Abstract

The aim of the research presented here is to find out what motivates professional interpreters in their profession and whether there are specific dimensions of motivation that distinguish professional interpreters with longer experience from professional interpreters with shorter experience, interpreting students, and the general population of non-interpreters. The research tools used were semi-structured interviews and the Achievement Motivation Inventory (AMI). The interpreters in our research sample (N=9) considered specific personality traits more important than general giftedness or talent. In particular, they considered curiosity, a general interest in the world around them, and the enjoyment of tackling new challenges to be desirable. In general, interpreters were convinced that skills can be acquired through practice and experience if one is sufficiently motivated (intrinsic motivation). Quantitative analysis and comparison of the motivational profiles of the different groups with each other showed that professional interpreters with longer experience were characterized by higher perseverance, dominance, and confidence in success. Therefore, these characteristics are likely to be acquired in the process of gaining experience, a more advanced routine, erudition, and thus confidence in their own abilities. On the contrary, none of the interviewees reported feeling motivated by status orientation or the pursuit of career advancement. These statements were supported by the data from the quantitative analysis in the AMI. Strong intrinsic motivation and the belief that one's own skills and competences can be improved through training and experience are undoubtedly beneficial "mindsets" that allow interpreters to remain satisfied and successful in their profession for a relatively long time. 

Keywords: professional interpreters, motivation, semi-structured interviews, students, AMI

1. Introduction

Every profession demands cognitive prerequisites, abilities, and skills. However, personality traits also play a crucial role and are the most challenging variables to control. That is not different in the interpreting profession. Apart from cognitive prerequisites, abilities, and skills, Rosiers and Eyckmans (2017) also underline the importance of the interpreter's personality profile for potential success in the profession. Research on interpreting has explored various aspects of the personality of professional interpreters and interpreting students and has identified several soft skills linked to personality traits which can be classified as desirable. Generally speaking, these are characteristics related to conference interpreting, but it is likely that most of these characteristics may also be relevant for community interpreters (Rosiers and Eyckmans 2017) as well as for sign language interpreters (Macnamara et al. 2011).

Setton and Dawrant (2016) offer a summary of desirable personality characteristics in applicants to the interpreting profession based on the experience of leading interpreting programmes. According to the authors, one of several relevant characteristics is high motivation.

The importance of motivation for human performance in general, and for interpreting performance in particular, is also highlighted by Moser-Mercer (2008). Drawing on the literature, the author considers willingness, i.e., the motivation and attitude of an individual to perform a given skill at the highest level, to be one of the three main factors, alongside opportunity (suitable physical working environment) and capacity (intelligence, acquired skills, physical fitness).

Although it is clear that certain qualities may be key to the interpreting profession, Korpal (2016) points to overlooking the importance of personality and psycho-affective factors in theoretical considerations about interpreting as well as in interpreting practice. For these reasons, specifically due to the potential relevance of certain characteristics in the interpreting profession and, at the same time, relatively limited attention devoted to this subject by research, we decided to investigate selected personality characteristics in professional interpreters and interpreting students. We conducted comprehensive empirical research, part of which focused on exploring motivation. This study presents the results of an investigation into motivation and seeks to answer the following questions:

1. What motivates professional interpreters in the profession? In other words: do they have some kind of internal engine that drives them in their efforts to perform well, or are external circumstances more decisive?
2. Do professional interpreters with longer experience (seniors) have a different motivational profile than professional interpreters with shorter experience (juniors)?
3. Do professional interpreters differ in terms of achievement motivation from interpreting students and the general population of "non-interpreters"?

2. Motivation

According to Pašková (2008), the study of motivation is undeniably crucial for understanding an individual's personality, as it represents a possible driving force behind their actions. In psychology, there are different models and categories of motivation. Vallerand (1997) formulated a structural model of motivation consisting of three levels that interact hierarchically: global motivation (the general disposition of the personality), contextual motivation (motivational orientation and context-specific regulatory strategies in different domains) and situational motivation (motivation in a specific situation).

At all levels of the hierarchy, both internal and external, individual and social factors play a role. A key concept is motives defined as internal determinants of the direction and strength of behaviour (Nakonečný 1997: 125). Any behaviour directed towards achieving a desired outcome or fulfilling a need is called motivated behaviour. In the context of motivated behaviour, Gabler (2002: 52) uses the term performance motivation to refer to all the actual emotional and cognitive processes that are triggered when an individual is confronted with a performance situation. Thus, we speak of motivated behaviour (motivated performance) when a person tries harder, focuses more on the task, and persists longer in it (Roberts 2001: 8). In this case, motivated behaviour refers to physical activity (sports), but it is evident that by analogy it can also be applied to intellectual activity.

Motives can also be understood as “general drivers of risk-taking” (Zinn 2015: 3). Risk-taking behaviour is a specific type of motivated behaviour, and risk motivation can have both positive and negative effects on our performance (Yates 1992, Trimpop 1994). The risk motivation theory is a dynamic state-trait model that incorporates physiological, emotional, and cognitive components of risk perception, processing, and planning (Trimpop 1994). Zinn (2015) proposes to distinguish between different motives for risk taking and different levels of control. Fear of failing to achieve personal goals would motivate us to be more cautious. There has been support for the assumption that risk seekers pursue activities that are often neither goal-oriented nor material-oriented (aiming for material gain). The opposite preferences are characteristic of risk avoiders. Since some situations favour a certain type of risky behaviour over another, people are then more motivated to engage in the subjectively most rewarding type of activity (Trimpop 1994).

The Self-Determination Theory (Deci and Ryan 1985) views motivation as a continuum with poles represented by intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Outside this continuum, there is amotivation (non-regulation). Behind every intrinsically motivated action, there is curiosity, spontaneity and interest, and it is characterised by autonomy. Extrinsic motivation is based on tasks and challenges from the external environment and is thus characterised by external control. Moving from extrinsic to intrinsic motivation (self-determination), behaviour is influenced by different types of regulation: external, introjected, indentified, integrated, and intrinsic regulation. Amotivation is characterised by unregulated behaviour (Ryan and Deci 2000).

Some authors claim that an individual's performance during training and later in the workplace is fundamentally influenced by both cognitive abilities and personality traits, including motivation (Beier, Villado and Randall 2017). Barrick and Mount (2005) divide the personality factors that have the greatest impact on success in a particular task and in the profession into: performance factors (general cognitive abilities) and volitional factors (personality traits, for example, motivation, self-confidence, goal orientation).

The last few decades have seen an increase in findings on the influence of personality on academic and occupational success (Ree and Earles 1992; Schmidt and Hunter 1998; Beier, Villado and Randall 2017). Meta-analyses of research on the relationship between personality traits and occupational success suggest that conscientiousness and emotional stability are generally reliable predictors of overall occupational performance (Barick, Mount and Judge 2001). However, it is still generally believed that cognitive ability has somewhat greater predictive power in this regard, that is, people tend to choose professions with cognitive demands matching their intellectual abilities (Beier, Villado and Randall 2017).

2.1 Motivation in interpreting

Research on motivation in interpreting has focused predominantly on students, marginally on (translation and) interpreting graduates, and professional interpreters, respectively. Dodds (1990) underlines the complexity and importance of (de)motivation in interpreter training. In their study on aptitude, Timarová and Salaets (2011) point to skills and personality traits as possible predictability factors but at the same time they stress that it has not been systematically researched. Wu (2016) also highlighted the lack of proper attention devoted to interpreting students' motivation. According to the author, research on interpreting students' motivation could be divided into three strands: motivation as a predictor of aptitude, motivation as the reason for studying interpreting, and the role of motivation in interpreter training (Wu 2016). In the following review, we first examine research on motivation among students.

Shaw (2011) conducted a study on a sample of interpreting students from four universities (Czech Republic, Austria, Belgium, Netherlands), further differentiating the sample into entry-level and advanced students of spoken and signed language interpreting. The author examined selected cognitive and motivational aspects. As regards motivational aspects, she found that there were significant differences between spoken and signed language interpreting students in the areas of flow (intense focus, concentration) and internality (the belief that success is due to internal causes). The sign language interpreting students showed a greater ability to focus intensely, while the spoken language interpreting students attributed their achievements to their own efforts to concentrate and avoid distractions to a greater extent. Shaw (2011) also identified significant differences between entry-level and advanced students in the areas of eagerness to learn and flow. Advanced students scored higher than entry-level students in both areas. As the length of study increased, so did the willingness to acquire and expand knowledge on the one hand, as well as the ability to focus intensively by eliminating distractions on the other (Shaw 2011).

Hodáková's study (2021) focused on the influence of motivation and anxiety on the students' interpreting performance. The Performance Motivation Questionnaire (Pardel et al. 1984), a modification of the Questionnaire Measure of Achievement Motivation (Hermans 1970), was used to examine three factors of motivation: performance motivation (the overall intensity of motivation), facilitating anxiety, and debilitating anxiety (motivational orientation). The students in the group of 'better' interpreters scored higher on performance motivation, demonstrating motivational intensity. They also scored higher on facilitating anxiety, demonstrating the positive effect of stress on their performance. In contrast, students in the group of 'worse' interpreters scored higher on debilitating anxiety, which demonstrates the negative impact of stress on their performance. Hodáková (2021)[1] also identified significant differences between 'better' and 'worse' interpreters in motivational orientation. While in the group of 'better' interpreters, higher debilitating anxiety leads to a lower quality of their interpreting, in the group of 'worse' interpreters, it was the facilitating anxiety that led to a lower quality of interpreting. The author concludes that the right intensity and orientation of motivation is not the only decisive factor for ensuring high quality and stability of interpreting performances. Appropriate interpreting competences (linguistic, translational, and cognitive skills) are also important, for motivation alone cannot guarantee success. If an adequate combination of these variables is not ensured, a high level of motivation may even be counterproductive (Hodáková 2021).

The correlation between motivation and the quality of consecutive and simultaneous interpreting of students was the subject of another empirical study (Melicherčíková and Dove 2021). The authors defined motivation as a preference for interpreting rather than translating. The results indicated that there was a statistically significant difference between the performance of motivated and unmotivated students. The performance of motivated students was better in both consecutive and simultaneous interpreting.

Students' learning motivation and performance in the context of Covid-19 was the subject of a quasi-experimental study by Cui et al. (2022). The authors designed a questionnaire that examined six dimensions of motivation and also conducted experimental teaching that included the Covid-19 context for the experimental group but not for the control group. Data analysis showed that (self-)actualization (the need to fully deploy one's potential) and transcendence motivation (one's consideration of society other than oneself) increased significantly after the experimental teaching in the experimental group but not in the control group. The experimental group also scored higher on the final test. These findings imply that the dimensions of (self-)actualization and transcendence are closely related to the students' performance.

The bidirectional relationship between psychological factors (including motivation) and interpreting performance was investigated by Cai, Lin and Dong (2023). Correlational and hierarchical regression analyses showed that in undergraduate students, motivation decreased between the beginning and end of the first year of training, while anxiety remained relatively stable. Interpreting-specific anxiety was negatively correlated with interpreting performance at both the beginning and the end of training. Motivation at the beginning of training contributed significantly to the development of interpreting competence. Master's students showed higher learning motivation and lower anxiety than undergraduate students. These findings suggest a different development of psychological factors and their relationship to the level of interpreting competence.

All of the aforementioned studies have focused on interpreting students. The motivation of translation and interpreting graduates was investigated in an empirical study by Horváth and Kálmán (2021). The authors' findings suggest that intrinsic motivation is the strongest motivational aspect. Correlation and regression analyses confirmed that intrinsic motivation contributes to motivated learning. At the same time, altruism seemed to contribute negatively to motivated learning. According to the authors, this might be due to the fact that respondents who have a helping attitude may not want to become professional interpreters or may lose the capacity to focus on their own professional development compared to peers who are more achievement-oriented. This somewhat unexpected finding would require further research.

Research on students and professional interpreters shows that personality traits are crucial for success in studies and the profession. Shaw, Grbić and Franklin (2004), in interviews with both spoken and signed language interpreting students, found that students consider self-confidence and willingness to take risks to be the most important qualities for success in their studies and later in the profession.

Research on the motivation of professional interpreters is less common than research on student interpreters. Badalotti (2011) worked with the concept of the multilingual professional[2] and applied it to the sample of professional translators and interpreters. The author did not differentiate the sample further, so the findings are rather general and cannot be applied only to interpreters. Hlavac and Commons (2023) categorised Badalotti's (2011) data according to a self-determination continuum. Analyzing the paricipants' responses intrinsic motivation was confirmed as the main determinant in most cases, followed by extrinsic motivation with a strong intrinsic source, and integrated regulation.

Hlavac and Commons (2023) attempted to compile a profile of interpreters, specifically professionals and students of community interpreting. Motivation was one of the aspects investigated, and the authors also drew on the aforementioned self-determination theory. Other aspects examined were work experience and work volume. The results indicated that the students were dominated by extrinsic motivation with a focus on community activism; the motivation of professional interpreters was more intrinsic. We can see some parallels with previous research (Badalotti 2011) in which intrinsic motivation also emerged as dominant in professional interpreters.

3. Method

We conducted empirical research to collect quantitative data and qualitative reflections on the issue of motivation among professional interpreters. We were further interested in whether the length of the interpreting experience has a different influence on the motivation of professional interpreters and whether there are differences in the dimensions of motivation using a psychological self-report inventory, the Achievement Motivation Inventory (Schuler et al. 2011), between professional interpreters, interpreting students and the general (reference) population.

The main objective of our research was to find out:

a) what specifically motivates professional interpreters in their profession;

b) whether there are differences in the motivational profile between the group of professional interpreters with longer experience (seniors) and shorter experience (juniors);

c) whether there are specific aspects and dimensions of professional interpreters' motivation that distinguish them from interpreting students and the general population of "non-interpreters".

The research was conducted anonymously with participants' informed consent preceding the completion of the individual tasks. Participants and researchers signed a data protection form for GDPR compliance. This type of research did not require the approval of the Ethical Committees at the researchers' universities.

3.1 Participants

Due to the specificity of the research sample, the selection of participants was intentional, and we opted for convenience sampling in the case of professional interpreters and interpreting students.

3.1.1 Professional interpreters

The basic requirement for inclusion in the study was that the participants had to be professional interpreters who were actively engaged in the profession and who interpreted regularly. As the research also focused on possible differences that may be related to the length of experience or expertise, part of the research sample consisted of subjects with at least 10 years of continuous interpreting experience. One of the members of the research team approached interpreters who met the required criterion through his network of contacts and professional associations. A financial incentive was offered to participation in the research. Nine of the interpreters contacted agreed to participate in the research. The mean age of the participants was 38.4 years (28 – 54 years); they were 6 women and 3 men. All of them had Slovak both as their mother tongue and their working language in interpreting and all of them also reported English as their working language. With the exception of one participant, the others also work with other foreign languages. Table 1 below summarises educational and professional background of our sample.

Table 1: Characteristics of professional interpreters

Legend: T&I – (Master's degree in) translation and interpreting, I – (Master's degree in) interpreting, L – Master's degree in linguistics, Te – Master's degree in teaching, Eng – Master's degree in engineering, FL – freelance work, EU – accreditation for EU institutions, FLT – foreign language teaching, PR – public relations management, SC – speaker coaching, J – junior, S – senior

Eight participants received philological education, one has a technical background. One interpreter is a full-time staff member of the European Commission and interprets exclusively for institutional needs. Four interpreters currently work as freelancers both on the private market and for the EU Institutions, and four interpreters work exclusively on the private market as freelancers. Seven interpreters also work as translators. All participants report continuous interpreting experience (with possible interruptions during maternity or parental leave) ranging from 6 years to 25 years, the average being 14.22 years. Regarding the average monthly amount of interpreting expressed in working days (one day = 8 hours), one respondent is a full-time interpreter, another one states that s/he works less than a full-time job, and one interpreter was on parental leave, interpreting occasionally. The remaining professionals report a workload related to interpreting of between 2 and 12 working days per month. Considering the potential impact of the length of the interpreting experience on motivation, we further divided this sample into professional interpreters with shorter experience (juniors, 6-10 years of experience, N=5) and professional interpreters with longer experience (seniors, 20-25 years of experience, N=4). We assumed that longer interpreting experience must indicate more expertise and may be reflected in different individual dimensions of motivation compared to shorter interpreting experience.

3.1.2 Interpreting students

The second group consisted of interpreting students, namely second-year students of a master’s degree in philology with a focus on translation and interpreting (N=5), who, according to their own statements, inclined towards interpreting and would like to pursue it professionally in the future. These were graduating students who had performed well in interpreting seminars during their studies and were willing to volunteer for the same complex testing as professional interpreters. The students participated in the research without remuneration.

The mean age of the group of interpreting students (N=5) was 22.8 years, there were 3 women and 2 men. As in the case of professional interpreters, Slovak was the mother tongue of all interpreting students, and English was one of their working languages. Most students (N=4) had experience with interpreting outside of interpreting seminars; this was interpreting as part of a compulsory school placement or as part of their own professional practice.

3.2 Materials

3.2.1 Achievement Motivation Inventory

Several tools have been used to assess achievement motivation in Slovakia. In order to quantitatively investigate specific dimensions of motivation, we chose the Achievement Motivation Inventory (AMI – Schuler et al. 2011), because it provides more comprehensive information (a broader spectrum of achievement motivation) and has standards for the Slovak population compared to other instruments. We used the official Slovak translation of the full version. This research instrument has been used in personnel selection, personality and motivation research, psychology of sports, and other fields that focus on the psychological aspects of achievement motivation. A study by Byrne et al. (2004) suggested that AMI, as a comprehensive measure of achievement motivation, can be used cross-culturally,

The AMI consists of 170 items that are assigned to the following 17 dimensions:

1. Persistence refers to stamina and large amounts of effort to cope with tasks.
2. Dominance represents the tendency to display power, influence others, and lead them.
3. Engagement describes an individual's willingness to perform, put in the effort, and get the task done.
4. Confidence in success refers to the anticipation of the outcomes of specific behaviors.
5. Flexibility describes the way one copes with new situations and tasks; its high values indicate openness, interest, and willingness to adapt to different conditions in the profession.
6. Flow expresses the tendency to pursue problems with high intensity, while excluding all distractions; high scores characterize individuals who can become so involved in their work that they cease to perceive what is going on around them.
7. Fearlessness refers to the anticipated outcome of an action in terms of potential failure or success; high scores are indicative of individuals who do not experience fear of failure and negative evaluation and therefore can be characterized as emotionally stable.
8. Internality is related to the way in which the results of an activity are interpreted; high scores indicate that the individual attributes achievement or failure to self, own behaviour, and effort.
9. Compensatory effort represents the personal effort that is conditioned by fear of failure; high-achieving individuals minimize fear of failure through intensive preparation.
10. Pride in productivity represents a positive emotional state as a consequence of one's own performance; high scores indicate that individuals are satisfied if they have delivered maximum performance.
11. Eagerness to learn refers to the effort to acquire new knowledge and expand knowledge.
12. Preference for difficult tasks corresponds to choosing challenging tasks; high values imply that individuals prefer difficult tasks, increasing their own level of demands.
13. Autonomy refers to the tendency to behave autonomously; high scores indicate independent decision-making.
14. Self-control characterizes how tasks are organized and carried out. Individuals who achieve high scores are able to concentrate more easily on tasks, do not postpone them until later, and are characterized by disciplined and focused work.
15. Status orientation reflects the efforts made to achieve a significant role in the social environment. Individuals with high scores seek social recognition for their achievements, want to hold positions of responsibility, and secure professional advancement.
16. Competitiveness is understood as encouragement and motivation for professional performance; high scores point to comparing oneself with others and striving to be better.
17. Goal setting relates to the future; high values are characteristic of individuals who have long-term plans, set high goals, and know how they want to move forward (Schuler et al. 2011: 20-23).

Each dimension in the test consists of 10 items, respondents are provided with a seven-point scale expressing the strength of agreement (ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree), therefore the minimum score is 10 and the maximum score is 70. There are no time limitations; the test usually takes 30 to 40 minutes to complete. As part of the instructions sent to our participants, we asked them to complete a psychological test to explore their attitudes towards work, employment and performance. We stressed that only their personal opinion was important and that there were no right or wrong answers.

3.2.2 Semi-structured individual interviews

The researchers had prepared a basic interview structure (cf. Appendix 1) according to each topic area with specific questions, which were modified, supplemented, or changed depending on the course of the actual interview.

In our interviews with professional interpreters, we were interested in various aspects related to their profession, such as educational background and beginnings in the interpreting profession; their current occupation (professional focus, type of employment, workload, thematic focus, types of interpreting); psychosocial factors in the interpreting profession (motivation, coping with stressful situations, influence of personality traits on the performance of the profession).

3.3 Procedure

In the first stage of the research, between November and December 2021, the participants, both profesional interpreters and interpreting students, completed the online version of the Achievement Motivation Inventory. Data on the different dimensions of motivation of both groups were evaluated quantitatively and compared with the mean score of a reference population (the general population).

In the second stage of the research, in February 2022, semi-structured individual interviews with professional interpreters were conducted online via the Zoom platform. The interviews lasted between 30 and 45 minutes and they involved one researcher and one participant at a time. The researcher, who did not know the participants personally, also acted as moderator in the interviews. Participants were asked to indicate the code under which they completed the entire research. Using this anonymised code, the results of the other tests in the research were subsequently matched to the analysis of the interview responses. During the interview, the participants were asked about motivation in different contexts (long-term, short-term, etc.); we did not duplicate the AMI so that they would have the opportunity to express anything related to motivation. Anonymized transcripts of the recorded interviews were subsequently produced and subjected to qualitative analysis.

Coding within the qualitative analysis was based largely on thematic analysis of particpants' responses to interview questions and was accomplished through the identification of basic units of analysis, that is, segments of text that contained a particular piece of information relevant to our research problem (cf. Appendix 2). This was done rather intuitively and was not founded on a theoretical model. Thematic analysis allowed us to identify key areas or themes. Subsequently, we determined the identified units by assigning specific features to be able to categorize individual phenomena. After coding, we looked for analogies with AMI (e.g., intrinsic motivation, performance, success, failure, etc.).

To ensure reliability, we validated the coding method chosen by the researcher; 10% of the total data in the transcripts of the recordings were coded simultaneously by another researcher, and a high degree of agreement (95%) was confirmed in the method and execution of the thematic analysis between the researchers.

4. Results and discussion

First, we present results from the first stage of the research (Section 4.1). Here, we were interested in the motivational structure of the personality of professional interpreters and interpreting students, which is measurable and quantifiable in the form of individual dimensions of motivation (AMI). Then we proceed to present and discuss the results from the second stage of the research, in which we attempted to support the quantitative data obtained (AMI) with subjective qualitative statements from semi-structured interviews with professional interpreters about their perceptions of their own motivation in the profession (Section 4.2). Finally, we will outline several research limitations (Section 4.3) and draw some conclusions (Section 5.).

4.1 Dimensions of motivation: quantitative data analysis and interpretation

In the evaluation and interpretation of the AMI inventory, we used the means of the raw scores of the participants on each dimension to investigate which dimensions of motivation play a greater and which play a lesser role in performance motivation. We compared the scores of professional interpreters, interpreting students, and the Slovak reference population (N=1148; Schuler et al. 2011). In this section, we present a basic analysis of the data. The means of the raw scores (together with the standard deviation) of the three comparison groups for the individual dimensions of performance motivation are presented in Table 2.

Table 2: Mean scores of the dimensions of motivation

A comparison of the raw scores for all 17 dimensions in the AMI shows what follows. Persistence is highest among senior interpreters. Compared to students, both groups of professionals (junior and senior) appear to be more persistent, determined, and focused. Overall, all groups show higher mean scores than the Slovak reference population. Senior interpreters also appear to be the most dominant. A score comparable to the Slovak reference population was achieved by the group of students. Junior interpreters were the least dominant in the comparison between groups. The results further show that students appear to be the most engaged. They show to be more ambitious and aspiring than the professional interpreters’ groups and also than the Slovak reference population. Senior interpreters appear to be the most confident in expecting success of their activities. The means of the other two groups are relatively comparable, with both junior interpreters and students scoring lower than the Slovak reference population. In our research sample, flexibility scores were comparably high in two groups, students and senior interpreters. Flow, intense concentration, is highest in the group of students. This dimension also proved to be distinctive in the research conducted by Shaw (2011). The interpreting students in our sample achieved even higher mean flow scores (54.00, SD 6.82) than the interpreting students in Shaw’s research (50.47, SD 6.21). Both groups of professionals achieved comparable scores in flow. Of all groups, the students scored the highest in fearlessness. Senior interpreters also appear to be decisive and stable. On the contrary, the junior interpreters scored the lowest. However, all groups scored higher than the Slovak reference population on this dimension. In internality, we observe high mean scores for all groups, that is, they believe that most events depend on their behaviour and effort. Senior interpreters were the most likely to agree with this perception. Similar to internality, we observe higher group means for compensatory effort compared to the reference population. The highest scores were achieved by junior interpreters. In our research sample, pride in productivity is most evident in the group of junior interpreters. Among the mean scores of all dimensions of the Slovak reference population, pride in productivity is the highest and the only dimension that exceeds the value of 50. Only students scored lower compared to the reference population on this dimension. On average, junior interpreters showed the highest eagerness to learn, followed by students. In a comparison between groups, senior interpreters show the highest scores in preference for difficult tasks. Junior interpreters scored the lowest on this dimension, even markedly lower than the reference group. Senior interpreters show the highest independence compared to other groups. Junior interpreters scored the highest on self-control, followed by students. When comparing individual groups on status orientation, it is evident that junior interpreters have the highest mean scores on the dimension, followed by students and senior interpreters. Interestingly, however, none of the examined groups reaches the average of the Slovak reference population. For senior interpreters, this is even their absolute lowest score of all dimensions, which may be related to the declining prestige and general recognition of the interpreting profession as Mackintosh's (2003) study suggested earlier. This trend is most likely related to technological advances and the use of artificial intelligence. In the dimension of competitiveness, similar to the previous dimension, none of the groups reached the average of the Slovak reference population. The students scored the lowest of all groups on competitiveness, which is also their lowest score across all dimensions. The junior and senior interpreters scored comparably. For goal setting, we observe the smallest overall intergroup differences across all dimensions. That is, all groups are equally goal-oriented and ambitious about the future. At the same time, goal setting in all examined groups is close to the average of the Slovak reference population.

Focusing on the specific motivational profiles of each group, it is possible to identify the dimensions that most strongly influence the motivation of senior interpreters, junior interpreters, and students inclined towards interpreting. As an indicator for this type of analysis, we chose to identify the dimensions in which each group achieved a mean raw score higher than or equal to 50. Students preferring interpreting showed the highest mean scores on the dimensions of compensatory effort, flow, internality, pride in productivity, and flexibility. Conversely, the lowest scores, by a large margin, were achieved in competitiveness (cf. Appendix 3). Professional interpreters with shorter experience scored highest on the dimensions of pride in productivity, internality, compensatory effort, self-control, and persistence. On the contrary, they scored lowest on preference for difficult tasks (cf. Appendix 4). Professional interpreters with longer experience had the highest mean raw scores on the dimensions of internality, pride in productivity, persistence, compensatory effort, flexibility and confidence in success. They scored lowest (but with a negligible difference compared to the other dimensions) on status orientation (cf. Appendix 5).

Figure 1 shows a comparison of the motivational profiles of all groups examined (students, junior and senior interpreters) with the mean values of the Slovak reference population (Schuler et al. 2011: 85).

Figure 1: Dimensions of motivation: comparison of the groups to the general population

Overall, if we look for peculiar features in the motivation of future and professional interpreters, higher persistence, greater compensatory effort, higher levels of internality and fearlessness, and higher flow are noticeable in all groups compared to the Slovak reference population. Thus, both interpreting students and professional interpreters, whether with shorter or longer experience, are characterized by better stamina and greater effort to cope with professional tasks, higher commitment, focus, and engagement. At the same time, they invest more effort in their work activities, which is conditioned by the fear of failure. They attribute potential success and failures more to themselves and their skills than to other factors. They perceive difficult situations less negatively and see them more as a professional challenge. The motivation of these groups is therefore very likely to be intrinsically determined, they are characterised by high stamina and commitment in their work, they look for the cause of their success or failures within themselves, and they are not discouraged by difficulties and challenging activities.

Compared to the Slovak reference population, all groups are characterised by an average goal setting in relation to the future, that is, on average they are neither noticeably more goal-oriented nor noticeably less ambitious. Therefore, they are probably not strongly motivated by the long-term pursuit of their ambitions.

Regarding the dimensions in which all groups scored lower than the Slovak average, it can be seen that both interpreting students and professional interpreters (both groups) are characterized by lower competitiveness and status orientation in the profession compared to the Slovak reference population. Therefore, their motivation is not determined by the pursuit of status or competitiveness. This piece of information confirms the assumption of a predominantly intrinsic determination of motivation in (future) interpreters.

In addition to a general comparison of (future) interpreters with the Slovak average, we were also interested in a more specific comparison of the individual groups with each other. Since motivation is one of the dynamic aspects of personality, it is possible in this context to assume that some of the differences between the groups can be attributed to the growing experience of professional interpreters, the maturation of personality, or the changing working conditions. We are aware that because of the small number of participants in each group, it is not possible to make generalisations, but the results may offer suggestions for further research that can later be statistically verified on a larger sample.

In this regard, it was interesting, for example, to find that professional interpreters (juniors and seniors), compared to students, were characterized by higher persistence, but conversely, lower flow, that is, lower levels of concentration and engagement in activities. We can assume that the higher persistence of professional interpreters may be related to personality maturation. At the same time, with age and greater work experience, routine in performing work activities also increases, and thus a certain mental or psychological stamina and endurance in activities increase. Conversely, professional interpreters’ lower concentration (but not at all low compared to the general population) and flow may also be related to the fact that with increasing experience, their work may require less mental energy and lesser need to concentrate unconditionally on their performance.

Senior interpreters were characterized by higher dominance and confidence in success compared to their younger colleagues and students. Higher scores on both dimensions may again be related to the length and amount of their work experience; it is likely that they have learned to draw on their professional experience, have more confidence in their own skills, and/or pass on their experience to younger colleagues.

4.2 Subjective perceptions of motivation: qualitative data analysis and interpretation

Thematic qualitative analysis of data collected in the individual semi-structured interviews with both groups of professional interpreters (with shorter and longer experience) revealed that interviewees approached the issue of motivation from a number of angles. On the one hand, they reflected on their own intrinsic motivations and motives for choosing and pursuing the profession of interpreting[3] and for wanting to be good at their profession. On the other hand, some also mentioned extrinsic motivations, such as financial and time considerations. In the qualitative analysis of the interview data, no major differences were identified between junior and senior interpreters; rather, these were individual opinions and perspectives.

From the interviews with the interpreters, it was evident that they all found their work interesting and felt motivated to stay in their profession in the long term. One interviewee (I8) expressed concern about the future prospects of interpreting due to technological advances and overall changes in society, but nevertheless felt motivated and fulfilled by interpreting.

Eight participants (I1, I3, I4, I5, I6, I7, I8, I9) described the nature of their motivation as more of a tendency to achieve success, overcome challenges, and continually improve. One interviewee (I2), in his own words, felt motivated more by the desire to avoid failure. These statements are consistent with the motivation dimension of confidence in success in the AMI, which was highest among senior interpreters.

Seven interpreters (I1, I4, I5, I6, I7, I8, I9) agreed that what motivated them was the dynamic nature of the job, the need to continue improving, they liked to learn new things and they had a desire to have a broad perspective: “I enjoy the work itself and it's so interesting, it's dynamic with people and that's why I enjoy the world events, the current events” (I5). Even more specifically in this regard, two of them (I5, I7) reported that what they enjoyed was being in settings and getting familiar with information and contexts that were not normally accessible or known to the public: “And I'm always learning something new or a different angle or seeing how an area is evolving or which way it's going, and I'm learning things that other people either don't learn about because they just don't have a reason to care that much, or I'm getting into environments physically, i.e. before the pandemic, where other people wouldn't have been able to get to, and it's very interesting” (I7). These statements are consistent with the motivation dimension of eagerness to learn in the AMI, which was highest among junior interpreters.

Three interviewees (I4, I5, I9) highlighted that contact with people motivated them. These considerations may be related to the fact that at the time of the interviews, most of the interpreted events were conducted in the virtual environment due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which resulted in a lack of social contact and interaction with colleagues as well as with delegates or attendees at conferences (cf. Mahyub Rayaa and Martin 2022). This finding indicates that motivation is more than an individual personality trait but can be determined (achieved or denied) by others. In the case of students or novice interpreters, contact and support from a more experienced colleague appears to be necessary. Reflections on the importance of human contact from interviews can be linked to the AMI dimension of competitiveness, in which both groups of interpreters scored lower than the Slovak reference population, suggesting that their motivation is not derived from competing with others but rather from working with them in a team.

One interviewee (I4) explicitly stated that she liked to present herself and to perform in front of an audience and similarly another one (I3) mentioned as the strongest intrinsic motivation, ambition, the desire to present oneself in the best possible light. Another participant (I6) stated that a reason for losing motivation was the possibility of receiving negative feedback on his interpreting performance: “For example, in Brussels, they regularly write reports on freelancers, and when I know in advance that there is going to be a report, I get quite nervous, and it happened to me once that I had a less than ideal day, and just then a colleague wrote a report on me, and after that day she also told me some suggestions for improvement, let's say, and she didn't write any serious criticism in the report, and I know I was demotivated by that. I'm rather demotivated by that criticism”. Financial motivation was highlighted by three respondents (I7, I8, I9) in the interviews. For them, the autonomy and time flexibility offered by the interpreting profession was also motivating. These statements are in line with the dimensions of independence and flexibility, which were highest among senior interpreters in the AMI.

Related to the issue of motivation is the issue of desirable qualities, skills, or traits that participants believed interpreters should possess in order to be satisfied, successful, or respected in their profession. Interviewees mainly reflected on what characteristics they themselves possessed or would like to possess because they saw them as desirable, or they noticed them in other interpreters whom they rated as successful. Four interpreters in our sample (I1, I3, I7, I8) considered it necessary for interpreters to be naturally curious, interested in the current affairs, and eager to learn. This confirms the findings of the quantitative part of this research work on the strong internal determination of motivation in interpreters, attributing success/failure in the profession to their own abilities, skills and competence. Both groups of interpreters (junior and senior) scored high on internality in the AMI. In addition, four particpants explicitly emphasised their belief that everything can be learned. These statements are consistent with the motivation dimension of persistence in the AMI, which was high in both groups of interpreters.

Four interviewees (I2, I3, I5, I6) stressed that interpreters should be mentally resilient, considerate, calm in nature, and should be able to keep a cool head: “I think it helps me quite a lot that I don't stress so much when it comes to work. So, if there is a difficult situation, sometimes in interpreting you have to make a decision very quickly, even if it's a high-level interpreting or with a lot of listeners, I think it's good to be able to keep a cool head and to be able to make a decision and not to panic somehow” (I5). In this regard, two other participants (I4, I7) added that interpreters should not be afraid to make mistakes and accept that their performance also has imperfections. These statements are in line with the AMI dimension of fearlessness; both junior and senior interpreters' scores on this dimension confirmed their emotional stability.

Some interviewees also considered personality temperament to be key. One of them (I3) thought that interpreters should be more introverted, be able to stay in the background, and not show their personality as they convey other people's thoughts. Another one (I4), on the other hand, thought that interpreters should be more extroverted, not afraid to present themselves and speak in public. One interviewee (I8) also based her answer on her own research, since she had dealt with a similar topic as part of her thesis. She assumed that interpreters should be neither strong introverts, as they interact with people and make public appearances, nor strong extroverts, because she believed that extroverts tended to be superficial in their analysis of information. Although some research, such as Dörfler and Hornke (2010), confirmed that extroverts respond more quickly but less accurately than introverts when reasoning, which can be interpreted on the basis of Eysenck's (1994) arousal theory, research findings on the correlation between extraversion and superficial analysis are inconclusive.

Being communicative was highlighted as a desirable characteristic by two participants (I4, I9) while the second interviewee (I9) added the importance of building relationships with clients: “This is basically my business and I have to deal with customers somehow, I have to build relationships somehow and often it's not just the quality of the interpretation that determines whether they call me next time, it's everything around that”.

In summary, the interpreters in our research felt motivated, enjoyed their work, and wanted to stay in the job. The importance of intrinsic motivation, natural curiosity, eagerness to improve, desire to learn new things, and to having knowledge of the world was also underlined. Most interperters felt motivated by the desire to overcome challenges, to achieve success, and to continuously improve. Here, they had in mind their own development, specialisation, improvement of individual skills and competences. Our findings from the thematic analysis of individual semi-structured interviews are also consistent with the findings by Badalotti (2011) and Hlavac and Commons (2023). In their research, intrinsic motivation was also dominant among professional interpreters.

None of the participants mentioned status orientation, striving for career advancement as motivating. This finding – the absence of status orientation – is consistent with the observations in the quantitative analysis of the AMI data. This result may also be related to the fact that in the interpreting profession, in most cases, there is a lack of a particularly differentiated hierarchy of positions and interpreters receive recognition for good performance in interpreting in general rather than for interpreting in particularly challenging situations and/or settings. The findings by authors of other similar research work are mixed. For example, Dam and Zethsen (2013) did not confirm their assumption that professional interpreters would view themselves as having a higher status than professional translators. On the contrary, Gentile (2013) found that conference interpreters perceived the prestige of their profession as comparable to that of doctors, lawyers, and university professors. We assume that the different self-perceptions of the interpreter's status may be related to the changed socio-economic conditions in the last decade(s) as well as to the specifics of individual interpreting markets.

In conclusion, it can be assumed that a positive perception of one’s own role and one’s own importance in achieving success/failure in the interpreting profession, a belief in the possibility of improving one’s abilities, skills and competences, and thus a highly internalized form of motivation is very likely to be a strong driver in the interpreting profession. We also view these findings positively in the context of educating future interpreters, as they suggest that one of the crucial factors for success in the interpreting profession is precisely the willingness to learn and continuously improve.

4.3 Research limitations

Despite the attempt to take a rigorous approach, our research design undoubtedly has limitations. One of them is the sampling selection, that is, approaching potential participants through direct contact or through a specific professional association. Given the specificity of the research sample, it was not realistic for us to opt for a random sampling. At the same time, with this type of sampling, we assumed a greater willingness to participate in the research, which was very complex, time-consuming, and often revealed quite private aspects of the participants’ personality and life. Therefore, the convenient sampling may have influenced the structure and representativeness of our research sample.

Another limitation of the research is the size of the sample, which is related to the design of the research, its complexity, and the time-consuming nature of the research on the part of both the participants and the researchers. Since the overall research not only focused on the issue of motivation, but also investigated other aspects of interpreters' personality and their interpreting performance, the participants in the research completed quite a large number of test tasks. This may explain the willingness by only a small group of professional interpreters (N=9) to participate in the research. We are aware of the fact that it is also problematic to make quantitative statements with such a small sample.

A third limitation is also the fact that there is a gap of more than a decade between the standards available for the AMI and data collection in our research, during which there have been significant changes in the interpreting market and in the interpreting profession.

A fourth limitation, which according to Gile (2017: 27) is often ignored in translation and interpreting studies, is social desirability bias, “a tendency by respondents to consciously or subconsciously answer questions in a way which they assume will reflect a more favorable image of them and their action“. This implies that in both the AMI and the interview, the respondents might have provided the answers they perceived to be desirable for the research purpose.

In addition, the nature of this type of research increases the degree of subjectivity in the data collected. At the same time, participants could talk about their own motivations quite freely; the interview questions (aligned to the quantitative analysis) were designed to be open-ended, that is, each subject could reflect on different aspects, or only on some aspects. However, since the quantitative analysis was conducted first, we believe that the qualitative data obtained have quite a great deal of supporting power in providing a comprehensive view on the motivation of professional interpreters.

