How to obtain information about the sender
How can the translation-relevant information about the sender (or the text producer) be obtained? The first clues are provided by the text environment (imprints, blurbs, preface or epilogue, footnotes, etc.). The author's name may already carry further information which either belongs to the receiver's or translator's general background knowledge or can, if necessary, be obtained. The name of a writer usually evokes some knowledge of their literary classification, artistic intentions, favourite subject matters, usual addressees, status, etc.; similarly, the name of a politician evokes his or her political standpoint, function or position, public image, etc. Since this is culture-specific knowledge, which belongs to the "hinterland" of the text, it cannot be presumed that it is shared by the target receiver. Therefore, the translator has to consider whether the TT receiver might lack information. Whenever such a lack interferes with text comprehension, it should be compensated for by some additional piece of information given in the target text or in the TT environment.
Example
If ex-Prime Minister Edward Heath writes an editorial in a British newspaper, British readers will immediately know what political party the author belongs to. If the text is translated and published in the German weekly paper DIE ZEIT, many German readers may not be able to "classify" the author as easily. If, however, the classification is relevant for the comprehension and/ or interpretation of the article, the information has to be supplied in a few introductory lines or even in the text itself, if possible.
Further information about the sender may be provided by other factors of the communicative situation (either individually or as a combination of several factors). There may be clear and unambiguous information, which I call "data", or there may be hints which may allow the necessary information to be inferred. If the analyst knows, for instance, by which medium, at what time, and for which function a text has been published (local newspaper of the day X, death announcement), s/he is able to tell who the sender may be (relatives, employer, or friends of the dead person). The place of publication points to the origin of the sender or possible origin, if the language is spoken in various countries (Great Britain - United States - Australia - India; Portugal - Brazil; Spain - Latin America -Bolivia), and the medium can throw light on the possible status of the sender (specialized journal - expert; newspaper -journalist), etc.
Sometimes it may even be possible to ask the sender in person, or a person related to him or her.
Another source of information is the text itself. If the text environment does not provide the necessary details, the analyst has to look for internal hints about the characteristics of the sender. The use of a certain regional or class dialect may reveal the (geographical or social) origin of the text producer (although not necessarily that of the sender, if they are not the same person), and the use of obsolete forms may tell the analyst that the text producer probably lived in another age. These questions, however, can only be answered after completing the intratextual analysis.
Checklist
The following questions may help to find out the relevant information
about the sender:
1.Who is the sender of the text?
2.Is the sender identical with the text producer? If not, who is the text producer and what is his/her position with regard to the sender? Is s/he subject to the sender's instructions? Is s/he an expert in text production or an expert on the subject?
3.What information about the sender (e.g. age, geographical and social origin, education, status, relationship to the subject matter, etc.) can be obtained from the text environment? Is there any other information that is presupposed to be part of the receiver's general background knowledge? Can the sender or any person related to him or her be asked for more details?
4.What clues as to the characteristics of the sender can be inferred from other situational factors (medium, place, time, motive, function)?
5.What conclusions can be drawn from the data and clues obtained about the sender with regard to
(a)other extratextual dimensions (intention, receiver, medium, place, time, occasion, function) and
(b)the intratextual features?
The difference between intention, function, and effect
In order to ascertain the dimension of intention we have to ask what function the sender intends the text to fulfill, and what effect on the receiver s/he wants to achieve by transmitting the text. It may seem difficult to distinguish the concept of intention from that of function and effect. Biihler (1984), for example, equates "author's intention" with "purpose and effect". The three concepts are three different viewpoints of one and the same aspect of communication. The intention is defined from the viewpoint of the sender, who wants to achieve a certain purpose with the text. But the best of intentions does not guarantee that the result conforms to the intended purpose. It is the receiver who "completes" the communicative action by receiving (i.e. using) the text in a certain function, which is the result of the configuration or constellation of all the situational factors (including the intention of the sender and the receiver's own expectations based on his/her knowledge of the situation). The question "What is S aiming at with the text?" can therefore not be assigned to the factor of text function, but belongs to the dimension of intention.
