation from English into Czech and vice versa (Jana Richterová)
• Introduction
• English and Czech word order systems and the FSP factors
• Translation from English into Czech: Analysed samples
• George Orwell: Animal Farm, translation by G. Gössel (1991)
• Alan Sillitoe: The Loneliness of a Long Distance Runner, translation by J. Škvorecký (1965)
• Translation from Czech into English: Analysed samples
• Josef Škvorecký: Zbabělci/The Cowards, translation by Jeanne Němcová (1970)
• The pseudo-cleft (“thematic equative”)
• Disputable usage of the pseudo-cleft
• The It-cleft
• Fronting
• Inversion (full)
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Literary excerpts
• 7 Translating doubt: The case of the Hungarian discourse marker vajon (Andrea Götz)
• Introduction
• Do discourse markers “translate”? Norms of language and translation
• Vajon and rhetorical questions
• Research design
• Research questions and hypotheses
• Corpus and methods
• The effect of transcription
• Results and discussion
• Translation data of vajon: English source texts translated into Hungarian
• Summary and discussion of results
• Interpretation data of vajon: English speeches interpreted into Hungarian
• Summary and discussion of results
• Conclusion
• Primary source
• Bibliography
• Part III: Translation in specialized discourses
• 8 Incongruity of civil law terms under Polish and British legal systems (Anna Kizińska)
• Introduction
• Methodology
• Research
• Spadkobierca ustawowy, spadkobierca testamentowy
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Legal acts
• Website
• Dictionaries
• Civil Code translations
• 9 Translation of individual lexical items for the purposes of lexicography: Practical considerations (Michał Janowski)
• Introduction
• The Lithuanian language and Proto-Indo-European reconstruction
• The organization of the project
• Selection of the translators through test translations
• Characteristics of the text
• The form
• The content
• Linguistic variation: alternant and variant forms
• Hidden terminology
• Lexical gaps
• Onomatopoeia
• Problems related to culture and technology
• Bibliography
• 10 Psychology in translation: Textual tendencies in selected English–Polish translations of popular science texts (Monika Linke-Ratuszny)
• Translation of popular science texts as specialized translation
• Polish psychological discourse and translation of texts on psychology into Polish
• Case study
• Materials
• Study aims and methodology
• Analysis of the position of translated texts
• Documentation of sources
• Analysis of selected lexical aspects
• Titles of articles
• Institutions, associations and academic titles
• Terminology
• Titles of publications within the texts
• Examples of dominant textual tendencies
• Deletions
• Generalizations
• Additions
• Expansions
• Shifts in register
• Structural editing
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Primary sources
• Secondary sources
• Part IV: Between the global and the local
• 11 Rendering accents, dialects and prosodic features in game localization (Paweł Aleksandrowicz)
• The problem of accent rendition
• The solutions to the problem of accent rendition
• Partial or no localization
• Retaining the original accent
• Accent-to-accent transfer
• Accent-to-dialect transfer
• Neutralization
• Prosody manipulation
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• 12 Between globalness and localness: The case of proper names in the philosophy of language (Tomohiro Sakai)
• Introduction
• Nature of the convention associating a proper name with its bearer
• An overview
• The homonymy view
• The indexical view
• Are proper names part of the language?
• Proper names as a grammatical category
• The essentially local character of proper names
• The essentially global character of proper names
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• 13 Motoring and discourse speak one language: A case for globalized motoring discourse (Maciej Adamski)
• Introduction
• The language of motoring
• Car-driven identities in communication
• The stages of development
• The Babel of cars
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Notes on contributors
• Index
• Series index

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ELŻBIETA TABAKOWSKA

2 Memory, imagination, translation¹

Memory feeds imagination.

— AMY TAN

For memory, we use our imagination. We take a few strands of real time and carry them with us, then like an oyster we create a pearl around them.