Due to these limitations, we have no ambition to generalise our findings to all professional interpreters in Slovakia. However, by complementing the quantitative analysis of a self-report inventory with qualitative data obtained from interviews, we believe that we can at least offer suggestions worthy of further investigation.

5. Conclusion and recommendations

The interpreters in our research sample consider specific personality traits more important and desirable than general giftedness or talent. In particular, they value curiosity and general interest in the world around them, and they enjoy new challenges.

In general, the interpreters in our research believe that skills can be acquired through practice and experience if one is sufficiently motivated. The aforementioned sufficient level of motivation is demonstrated as intrinsic motivation in both professional interpreters and students who are inclined to interpreting. The dominant dimensions in the three groups, which distinguishes them from the reference population, are persistence, compensatory effort, internality, fearlessness (emotional stability) and flow.

As we also compared the motivational profiles of the groups with each other in the research, we found that senior interpreters are characterised by higher persistence, dominance, and confidence in success. Since these characteristics are found in the senior group, they are likely to be acquired in the process of gaining experience, having more advanced routines, erudition and, therefore, confidence in one’s own abilities.

In contrast, none of the interviewees reported feeling motivated by status orientation or the pursuit of career advancement. These statements were supported by data from quantitative analysis (AMI). This finding would be worth verifying on a larger sample, as the results of research on the professional status within interpreting studies are mixed.

As we have already pointed out, due to the small number of participants, our findings cannot be generalized. Replication of the research on a larger sample with an equal representation of participants (professionals with longer experience, professionals with shorter experience, interpreting students) could confirm or refute our findings. The research conducted has also provided us with several ideas, which we present below, that can be applied in the training of future interpreters.

Both interpreting students and professional interpreters were characterised by high fearlessness (emotional stability) and internality. Strong intrinsic motivation and the conviction that one's own skills and competences can be improved through training and experience are undoubtedly a beneficial mindset that enables interpreters to remain satisfied and successful in their profession for a relatively long time. The higher stress resilience of these groups compared to the general population may represent higher emotional stability, which is generally considered a reliable predictor of (not only) the interpreting profession. We believe that personality characteristics such as emotional stability (Bontempo et al. 2014; Rosiers and Eyckmans, 2017) and intrinsic performance motivation can help both professionals and interpreting students compensate for possible performance deficiencies, for example, by more intensive training, more rigorous preparation, a more motivated approach to (self-)study, and a willingness to improve and work on oneself. At the same time, these findings provide interpreting trainers with good grounds for encouraging students, for pushing them further in terms of competences and personality traits that are already intrinsically present, as these findings point precisely to the importance of motivation and training for success in their professional future.

About the author(s)

Soňa Hodáková works as a translator and conference interpreter for national and international companies and institutions. She teaches seminars on translation, interpreting and mental health at Constantine the Philosopher University in Slovakia. Her scientific activities focus mainly on research related to cognitive aspects in interpreting and research on the application of specific competences in the education of future translators and interpreters. She is a member of the international EMT working group on public service interpreting and translation (PSIT). She is the principal investigator of several research projects and the Slovak coordinator of international project funded by the European Commission's Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund (AMIF) entitled Mental Health 4 All: Development and implementation of a digital platform for the promotion of access to mental healthcare for low language proficient third-country nationals in Europe.

Miroslava Melicherčíková completed her studies in translation and interpreting at Matej Bel University in Slovakia. She teaches courses focused on improving students’ interpreting and translation skills. Her research and publishing activities focus on selected aspects of consecutive and simultaneous interpreting, interpreters’ personality and cognitive characteristics as well as didactics of interpreting. She has actively participated in several national research projects dealing with translation and interpreting. She was the principal investigator of the national research project called Reflection of Cognitive and Personality Traits in the Interpreting Performance of T&I Students and Professionals in Real and Virtual Environments.

Email: [please login or register to view author's email address]

Abstract & Keywords

English:

Press conferences at international football tournaments require interpretation services to ensure interlanguage understanding between participants. The aim of journalists is to obtain information by asking questions that the protagonists of the match must answer. However, if the questionare tough or adversarial, interviewees may resist by applying various answering strategies. This case study aims to analyze the questioning and answering strategies in a sample of press conferences of the Spanish national football team at UEFA EURO 2020, and to investigate whether such dynamics are replicated in the English interpreted versions.

Spanish:

En los torneos de fútbol internacionales se celebran ruedas de prensa en las que el servicio de interpretación es indispensable para garantizar la comprensión interlingüística entre los participantes. En ellas, el objetivo de los reporteros es obtener información a través de preguntas que los protagonistas del partido deben responder. Sin embargo, si la pregunta les incomoda, los entrevistados pueden oponer resistencia aplicando estrategias de respuesta. Este estudio de caso se propone analizar las estrategias de planteamiento de preguntas y respuestas en una selección de ruedas de prensa de la selección española de fútbol en la UEFA EURO 2020, e investigar si tal dinámica se replica en las versiones interpretadas al inglés.

Keywords: simultaneous interpreting, questioning and answering strategies, football, press conferences, adversarialness, interpretación simultánea, ruedas de prensa, fútbol, estrategias de formulación de pregunta y respuesta, conflictividad

1. Introducción

El fútbol es el deporte estrella de numerosos países y capta un amplio abanico de servicios lingüísticos, tanto tradicionales (i. e. traducción escrita de artículos de prensa), como vanguardistas (i. e. localización de videojuegos). En los eventos deportivos multilingües es necesaria la interpretación para ofrecer servicios lingüísticos más inmediatos que la traducción. De hecho, en el caso de los torneos de fútbol internacionales se celebran ruedas de prensa prepartido y pospartido mediadas por intérpretes para que los periodistas obtengan acceso a los entrenadores y a los jugadores. Estos últimos, por su parte, están obligados a participar y a responder según lo acordado con los organizadores del evento. En esta situación comunicativa, los entrevistadores y los entrevistados tienen intereses contrapuestos, puesto que la prensa quiere sonsacar información inédita a los entrevistados y estos no desean revelar demasiada información si la pregunta les incomoda (Sandrelli, 2018). En medio de esta pugna se encuentra el intérprete que debe prestar sus servicios sin interferir con los objetivos comunicativos de ambos participantes.

El presente artículo propone un estudio de caso que recoge el guante lanzado por Sandrelli (2018) en las conclusiones de Interpreted-Mediated Football Press Conferences: A Study on the Questioning and Answering Strategies. Sandrelli (2018), tras haber constatado que las estrategias de formulación de pregunta y respuesta en la interpretación al inglés eran «remarkably similar» (ibid. 202) a las de las ruedas de prensa originales en italiano, añade que «it is hoped that the present study can inspire research on other language combinations to further validate these conclusions» (ibid. 203). De este modo, se aspira a contribuir a la investigación de las estrategias de planteamiento de pregunta y respuesta en las ruedas de prensa futbolísticas, pero sin ofrecer datos directamente comparables con el de Sandrelli (2018) a causa de la diferencia de representatividad de los entrevistados en las bases de datos implicadas. Por un lado, FOOTIE (Sandrelli, 2012) es un corpus que recoge únicamente ruedas de prensa del entonces entrenador de la selección de fútbol de Italia, Roberto Mancini. Por otro lado, la base de datos del estudio, EFCIC (European Football Championship Interpreting Corpus) (Suárez Lovelle, 2023), no solo recopila ruedas de prensa del entrenador de la selección de fútbol de España, sino también de los jugadores. Por ende, el presente estudio analiza las estrategias de planteamiento de pregunta y respuesta con un perfil de entrevistado distinto para observar si se mantienen las mismas estrategias identificadas con el entrenador Mancini. Asimismo, examina cuantitativamente si las estrategias de pregunta y respuesta utilizadas por los reporteros y por los entrevistados en las ruedas de prensa de la selección española fueron replicadas en las versiones interpretadas al inglés, y observa el nivel de conflictividad de los intercambios.

A continuación, se abordan las estrategias en el planteamiento de preguntas y respuestas (§2), la información general de la base de datos (§3), la metodología del estudio (§4), el análisis (§5) y, por último, se presenta la discusión y las conclusiones de los resultados (§6).

2. Estrategias de planteamiento de preguntas y respuestas en ruedas de prensa

La interacción en un contexto institucional está caracterizada por un protocolo que predetermina los roles de los participantes, las relaciones de poder, los temas admitidos, la toma de palabra, etc. (Orletti, 2000). Asimismo, las ruedas de prensa son un tipo de interacción institucional que tiene lugar en la esfera pública, un espacio en el que un gran abanico de participantes (personajes públicos y profesionales de los medios de comunicación) entablan una conversación sin guiones sobre asuntos transcendentales para el público (Clayman, 2004). De hecho, un rasgo que caracteriza las ruedas de prensa es que la constelación de participantes es mayor que en las entrevistas: un moderador, uno o dos personajes públicos y una multitud de entrevistadores. Por lo tanto, además de las preguntas y las respuestas, los eventos discursivos producidos en dicho contexto también incluyen las declaraciones de apertura y cierre, la asignación del turno de palabra y los comentarios. Por añadidura, en las ruedas de prensa los reporteros buscan ser neutrales y conflictivos contemporáneamente, pero es extremadamente difícil encontrar un equilibrio entre ambas finalidades (Clayman y Heritage, 2002a; Clayman, 2004). Un modo en el que la prensa puede ejercer control sobre la interacción es mediante estrategias de formulación de pregunta, dado que la pregunta es siempre la primera parte del par adyacente (pregunta-respuesta). Por consiguiente, el reportero puede diseñar la pregunta en un modo específico o introducir información en la formulación que incline la respuesta en una dirección determinada. Ante tal presión, los entrevistados tienden a desplegar estrategias de resistencia, o bien pareciendo colaborativos, o bien desafiando al reportero (Sandrelli, 2018). Dichas estrategias de pregunta y respuesta serán ilustradas en mayor detalle en las próximas subsecciones.

2.1. Planteamiento de preguntas

Para identificar estrategias de planteamiento de preguntas, la literatura de la comunicación en tribunal puede tomarse como punto de referencia para determinar mecanismos comunicativos también presentes en las ruedas de prensa. De acuerdo con dicha línea de investigación, es posible diseñar preguntas de diversas maneras. Desde el punto de vista de la función, subsiste una distinción general entre las information-seeking questions (de ahora en adelante, ‘preguntas que buscan información’, o PBI) y las confirmation-seeking questions (de ahora en adelante, ‘preguntas que buscan confirmar información’, o PCI). (Maley y Fahey, 1991; Galatolo, 2002).

Por un lado, las PBI buscan obtener información general o dar pie a que el entrevistado pronuncie un discurso libre. Las PBI son preguntas abiertas, que conceden la mayor de las libertades al entrevistado a la hora de responder. A menudo pueden estar planteadas con pronombres interrogativos (por comodidad, de ahora en adelante, ‘preguntas Wh-’): ‘quién’, ‘qué’, ‘cuál’, ‘cómo’, ‘dónde’, ‘cuándo’, ‘cuánto’ y ‘por qué’ (i. e. «¿quién te ayudó…?» en M45-ESP-POSTPRESS-SIMON). De igual modo, se utilizan verbos modales que enmarcan la pregunta y expresan la posibilidad, la voluntad o la habilidad del entrevistado para responder (modal polar questions), como ‘poder’, ‘querer’ o ‘saber’, inter alia (i. e. «puedes explicar…» en M22-MDM1-ESP-PRESS-MORATA).

Por otra parte, las PCI presentan los hechos y buscan una confirmación en la respuesta, restringiendo el abanico de opciones del entrevistado. En primer lugar, la preguntas de tipo sí o no (también llamadas interrogativas polares) admiten como posible respuesta ‘sí’ o ‘no’ (i. e. «…percibes que España es favorita?» en M45-MDM1-ESP-PRESS-LAPORTE). Asimismo, las preguntas con varias opciones presentan una gama de alternativas al entrevistado (i. e. «no sé si esperas que pase Suiza o Francia» en M42-ESP-POSTPRESS-BUSQUETS). Por añadidura, las preguntas declarativas suelen pronunciarse como declaraciones (con entonación descendente) y tienden a estar acompañadas de coletillas interrogativas que tienen el propósito de buscar el acuerdo por parte del entrevistado (i. e. «Ferrán Torres no va pero entiendo que tú quieres estar no?» en M49-MDM1-ESP-PRESS-PEDRI). En último lugar, el uso del imperativo, que pretende exigir al entrevistado mediante una orden que le entregue información. A modo de conclusiones, en Tabla 1 se muestra una clasificación de las estrategias de formulación de pregunta según la función y la estructura (Clayman y Heritage, 2002a; Galatolo, 2002; Sandrelli, 2018).

Tabla 1. Clasificación de estrategias de pregunta^[1]

Por añadidura, cabe considerar otros aspectos en el análisis de las estrategias de planteamiento de preguntas: el grado de iniciativa (‘degree of initiative’), si es directa o indirecta (‘directness’ y ‘indirectness’), la asertividad (‘assertiveness’) y el nivel de hostilidad (‘level of hostility’) hacia el entrevistado (Clayman y Heritage, 2002a; 2002b; Clayman et al., 2007).

La iniciativa hace referencia al intento de la prensa para ejercer control sobre la pregunta mediante la complejidad. En las ruedas de prensa los periodistas compiten entre ellos para tomar la palabra y son conscientes de las exiguas posibilidades de réplica luego de la respuesta (Clayman, 2004). Por lo tanto, para evitar dicho obstáculo, el reportero tiende a formular varias preguntas dentro de un único turno de palabra (multi-part questions). Una única pregunta puede poseer una estructura compleja, por ejemplo, mediante una larga declaración previa a la pregunta propiamente dicha. En determinadas ocasiones también puede encontrarse a la mitad del turno, o al final de este como reflexión a guisa de conclusión. Cabe señalar que ambas estrategias (la pregunta multi-part y la declaración introductoria) se pueden combinar en un mismo turno de palabra. Además, un método adicional para ejercer presión sobre el entrevistado es hacer la misma pregunta una y otra vez con palabras distintas (‘question cascade’, de ahora en adelante, ‘pregunta cascada’). En otros términos, se trata de la enunciación de varias versiones de la que es, aparentemente, la misma pregunta (Clayman y Heritage, 2002b). De hecho, todos los turnos de pregunta cascada serán también preguntas multi-part, pero no todas las preguntas multi-part serán necesariamente cascada. A este respecto, en algunos turnos de pregunta multi-part, dos o más preguntas son reformulaciones únicamente de una idea (pregunta cascada) de las varias que contiene el turno. Finalmente, si los periodistas no están satisfechos con la respuesta y consiguen volver a tener el turno de palabra, es posible que intenten poner en dificultad al entrevistado con una reformulación o una pregunta adicional (Partington, 2001). La reformulación sirve para verificar datos, para resumir el meollo de la respuesta y para tomar una posición hostil que conlleve a que se responda debidamente a la pregunta.

En segundo lugar, las preguntas pueden ser directas o indirectas. La prensa puede plantear preguntas con verbos modales (modal polar questions), que expresan posibilidad o voluntad, para hacer que sean percibidas de forma más respetuosa por parte del entrevistado. De igual modo, otra estrategia que utilizan los periodistas para parecer menos descorteses son las autorreferencias, es decir, hacer mención de su intención o capacidad de formular una pregunta (i. e. «quería preguntarle» en M22-MDM1-ESP-PRESS-ENRIQUE).

En tercer lugar, un rasgo adicional del planteamiento de las preguntas es la asertividad. La asertividad se refiere a la capacidad que tiene el periodista de sugerir, insinuar o presionar para obtener una respuesta determinada (Clayman y Heritage, 2002b). Es posible alcanzarla mediante el uso de una declaración introductoria tendenciosa (i. e. «qué es lo que tiene que cambiar para que no se repitan?» en M45-MDM1-ESP-PRESS-LAPORTE) o con el uso de formulaciones negativas (i. e. «no deja de ser un hándicap no?» en M09-MDM1-ESP-PRESS-ALBA). Estas últimas son aparentemente preguntas, pero delimitan tanto la respuesta del entrevistado que a menudo se consideran declaraciones. Su objetivo es enunciar la posición del personaje público y desencadenar una reacción por su parte (Clayman y Heritage, 2002a).

En cuarto y último lugar, el parámetro de hostilidad está ligado al carácter conflictual de las preguntas que llaman al entrevistado a rendir cuentas y a justificar sus acciones. En los turnos abiertamente hostiles, podemos incluso encontrar preguntas acusatorias (i. e. «buenas tardes // ehm: efectivamente es difícil ganarnos Aymeric pero también es difícil pasar una eliminatoria recibiendo tres goles // esto va a pasar muy pocas veces en Mundiales y Eurocopas // eh lo habéis pensado? // qué podéis hacer para solucionarlo? // porque recibiendo tres goles lo normal es que te eliminen // no pasó contra Croacia pero puede pasar // no crees que haya que corregir esto?» en M45-MDM1-ESP-PRESS-LAPORTE). En estos casos, lo que se pretende es acusar al personaje público sobre acontecimientos pasados.

Los susodichos rasgos que caracterizan las preguntas de los periodistas en las ruedas de prensa han sido resumidos en Tabla 2.

Tabla 2. Clasificación de los rasgos de las preguntas^[2]

2.2. Planteamiento de respuestas

En una interacción institucional, responder a las preguntas no es una opción, sino una obligación moral. Los entrevistados, incluso cuando una pregunta les incomoda, intentan replicar correctamente ya que son conscientes de que los periodistas vigilan con suma atención lo que dicen, con el fin de determinar si responden debidamente a la interrogación. Para lidiar con dichas preguntas conflictivas, los personajes públicos han desarrollado una serie de estrategias (Sandrelli, 2018).

Antes que nada, es menester trazar una distinción entre las respuestas directas e indirectas. Por un lado, las respuestas directas implican un grado de conflicto mínimo, pues de forma implícita los personajes públicos aceptan y validan el contenido de la pregunta. Estas abordan directamente la cuestión dentro de la pregunta y proporcionan la información solicitada, o bien en seguida, o bien dando un rodeo que termina conduciendo a la respuesta deseada. Igualmente, en ciertas ocasiones los entrevistados pueden responder únicamente a una parte de una pregunta multi-part, proporcionando una respuesta parcial. Tanto las respuestas parciales como las que contienen digresiones pueden ser consideradas evasivas por parte de los periodistas y, por ende, estos últimos podrían reiterar la misma pregunta para obtener la información deseada. Para evitar dicho escenario, los entrevistados deben dar la impresión de estar respondiendo debidamente a la pregunta, aunque así no sea (Clayman, 2001).

Por otro lado, las respuestas indirectas se producen cuando el entrevistado opone resistencia a una pregunta conflictiva o desea evitarla (Clayman y Heritage, 2002a; Clayman, 2001, 2004). Antes que nada, el personaje público podría negarse rotundamente a responder (resistencia explícita), pero es arriesgado ya que los entrevistados no quieren parecer evasivos ante la prensa. Sin embargo, una resistencia implícita permite que el entrevistado parezca cooperativo a pesar de estar evitando la pregunta. Por ejemplo, a la hora de responder, el personaje público puede cambiar el punto de vista de la pregunta, proporcionando información que no había sido solicitada e introduciendo elementos en los que desea poner el foco (respuesta suplementaria). Por añadidura, otras formas de oponer resistencia ante una pregunta conflictiva son la reformulación de esta, conduciendo la pregunta hacia aguas más apacibles, y la puesta en duda de su pertinencia. Así, tanto la reformulación de una pregunta, como su desafío se consideran disclaimers, puesto que subyace el rechazo patente de la pregunta. En último lugar, un entrevistado puede evitar la respuesta proporcionando un comentario sin abordar directamente la cuestión. Para concluir, en Tabla 3 se resumen las susodichas estrategias de respuesta.

Tabla 3. Clasificación de estrategias de respuesta^[3]

3. Información sobre la base de datos y detalles prácticos

La decimosexta edición del Campeonato Europeo de la UEFA (EURO 2020) fue especialmente complicada a causa de la difusión de la COVID-19, lo que dificultó el desarrollo de uno de los eventos deportivos más importantes del mundo (Connecting UEFA EURO 2020, s.f.). Por cada encuentro se celebró una rueda de prensa prepartido y otra pospartido con las dos selecciones enfrentadas. En el caso de la selección española, en la sala de la rueda de prensa se encontraba presencialmente el moderador Pablo García Cuervo, director de comunicación de la Real Federación Española de Fútbol, junto con el entrenador Luis Enrique Martínez García y, en la mayoría de las ocasiones, un jugador. Por el contrario, la totalidad de los periodistas se comunicaba a distancia con los entrevistados a través de una plataforma de teleconferencia, puesto que no podían acceder físicamente a la sala de prensa (a excepción de la final en el estadio de Wembley, en Londres). De hecho, hubo algunos de entre ellos que se vieron abocados a conectarse con su teléfono móvil y auriculares desde las inmediaciones del estadio, o incluso desde los pasillos o las gradas del mismo, obligados a escuchar con grandes dificultades la rueda de prensa por el ruido ambiente (griterío de aficionados, música, bocinas, etc.) y a alzar la voz para ser escuchados correctamente en la sala de prensa (Suárez Lovelle, 2023).

Como base de datos para el estudio se emplea el corpus EFCIC (European Football Championship Interpreting Corpus): un corpus abierto, sincrónico, paralelo y multimedia de una muestra de ruedas de prensa de la selección española de fútbol en la EURO 2020 y sus respectivas interpretaciones simultáneas al inglés. En EFCIC hay un único intérprete que trabaja desde su lengua B (español) a su lengua A (inglés). De igual modo, EFCIC es un corpus abierto, puesto que por el momento no se han incluido los ‘textos’ de todas las ruedas de prensa de la selección española en la EURO 2020. En la fase de creación de EFCIC, se decidió optar por incluir al menos una rueda de prensa del entrenador, de cada jugador entrevistado y un ejemplo de todos los partidos jugados por la selección para obtener una base de datos variada que permitiera obtener mayor representatividad de todos los tipos de participantes involucrados. En ese momento, lo que se pretendía no era efectuar un estudio con un solo participante de la rueda de prensa (i. e. el entrenador), sino permitir que gracias a su diversidad pudiera usarse en otro tipo de estudios.

En Tabla 4 se muestra el repositorio completo de las ruedas de prensa de la selección española que ha sido recopilado, un total de 12 (dos por cada encuentro), con sus respectivos entrevistados. Sin embargo, únicamente aquellas sombreadas en gris conforman EFCIC, a saber, la base de datos utilizada en el presente estudio. Además, las cabeceras de los textos son las mismas que las del UEFA Media Channel, una plataforma dedicada a los medios de comunicación donde se encuentran recogidos todos los vídeos de la UEFA. De este modo, ‘M’ significa match y el número es el número del partido jugado en todo el campeonato por orden cronológico; ‘MDM1’ (match day match one) y ‘PRESS’ son las abreviaturas utilizadas para señalar que se trata de una rueda de prensa prepartido, y ‘POSTPRESS’ para la pospartido; ‘ESP’ indica la selección entrevistada, en este caso la española; y por último se incluye el nombre del entrevistado (por ejemplo, ‘ENRIQUE’). Para más información, cf. Suárez Lovelle, 2023.

Tabla 4. Repositorio completo de las ruedas de prensa de la selección española

En su conjunto, los dos subcorpus de EFCIC (EFCIC-ES y EFCIC-EN) engloban 26.882 palabras. La Tabla 5 refleja la información relativa a las dimensiones del corpus. Las características de ambos subcorpus trazan una distinción entre textos fuente (‘st’ o source text) y textos meta (‘tt’ o target text), el idioma de cada subcorpus (‘es’ para ‘español’ y ‘en’ para ‘inglés’), y solo en el caso del subcorpus en inglés, el idioma fuente desde el que se tradujeron las ruedas de prensa (‘from-es’, a saber, ‘del español’). De igual modo, se incluye la dimensión ‘oral’ del discurso (‘sp’, es decir, spoken). Con el término ‘texto’ se hace referencia a cada entrevista que conforma una rueda de prensa en EFCIC. En otras palabras, cada rueda de prensa tiene varios entrevistados, en todas el entrenador y en la mayoría de los casos un jugador. Cada una de estas entrevistas dentro de una única rueda de prensa se considera en cuanto texto independiente. Por lo tanto, en EFCIC se recogen 10 textos de un potencial máximo de 21. Finalmente, se trata de un corpus público que se puede consultar en la plataforma NoSketch Engine[4] (a partir de ahora NoSkE) en la página web del centro de investigación CoLiTec del Departamento de Interpretación y Traducción de la Universidad de Bolonia, Campus de Forlì (https://corpora.dipintra.it/).

Tabla 5. Información relativa a las dimensiones de los subcorpus de EFCIC

Es menester subrayar que la base de datos del presente estudio no es totalmente representativa de las ruedas de prensa seleccionadas. Durante la fase de diseño de EFCIC se eliminaron algunos fragmentos que habrían ensuciado las transcripciones, limitando así la utilidad de la anotación part-of-speech (POS) del corpus a través de la herramienta NoSkE. Por un lado, se han incorporado en el subcorpus EFCIC-ES solo aquellos textos fuente pronunciados en español durante las ruedas de prensa. En las ruedas de prensa de la selección española los periodistas eran mayoritariamente de habla hispana, pero a medida que la selección se enfrentaba a equipos de mayor envergadura y con más atención mediática internacional, en las ruedas de prensa había cada vez más entrevistadores de distintas nacionalidades que interrogaban principalmente en inglés o en el idioma del equipo adversario. De hecho, como norma general, las preguntas de reporteros extranjeros se encontraban al final de la rueda de prensa. Tales preguntas, o bien se interpretaban al español para que los entrevistados pudieran responder en su lengua materna o bien eran planteadas y respondidas en inglés (Suárez Lovelle, 2023). Por otro lado, al ser la EURO 2020 el primer torneo internacional de selecciones de fútbol que utiliza la modalidad VRSI (‘video remote simultaneous interpreting’) en un ‘home-to-venue setup’ (véase Seeber et al., 2019), se registran interrupciones e interferencias en el texto fuente (TF), debidas a la mala calidad de la conexión, que influyen a su vez en el texto meta (TM). En las primeras ruedas de prensa, los problemas técnicos eran más recurrentes (i. e. dificultad en ponerse en contacto con los periodistas). Esta situación alargaba innecesariamente la rueda de prensa y creaba turnos dialógicos entre el entrevistado y el moderador en los que a menudo reían y bromeaban sobre la situación. De igual modo, en ciertas ocasiones el equipo técnico irrumpía en la sala de prensa para resolver algún problema técnico a causa del mal funcionamiento de la aplicación y, en ocasiones, la imposibilidad de escuchar a los periodistas ha provocado el cierre de la rueda de prensa (i. e. M09-MDM1-ESP-PRESS-ALBA). En su mayoría, los susodichos turnos eran de tipo ‘comment’ y no se recogen en EFCIC (cf. Suárez Lovelle, 2023). En conclusión, se privilegiaron dos parámetros en la selección del material: el criterio del español como único idioma fuente y la pulcritud de los discursos, es decir, sin problemas técnicos. Para terminar, en Tabla 6 se puede consultar la duración de las ruedas de prensa tras haber eliminado los anteriores fragmentos y el número total de turnos de pregunta y respuesta por orador.

Tabla 6. Duración de las ruedas de prensa y pares adyacentes en EFCIC

4. Metodología

Durante la fase de creación de la base de datos EFCIC, se codificaron metadatos que arrojan información sobre el papel del orador (‘role’), el nombre (‘speaker’) y el tipo de evento discursivo (‘speechevent’) mediante un proceso de etiquetado (cf. Suárez Lovelle, 2023). De este modo, con los filtros de búsqueda de la herramienta de consulta NoSkE, pudieron extrapolarse de forma automática la totalidad de los eventos discursivos de pregunta y respuesta de EFCIC (un total de 73 preguntas y 74 respuestas). Para encontrar dichos turnos en el buscador utilizado, es necesario situarse en la pestaña PARALELL CONCORDANCE y realizar una búsqueda avanzada. A continuación, debe seleccionarse el query type ‘CQL’, acrónimo de Corpus Query Language, e introducir lo siguiente: . A este respecto, el símbolo ‘/’ es indispensable, puesto que hace que aparezca la totalidad del turno, en vez de la primera frase. Por último, es menester seleccionar la opción de Text Type y el tipo de evento discursivo interesado, en este caso ‘question’ o ‘answer’. Luego de haber lanzado la búsqueda, aparecerán todos los turnos completos (hasta un máximo de 100 palabras) del evento discursivo seleccionado con sus respectivas interpretaciones (véase Imagen 1).

Imagen 1. Búsqueda de turnos de pregunta en NoSkE

Posteriormente, con el fin de examinar las estrategias de pregunta y respuesta de forma más amena, se procedió a la exportación de los turnos en formato PDF y a su sucesiva impresión con el objetivo de efectuar un análisis manual de los datos. A continuación, se ha efectuado un análisis cuantitativo de las estrategias de la prensa en el planteamiento de preguntas (véase Tabla 1) y de los entrevistados a la hora de responder (véase Tabla 3) con el objetivo de parangonar dichas estrategias con las de la interpretación al inglés. De igual modo, con la máxima de enriquecer adicionalmente el presente estudio, se ha analizado el carácter conflictual de los intercambios. Cada turno de pregunta ha sido examinado en función de su complejidad, asertividad, hostilidad y su carácter directo o indirecto (véase Tabla 2). De esta forma, se ha determinado si los turnos contenían carga conflictiva. Sucesivamente, se ha desgranado cada turno de respuesta para observar si transmitía una actitud colaboradora con la prensa (respuesta completa o parcial) o si, por el contrario, había opuesto resistencia a una pregunta conflictiva (suplementaria, disclaimer o comentario).

5. Análisis

En la presente sección se aborda el análisis de los turnos de pregunta y respuesta en los textos fuente (§5.1) y en los textos meta (§5.2), con hincapié en las estrategias empleadas y el nivel de conflictividad de los intercambios.

5.1. Las ruedas de prensa TF

Por lo que concierne al análisis cuantitativo, los resultados de las estrategias empleadas en el planteamiento de preguntas están recopilados en Tabla 7. Respecto a la función, se observa que las preguntas que buscan información (PBI) superan ligeramente las preguntas que buscan confirmar información (PCI) (74 vs. 64, a saber, 54 por ciento vs. 46 por ciento). En más de la mitad de los casos, los periodistas formulan preguntas que daban pie a respuestas libres. Por añadidura, se observa una gran presencia de preguntas Wh- (71), siendo la más frecuente al alcanzar un 51 por ciento, frente a un ínfimo número de preguntas con verbo modal (3). Aunque no es inusual encontrar este último tipo de pregunta en castellano, cabe destacar que la prensa ha privilegiado abrumadoramente otra estructura sintáctica que otorga a las preguntas un carácter indirecto, sinónimo de cortesía: la autorreferencia. De hecho, 42 turnos de pregunta del total de 73 recurren a ella. Asimismo, el resto de las preguntas más comunes pertenecen al grupo PCI: 50 preguntas sí o no, un 36 por ciento del total, seguidas por 8 declarativas y 6 preguntas con opción.

Por lo que se refiere la complejidad de las preguntas, la carencia de PCI no está directamente relacionada con preguntas mayoritariamente sencillas. Como demuestran los datos en Tabla 8, los periodistas optan por ejercer presión sobre los entrevistados. En efecto, el primer parámetro que determina la complejidad muestra que las preguntas multi-part han sido predominantes. Casi en el 60 por ciento de los casos los periodistas aúnan varias preguntas en un único turno. Igualmente, el 78 por ciento de los turnos de pregunta, cualquiera que sea su grado de complejidad, contiene una declaración introductoria. En tercer lugar, cabe destacar que 19 de las 43 preguntas multi-part (un 44 por ciento) son preguntas cascada. Este dato es esclarecedor, puesto que la prensa no solo desea aprovechar su turno para plantear preguntas inherentes a diversas cuestiones, sino que también tiende a reiterar con insistencia la misma pregunta para presionar al entrevistado y obtener la información deseada. En último lugar, en ningún caso un periodista toma la palabra en un tercer turno. Este dato podría parecer revelador, pero en el presente estudio se vuelve redundante, puesto que a causa de la dimensión telemática de las ruedas de prensa, el moderador apagaba inmediatamente el micrófono de los periodistas una vez estos habían formulado la pregunta para evitar ruidos indeseados en la sala. Por ende, a diferencia del contexto presencial, la prensa no pudo imponerse y replicar en un tercer turno. Por los susodichos motivos, el grado general de complejidad de los turnos de pregunta TF puede juzgarse elevado.

Tabla 7. Tipos de pregunta en las ruedas de prensa TF

Tabla 8. Complejidad de los turnos en las ruedas de prensa TF

Por añadidura, por lo que respecta al carácter directo e indirecto de las preguntas, la prensa opta por ser respetuosa en la mayoría de los casos: seis de cada diez turnos de pregunta fueron indirectos (un 62 por ciento) y cuatro de cada diez (un 38 por ciento) directos. De igual modo, en el 57 por ciento de los casos, la intencionalidad de plantear una pregunta se subrayó con una autorreferencia: «quería preguntarte […]». Asimismo, por lo que concierne al grado de asertividad, los periodistas plantean un 33 por ciento de turnos de pregunta conflictivos mediante 19 declaraciones tendenciosas y 5 formulaciones negativas (véase Tabla 9). Por último, en EFCIC se recogen dos ejemplos de turnos de pregunta abiertamente hostiles cuyo objetivo es desencadenar una reacción airada como en el caso del entrevistado Aymeric Laporte (en M45-MDM1-ESP-PRESS-LAPORTE). Igualmente, se puede observar que el grado de conflictividad de las preguntas coincide aproximadamente con las preguntas que buscan confirmar información: 46 por ciento de PCI, frente a un 38 por ciento de turnos directos y un 33 por ciento de turnos asertivos o abiertamente hostiles. Por ende, al plantear una PCI, la prensa tiende a emplear una estructura conflictiva, lo que predispone en gran medida la reacción del entrevistado en la respuesta.

Tabla 9. Turnos de pregunta asertivos en las ruedas de prensa TF

Por lo tanto, no es sorprendente que, durante el proceso de análisis de las estrategias de respuesta, se encuentren evidencias de resistencia a las preguntas PCI con carga conflictiva. Los datos cuantitativos recogidos en Tabla 10 muestran, por un lado, que hay un elevado número de respuestas indirectas (un 41 por ciento), principalmente respuestas suplementarias (29), seguidas por los disclaimers, utilizados en 11 ocasiones. Por otro lado, las respuestas directas representan el 59 por ciento del total, proporcionando la totalidad de la información solicitada en 49 ocasiones y de forma parcial en 11 ocasiones. De nuevo, las cifras de respuestas directas e indirectas coinciden aproximadamente con la función de las preguntas: 46% de PCI vs. 41% de respuestas indirectas; y 54% de PBI vs. 59% de respuestas directas.

Tabla 10. Estrategias de respuesta en las ruedas de prensa TF

Cabe subrayar que estos datos revelan que los entrevistados tienden a colaborar, pero que en muchas ocasiones oponen resistencia y objetan algunas preguntas. Así, los turnos asertivos se concentran en los textos de M22-MDM1-ESP-PRESS-ENRIQUE, M22-MDM1-ESP-PRESS-MORATA y M45-MDM1-ESP-PRESS-LAPORTE (véanse sombreados en Tabla 9). De hecho, dichas ruedas de prensa, a diferencia de las de sus compañeros, están impregnadas de polémica. En primer lugar, en la rueda de prensa de Luis Enrique, se le interroga sobre los pitos a la selección y al delantero Álvaro Morata por su falta de gol. Por consiguiente, el entrenador sale en defensa del futbolista empleando prevalentemente respuestas de tipo disclaimer, que ponen en tela de juicio la pertinencia de la pregunta. En segundo lugar, a Álvaro Morata se le plantean preguntas de la misma tónica, pero, con una actitud más pausada, le quita hierro al asunto y desvía la atención del tema utilizando respuestas suplementarias. Por último, el defensa Aymeric Laporte recibe preguntas sobre los últimos minutos del partido en los que, según la opinión de la prensa, no ha estado al mejor nivel, puesto que España encaja tres goles en pocos minutos y por poco no es eliminada del torneo. Por ello, ante la incomodidad creada por dichas preguntas, no es de extrañar que los turnos con mayor número de respuestas indirectas sean precisamente los de Luis Enrique, Álvaro Morata y Aymeric Laporte (7, 10 y 6, respectivamente), y con mayor número de disclaimers que ponen en tela de juicio la pertinencia de la pregunta (sombreados en gris en Tabla 10).

A continuación, se ejemplifican los datos anteriormente expuestos mediante una serie de turnos de pares adyacentes (pregunta y respuesta) extraídos de la base de datos EFCIC, junto con la interpretación al inglés y una traducción literal al inglés de las pregunta del TF. En primer lugar, en el Ejemplo 1, el periodista Ladislao Moñino anuncia su intención de plantear una primera pregunta (de varias, por lo tanto, una pregunta multi-part) con una autorreferencia (líns. 1-2). A continuación, realiza una digresión para contextualizar su pregunta e inicia una declaración introductoria (líns. 3-4), antes de proceder con la primera pregunta de tipo Wh- en estilo indirecto (líns. 4-5) sobre la posición del futbolista Marcos Llorente. Después, precede la segunda pregunta sí o no (líns. 5-8) con una breve declaración introductoria: y si también por el fútbol que practicáis (líns. 5-6). Dicha pregunta no contiene en su enunciado rasgos conflictivos que pudieran llevar al capitán Jordi Alba a evadir la respuesta. Por ende, el futbolista responde de forma completa a ambas preguntas: primero a la segunda (líns. 1-2), afirmando que se trata de un portento físico, la cual retoma al final del turno añadiendo más información relativa a su estado y rendimiento dentro del grupo (líns. 9-12); y después a la primera (líns. 2-9), declarando que puede jugar en la posición de lateral.

Ejemplo 1. Par adyacente n.º 2 (Q&A)

A continuación, en Ejemplo 2 se procede a observar un turno de pregunta conflictivo. Tras la pregunta de Miguel Ángel Lara, el delantero Álvaro Morata considera que la cita del periodista es imprecisa y procede a reformularla en su respuesta empleando la estrategia de disclaimer (líns. 1-6). Efectivamente, en el turno de pregunta, el reportero delinea una declaración tendenciosa (líns.3-5) en la que declara que Morata tuvo problemas para dormir tras el empate del partido anterior (se sobreentiende que a causa de los pitos y las críticas recibidos) y le plantea una pregunta de sí o no sobre si ha consultado al psicólogo de la Federación Española de Fútbol (líns. 4-5). El futbolista, tras la reformulación (disclaimer), procede a replicar a la pregunta propiamente dicha con una respuesta suplementaria que no responde a si ha consultado al psicólogo, sino que pone el foco en la importancia de «Joaquín» (el psicólogo) al que se refiere por su nombre de pila (líns. 6-12), y comenta su larga carrera como deportista y en la importancia del apoyo de los miembros del equipo (líns. 15-24).

Ejemplo 2. Par adyacente n.º 19 (Q&A)

Igualmente, en el Ejemplo 3 la reportera Helena Condis enuncia una declaración introductoria sobre el gran estatus del mediocentro Pedro González en su club y su selección y sobre la posibilidad de que juegue, tras la temporada de la Liga y tras la Eurocopa, en los Juegos Olímpicos (líns. 2-4). En las dos últimas líneas, con una oración declarativa constata que el futbolista quiere estar (lín.6), pero al final añade una coletilla para saber su opinión: [...] no? Como respuesta, Pedro González cambia el foco de la pregunta y no responde directamente a si participará en los Juegos Olímpicos, limitándose a declarar, con una respuesta suplementaria, que a él lo que le gusta es jugar al fútbol (líns. 1-2).

