This intentionality is reflected by those characteristics of lexis which are not due to the specific situational conditions or to norms and conventions, as well as by those features which appear to signal an intentional "violation" of any norms and conventions valid both for the genre in question and for the conditions of medium, place, time, and motive of communication characterizing the situation of the text. This means that a feature of lexis can be assumed to be intentional if the translator has to analyse the interest and the purpose which induced the author to use precisely this expression, this figure, this word.
Example
Language can be used, for example, to camouflage the real significance of an event, as is shown in the following paragraph from an article on "doublespeak": "Attentive observers of the English language also learned recently that the multi-billion-dollar stock market crash of 1987 was simply a fourth-quarter equity retreat; that aircraft don't crash, they have uncontrolled contact •with the ground; that janitors are environmental technicians; that it was a diagnostic misadventure of a high magnitude which caused the death of a patient in a Philadelphia hospital, not malpractice; and that Ronald Reagan wasn't really unconscious while he underwent minor surgery, just in a non-decision-making form." (THE SUNDAY TIMES, 7 January 1990)
In order to elicit the sender's intention it seems advisable to analyse the "degree of originality" of the lexis used in the text. This is common practice with similes and metaphors. But it can also be applied to other figures of speech, such as the adoption of words from other areas of lexis (e.g. language for special purposes in a general text), other registers (e.g. slang words in a formal text), or from regional or social dialects, and to the metonymic use of words (e.g. the Pentagon for the US Ministry of Defense). In all these cases the translator has to examine whether the choice of words is common or at least standardised for certain text types or whether it can be regarded as original or even extravagant.
The analysis of various lexical items in a text can often show that a particular stylistic feature is characteristic of the whole text. If the translation skopos requires the preservation of such features, individual translation decisions (in the field of lexis as well as content, composition, sentence structure, etc.) have to be subordinated to this purpose. The translator has to plan the translation strategies with this overall purpose in mind, looking for the stylistic means which serve to achieve this purpose in the target language and culture instead of translating metaphor by metaphor or simile by simile.
Similarly, the translator should also assess the stylistic implications of the author's "semantic intentionality". Semantic intentionality refers to the reasons which have induced the author to select one particular piece of information for his or her text from the wide range of all possible information, and to the effect that this choice has on the audience. This can be of particular importance in fictional texts since it may be assumed that the number of informational details which the author may choose from is limited only by the situational conditions. The decision to take one specific detail rather than another constitutes an important clue to the author's (stylistic, literary) intention.
A text may not only contain implicit clues to the sender's intention, but also explicit expressions or (often conventional) cliches by which the sender's intention is announced.
Example
"Our aim is therefore to replace a sporadic approach with a systematic one; to minimise - we can never remove - the intuitive element in criteria of analysis." (From the Introduction to Crystal & Davy 1969: 14).
The medium mainly influences the level of style of the lexical elements (colloquial, formal), word formation (e.g. abbreviated words or acronyms as used in mobile phone messages) and deictic expressions (e.g. operating instructions, which come to the receiver together with the machine).
Example
Just a few examples of typical newspaper abbreviations and compounds, collected from one page of THE SUNDAY TIMES (7 January 1990, p. El); Ј215m fraud, pre-tax profits, RAF, ISC, CSF, GEC, GrandMet, Bond Corp, a pubs-for-breweries swap, the UK dairy-produce company, cash-rich institutions, PR group.
The aspect of time is also reflected in deictic elements, in internal time references, and in temporal markings of certain lexical items. This last aspect is particularly relevant both to the translation of old texts and to that of texts whose language is marked as "modern". In old texts we would not expect "modernisms" (and vice versa).
However, the translator has to decide whether the translation skopos requires a "synchronous" or an "actualizing" translation. As it might be difficult for a 21st century translator to render a text in the language of the 18th century, s/he should at least take care not to use typically 21st century lexis (e.g. fashion words).
In Jonathan Swift's A Voyage to Lilliput, archaic forms like giveth, mathema-ticks, physick, Old Jury instead of Old Jewry, my self and words like hosier (in the 1735 edition, reprinted in Gulliver s Travels, Everyman's Library, London 1940) mark the text as "old" without being an obstacle to comprehension. The German translation (Swift 1983), however, is written in unmarked modern German.
Certain text types, such as legal documents, are characterized by archaic lexis.
The motive or occasion for communication may influence the choice of lexis by requiring a particular level of style (e.g. in a funeral address) or certain formulas or cliches. This can be an important aspect when the target text is intended to be used on a different occasion from that of the source text.