Text function is defined "externally", before the receiver has actually read the text, whereas the effect the text has on the receiver can only be judged after reception. It is, so to speak, the result of the reception and encompasses both external and internal factors.
It is true that certain genres are conventionally associated with certain intentions, but these need not necessarily be realized in the communicative situation. Some ancient genres, for example, such as magic spells or epic poems, are received today in a function which differs considerably from that intended by the original sender.
Ideally, the three factors of intention, function and effect are congruent, which means that the function intended by the sender (= intention) is also assigned to the text by the receiver, who experiences exactly the effect conventionally associated with this function. Methodologically, the three factors have to be distinguished because their separate analysis allows for a different treatment (preservation, change, adaptation) in the translation process. If the intention has to be preserved in translation, we must often be prepared for a change in function and/or effect.
The intention of (he sender is of particular importance to the translator because it determines the structuring of the text with regard to content (subject matter, choice of informative details) and form (e.g. composition, stylistic-rhetorical characteristics, quotations, use of non-verbal elements etc.). At the same time, the specific organization of a text marks the text type and is a pre-signal which tells the receivers in which function they are expected to use the text.
Example
A set of operating instructions is meant to inform the user about a certain piece of equipment, e.g. a hairdryer, and to explain its correct use. Therefore, the text producer chooses the conventional forms of text organization (composition, sentence structures, lexical cliches, etc.). Taking the text out of the box with the hairdryer, the receiver recognizes the particular forms of text organization and immediately knows that the sender wants to inform about the hairdryer and the way it has to be used. Therefore receivers will normally utilize the text in this particular function. In this case, the text type is linked with a particular intention on the part of the sender, which leads to the corresponding text function on the part of the receiver. The effect will be that of "conventionality".
The sender's intention is also important in connection with the principle of loyalty. Even if the text function is changed in translation, the translator must not act contrary to the sender's intention (if it can be elicited).
The information on the dimension of intention can throw some light on other external factors (e.g., what effect on the receiver might be intended, which medium may be most appropriate or conventionally used to realize the intention in question, or whether there is a link between intention and genre), and, to a large extent, on the intratextual features (e.g. composition, use of rhetorical devices or non-verbal elements, tone, etc.).
What to find out about the sender's intention
What different types of intention can be associated with a text? There may be forms of "communication", where the sender is his or her own addressee: somebody may write something down either to ease the burden of their memory or to sort out their ideas and thoughts, or they may just scribble something on a piece of paper while making a phone call ("zero-intention"). These forms would not appear to be relevant to translation. In normal communication with two or more participants, the possible intentions correspond with the four basic functions of communication described above in connection with the systematic framework. We may ask, for example, whether the sender wants to inform the receiver about a certain issue (referential intention) or intends to express her/his feelings or attitude towards things (expressive intention), whether s/he plans to persuade the receiver to adopt a particular opinion or perform a certain activity (appellative intention), or whether s/he just wants to establish or maintain contact with the receiver (phatic intention).
Of course, a sender may well have more than just the one intention. Several intentions can be combined in a kind of hierarchy of relevance. For pragmatic reasons, this hierarchy may have to be changed in translation.
How to obtain information about the sender's intention
Normally, the receiver is not informed explicitly about the sender's intention, but receives the text as the result of the sender's communicative purposes. One means of obtaining explicit or implicit information about the intention(s) of the sender or text producer, therefore, is the analysis of intratextual features.
However, if we stay with the extratextual factors (sender, receiver, medium, place, time, motive, and function), these can throw some light on the intention the sender may have had in transmitting the text. Paralinguistic phenomena, such as manifestations of the sender's excitement or indignation, may have to be taken into account as well.
In determining the sender's intention we have to consider the role the sender adopts towards the receiver in or through the text, a role which is quite separate from the "real", status-based relationship between the two. A sender who is superior to the receiver because of greater knowledge about the subject in question may nevertheless try to play down this knowledge in order to gain the receiver's confidence. If the analyst knows the sender's role (in relation to status), s/he may be able to draw some conclusions as to the sender's intention.