Ejemplo 3. Par adyacente n.º 68 (Q&A)

5.2 Las ruedas de prensa TM

La versión interpretada se ha analizado pormenorizadamente utilizando las mismas categorías de estrategias de preguntas y respuestas en Tabla 1, Tabla 2 y Tabla 3 para obtener información comparable. En primer lugar, el análisis cuantitativo en Tabla 12 muestra que la distribución de las preguntas según la función es prácticamente idéntica entre las versiones del TF y TM: un 53 por ciento de PBI y un 47 por ciento de PCI en las interpretaciones al inglés, frente a un 54 por ciento de PBI y un 46 por ciento en los discursos originales. De igual modo, por lo que concierne a los tipos de pregunta específicos, de nuevo los más frecuentes son las preguntas Wh- (59), seguidas por las preguntas de tipo sí o no (48), y en menor medida las de opción (4), declarativas (2) y modal polar (2). Asimismo, es interesante notar que en la versión interpretada únicamente dos categorías (‘Wh-’ y ‘sí o no’) abarcan el 93 por ciento del tipo de pregunta, mientras que en las versiones originales el porcentaje es ligeramente inferior (87 por ciento). En efecto, en parangón con los tipos de pregunta TF en Tabla 7, en la versión interpretada se observa una leve disminución de declarativas (-6) y preguntas de opción (-2), junto con una fuerte caída de preguntas Wh- (-12). En ningún caso se registra un incremento de preguntas./p>

Tabla 11. Complejidad de los turnos en las ruedas de prensa TM

Tabla 12. Tipos de pregunta en las ruedas de prensa TM

Como se observa en Ejemplo 4, el intérprete resume ambas preguntas Wh- de la versión original en una sola que contiene fundamentalmente la información de la primera. Es probable que el intérprete decida no interpretar la segunda, puesto que se da cuenta de que es una reformulación de la anterior y, por lo tanto, y de tal manera puede quizás ganar tiempo y concentrarse en la interpretación de la respuesta.

 Ejemplo 4. Turno de pregunta n.º 4

De igual modo, en las ruedas de prensa del TF hay 19 turnos de pregunta cascada de un total de 73 (véase Tabla 8) y tan solo 10 en el TM (véase Tabla 11). Se constata una reducción de preguntas redundantes (principalmente de tipo Wh- y sí o no) en la versión interpretada: de los 19 turnos de pregunta cascada, 9 contienen únicamente preguntas de tipo Wh-, 7 solo de tipo sí o no, 2 una pregunta declarativa junto con una de tipo sí o no y, por último, 1 una pregunta de tipo Wh- y sí o no. Además, la disminución de preguntas Wh- sería todavía mayor de no ser porque una pregunta declarativa se transformó en Wh-, mientras que las otras cinco declarativas restantes se convirtieron en preguntas de tipo sí o no. Entonces, por un lado, es comprensible que la categoría de pregunta Wh- en el TM registre una flexión de 12 preguntas, puesto que la mayor parte de los turnos cascada están formados por dos o más preguntas de dicha categoría. Por otro lado, también se entiende que la categoría de sí o no permanezca casi invariable (-2) ya que la disminución causada por el resumen de preguntas cascada en el TM está contrarrestada por la transformación de preguntas declarativas en preguntas de tipo sí o no. En definitiva, más allá de las susodichas diferencias, la distribución de los tipos de pregunta es extremadamente parecida entre ambas versiones. Por ende, las estrategias de planteamiento de preguntas en la interpretación fueron por lo general replicadas fielmente.

Por añadidura, el parámetro de conflictividad relativo al carácter directo e indirecto de las preguntas revela que las versiones del TM no reproducen el mismo nivel de cordialidad. Por un lado, las autorreferencias se traducen de forma invariable en 18 ocasiones, a saber, en un 43% (véase Tabla 13). Por otro lado, por lo que se refiere a los tres casos en los que se emplea una pregunta modal polar, ninguno de ellos se traduce de la misma manera: el primero (i. e. «puedes explicar por qué […]» en M22-MDM1-ESP-PRESS-MORATA) no se traduce en absoluto pues el intérprete omite ese turno de pregunta (posiblemente por incomprensión a causa de mala calidad del sonido); el segundo se transforma en una autorreferencia (en castellano «me gustaría si me puedes valorar» se traduce en inglés como «I'd like to ask you about» en M49-ESP-POSTPRESS-ENRIQUE); y el tercero se traduce en una pregunta Wh- (en castellano «[…] si me pudiera hacer una valoración del torneo que ha hecho Dani Olmo» se traduce en inglés como «what did you make of Dani Olmo's tournament?» en M49-ESP-POSTPRESS-ENRIQUE). Por consiguiente, las interpretaciones de los turnos de pregunta son más directas que sus respectivos turnos originales en castellano.

 Tabla 13. Traducción de las autorreferencias en TM

Igualmente, por lo que concierne al grado de asertividad, la versión interpretada reproduce con fidelidad las versiones originales en casi la totalidad de los casos. Absolutamente todas las declaraciones tendenciosas se interpretan con la intención del original (19 de 19), pero el intérprete no traduce una formulación negativa en dos ocasiones (2 de un total de 5):

• M22-MDM1-ESP-PRESS-ENRIQUE: «no te importaría acabar sin un gol si somos campeones como Giroud con Francia siendo aquel Mundial», se traduce como «would you be happy until to score no goals if we end up winning the trophy?»
• M45-MDM1-ESP-PRESS-LAPORTE: «no crees que haya que corregir esto?», se traduce con una explicitación que resumía lo dicho anteriormente en el turno como «have you thought about improving your defensive result and thinking about receiving some fewer goals?»

Por lo que se refiere al análisis cuantitativo de las estrategias de respuesta, no se presenta una tabla, puesto que la versión interpretada refleja el tipo de respuesta del original en todos los casos, a excepción de aquellas respuestas que se han omitido. En otras palabras, cuando se traduce la respuesta, el intérprete mantiene la intención y la estructura de la misma. A título de ejemplo, en M22-MDM1-ESP-PRESS-ENRIQUE, tras una pregunta conflictiva con una declaración tendenciosa, el entrenador Luis Enrique replica con una pregunta retórica dirigida al periodista: «con: eh: dónde quieres centrar tu atención?» Esta respuesta es un disclaimer que pone en duda la pertinencia de la pregunta. Después, el seleccionador da una explicación en la que expone su punto de vista (respuesta suplementaria). Pues bien, en la versión interpretada se ha omitido la primera respuesta (disclaimer) y se ha traducido solo la segunda.

6. Discusión de los resultados y conclusiones

En esta muestra de ruedas de prensa de la selección española de fútbol en la EURO 2020, se observa una mayor cantidad de preguntas que buscan información (PBI), un 54 por ciento del total, frente a aquellas preguntas que buscan confirmar la información (PCI), un 46 por ciento. A tenor de los resultados, se podría hipotetizar que los periodistas optan por formular preguntas que les den nueva información, en vez de interrogarles para que les confirmen sus ideas. Igualmente, se observa que un 59 por ciento de respuestas son directas, frente a un 41 por ciento de respuestas indirectas lo que pone de manifiesto que los entrevistados tienden a ser colaboradores.

Estos datos están en consonancia con los niveles de conflictividad del presente estudio, puesto que estilo prevalente de las preguntas de las ruedas de prensa analizadas tiende a ser más neutral que conflictivo. En efecto, los turnos asertivos y hostiles representan casi un tercio del total de turnos, mientras que los neutrales más de dos tercios. Una vez dicho esto, cabría subrayar que la conflictividad es notablemente mayor en aquellas ruedas de prensa en las que los periodistas insisten en tocar aspectos peliagudos. De hecho, el 62 por ciento de los turnos asertivos se encuentra en tan solo 3 de los 10 textos que conforman la base de datos (cf. Sección 5.1). Por ende, es menester destacar que el grado de conflictividad depende en gran medida de la temática común denominador de la rueda de prensa y del entrevistado. De hecho, en el proceso de análisis del material recabado se visionaron las 12 ruedas de prensa del entrenador Luis Enrique y se pudo observar que tiende a responder de forma directa y sin tapujos a los reporteros, los que a su vez, adoptan una postura hostil con él. Por los susodichos motivos, es altamente probable que con una mayor representación del seleccionador en la base de datos aumente exponencialmente la conflictividad de los intercambios e incremente la cantidad de preguntas que buscan confirmar información (PCI) y, por lo tanto, también las respuestas indirectas.

Por lo que atañe a la versión interpretada, a los clásicos desafíos de este contexto, es decir, el veloz intercambio de turnos de palabra y la brevedad de cada turno (Sandrelli, 2018), se añade la mala calidad del audio de los periodistas que se conectaban a distancia. A este respecto, se puede mencionar el comentario sarcástico del seleccionador Enrique en referencia a la nueva aplicación de la UEFA para las ruedas de prensa a distancia (M22-MDM1-ESP-PRESS-ENRIQUE, min. 00:54): «ah pues yo te lo digo en serio que los feliciten». A pesar de los anteriores escollos, en el presente estudio las estrategias de formulación de pregunta y respuesta del TM son reproducidas, por lo general, de forma fidedigna a las ruedas de prensa originales, pero se observan algunas diferencias relativas a los rasgos de las preguntas entre ambas versiones. La diferencia principal es que el grado de complejidad y el nivel de cordialidad de las preguntas en el TM es inferior que en el del TF. De hecho, la omisión de las declaraciones introductorias otorga un mayor carácter conflictivo al texto meta. Como se observa en Ejemplo 5, en el TM se omiten una declaración introductoria (líns. 5-6) y el comentario referido a los problemas técnicos de la rueda de prensa (líns. 2-4). Mientras que este último no aporta información relevante, la declaración introductoria antes de la pregunta atenúa la pregunta que sabe de antemano que no le va a contestar. De hecho, Luis Enrique le responde riéndose: «un poco para contestarte a eso de lo otro no voy o sea sois incorregibles y nunca digo que va a jugar nadie». Cabe destacar que Luis Enrique es conocido por ser una persona a la que nunca le gustó la prensa, ni cuando era jugador ni entrenador, y que tiene un concepto de comunicación deportiva agresiva hacia los medios (Prieto y Pascual, 2022; González Jerez, 2022). Por esto, la anterior declaración introductoria y el operador de cortesía suerte para mañana podrían considerarse una forma de crear sintonía con el míster para que no perciba sus preguntas de forma conflictiva.

  Ejemplo 5. Par adyacente n.º 14 (Q&A)

A modo de conclusiones, el presente estudio arroja luz sobre la dinámica de las ruedas de prensa en ámbito futbolístico con un grupo de entrevistados que incluye, además del entrenador, a los jugadores. En futuras investigaciones cabe aumentar la base de datos para tener una panorámica de la totalidad de las ruedas de prensa de la selección española en la EURO 2020 y así comprobar si se confirman las anteriores observaciones.

About the author(s)

Gonzalo Suarez Lovelle is CEL (Collaboratore Esperto Linguistico) and Adjunt Professor of Spanish language at the University of Catania. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Modern Languages and Translation at the University of Alcalá de Henares and a Laurea Magistrale in Conference Interpreting at the University of Bologna. His research interests include Interpreting and Translation Studies and Second-Language Acquisition.

Email: [please login or register to view author's email address]

Abstract & Keywords

English:

This article focuses on three case studies of multilingual organisations in Italy, i.e. a public administration in an officially multilingual area, private companies in the same area and private companies in a monolingual area. Non-professional translators are present in all three contexts. We show their role in coping with multilingualism, discuss the similarities and differences between each case study, and give voice to these still understudied professional figures.

Italian:

Il contributo presenta tre casi di studio italiani in cui è stata individuata la presenza di traduttori non professionisti: una amministrazione pubblica in una zona multilingue, delle imprese private nello stesso territorio e delle imprese private in una zona monolingue. Illustriamo il ruolo centrale di queste figure nella gestione del multilinguismo delle organizzazioni mostrando analogie e differenze tra i vari contesti e dando voce a delle figure professionali ancora poco studiate in Italia.

Keywords: non-professional translation, multilingual organisations, SMEs, translation process, case studies, traduzione non-professionale, organizzazioni multilingui, PMI, processo traduttivo, casi di studio

1. Introduzione

La traduzione non professionale è un fenomeno noto al mondo accademico, al punto da aver acquisito diverse denominazioni nel corso degli ultimi decenni che hanno posto l’accento su vari aspetti: le caratteristiche intrinseche di chi traduce, il contesto di traduzione, le carenze rispetto ai traduttori professionisti, spesso eletti a termine di paragone. La letteratura di riferimento raccoglie ormai molti contributi che descrivono forme di traduzione non professionale, dall’interpretazione informale a opera di minori, a quella svolta in contesti migratori o istituzionali come nei tribunali e negli ospedali, alle forme di traduzione volontaria nel web. Un’attenzione forse minore è stata dedicata all’interazione tra la traduzione non professionale e il mondo lavorativo multilingue, ovvero a quei contesti in cui la traduzione è parte integrante dell’attività lavorativa ma viene sistematicamente trattata come attività accessoria di personale con altri profili professionali. Come riconosce anche Angelelli (2020: 117, 127), in questo contesto ci sono ancora molti quesiti aperti, tra cui quali competenze (minime) siano richieste al non professionista e quali circostanze portino alla sua scelta al posto di professionisti.

Il contributo intende colmare in parte questa lacuna concentrandosi su tre realtà italiane. Dopo una disamina sugli studi dedicati alla traduzione non professionale nelle istituzioni e nelle imprese, presenteremo tre contesti professionali – uno nel settore pubblico e due nel settore privato – in cui la traduzione svolge un ruolo importante. Facendo riferimento ai risultati di tre dottorati di ricerca, descriveremo come alcune figure professionali affrontano la traduzione all’interno del loro contesto lavorativo, verificheremo se possiedono le caratteristiche del traduttore non professionista descritte da Antonini et al. (2017) e se, pertanto, si possono considerare tali. La descrizione si costruirà attorno a citazioni provenienti da interviste e risposte aperte di questionari per dare voce ai protagonisti di questi contesti traduttivi. Concluderemo riflettendo sui punti di contatto e sulle divergenze tra i tre studi, nonché sulle ragioni che spingono le realtà lavorative studiate alla scelta sistematica di personale non specializzato in traduzione.

2. Letteratura

La traduzione è da sempre associata alla competenza linguistica dai non addetti ai lavori. Si potrebbe considerare una delle professioni socialmente meno riconosciute (Dam e Korning Zethsen 2008), dato che la conoscenza di una seconda lingua è ormai comune e a traduttori e interpreti sembrano mancare delle caratteristiche esclusive (Pérez-González e Susam-Saraeva 2012: 150). Ciò non sorprende se si considera che la professionalizzazione del traduttore risale solo allo scorso secolo, mentre la traduzione di per sé è un’attività con radici antiche. Ancora più recente è l’attenzione scientifica che la traduzione a opera di “non professionisti” ha guadagnato, aprendo la strada al nuovo ambito di studi della Non Professional Interpreting and Translation (NPIT). Per riferirsi a chi traduce senza farlo di mestiere si sono succedute numerose denominazioni[1], cominciando da natural translator di Harris e Sherwood (1978: 155) ripresa successivamente da Antonini (2011: 102) e, per citarne solo alcune, ad hoc translator, informal translator, unprofessional translator, unrecognized translator[2] e paraprofessional translator (Koskela et al. 2017: 464). Una delle denominazioni oggi più condivise è quella di non-professional translator, focalizzata sulla mancata professionalizzazione. Tra le caratteristiche essenziali di un traduttore non professionista rientrano infatti (a) l’assenza di formazione in traduzione e dunque di una qualifica, nonché (b) la competenza linguistica in un’altra lingua acquisita tendenzialmente per motivi circostanziali; (c) il fatto che può non essere assunto o pagato per svolgere il lavoro di traduzione, (d) che può svolgerlo in assenza di norme di riferimento e (e) può non acquisire prestigio sociale grazie alla traduzione. Infine, (f) può essere chiamato a operare sia in contesti informali sia in contesti formali e istituzionali, di solito per le sue competenze linguistiche (Antonini et al. 2017: 7).

Le analisi sulla NPIT si sono a lungo concentrate sull’interpretazione; la traduzione a opera di non professionisti è stata descritta più spesso in riferimento alla traduzione volontaria, ad esempio nel web (es. fan-subbing), mentre i contesti formali e lavorativi, sia pubblici che privati, hanno ricevuto minore attenzione; essendo questo l’ambito di nostro interesse, riepilogheremo alcuni studi che se ne sono occupati. Cominciando dal settore pubblico, vediamo che le politiche di traduzione spesso variano in base all’ufficialità della lingua considerata e che si evidenzia una tendenza ad “arrangiarsi in casa” con le risorse disponibili, laddove emerga un’esigenza di comunicazione con utenti esterni. Neather (2012) ha realizzato uno studio etnografico su 14 musei bi- e trilingui cinesi, da cui è emerso che il personale museale copre alle volte anche il lavoro dei traduttori, sebbene l’esternalizzazione sia abbastanza diffusa. Gli intervistati considerano il personale museale più esperto della materia e della forma comunicativa e testuale rispetto a professionisti esterni. Angelelli (2015) ha indagato il modo in cui alcuni paesi dell’Unione europea gestiscono il fabbisogno comunicativo degli stranieri nel contesto sanitario. In nessuno Stato tra quelli analizzati vige una normativa che regolamenta questo ambito: generalmente il paziente ricorre a parenti e amici o a mediatori culturali, laddove disponibili, oppure se la cava da sé. González Núñez (2017) riporta i risultati di un’indagine compiuta in alcune istituzioni pubbliche nella città di confine di Brownsville (Texas), dove il personale amministrativo opera spesso come traduttore e interprete per la comunità linguistica ispanofona, in assenza di politiche traduttive definite, complete e condivise. Infine, anche le organizzazioni senza scopo di lucro sembrano applicare strategie simili. Tesseur (2014, 2017) individua in Amnesty International pratiche di traduzione divergenti proprio a seconda della lingua: per le lingue minori il personale delle sedi minori traduce senza formazione e spesso senza materiale adeguato, mentre nelle sedi centrali e per le lingue principali dell’organizzazione vengono impiegati dei professionisti. Ozolins (2010) ha identificato per l’interpretazione quattro fattori che determinano la sua presenza o assenza dalle istituzioni pubbliche. In buona misura, tali fattori possono considerarsi validi anche per la traduzione e includono: budget disponibile; quantità di lingue a cui dover far fronte; servizi linguistici riconosciuti come una questione istituzionale più che una professione a sé dotata di standard propri; trasversalità della traduzione, che la rende necessaria nell’intera istituzione e non solo in alcuni dipartimenti.

Spostando l’attenzione sulle imprese, queste sono chiamate a superare barriere linguistiche sia nella comunicazione interna tra diverse sedi o dipartimenti che nella comunicazione esterna con partner, fornitori e clienti esteri. In entrambi i casi le sfide da superare consistono nell’utilizzo attivo o passivo di una o più lingue straniere o nella resa della documentazione aziendale in una o più lingue. Laddove le competenze linguistiche richieste per coprire i fabbisogni comunicativi non siano diffuse tra il personale, spesso si ricorre a singoli collaboratori con competenze in una o più lingue straniere che fungono da mediatori tra le diverse sedi aziendali o con l’esterno. Queste figure vengono definite language nodes (Feely e Harzing 2003: 46) o bridge individuals (Harzing et al. 2011: 284). Si tratta solitamente di personale bilingue o di dipendenti delle sedi estere non assunti come traduttori. L’assenza di un vero e proprio background di studi linguistici nonché la natura informale del loro ruolo li rendono de facto dei traduttori non professionisti.

Sul piano traduttivo, Koskinen (2020: 60) utilizza il termine translatoriality per descrivere l’utilizzo dinamico della traduzione e il continuo passaggio da una lingua all’altra, aspetti questi che contraddistinguono le organizzazioni multilingui. Al loro interno spesso il processo traduttivo non coinvolge i soli traduttori professionisti e si configura come una serie di attività, talvolta non lineari, in cui entrano in gioco diversi attori e pratiche quotidiane. Per soddisfare le proprie esigenze traduttive, le imprese possono adottare politiche formali, ad esempio creare un reparto di traduzioni centralizzato, esternalizzare gli incarichi o inserire nel workflow strumenti a supporto della traduzione (cfr. Piekkari et al. 2017: 36–44). Queste politiche però richiedono risorse che spesso superano quelle disponibili, in particolar modo nelle PMI (cfr. Hagen 2006: 46). Pertanto, sono molto diffuse anche le pratiche traduttive informali, tra cui l’autotraduzione da parte dei dipendenti o il ricorso a colleghi con le competenze linguistiche necessarie, che traducono parallelamente a o al posto dei traduttori professionisti esterni. Si tratta spesso di impiegati come manager di filiale (Ciuk e James 2015; Logemann e Piekkari 2015), il cui lavoro non consiste ufficialmente nel tradurre ma che hanno competenze linguistiche in più di una lingua (Koskinen 2020: 65-66; Tietze 2021: 38). Queste figure rivestono un ruolo cruciale nelle imprese ma vengono analizzate di rado nella letteratura di stampo traduttivo, tradizionalmente più focalizzata sul piano professionale della traduzione (Dam e Korning Zethsen 2008; Sela-Sheffy e Shlesinger 2011) e su traduttori freelance e agenzie di traduzione (Olohan e Davitti 2017; Risku 2016). Le poche indagini empiriche evidenziano la natura ibrida e dinamica delle loro mansioni, nonché le loro diverse forme di expertise (Kuznik 2016; Lebtahi e Ibert 2004).

3. Casi di studio

In questa sezione presenteremo tre casi di studio, il primo incentrato sull’amministrazione della Provincia autonoma di Bolzano, il secondo su alcune aziende private in Alto Adige e il terzo su alcune aziende private nelle Marche, al fine di illustrare tre diversi modi di declinare la traduzione non professionale all’interno di realtà lavorative italiane. La scelta dei casi di studio si è incentrata su ricerche che permettono di descrivere il contesto e le percezioni di traduttori non professionisti impiegati in organizzazioni di vario tipo sul territorio italiano. La diversità dei tre contesti ci permette di mostrare che la figura del traduttore non professionista in Italia è presente sia in aziende private sia in enti pubblici, in zone ufficialmente multilingui ma anche in zone monolingui e che l’attività di traduzione non professionale viene affidata a persone con background molto vari, non necessariamente solo a chi abbia svolto degli studi linguistici. Ciascuno dei tre casi di studio ha raccolto sia dati quantitativi sia dati qualitativi. Nelle sezioni seguenti daremo particolare risalto al punto di vista degli impiegati ricorrendo il più possibile alle loro parole, ascoltate durante un’intervista (INT) o fornite come risposte libere (RL) a un questionario.

3.1 Traduttori non professionisti nel settore pubblico in Alto Adige

Il progetto quadriennale “TradAm” (2017-21), composto da una fase esplorativa e da un dottorato di ricerca[3], ha descritto e analizzato i processi traduttivi dell’amministrazione della Provincia autonoma di Bolzano (De Camillis 2021). In virtù del bilinguismo ufficiale del territorio le istituzioni pubbliche locali sono tenute a comunicare in italiano, tedesco e in parte anche in ladino; la traduzione è quindi uno dei punti nevralgici della comunicazione istituzionale. Combinando tecniche qualitative e quantitative, lo studio ha analizzato la funzione, il processo e il prodotto della traduzione nell’istituzione. Gli strumenti di analisi sono stati: 24 interviste esplorative semi-strutturate a dipendenti provinciali; un questionario rivolto all’intero corpo amministrativo, ovvero all’intera popolazione di riferimento, ragion per cui non è stato realizzato alcun campionamento (su 2.963 dipendenti, 1.276 hanno completato il questionario, pari al 43 percento); l’analisi della complessità linguistica di un corpus di testi bilingui (45 testi tra decreti, circolari e foglietti informativi); la comparazione delle politiche di traduzione con due regioni estere (Catalogna e Paesi Baschi) attraverso il modello Translation Policy Metrics (Sandrini 2019). In questo contributo si ricorrerà in particolare alle risposte libere (RL) lasciate dai rispondenti nella compilazione del questionario.

Il questionario ha confermato quanto emerso dalle interviste esplorative, analizzate secondo i parametri della Qualitative Content Analysis (Mayring 2014): le traduzioni sono pane quotidiano di buona parte del corpo amministrativo provinciale. Il 67,6 percento dei rispondenti ha dichiarato infatti di aver svolto traduzioni nel corso dell’anno antecedente alla rilevazione, generalmente come attività accessoria alle proprie mansioni principali, per non più di un quarto del proprio tempo lavorativo. Soltanto il 2,9 percento di chi traduce possiede una formazione universitaria in ambito linguistico, mentre più rappresentate sono la giurisprudenza (10,2 percento), le scienze naturali come biologia e agraria (7,5 percento) e l’economia (5,5 percento). Buona parte dei rispondenti possiede invece un titolo di scuola secondaria di secondo grado, in particolare di tipo tecnico e professionale (40,3 percento), elementi questi che causano una certa confusione sui ruoli: “Non abbiamo una preparazione specifica in campo traduzioni, abbiamo una preparazione tecnica.”[4] (RL 43); “ÜbersetzerInnen sollten Übersetzungen übernehmen!”[5] (RL 199). Alla traduzione si sono approcciati attraverso il learning by doing, poiché oltre il 96 percento di loro non ha mai frequentato corsi di formazione sulla traduzione o sulla terminologia, lamentandone la mancanza: “Dei corsi di aggiornamento nell’ambito delle traduzioni sarebbero auspicabili” (RL 2); “C’è troppa approssimazione e poca preparazione. Bisognerebbe dare una buona formazione base al personale e poi individuare delle persone di riferimento per la traduzione” (RL 168).

Il 69 percento dei rispondenti possiede competenze bilingui di livello C1 e il 25 percento di livello B2[6], dunque la quasi totalità di chi traduce ha competenze bilingui medio-alte, almeno sulla carta. La certificazione di bilinguismo non sembra tuttavia uno strumento del tutto attendibile, poiché le competenze certificate all’inizio della carriera lavorativa possono nel tempo ritrarsi o espandersi, come giustamente segnalano alcuni rispondenti: “Leider besteht die Zweisprachigkeit bei vielen Landesangestellten nur auf dem Papier”[7] (RL 97); “Es ist Schade, dass vielfach ältere Mitarbeiter immer noch nicht die zweite Sprache erlernt haben”[8] (RL 106); “Credo che debba crescere la competenza linguistica di noi dipendenti” (RL 124). Ciononostante, il presunto bilinguismo del personale sembra essere l’unico parametro in base a cui l’istituzione affida le traduzioni internamente.

Trattandosi di un’attività accessoria, va da sé che il personale che traduce non venga assunto allo scopo specifico di tradurre. Alcuni accettano questa attività come un compito connaturato al lavoro amministrativo in due lingue, come espresso in questa risposta:

Durch den Nachweis der Zweisprachigkeitsprüfung sollte jede Mitarbeiterin und jeder Mitarbeiter in der Lage sein, im eigenen Arbeitsbereich kleinere Texte selbst zu übersetzen; wozu sonst braucht es einen Zweisprachigkeitsnachweis?[9] (RL 63)

Molti altri invece la vivono e la descrivono come un aggravio, specialmente di carattere temporale, perché intralcia lo svolgimento delle mansioni principali: “Il carico di lavoro per le traduzioni si aggiunge all’ordinario carico di lavoro di settore e spesso non viene considerato o sottovalutato” (RL 251); “La traduzione di tutti i testi richiede molto tempo che viene sottratto al normale svolgimento delle attività istituzionali” (RL 214); “Übersetzungen sollen nebenbei laufen, sodass meist nicht die Zeit bleibt, sich genauer damit zu befassen, da die ‘eigentliche’ Arbeit ja wartet”[10] (RL 42).

Il personale addetto alle traduzioni sbriga questa attività tendenzialmente in modo autonomo; l’istituzione infatti non dispone di norme condivise o strategie comuni: “eine einheitliche Handhabung der Übersetzungen ist weder innerhalb der Abteilungen und Ämter, noch in der Landesverwaltung als Gesamtheit zu erkennen”[11] (RL 161). Le uniche linee guida emesse dall’Ufficio Questioni linguistiche, incentrate sul linguaggio di genere, sulla semplificazione del linguaggio amministrativo e sulla redazione dei criteri legislativi, toccano questioni traduttive ma non sono riconosciute come direttive per le traduzioni dall’84,7 percento dei rispondenti. La sensazione descritta è quella di abbandono a sé stessi: “ogni singolo dipendente provinciale affronta il problema della traduzione in modo isolato, non vi è una linea comune” (RL 173); “man ist zu viel auf sich alleine gestellt”[12] (RL 192). A ciò contribuisce anche l’assenza di strumenti specifici per la traduzione. Mancano strumenti CAT, memorie di traduzione, glossari e sistemi di traduzione automatica; il sistema informativo bistro[13], che raccoglie parte della terminologia giuridico-amministrativa altoatesina, è noto soltanto a circa il 20 percento del personale. Anche di questo aspetto i rispondenti si lamentano: “dovrebbero comunque essere forniti strumenti agli impiegati (applicazioni software) per la traduzione professionale (specie quella tecnica)” (RL 21); “ein auf die Landesverwaltung angepasstes Übersetzungsprogramm”[14] (RL 111). Emerge con chiarezza la mancanza di una visione globale nei confronti dell’attività di traduzione da parte dell’istituzione, che definisca strategie, responsabilità, fasi di lavoro e strumenti a disposizione.

Infine, per quanto riguarda l’oggetto della traduzione, tra le tipologie testuali più tradotte rientrano la corrispondenza, le comunicazioni, le delibere, i decreti, i moduli e i report. Al 52 percento accade di frequente di svolgere la traduzione di un testo scritto da loro stessi, ovvero di autotradursi. È possibile che questo fattore, sommato alle competenze traduttive abbozzate e alla complessità della materia, contribuisca al senso di straniamento provato dai dipendenti leggendo i testi istituzionali. Loro stessi infatti individuano un nesso tra la qualità della redazione e la qualità della traduzione, riconoscendo che non possano nascere buone traduzioni da testi oscuri, specialmente perché di solito si traduce in modo letterale: “es passiert noch zu oft, dass die übersetzten Texte (vom Deutschen ins Italienische und umgekehert) zu wenig präzise sind”[15] (RL 18); “alcune volte […] rileggendo i testi mi accorgo che viene tradotto più in modo letterale che logico” (RL 32); “sempre più spesso si riscontrano errori di traduzione e testi redatti in modo non corretto (ortografia e sintassi), con incongruenze tra le due versioni italiane e tedesche” (RL 68).

Nel complesso la traduzione nell’amministrazione provinciale di Bolzano si delinea come un’attività trasversale e generalizzata, assegnata al personale amministrativo sulla base delle sue competenze linguistiche e tematiche, ma gestita in modo approssimativo senza una linea comune, formazione né supporto specifico da parte dell’istituzione.

3.2 Traduttori non professionisti nel settore privato in Alto Adige

La traduzione nel settore privato altoatesino è stata indagata nel 2012-13 nel quadro di un dottorato sulla gestione del multilinguismo nelle PMI in provincia di Bolzano[16] (Chiocchetti 2015). L’obiettivo era esplorare le strategie di gestione multilingue della conoscenza presso le aziende altoatesine, che da sempre affrontano il multilinguismo del proprio territorio oltre che le recenti sfide linguistiche date dall’internazionalizzazione. In questo contesto si sono analizzati, tra le altre cose, il ruolo della traduzione nonché le prassi traduttive e terminologiche con l’obiettivo di individuare buone pratiche. Data la prevalenza di imprese medio-piccole, si è posto l’accento sulle PMI, categoria ancora poco studiata per quanto concerne il multilinguismo. A differenza del settore pubblico, in quello privato non vige un obbligo di bilinguismo in Alto Adige. La scelta delle lingue di comunicazione dipende essenzialmente dalle dimensioni, dalla localizzazione e dai mercati dell’azienda. Le imprese piccole, spesso a conduzione familiare, site in zone sostanzialmente monolingui, tendono a un multilinguismo abbastanza ridotto, mentre quelle più grandi, con mercati internazionali, mostrano una diversificazione linguistica maggiore.

I risultati riportati di seguito si basano su dati quantitativi e qualitativi. I primi derivano da un questionario online, statisticamente non rappresentativo, a cui hanno partecipato 443 aziende del territorio. I secondi sono stati raccolti tramite 26 interviste presso imprese locali o con testimoni privilegiati nonché tramite le risposte libere al questionario. In questa sezione la voce dei traduttori non professionisti sarà dunque presentata indirettamente attraverso le informazioni fornite dai dirigenti.

In quasi tre quarti delle aziende partecipanti all’indagine il personale amministrativo svolge delle traduzioni. La seconda opzione più frequente è l’esternalizzazione. Seguono i tecnici interni con competenze settoriali: “dipende dal testo da tradurre, no? Se è un testo tecnico, sono i tecnici stessi che lo fanno, se sono, diciamo, documenti di gestione… [li traducono in amministrazione]” (INT 15). Se presenti, il reparto marketing, comunicazione e commerciale sono i reparti più multilingui, che si fanno carico delle traduzioni in circa un terzo delle aziende rispondenti. Meno di un decimo delle aziende indagate impiega traduttori interni.

Le traduzioni sono affidate volentieri a persone in possesso di un diploma di maturità linguistica oppure a personale straniero proveniente dai Paesi dove si parla la lingua richiesta: “abbiamo anche […] un ingegnere russo” (INT 19) e “a livello strategico […] [per] ogni Paese dove noi siamo presenti vogliamo avere delle persone qui che parlano la lingua di quel Paese” (INT 14). Non si tratta però di persone assunte per tradurre bensì per svolgere altre mansioni. Si applica così la credenza che basti conoscere una lingua per tradurre, come suggeriscono alcune risposte: “[l]a maggior parte dei collaboratori ha una padronanza sufficiente delle due lingue [locali] nel suo ambito” (RL 43); “wir sprechen nativ drei [S]prachen, [E]nglisch sehr gut als vierte [S]prache”[17] (RL 34). Il personale aziendale assume un ruolo cardine nella comunicazione multilingue, benché non riconosciuto, sia per le funzioni interne sia per quelle esterne, cioè tanto per la gestione e organizzazione dell’impresa stessa quanto per logistica, acquisti e vendite.

In merito ai supporti tecnici per la traduzione, si rilevano approcci poco sistematici: “Do mocht man sich holt in Internet awien schlau”[18] (INT 22). Gli strumenti di traduzione automatica non erano ancora molto sfruttati prima dell’avvento dei sistemi neurali nel 2016, ma più di un rispondente su venti già li usava spesso o sempre. Oltre un’azienda su dieci afferma di avere dei glossari, piccoli dizionari o liste di traduzioni interni: “[s]olitamente utilizziamo glossari già presenti. Oppure vengono stilate liste di termini tecnici. Negli altri casi, per proprio uso ciascuno prende appunti come meglio crede” (RL 13). La terminologia non sembra porre difficoltà. I glossari interni non si producono perché il personale possiede già sufficienti competenze o per mancanza di tempo e “sono comunque presenti dei dizionari” (RL 90). Si dà per scontato che chi traduce conosca già la terminologia specialistica in più lingue. Spesso non si rileva nemmeno l’esigenza di creare delle raccolte terminologiche plurilingui: “Jeder[,] der Texte seines Bereiches übersetzt, kennt die wichtigsten Begriffe bereits”[19] (RL 17). “Die Kenntnis der fachspezif[is]chen Begriffe wird in den einzelnen Fachgruppen vorausgesetzt”[20] (RL 19). Tuttavia, le difficoltà terminologiche si presentano comunque, quantomeno per chi affronta ambiti o combinazioni linguistiche nuove o meno frequenti per l’azienda: “A Preislischte in Englisch hota giwellt, puh. I, i hon in do Schuil Englisch gilearnt, okay, […] obo di gewissn Fochbegriffe, semm mueß man schaugn, ob man de außifind”[21] (INT 23).

La tipologia di testi tradotti internamente o esternamente varia di azienda in azienda. Si tende a esternalizzare testi urgenti, lunghi e/o legati ad argomenti specifici (es. bilancio, contratti, testi pubblicitari) oppure in lingue minori, mentre quelli relativi al core business restano in azienda. La documentazione giuridica e amministrativa può venire affidata a servizi di traduzione, in parte per mancanza di competenze in questi ambiti:

le uniche cose che faccio tradurre all’esterno sono […] le delibere del Consiglio di amministrazione, perché lì voglio che la traduzione sia veramente il più fedele possibile e non voglio che ci siano errori, perché poi son documenti ufficiali che vengon riportati nei libri societari. (INT 13)

L’autotraduzione è prassi comune. Non di rado vige la regola che “ognuno deve fare le sue traduzioni, il tecnico le sue, il personale le sue” (INT 15) e che “ognuno se le scrive a modo suo” (INT 13). La revisione dei testi tradotti è una fase del workflow traduttivo presente anche nelle aziende, il feedback sul testo tradotto è però riservato perlopiù al personale interno, mentre è raro che si diano riscontri a traduttori esterni: “se è un traduttore esterno mai, se è un traduttore interno riceve la copia definitiva per conoscenza” (RL 1). Infine, riguardo alla formazione interna, tre quarti delle aziende rispondenti non organizzano corsi per promuovere le competenze linguistiche e/o comunicative, tra cui rientrano i corsi di lingua ma anche di scrittura professionale o traduzione. I corsi offerti concernono perlopiù le lingue straniere e sono spesso rivolti a dirigenti o amministrativi.

I risultati dell’indagine illustrano una situazione in cui predominano gli approcci interni e “fai da te” alla traduzione: nelle aziende altoatesine praticamente chiunque prima o poi si trova a dovere stilare delle traduzioni, con particolare frequenza se è impiegato nei reparti marketing o commerciale.

3.3 Traduttori non professionisti nel settore privato nelle Marche

Per quanto riguarda il territorio marchigiano vengono presentati di seguito i risultati di un’indagine svolta nell’ambito di un progetto di dottorato di durata triennale (2019-22) promosso dalla Regione Marche (Farroni 2023). La ricerca si configurava come mixed-methods, in quanto è stata svolta utilizzando sia metodi quantitativi che qualitativi. La raccolta dei dati è avvenuta tramite questionario e interviste semi-strutturate. Particolarmente interessanti per le finalità del presente contributo sono i risultati dell’analisi qualitativa delle interviste condotte sul territorio.

Sono stati intervistati quindici soggetti di 15 aziende locali, di cui 5 grandi imprese e 10 PMI. Tre degli intervistati svolgono un ruolo di coordinamento delle attività di traduzione mentre gli altri traducono testi in prima persona. Il loro punto di vista è significativo per la presente indagine, poiché ci consente di fare luce su delle pratiche traduttive e dei profili lavorativi ancora poco esplorati nelle Marche e in Italia.