— JOHN BANVILLE

Preliminaries

Memory has long been recognized as a subject of scholarly investigation, but realization of its significance for translation and translation studies (henceforward TS) is relatively recent; over the last decades, research has been carried out in two main areas: neuroscience and translation memories. The former aims at finding out “what actually occurs in the brain as translators move between languages” (Tymoczko 2014: 112), and its main assumption is that mental processes which underlie interlingual transfers are fed by memories of earlier experience and of knowledge gained through cultural transmission. The ultimate purpose of the research is a comprehensive description of the role that human memory plays in the process of translation. In contrast, translation memories are electronic tools that ← 19 | 20 → facilitate translation through quick recovery of large corpora of possible translation equivalents and thus offering preferred choices, according to frequency of occurrence and the principle of maximum similarity. What human memory and computerized memory have in common is providing the (human) translator with information needed to make particular translational decisions, based upon earlier knowledge and/or experience. Imagination, tacitly considered a facility of the human mind that is necessary to perform translation, is one of the undercurrents present in practically all discussions on translation. However, it has not been systematically discussed within the TS framework. The recognition of the significance of memory and imagination for TS reflects the recent overall shift in theoretical thinking about translation: from translation considered as a ready product towards translation seen as a process. In consequence, there is a shift of the focus from contrastive analyses of source and target texts towards investigation of the translator’s decision-making processes. The discussion presented further in this chapter follows this way of thinking; it is based upon the following assumptions:

1. Memory – either human or computerized – plays a significant role at every stage of the translation process, which consists of three consecutive phases, believed to underlie any creative cognitive process of the human mind: perception, conceptualization and expression (Nathan 2009). The borderline between the first two stages is fuzzy, as in perception new experience (knowledge) is constantly juxtaposed to imagination, by retrieving what had already been stored in memory, which results in constructing or reconstructing relevant mental structures. Therefore, some scholars (notably Talmy 1996) postulate a terminological merger, in which perception and conception coalesce into a single process of –ception. The last stage is that of expression, that is, with application to translation, finding linguistic forms deemed to be most adequate as means to render the outcome of –ception.

2. Both computerized memory and human memory are subjective and selective, as are treasure troves of individuals and communities, accumulated as the result of either direct experience or complex cognitive processes. Unlike translation memories, human memory stores ← 20 | 21 → memories of an individual’s imaginings of things and events rather than of memories of facts.

3. Human memory – unlike computerized memories – is supported by imagination, while a translation memory can be created offhand by a computer programmer (indeed, on the web one can find readymade instructions on how to create “a new empty memory”).

It is the links between memory and imagination which I consider crucial for any discussion about the translation process, and it is this relation that will be thrown into relief in the remainder of this chapter.

Memory: Psychology, cognitive linguistics, translation studies

In psychology, the main distinction is made between short-time memory (henceforward STM) and long-time memory (henceforward LTM). The former stores small amounts of information which is kept for a short time, that is, for as long as the material is being focused upon. In the case of the latter, the storing time is unlimited, and the effect of its operation is commonly referred to as remembering. It involves either recognition, that is, including some new information into old (that is, already/existing) mental categories, or leads to rearranging category membership or creating new categories. Unlike STM, LTM is linked to biological processes: the brain substrate becomes permanently changed, resulting in the emergence of what is defined as memory traces. If the trace involves integration of cognitive aspects with affective aspects (memory of emotion), the memory is stored in LTM as an integrated memory trace.

Depending on the ways in which information stored in LMT is retrieved, psychological studies differentiate between declarative and non-declarative LTM. Declarative, or explicit, memory includes things that had been remembered and which are consciously recalled whenever they are needed for carrying out a particular cognitive process. On the other ← 21 | 22 → hand, non-declarative, or procedural LTM refers to memories that do not require conscious retrieval. In view of the nature of the material stored, LTM can be either episodic or semantic. Episodic memories are events and facts pertaining to individual experience, while semantic memory stores general factual information. Thus episodic memory is specific: it pertains to particular facts and events associated with particular time or particular places and results in the recollection of individual rich images. By contrast, semantic memory is schematic, and it involves general rules, principles, etc. such as are devoid of particular contexts. “The episodic” versus “the semantic” dichotomy is reflected in the opposition between individual memory (also called autobiographic), which stores memories from one’s life, and collective memory, which includes the overall cultural load of a community. The interplay of ST in LT memories can be shown in Figure 2.1.