Text function (in correlation with the text type) is also frequently reflected in the choice of lexical items. For example, some examples of typical lexical features of the language of newspaper reporting: complex pre and postmodification, typical adjective compounds such as more and faster-arriving, sequences of adjectives; emphatic and colloquial lexis, etc. Language for special purposes and metalanguage are other function-specific fields of word use. Genre conventions point to the fact that the sender is interested in subordinating form to content, thus setting guidelines for a particular effect of the text. If the function changes within the text, the use of text-type conventions or of functional style can signal a particular stylistic interest on the part of the author.
Checklist
The following questions may be helpful in analysing the lexis used in a text.
1. How are the extratextual factors reflected in the use of lexis (regional and social dialects, historical language varieties, choice of register, medium-specific lexis, conventional formulas determined by occasion or function, etc.)?
2. Which features of the lexis used in the text indicate the attitude of the sender and his/her "stylistic interest" (e.g. stylistic markers, connotations, rhetorical figures of speech, such as metaphors and similes, individual word coinages, puns)?
3. Which fields of lexis (terminologies, metalanguage) are represented in the text?
4. Are there any parts of speech (nouns, adjectives) or patterns of word formation (compounds, prefixed words, apocopes) which occur more frequently in the text than would normally be the case?
5. Which level of style can the text be assigned to?
Sentence Structure
General considerations
The formal, functional and stylistic aspects of sentence structure are mentioned as an important factor in almost all approaches to translation-relevant text analysis, although they are not dealt with in any systematic way.
In spite of the transcultural repertoire of syntactic figures of speech, such as parallelisms, chiasms, rhetorical questions, etc., the effect of these figures may vary slightly according to the different language structures. Complex hypotactic sentences are generally regarded as an appropriate means to describe complex facts. However, in German, hypotactic sentences are much more likely to look complicated and intricate (partly because the verb has to be put at the end of subordinate clauses) than, for instance, in Spanish, where the syntax has a principally linear character and where isolated non-finite constructions (gerund, participles, infinitives) are often preferred to subor-i clinate clauses.
The analysis of sentence structure yields information about the characteristics of the subject matter (e.g. simple vs. complex), the text composition ("mise en relief, order of informational details), and the suprasegmental features (stress, speed, tension), and some syntactic figures, such as aposiopesis, may indicate presuppositions. Among the extratextual factors it is primarily the aspects of intention, medium and text function that are characterized by particular sentence structures.
How to find out about sentence structure
The translator gets a first impression of the typical sentence structure of a text by analysing the (average) length and type of the sentences (statements, questions, exclamations, ellipses) and the other constructions which replace sentences (infinitives, past and present participles, gerunds), the distribution of main clauses and subordinate clauses -and inclusions - in the text (paratactical vs. hypotactical sentence structures), and the connection of sentences by connectives, such as conjunctions, temporal adverbs, substitutions, etc.. On the basis of such an analysis, s/he is able to find out how the information given in the text is structured. I wish to stress the point, however, that the analysis of sentence structure is not an aim in itself but must lead to a functional interpretation.
Below the level of sentences and clauses it is the order of the constituents (such as Subject-Predicator-Complement/SPC) or words (e.g. the position of adverbials) that may lead to a further structuring. Depending on their respective norms of word order, intonation, pitch patterns, etc., different languages use different means of focussing certain sentence parts or of giving a "relief to the text. By analysing the different aspects of syntax (e.g. distribution of main and subordinate clauses and non-finite constructions, "mise en relief by tense and aspect) the translator may achieve a solid basis for text interpretation.
In addition to the classical figures of speech it is (mainly, but not only, in literary texts) the deviation from syntactic norms and conventions which is used in order to produce a particular stylistic effect. In these cases, the translator has first to find out what kind of deviation is used and how it works before s/he can decide, whether or how to "translate" it (in the widest sense of the word) in the light of the translation brief.
Example
In his short story Los cachorros ("The Little Dogs"), the Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa plays with syntactic structures, boldly mixing narration, direct speech and stream-of-consciousness technique: "Y un dia, toma, su mama, corazon, le regalaba ese pic-up, ipara el solito?, si...". By a syntactic analysis, we can separate the narrative sentence, which conforms to the syntactical norms ("Y un dia su mama le regalaba ese pic-up"), from the inserted elements of direct speech {toma, corazon, si) and interior monologue Qpara el solito?). Reversing these steps of analysis, the translation is easy: "And one day, here you are, his mummy, darling, gave him that record-player, just for him?, yes..."