Nel definire il grado di professionalità di questi soggetti è opportuno chiedersi che tipo di formazione abbiano. 5 dei 12 soggetti che si occupano delle traduzioni in azienda non hanno alcun tipo di formazione linguistica, ma hanno appreso almeno una seconda lingua per motivi circostanziali, dettati dall’ambiente multilingue in cui lavorano o da soggiorni più o meno prolungati all’estero. Spesso si tratta di figure addette alla gestione dei rapporti con l’estero, come commerciali esteri ed export manager. L’assenza di una formazione linguistica non è necessariamente sinonimo di incompetenza (Antonini et al. 2017: 7), ma viene vista in alcuni casi in maniera critica dagli intervistati stessi:

A partire dalle schede tecniche, fino ai listini e al sito internet traduco tutto io. Io sono però un commerciale, in realtà senza neanche un titolo di traduzione. Se andiamo nel dettaglio io sono diplomato in ragioneria e laureato in scienze economiche ma non è un titolo di lingua. Quindi io non sarei neanche titolato in realtà. (INT 6)

Nella mia azienda generalmente la traduzione sta alla competenza del commerciale estero, perché è visto come uno spreco di risorse quello di affidarsi a dei traduttori professionisti. Va bene se il commerciale estero ha una formazione linguistica. Va un po’ meno bene se il commerciale estero è un po’ più autodidatta. (INT 11)

I sette intervistati rimanenti hanno invece una formazione di natura linguistica ma nessuno di loro è stato assunto per ricoprire il ruolo di traduttore in-house, né può considerarsi un vero e proprio traduttore di professione. Le attività svolte da molti degli intervistati si configurano dunque come ibride e fortemente influenzate dalla volontà dei piani dirigenziali, come emerge dai seguenti estratti:

se io passo le mie quaranta ore settimanali a revisionare o tradurre il sito e le pagine pubblicitarie in tre lingue, non posso lavorare al resto. Credo che il mio caso sia lo stesso di tante altre aziende del territorio in cui ci si affida alla figura che parla le lingue e basta. (INT 3)

affidarsi ad una ditta esterna... il titolare non era proprio propenso. Dice che noi ce le abbiamo internamente le competenze, quindi sfruttiamole. Anche se poi non capisce che toglie tempo al lavoro ordinario. (INT 15)

Alcuni degli intervistati devono inoltre giostrarsi con le richieste provenienti dagli altri reparti aziendali:

io faccio un po’ il jolly in azienda attualmente. […] Alcuni ti dicono “no, io con i clienti non ci parlo perché non sono capace quindi parlaci tu” e alla fine sono io che devo interpretare, imparare per ogni reparto il linguaggio settoriale. (INT 3)

Molti degli intervistati si trovano dunque a gestire sia incarichi di natura commerciale (assistenza ai clienti, gestione degli ordini esteri) che attività di traduzione e assistenza linguistica. Questa combinazione di mansioni viene percepita talvolta come poco efficiente e come un fardello: “se il testo è interessante mi piace tradurre. Ciò che me lo rende meno divertente è che non potendo fare questa attività come mia mansione, io mi devo ritagliare del tempo per farlo” (INT 6).

Un ulteriore aspetto degno di approfondimento è il ricorso all’esternalizzazione dei testi da tradurre. In questo contesto, le risorse a disposizione in azienda giocano un ruolo chiave. Infatti, l’esternalizzazione è una soluzione adottata principalmente dalle grandi aziende. Al loro interno vengono individuate in alcuni casi delle figure preposte alla gestione dei rapporti con le agenzie di traduzione e vengono implementate delle pratiche di revisione e condivisione di feedback con i professionisti esterni (INT 13 e INT 14). Al contrario, nelle PMI le risorse a disposizione sono minori e ci si rivolge a professionisti esterni solo in casi di particolare necessità. Tra le casistiche menzionate più di frequente vi è la traduzione giuridica, in particolare di marchi da registrare (INT 8), contratti (INT 11) e contestazioni internazionali:

Chiediamo una traduzione ufficiale esternamente [...] quando ci sono di mezzo gli avvocati. Ad esempio, per la risposta ad un post-vendita, contestazioni subite o da fare. […] Questi sono gli unici appigli che si hanno per potersi rivolgere ad una società esterna. (INT 6)

Il processo è nel complesso fortemente influenzato dal tipo di competenze e dalle lingue parlate dal personale presente in azienda: “visto che ce l’abbiamo internamente [un madrelingua francese] per il francese possiamo farlo [revisionare i testi in francese], per l’inglese e per lo spagnolo no perché non abbiamo madrelingua” (INT 15). In assenza di esternalizzazione e in mancanza di competenze linguistiche sufficienti, il processo si fa meno rigoroso e ogni azienda adotta strategie di varia natura per far fronte alle esigenze traduttive. Ad esempio, al seguente intervistato è capitato di avvalersi di un cliente straniero di lunga data per la revisione di testi tradotti verso il francese:

se ho problemi con la terminologia alzo il telefono e chiamo l’agente in Francia o un cliente affezionato e chiedo come chiamano certe cose. A volte giro proprio le schede tecniche al cliente e chiedo una mano per capire se si capisce o non si capisce. (INT 6)

Una caratteristica che contraddistingue gli addetti alle traduzioni è anche l’interazione diretta con i propri colleghi. In questo, la loro attività lavorativa si differenzia fortemente da quella dei traduttori professionisti esterni. Questi ultimi orbitano al di fuori dell’ambiente aziendale e spesso devono rivolgersi a dei project manager che fanno da tramite. Le interazioni continue tra i traduttori in azienda e i loro colleghi si ripercuotono in due modi sul processo traduttivo. Da un lato, il loro lavoro è esposto alle esigenze degli altri reparti e a imposizioni che ne riducono l’autonomia. Dall’altro, le diverse figure coinvolte nell’interazione vengono inevitabilmente influenzate dalle competenze di ciascuno e si viene a creare nel tempo una comunità di pratiche condivise.[22] Nel caso di studio delle Marche, è evidente come il processo traduttivo non sia sempre ottimale, ma al contempo è possibile individuare delle buone pratiche sviluppate in maniera collaborativa. Nell’estratto seguente un commerciale estero spiega come è riuscito con i suoi colleghi a rendere più efficiente il processo traduttivo intervenendo nella fase di redazione:

Noi abbiamo imposto [al redattore tecnico] alcune cose. […] Abbiamo dato dei parametri e delle regole che il tecnico riesce a rispettare. Abbiamo chiesto di mantenere uno stesso layout, di fare le frasi più semplici, magari di accorciare le descrizioni. Sono piccole accortezze che a noi rend[ono] la vita un po’ più semplice. (INT 15)

Da questa panoramica si evince come gli addetti alle traduzioni in ambito aziendale siano figure estremamente versatili, che agiscono in complesse reti sociali. In un territorio monolingue come quello marchigiano, il commerciale estero viene percepito come la figura che, a differenza dei suoi colleghi, conosce le lingue. Dagli estratti presentati appare evidente che questa concezione ha delle ripercussioni sia sulla figura del traduttore – che non gode di autonomia nell’ecosistema aziendale – che sul processo stesso, percepito in molti casi come un’attività collaterale.

4. Discussione

Dall’analisi del personale che all’interno di tre realtà lavorative italiane si dedica alle traduzioni sono emersi diversi punti in comune ma anche alcune differenze. Riprendendo la definizione di traduttore non professionista illustrata nella sezione 2 (Antonini et al. 2017: 7) con le rispettive caratteristiche essenziali, il primo elemento presente nei tre contesti studiati riguarda l’inquadramento di queste figure (caratteristica c: può non essere assunto o pagato per tradurre). Si tratta di personale dedito a mansioni tra le più svariate, dall’amministrazione e direzione aziendale alla gestione di attività tecniche e commerciali, dunque assunto per svolgere principalmente compiti di natura non traduttiva, ma che per motivi circostanziali è tenuto o è chiamato a svolgere anche delle traduzioni. Queste figure ibride possiedono competenze linguistiche per motivi diversi (caratteristica b: competenze linguistiche acquisite tendenzialmente per motivi circostanziali), che spaziano dall’obbligo di legge come nel caso degli impiegati amministrativi della Provincia di Bolzano, all’aver studiato a scuola la L2 o la lingua straniera o aver svolto soggiorni all’estero per i dipendenti delle aziende private. Pur non avendo una vera e propria formazione linguistica, queste figure agiscono spesso da language nodes (cf. sezione 2) e si fanno carico della comunicazione in lingua straniera internamente all’organizzazione o esternamente con partner e clienti esteri. Nemmeno chi ha svolto studi linguistici, come ad esempio gli intervistati di alcune aziende marchigiane, è assunto come traduttore, bensì con altre mansioni predominanti. Escludendo queste ultime figure, emerge in modo chiaro anche una mancanza di formazione in ambito traduttivo (caratteristica a: assenza di formazione in traduzione e di una qualifica). Le istituzioni di appartenenza in nessuno dei tre casi provvedono a una formazione professionale continua o a dei corsi ad hoc sulle strategie traduttive, quantomeno nel periodo in cui si sono svolte le tre indagini. Le traduzioni sono dunque pane quotidiano per le organizzazioni multilingui analizzate e il personale impiegato se ne occupa in virtù delle proprie competenze linguistiche, ma in assenza di competenze tecniche certificate per la professione del traduttore. Mancano inoltre all’interno dell’azienda o dell’istituzione norme di riferimento, regole e strategie condivise (caratteristica d: tradurre senza norme di riferimento), infatti in nessuna delle tre realtà analizzate è emerso un processo standardizzato (spesso lo è soltanto in parte). Infine, almeno per quel che riguarda il contesto pubblico altoatesino e privato marchigiano, svolgere traduzioni è una mansione a cui non sembra essere associato prestigio sociale (caratteristica e: può non acquisire prestigio sociale grazie alla traduzione), al contrario sembra essere un’incombenza inevitabile a cui bisogna far fronte. Le traduzioni sono considerate laboriose, d’ostacolo a mansioni principali più importanti o urgenti e dispendiose dal punto di vista temporale.

A fare da comune denominatore tra queste tre realtà emergono in particolare due elementi. Il primo riguarda la convinzione che conoscere una lingua straniera sia sufficiente per produrre traduzioni di qualità, opinione diffusa difficile da eradicare nonostante gli interventi mirati alla definizione di profili professionali con competenze riconosciute. Ci riferiamo in particolare alla stesura di modelli sulla competenza traduttiva, tra cui EMT (EMT expert group 2022) e PACTE (Hurtado Albir 2017), nonché all’istituzione di corsi di studio universitari e alla pubblicazione di norme internazionali di standardizzazione (ISO 17100:2015). In stretta relazione a questo primo fattore sta la tendenza da parte delle istituzioni analizzate a non riconoscere la traduzione come un’attività professionale a titolo pieno (Ozolins 2010); è tale solo in specifici casi, se ad esempio tra il personale non c’è chi parla quella specifica lingua, oppure per un certo tipo di testi, ma non lo è a priori. Nei tre casi presentati abbiamo visto infatti sia nel settore pubblico sia in quello privato, monolingue o bilingue che fosse, che per le traduzioni ci si affida alle risorse interne. Il personale conosce bene gli ambiti di attività, i processi e il linguaggio dell’organizzazione, una conoscenza preziosa che manca a traduttori esterni e che i traduttori in-house acquisirebbero solo nel tempo. Di pari passo, al traduttore professionista tendenzialmente non vengono riconosciute delle competenze esclusive tali da renderlo indispensabile nel contesto lavorativo; la traduzione è vista come una questione istituzionale più che professionale (Ozolins 2010: 196). Nell’area multilingue studiata questo riconoscimento manca anche al processo di traduzione in sé, che di fatto viene sottovalutato e può essere percepito come una perdita di tempo e “un male necessario” (Chiocchetti 2011: 12). Molti traduttori non professionisti lamentano un sovraccarico di lavoro, a riprova del fatto che a monte non si tiene conto o non si conosce quanto tempo e risorse siano necessarie per tradurre.

Al contempo, dalla comparazione tra le tre realtà studiate sono emerse alcune differenze riconducibili da un lato al diverso contesto linguistico di Marche e Alto Adige e, dall’altro, alle diverse caratteristiche della traduzione svolta in ambito pubblico o privato. Per quanto riguarda il primo punto, ricordiamo che in Alto Adige vige una condizione di bilinguismo per cui in ambito pubblico è obbligatoria la conoscenza del tedesco e dell’italiano. Sebbene questa obbligatorietà non valga per le aziende private, l’apprendimento della seconda lingua a scuola porta a una maggiore disponibilità di figure con competenze sia in tedesco che in italiano. Le Marche rappresentano invece un contesto monolingue dove le competenze linguistiche sembrano venire date meno per scontate. Ciò si evince da tre aspetti. In primo luogo, sette intervistati marchigiani addetti alle traduzioni, pur non rivestendo il ruolo di traduttori in-house, hanno una formazione linguistica. Si è già sottolineato invece come solo il 2,9 percento degli impiegati amministrativi altoatesini che hanno partecipato all’indagine abbia una formazione linguistica. In secondo luogo, nelle Marche, molti dipendenti aziendali si rivolgono alla “figura che parla le lingue” per sbrigare questioni linguistiche. In Alto Adige frequente è invece il ricorso all’autotraduzione e il carico di lavoro è maggiormente distribuito tra tutti i dipendenti. In terzo luogo, nelle Marche l’offerta dei corsi linguistici per i dipendenti sembra essere più diffusa che in Alto Adige. Come emerge dalla sezione 3.2, tre quarti delle aziende altoatesine non offrono corsi di lingua. Al contrario, in nove delle 15 aziende intervistate nelle Marche si tengono, sono stati tenuti o sono previsti per il futuro dei corsi di lingua per il personale. Da questa panoramica sembra emergere una consapevolezza delle lacune linguistiche del personale e la disponibilità a colmarle, mentre per le imprese altoatesine spetta all’istruzione obbligatoria fornire le competenze linguistiche richieste nelle aziende (Chiocchetti 2015: 259-260). Inoltre, nelle Marche la selezione degli addetti ai rapporti con l’estero – e solitamente alle traduzioni – sembra tenere conto almeno in parte delle competenze linguistiche, mentre nel contesto altoatesino si tende a darle per scontate.

Per quanto riguarda il secondo punto, il contesto pubblico o privato in cui operano i traduttori non professionisti influenza in particolar modo la tipologia e la quantità di testi tradotti. Il quadro giuridico dell’Alto Adige prevede infatti, per le istituzioni, l’obbligo di pubblicare in italiano e in tedesco molti atti e documenti istituzionali. Al contrario, nelle aziende private non vige quasi alcun obbligo e i testi tradotti spaziano dalla documentazione tecnica ai contratti, dai bilanci al materiale pubblicitario e possono variare e aumentare a seconda delle strategie aziendali e dei mercati target. Il traduttore non professionista aziendale potrà quindi dover affrontare diverse tipologie di testi ma tendenzialmente in minore quantità, perché non tutto verrà tradotto, mentre il traduttore non professionista istituzionale tradurrà un numero perlopiù fisso di tipologie testuali ma la mole sarà maggiore a causa dell’obbligo di bilinguismo.

5. Conclusioni

Nel contributo abbiamo messo a confronto tre realtà diverse del mondo lavorativo italiano: una pubblica amministrazione in un territorio multilingue, alcune imprese private nello stesso territorio multilingue e alcune imprese private in un territorio monolingue. In questi contesti si trovano traduttori non professionisti che rispondono alle caratteristiche individuate da Antonini et al. (2017). Svolgono un ruolo centrale nella comunicazione multilingue interna ed esterna delle proprie organizzazioni in virtù delle loro competenze linguistiche, senza che tale ruolo sia formalmente riconosciuto, retribuito, organizzato o sostenuto in maniera adeguata. I punti salienti che emergono dal confronto sono il carattere trasversale dell’attività di traduzione, con conseguente ricorso alle risorse interne anziché a professionisti per tradurre, nonché la frequenza dell’autotraduzione nel territorio multilingue rispetto a quello monolingue. In quest’ultimo le competenze linguistiche vengono date molto meno per scontate e si concentrano in un numero minore di addetti, aspetto dimostrato anche dalla maggiore propensione delle imprese a offrire formazione in ambito linguistico. Ciononostante, la competenza traduttiva in un caso e nell’altro viene associata alle competenze linguistiche, per cui la figura professionale del traduttore sostanzialmente non è riconosciuta come necessaria. Nel confronto tra il settore pubblico e privato emergono differenze tra la tipologia e la quantità di testi tradotti. Mentre la tipologia di testi tradotti è abbastanza stabile nel pubblico, nel privato è più variabile. La quantità di testi tradotti è cospicua nel pubblico a causa degli obblighi di legge, più contenuta nel privato, dove le pratiche traduttive sono tendenzialmente dettate da concrete esigenze di mercato e dalla disponibilità di risorse interne.

Le ragioni che spingono i tre contesti lavorativi analizzati a delegare sistematicamente le traduzioni al personale interno non formato in traduzione sono sostanzialmente di due tipi. Da una parte, troviamo ragioni di carattere economico. Le istituzioni pubbliche sono soggette a croniche riduzioni di finanziamenti da ormai diversi decenni e, in base alle politiche economiche degli ultimi governi, questo processo non sembra destinato ad arrestarsi. Per le imprese private il discorso è diverso ma simile, quantomeno nel panorama italiano dove prevalgono le piccole aziende a conduzione familiare e l’assunzione di personale rappresenta spesso una scommessa sul futuro. Dall’altra parte, troviamo motivi di natura culturale. A un tradizionale screditamento delle materie umanistiche si somma una svalutazione specifica della traduzione, comunemente ancora considerata una costola della competenza linguistica. Grazie ai processi di globalizzazione, le competenze linguistiche sono diventate un requisito trasversale a figure professionali tra le più svariate; di conseguenza la traduzione viene spesso considerata un’attività alla portata di ingegneri e tecnici tanto quanto di linguisti. Perlomeno nei contesti analizzati in questo contributo, alla traduzione non è generalmente riconosciuto un carattere specifico. Va da sé la credenza secondo cui non siano necessari professionisti specifici ma che basti conoscere la lingua per tradurre.

La traduzione non professionale è una dimensione presente nei contesti lavorativi indipendentemente che si tratti di realtà monolingui o plurilingui. Difficilmente questo potrà cambiare nel futuro, sia per le ragioni appena menzionate sia per l’evoluzione delle tecnologie linguistiche. Senz’altro, la collaborazione tra università e imprese e università e istituzioni pubbliche potrebbe aiutare a diffondere la credibilità e la necessità della figura professionale del traduttore, non soltanto attraverso lo strumento del tirocinio – che alle volte corre il rischio di trasformarsi in una svendita di manodopera – bensì, ad esempio, con campagne informative, open day e reportage sul ruolo del traduttore in contesti professionali determinati. La formazione continua nel contesto lavorativo, inoltre, può rappresentare l’altra faccia della medaglia, specialmente dove la traduzione non professionale è già una realtà. Proporre dei corsi di formazione sulla traduzione potrebbe rivelarsi una soluzione pratica a un problema concreto e di difficile soluzione.

A complicare ulteriormente il quadro non va dimenticato, infine, il ruolo della traduzione automatica, strumento di cui spesso i non professionisti abusano proprio per gli enormi vantaggi a costo (quasi) zero che comporta. Oggigiorno la traduzione automatica rappresenta la prima risorsa a cui si ricorre per svolgere una traduzione, spesso proprio il primissimo approccio, ragion per cui dovrebbe rientrare tra i principali temi trattati non soltanto nei corsi universitari frequentati dai futuri professionisti del settore, ma anche nei corsi di formazione nei contesti lavorativi pubblici e privati. L’amministrazione provinciale di Bolzano alla fine del 2023 ha puntato su questa strategia, offrendo al proprio personale formazione sull’uso degli strumenti di traduzione automatica e sulla traduzione più in generale. La validità e l’efficacia di tale iniziativa sono ancora da dimostrare, ma quantomeno si può considerare questo un primo passo verso un’organizzazione più coesa dell’attività.

Con la nostra indagine speriamo di aver contribuito a far luce sul ruolo decisivo che i traduttori non professionisti svolgono per il funzionamento multilingue e l’internazionalizzazione di molte strutture pubbliche e private e ad attirare maggiore attenzione scientifica su queste figure ancora poco riconosciute e studiate in Italia.

About the author(s)

Flavia De Camillis
Flavia De Camillis è stata ricercatrice post-doc all’Istituto di linguistica applicata di Eurac Research fino al 2023. Nel 2021 ha conseguito il dottorato in Traduzione, Interpretazione e Interculturalità presso l’Università di Bologna, con una tesi incentrata sulla traduzione non professionale in un contesto istituzionale multilingue. Negli ultimi anni ha partecipato a conferenze nazionali e internazionali e ha realizzato alcune pubblicazioni sui temi della sua ricerca dottorale. I suoi interessi di ricerca includono la traduzione istituzionale, le politiche di traduzione e la traduzione automatica. A questo indirizzo è disponibile un CV più dettagliato: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7228-5629.

Cristina Farroni
Cristina Farroni ha conseguito nel 2023 il dottorato in Umanesimo e Tecnologie presso l’Università degli studi di Macerata. Il suo progetto di ricerca è stato condotto in collaborazione con la Regione Marche e la Facoltà di Economica di Ancona e verteva sull’analisi del processo traduttivo in ambito aziendale, in particolare presso le PMI marchigiane. Tra i suoi interessi di ricerca vi sono la traduzione non professionale, i workplace studies in ambito traduttivo e la gestione linguistica aziendale.

Elena Chiocchetti
Elena Chiocchetti è ricercatrice senior presso l’Istituto di linguistica applicata di Eurac Research a Bolzano. Laureata in traduzione presso l’Università di Trieste, nel 2015 ha conseguito il dottorato di ricerca all’Università di Bologna con una tesi sulla gestione multilingue della conoscenza nelle aziende. Ha pubblicato contributi a livello nazionale e internazionale sulla comunicazione aziendale multilingue, la traduzione specialistica, la terminologia giuridica, la comparazione terminologica. Il CV completo è disponibile all’indirizzo: https://www.eurac.edu/en/people/elena-chiocchetti

Email: [please login or register to view author's email address]

Abstract & Keywords

English:

This article analyses the Italian reception of Les Profs by Erroc and Pica, a French comic book series published since 2000 by Bamboo Édition which has enjoyed great success in France. The series, devoted to the adventures of the teachers and pupils of an imaginary high school, Fanfaron, was imported into Italy in two different ways. Firstly, single translated panels appeared in the monthly published children's magazine Focus junior, which began in 2004 and has continued uninterrupted until now. Secondly, a single volume containing the translation of two comic books was published by Mondadori in 2020. A comparison between these two publications reveals some interesting mechanisms in terms of selection of the originals, influence of the intended readership, constraint of seriality and the tendency to naturalise the realia and contexts evoked. I would like to argue that the Italian translation of Les Profs reveals a gradual awareness of the issues at stake and of the need to pursue an overall coherence, undoubtedly prompted by the translated volume, which also consecrated the official translator of this comics series.

French:

Cet article analyse la réception italienne d’une bande dessinée humoristique française qui connaît un grand succès dans l’Hexagone, Les Profs d’Erroc et Pica, publiée depuis 2000 par Bamboo Édition. Cette bande dessinée consacrée aux aventures des professeurs et des élèves d’un lycée imaginaire, le lycée Fanfaron, a fait l’objet d’un double canal d’importation en Italie, pour ainsi dire en deux phases et deux modalités de localisation : d’abord, la publication mensuelle d’une planche traduite dans le magazine pour enfants Focus junior, commencée en 2004 et ininterrompue jusqu’à présent, et ensuite la traduction de deux tomes en un seul volume chez Mondadori en 2020. La comparaison entre ces deux démarches met en lumière d’intéressants mécanismes quant à la sélection des originaux, au poids du lectorat envisagé, à la contrainte de la sérialité et à la tendance à la naturalisation des realia et des contextes évoqués. On peut affirmer que dans la traduction italienne des Profs se dessine une prise de conscience progressive des enjeux présents et de la nécessité de poursuivre une cohérence globale, stimulée sans doute par le passage à la traduction en volume, qui a, par ailleurs, consacré la traductrice officielle des Profs.

Keywords: traduction de la BD, comics translation, adaptation, comics, Les Profs

1. Les Profs en France et en Italie

Les Profs est une bande dessinée humoristique française qui connaît un grand succès dans l’Hexagone, une série créée par Erroc (pseudonyme de Gilles Corre, scénariste) et Pica (pseudonyme de Pierre Tranchand, dessinateur), publiée d’abord, en 1999, dans un magazine pour enfants (Le Journal de Mickey) et depuis 2000 en albums par Bamboo Édition[1]. Il s’agit d’une bande dessinée « catégorielle », c’est-à-dire consacrée à l’illustration d’une catégorie professionnelle, celle des professeurs justement, comme l’explicite la présentation placée en quatrième de couverture dès le premier tome (t. 1/2000), qui demeure quasiment inchangée jusqu’au tout dernier (t. 26/2023), dont nous citons :

Venez découvrir les seuls vrais aventuriers modernes : les profs ! Plus forts que Zorro, plus courageux qu’Indiana Jones et bien moins payés que James Bond, ces enseignants de choc n’hésitent pas à braver quotidiennement la jungle étouffante des lycées peuplés de tribus d’élèves hostiles.
Suivez le prof d’histoire débutant, le prof de gym survitaminé, la prof de français sexy, le prof de philo blasé et la prof d’anglais peau de vache dans leur croisade contre l’ignorance et le poil dans la main !

Conformément aux habitudes de publication de nombreuses bandes dessinées francophones, il s’agit d’une publication apériodique, qui sort en albums grand format, cartonnés et en couleur, comportant 48 pages, et se trouve en vente en librairie à un prix qui avoisine les 12 euros[2]. Chaque album se compose de planches qui sont pour la plupart autoconclusives et centrées sur une sorte de sketch[3]. Le cadre des épisodes est le lycée Fanfaron, classé comme le pire lycée de France, où sont mis en scène les rapports au quotidien entre les enseignants et les élèves, en jouant sur les stéréotypes attribués aux uns et aux autres (il y a des professeurs qui cherchent tout le temps une raison pour faire grève, ceux qui sont à tel point obsédés par leur travail qu’ils ne décrochent jamais, même pas en vacances, ceux qui s’énervent facilement et ceux qui craquent sous les difficultés, etc. ; du côté des lycéens, il y a le cancre, l’élève en surpoids qui se croit harcelé par le professeur de gymnastique, etc.).

On peut affirmer que cette bande dessinée se base sur un comique de situation, c’est-à-dire lié aux contextes et aux personnages – souvent caricaturaux, tant caractériellement que graphiquement –, bien que les épisodes qui se terminent sur un mot d’esprit ne manquent pas. Le ton se rapproche parfois de la satire quand on évoque des problèmes notoires comme la bureaucratie administrative, les fausses promesses du Ministère de l’Éducation nationale, les coupes dans les financements, les nouveaux modèles pédagogiques imposés aux enseignants et leur frustration, etc.

Comme Pica l’a souligné, c’est une bande dessinée intergénérationnelle, qui s’adresse aux jeunes en âge scolaire tout comme aux adultes, qu’ils soient enseignants ou pas, puisque tout le monde a un passé d’écolier et peut prendre plaisir à revivre les aventures représentées par les auteurs (Roux 2015). En même temps, on peut définir Les Profs comme une bande dessinée « populaire » (avis de Simon Léturgie rapporté dans Roux 2015), dans l’acception française mise en avant par Valerio Rota: « un fumetto che, per contenuti e stile narrativo, riesce ad incontrare i gusti di un ampio pubblico e ad essere venduto in un numero alto di copie »[4] (Rota 2000: 61).

La série des Profs a retenu l’attention de l’édition italienne quelques années après sa parution, quand, suite à un accord avec Bamboo Édition, le magazine mensuel Focus junior a commencé, dès son premier numéro en février 2004, à publier régulièrement une planche des Profs dans une rubrique intitulée A scuola con i prof, qui est devenue un rendez-vous incontournable, encore de nos jours, pour les jeunes lecteurs italiens. Ce magazine appartenant au groupe Mondadori est destiné aux élèves de l’école primaire ou au maximum des premières années du collège (le site du magazine indique la tranche d’âge de 8 à 13 ans[5]) ; il aborde des sujets divers, qui vont de l’actualité aux principales disciplines scolaires, tout en proposant des jeux, des blagues et des pages réservées à des bandes dessinées. Ce n’est qu’en 2020, à la suite du succès de la traduction mensuelle auprès des lecteurs, que l’idée est née de publier un volume entier en italien, empruntant le titre déjà acclimaté chez les lecteurs, A scuola con i prof.

Ce double canal d’importation de la bande dessinée originale, pour ainsi dire en deux phases et deux modalités de localisation (voir Zanettin 2008) – publication mensuelle, ininterrompue, et publication en volume, ponctuelle et non renouvelée –, pose d’intéressantes questions du point de vue traductif et traductologique, que nous illustrerons d’abord séparément, avant de tirer quelques conclusions communes.

2. La traduction mensuelle des Profs dans Focus Junior[6]

L’insertion de planches des Profs dans Focus Junior obéit à un projet qui comporte des adaptations de l’original à plusieurs niveaux. D’abord, on constate un abaissement de l’âge du public envisagé, car il s’agit d’un magazine pour enfants. Ensuite, la dénomination de la rubrique accueillant la traduction, A scuola con i prof, met bien l’accent sur la dimension collective du milieu, puisque c’est l’école dans son ensemble qui est au cœur de ces histoires, et pas seulement les enseignants.

2.1 La sélection des planches à traduire

Comme nous l’a confirmé un membre de la rédaction de Focus Junior, Marta Ferrario[7], l’orientation vers le public d’arrivée dicte d’abord une sélection attentive des contenus de la part des rédacteurs, qui reçoivent ensuite l’aval du directeur. Car ces contenus doivent être acceptables pour la tranche d’âge indiquée et font l’objet de l’attention constante des adultes-médiateurs qui achètent une copie du magazine ou un abonnement pour leurs enfants et n’hésitent pas à faire part à la rédaction de leur approbation, ou plus rarement de leur désaccord, sur les thèmes abordés dans les différentes sections. Marta Ferrario rapporte un épisode éclairant à ce propos : la planche publiée dans le n. 222/2022, tirée du t. 23/2020, mentionne « the French kiss », qui est le sujet d’un cours de la professeure d’anglais, ce qui explique pourquoi sa salle de classe est pleine d’élèves très motivés. Une mère a écrit à la rédaction pour se plaindre de ce choix, considéré comme frivole et inapproprié pour un magazine tel que Focus Junior. Dans un autre cas, Marta Ferrario raconte qu’au dernier moment une planche d’abord retenue pour la publication en italien a été écartée puisqu’on s’est rendu compte que, dans un coin, elle représentait un jeune en train de fumer : on a voulu ainsi prévenir des plaintes pour avoir inclus un élément non éducatif. Cela constitue un bel exemple de « political correctness » appliquée par le magazine sur la base de son éthique (Celotti 2008 : 36).

Le critère de l’adéquation du contenu – qui se rapproche d’une espèce d’autocensure due à des prérogatives éditoriales (voir Zanettin, sous presse) – explique sans doute, dans les traductions proposées, l’absence de planches portant sur des sujets clivants (par exemple l’épisode à la p. 23, dans le t. 2/2001, contient une allusion aux discriminations raciales et aux violences policières pendant une manifestation) ou inappropriés (comme la p. 41 du t. 1/2000, où Amina, la professeure de français super sexy, fait un strip-tease pour capter l’attention des élèves). Il en va de même pour l’omission d’histoires axées sur des problématiques professionnelles (le recrutement, le syndicat, les grèves, etc.), qui ne rencontreraient pas l’intérêt des jeunes lecteurs. Comme Marta Ferrario nous l’a confié, des raisons plus strictement traductives motivent l’exclusion d’épisodes comportant des realia ou des situations peu adaptables, ou encore des écueils linguistiques de taille. Parmi les exemples passibles d’un tel critère d’élimination, on pourrait citer une planche illustrant l’abus de sigles incompréhensibles qui sévissent dans le jargon scolaire imposé par l’Éducation nationale (t. 10/2007, p. 41), ou une autre dont la structure narrative est entièrement bâtie sur la comptine Poil à…, très populaire parmi les élèves français et reprise tant dans le texte verbal que dans le dessin (t. 1/2000, p. 43).

Étant donné les paramètres de sélection (visant à l’évitement de tout ce qui pourrait résulter inopportun ou problématique), le choix des planches traduites chaque mois dans Focus Junior ne suit pas forcément l’ordre chronologique des albums originaux, ni ne puise en égale mesure entre tous ceux qui sont disponibles. Un critère additionnel, que l’on pourrait définir de bon timing, influe parfois sur le moment de la parution des planches : certains épisodes concernant les vacances sont publiés dans les numéros estivaux, alors que des histoires où il est question du Père Noël paraissent dans le numéro de janvier, qui sort dans le courant du mois de décembre (par exemple FJ n. 24/2006 ; n. 144/2016).[8]

2.2. Une traduction « filtrée » et « décontextualisante »

Initialement, la responsabilité de la traduction des Profs peut être considérée comme collective, puisqu’au début ce travail était confié, de manière fortuite et sans attribution déclarée, à quiconque avait des rudiments linguistiques pour s’en occuper au sein de la rédaction du magazine. En 2012, on décide de conférer régulièrement cette tâche à une journaliste qui avait intégré la rédaction deux ans plus tôt, Marta Ferrario[9], en raison de sa connaissance de la langue française, étudiée au lycée et cultivée par la suite à l’Université, sans qu’elle n’ait pour autant de qualification professionnelle pour la pratique de la traduction. C’est encore elle qui assure de nos jours tous les mois la traduction des Profs dans Focus Junior et qui nous a renseignée sur la pratique établie : la maison d’édition française, Bamboo Édition, envoie les albums originaux et les planches en format PDF avec les bulles vides ; elle ne contrôle pas le résultat final, accordant une grande liberté dans la traduction-adaptation des planches, ce qui se voit également dans le rendu en italien, qui s’apparente très souvent à une réécriture. En effet, le parti pris qui semble caractériser la traduction dans Focus Junior est celui de la transparence vis-à-vis du public d’arrivée, dans l’acception notamment conçue par Georges Mounin, qui nous paraît la plus fonctionnelle pour éclairer notre propos[10] : la traduction entendue comme un « verre transparent » présuppose un traducteur « amené à masquer, à transposer, à supprimer […] tout ce qui risquerait de dépayser son lecteur » (Mounin 1994 : 89). Cette approche naturalisante fait en sorte que l’univers où se déroulent les épisodes est décidément « filtré, par un filtre qui retient comme impureté tout ce qui peut avoir un goût de civilisation prononcé » (Mounin 1994 : 90, italique dans le texte). Cette image rend bien l’idée du processus qui affecte l’original, dont les quelques spécificités culturelles qui restent après le tri préventif des planches sont soit supprimées, soit remplacées par des hyperonymes, quand elles ne sont pas carrément adaptées là où cela est possible. De l’aveu de Marta Ferrario, une démarche d’adaptation, bien que « minimale », était nécessaire pour aller à la rencontre du public cible, suivant d’ailleurs une orientation plutôt commune dans la littérature de jeunesse : elle parle d’une « décontextualisation » par rapport à l’original qui ferait émerger une « école universelle »[11], une espèce de lycée indéterminé que des écoliers ou des collégiens pourraient envisager sans être trop désorientés, ce qui est facilité par le fait que de toute façon ils n’en ont pas encore d’expérience directe. Il en résulte, par exemple, que les figures ou les caractéristiques dissymétriques entre les deux systèmes scolaires sont rendues par des fonctions plus ou moins comparables (par exemple le CPE, Conseiller principal d’éducation, dont les responsabilités relèvent de la discipline et des relations avec les familles dans l’enseignement secondaire, est rendu par « vice-preside », soit proviseur adjoint) et que les notes, en France basées sur 20, sont systématiquement converties sur 10, comme en Italie (sauf que parfois le dessin continue de montrer les notes françaises[12]).

2.2.1 Le traitement des titres

Cette macro-orientation cibliste se retrouve au niveau de la structure de chaque planche, où l’intitulation originale est altérée. Depuis le premier album de la série et encore actuellement, les épisodes français ont la particularité de présenter, en haut à droite de la page, un petit dessin en guise de condensé visuel suggérant une clé de lecture ou, pour le moins, une continuité thématique avec l’histoire qui suit. Focus Junior oblitère cette pratique et la remplace avec des titres verbaux, opération qui relève d’une attitude naturalisante à divers niveaux. Premièrement, les titres italiens évitent un effort de coopération et d’interprétation supplémentaire aux lecteurs, qui pourraient être déroutés par cette composante iconique additionnelle placée dans le paratexte, d’autant plus qu’elle revêt souvent une fonction ludique ou ironique pouvant redoubler l’effet d’opacité auprès d’un jeune public. Deuxièmement, les titres verbaux insérés par la rédaction obéissent à une volonté d’expliciter la thématique abordée dans la planche pour donner « une orientation de lecture »[13] qui est estimée nécessaire dans la présentation individuelle et décontextualisée de chaque épisode. Troisièmement, les titres ajoutés empruntent délibérément la voie de « formules à effet de type journalistique »[14], en mesure d’attirer l’attention du jeune lecteur, et retrouvent certaines caractéristiques du langage des bandes dessinées italiennes, qui regorgent de locutions et de tournures idiomatiques (voir Morgana 2016 : 246). On trouve par exemple des expressions figées ou des proverbes, parfois employés de manière détournée ou ironique : Se io do una cosa a te… (FJ n. 81/2010), Prendila con filosofia (FJ n. 95/2011), Chi si accontenta… (FJ n. 104/2012), A mali estremi… (FJ n. 176/2018). Ailleurs, les titres italiens contiennent des renvois à des intertextes connus des jeunes, comme Mission impossible 5 (FJ n. 103/2012), emprunté à la célèbre série cinématographique étasunienne, ou bien ils se font vecteurs de messages éducatifs (Abbasso il razzismo, FJ n. 228/2023).

Pour éclairer le fonctionnement du passage du titre visuel original au titre verbal italien, on peut considérer la première planche traduite, intitulée Mitico prof, interrogaci ancora ! (FJ n. 1/2004), où un professeur d’anglais allèche ses élèves en transformant ses interrogations en quiz télévisés, ce qui dans l’original est anticipé par un dessin représentant l’enseignant à côté d’une roue de la fortune (t. 1/2000, p. 15). Outre l’adjectif de registre familier (« mitico »), on peut observer dans le titre italien que la perspective de l’énonciateur coïncide avec celle des élèves (« Interrogaci »), selon un mécanisme qui s’avère fréquent dans Focus Junior dans le but de favoriser l’identification de la part des lecteurs. Un autre cas montre bien à quel point la seule référence visuelle peut s’avérer opaque : un gros plan du professeur de philosophie portant un turban, les yeux fermés et les mains jointes comme en prière, annonce l’épisode où il adopte un expédient pour hypnotiser ses élèves et leur faire aimer les philosophes (t. 5/2003, p. 7) ; en réalité, ce seront les élèves qui auront le dessus et qui réussiront à lui imposer leurs idoles (des chanteurs et des footballeurs), d’où le titre formulé par Focus Junior : Meglio i filosofi o i cantanti ?  (FJ 11/2004)[15].