The sender's intention is of particular importance when analysing literary texts or texts marked as a personal opinion (e.g. political commentaries, editorials) because there is no conventional link between genre and intention. In these cases, the translator may have to take account of the author's life and background, events that have influenced his or her writings or any literary classification (such as "romantic" or "politically/socially committed literature"). There is no doubt that for a translation-relevant text analysis translators must exploit all sources at their disposal. The translator should strive to achieve the information level which is presupposed in the receiver addressed by the author. For a literary text this will not be the level of a literary scholar, but certainly that of a "critical receiver".
Example
a) Bertolt Brecht is a representative of German politically committed literature. If the receivers know that his story "Measures against Violence" was first published in 1930, they may take this as a clue that the author intended to warn his readers about Nazi tendencies, b) If a text is published in a newspaper on the pages specially devoted to political commentaries (which in quality papers is often separate from news and reports), this medium of publication can be taken as a clear hint that the sender's intention was that of "commenting" on recent political events or tendencies, c) In a text marked as a "recipe" the reader can be quite sure that the sender's intention was to give directions for the preparation of a particular dish and to give a list of the necessary ingredients. However, if the same recipe is embedded into a larger unit, e.g. a novel, the sender's intention may have been quite different.
Sometimes senders themselves give a metacommunicative explanation as to their intentions, as is shown in the following example.
Example
In the preface of his story Los cachorros (Barcelona 1980), the Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa writes: "I wanted Los cachorros to sound like a story that is sung rather than told, and therefore the criterion for the choice of each syllable was not only a narrative but also a musical one. I somehow had the impression that the authenticity of the story depended on whether the reader really felt that he was listening to the story and not reading it. I wanted him to perceive the story with his ears." (My translation)
Such a statement by the author is no guarantee that the source text (actually, or even in the author's opinion) conforms to this intention.
Checklist
The following questions may help to find out the relevant information about the sender's intention:
1.Are there any extratextual or intratextual statements by the sender as to his or her intention(s) concerning the text?
2.What intention(s) are by convention associated with the genre to which the analysed text can be assigned?
3.What clues as to the sender's intention can be inferred from other situational factors (sender - especially his or her communicative role -, receiver, medium, place, time, and motive)?
4.What conclusions can be drawn from the data and clues obtained about the sender's intention with regard to
(a)other extratextual dimensions (receiver, medium, and function) and
(b)the intratextual features?
Lecture 2. Audience, Medium and Place of Communication
Source-text audience vs. target-text audience
During the process of text analysis the translator elicits those textual elements or features which can be considered to be determined by the particular audience-orientation of the source text. Since each target text is always addressed to receivers-in-situation different from those to whom the source text is or was addressed, the adaptation of precisely these elements is of particular importance.
Example
If the source text is a report on a recent event published in an American newspaper, it is addressed to a large, non-specific audience in the United States. In order to capture the attention of the readers the author chooses a sensationalistic title plus an additional, informative subtitle and uses small text segments and quotations as sub-headings for the paragraphs. The text is accompanied by two photos. All these features are intended as "reading-incentives" for the receiver. If this text is translated for a journalist who has herself initiated the translation because she is interested in the information provided by the text, the reading-incentives are superfluous, and the paragraph headings may even have a confusing effect.
Every TT receiver will be different from the ST receiver in at least one respect: they are members of another cultural and linguistic community. Therefore, a translation can never be addressed to "the same" receiver as the original.
Addressee vs. chance receiver
First of all, we have to distinguish between the addressee of a certain text (i.e. the person or persons addressed by the sender) and any chance receivers who happen to read or hear the text, even though they are not addressed directly, such as people listening to a panel discussion or watching a televised parliamentary debate. In some cases, the "chance receiver" is actually a secondary addressee; for example, when a politician pretends to be answering a question asked by an interviewer but is, in reality, addressing his/her words to potential voters.