The syntactic features, too, depend on various other intratextual features, especially content and composition (e.g. distribution of informational details both in the text and in the sentences), lexis (e.g. verbal or nominal constructions), and suprasegmental features (especially focus, intonation). Among the extratextual factors it is mainly the aspects of intention, audience, medium (e.g. speech vs. writing), and function (e.g. conventional structures), which affect the syntactic features.
Checklist
The following questions may be helpful in analysing sentence structure:
1.Are the sentences long or short, coordinated or subordinated? How are they linked?
2.Which sentence types occur in the text?
3.Does the order of sentence constituents correspond to the theme-rheme structure? Are there any focussing structures or deviations from normal word order?
4.Is there any text relief?
5.Are there any syntactic figures of speech, such as parallelism, chiasm, rhetorical question, parenthesis, aposiopesis, ellipsis, etc.? What function do they perform in the text?
6. Are there any syntactic features which are determined by audience orientation, text-type conventions, or by the medium? Does the translation skopos require any adaptations?
Suprasegmental features
General considerations
The suprasegmental features of a text are all those features of text organization which overlap the boundaries of any lexical or syntactical segments, sentences, and paragraphs, framing the phonological "gestalt" or specific "tone" of the text.
The particular framing of a text depends, first and foremost, on the medium by which the text is transmitted. In written texts, the suprasegmental features are signalled by optical means, such as italics, spaced or bold type, quotation marks, dashes and parentheses, etc.
In spoken texts, the suprasegmental features are signalled by acoustic means, such as tonicity, modulation, variations in pitch and loudness, etc.. This applies both to spoken texts which are produced spontaneously (e.g. a contributions to a discussion, a statement by the witness of an accident) and to written texts which are presented orally (e.g. lectures, radio and television news, etc.).
It is important to distinguish suprasegmental features, in their function as features of verbal text organization, from the non-verbal or para-verbal elements accompanying the text, such as facial expressions, gestures, etc. On the other hand, habitual psycho-physical and physical features of speech (such as quality of voice or excitement) as well as features resulting from biographical factors (such as origin, age, status, e.g. social or regional dialect) must be distinguished from "controllable" functional features, i.e. features depending on the sender's intention or on other situational factors such as the relationship between sender and receiver etc.
Prosody, intonation, and stress
The concept of intonation refers to "the totality of prosodic qualities of utterances which are not linked to individual sounds". It includes the general features of tonicity and pitch, modulation, rhythmicality, speed, loudness, tension and pauses.
Intonation as a means of text organization (as opposed to intonation indicating psychical states, habitual characteristics of the sender or even psycho-pathological phenomena) serves mainly to mark the information structure and to divide the speech stream into tone units separated by pauses. The tone units usually correspond to information units. Another function of intonation is to mark the semantic nucleus of the sentence.
Moreover, intonation helps to disambiguate the various possible meanings of a sentence (e.g. serious vs. ironic meaning in the sentence "That was very clever of you!"). The "meaning" conveyed by intonation is independent of, i.e. not subordinated but coordinated to, that of lexical and semantic units. Intonation signals the attitude of the speaker towards the message and, in this respect, its function can be compared with that of the stylistic function of lexis and sentence structure. It can be analysed only in connection with the other two factors.
The analysis of prosodic features is of particular relevance to the interpreter. It facilitates the comprehension of content and text composition, since stress markings are a textological instrument for making the relations of coherence between sentences explicit. For example, the stress on the word money in the sentence "John found some money today" points to it in the following sentence: "But he spent it immediately." In simultaneous interpreting, the analysis of intonation therefore can make it easier for the interpreter to anticipate how the text will continue. The pauses between the informational elements, whether "empty" or "filled" by sounds such as ah, hum, etc., divide the stream of speech and give a breathing space to the interpreter.
On the other hand, "contrastive" stress may reveal the speaker's intention. In the sentence pair "John found some money today" and "Peter found happiness", the stress on money forms a paradigmatic contrast with the stress on happiness. Syntagmatic contrast is produced by the two stress points in the sentence "John found some money today" if the following (or preceding) sentence is "He found happiness yesterday". In English, contrastive stress is often combined with certain syntactic structures, such as clefting: "It was John who found some money today, but Peter was the one who found happiness." Contrastive stress, too, can be very helpful to the interpreter because it limits the variety of possible "next sentences" and thus makes anticipation easier. Of course, the procedures for source text analysis have to be automatized or internalized in interpreter training, since there is not much time to start thinking about contrastive stress in the process of simultaneous interpreting.