2.2.2 Stratégies de transculturation

Quand l’évitement ou la généralisation des realia ne sont pas possibles, les planches de Focus Junior témoignent de stratégies d’adaptation, qui de ponctuelles peuvent devenir globales et amener à une opération de « transculturation », soit une naturalisation complète de l’horizon culturel d’origine (voir Podeur 2008 : 86-93, d’après Margot 1979 : 90). L’illustration la plus évidente est l’italianisation des noms des personnages évoluant dans l’univers des Profs (certaines planches traduites parlent d’ailleurs carrément de « la scuola italiana » et des « professori italiani » là où l’original évoquait la nationalité française, par exemple FJ n. 175/2018 - t. 16/2013, p. 39)[16]. Le manque de systématicité des correspondants initialement proposés s’explique à la fois par les obstacles posés à la sérialité par la fragmentation due à la publication échelonnée de planches individuelles et par l’instabilité du rôle de traducteur au sein de la rédaction avant l’arrivée de Marta Ferrario. Elle dit, en effet, avoir beaucoup travaillé dans le but de conférer une cohérence à cet aspect primordial de la série et donc une identité fixe aux protagonistes, puisque le lectorat des bandes dessinées s’attend à retrouver et à reconnaître ses personnages bien-aimés avec leur caractérisation et leurs petites manies (voir Scatasta 2002 : 103). L’exemple le plus éclatant est celui d’Antoine Polochon, professeur d'histoire qui voue un culte obsessionnel à Napoléon Bonaparte et ressasse une phrase qu’il n’arrive jamais à achever : « Ce jour-là, Napoléon dit à ses généraux… ». Dans la traduction italienne il prend d’abord les dénominations les plus variées, qui parfois se superposent à celles d’autres personnages : « Professor Rossi » (FJ n. 24/2006), « Pio Bistozzi » (FJ n. 64/2009) ; « Pestalozzi » (FJ n. 98/2012), « Antonio Polloni » (FJ n. 111/2013). Les préférences des traducteurs se fixent assez vite sur le prénom « Antonio » (FJ n. 82/2010 ; n. 128/2014 ; n. 159/2017, bien que l’épisode dans le n. 132/2015 atteste l’appellation hypocoristique « Ughetto » de la part d’une jeune collègue), alors que son nom de famille oscille davantage (de « Sapientoni », nom clairement parlant, FJ n. 96/2012, à « Filippazzi », FJ n. 132/2015), avant l’adoption définitive d’« Antonio Pellizzoni » dans la traduction en volume en 2020 et dans les planches de Focus Junior de ces dernières années.

Si, dans la version italienne, Polochon garde généralement son dévouement à Napoléon (personnage bien connu également des élèves italiens), qu’il continue d’évoquer dans sa célèbre phrase (« Quel/Un giorno, Napoleone, disse ai suoi generali… »), il montre parfois un penchant inédit pour l’histoire romaine et ses protagonistes, surtout dans des épisodes traduits pendant les dix-douze premières années de la rubrique A scuola con i prof. Par exemple, dans FJ n. 108/2013, il corrige des interrogations écrites sur « una cronologia dettagliata degli imperatori di Roma », alors que la consigne originale demandait « une chronologie détaillée des guerres napoléoniennes » (t. 13/2010, p. 32) ; à quelques reprises, il mentionne « Giulio Cesare » (Jules César) à la place de son adoré Napoléon et son livre intitulé Napoléon contre-attaque (t. 15/2012, p. 32) est remplacé par Giulio Cesare, storia e leggenda (FJ n. 141/2015).

Parmi les autres personnages des Profs, nous nous limiterons à signaler le destin de quelques noms au départ sémantiquement motivés. Boulard, le cancre du lycée, tellement aimé du public qu’il a inspiré la création d’un spin off[17], doit probablement son nom à l’altération péjorative de « boulet » (au sens propre : « boule de métal qu'on attachait aux pieds de condamnés », et au figuré : « obligation pénible », Le Robert). Dans la traduction italienne il est sujet lui aussi à de nombreuses fluctuations onomastiques (dont « Pierino », correspondant au célèbre cancre des blagues italiennes, FJ n. 24/2006), avant de trouver une stabilité comme « Piero » par décision rédactionnelle à partir de 2018, prénom qu’il garde également dans la traduction en volume. De même, l’élève paresseux et grassouillet, Boudini (de « boudin »), est rebaptisé par des noms renvoyant à des aliments à la consistance molle, d’abord « Semolini » (de « semola », soit « semoule », FJ n. 40/2007) et ensuite « Budini » (qui évoque un dessert italien, « budino », assimilable à un flan, FJ n. 208/2021).

Une tendance assimilatrice s’observe également dans le traitement des realia hors du milieu scolaire, qui sont l’objet de substitutions ponctuelles censées fournir au lecteur des éléments plus familiers : on change les destinations de vacances envisagées ou décrites, on remplace les personnages célèbres et les chansons évoqués, etc. Par exemple, dans FJ n. 90/2011 le lieu rêvé pour les vacances des professeurs passe des Antilles (t. 12/2009, p. 46) à la Sardaigne, avec une série de petits ajustements descriptifs ; dans sa liste au père Noël, Polonchon exprime le désir d’une « Ferrari » (FJ n. 24/2006) au lieu d’une « Porsche » (t. 1/2000, p. 29), alors qu’ailleurs les références à la chanteuse Madonna et au footballeur français Zidane (t. 5/2003, p. 7) sont remplacées par d’autres considérées plus proches du public d’arrivée (le rappeur Eminem et le footballeur Totti, FJ n. 11/2004). Pareillement, la chanson d’un groupe folk rock de musique celtique fredonnée par Polonchon en route vers la Bretagne[18] (t. 1/2000, p. 46) est adaptée en traduction par le biais de Volare de Domenico Modugno, un morceau on ne peut plus imprégné d’italianité qui s’insère dans un contexte où les références géographiques étrangéisantes ont été gommées (FJ n. 5/2004). Cette orientation continue bien au-delà des premiers numéros dont nous avons tiré ces exemples et peut déboucher sur une véritable transculturation, causant parfois quelques incohérences visuelles. C’est le cas d’un épisode sur les vacances d’été des professeurs qui s’étale sur quatre pages (t. 15/2012, p. 3-6), où le cadre se déplace de la France à l’Italie (FJ n. 128/2014) : le village de « Ploumanach-sur-Varech »[19] est remplacé par une localité inexistante, dont le nom comporte une consonance italienne, « Castelrugoso a mare » ; « le Sud » de la France est transformé en la « Sardegna », destination touristique tout aussi prisée ; le « pastis » planifié pour le soir est substitué par « pizza e gelato », et la lecture de Polochon n’est plus la énième « biographie de Napoléon », mais celle de « Giulio Cesare ». Cette transposition de l’horizon culturel de départ est toutefois dérangée par un détail visuel, puisque, dans la traduction, on continue de voir dans une vignette une serveuse dans son costume breton traditionnel, même si on a effacé l’enseigne « Crêperie ».

Une autre planche de Focus Junior va encore plus loin, introduisant un personnage familier au public cible à la place d’une référence totalement inventée dans le texte de départ, le footballeur Thierry Platon de l’équipe de Béton-sur-Tours (t. 4/2002, p. 6). Dans l’épisode original, cette homonymie avec Platon le philosophe grec permet l’équivoque et alimente la satisfaction du professeur face à l’intérêt inespéré manifesté par sa classe. Dans la traduction la méprise se joue sur le prénom « Adriano » (FJ n. 13/2005), puisque le professeur propose comme sujet d’un cours d’histoire l’empereur Adrien, alors que les élèves pensent à Adriano Leite Ribeiro, footballeur brésilien qui a joué dans l’équipe milanaise de l’Inter entre 2001 et 2009 et était connu simplement comme Adriano ou « L’imperatore » (d’où la double lecture du titre ajouté, Tutti matti per l’imperatore). Cette référence comporte la réécriture de l’épisode pour assurer la reconnaissance de la part du public et l’effet humoristique final, quitte à faire une entorse à la caractérisation de l’enseignant protagoniste (Maurice, qui de professeur de philosophie devient ici professeur d’histoire) et donc aux exigences de sérialité. D’ailleurs, ce personnage a été particulièrement maltraité dans la traduction de Focus Junior, qui montre pendant longtemps une hésitation quant à la matière qu’il enseigne, sans doute parce que c’est une discipline absente à l’école primaire et au collège en Italie[20].

3. A scuola con i prof chez Mondadori[21]

En 2020 le service marketing de Focus Junior a décidé de publier en italien un volume réunissant deux albums récents des Profs (t. 18/2016, dont il reprend la couverture, et t. 19/2017), choisis suite à des accords commerciaux entre les éditeurs. La direction en a confié la traduction entièrement à Marta Ferrario, qui s’occupait déjà des planches mensuelles, contre une petite rémunération forfaitaire ; sur ce support, son nom apparaît dans la page de titre (« Traduzione di Marta Ferrario ») et acquiert enfin une visibilité.

A scuola con i prof s’insère dans la collection « I fumetti di Focus Junior », qui comprend d’autres bandes dessinées pour enfants. Cet album a des dimensions légèrement inférieures au format français classique, mais il est, comme celui-ci, cartonné et coloré ; son prix réalise un compromis entre le modèle français et les habitudes de consommation italiennes de bandes dessinées, proposant 90 pages à 16 euros, solution qui n’a pas déplu au public, au vu du succès du volume[22]. La quatrième de couverture propose un texte ouvertement adressé à un co-énonciateur en âge scolaire, reprenant le descriptif original seulement dans l’incitation finale à la lecture, modulée de façon à mettre en relief « les bizarres aventures » des enseignants, sans trop les individualiser :

Andare a scuola non è facile neanche per i prof ! Hai mai pensato com'è la scuola vista con gli occhi degli insegnanti ? Cosa si dicono veramente in sala professori o alla macchinetta del caffè ? Cosa pensano dei colleghi e degli alunni ? Segui le bizzarre avventure degli insegnanti di storia, inglese, matematica, filosofia e tanti altri nella loro crociata contro l'ignoranza ![23]

Le site de l’éditeur italien catégorise cette publication pour des lecteurs entre 6 et 9 ans[24], une tranche d’âge donc plus basse que celle ciblée par le magazine Focus Junior (8-13 ans), ce qui paraît d’autant plus inapproprié que l’édition en volume présente des caractéristiques qui ménagent beaucoup moins ses destinataires. Pour commencer, il n’y a eu aucune sélection préalable des planches originales des tomes 18 et 19, qui ont toutes conflué, sans même changer d’ordre, dans le volume Mondadori, sans aucun égard pour des sujets potentiellement sensibles, comme par exemple la drogue, qui fait son apparition dans un épisode où Gladys, la professeure d’anglais, découvre Boulard et un camarade en train de fumer un joint dans les toilettes et passe rapidement de la désapprobation à l’envie d’essayer à son tour (t. 19/2017, p. 14 ; vol. M., p. 58). Le deuxième constat qui renforce cette idée d’un destinataire pour ainsi dire moins materné et idéalement sans doute plus âgé, pour la traduction en volume, que celui visé par les planches traduites dans le magazine, c’est la conservation systématique des petits titres iconographiques dans chaque épisode, sans l’ajout d’explications verbales (dans la planche susmentionnée on voit Gladys en version rasta).

Marta Ferrario a travaillé à la traduction de ces deux tomes des Profs pendant le premier confinement dû à la pandémie de Covid-19, pouvant bénéficier, de ce fait, d’une certaine continuité et d’un rythme plus détendu que pour les éditions mensuelles. Ces différences de conditions ont sûrement permis une prise de conscience de la nécessité de poursuivre une cohérence globale et de garantir la continuité narrative à l’intérieur de la série. Le respect des exigences de sérialité a rendu la traduction du volume plus homogène, notamment quant aux choix relatifs à l’onomastique et à la caractérisation des personnages, qui se sont ensuite répercutés sur la pratique traductive dans Focus Junior. Que cette occasion ait été propice à une réflexion plus approfondie sur la démarche traductive à entreprendre semble confirmé par le fait que quelques-unes des planches traduites dans le volume Mondadori avaient déjà paru séparément dans Focus Junior (en 2019), et que la traduction plus récente diffère en quelques petits points, relevant d’un travail généralement plus soigné[25].

En ce qui concerne la tendance à la naturalisation, on constate dans le volume le maintien de l’habitude d’italianiser les noms propres des nouveaux personnages qui sont introduits, en proposant tout de même des solutions moins fantaisistes que dans les premières traductions de Focus Junior (par exemple dans la planche à la p. 12 du t. 19, « Bernard Longet » devient « Bernardo Longhi », vol. M., p. 56) ou bien des solutions intermédiaires (comme « Élodie Morel », t. 18/2016, p. 34, nom qui est partiellement italianisé en « Élodie Morelli », vol. M., p. 34), tout en ne renonçant pas à des substituts plus libres quand il s’agit de maintenir certaines connotations (comme le prénom « Mafalda », vol. M. p. 52, à la place de « Cindy », t. 19/2017, p. 8, pour caractériser une élève disgracieuse et complexée, en introduisant au passage un rappel intertextuel à la célèbre bande dessinée argentine du même nom). En outre, le passage au volume a définitivement cristallisé les appellations des protagonistes, mettant un terme à la fluctuation qu’ils avaient connue dans les planches du magazine : par exemple, la professeure de français aux origines maghrébines, Amina, confirme son prénom original auprès du public italien, la professeure d’anglais qui, en dépit de son prénom britannique (Gladys), parle très mal la langue qu’elle est censée enseigner, est nommée Rita, et Serge Tirocul, professeur fainéant et absentéiste au nom parlant (« tire-au-cul » signifie « personne paresseuse », Le Robert), trouve son correspondant stable dans « Sergio Lazzaroni » (« lazzarone » : « persona […] per lo più pigra, scansafatiche », Treccani).

Pour ce qui est des realia, il faut d’abord dire que les deux tomes retenus pour la traduction en volume en contiennent très peu, ce qui peut avoir joué dans la sélection. Celles qui sont présentes constituent des exemples isolés et peu problématiques du point de vue traductif, tantôt elles sont généralisées ou accompagnées d’un hyperonyme (par exemple « la MJC Jean-Claude Van Damme » – le sigle renvoyant à la « maison des jeunes et de la culture », nommée d’après un acteur et expert d’arts martiaux très populaire également en Italie, t. 19/2017, p. 24 – est rendue par « centro sociale Jean Claude Van Damme », vol. M. p. 68), tantôt elles sont conservées dans l’original sans répercussion sur la tenue de l’épisode (comme « cet excellent Château-Mamour 82 » – t. 18, p. 9 – compréhensible grâce à l’image d’une bouteille servie au restaurant et à la connotation de prestige des vins français internationalement répandue : « questo eccellente Château-Mamour dell’82 », vol. M., p. 9). 

Dans le volume comme dans les planches traduites dans le magazine, peuvent subsister des discordances qui sont parfois signalées par les lecteurs, mais qui, selon Ferrario, n’entravent finalement pas le plaisir de la lecture. C’est le cas de l’épisode qui clôt le volume Mondadori sur le voyage scolaire à Londres, Ze London trip[26] (titre maintenu à l’identique en italien puisqu’il évoque la prononciation anglaise) : les élèves (qui en traduction sont censés être italiens) rejoignent la capitale britannique par l’Eurostar, train qui relie Paris et Londres à travers le tunnel sous la Manche, qui est cité et représenté visuellement (t. 19, p. 42 ; vol. M., p. 86). Ou encore, pendant un cours d'éducation physique et sportive (t. 18/2016, p. 23) le professeur rappelle aux élèves, pour les motiver à améliorer leurs performances, qu’ils ont choisi « l’option piscine au bac », ce qui est inconcevable en Italie, quel que soit le lycée (« la prova in piscina per gli esami », vol. M., p. 23). Ailleurs, on remarque une mauvaise interprétation d’un élément typique du milieu scolaire français, inexistant en Italie : le « foyer » (t. 18/2016, p. 30), soit la salle où, dans un lycée, les élèves peuvent se détendre, est rendu par « sala insegnanti » (vol. M., p. 30), malgré l’incohérence visuelle et diégétique qui s’ensuit, puisque dans cet espace se réunissent des lycéens pour élaborer le journal de l’école. De même, les punitions prévues dans les écoles françaises, les « heures de colle » (t. 19/2017, p. 41), n’ayant pas de correspondant en Italie, apparaissent peu convaincantes et plutôt maladroites en traduction (vol. M., p. 85 : « quattro ore di punizione »).

4. Quelques réflexions finales

Ce parcours à travers l’importation des Profs en Italie nous permet de dresser un bilan de quelques aspects généraux et d’indiquer des pistes de recherche ultérieures. D’abord, on peut affirmer que la formule réalisée par Focus Junior s’est avérée gagnante pour créer un intérêt pour cette bande dessinée et pour fidéliser un public qui se passionne, encore aujourd’hui, pour les aventures des personnages du lycée Fanfaron. Le passage à la traduction en volume semble avoir stimulé une meilleure appréhension des enjeux présents dans la bande dessinée originale et a sûrement permis la consolidation d’une mémoire historique en mesure de mieux répondre aux attentes du public (voir Scatasta 2002 : 103). Cela se reflète dans les traductions mensuelles successives de Focus Junior, qui relèvent enfin d’une vision d’ensemble. En outre, l’expérience de la traduction en volume a consacré Marta Ferrario comme la traductrice officielle de cette bande dessinée en italien (bien qu’encore non déclarée comme telle dans le magazine) et la responsable de la sélection périodique des planches originales.

De plus, au fil des années, on assiste en traduction à une attention croissante vers les éléments du paratexte linguistique (voir Celotti 2008 : 39-42) : les inscriptions hors des bulles ou tracées sur des objets sont traduites de plus en plus souvent, et les onomatopées et les interjections sont remplacées par leurs correspondants italiens, quand elles ne sont pas partagées entre les deux langues. Auparavant, dans les deux cas, ces éléments étaient d’habitude effacés ou, plus rarement, laissés dans la langue originale, ce qui créait un effet d’opacité paradoxal dans un projet traductif voué à la transparence. On peut mettre ce changement d’attitude, bien que non systématique, sur le compte d’une plus grande prise de conscience de l’apport de ces composantes à la signification globale du texte, favorisée par les nouvelles facilités techniques permettant d’intervenir sur l’aspect graphique de manière moins onéreuse que par le passé. Un exemple assez éloquent en est une planche tirée du t. 21/2018 (p. 3), basée sur une partie de Scrabble où apparaissent les lettres qui composent le mot « rentrée », le véritable épouvantail des professeurs. Cet épisode est sélectionné pour paraître dans Focus Junior (n. 212/2021), où ces lettres dans et hors les bulles sont modifiées pour former le mot correspondant en italien, « rientro ».

Pour ce qui concerne la langue utilisée en traduction, que ce soit dans le magazine ou dans le volume, Marta Ferrario insiste sur l’importance de bien cerner les spécificités linguistiques de chaque personnage (ses phrases fétiche ou son idiolecte, comme l’anglais macaronique de Gladys, efficacement reproduit sur base italienne en traduction) et sur la difficulté de trouver en italien le ton approprié pour la langue orale et familière largement représentée dans la bande dessinée, sans tomber dans l’aplatissement ni dans des régionalismes. Si une analyse systématique reste à faire sur ce point, l’impression générale qui se dégage est que la langue de la version italienne est globalement moins branchée que celle de l’original, tout en cherchant à injecter des éléments du jargon juvénile[27]. Cela peut dépendre non seulement de la difficulté de rendre les variétés diaphasiques du français dans une langue comme l’italien, qui se différencie plutôt sur l’axe diatopique[28], mais aussi de la volonté de proposer aux lecteurs un modèle de langue pour ainsi dire contrôlé, ce qui vaut surtout pour les traductions mensuelles clairement destinées à un public très jeune (cette tendance au conservatisme linguistique dans les bandes dessinées publiées en Italie, originales ou traduites, est confirmée par Macedoni 2010 et Morgana 2016 : 242-243). En effet, la qualité de la langue est un aspect que les adultes surveillent de près dans les publications pour l’enfance : Marta Ferrario affirme que parfois la rédaction de Focus Junior reçoit des plaintes de la part de parents sur l’usage de lombardismes, jugés déplacés dans un magazine au tirage national (par exemple le verbe « bigiare »[29], vol. M., p. 85, pour « sécher l’école », t. 19/2017, p. 41) ; elle se justifie en alléguant l’origine géographique de la plupart des collaborateurs du magazine, qui a son siège à Milan, épicentre du monde de l’édition italienne. Un souci d’acceptabilité dans les planches traduites se révèle, en outre, dans quelques cas d’euphémisation par rapport aux expressions originales (par exemple « vous êtes foutue », t. 11/2008, p. 25 > « è spacciata », FJ n. 80/2010 ; « le concierge est une grosse bouse », t. 18/2016, p. 16 > « il custode puzza », vol. M., p. 16), sans que cela soit particulièrement évident, puisque, par une sorte d’autocensure linguistique préalable, cette bande dessinée au départ ne se distingue pas par un langage particulièrement grossier et que, pour exprimer les dysphémismes, elle fait un large usage de métaphores visuelles, qui se passent de traduction et que chaque lecteur peut verbaliser à sa guise.

Au niveau du contenu, à la lecture des derniers tomes il nous paraît que les épisodes profondément ancrés dans un horizon de référence spécifiquement français se font rares, ce qui réduit par conséquent la présence des realia et leur impact dans le processus traductif. Éviter de singulariser l’origine de son produit pour encourager la plus vaste identification possible de la part des lecteurs pourrait correspondre à un objectif de marketing qui tend vers l’universalisation et en général favorise l’exportation[30], faisant par conséquent le jeu de Focus junior et rendant la « filtration » culturelle évoquée par Mounin (1994 : 90) de moins en moins nécessaire. 

About the author(s)

Catia Nannoni est professeure de Linguistique française et Traduction au Département de Langues, Littératures et Cultures Modernes de l’Université de Bologne, où elle enseigne la linguistique française et la traduction du français vers l’italien. Elle est titulaire d’un doctorat en Sciences de la traduction obtenu en 2003 à l’Université de Bologne. Ses recherches et ses publications récentes portent sur la traduction de textes plurilingues et de littératures migrantes, ainsi que sur la traduction audiovisuelle et intersémiotique.

Catia Nannoni is Professor of French language and translation at the Department of Modern Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at the University of Bologna, where she teaches French linguistics and translation from French into Italian. She holds a PhD in Translation Studies, awarded in 2003 by the University of Bologna. Her research and recent publications focus on the translation of multilingual texts and migrant literature, as well as on audiovisual and intersemiotic translation.

Email: [please login or register to view author's email address]

Abstract & Keywords

English:

While the link between our experience of the world and our use of language is no longer in doubt (Ungerer and Schmid 2006), the effect of the level of experience on our language use has received little attention, particularly within the field of translation studies. In this article, we investigate this factor by means of a didactic experiment focusing on French translations of the most typical Dutch contrastive marker, maar, by professional translators on the one hand, and translation students on the other. The first group in this study therefore has a broader experience of the world than the second group. Our hypothesis is that this difference in experience will give rise to differences between the translation results of professional translators and those of translation students. It is partially confirmed, as the translation strategies adopted by the two groups of participants show statistically significant differences for certain semantic categories of maar.

French:

Si le lien entre notre expérience du monde et notre utilisation du langage ne fait plus de doute (Ungerer et Schmid 2006), l’influence de la variation du degré de cette expérience sur son utilisation du langage a fait l’objet de peu d’attention, en particulier dans le cadre de la traductologie. Dans cet article, nous nous proposons d’investiguer ce facteur par le biais d’une expérience didactique en nous focalisant sur la traduction en français du connecteur d’opposition néerlandais le plus typique, maar, par, d’une part, des traductrices et traducteurs professionnel·le·s, et d’autre part, des étudiantes et étudiants en traduction. Le premier groupe de cette étude possède donc une expérience du monde plus large que le second groupe. Notre hypothèse est que cet écart d’expérience va donner lieu à des différences entre les stratégies traductives déployées par ces deux groupes. Cette hypothèse se confirme en partie, car certaines catégories sémantiques de maar présentent des stratégies de traduction significativement différentes entre les deux groupes de participant·e·s à cette l’étude.

Keywords: translation strategies, contrastive markers, French, Dutch, experience, connecteurs d’opposition, stratégies traductives, français, néerlandais

1. Introduction

Pour la linguistique cognitive, le langage ne se conçoit pas comme une structure isolée dans l’esprit humain (Langacker 1993), mais s’inscrit dans le concept plus large de la cognition humaine. Dans cette vision décloisonnée des connaissances linguistiques, l’expérience du monde que se font les locuteur·trice·s d’une langue occupe une place fondamentale dans la manière dont ils et elles s’en servent.

À mesure que nous avançons en âge, notre perception du monde change (van de Rijt et Plooij 2018). Cette évolution se retrouve, entre autres, dans le domaine linguistique. Ryan et al. (1992) ont ainsi démontré l’existence de divergences entre la manière dont des jeunes adultes (environ 26,4 ans) et des adultes plus âgé·e·s (environ 72,9 ans en moyenne) évaluent leurs propres compétences linguistiques, ainsi que celles de leurs pairs.

La traductologie faisant partie intégrante des sciences cognitives (Achard-Bayle et Durieux 2020), l’on peut concevoir que l’expérience d’un·e traducteur·trice puisse exercer une influence sur ses stratégies traductives. Cette question reste encore peu explorée, et rares sont les études qui s’y intéressent de façon spécifique. Ces dernières tendent néanmoins à montrer que l’âge et l’expérience jouent bien un rôle dans le processus traductif. Kruger et Crots (2014) ont par exemple comparé de jeunes traducteurs·trices avec peu d’expérience à des traducteurs·trices chevronné·e·s et, de facto, souvent plus âgé·e·s. Elles se sont penchées en particulier sur le rôle de l’éthique personnelle et professionnelle sur les stratégies de traduction de ces deux groupes de traducteurs·trices, et ont montré que l’âge d’un·e traducteur·trice, et surtout son expérience, influencent ses stratégies traductives.

Dans cette étude, nous souhaitons conférer une place centrale à la question de la variation des stratégies traductives liées à l’expérience des traducteurs·trices. Nous nous concentrerons pour cela sur un élément linguistique qui n’a pas encore fait l’objet d’une analyse traductologique dédiée à ce critère, à savoir la traduction en français du connecteur d’opposition néerlandais maar. L’objectif de cette étude est donc de voir si le degré d’expérience d’un·e traducteur·trice exerce une influence sur ses stratégies traductologiques lorsqu’il ou elle doit traduire le connecteur d’opposition maar en français, et si tel est le cas, de décrire cette influence avec précision.

2. Méthodologie

2.1. Sélection des participant·e·s et du texte de l’étude

Afin d’étudier le rôle de l’expérience des traducteurs·trices dans la traduction du connecteur d’opposition maar, nous avons établi deux groupes qui diffèrent principalement l’un de l’autre par le degré d’expérience qui caractérise les traducteurs·trices dont ils se composent.

Le groupe A est constitué des traducteurs·trices ayant l’expérience la plus limitée. Il se compose de 19 étudiant·e·s de dernière année de master de la Faculté de Traduction et d’Interprétation de l’Université de Mons (FTI-EII) en Belgique. Chacun·e de ces étudiant·e·s était francophone natif·ve, et possédait le néerlandais dans sa combinaison linguistique de base lors de ses études.

Le groupe B représente quant à lui les traducteurs·trices expérimenté·e·s, que nous appellerons désormais « traducteurs·trices professionnel·le·s ». Les critères qui nous ont permis de les sélectionner sont ceux de PACTE (2008). Les traducteurs·trices du groupe B possèdent ainsi au moins cinq ans d’expérience en tant que traducteurs·trices professionnel·le·s, en ce sens que la traduction représente au moins 70 pour cent de leurs revenus. Ces critères ont été complétés et adaptés aux besoins spécifiques de notre étude. Les traducteurs·trices professionnel·le·s devaient ainsi également être francophones natif·ve·s, et posséder le néerlandais dans leur combinaison linguistique lors de leurs études. 12 traducteurs·trices professionnel·le·s répondant à ces critères ont participé à l’étude.

Ces deux groupes ont été invités à traduire en français un texte rédigé en néerlandais de 488 mots comportant 12 occurrences du connecteur maar (texte en annexe). Le texte de l’étude est un texte semi-authentique : il se présente sous la forme d’un texte rédigé dans un néerlandais authentique (produit par des locuteurs·trice·s natif·ve·s, et à destination de locuteurs·trice·s natif·ve·s) qui a été légèrement remanié à des fins didactiques (Makukhina, 2023). Dans notre cas, la principale modification réalisée a consisté en une réduction de la longueur des parties du texte ne comportant pas de maar. Elle a ainsi permis une maximisation du nombre d’occurrence de ce connecteur sans pour autant que le texte à traduire ne soit trop long.

Le sujet de l’étude n’était révélé aux participant·e·s qu’une fois la traduction effectuée. Nous avons choisi le genre journalistique comme type de texte, car c’est le type de texte auquel les étudiant·e·s en question étaient le plus habitué·e·s. Le texte de cette expérience se présente donc sous la forme d’un article de journal.

Les étudiant·e·s du groupe A ont tous réalisé la traduction simultanément dans un local de l’Université de Mons. Les traductions des traducteurs·trices professionnel·le·s du groupe B se déroulaient lors de rendez-vous durant lesquels nous nous déplacions jusqu’au lieu souhaité par les participant·e·s. Nous étions donc présent lors de l’entièreté de l’expérience pour l’ensemble des participant·e·s. Ils et elles avaient accès à tous les outils linguistiques souhaités (dont des dictionnaires bilingues) et à Internet pour se documenter sur le sujet du texte. Seul l’usage de la traduction automatique était interdit. L’expérience a duré une heure et demie et ses résultats ont été anonymisés.

Afin d’éviter la communication entre les professionnel·le·s, qui prenaient part à l’étude de manière asynchrone, le recrutement des traducteurs·trices se faisait de manière anonyme. Par ailleurs, ces dernier·ère·s étaient informé·e·s du caractère confidentiel de leurs (futurs) résultats dès la phase de recrutement durant laquelle nous fournissions un document récapitulatif des modalités de l’étude qui en soulignait l’importance. Enfin, une fois l’expérience terminée, chaque professionnel·le se voyait rappeler la nécessité de ne divulguer ni le texte, ni le sujet de l’expérience à d’éventuel·le·s pairs.

2.2. De la classification sémantique du néerlandais maar et du français mais

Le texte de notre expérience didactique comporte des maar authentiques couvrant les principales catégories sémantiques de ce connecteur. Avant de nous intéresser à mais et maar d’un point de vue traductologique, il convient d’exposer la classification sémantique de ces connecteurs que nous avons adoptée dans le cadre de l’expérience didactique décrite dans cet article.

S’intéresser au sémantisme de mais et maar invite à se pencher sur la notion d’opposition, dont mais (Dajko et Carmichael 2014) et maar (Pérrez 2006) sont les connecteurs les plus typiques. Dans cet article, la notion d’opposition repose sur trois sous-notions principales, à savoir, la concession, l’adversation, et la correction. Cette vision en trois dimensions, que nous avons mise à l’épreuve des corpus lors de précédentes études descriptive et contrastive de maar et mais (Stilmant 2023), est celle qui est la plus communément adoptée dans les études multilingues, contrastives et traductologiques traitant de la notion d’opposition (Dupont 2019).

La concession est la première sous-notion oppositive fondamentale. Elle implique une attente implicite, qui, contre toute attente, ne se rencontre pas (Thomas et Matheson, 2003), comme dans (1) :

(1) Rodrigue n’est pas grand, mais il est fort. (Adam 1990 : 203)

La petite taille de Rodrigue amène le lecteur à s’attendre à ce que ce dernier ne soit pas très fort, mais contre toute attente, c’est bien le cas. L’attente du lecteur est donc niée, par les éléments qui suivent mais.

Jean-Michel Adam (1990) distingue trois différents mais concessifs. Nous avons choisi de reprendre sa classification, car elle permet de faire émerger des profils fonctionnels de mais très intéressants (Stilmant 2023). Pour Adam, il existe ainsi tout d’abord des mais de concession simple, dont l’exemple (1) fait partie.

Ces mais peuvent s’accompagner d’un connecteur additif. Ils révèlent alors ‘le système de valeurs sur lequel s’appuie le locuteur’ (Adam 1990 : 192), et font émerger la hiérarchie des éléments unis par mais :

(2) Pour l’aventure, bien sûr, mais pour une leçon de cinéma aussi. (Adam 1990 : 198)

L’exemple (2) est une publicité pour aller voir le film « Indiana Jones ». Les deux arguments liés par mais tendent vers la même conclusion, qui pourrait être « allez voir le film », une différence notable par rapport à l’exemple (1) dont les deux arguments possédaient des conclusions opposées. La présence de aussi n’inverse pas l’orientation argumentative : elle la renforce. Le ou la destinataire du message est dès lors invité·e à comprendre, grâce à l’exemple (2), qu’il faut aller voir Indiana Jones non seulement parce qu’il s’agit d’un film d’aventure, mais (aussi / (et) surtout) parce qu’il s’agit d’une leçon de cinéma.

Enfin, il existe des mais qui agissent davantage comme des embrayeurs de points de vue (Rabatel 1999). En partie vidés de leur charge contrastive, ils articulent ‘des morceaux discursifs a priori hétérogènes : une parole sur une autre à l’oral, un fragment textuel avec un autre, à l’écrit’ (Adam 1990 : 203). Ils permettent ainsi d’introduire un nouveau thème, au sein du récit (3) (emploi plutôt narratif) ou de la discussion (4) (emploi phatique) dans lesquels ils figurent :

(3) Toujours enfoui dans le souple support de fourrure, la conductrice de Mercedes dessous, Meyer ne détache plus ses yeux de la centrale. Sans plus aucune envie de bouger. Mais il faut bien qu’il bouge lorsque la jeune femme, d’une voix étouffée, lui demande si ça ne l’embêterait pas trop de la laisser se relever. (Nous trois, Jean Echenoz 1992, cité par Rabatel 1999)

(4) Mais occupe-toi d’Amélie. (Ducrot et al. 1976)

Dans les deux exemples, les connecteurs d’opposition n’articulent plus des éléments internes au discours, mais agissent plutôt sur sa structure et sa progression.

La seconde sous-notion concessive fondamentale est l’adversation. Un connecteur adversatif souligne l’existence d’une différence entre les deux éléments qu’il lie (Dupont 2019), avec une idée de comparaison sous-jacente, comme dans :

(5) Jan est grand, mais Piet est petit. (Foolen 1993)

On compare ici Jan et Piet, et on présente leurs caractéristiques comme contraires.

La correction est la troisième sous-notion contrastive fondamentale. Elle rectifie un fait qui est présenté comme erroné, et le remplace par un autre fait (Dupont 2019) :

(6) Pierre n’est pas français, mais allemand. (Anscombre et Ducrot 1977)

Le sémantisme de chaque maar présent dans le texte de l’étude a donc été analysé selon cette classification, comme le montre le tableau 1.

Tableau 1 : occurrences de maar présentes dans le texte source de l’étude

Une analyse sémantique de ces maar fondée sur les mêmes critères d’analyse que ceux décrits dans cet article a été réalisée par un autre chercheur en traductologie de la Faculté de traduction de Mons. Elle a abouti à un accord global de 91,67 pour cent et à un kappa de Fleiss de κ = 0,90, soit un accord presque parfait (Landis et Koch 1977). Les maar traduits par les participant·e·s de cette étude couvrent donc de manière fiable l’ensemble des différentes catégories sémantiques de ce connecteur.

2.3. Traduire maar : trois stratégies possibles

Nous distinguons trois manières de traduire maar en français. La première est la traduction littérale (7). Maar est alors traduit par mais, son équivalent de connecteur d’opposition le plus répandu.

(7) Russisch steenkool in de ban, maar hun olie en gas blijven wel welkom.

« Embargo sur le charbon provenant de Russie, mais son pétrole et son gaz restent les bienvenus » (Traducteur·trice professionnel·le #5).

La seconde stratégie traductive est le choix d’un connecteur logique explicite autre que mais. L’auteur·e de la traduction (8) a ainsi opté pour par contre :

(8) Russisch steenkool in de ban, maar hun olie en gas blijven wel welkom.

« Embargo sur le charbon russe, par contre son pétrole et son gaz restent les bienvenus » (Traducteur·trice professionnel·le #3).

Certain·e·s participant·e·s, pour traduire maar, ont parfois employé des morphèmes qui ne sont pas reconnus à l’unanimité comme des connecteurs. Afin de garantir une cohérence dans le traitement des résultats, nous avons analysé l’ensemble des traductions en nous référant à la liste des connecteurs d’opposition de Dupont (2019). Cette liste repose en grande partie sur la base de données LEXCONN (Danlos, Roze et Muller 2012), dont l’objectif est de recenser l’ensemble des connecteurs logiques français. Les connecteurs autres que mais repris dans Dupont (2019) seront dès lors considérés comme des traductions de maar par un autre connecteur que mais, tandis que les traductions dont les connecteurs ne sont pas repris dans cette liste relèveront de la troisième stratégie traductive, à savoir le non-marquage. Cette dernière stratégie se caractérise par une ‘absence de connecteur entre les membres d’une construction pour signifier une relation sémantico-pragmatique’ (Corminboeuf 2014). Aucun connecteur explicite n’est ici employé dans la traduction, comme dans l’exemple (9) :

(9) Russisch steenkool in de ban, maar hun olie en gas blijven wel welkom.

« Embargo sur le charbon russe, le pétrole et le gaz épargnés »                                                       (Traducteur·trice professionnel·le #10).

Terminons cette section en faisant remarquer que nous n’avons écarté aucune des traductions qui nous ont été fournies, même celles qui pourraient être discutables (par exemple, un maar traduit par un connecteur qui n’exprime plus l’opposition, mais une autre notion, comme un donc exprimant une conséquence).

3. Résultats

3.1. Stratégies traductives des étudiant·e·s

Le tableau 2 résume les différentes stratégies traductives adoptées par les étudiant·e·s pour traduire les maar du texte de l’étude.

Tableau 2 : stratégies traductives des étudiant·e·s

La traduction littérale est globalement la stratégie la plus représentée dans le tableau 2, constituant 57,4 pour cent des traductions réalisées par les étudiant·e·s. La seconde stratégie, consistant à traduire maar par un connecteur autre que mais, a quant à elle été employée dans 22,3 pour cent des traductions de maar, et les relations non marquées représentent 20,1 pour cent des traductions.

Ces chiffres sont cependant influencés par la répartition inégale des catégories sémantiques dans le texte utilisé dans cette étude. La concession simple est, par exemple, davantage représentée que les autre catégories sémantiques (car elle est aussi la plus répandue, Stilmant 2023). En calculant la prévalence des trois stratégies traductives avec un poids équivalent pour chaque catégorie sémantique, la traduction littérale perd un peu d’importance, et représente alors 46,6 pour cent des traductions des étudiant·e·s. Les autres connecteurs totalisent 26,5 pour cent des traductions, et les relations non-marquées, 26,8 pour cent.

L’on observe ensuite que les stratégies traductives possibles dans le cadre de cette étude assument toutes les trois, dans au moins une catégorie sémantique de maar, le rôle de stratégie la plus employée par les étudiant·e·s.

Ainsi, les maar concessifs simples, les maar concessifs additifs, et les maar adversatifs ont été majoritairement traduits littéralement par les étudiant·e·s. Les relations non marquées, elles, constituent la stratégie traductive la plus utilisée pour traduire les maar concessifs non verbaux oraux (phatiques), et les maar correctifs. Enfin, les étudiant·e·s ont la plupart du temps traduit les maar concessifs non verbaux du discours écrit (narratifs) en se servant d’un connecteur autre que mais. On remarque d’ailleurs que ces maar n’ont jamais été traduits littéralement par mais. Ils constituent ainsi l’unique catégorie où l’une des trois stratégies traductives n’est pas représentée. Nous reviendrons sur cette particularité dans la section 3.3.1.

3.2. Stratégies traductives des traducteurs·trices professionnel·le·s

Le tableau 3 reprend les différentes stratégies traductives adoptées par les traducteurs·trices professionnel·le·s pour traduire les maar du texte de l’étude.

Tableau 3 : stratégies traductives des traducteurs·trices professionnel·le·s

Chez les traducteurs·trices professionnel·le·s également, la stratégie de la traduction littérale est la plus employée. Elle représente 60,4 pour cent des traductions réalisées par les traducteurs·trices professionnel·le·s. Ils et elles ont utilisé un connecteur autre que mais dans 21,5 pour cent de leurs traductions, et ont opté pour une relation non marquée dans 18,0 pour cent des cas.