Figure 2.1: The interplay of ST in LT memories.

Carrying out a cognitive task requires making use of information stored in both STM and LTM. When performing such tasks, the human mind uses what is defined as working memory, which is “a system for temporarily storing and managing the information required to carry out complex cognitive tasks such as learning, reasoning, and comprehension” (<http://www.vmedicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=7143>). ← 22 | 23 → In other words, working memory is responsible for the retrieval of that part of information which is activated in order to be used “right now”, as well as for integrating it with both information stored as (integrated) memory traces (LTM) and the data coming from immediate direct experience (STM).

In translation, the original cognitive task is that of reading and understanding the original written text. Apart from mechanisms responsible for recognition and analysis of graphic signs, STM operations engage linguistic information stored in LTM – both declarative and non-declarative. The former allows to retrieve the word-specific, or verbal knowledge, which is stored in memory in the form of mental lexicon, while the latter accounts for grammar: the rule governed combinations of lexical items into larger structures, that is, procedures performed automatically, without engaging the agent’s consciousness (cf. e.g. Ullman 2004; Tymoczko 1012: 120). With the help of imagination, a mental image is created, which becomes subject to understanding: reasoning, interpretation, judgement, etc. Below I will try and substantiate the claim that the difference between declarative and non-declarative memories has a bearing on translation theory, practical translation and translation teaching.

The role of memory in understanding linguistic expressions has been recognized by linguists. Parallels with mental structures and processes posited by theorists working within the framework of cognitive linguistics are easily seen. Psychological underpinnings of cognitive linguistics have now become a matter of course, although the correspondences are more often implied than explicitly accounted for. Thus the structure and working of STM find a direct counterpart in Gilles Fauconnier’s theory of mental spaces (henceforward MSs), which are defined as a “very partial assemblies constructed as we think and talk, for purposes of local understanding and action”. MSs are connected to long-term schematic knowledge, that is, knowledge structured within semantic frames or idealized cognitive models. In other words, MSs operate in working memory, but are fed with well entrenched information, due to activating relevant structures stored in LTM. Although dynamic in nature and constantly adapted to the requirements of ongoing mental processes, they can become “petrified” and then become stored in LTM for future use: they give rise to (integrated) memory traces, which cognitive linguistics defines as cognitive domains. Significantly, “mental spaces ← 23 | 24 → are built up from many sources – from previous knowledge, from immediate experience, or – which is particularly important in view of the subject under discussion in this paper – from ‘what people say to us’” (Fauconnier online).

With reference to translation studies, both STM and MSs correspond to what process- oriented TS defines as the translation unit: “the stretch of source text on which the translator focuses attention in order to represent it as a whole in the target language” (Malmkjaer 1998: 286, after Baker and Saldanha 2009: 304). The notional convergence (in spite of terminological disparity) is not accidental. Discussing this point in more detail would mean going beyond the scope of the present chapter. Suffice it to say that it is just one of the many areas where neuroscience, psychology, linguistics and TS meet, each discipline feeding the neighbouring ones, with the overall complex justifying the plea for interdisciplinarity understood as two- or many-ways traffic.

Adapted to the process of translation the interplay between memories stored in cognitive domains and mental spaces, Figure 2.1 can be adapted as shown in Figure 2.2.

Figure 2.2: Figure 2.1 adapted to the process of translation. ← 24 | 25 →

As an illustration, consider

(1) […] they would continue to explore the twisting alleyways and sudden squares in silence, and with each step the city would recede […] (McEwan, The Comfort of Strangers, 1982: 150; author’s emphasis)