En donnant à chaque catégorie sémantique le même poids, la traduction littérale représente proportionnellement 53,8 pour cent des traductions des traducteurs·trices professionnel·le·s, les connecteurs autres que mais 24,3 pour cent, et les relations non-marquées 21,8 pour cent.

À l’instar des traductions des étudiant·e·s, la stratégie traductive de maar privilégiée en français par les traducteurs·trices professionnel·le·s varie en fonction de la catégorie sémantique de ce connecteur. Les maar concessifs simples, les maar concessifs additifs et les maar adversatifs ont été le plus souvent traduits par mais et donc par une traduction littérale. La traduction littérale est également la stratégie la plus utilisée pour traduire les maar adversatifs et les maar non-verbaux oraux (phatiques), sans plus concerner toutefois la majorité absolue des occurrences de ces catégories sémantiques.

Le non-marquage, quant à lui, est la stratégie la plus utilisée par les traducteurs·trices professionnel·le·s pour traduire les maar correctifs.

La stratégie des connecteurs autres que mais, enfin, est la stratégie la plus employée par les traducteurs·trices professionnel·le·s pour traduire les maar concessifs non-verbaux du discours écrit (narratifs), et concerne la moitié des occurrences des maar de cette catégorie sémantique.

3.3. Analyse contrastive des résultats des deux groupes de participant·e·s

3.3.1. Stratégies les plus répandues

Si les résultats descriptifs fournissent déjà des informations intéressantes sur les tendances des stratégies traductives des étudiant·e·s et des traducteurs·trices professionnel·le·s, ils ne permettent pas une compréhension immédiate des divergences entre ces deux groupes. Il convient pour cela de mener une analyse contrastive.

Examinons d’abord les stratégies traductives prédominantes au sein des deux groupes, grâce au tableau 4. Les lettres « A » et « a » désignent les stratégies les plus utilisées par les étudiant·e·s, les lettres « B » et « b » réfèrent aux stratégies les plus utilisées par les traducteurs·trices professionnel·le·s. Une lettre majuscule indique que la stratégie a été utilisée pour traduire plus de la moitié des occurrences des maar de la catégorie sémantique concernée, une lettre minuscule indique que la stratégie traductive est la plus choisie par les participant·e·s pour la catégorie sémantique donnée, mais qu’elle concerne moins de la moitié des maar traduits.

Tableau 4 : stratégies traductives dominantes des deux groupes de l’étude

On note tout d’abord que les étudiant·e·s semblent plus catégoriques lorsqu’ils et elles utilisent une stratégie traductive. En effet, seuls les maar correctifs, à une occurrence près, n’ont pas été traduits majoritairement par une seule et même stratégie traductive. Dans les autres catégories sémantiques, les stratégies les plus employées par les étudiant·e·s couvrent toujours plus de la moitié des occurrences des maar traduits. Les traducteurs·trices professionnel·le·s, eux/elles, semblent moins tranché·e·s dans leur choix de stratégies traductives. La moitié des catégories sémantiques de maar ont ainsi été le plus souvent traduites par des stratégies de traduction qui ne concernent même pas la moitié des connecteurs de ces catégories.

D’emblée, l’on aurait tendance à croire qu’étudiant·e·s et traducteurs·trices professionnel·le·s divergent surtout sur les traductions d’une seule catégorie sémantique de maar, celle des concessions non-verbales phatiques. Mais ces résultats indiquent-ils une différence réelle, ou relèvent-ils du hasard ? Et se pourrait-il que, bien qu’ils affichent les mêmes tendances pour les autres catégories sémantiques, les traducteurs·trices et les étudiant·e·s aient tout de même effectués des choix significativement différents dans les autres catégories sémantiques du tableau ?

Pour répondre à ces questions, il faut gagner en précision dans l’analyse des données, et faire usage du test de Fisher. Cet outil statistique permet de savoir si deux variables sont indépendantes ou si elles sont liées. Ici, il nous permettra donc de savoir si les variations des usages des stratégies traductives entre les étudiant·e·s et les traducteurs·trices professionnel·le·s sont dues au hasard ou non.

Le tableau 5 compare le recours aux trois stratégies traductives des étudiant·e·s et des traducteurs·trices professionnel·le·s et donne pour chacune de ces comparaisons la valeur-p calculée selon le test de Fisher. Les valeurs inférieures à 0,05 indiquent que la variation de stratégie entre les étudiant·e·s et les traducteurs·trices professionnel·le·s est significative et donc non due au hasard.

Tableau 5 : résultats des tests exacts de Fisher comparant les usages des stratégies traductives des deux groupes de l’étude

Les résultats du tableau 4 liés aux deux premières catégories sémantiques se retrouvent dans le tableau 5. Etudiant·e·s comme traducteurs·trices professionnel·le·s traduisent donc peu ou prou les maar concessifs simples et les maar concessifs additifs de la même manière, à savoir, par mais.

En se penchant ensuite sur les résultats des maar concessifs non-verbaux phatiques, on se retrouve face à une divergence intéressante par rapport aux résultats du tableau 4. En effet, les étudiant·e·s avaient utilisé la stratégie du non-marquage pour la majorité de ces maar, alors que les traducteurs·trices professionnel·le·s avaient favorisé les traductions littérales. Ces divergences ne sont cependant pas statistiquement significatives.

Le premier résultat significatif de cette étude arrive avec la catégorie des maar concessifs non-verbaux narratifs (valeur-p = 0,004). S’il est vrai que tant les étudiant·e·s que les traducteurs·trices professionnel·le·s ont préféré les connecteurs autres que mais pour traduire des maar de cette catégorie traductive, les deux groupes ont eu recours à la traduction littérale de manière très différente. En effet, les étudiant·e·s n’ont traduit aucun maar de cette catégorie par un mais, ce qu’ont par contre fait cinq traducteurs·trices professionnel·le·s sur les 12 participant·e·s à l’étude.

Cet écart s’explique peut-être par une différence de perception d’une idée fortement répandue en français, qui veut qu’il soit préférable d’éviter de commencer une phrase par mais (de Chantal et Mauduit 2021). Cette recommandation n’est cependant pas valable pour l’ensemble des catégories sémantiques de mais.

Les mais concessifs simples et concessifs additifs s’emploient en effet peu souvent en position initiale dans leur phrase hôte (Stilmant 2023). Peut-être faut-il y voir ici un reliquat de leur usage en ancien français, où cette position leur était impossible (Rodríguez Somolinos 2002). Cependant, il n’en est pas de même pour les mais concessifs non verbaux. La position initiale est en effet la position de prédilection de ces mais, car elle leur permet d’assumer au mieux leur rôle d’embrayeurs de points de vue, d’introducteurs de nouveaux thèmes dans le discours (Rabatel 1999). Adam (1990) note que les plus grands auteurs de la littérature française utilisent de tels mais concessifs non verbaux narratifs souvent en début de paragraphe. Quant aux mais concessifs non verbaux phatiques, Ducrot et al. montrent dès 1976 qu’ils se retrouvent dans la plupart des cas ‘en tête de réplique’.

La recommandation, parfois présentée comme une règle formelle, conseillant aux locuteurs francophones de ne pas commencer de phrase par mais est donc plus subtile qu’elle n’y paraît, car elle ne s’applique pas avec la même pertinence à l’ensemble des catégories sémantiques de mais. Vu que les étudiant·e·s ‘ont tendance à généraliser le système linguistique qu’ils [et elles] apprennent lorsqu’ils [et elles] ont encore une compétence limitée’ (Kusmaryania 2023 : 42), il se peut qu’ils et elles l’appliquent sans distinction pour l’ensemble des catégories sémantiques de mais. La peur de sortir de la norme les a ainsi poussé·e·s à éviter de traduire littéralement les maar concessifs non verbaux narratifs. Or de tels mais ont tout à fait leur place en position initiale, comme l’a noté entre autres Adam (1990). Notre hypothèse ici est que, grâce à leur expérience plus grande de la langue française acquise par les années supplémentaires qui les ont mis·e·s en contact avec elle, les traducteurs·trices professionnel·le·s ont perçu mieux que les étudiant·e·s que le mais concessif non verbal narratif peut s’employer en position initiale. Ils et elles n’ont donc pas cherché à éviter systématiquement la stratégie de la traduction littérale pour traduire les maar de cette catégorie. Notons que le maar concessif non verbal de cette expérience, qui se trouve dans un extrait d’une déclaration radiophonique d’Alexander De Croo, a été traduit littéralement par certain·e·s étudiant·e·s, et ce bien que figurant lui aussi en position initiale. Les étudiant·e·s semblent donc moins éviter la traduction littérale pour les maar situés en position initiale dans un discours oral que dans un discours écrit (un constat cependant non significatif, p = 0,105).

Le second groupe de résultats significatifs de ce tableau est lui aussi lié, entre autres, à une différence d’utilisation de la traduction littérale entre les étudiant·e·s et les traducteurs·trices professionnel·le·s, mais concerne cette fois la catégorie des maar adversatifs (valeur-p = 0,028). Ce constat contraste lui aussi avec les résultats du tableau 4, où les deux groupes de l’étude traduisaient le plus souvent les maar adversatifs de manière littérale. En cause, une utilisation plus importante de connecteurs autres que mais chez les traducteurs·trices professionnel·le·s (valeur-p = 0,009), ainsi que, dans une moindre mesure, de relations non-marquées (plus du double par rapport aux étudiant·e·s). Sur ce point, l’adversation se distingue à nouveau de toutes les autres catégories sémantiques de maar comprises dans le cadre de cette étude. Elle est en effet la seule catégorie où les traducteurs·trices professionnel·le·s ont utilisé la stratégie des connecteurs autres que mais plus que les étudiant·e·s.

3.3.2. Des connecteurs autres que mais, mais lesquels ?

Le constat sur lequel nous avons clôturé la section précédente nous invite à explorer un aspect propre à la stratégie du choix d’un connecteur autre que mais pour traduire maar, à savoir, sa diversité. En effet, si l’on s’en tient à une analyse fondée sur les connecteurs discursifs dans les traductions françaises des participant·e·s comme c’est le cas ici, les traductions littérales et les relations non marquées ne peuvent se cristalliser que d’une seule manière, respectivement, en traduisant maar par « mais » (7), et en n’utilisant pas de connecteurs discursifs explicites (9).

La stratégie du changement de connecteur dans la traduction, elle, peut se manifester de plusieurs façons différentes, comme on peut l’observer dans les traductions (11) et (12), toutes deux proposées par des traducteurs·trices professionnel·le·s pour traduire l’exemple (10) :

(10) Een gasboycot ligt nog altijd erg gevoelig, maar voor olie zouden we wel alternatieven vinden.

(11) « Si l’embargo gazier reste très sensible, nous pourrions trouver des alternatives pour le pétrole » (Traducteur·trice professionnel·le #10).

(12) « Le boycott du gaz reste tabou. Pour le pétrole par contre, des alternatives sont envisageables » (Traducteur·trice professionnel·le #7).

Les deux traductions présentent des connecteurs oppositifs différents, « si » et « par contre » qui, dans ce cas-ci, sont tous les deux acceptables.

On pourrait voir dans le recours à cette stratégie une cristallisation de l’universel de traduction visant l’évitement des répétitions (Baker, 1993) à l’échelle textuelle, qui ici se matérialisent par un usage répété de la traduction littérale. Ce principe étant lui aussi parfois présenté comme une norme, l’on pourrait s’attendre à retrouver davantage la stratégie des autres connecteurs chez les étudiant·e·s que chez les professionnel·le·s. Nos résultats montrent cependant un équilibre entre les deux groupes de l’étude : 21,4 pour cent de l’ensemble des maar traduits par les étudiant·e·s ont été rendus par un connecteur autre que mais, contre 20,8 pour les professionnel·le·s. La minime différence entre les deux groupes peut cependant être attribuée au hasard (p = 0,8973).

Nous avons cependant observé qu’en étudiant séparément les traductions des catégories sémantiques de maar (tableau 5), certaines différences significatives apparaissent (par exemple, pour les maar adversatifs). On pourrait s’attendre à ce que le groupe qui a davantage recours aux connecteurs autres que mais fasse preuve d’une diversité plus grande dans les connecteurs utilisés. Dans le tableau 6, nous nous penchons sur cette question en reprenant l’ensemble des connecteurs qui ont servi aux participant·e·s de l’étude à traduire les maar autrement que par mais.

Tableau 6 : diversité des connecteurs employés pour traduire maar

Pour mieux évaluer la diversité des connecteurs utilisés par les deux groupes de l’étude, il convient de diviser le nombre total de cas où maar a été traduit par un autre connecteur que mais, par le nombre de connecteurs différents utilisés pour traduire maar par un autre connecteur que mais. L’on obtient alors un ratio, qui indique en moyenne combien de fois un connecteur a été utilisé. Plus il est petit, moins le connecteur a été utilisé, et donc, plus la diversité des connecteurs utilisés est grande. Par exemple, les étudiant·e·s affichent un ratio de 2,5 pour les maar concessifs simples. Cela signifie qu’en moyenne, les connecteurs autres que mais qu’ils et elles ont utilisés pour traduire ces maar ont été utilisés 2,5 fois. Pour cette même catégorie, les traducteurs·trices professionnel·le·s affichent un ratio de 2. Ils et elles n’ont donc utilisé chaque connecteur que deux fois en moyenne, leur variété des connecteurs utilisés est donc supérieure à celle des étudiant·e·s.

Le tableau 7 reprend, pour chaque catégorie sémantique de maar, le nombre moyen des recours à des connecteurs autres que mais pour traduire maar. La dernière colonne affiche le rapport entre les résultats des deux groupes : un chiffre positif signifie que les traducteurs·trices professionnel·le·s ont fait preuve de davantage de diversité que les étudiant·e·s.

Tableau 7 : ratios de diversité des connecteurs utilisés

Un seul des résultats de la dernière colonne est entièrement négatif, celui des maar adversatifs. Cela peut paraître inattendu, quand on sait, comme nous l’avons vu dans nos résultats précédents, que ce sont les étudiant·e·s, et non les traducteurs·trices professionnel·le·s qui, excepté pour les maar adversatifs, utilisent davantage la stratégie des autres connecteurs pour chacune des catégories sémantiques de maar. L’on aurait dès lors pu s’attendre à ce qu’un recours plus important à d’autres connecteurs chez les étudiant·e·s entraîne une plus grande variété de connecteurs, or, ce n’est pas le cas. Bien qu’ayant eu moins souvent recours aux autres connecteurs que mais pour traduire maar, les traducteurs·trices professionnel·le·s ont presque toujours utilisé des connecteurs plus variés que les étudiant·e·s, à une exception près (maar adversatifs).

Les maar adversatifs se distinguent aussi des autres catégories sémantiques par leur ratio, -3. C’est le seul résultat tout à fait négatif du tableau, indiquant la seule catégorie où les traducteurs·trices montrent une diversité de connecteurs strictement moins grande que les étudiant·e·s. C’est en outre l’écart le plus grand entre les deux groupes de l’étude, il est au moins six fois plus marqué que n’importe quel autre écart de diversité entre les étudiant·e·s et les traducteurs·trices professionnel·le·s.

Un recours plus important à la stratégie consistant à recourir à d’autres connecteurs que mais n’entraîne donc pas forcément une plus grande diversité de ces connecteurs utilisés. Les résultats du tableau 7 semblent même indiquer que c’est le contraire : la seule catégorie sémantique pour laquelle les traducteurs·trices professionnel·le·s font preuve d’une plus faible diversité des connecteurs utilisés par rapport aux étudiant·e·s est aussi la seule catégorie où ils et elles choisissent de traduire maar par autre chose que mais plus souvent que les étudiant·e·s.

3.3.3. Au sein d’un même groupe d’étude : homogénéité des stratégies, ou profils variés ?

Si les deux sections précédentes ont mis en lumière certaines divergences de stratégies traductives entre étudiant·e·s et traducteurs·trices professionnel·le·s de manière collective, elles ne fournissent pas d’informations quant au recours à ces stratégies à l’échelle individuelle des participant·e·s de l’étude. En effet, ces différences, se rencontrent-elles chez tous les individus des groupes de l’étude, ou sont-elles la spécificité d’un nombre limité de participant·e·s dont les résultats influencent la moyenne du groupe ? En d’autres termes, le taux du recours à la stratégie des connecteurs autres que mais est-il homogène à l’intérieur des deux groupes de l’étude ? Et qu’en est-il de celui de la traduction littérale, et des relations non marquées ? Pour le savoir, il faut recenser tous les cas d’utilisation de ces stratégies pour chaque participant·e·s de l’étude, et compiler ces résultats dans des boîtes à moustaches qui en montreront la dispersion.

Tableau 8 : boîtes à moustaches des stratégies traductives par participant·e

Commençons par nous pencher sur les résultats de la traduction littérale. On observe que les boîtes, qui représentent 50 pour cent des individus de chaque groupe, sont plus grandes chez les traducteurs·trices professionnel·le·s que chez les étudiant·e·s. Il en va de même pour les moustaches, ces traits linéaires partant des boîtes et représentant les extrêmes de chaque groupe. Ainsi, si les moustaches des étudiant·e·s et celles des traducteurs·trices professionnel·le·s ont le même minimum, 4, celles des traducteurs·trices professionnel·le·s ont pour maximum 12, alors que celles des étudiant·e·s ne vont que jusqu’à 9. Certain·e·s traducteurs·trices ont donc choisi la traduction littérale pour traduire tous les maar du texte, alors qu’aucun·e étudiant·e n’a jamais utilisé cette stratégie plus de neuf fois. Les traducteurs·trices professionnel·le·s semblent donc présenter une plus grande hétérogénéité de profils stratégiques que les étudiant·e·s. Voyons à présent si cette tendance se retrouve dans d’autres stratégies traductives.

S’agissant des résultats concernant l’utilisation de connecteurs autres que mais, l’on note en outre une différence similaire dans la taille des boîtes, voire encore plus marquée : la boîte des traducteurs·trices professionnel·le·s est presque trois fois plus grande que celle des étudiant·e·s, ce qui démontre une hétérogénéité dans l’usage des connecteurs autres que mais plus grande que chez les étudiant·e·s. Cette hétérogénéité se retrouve également en partie dans les moustaches. Les moustaches des étudiant·e·s vont de 1 à 4, elles sont donc moins étendues que celles des traducteurs·trices professionnel·le·s, qui s’étendent de 0 à 6. Certain·e·s traducteurs·trices n’ont donc pas une seule fois utilisé d’autres connecteurs que mais pour traduire maar, alors que d’autres ont utilisé cette stratégie jusqu’à six fois dans leur traduction. L’on constate donc des profils d’utilisation de la stratégie des autres connecteurs beaucoup plus hétérogènes chez les traducteurs·trices professionnel·le·s que chez les étudiant·e·s. L’on note tout de même que les deux catégories de participant·e·s de l’étude ont les mêmes maximum et minimum. En effet, si les moustaches des étudiant·e·s sont comprises entre 1 et 4, on observe la présence de quelques cas isolés représentés sous la forme de points sur le schéma. Chez les traducteurs·trices professionnel·le·s, les moustaches englobent l’entièreté des résultats, il n’y a pas de points isolés.

Enfin, la stratégie de non-marquage, dans une moindre mesure, s’inscrit dans la continuité des boîtes à moustaches des traductions littérales et de l’usage des autres connecteurs. L’on constate en effet qu’ici aussi, la boîte des professionnel·le·s est un peu plus grande que celle des étudiant·e·s. Il en est de même pour les moustaches. Notons cependant que les variations entre étudiant·e·s et traducteurs·trices professionnel·le·s sont nettement moins marquées pour la stratégie du non-marquage que pour la traduction littérale ou les connecteurs autres que mais.

4. Conclusion

Cet article s’est penché sur l’influence de l’expérience d’un·e traducteur·trice sur les choix de stratégies traductives du connecteur néerlandais maar. Après avoir proposé une grille de classification sémantique pour ce connecteur reposant sur une conception tridimensionnelle de la notion d’opposition (concession, adversation, correction), nous avons soumis un texte journalistique rédigé en néerlandais contenant plusieurs maar authentiques à des étudiant·e·s en traduction et à des traducteurs·trices professionnel·le·s. Les traductions des participant·e·s ont ensuite été analysées et classées selon trois stratégies : traduction littérale de maar par mais, traduction par un connecteur d’opposition autre que mais, et non-marquage sans utilisation explicite d’un connecteur oppositif dans la traduction.

Trois cas de différences significatives d’utilisation de ces stratégies traductives entre les étudiant·e·s et les traducteurs·trices professionnel·le·s ont été relevés dans cette étude. Tout d’abord, la traduction littérale a été utilisée plus souvent par les traducteurs·trices professionnel·le·s que par les étudiant·e·s pour traduire les maar relevant d’une sous-catégorie de la concession, à savoir, les maar concessifs non verbaux issus du discours écrit. La fréquence de l’usage de la traduction littérale diffère elle aussi entre les deux groupes de l’étude s’agissant de la traduction des maar adversatifs. Les traducteurs·trices ont ici moins recours à la traduction littérale que les étudiant·e·s pour traduire ces maar, lui préférant le non-marquage, mais surtout, le recours à d’autres connecteurs d’opposition explicites dans leurs traductions. Cette dernière tendance constitue d’ailleurs la troisième différence significative entre les deux groupes de l’étude. Ce constat contraste avec les autres catégories sémantiques de maar, pour lesquelles les traducteurs·trices professionnel·le·s utilisent systématiquement moins que les étudiant·e·s les connecteurs autres que mais.

La singularité des maar adversatifs ne s’arrête pas là, car en plus d’être la seule catégorie sémantique où les traducteurs·trices professionnel·le·s utilisent plus souvent que les étudiant·e·s d’autres connecteurs que mais, elle est, paradoxalement, la seule catégorie sémantique où les connecteurs d’opposition autres que mais sont moins variés chez les traducteurs·trices professionnel·le·s que ceux des étudiant·e·s.

Nous avons enfin cherché à savoir si les différences et les similarités des deux groupes de l’étude étaient des tendances générales en leur sein, et avons donc investigué les profils stratégiques individuels des participant·e·s au moyen de boîtes à moustaches. Ces dernières ont révélé que, pour les trois stratégies traductives, les traducteurs·trices professionnel·le·s affichent des profils plus variés que les étudiant·e·s. Ces résultats suggèrent donc que les traducteurs·trices professionnel·le·s de cette étude se différencient davantage les uns des autres que ne le font les étudiant·e·s. Leur plus grande expérience les a peut-être amené·e·s à avoir plus d’occasions de développer leur propre style traductologique et à se différencier de leurs pairs. Les stratégies des étudiant·e·s sont plus homogènes, leurs traductions se ressemblent davantage entre elles que celles des traducteurs·trices professionnel·le·s qui ont peut-être eu le temps de prendre de la distance avec les normes inculquées dans les écoles de traduction. Cela provient sans doute de leur expérience du monde plus limitée, et du fait qu’ils et elles ont tendance, au début de leurs apprentissages, à généraliser les règles et conseils de leurs enseignant·e·s (Göpferich 2015), or les étudiant·e·s de cette étude, puisqu’ils et elles proviennent de la même université, ont toutes et tous eu les mêmes enseignant·e·s. Reproduire cette expérience avec des étudiant·e·s d’une autre université mènerait peut-être dès lors à d’autres résultats. Nous serions aussi curieux de voir si réaliser cette étude à une plus grande échelle, pour d’autres connecteurs d’opposition, ou avec un autre type de texte, fournirait des résultats similaires ou différents de ceux présentés dans cet article.

Concluons en notant que cet article n’est que la première étape dans l’étude des différences qui peuvent exister entre des traducteurs·trices novices et des professionnel·le·s. En effet, s’il démontre l’existence de telles différences, il ne se penche pas (encore) sur leurs causes. Il est probable que ces dernières soient multifactorielles, et présentent des manifestations de phénomènes comme les universaux de traduction, comme l’évitement des répétitions. Un style élégant évitant les redites (Baker 1993), il se pourrait, par exemple, que le choix d’un connecteur autre que mais pour traduire maar soit motivé par une recherche de variété et d’évitement de répétitions de traductions littérales.

Enfin, le rôle des normes et académismes n’est pas non plus à minimiser. Les étudiant·e·s, par leur posture d’apprenant·e·s en traduction, ont probablement plus de difficultés à s’en écarter que les professionnel·le·s. Ce contraste peut trouver une explication dans le fait que, vu que la plupart des étudiant·e·s souhaitent plaire à leurs enseignant·e·s (Mellgren 2020), ils et elles se conforment dès lors davantage aux normes et aux académismes dont ces mêmes enseignant·e·s sont en général les principaux·les vecteur·trice·s.

About the author(s)

Nathanaël Stilmant is currently a fourth-year PhD student under the supervision of Gudrun Vanderbauwhede and Hanne Cardoen at the university of Mons, Belgium. His thesis is dedicated to the translation of Dutch and French contrastive markers. As an assistant, he also gives Dutch language courses and specialised Dutch-French translation courses to translation students. A summary of his latest academic and research activities can be found at: UMONS, membres du staff: Publications de Stilmant Nathanaël

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Abstract

Since its discovery and translation in the late 19th century, the Cyrus Cylinder has made a tangible impact on not only Iranian, but also global historical awareness concerning the ancient Near Eastern politics. Apart from yielding illuminating insight on the past, the Cyrus Cylinder has been appropriated for present political and cultural exploitations, through being imbued with shades of meanings and narratives (Van de Ven, 2017). It has gone beyond a mere archaeological relic and has gained world-wide reputation due to its symbolic significance among different national and ethnic communities. Despite its role in both the composition of the Cyrus Cylinder in the ancient era and the politicization of it in the modern era, translation, in its intralingual, interlingual and cultural senses, has been largely ignored by current scholarship. This study endeavors to show, first, how the composition of this Cylinder might be seen as a translational practice, and, second, how the Cyrus Cylinder was exploited through translation for different legitimation narratives, both in ancient and modern periods.

Keywords: Cyrus Cylinder, Achaemenid dynasty, legitimation narratives, Cyrus the Great, Babylon, Persia

1. Introduction

The use of translation in the field of historiography, i.e., “the history of the practices of history-writing” (D’hulst 2010: 397) has been, at best, considered as “natural” among both historians and translation scholars (Foz 2006: 131). Gertrudis Payàs (2004: 544), who is one exception, holds that “historians and anthropologists sometimes need to translate or to use translations in order to have access to sources written in other languages.” The importance of translation in the field of historiography is particularly pronounced when it comes to writing the ancient history of a nation, since its language, writing system and culture are all dead and its memory is revived only through material relics and translations of their written records into modern living languages; there is no Greek Cycladic, Neo-Assyrian, Neo-Babylonian or Old Persian civilizations, neither their languages nor their cultures exist anymore.

The Cyrus Cylinder, or the Edict of Cyrus, and in Persian as manshoor-e Kourosh, e.g., Cyrus Charter, is both a written document and an archaeological relic which was ordered by Cyrus II (ca. 600-530 BCE), known as Cyrus the great, in Persian Kurush-e kabir, the founder of the Persian Achaemenid empire (550-530 BCE). It belongs to the ancient past of the Iranians, or the Persians in the western parlance. As one of the best-known cuneiform inscriptions in the world, the Cylinder was discovered in 1879 by Hormuzd Rassam, an Assyrian archaeologist affiliated with the British Museum, and was first translated into English by Sir Henry Rawlinson, the renowned British archaeologist who also deciphered and translated the trilingual Bisotun inscription of Darius I in 1846 (for a detailed discussion of Cylinder, see Irving Finkel 2013).

There are a number of studies which have analyzed the textual and literary properties of the Cyrus Cylinder (e.g., Harmatta 1971a; Stolper 2013; Razmjou 2020). However, scant scholarly attention has so far been given to its translation despite its importance to the history of this document. The present study seeks to unfold the traces of translation in the history of the Cylinder, from the time it was composed in the late sixth century BCE up to the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In precise terms, this study explores:

• The translationality of the Cyrus Cylinder among the Neo-Babylonian royal literature,
• The translation of the Cylinder in the biblical historical literature,
• The (re)translations of the Cylinder in the modern historical literature.

To this end, the text of the Cylinder was first juxtaposed with a sample of royal inscriptions belonging to both Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian kings such as Sargon II, Sennacherib, Esarhaddon, Ashurbanipal, Nebuchadnezzar, and Nabonidus. The final sample amounted to roughly 67 thousand words[1]. An attempt was made to show how its rhetorical, structural, and phraseological patterns might be a translation or rewriting of the preceding Mesopotamian royal inscriptions. Second, the Cylinder was compared with some biblical passages, including the books of Isaiah and Ezra. Finally, the modern translations of the Cylinder were reviewed to see how it has been interpreted.

2. Why was the Cyrus Cylinder Composed?

The Cyrus Cylinder is a barrel-shaped clay piece of 45 lines which is written in the Late Babylonian cuneiform script. As conceded by many scholars (e.g., see Kuhrt 2007: 110; Stolper 2013: 40; Finkel 2013: 18; van der Spek 2014: 234; Razmjou 2020: 29), the Cylinder is one of the latest examples of a Mesopotamian royal tradition of foundation or deposit inscriptions which date back to the late third millennium BCE. Since then, such inscriptions were used to consecrate important buildings (e.g., sanctuaries, palaces, urban buildings, etc.) and commemorate the king who built it and were then buried under the building (Grayson 1987: 3; Finkel 2013: 18).[2] In a similar vein, the Cylinder was a deposit inscription which was made shortly after the capture of Babylon in 539/8 and was buried in the foundations of the Esagila, the temple of Marduk, the chief god of the Babylonian pantheon (Wiesehöfer 2001: 2; Kuhrt 2007: 109). The main message of this cylinder, which was part of a much wider policy of gaining legitimation for the new ruler, was to make a sharp contrast between the purportedly impious Nabonidus, the last native king of the Neo-Babylonian empire (ca. 612-539 BCE), and the pious Cyrus as the upright Babylonian king, appointed by Marduk (see Briant 2002: 43; Curtis and Razmjou 2005: 59; Kuhrt 2007: 119; Van der Spek 2014: 3). As a new foreign claimant to the Babylonian throne, Cyrus tried to present himself like the preceding Babylonian monarchs by respecting their temples and building urban constructions, as claimed in the Cylinder (see Kuhrt 2007; Finkel 2013). Indeed, by so doing, Cyrus sought to show that “while a person from beyond the eastern border, he knew how to behave like a Babylonian in matters of religion, administration and tradition in general.” (Finkel 2013: 11). Cyrus’ attempts at winning political legitimation can be metaphorically seen as endeavoring to translate himself into the Babylonian culture.

3. The Cyrus Cylinder’s Translational Properties

In this part, the Cyrus Cylinder is examined in different sections, each followed by a summary and its textual juxtaposition with the Mesopotamian royal inscriptions which were written in either Assyrian or Babylonian languages. These are the two main dialects of old Akkadian language, an Eastern Semitic language, which were spoken in southern and northern Mesopotamia (largely modern Iraq), respectively, since the beginning of the 2^nd millennium BCE (Luukko and Van Buylaere 2017). However, they were so different in grammar and vocabulary that they were considered separate languages by the ancients themselves (George 2007: 31). It is modern Assyriologists who treat them as variant forms of Akkadian (Luukko and Van Buylaere 2017: 314). Furthermore, both Assyrian and Babylonian languages went through stages of historical development; from Old Babylonian/ Assyrian in ca. 2000 BCE to Neo-Babylonian/ Assyrian in ca. 1000 BCE and eventually to the Late Babylonian in ca. 500 BCE (George 2007: 36). During this time-span of nearly 1500 years, both languages underwent remarkable syntactic and lexical transformations, so much so that understanding royal inscriptions written in Old/middle Babylonian/Assyrian languages entailed diachronic intralingual/interlingual translation.

3.1 Cyrus Cylinder: Lines 1-19: Prologue

This introductory section is narrated in the third person singular and reflects the perspective of Marduk (Finkel 2013: 9) and a eulogy of this god (Harmatta 1971a). It is an apologia which sets the scene for Cyrus’ capture of Babylonia. It relates Marduk’s wrath at Nabonidus’ cultic misdeeds, his summoning up of Cyrus as “the upright king” to rule over Babylonia and his assistance to Cyrus to enter Babylon without a battle[3]  (for a detailed summary of the whole Cylinder, see Kuhrt, 1983, 2007; Wiesehöfer 2001: 38-55). Table 1 provides some examples of the identified parallel rhetorical themes in the Mesopotamian royal inscriptions and the Cyrus Cylinder.

Table 1: Common rhetorical themes between the Mesopotamian royal inscriptions and Cyrus Cylinder

The first prevailing rhetorical theme of this section is what Cogan (1974) calls ‘divine abandonment’, according to which, the deities of an enemy leave their city due to their anger at the misdeeds of the king or the inhabitants. This theme was invoked by the new conqueror to justify his ravages and imperial expansions (Van der Spek 2014: 10). This theme is both observed in the Cyrus Cylinder and some of the royal inscriptions (see Table 1). The second rhetorical theme in the Cylinder is divine selection, according to which the new aspirant to power was proclaimed as king by the god of the conquered land. Divine abandonment and selection are then followed by divine assistance; that is, the new conqueror is not only chosen by gods, but he is also assisted by them in his military expeditions. This is why Cyrus is claimed to have been assisted by Marduk in his military campaigns. This theme can be discerned, among others, in the royal inscriptions of Esarhaddon and Ashurbanipal (see Table 1).

This section ends with Cyrus’ peaceful capture of Babylon and his joyous reception by the Babylonians. There is no translation (in the sense of translating of nonverbal events into verbal accounts) of the Opis battle which Cyrus’ army fought against the Nabonidus army. Interestingly, very few parallel examples of joyous reception were found among the preceding royal inscriptions. One exception is seen in the Annals of Sargon II, the Neo-Assyrian king, when he seized Babylon, although it does not represent the invasion of Babylon as a peaceful act and merely writes that, “Happily, I entered Babylon…” (see Table 1, row 4). This is understandable given Cyrus’ need for political legitimation among his Babylonian subjects.

3.2 Lines 20-22: Royal Protocol

From the line 20 of the text of the Cylinder onwards, Cyrus himself becomes the narrator. This shift of point of view was, as far as the analyzed sample showed, unique to the Cylinder. This structural device is understandable given that Cyrus was a foreign conqueror of Babylon and was in need of legitimation; the scene had to be made ready from a third-person point of view to convince the audience of Cyrus’ role as a divinely-chosen savior for his Babylonian subjects, not as a usurper. However, the way Cyrus presents himself and his genealogy, has countless parallel examples in the Mesopotamian royal inscriptions. Table 2 provides some examples of royal protocol in the Mesopotamian royal inscriptions and the Cylinder.

Table 2: Royal protocol in Mesopotamian royal inscriptions and Cyrus Cylinder

This section of the Cylinder describes Cyrus’ autonyms (i.e., royal epithets) and his genealogy, going back to his great-grandfather (for a discussion of this royal self-presentation, see Stolper 2013). Upon close reading and comparison of this part with the preceding royal inscriptions, it was found that it bears more similarities with the Neo-Assyrian royal inscriptions than with the Neo-Babylonian ones. As seen in Table 2, the royal titles of “king of the world”, “strong king”, “great king”, “king of the four quarters (or rims) of the world” and “king of Sumer and Akkad” which are all used in the Cylinder, have their prototypes in the royal inscriptions of the Neo-Assyrian kings, e.g., Sargon II and Ashurbanipal. They were not discerned in the Neo-Babylonian royal inscriptions, even in those of Nebuchadnezzar II who was the most powerful Neo- Babylonian king. This finding is in line with Harmatta (1971a) who argued that this similar royal protocol stems from the fact that Cyrus, like Ashurbanipal, the great Neo-Assyrian king, claimed world domination. It’s noteworthy that these expressions for royal self-presentation were not, however, initiated by Ashurbanipal; rather they were in use since at least the late 3^rd millennium, when the great Akkadian empire (ca. 2300-2100 BCE) was founded by Sargon of Akkad (ca. 2334-2279 BCE) (de Blois and Van der Spek 1983/2019: 19). This implies that these Neo-Assyrian royal protocols were themselves translated from the Old Babylonian language.

3.3 Lines 22-43: Positive Assessment of Cyrus and Restoration Policy

This section which makes up the main body of the Cylinder, first presents Cyrus’ peaceful capture of Babylon and then enumerates Cyrus’ benevolent cultic restorations and building projects in Babylon. As seen in Table 3, representation of building projects and cultic restorations has also its prototypes in both the Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian royal inscriptions.

Table 3: Cultic and building restoration in Mesopotamian royal inscriptions and Cyrus Cylinder

3.4 Lines 44-45: Concluding Prayers

In the final section, Cyrus asks for a long life and secure throne and full age from Marduk for himself. Likewise, all the Mesopotamian royal inscriptions end with such prayers.

Table 4: Concluding prayer in the Mesopotamian royal inscriptions and Cyrus Cylinder

Besides all the rhetorical similarities mentioned above, there are also phraseological similarities. For example, the term ‘shepherd,’ (line 13) was amply used as a royal epithet in the Mesopotamian inscriptions; it can be discerned even in the well-known Code of Hammurabi, composed around 1755-1750 BC in Old Babylonian; “Hammurabi, the shepherd, called by Enlil, am I.” Phrases like ‘from the upper sea to the lower sea’, ‘kissing the feet’ of the new conqueror and ‘bringing tributes’ for him by other kings are also typical of the Mesopotamian inscriptions (e.g., in Ashurbanipal 003, prism B; Nebuchadnezzar II 011, prism). Phrases such as to ‘take the hand of’ [Cyrus], ‘to call him [king] by name’, ‘to proclaim him aloud for kingship’ (line 12), ‘like a friend and companion’, ‘walk at his side’, ‘hand over to him’ [Nabonidus], (lines 15 and 17) all have their precedent examples in the Mesopotamian royal inscriptions.

Far from being an accurate reproduction of its preceding Mesopotamian royal inscriptions, the Cylinder also possesses some unique thematic and narrative novelties which fit its own cultural and political context. The first one is the shift in point of view explained earlier. Second, in line 35 of the Cylinder, Cyrus asks for Marduk’s mercy for both himself and his son, Cambyses. Although asking for gods’ mercy was highly typical in the royal inscriptions, none of them refer to their succeeding heirs to the throne though. These differences might be textual innovations emanating from the Persian literary tradition.

Drawing on these similarities and differences, the Cylinder, without a doubt, stands in a translational relationship with the preceding Mesopotamian royal inscriptions on the following grounds:

• The very act of borrowing cylinder writing on the part of Cyrus can be assumed as a cultural translation.
• As an edict issued by Cyrus to his Babylonian subjects, the Cylinder is written in the Neo-Babylonian language, not in Cyrus’ own language. Indeed, it is Cyrus who translates himself in Babylonian terms.
• The text of the Cylinder bears more rhetorical, textual and phraseological similarities with the Neo-Assyrian royal inscriptions than with the Neo-Babylonian ones. This implies that the Babylonian scribes were not merely copyists, but expert translators who were well-versed in the preceding Neo-Assyrian royal literature. Simply put, writing the text of the cylinder entailed interlingual transfer.
• The textual similarities with the Neo-Babylonian inscriptions can also be considered as signs of intralingual translations.
• The Cylinder is a ‘metatext’ which is a translation of not a single text, but of a repertoire of Mesopotamian royal ‘prototexts’. The idea of translation as an intertextual practice not as equivalence, as defined by Author2 (2009), is more pronounced in historiography, since the historical ‘metatext’ is in intertextual dialogue with a plurality of ‘prototexts’ not a single one. This further attests to the fragile idea of originality.

3.5 The Cyrus Cylinder: A Journey through Translation

In this part, the translation of Cylinder into other cultural traditions is explored.

3.5.1 Biblical Tradition

The earliest translational traces of the Cylinder can be discerned in the biblical tradition which has yielded a favorable image of Cyrus as the liberator of the Jewish people who had been put into exile in Babylon since Nebuchadnezzar had demolished the land of Judah in 597/6[12] (Kuhrt 2007: 109). Although no straight reference to Jewish liberation exists in the Cylinder, lines 30-32 have been taken as testimony for the idea that Cyrus issued a decree for the return of Jewish exiles and the rebuilding of their god’s temple in Jerusalem and thus put an end to the so-called Babylonian captivity. Juxtaposing the Cylinder text with Old Testament’s texts mentioning the name of Cyrus (e.g., Ezra, Daniel, Deutro Isaiah) reveals significant phraseological and rhetorical similarities (For further discussion see, Razmjou 2020).

Table 5: Textual similarities between the Cyrus Cylinder and Isaiah

These textual similarities can be taken as evidence that the biblical sources were translated from their preceding Neo-Babylonian source, given the fact the Jews lived in Babylon when the Cyrus Cylinder was composed. However, the figure of Cyrus, when represented in biblical historical narratives, was translated into Jewish cultural and theological terms. While Cyrus was ‘called’ by Marduk to rule over Babylon in the Cylinder, he was ‘summoned’ by Yahweh, he was hailed as Yahweh’s “anointed” and “Messiah” (Isaiah, 45: 1).

3.5.2 Modern Era Tradition (19^th century onwards)

Within the western tradition, the Achaemenid kings were fairly well known through the translations of Greek and biblical literature. Within Iran, however, since the Sassanid era (224-651 AD), the factual history of the Achaemenids, including the figure of Cyrus, was replaced with the mythical Avestan dynasties of Pishdadians and Kayanians. This replacement of historical narrative with mythical narrative persisted until the late 19^th century through Arabic and later Persian (re)translations of the Middle-Persian Khwaday-namag (i.e., book of kings) (for further information, see Daryaee 2014; Hameen-Anttila 2018). In other words, the Achaemenids were almost unknown to Iranians up until the late 19^th century.

Thus matters stood in Iran until the mid-nineteenth century when nationalist sentiments began to emerge in Persian historical thought. Later known as “proto-nationalist historiography” (Amanat 2012: 293), this line of historical thought put great emphasis on the glories of Iran’s pre-Islamic past. More particularly, it was the deciphering and translation of ancient cuneiform inscriptions by Sir Henry Rawlinson (1810-1895) in the 1840s as well as the translations of European archaeological and historical works which caused a boom in nationalist historiography which aimed to “contrast Iran’s glorious past with the plight of its present” (Amanat 2012: 337).

It was within such nationalist milieu that the Cylinder was discovered in 1879 after being buried underground for over 2400 years. One year after its discovery, the Cylinder was transliterated and translated into English by Henry Rawlinson[13]. Its translation into other European languages (e.g., German Tr.: F. H. Weissbach 1911; Eilers 1971/4; Berger 1975) and retranslations into English (e.g., R. W. Rogers 1912: Budge 1922 (a partial trans.); Smith, S. 1924; Openheim in Pritchard, 1969: 315-6; Grayson 1975) emerged within decades.

Since the late 19^th century, owing to the translations of Greek and biblical texts and European travelogues, the figure of Cyrus was an emergent national figure, praised as an ideal powerful king among the Iranian cultural and political elites. However, Cyrus and many other historical ancient figures were identified with the well-established Persian mythological characters. Evidently, it was only after the first Persian translation of the Cylinder by the renowned historian, Hasan Pirniya (1871-1935), in his ground-breaking book, History of Ancient Iran, published in 1933, that Cyrus’ true history was revealed to the Iranians. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, until 1979, eight other Persian full/ partial retranslations and summaries appeared in the Iranian historical books (Falsafi 1939; Bastani-Parizi 1951; Hedayati 1956; Moghaddam 1961; Khanbaba-Bayani 1968; Shahpour-Shahbazi 1969; Ashrafi 1971; Bayani 1971). A close reading of these Persian translations as well as the translators’ pre/post commentaries showed their emphasis on Cyrus as a champion of religious toleration towards the Jews and other cults and his respectful treatment of his subjects. Table 6 shows a summary of comparison between Roger’s (1912) English translation and Pirniya’s (1933) Persian translation.

Table 6: A comparison of Roger’s (1912) and Pirniya’s (1933) translations of the Cyrus Cylinder

Pirniya’s translation, and his book in general, provoked increased interest in the life of Cyrus, to the extent that, among the 94 identified books on the history of ancient Iran published between 1927 and 1979, 24 were exclusively about Cyrus, (half of which were translated). These books were mostly translations of Xenophon’s Cyropaedia, which is a fictional eulogy of Cyrus as an ideal leader.

Being translated into European and Persian languages, the Cyrus Cylinder was gradually raised beyond a mere archaeological relic and was imbued with a multitude of meanings and narratives beyond its original function by different ethnic and national groups. First, it was appropriated by the Jewish community as a further archaeological and historical proof for invigorating the biblical story of Jewish liberation by Cyrus, Ko’resh, their “Messiah” (Van de Ven 2017: 73-75). This new historical narrative was invoked by the Jews to establish their own state in Palestine, to the extent that the American president Harry Truman declared himself “the soul creator of the state of Israel, proclaiming ‘I am Cyrus’ repeatedly at a Jewish Theological Seminary in November of 1953.” (Van de Ven 2017: 74).

Within Iran, being in want of political legitimation, the First Pahlavi monarch, Reza Shah (r. 1925-1941) (and more particularly the Second Pahlavi monarch, Mohammad Reza Shah (r. 1941-1979), went to great lengths to construct a pre-Islamic “national memory of the glorious past” (Vaziri 1993: 197) so as to provide “a nationalist, nonreligious identity onto which Western ways might be grafted.” (Gregg 2005: 309). Cyrus became a paragon for this “Aryan Neo-Achaemenid nationalism” (Bausani 1975: 46; cited in Van de Ven 2017: 79). Seeking to establish his own legitimacy by identifying himself as the successor to the great Achaemenid empire, the Second Pahlavi displayed a profound desire “to not only slot the Cyrus Cylinder into the narrative of his own nation, and the continuity of Persian monarchy, but also into the tale of international civilizational development” (Van de Ven 2017: 82). In order to perpetuate the cultural and national memory of Iranian’s past, the Second Pahlavi launched a widespread pro-Achaemenid campaign and carried out a number of things. First, the Cylinder was labeled as “First Declaration of Human Rights” in the 1960s (Curtis 2013: 86). Second, the 2,500-year anniversary celebrations were held in October 1971, for which the Cylinder was chosen as “the official symbol” (Curtis 2013: 88) and “as a symbol of Iranian military prowess and humanitarian achievements” (Van de Ven 2017: 80) so as “to represent the depth of Iranian history, and the achievements of its empires through time” (Van de Ven 2017: 144) and to show that “Persia had been the birthplace of human rights” (Bailey 2004; as cited in Curtis 2013: 88). Second, the United Nations Conference on Human Rights was held in Iran in 1968 and a truncated translation of Cylinder was delivered to United Nations in October 1971 so as to perpetuate the narrative of the Cylinder as “The First Bill of Human Rights”.[15] Finally, an attempt was made by the Second Pahlavi to “introduce a new ‘Imperial’ calendar dated from the accession of Cyrus the Great in 559 BC.” (Ansari 2012: 183)

4. Conclusions

The present study traced the translationality of the Cyrus Cylinder and its (re)translations into other languages. It showed that the Cylinder was not only composed through interlingual and intralingual translation in the ancient era, but it has also had a translational life in the modern era. Some parts of the text of Cylinder also were translated into Hebrew language. In modern era, the original text of the Cylinder is preserved in the British museum and is understood by Assyriologists alone. The translation of the Cylinder into modern languages, while securing its afterlife, becomes a “metalanguage” (Venuti 1993: 196) of cultural appropriation and embeds it in an ever-changing network of cultural meanings and legitimation narratives, including biblical veracity, Jewish nationalism, Iranian cultural supremacy and Iranian national identity.

The ancient past is a ‘lost original’ which can be read through its modern translations; it is either seen through its material remains or its translations. The bulk of cultural knowledge on, say, Cyrus the great, comes from translations (of both the cuneiform cylinder and Greek sources), which in turn have generated further historical interpretations. Translation, as a discursive practice, is one of the essential ways of generating and furthering historical knowledge, ultimately leading to the construction and dissemination of culture-bound historical narratives. Not only is history translation in the narrativist sense of translating events into historiographical narrative (e.g., White 1973), but history is also written through translation; historians use translation as an essential operative tool. Reading many historical works on the life of Cyrus, for example, shows that they are metatexts which rest on intertextual relations with many ‘local’ and/or ‘global’ prototexts (see Author2 2009). Once Lefebvre and Bassnett (1998: 6) held that “translation is in history, always.” Now, it might be added that history writing is also in translation.

About the author(s)

Zeinab Amiri is PhD candidate of Translation Studies in Allameh Tabataba’i university, Tehran, Iran. She has published papers on translation and Iranian women journals. She is currently studying translation in ancient Iran for her doctoral dissertation.

Farzaneh Farahzad is a Professor of Translation Studies in Allameh Tabataba’i University, Tehran. She has published extensively on Translation Studies. Her recent works include a “A Comprehensive English-Persian Dictionary of Translation Studies” , “Translation Studies: From literary studies to linguistics” in Persian, and “Women Translators: Different Voices and New Horizons”, published by Routledge. She is one of the pioneering figures in introducing TS in Iran, and in curriculum development for TS programs. She is the author of several course books in Persian and English and of a great number of Persian and English articles. Her model of Translation Criticism, and her approach to Intertextuality have inspired a great number of local and international researches.

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Abstract

This article presents the results of a multimodal critical discourse analysis comparing UK and Italian online news texts published at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Our theoretical framework and methodology draw upon framing theory, journalistic translation research, multimodal discourse analysis and discursive news values analysis (DNVA). Our analysis demonstrates how coverage of the pandemic in leading UK and Italian newsbrands perpetuated Italian and British national and cultural stereotypes through lexis, choice of images and transquotation. By exploring the nexus between multimodal discourse and cultural translation in the framing of international news, our study contributes to closing the gap in multimodal news translation research.

Keywords: news translation, cultural representation, COVID-19, multimodality, news values

1. Introduction^[*]

National ideologies and cultural borders have not disappeared with the emergence of globalised societies: on the contrary, social practices such as stereotyping and Othering tend to re-surface in times of crisis. As Joep Leerssen (2007: 25) has suggested, ‘[t]he revival of national attitudes is not so much a re-appearance of something that had disappeared’ but rather ‘a new upsurge’.  Studies have shown that when Coronavirus struck in Wuhan towards the end of 2019 and the pandemic loomed, the news media tended to frame the evolving international health crisis using ‘hyperbolic and exclusionary language designed to generate distinct group boundaries between “us” and “them”’ (Martikainen and Sakki 2021: 390). The aim of this paper is to analyse the construction in online news of reciprocal representations across Italian/English linguacultures (Risager 2012) during the first wave of Coronavirus. Because we are both readers and scholars of online newspapers who witnessed the pandemic unfold from two linguacultural perspectives, our attention was drawn to the ways in which cultural representations emerged in a dialogic exchange across the respective national news media through framing practices intrinsic to forms of journalistic and cultural translation.

To explore this exchange, we constructed a comparable corpus of journalistic texts encompassing the UK’s reporting on Italy's handling of the Covid emergency during the first national lockdown outside China (Italy locked down on 9 March 2020), and Italian news reporting on the inexorable move towards Britain’s lockdown (23 March 2020).  Starting from the theoretical premise of media framing (Entman 1993) according to which aspects of a perceived reality are selected, foregrounded, or backgrounded to promote a particular interpretation, we analyse the verbal and visual features of the news texts using a multimodal critical discourse analysis approach (Machin & Mayr 2012; Ledin & Machin 2018). We focus on examples of cultural translation, transquotation, lexis, and the multimodal construction of meaning to address the following questions:

1. How does the interplay of discourse and image contribute to constructing representations of the Other at the beginning of the pandemic?
2. How do ‘transquotations’ (Filmer 2020; Haapanen and Perrin 2019) contribute to Other representations?

The study contributes to an emerging area of interdisciplinary critical discourse studies, which explores the nexus between multimodal discourse and cultural translation in the framing of international news (Altahmazi 2020; Aragrande 2016; Filmer 2021a, 2021b, 2016a, 2016b; Hernández Guerrero 2022; Riggs 2021, 2020). More specifically, the article contributes to the growing body of research on the role of translation in conveying information during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Italy was the first European state to be hit by COVID-19 and the first nation outside of China to impose lockdown. Therefore, the containment strategies and pandemic policies adopted by the Italian government proved a testing ground for the Western world (Cerqueti et al. 2022). Following the British government’s initial much criticised laissez faire approach, the UK eventually aligned with Italy’s restrictive measures (see section 4.2).

Although the acute phase of the COVID-19 pandemic crisis has ended, the far-ranging repercussions of that period are still being felt in autumn 2023. In this context, it is timely to investigate the responsibility of the media in communicating information on the disease across languages and cultural spaces.

The contribution is organised in six parts. Following the introduction, part two gives an overview of the theoretical approaches that underpin the research. Section three describes the corpus and methodology, while parts four and five present the findings from the English and Italian digital news texts. The contribution closes with preliminary conclusions and remarks.

2. Theoretical approaches

2.1. Theoretical framework - Framing

Our overarching premise is that news producers employ framing practices when reporting on the Other. Framing is viewed here from the perspective of translation studies (Baker 2006: 5) and in particular, the sub-discipline of journalistic translation (Valdeón 2015). The application of framing practices in the production of translation-mediated news has long been recognised (some examples are Filmer 2016b; Liu 2019; Qin and Zhang 2018; Song 2017, 2021; Spiessens and Van Poucke 2016; Valdeón 2014; Wu 2017). As Roberto Valdeón (2021: 6) points out, ‘journalists and translators have the power to shape and reshape the representation of events, and, consequently, to frame them in particular ways’.

Robert Entman (1993) affirms that frame analysis can shed light on the subtle ways that influence is exerted on the human perception of reality during the transfer of information, for example, from a speech, utterance, or news report, to that receptive consciousness. Yves Gambier (2006: 11) observes that ‘[n]ews frames make certain facts meaningful, provide a context in which to understand issues, shape the inferences made, reinforce stereotypes, determine judgments and decisions, draw attention to some aspects of reality while obscuring other elements’ (our emphasis). Translation can contribute to the framing process by combining selection and deselection of news events and through the ‘adaptation of other elements such as headlines and quotes’ (Valdeón 2014: 56). Frames in the news can be examined and identified through ‘[t]he presence or absence of certain keywords, stock phrases, stereotyped images, sources of information and sentences that provide thematically reinforcing clusters of facts or judgements’ (Entman 1993: 52). In the specific case of a health crisis, Seow Ting Lee and Iccha Basnyat (2013: 120) point out that ‘media frames play a critical role in shaping the public’s understanding of a highly contagious viral disease and attitudinal and behavioural reactions that impact prevention, containment, treatment, and recovery’. Frames are reflected in, or ‘carried’ by, not only verbal content, but also photographic and audio-visual elements. Photographs are central to the framing process by ‘narrowing down the possible interpretations and swaying the viewer/reader towards a particular view’ (Breeze 2014: 316). Mona Baker (2006) has also noted that (re)framing is a multi-semiotic process drawing on linguistic and non-linguistic resources such as typography, colour and image, elements that are particularly significant in the examination of digital news texts.

2.2 Translation in the news

In the context of international news, the interpretation of reality is filtered not only through framing strategies inherent in news discourse, but also through translation practices. The concept of translation we adopt aligns with Lucile Davier and Kyle Conway (2019: 1), who view translation in the news ‘in the broadest possible sense, from the re-expression of bits of speech or text in a different language to the explanation of how members of a foreign cultural community interpret an object or event’. Such a definition can accommodate multimodal content, intercultural mediation, and cultural representation in multiple modes within the remit of translation in the news.

In terms of cultural translation, that is, explaining one culture to another (see, for instance, Conway 2012; Katan and Taibi 2021; Maitland 2017; Ping 2022), journalists operate as intercultural mediators for their audiences when they mediate information about the cultural and linguistic Other (Beliveau, Hahn and Ibsen 2011; Brownlie 2010; Conway 2012). That said, research has indicated that reporting on other cultures is often characterised by ‘negative mediation’ (Valdeón 2007; c.f. Filmer 2021b; Riggs 2020). In addition, when ‘reformulating, shaping, and domesticating foreign discursive events for their target audience’, journalists may propose ‘representations of Otherness that potentially foster prejudice’ (Filmer 2021a: 2).

In the construction of news stories, quotations ‘enhance the reliability, credibility, and objectivity of an article and characterize the person quoted’ (Haapanen and Perrin 2019: 17). Research adopting approaches from Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) has brought to light the ideological implications of reformulating translated political discourse in news contexts (see, for instance, Schäffner 2004, 2008; Caimotto 2020). The journalistic practice of transquotation (Filmer 2020; Haapanen and Perrin 2019 refer to ‘translingual quoting’) plays a key role in shaping self- and other-representations and is therefore a key focus of our analysis.

2.2.1 Journalistic translation and COVID-19

A growing body of research employing different theoretical and methodological perspectives is emerging on the role of translation in relaying international news during the COVID-19 pandemic. A small but significant number of studies have focused on national identity and intergroup relations in cross-cultural news reportage. For example, Eleonora Fois (2022) employs imagology (Beller and Leerssen 2007) and framing analysis to explore how news translation contributes to the construction of national image in news texts produced for the Italian and English editions of ANSA, the Italian news agency website. Fois reports that the articles translated into English emphasised the ‘responsibility frame’ for China, thereby disassociating Italy from the virus. Adopting a multimodal discursive approach, Jari Martikainen and Inari Sakki (2021) examine how the Finnish press coverage of the evolution of COVID-19 in Sweden is presented through frames of nationalism and national stereotyping. They identify three multimodal rhetorical strategies: moralising, demonising, and nationalising, which construct discourses of arrogant, immoral, and dangerous Swedes. Narongdej Phanthaphoommee (2023) has looked at the phenomenon of fake news as a product of translation. The researcher examines Thai translations of online international news about the COVID-19 pandemic that have subsequently been proven to be untrue and observes that translation ‘is one of the most important factors contributing to the spread of misinformation’.

2.3 Multimodality in journalistic translation research

Visual communication conveys beliefs and values just as much as words and ‘plays a part in shaping and maintaining a society’s ideologies’ while serving ‘to create, maintain and legitimise certain kinds of social practices’ (Machin and Mayr 2012: 19). Thus, news values (what makes an event or topic newsworthy, see Section 3) are not inherently present in events but are discursively constructed through both word and image (Bednarek and Caple 2017; Caple, Huan and Bednarek 2020; Filmer 2021a; Martikainen and Sakki 2021; Riggs 2021).

If our discipline is to develop an understanding of digital news as a multimodal phenomenon, the interaction between the verbal and the visual needs further attention. Although journalistic translation research tends to focus predominantly on the written word, there are some notable exceptions. Where audio-visual translation is concerned, these include Claire Tsai’s work on Taiwanese news broadcasting (2005, 2012, 2015), Gaia Aragrande’s (2016) corpus-based study of Euronews online video-news, and Federico Federici’s (2017) methodological reflections on how to analyse the AVT of embedded videos in online news texts. Regarding the multimodal discourse constructed by the text-photograph combination, Denise Filmer (2021a, 2021b) examined ‘frames of “Italianness”’ in American and British coverage of political figures, and Ashley Riggs (2021), how British, Spanish and Swiss news headlines and images frame a violent event as newsworthy and as a terrorist act.

3. Corpus and methodology

The research discussed here is a corpus-based, qualitative study of multimodal news content. We built an ad hoc comparable corpus of English and Italian online newspaper articles published in a short timeframe during which interesting reciprocal news narratives unfolded: the period during which Britain drew nearer to lockdown and the crisis deepened in Italy, including a significant spike in deaths in Lombardy[1] which led to a renewed focus on Italy in the UK media. The selection of the timeframe, the corpus and the methods used to analyse it are explained below.

3.1. The Corpus

The corpus consists of articles from one middle-market and three quality UK news brands, the Daily Telegraph, the Guardian, the Mail Online and the Times, and four Italian online news brands, Corriere della Sera, Il Fatto Quotidiano, Il Giornale and La Repubblica. Their ideological stances represent different parts of the political spectrum. Table 1 provides information about the size of the two datasets and the news brands’ political positioning.

Table 1: Information on corpus size and political affiliation of articles by news brand

3.2. Methodology

3.2.1. Establishing the timeframe

The 16-23 March 2020 timeframe is a period during which the rise in deaths in Italy was reported on regularly in both countries. On 19 March, the Italian army was deployed to Bergamo (Lombardy) to help document and remove the deceased, and reporting on the many deaths intensified. On 21 March, then Italian Premier Giuseppe Conte announced a significant broadening of the national lockdown, while the final date of the timeframe, 23 March, is the date on which the United Kingdom went into lockdown. Thus, this period represents a progression or even crescendo in both reporting across the linguacultures and the introduction of preventive measures. Qualitative analysis of 142 articles from this timeframe was sufficient to answer our research questions. That said, our research design has limitations, which are addressed in the Conclusions.

3.2.2. Approaches to data collection and analysis

We selected articles for inclusion by conducting searches on each news website using the following keywords: Coronavirus + Italy, Coronavirus + Lombardy, Coronavirus + Bergamo (UK websites); Coronavirus + Johnson, Coronavirus + Londra (Italian websites).

Following a close reading of the corpus to identify salient or recurring themes and linguistic characteristics, we selected and colour-coded the following elements for analysis:

• National/cultural representations (word and image);
• Identifiably translated content, including transquotation;
• Content cited from newspapers of the Other country.

To analyse the interplay of news language and image, we adopted approaches from Critical Discourse Studies (for instance, van Dijk 1988; Fairclough 1995, 2003) and Discursive News Values Analysis (DNVA). Given the current gap in multimodal news translation research, we engaged in multimodal news analysis (Bednarek and Caple 2017; Caple, Huan and Bednarek 2020) which included DNVA of both text and image (Bednarek and Caple 2017, 2020; see Caple, Huan and Bednarek 2020: 4–17 and in particular Table 1.1: 4–5 and Table 1.2: 9–17). DNVA makes it possible to ‘systematically examine how news values are constructed through such semiotic resources’ (Caple, Huan and Bednarek 2020: 1).

The following news values are relevant for our corpus: ‘Consonance is defined as the construction of an event’s news actors, social groups, organisations or countries/nations in a way that conforms to stereotypes that members of the target audience hold about them.’ (Caple, Huan and Bednarek 2020: 7) That of Eliteness may include, among others, ‘references to […] politicians, […] officials’ (8), and photographs conveying it are likely to use a ‘low camera angle indicating high status of participant in image’ (Caple and Bednarek 2016: 448). With Negativity, ‘the event is discursively constructed as negative (Caple, Huan and Bednarek 2020: 6), and visuals often involve a ‘high camera angle, putting viewer in dominant position’; there is also ‘running, ducking […] (suggesting unstable situation, that is, danger)’ (Caple and Bednarek 2016: 447). Closely linked is Impact, the way the event is discursively constructed as having significant effects or consequences’ (Caple, Huan and Bednarek 2020: 6), and ‘showing the after-effects (often negative) of events […]; showing emotions caused by an event; showing sequences of images that convey cause and effect relations’ (Caple and Bednarek 2016: 448). Aesthetic Appeal is also interesting for our corpus (see discussion of monuments; of coffins): ‘The aesthetically pleasing aspects of an event or issue’, with ‘lighting, colour contrast and shutter speed used for artistic effect’ (448). The news value Relevance is not included in Monika Bednarek and Helen Caple’s taxonomy but proves particularly useful for understanding how the Italian newsbrands constructed news on the UK’s experience of the COVID-19 pandemic. Other scholars of news discourse have defined Relevance as ‘the effect on the audience’s own lives or closeness to their experience’ (Bell 1991: 157), or ‘Interest for large groups of readers, thus, […] both a cognitive and a social constraint on news selection. […] [R]elevance criteria show how events and decisions may affect our lives.’ (van Dijk 1988: 122)

Our study responds to ‘the call to apply and test DNVA on news stories published in different languages and in different cultural contexts’ (Bednarek and Caple 2017: 237; Caple, Huan and Bednarek 2020: 1).

4. Findings and analysis

4.1. The UK’s portrayal of Italy

For lack of space, we focus here on specific lexical and visual themes: the very prevalent language of Italy’s struggle (this term and related lexis are used frequently throughout the corpus) and its interplay with a sampling of images of the army/police, monuments, emergency room/hospital settings, and coffins. We then address a few examples of transquotation (the UK news brands citing Italian ones).

4.1.1. Cultural translation through the interplay between word and image

Across the news brands, the combination of specific lexical choices and army/police and monument images contribute to portraying Italy as not up to the task of managing the pandemic. According to the Times, ‘Army lorries have been called in to remove corpses from an overwhelmed [used as an epithet] Italian crematorium as the country’s death toll from coronavirus overtook that of China.’ (Kington 20 March 2020). The epithet is part of the headline and therefore particularly salient for the reader. The opening image of the article features six army lorries and a few cars driving away from the camera at dusk, with the caption, ‘An army convoy rolls in to remove bodies that were threatening to overwhelm the crematorium in Bergamo.’ (Negativity; Impact)

Where monuments are concerned, the first image in another article whose headline, lede and first image caption emphasise the high numbers of deaths in Italy is a photograph of the Spanish Steps (Rome), taken from far below, with the building at the top lit up in the Italian colours of red, white and green. The caption reads, ‘Italy recorded a record 793 deaths today, taking the toll in the world’s hardest-hit country to 4,825.’ (Willan 22 March 2020) Thus, a symbolic image acts as a synecdoche for the country, the angle of the shot (usually conveying authority, Eliteness) actually spotlighting the country which the language of the text portrays as struggling. (Negativity; Impact; Consonance) In addition, the phrase ‘In the northern regions of Lombardy and Piedmont, where the health service has been overwhelmed’ is immediately followed by an image of the Colosseum in Rome, with the transquoted caption ‘Italian landmarks and cities are deserted as the prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, said the country faced “the most difficult time in our post-war period”.’ (Willan 22 March 2020) The Colosseum and Rome are not located in the northern region in question, but for the domestic readership, they are emblematic of Italy. The position and prestige of Conte also give credence to the qualification ‘most difficult […]’. (Negativity; Impact; Eliteness; Consonance)

The Daily Mail and the Guardian show similar tendencies. A Mail article observes, ‘Bergamo has been so overwhelmed that the army has stepped in to move bodies to other provinces as the cemetery was too full.’ (Aloisi, Pollina and Barbarglia 23 March 2020). In another Mail article describing Bergamo as ‘the heart of the hardest-hit province in Italy's hardest-hit region of Lombardy, Italy’[2] (Associated Press 20 March 2020), the accompanying image shows people walking behind a hearse in a cemetery; a masked, blurred, spectral police or military officer stands in the foreground. (Negativity; Impact; Eliteness)

The Guardian publishes similar statements. For instance, ‘The army was deployed last week to transport bodies from Bergamo city to neighbouring provinces after the crematorium became overwhelmed’ (Giuffrida, 23 March 2020); a lede describes how ‘Coffins pile up and corpses are sealed off in homes as Bergamo’s funeral firms are overwhelmed’ (Giuffrida 19 March 2020). The article’s headline (again, salient for the reader) also includes ‘struggle’. Both articles feature images of army lorries; in the first, they are in a cemetery, while in the second, they and their camouflage tarp coverings are aesthetically juxtaposed with the background element of an unidentifiable but architecturally impressive stone monument complete with classical pillars (Aesthetic Appeal). The contrast between foreground and background is stark, making it salient for the viewer. The country known for its impressive art, culture and architecture is having to take the drastic step of relying on the army – potentially also representative of the authoritarianism associated historically with Italy (Consonance) – to address the COVID crisis.

Finally, while the Telegraph’s use of army/police images is not so clearly tied to the lexis of Italy struggling, it does reinforce the Italy-authoritarianism link. In the headline, ‘Coronavirus: Italy's deadliest day as 627 are killed’ (Gulland et al. 20 March 2020), the final participle gives the disease agency and suggests a violent death which alternatives such as ‘die [from Covid]’ would not. Such lexical/grammatical choices convey Negativity and Impact. The headline and its final word ‘killed’ are immediately followed by an image in which a member of the military, in full uniform and holding a machine gun, fills the foreground. The photograph is taken from below, emphasising his power and authority (Eliteness). He is flanked by other soldiers, a small army lorry and a tent. The image potentially also conveys Consonance by tying in with a stereotype of Italian officialdom as authoritarian. It could be frightening for the British collective imagination, given that the domestic readership is unaccustomed to seeing armed police in the streets.

Together with the chosen language and the use of army/police and monument images, the news brands also often rely on images of emergency room/hospital settings and coffins. The ways in which they convey Negativity and Impact bring home to the British reader the magnitude of the pandemic, convey a sense of threat, but also contribute to depicting Italy as struggling in the face of Coronavirus, all the more so as the three different visual elements – army/police, monuments (thereby with the addition of Eliteness and Consonance) and coffins – are sometimes found in the same photograph.

Where images of emergency room/hospital settings are concerned, suffice it to say that the Daily Mail articles contain a multiplicity – significantly more than the other news brands – of such images, whose characteristics strongly convey a sense of chaos, panic, lack of control, and the risk and prevalence in Italy of extremely serious illness. The tenor and sheer quantity of the images also tend toward the sensationalism for which the news outlet is well-known and, again, frame Italy as not up to the task of managing the virus.

Across the news brands, the use of images of coffins reflects the news values of Negativity – in many, the camera angle puts the viewer in the dominant position – and Impact. It is important to keep in mind that every news outlet uses images of coffins; they are proposed and repeated to the detriment of other images.

The Mail combines coffins and an association with religion through a photograph used more than once, a line of coffins with a cross on the foremost one (May 18 March 2020); and through another visual that so perfectly aligns a statue of the virgin in a park with the scene below that it looks like she is presiding over, praying over, the person on the stretcher being rushed (note the running, a factor in Negativity) along the path by medical personnel; the article evokes ‘chaotic scenes’ (Jones 20 March 2020).

The Times also includes an image that combines coffins and panicked medical personnel running; and both the Telegraph and the Guardian choose images foregrounding not only the aforementioned news values, but also that of Aesthetic Appeal. One photograph they both use shows a masked official carrying elaborate and beautiful funerial flowers, which are right in the foreground with, logically, the coffin in the background (Giuffrida 19 March 2020).

In stark contrast to the other UK online news outlets examined, the Telegraph mainly discusses the news about COVID-19 in Italy from the perspective of travel. Three headlines are, ‘Is it safe to travel to Italy? (Dickinson 17 March 2020), ‘Italy travel ban […] should you cancel your trip?’ (Morris 17 March 2020), ‘Is it safe to go on my ski holiday?’ (Aspden-Kean 17 March 2020),[3] despite the fact that travel was risky and limited in March 2020. This reflects an effort to cater for the many well-heeled retirees who make up its readership (and pay for its content).

The travel focus is reinforced through images: four women in masks taking a selfie on St. Peter’s Square with the Vatican in the background (Dickinson 17 March 2020); other iconic monuments oft-visited by tourists (Consonance: stereotypical imagery, conformity to the readership’s expectations); maps indicating ‘[w]hich parts of Italy are off limits to travellers’ (Dickinson 17 March 2020), or travel advice by region (Morris 17 March 2020); the interior of an opera house (Hawlin 18 March 2020). Italy is above all the playground of those who have the wherewithal to visit, so Italy is in a sense inferior in a different way: the well-heeled readership is the central preoccupation (in this vein, note the possessive adjectives in ‘your trip’, ‘my ski holiday’).

In summary, with the exception of the Telegraph, whose focus is on travel, the UK news brands generally frame Italy as lacking the ability to contain the virus, and as being obliged to resort to tactics portrayed by the British online press as drastic, desperate, and insufficient in various ways. Negative representations of Italy and Italians are concomitantly constructed. The news values of Negativity, Impact, Eliteness and Consonance are foregrounded, with the exception of the Telegraph, which favours Consonance.

4.1.2. Transquotation in the UK news brands

A phrase in a Mail headline, ‘Italy’s medics at “end of our strength”’ (Aloisi, Pollina and Barbaglia 23 March 2020), provides a truncated version of a transquotation included in the article. It is an interesting example of a translated quote which may, by virtue of not sounding entirely idiomatic, contribute to constructing a negative image of Italian doctors, who are already being depicted, via various linguistic and photographic choices, as struggling (recall the ideological implications of transquoted news discourse mentioned above). Literal and therefore sometimes unidiomatic translations may occur because the journalists do not consider the activity of translation as a key part of their work (see, for instance, Davier 2017). (Alternatively, they may be machine translations.) Yet such translations may frame the speakers – doctors, usually considered Elite actors – as inferior.

The same is true of a Telegraph article that transquotes an Italian doctor involved in fighting coronavirus in northern Italy: ‘“There are no more surgeons, urologists, orthopaedists, we are only doctors who suddenly become part of a single team to face this tsunami that has overwhelmed us”’ (Bodkin and Nuki 22 March 2020). It relies on literal translation – this time with resulting subject and verb tense issues – and a water/natural disaster metaphor[4] which paints the pandemic as powerful and uncontrollable. The content emphasizes Negativity and Impact whereas the literality may undermine the Eliteness of the doctor.

Also in the Telegraph, a transquote from an interview with then prime minister Giuseppe Conte in Corriere della Sera may have a similar effect due to a combination of grammatical and syntactic choices and the resulting literality: ‘“People need to avoid in every way possible movement that is not absolutely necessary”, Mr Conte said in an interview with Corriere della Sera newspaper.’ (Squires 16 March 2020; Guerzoni 16 March 2020[5])

The Times transquotes a statement by the Pope – a figure used in the UK online press to link Italy with Catholicism, in line with the Daily Mail’s strong emphasis on religion both through word and image (Consonance) – in such a way as to discredit him: ‘The Pope appeared to have forgotten social distancing rules [our emphasis] when he advised people in an interview with La Repubblica to “give a caress to our grandparents and a kiss to our children”’ (Kington 19 March 2020).  Here we have a case of both criticism and manipulation through transquotation, as neither the full quote nor the context is provided[6] (Rodari 18 March 2020). In addition, the chosen image of coffins with figures in green scrubs and white protective garb running (characteristic of Negativity, an unstable situation) to put them into lorries, and the association encouraged, may add insult to injury (failure to respect social distancing leading to deaths, thus the cause-effect relation conveyed by Impact).

A Daily Mail article provides an interesting contrast. It reproduces a front page of the Italian Corriere dello Sport which features in small print a statement by then Brescia football club president and ex-Leeds chairman (the Mail flags this Italy-UK link; Relevance) Massimo Cellino, and in large, yellow letters (thus salient) the English phrase ‘game over’. As the topic of both the Mail and Corriere articles is the interruption of the football season due to the pandemic, this phrase is a play on words. In addition, in the article, Cellino’s words are transquoted and domesticated (Bielsa and Bassnett 2009): ‘Don’t be daft, how can we resume the season?’ (Davis 22 March 2020; Zazzaroni 22 March 2020[7]). The rest of his transquoted statements (for example, ‘be realistic, people’, or ‘the plague is on our doorstep’) are also idiomatic[8] (which may contribute to establishing Relevance).

In summary, transquoting via literal/machine translation may contribute to depicting even typically Elite actors (doctors; the Prime Minister) as inferior whereas opting for domestication (Bielsa and Bassnett 2009) is one way of ‘bringing the story home’ (Bassnett 2005),  is likely to lead the readership to feel connected to the content reported (Relevance), and may in turn help convince them of its validity (including that of stereotypes/prejudices represented).

The Italian news brands appear to rely more on transquotation than the UK ones, with interesting results. These are addressed in section 4.2.3 below.     

4.2. Italy’s portrayal of the UK

What follows is an overview of Italian news narratives on the UK’s experience of the early stages of the pandemic. The most frequently employed news values are Consonance through stereotyping; Relevance, through the narratives of Italians living in the UK; and Eliteness in the person of Boris Johnson. For this reason, the ways in which Johnson’s statements are transquoted are of particular interest. The linguistic choices across the newsbrands convey three main ideas: mounting fear and panic in the UK; ridicule and dismay at Johnson’s herd immunity approach; positive (Italian) self, contrasted with negative (UK) Other, given the British government’s apparent reluctance to go into lockdown. These three strands are intertwined in the discourse.

Johnson declared lockdown on 23 March 2020,[9] the last day of our timeframe. Perhaps for this reason (among others, like the propensity in Italian journalism towards words rather than image, even online), many of the articles in the corpus are accompanied by symbolic images of Johnson making declarations. Above all, what is prevalent in the Italian journalists’ style of reporting is their tendency to function as cultural mediators by elucidating the domestic audience with their interpretations of the British national character, habits and attitudes in relation to the pandemic.

4.2.1. Cultural translation through word: common themes

The corpus evidences a dialogic relationship between the two media and cultures and a reciprocal narrative: From the analysis in section 4.1 one might interpret the British press’s stance as, in part, ‘it won’t happen to us’; in observing the UK move towards lockdown, the retort from Italy seems to be ‘we told you so’. Furthermore, Italian news outlets tend to frame the UK situation as a crescendo of panic and mounting fear; Johnson’s constant changing of tactics is seen as adding to the anxiety, fuelling the impression that the situation was getting out of hand. 

1. On 18 March 2020 Corriere della Sera (De Carolis  2020) ran the headline: ‘Coronavirus, il panico di Londra […] e Boris cambia piano: scuole e college chiusi’ [Coronavirus: Panic in London […] and Boris changes plan: schools and colleges closed]. With ‘panic’ in theme position, the focus is on the psychological state of the British capital, as synecdoche for the government, the population, and the nation. The article personifies fear as ‘arriving in the UK’: ‘La paura del coronavirus arriva anche in Gran Bretagna, “un paese che crede nella libertà”, nelle parole del primo ministro Boris Johnson, ma dove le abitudini e il tran tran quotidiani ieri si sono bruscamente interrotti’. The journalist delegitimizes Johnson by juxtaposing his declaration that Britain is ‘a country that believes in personal freedoms’, which is transquoted literally [un paese che crede nella libertà, in the words of prime minister Boris Johnson], with the government’s sudden decision to close all schools and colleges. There is also the implicit comparison with Italy: ‘coronavirus arrives in the UK, too’. As the days pass, the comparisons with the Italian situation become more evident in Corriere della Sera’s narrative. Four days later, ‘Londra teme che i numeri di contagiati e vittime saranno superiori a quelli italiani’ (Ippolito, 20 March 2020) [London fears that the number of infections and victims [in the UK] will be higher than in Italy]. The following day: “Coronavirus, Londra ora teme una curva italiana: i contagi aumentano più che a Bergamo (Ippolito 23 March 2020) [Coronavirus, London now fears Italian curve: the infections increase more than in Bergamo]. The ultimate comparison is with Bergamo, which just a few days earlier had been under the spotlight of British newsbrands reporting on the Italian handling of the pandemic (see above). The lexicon of fear and panic appears with similar frequency in the other Italian news brands.

The following examples instead focus on Italy as model. When Johnson declares lockdown, regardless of political bias, the Italian newsbrands use positive self-frames contrasted with negative Other representations to bring the news home. Johnson has finally capitulated and accepted that Italy is the example to follow:

1. Boris Johnson si allinea alla via italiana nella battaglia contro il coronavirus e impone all'intero Regno Unito misure restrittive come quelle che la Penisola aveva adottato un paio di settimane fa. [Boris Johnson aligns with the Italian way in the battle against Coronavirus, imposing restrictive measures on the UK like those the Peninsula adopted a couple of weeks ago (La Repubblica 23 March 2020). 

2. Dall'immunità di gregge al lockdown modello Italia [From herd immunity to the Italian model] (Giuliani 23 March 2020).

3. […] il primo ministro Boris Johnson ha deciso di adottare una strategia all’italiana [the prime minister Boris Johnson has decided to adopt an Italian-style strategy] (Il Fatto Quotidiano 23 March 2020).

4.2.2. Cultural translation through the interplay between word and image

Images accompanying the news reports tend to function as synecdoche for Englishness rather than illustrating verbal content. The Union Jack, views of Westminster, Big Ben, a red London bus or scenes on the London Underground create Consonance in the Italian collective imagination as easily recognisable icons for London life, which conflates with British life as a whole.

In Il Fatto Quotidiano and Il Giornale in particular, the interplay between word and image also serves to contrapose British behaviour – which is implicitly or explicitly condemned – with the positive self-frame of caring and/or wise Italy’s compliance with the lockdown rules. For instance, the headline from Il Fatto Quotidiano, ‘Noi italiani a Londra siamo molto preoccupati. Qui i locali sono aperti, sappiamo cosa ci aspetta’ [We Italians in London are very worried. Here venues are open, we know what’s ahead of us] (Vasques 18 March 2020), is accompanied by a photograph of theatregoers outside the Prince Edward Theatre in London. The message: Italians living in the UK know what lies ahead and are rightly worried.

Quoting anonymous Italians living in the UK is a common strategy of bringing the news home. La Repubblica (17 March 2020) for example, runs the headline: ‘Coronavirus, la paura degli italiani nel Regno Unito: “Senza restrizioni, rischiamo il contagio”’, [Coronavirus, the fear of Italians in the UK] with a video of Italians being interviewed on the question of wearing masks in London before they became obligatory in public places. The news of the spreading virus is supported by an image of commuters waiting on a platform of the London underground, only one of whom wearing a mask. The function may be descriptive, illustrating the British public’s indifference to safety measures. It is also symbolic of London life, thus creating Consonance. 

An article in La Repubblica (Guerrera 17 March 2020) entitled “Coronavirus, Johnson avverte: 'Per il Regno Unito la peggiore sfida economica dal dopoguerra' [Coronavirus, Johnson warns: for the UK, the worst economic crisis since the war] quotes Johnson, who is in turn citing Mario Draghi’s famous maxim, ‘whatever it takes’ (Relevance for the Italian readership). The former British prime minister is described as a 'Brexiter', thereby highlighting his anti-European stance, while assuring the British public he will do ‘whatever it takes’ to overcome the crisis. The accompanying image reflects the negative news: customers sit in a gloomy pub drinking beer while looking up at a TV screen where Johnson is making a statement. The choice of photograph brings into sharp relief the contrasting approaches to COVID-19 in the two nations: Italians in lockdown and the British drinking in pubs.

4.2.3. Citing of UK news brands and transquotation

Images of Johnson dominate the Italian coverage of UK news, and his words are often transquoted. For example: ‘Boris Johnson ha elogiato la sanità italiana: ma se non reggono loro, non reggeremo neanche noi’ (Ippolito 23 March 2020) [Boris Johnson praises the Italian health service: if they can’t bear the strain, neither will we]. The transquotation in the headline is a loose interpretation or recontextualisation of Johnson’s words, quoted in the Sunday Telegraph (Bodkin and Malnick 21 March 2020): ‘The Italians have a superb health care system. And yet, their doctors and nurses have been completely overwhelmed by the demand’. Johnson’s positive evaluation of the Italian health system is newsworthy and boosts the positive self-image of Italy (Relevance). Its inclusion contrasts with Italy’s framing of the Johnson government and the UK’s attitude to the pandemic.

Other headlines and quotes from the same speech appear throughout the dataset. For example:

1. A la Repubblica (Scuderi 22 March 2020) headline reports ‘Johnson, sanità italiana superba ma sopraffatta’ [Johnson: Italian health service superb but overwhelmed]. The use of alliteration gives the summary Impact.

2. Il Corriere della Sera (Ippolito 23 March 2023): ‘Gli italiani hanno un sistema sanitario eccezionale. E tuttavia i loro medici e infermieri sono stati completamente travolti: il loro conto dei morti ha raggiunto le migliaia e continua ad aumentare’. Here, the transquotation reads naturally in Italian; the journalist uses omission and fluent collocations: ‘eccezionale’ rather than the calque ‘superbo’, ‘Il loro conto dei morti’ to translate death toll, while the idiomatic ‘I numeri sono molto netti’ [the numbers are very clear] conveys the English ‘The numbers are very stark’. The translational decisions would indicate a considered approach on how to render the quotations in Italian as opposed to selecting the first options that pop up on Google translate. As the London correspondent for the Corriere della Sera the journalist is likely to have a high level of English language competence.

Transquotation contributes to portraying the British people’s behaviour and the UK government’s early anti-COVID-19 measures as indifferent. This reinforces the news value Consonance, that is, what the domestic audience expect from the British. For instance, in an editorial in il Fatto Quotidiano (Pellizzetti 17 March 2020), what the journalist describes as ‘il profondo disprezzo della solidarietà’ [a profound disdain of solidarity] is a ‘tratto della cultura anglosassone’ [a feature of the Anglo-Saxon culture], which from Thatcher to Johnson, according to the journalist, is the ideological justification for ‘indifferenza civile’ [civil indifference]. The implication is that anglophone cultures would callously and willingly let older and more vulnerable members of society die in the pursuit of herd immunity. The journalist goes on to transquote Margaret Thatcher to legitimise his thesis: ‘Margaret Thatcher dichiarava “la società non esiste” [There is no such thing as society].’ This is an instrumentalized and decontextualized use of partial citation which Thatcher herself denounced at the time as manipulation of what she had intended to say.[10]

In another editorial published in Il Fatto Quotidiano on the same day (Rosso 17 March 2020), Johnson’s announcement is portrayed as a ‘brutal’ way to introduce the herd immunity strategy:

[…] l’espressione un po’ brutale con cui Boris Johnson ha inaugurato la politica della immunità di gregge che il governo inglese, finora unico al mondo, ha intrapreso per far fronte alla pandemia di coronavirus. [the rather brutal way that Boris Johnson has introduced herd immunity that the British Government, until now the only one in the world, has adopted to cope with the Coronavirus pandemic]

The journalist quotes The Times’ description of Johnson’s words as ‘a solemn statement’, which is left in English, and notes that in the UK, Johnson’s assertion received a chorus of consent. The article ironically refers to the adoption of herd immunity as ‘not lift[ing] a finger’ against COVID-19. It ends with a transquotation of Winston Churchill in order to make a comparison with Johnson: ‘Se nel 1940 Winston Churchill disse agli inglesi “Non ci arrederemo mai”, il “Preparatevi a morire” di Boris Johnson non è esattamente la stessa cosa. Dio salvi la regina’. [If in 1940 Winston Churchill said to the British people ‘We will never surrender’, Johnson’s ‘Prepare to die’ is not exactly the same thing. God save the Queen.] There is a clear manipulation of transquotation to put Johnson in a bad light.

5. Conclusions

This study sheds light on how British and Italian producers of multimodal international news have exploited the COVID-19 pandemic to (re)affirm national identities and stereotypes. The negative other-representations observed, whereby the UK press emphasises how much Italy ‘struggled’ to address the virus and whereby Britain’s ‘panic and fear’ is reported in the Italian press following the sharp escalation of COVID-19, confirm our hypothesis that in times of crisis, stereotyping and Othering as social practices tend to be reinforced, at least where this pair is concerned. Our research also contributes to filling the gap in research on multimodality in international news discourse by exploring how 'multimodal ensembles' (Kress 2011: 38) communicate national and cultural images.

Bearing in mind our research questions (see Introduction), the conclusions from our findings are as follows:

1. Both corpora show evidence of cultural translation practices – explaining the Other culture to the domestic audience – but in ways that encourage or reinforce stereotypes and prejudices. The trends in framing devices where both language and image are concerned suggest convincingly that even as the UK news seeks to inform and warn the domestic readership, there is a shared representation of Italy as not up to the task of managing the pandemic, and undertones of an association of Italy with authoritarianism. The Italian online press is vitriolic against the British and emphasises Italy’s experience and wisdom; this may be a form of retaliation for the earlier British newsbrands’ criticism of Italy’s handling of the emergency.
2. Visual content plays a more significant role in the UK corpus than in the Italian one. Italy’s online newsbrands tend to use images that are iconic, represent ‘typical’ UK life or portray Boris Johnson. In contrast, in addition to iconic images, the UK newsbrands also rely often on images of coffins, the army/police, guns, and emergency room/hospital settings. Thus the Italian articles mainly convey the news values of Consonance, Eliteness and Relevance whereas the UK ones also emphasise Negativity, Impact and, in a couple of unusual and interesting cases, Aesthetic Appeal.
3. Our corpus suggests that Telegraph journalists consider their readership to be UK citizens who have the knowledge, desire and (financial) wherewithal to appreciate Italy’s cultural and other leisure offerings and to travel to Italy to take advantage of them. For the Telegraph, Italy is above all a vehicle for its British readership’s leisure activities and enjoyment, and for its readership, the pandemic in Italy is above all an inconvenience.
4. Transquotation in the Italian and Daily Mail articles tends to be idiomatic and fluent, and sometimes manipulated for ideological purposes. Transquotation in the other UK news brands instead leans toward the literal (we hypothesise that most instances are in fact machine translation; to be verified with further research). The resulting unidiomatic utterances may also contribute to depicting the Italian actors as not very competent.

There are some limitations to our study. First, as with any qualitative study, one can ask how researchers define a finding as significant, especially when data is selected on a somewhat subjective basis. We consider that our careful, detailed and in-depth analysis, numerous examples and clear explanation of the methodology go some way to mitigating this potential criticism, especially as they would allow other researchers to replicate the analysis. Second, further analysis of this corpus could incorporate a qualitative data analysis tool that would allow more systematic and efficient treatment of the data, and in particular visual data, so that we could address more images.    

That said, our empirical work on multimodality and digital news is a significant strength. Our approach allows an overview of how text, paratext and image work together on a web page. Exploration of the word-image interplay not only contributes to filling a gap in journalistic translation research but shows how Other stereotypes and prejudices can be exacerbated in times of crisis.

Finally, in relation to our focus on journalistic translation and transquotation, various scholars have emphasised that journalists do not see themselves as translators (for instance, Bassnett 2005; Bielsa & Bassnett 2009; Davier 2017; Filmer 2014; Schäffner 2017; van Doorslaer 2013). Zanettin (2021: 75) neatly sums this up: ‘Professional journalists generally see translation as a linguistic operation involving replacement of linguistic material rather than as a practice concerned with the negotiation of cultures.’ Yet our study is a reminder that the negotiation of cultures is in fact at the heart of international news reporting.

About the author(s)

Denise Filmer is assistant professor of English language and translation at the Department of Philology, Literature, and Linguistics, University of Pisa, where she also teaches ESP in the Department of Political Science. She holds a PhD in translation studies (Durham University UK). Her research focuses on ideology in translation, political discourse, journalistic translation, audiovisual translation, gender and sexuality in media discourse, intercultural mediation, and cross-cultural pragmatics. She has published widely on these themes in national and international journals and authored two monographs: Translating Racial Slurs: last linguistic taboo and translational dilemma (2012), and Italy’s Politicians in the News. Journalistic Translation and Cultural Representation (2021). She is on the editorial board of Perspectives: Studies in Translation Theory and Practice and serves as reviewer for several international journals.

Ashley Riggs is assistant professor of English language and translation at the Department of Linguistics and Comparative Cultural Studies, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. Her research focuses on journalistic translation, journalistic style, cultural translation and multimodal news discourse, including in constructive news; her monograph Stylistic Deceptions in Online News: Journalistic style and the translation of culture (2020) explores a number of these topics. Ashley is on the publications committee of IATIS and acts as reviewer for various international journals. She holds a PhD in translation studies from the Faculty of Translation and Interpreting of the University of Geneva.

Email: [please login or register to view author's email address]

Abstract

The present paper deals with both linguistic and extralinguistic provisos determining the successful rendition of so-termed ‘realia’ as featuring complexly and conspicuously not only in various translated texts, but also in modern translatological discourse. The emphasis is, therefore, placed on clarifying the nature and compass of this fundamental phenomenon as well as on highlighting how its current interpretations developed. The authors suggest an alternative (and highly practical) classification of realia, based on the dichotomy ‘realodesignatum : realonym’ and allowing for what they see as four basic realia-forming patterns, namely realodesignatum paralleled by realonym, realonym unparalleled by realodesignatum, realodesignatum unparalleled by realonym, and realodesignatum coincident with realonym. Consistent with this typology, rubrics such as ‘realia proper’, ‘quasi realia’, ‘latent realia’, and ‘performative realia’ are singled out, discussed and meticulously illustrated. It is maintained that, depending on the preference of either ‘domestication’ or ‘foreignization’ strategy, possible ways of their rendition may vary, resulting, among other things, in the omission or preservation of certain types of realia, but what seems indispensable to a high-quality piece of translation is observance and not distortion of the original meaning and its connotations as embodied, among other things, in the phenomenon on hand. The results obtained can serve the purpose of furthering the study of realia themselves as well as that of rendering them into other languages.

Keywords: realodesignatum, realia, realonym, realia proper, quasi realia, performative realia, latent realia

Introduction

For historical reasons, the notion of realia[1], as is largely the case with the more nuts-and-bolts concepts of translation studies generally speaking, emerged and became common mostly in ex-Warsaw Pact countries during the Cold War and, to a lesser degree, post-Cold War eras, a possible explanation being the specific ‘translational barrier’ separating realities and ideologies that lay behind words in, for example, English and Russian to a far greater extent than those in, say, English and French. However, despite occasional exaggerated but not altogether unfounded instances of the sort, which were traditionally singled out under the rubric of ‘Sovietisms’ and now mostly belong to the past, there remain good grounds for retaining the concept in the present-day allegedly globalized world. In order to explain why, it seems worthwhile to give a brief overview of its emergence and coverage.

Theoretical background

As has been stated above, the notion on hand originated and became established in what might, in a non-evaluative way, be called ‘Cyrillic scholarship’. It is believed that for the first time the term ‘realia’ (реалии) was employed by Andrey Fedorov in his work ‘On Literary Translation’ way back in 1941. However, both in the early paper and in all four editions of his gradually evolving magnum opus on translation theory, the last version published in 1983, the father of the terminological unit consistently stuck to the phrasing of ‘words denoting realia’ (Fedorov, 1953: 136–145; 1958: 154–169; 1968: 175–192; 1983: 145–157), thus obviously interpreting its content as extralinguistic in character, expounded de re and not de dicto. Despite its customary correctness and etymological accuracy, such usage of the term — unhandy for its bulkiness and seemingly non-philological in essence — almost immediately saw extension. And so, already in 1952, Lev Sobolev put forth the following definition: ‘The term “realia” designates specifically national words and locutions from everyday life which have no equivalents in the mode of life and, consequently, in languages of other peoples’ (Sobolev, 1952: 281) by means of which considerably weakening not only the etymological acceptability of the term (for the root real definitely has to do with something more tangible than a word or locution), but also its practical applicability in those cases when grave disparities in meaning weren’t followed by corresponding linguistic discrepancies[2]. And yet, needless to say, it is precisely in the latter interpretation that the term survives till today, having acquired prevalent currency.      

Another challenge to Fedorov’s understanding of what realia were about came from linguistics, at the time firmly structuralist, and, in particular, the then booming purview of linguistic geography (lingvostranovedenie). From the standpoint of the former, the notion lacked lingual clarity and so had to be rethought in terms of more convenient language phenomena such as loanwords and all sorts of ‘exotic vocabulary’, alienisms, barbarisms, and localisms included. As Lidiya Sapogova put it, ‘in the most general sense, realia can be defined as a type of borrowings which, preserving maximum similarity to foreign words, functions in the target language to denote specific notions and phenomena of alien reality[3]’ (Sapogova, 1978: 71–79). Whereas the latter, facing the highly practical task of teaching Russian to foreigners, readily grasped at the new notion, but rather disfigured it in the process. As viewed by linguistic geographers, realia, in fact, were any words or locutions charged with so-termed ‘background information’ (Vereshchagin and Kostomarov, 1976; 1980), which, on the one hand, caused unjustified expansion of the concept and, on the other hand, bred further confusion by finally rendering facultative the meaning of tangibility enshrined in the term’s etymology. Thus, what originated as a notion of translation theory and not linguistics in the proper sense became, as is often the case with borderline concepts, subject to so much accommodation that R. Zorivchak was forced to remind: ‘When viewing realia, certain researchers … ignore the factor of binary comparison. According to their assertions, all lexemes designating nationally specific objects are realia. And yet, in actual fact, the notion of ‘realia’ as employed in translation theory emerges only in the course of comparing languages and, correspondingly, cultures. Outside this comparison realia cannot exist[4]’ (Zorivchak, 1989: 56).

Despite suchlike rejoinders, the two approaches rather tended to blend. This was especially obvious in attempts to work up a classification of realia, by far the fullest of versions put forth by Sergey Vlakhov and Sider Florin. According to the Bulgarian researchers, realia fell under a number of rubrics, all of them singled out basing on the following criteria: I. Material division II. Local division (depending on national and lingual attribution) III. Chronological division (in both synchronic and diachronic perspectives, following the principle of “familiarity”) IV. Translational division (Vlakhov and Florin, 1980: 50). As is well obvious, the fourth criterion strikes the eye as non-congenerous with the others, thus suggesting that in translation theory a different approach is applied. That recital, however, was additionally equipped with a note making the point on hand still clearer: ‘Perchance, from the standpoint of linguistics, it would be worthwhile to specifically single out the division of realia on the principle of assimilation, or familiarity, or prevalence. But since such categorization will hardly matter much for a practicing translator and in view of the relativity of delimitative criteria (as, in particular, the appearance of a unit in dictionaries) we chose to address this issue within the confines of chronological division, all the more so that assimilation of foreign realia is, once again, closely connected with the duration of their usage’ (Vlakhov and Florin, 1980: 50–51). And so, while positioning themselves as theorists of translation, the authors not only accepted and widely used the dubious term ‘linguistic realia,’ but increased confusion rather than clarity by completely mixing up the ‘linguistic’ and ‘translational’ approaches to the matter and retaining the binary comparison of languages as, de facto, merely facultative. Just as Sapogova thought realia to be a type of borrowings, Vlakhov and Florin — a mirror reflection of such an attitude — insisted on the opposite: even well-assimilated loanwords might have their status of ‘realia’ preserved, provided that they meet the rest of the requirements, thus further lengthening the already long and rather equivocal list of all sorts of -isms among the ‘exotic vocabulary’.

Results and discussion

The present tedious if cursory account still seems necessary in order to show that, as the Bulgarian researchers put it, such categorization hardly mattered much to practicing translators and, consequently, all the theorizing was of little help when applied to particular translational tasks. To ascertain this, one only needs to consult three different translations into English of the two opening paragraphs in the famous novel ‘The Master and Margarita[5]’ by Mikhail Bulgakov.

The original reads:

В час жаркого весеннего заката на Патриарших прудах появилось двое граждан. Первый из них — приблизительно сорокалетний, одетый в серенькую летнюю пару, — был маленького роста, темноволос, упитан, лыс, свою приличную шляпу пирожком нес в руке, а аккуратно выбритое лицо его украшали сверхъестественных размеров очки в черной роговой оправе. Второй — плечистый, рыжеватый, вихрастый молодой человек в заломленной на затылок клетчатой кепке — был в ковбойке, жеваных белых брюках и черных тапочках.

Первый был не кто иной, как Михаил Александрович Берлиоз, редактор толстого художественного журнала и председатель правления одной из крупнейших московских литературных ассоциаций, сокращенно именуемой МАССОЛИТ, а молодой спутник его — поэт Иван Николаевич Понырев, пишущий под псевдонимом Бездомный» (Bulgakov, 1989: 334).

Apart from rather catchy realia such as Патриарши пруды, the two paragraphs feature at least three other units of the same kind which, as practice shows, do not as readily leap to the eye. The first of them concerns the editor’s headwear. Questionable as it may sound, we are, nonetheless, convinced that it has not been translated either accurately or adequately in any of the three editions under analysis as well as in any other translation that we are familiar with[6]. To a speaker of Russian, the queerest thing about it is already the phrasing, ‘шляпа пирожком’, for in modern times the latter word would only sound natural if used within the word-combination шапка пирожком or, a still more common way to put it, шапка-пирожок which usage is, consequently, registered in dictionaries (see, for instance, the ‘Explanatory Dictionary of the Russian Language’ by S. Ozhegov and N. Shvedova: ‘(colloquial) men’s brimless [fur] hat with a lengthways concave top’ (мужская шапка без полей с продольно вдавленным верхом), that is what in English would be called ambassador hat). It remains only to guess whether or not in Bulgakov’s days, at least in colloquial usage, the word was also applied to felt hats of a particular style, but, if yes, one has good grounds to surmise what the hats must have looked like — most probably, they had a curled-up narrow brim and a middle-height crown with the proverbial lengthwise concavity, thus resembling what is called so today.

Among the possible prototypes of Berlioz, most of them personal enemies of Bulgakov, researchers mention the Soviet Russian poet Demian Bedny, one of the reasons being the distinctive headwear and the strange way of naming it: ‘…the pirozhok hat, characteristic of Bedny, is, in keeping with the season, transformed from a winter headpiece into a summer one (though summer headpieces aren’t usually called in that way)’ (Sokolov, 2006: 142–143). Whether this assumption is correct or not, one can hardly deny that at the time there existed conceptual antagonism between the old-time hat and a more democratic, ‘proletarian’ cap (Belobrovtseva and Kulyus, 2007: 145–146). If viewed from this vantage, the emphatically ‘class-conscious’ editor carrying a hat in his hand even on a particularly hot day when he is already prudently dressed in a summer two-piece suit might be seen as a poseur or impostor (first and foremost, a usurper of the literary position rightfully belonging to the Master[7]) which smacks of the author’s tongue-in-cheek reference to himself, a confirmed hat-wearer in a country of nothing but caps (cf. from Chapter XXI of the novel: ‘…а по тротуарам, как казалось сверху Маргарите, плыли реки кепок’) (Bulgakov, 1989: 561) and an owner of what looked very much like the headpiece in question (cf. Bulgakov’s photo taken at the funeral of Vladimir Mayakovsky).

Whereas in translation one comes across a ‘decorous pork-pie hat’ (Bulgakov, 1992: 1) and two cases of ‘fedora’, either ‘proper’ (Bulgakov, 1997: 3) or ‘respectable’ (Bulgakov, 1997), not one of the variants able to be regarded as convincing. Despite the outer semantic similarity, the former means an altogether different thing. Originally a women’s hat, the headpiece began to be worn by men in the early 20^th century Britain and later flourished in the USA, remaining intermittently popular into the early 1970s. Its distinctive features include a stingy curled-up brim, thus making it seemingly suitable for the context, and a low flat crown with no lengthwise concavity, but with a characteristic crease running around the inside top edge. However, both at the time when the novel was written and throughout the decades when hats where in fashion, a pork-pie hat, for a Soviet citizen, remained a distinctively Anglo-Saxon item of headwear, definitely not ‘decorous’ for a man such as Berlioz. The fedora, instead, though typically creased lengthwise down the crown with two ‘pinches’ near the front on both sides, normally had rather broad brims, a comparatively high crown and, generally speaking, became truly fashionable only at the turn of the 1920–30s. Put on the fictional editor-in-chief living in Soviet Russia somewhere around 1929, the Year of the Great Turn, a fedora would have seemed newfangled rather than ‘respectable’ or ‘proper,’ to say nothing of the same ‘ideologically alien’ look about it which would, in a dozen years or so, be seen as ‘kowtowing to the West’ (compare with ‘bourgeois belch’ (буржуазная отрыжка) for ‘necktie’ as a more contemporaneous example of the same attitude). Besides, neither of the two hat styles corresponds to other attributes of Berlioz as mentioned in the scanty passages describing the character, a non-smoker and, very likely, tea-totaller speaking with occasional dated locutions («ну-с», «престранный») (Bulgakov, 1989: 342, 335) and taking an interest in – if not a liking to! (Bulgakov, 1989: 338) – the highly conventional foreigner. And yet it is only against this background that the words ‘proper’ and ‘respectable’ really begin to make sense! The editor strives to bear a degree of resemblance to the pre-revolutionary intelligentsia (an impostor indeed!) and so the hat that suggests itself rather naturally in this context is a variety of the more conservative homburg, ‘a man’s felt hat having a narrow curled brim and a tapered crown with a lengthwise indentation’ (Oxford dictionary).

The second translational difficulty is caused by the word ковбойка, a ‘tartan shirt’ in one case (Bulgakov, 1992: 1) and a ‘cowboy shirt’ in the two others (Bulgakov, 1997: 3; Bulgakov, 1997). It is worthwhile to admit it from the start that, despite the misleading borrowed root cowboy, we tend to perceive the lexeme as characteristically Russian and in doing so quite agree with Vlakhov and Florin (1980: 25) who, considering the same vocabulary unit, call it an example of ‘assimilated’ («освоенных») realia, thus ranking with, in their terminology, ‘[one’s] own’ and not ‘alien’ phenomena of the sort, which is the very reason why the latter variant of translation seems unacceptable. Whereas coming back to the binary opposition advocated by Zorivchak, it seems of interest to note that in this particular case it is not lingual, but solely cultural factors that are at work, realia being created ‘with a careful eye to’ foreign — in actual fact, non-existent or highly exaggerated — patterns (compare the existential shock caused by inevitable subsequent disillusionment which is so pointedly portrayed in the 2008 movie ‘Stilyagi’ when provoked by the phrase «В Америке нет стиляг!» — “There are no stilyagi in America!”). 

According to various dictionaries of Russian, ковбойка can be described as ‘a checkered shirt with a turn-down collar, patch pockets, and, typically, lacing instead of buttons.’ In dictionaries of English, however, the noun cowboy shirt (unlike, for instance, cowboy boot) is not registered. And yet, in actual usage, it does occur in the context of the so-termed Western wear as denoting a shirt elaborately decorated with piping and embroidery, typically having a contrasting yoke and, in some cases, edged with a fringe. Already googling the word in search for images may be enough to ascertain that the shirt in question doesn’t have to be (and seldom happens to be) checkered, let alone possess the characteristic lacing (rather the opposite is true, it often has a pronounced placket, not infrequently of a different colour, with catchy buttons or snap fasteners). In view of that, it is no longer so out-of-place that the variant ‘tartan shirt’ begins to appear, preserving at least the more important semanteme of pattern[8] (in Russian-speaking post-Soviet countries, such shirts were popular in the 1990s, but, except in possible individual cases, were not known under the name of ковбойка). And yet it still seems unacceptable for two major reasons. On the one hand, the ‘tartan’ introduces Scottish connotations, absent in the original and objectionable in translation, and, on the other hand, it doesn’t suit either the season or the weather.                    

The third case concerns the word combination «толстый художественный журнал», translated as ‘highbrow literary magazine’ (Bulgakov, 1992: 1), ‘literary magazine’ (Bulgakov, 1997: 3) (elsewhere also interchangeable with ‘journal’) (Bulgakov, 1997: 4), and ‘fat literary journal’ (Bulgakov, 1997) . While the rendition of «художественный» as ‘literary’ can cause no serious objections, the search for an equivalent of the component «толстый» presents considerable problems. When applied to the word журнал, the Russian adjective in question may mean not only its size (as in, for instance, a thick magazine), but also, figuratively and quite as frequently, a type of a periodical meant for the literati rather than a wide reading public (compare the slogan of the internet project «Журнальный зал» featuring the activities of Russian literary and humanitarian magazines: «русский толстый журнал как эстетический феномен»). In view of that, all the three versions of translation are fairly questionable. The closest to the original, correct in meaning if not in wording (for the periodical, no doubt, saw its policy as perfectly ‘democratic’ and ‘revolutionary’), seems to be Michael Glenny’s variant of ‘highbrow’ (to some extent compensated by ‘journal’ as employed by the rest of the translators), whereas the two others, despite the literal exactitude of the latter, fail to convey the connotations of the original.   

And thus, coming back to theory, the above-performed analysis, as we see it, allows one to arrive at a most far-reaching conclusion: what makes it so hard to distinguish and adequately translate realia is precisely the overwhelming belief that they are both notions and words, whereas in actual fact the two may or may not coincide. A nationally specific meaning can be conveyed by what seems a perfect lexical equivalent (as in ковбойка : cowboy shirt; шляпа пирожком : pork-pie hat) and, vice versa, a nationally specific expression (as in шляпа пирожком, толстый журнал) can correspond (though sometimes explanatory interpolations may be necessary) to what is available also in other cultures but known under different names (homburg, intellectual magazine). 

It should be noted that Fedorov’s original conviction in the strictly extralinguistic nature of realia, despite its general rejection, was not completely lost on other theorists. For instance, still in 2004, Mykola Zarytskyi advocated the introduction of the term realonym to designate what the former somewhat bulkily called ‘words denoting realia’ (Zarytskyi, 2004: 97). Though realizing it that the broad usage of the term ‘realia,’ as long and commonly accepted by the academic community, is hardly revertible, we, nevertheless, find it possible to clarify its span and meaning by rethinking the approach to the classification of such units and to this end introducing the technical notion of realodesignatum as a necessary counterpart to realonym, the correlation between the two following that between a referent and its exponent. Using both tools, it seems feasible to provide an exhaustive structural description of realia while observing the three most commonly advocated delimitating principles such as the binary comparison of languages / cultures, the national specificity of either the former or the latter (thus, to some extent, incorporating into our scope the understanding of the subject current in linguistic geography), and the etymologically conditioned meaning of tangibility.

In our opinion, the grouping of realia based on the dichotomy between realodesignatum and realonym can be executed following four basic patterns: realodesignatum paralleled by realonym, realonym unparalleled by realodesignatum, realodesignatum unparalleled by realonym, realodesignatum coincident with realonym. Consistent with this typology, it seems reasonable to single out rubrics such as, accordingly, realia proper, quasi realia, latent realia, and performative realia, some of them falling / blending into additional classes as shown in Table 1.

Table 1. Classification of Realia

By far the commonest among the above-listed types are realia proper, that is those possessing both a nationally specific meaning with a sufficient degree of tangibility and a particular lingual unit to convey it (for instance, glengarry, (Germ.) Dirndl, (Fr.) camembert[9]). In the course of time, as the national coloration of suchlike notions is weakened or lost and corresponding lexemes are borrowed into other languages, certain samples of the group may cease to meet the standards of realia thus becoming semantically assimilated loanwords (for instance, джинсы, хотдог, бейсболка and so on). It is also with this group that certain culture-specific names, artifacts, customs, historic figures, events and so on have to be classified (that is to say archetypes of so-termed precedent phenomena), but only as used in the individual sense (e.g. Jack the Ripper — ‘an unidentified murderer active in London in 1888’) and not antonomastically (e.g. Jack the Ripper — ‘serial killer’), for in the latter case their realodesignata cease to be nationally peculiar, thereby forcing such units out into the next class.     

In case with quasi realia and other sub-classes comprising the rubric through the connotative branch, the national specificity of their designata is alleged rather than veritable and so such units do have functional, but not connotative equivalents (e.g. croûton — гренок, сухарик). The generic term, however, is reserved for those cases, when a certain instance of wording, normally intended to subdue an unacceptable impression (of straightforward unpretentiousness, lack of originality and so on) caused by a subject, happens to emerge ad hoc, acquires limited currency and is not or not yet accepted by a language system on the whole (apart from шляпа пирожком, which word-usage in unknown outside Bulgakov’s text, a convincing if facetious illustration from among more recent items of the kind may be provided by the ‘politically correct’ attempt to rename caffè Americano as Russiano) (‘Russiano’ Coffee Joke Sparks Online Humour). However, in those instances when suchlike word-usage persists, gradually out-competing a corresponding established name, it may become adopted and acquire overwhelming currency, thus causing the emergence of pseudo realia. Examples of both the former and the latter may be found in the following extract from “Anna Karenina”: 

 — Мне все равно. Мне лучше всего щи и каша; но ведь здесь этого нет.

— Каша а ля рюсс, прикажете? — сказал татарин, как няня над ребенком, нагибаясь над Левиным. […]

— Ну, так дай ты нам, братец ты мой, устриц два, или мало — три десятка, суп с кореньями…

— Прентаньер, — подхватил татарин. Но Степан Аркадьич, видно, не хотел ему доставлять удовольствие называть по-французски кушанья.

— С кореньями, знаешь? Потом тюрбо под густым соусом, потом… ростбифу; да смотри, чтобы хорош был. Да каплунов, что ли, ну и консервов. 

Татарин, вспомнив манеру Степана Аркадьича не называть кушанья по французской карте, не повторял за ним, но доставил себе удовольствие повторить весь заказ по карте: «Суп прентаньер, тюрбо сос Бомарше, пулар а лестрагон, маседуан де фрюи[10]… (Tolstoy, 1965: 39–40).  

Viewing the original fragment in the light of the above-stated criteria, one cannot but arrive at the conclusion that каша а ля рюсс (most probably, ‘buckwheat porridge’) must be classified with quasi realia since, for one thing, outside menu a la carte such word-usage is not found and, for another thing, the ordinary French equivalent for the Russian гречневая каша is la bouillie de sarrasin. Whereas in case with прентаньер the issue is rather more complex, for the French word (originally, just as porridge à la Russe, a fancy name for what was and remains known in Russian as майский суп) was finally, unlike the former, borrowed into the language’s lexis. A characteristic detail, however, is presented by the fact that the original formulation of «суп с кореньями» is rendered into English as ‘clear soup with vegetables.’ In view of climatic differences, certain ingredients of the French and Russian versions of the dish slightly differed, a characteristic feature of the latter recipe being various root crops, turnip among them, and that’s what the client means by коренья (compare from Kuznetsov’s dictionary: ‘the underground and green parts of certain plants (such as carrot, parsley, celery) as used for food’). In the French printanier/printanière, instead, similar products are possible, but rather less common (compare from Larousse: ‘un potage à base de légumes nouveaux [the emphasis is ours. — A. Z., O. M., S. V.] taillés menu’), hence conditioning the appearance of ‘vegetables’ in order to adapt the scene to the perception of the Western reader. But since the dinner takes place in winter when (in the XIX century Russia!) the soup, at best, could only imitate the French potage (which is, probably, the reason why the client calls it суп с кореньями rather than майский суп), the waiter’s wording is, in fact, less accurate — but, no doubt, far more ‘classy’ (mark the absence of any practical need in such a rendition and the Cyrillic spelling of the seemingly haute cuisine terminology).  

A still more pronounced example of pseudo realia can be provided by the word поридж as found in the text of Yu. Semyonov’s novel “Expansion-III”: «Работал он запойно, диктовал по тридцать, а  то  и  сорок  страниц  в день; после завтрака (поридж, ломтик сыра, грейпфрут, кофе) устраивался  в кабинете, ходил по старому хорезмскому ковру, обсыпая себя сизым сигарным дымом…») (Semenov, 1987). Despite the availability of a perfect equivalent (cf. the much famous line «Овсянка, сэр!» from Igor Maslennikov’s screen version of ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’), the lexeme is introduced with the sole purpose of adding national specificity to the image, albeit no genuine realodesignatum stands behind it. And yet it is enough to google the word (now, normally, as порридж) in order to receive evidence that in modern Russian such usage becomes more and more common.   

Pseudo realia are potentially further divisible into pseudo domestic and pseudo alien, the touchstone being the binary comparison of languages and cultures. Strictly speaking, both the former and the latter belong to ‘[one’s] own’ realia in the sense that they only emerge in a source language (either from native or borrowed lingual material), but their connotations drastically differ.

Pseudo domestic realia are intended to minimize external cultural influences and, in this way, they are typologically not dissimilar to what Einar Haugen called ‘loan creations,’ that is coinages independent of a foreign word, but created out of the desire to replace it (Khaugen, 1972: 344–382). A vivid example here may be provided by the words cognac and brandy when viewed in the triple context of French, English, and Russian. As Oxford dictionary puts it, brandy is ‘a strong alcoholic spirit distilled from wine or fermented fruit juice,’ whereas cognac means ‘a high-quality brandy, strictly speaking that distilled in Cognac in western France,’ and so within the English-French language pair the former must be classified with pseudo domestic realia (for, as is obvious from both definitions, the only difference between the two notions, apart from the rather ambiguous semanteme of ‘high-quality,’ is solely geographical). While in the context of the French-Russian language pair (compare the elegantly outspoken definition of the loanword cognac > коньяк in Ushakov’s dictionary: ‘vodka from grape juice’) no similar phenomenon is necessarily supposed to appear and it is rather the English brandy that may, depending on whether or not a particular translator prefers the so-termed ‘foreignization strategy,’ appear in the target language alongside with the non-realonym коньяк,[11] in this case presenting an instance of pseudo realia. To give another example, the same concerns whisky and whiskey (as Collins Advanced Learner’s dictionary rather straightforwardly puts it, ‘whiskey is whisky that is made in Ireland or the United States’). In the strict sense, however, there might emerge a significant contextual difference between, for instance, ‘[молдавский]’ коньяк, ‘[армянский]’ коньяк, and ‘[французский]’ коньяк, in which case the corresponding units should be classified with latent realia (see below).

Whereas a characteristic feature of pseudo alien realia is, on the contrary, subservience to foreign patterns, though either the ‘borrowed plumes’ themselves or the loanwords denoting them are largely fictitious or distorted beyond recognition. Apart from ковбойка mentioned earlier as illustration of the former possibility, of interest here is the realonym блайзер, current in the colloquial Russian of 1990s in the sense ‘baseball cap’ (the misunderstanding, probably, resulted from the contiguity with blazer — ‘a coloured jacket worn by schoolchildren or sports players as part of a uniform’). In this case, however (cf. бейсболка above), its realodesignatum is indeed observed, and hence the potential linkage to realia proper (see Table I). Another example here can be provided by морковь по-корейски, a post-Soviet space dish, borrowed from Korean diaspora, but unknown in mainland Korea. 

As concerns latent realia, their nature is determined by either absence or non-specified usage of terms denoting nationally peculiar tangible objects, which state of things results in speakers’ referring to them by their generic rather than particular names. Depending on a context, such differences (in many cases, rather minor[12]) may or may not be crucial enough to cause misunderstanding, and yet in certain situations they indeed become relevant. A good example here can be provided by the lexeme borscht as used in Slavic languages of Eastern Europe, English, and Yiddish. In Slavic-English context, the ‘Russian or Polish soup made with beetroot and usually served with sour cream’ (Oxford dictionary), though so far remaining among realia proper, hardly preserves a strong charge of uniqueness and is probably doomed (just like pizza, pasta and so on) to become semantically assimilated. Whereas in either Slavic-Yiddish or Yiddish-English binary comparison, the word (esp. as a shorthand name for peysakhdiker borsht – ‘Passover borscht’) may reveal significant differences in its meaning. When adopted by East European Ashkenazi Jews from their Slavic neighbours, the dish, for one thing, modified its recipe so as to meet the dietary prescriptions of kashruth, whereby developing two strictly separate varieties: meat borscht and dairy borscht, to say nothing of the substitution of pork by beef brisket in the former. But also, for another thing, its vegetarian variety, a clear ruby-red broth, obtained by fermenting beetroot in brine (actually, a drink; cf. what is meant in Polish by barszcz czysty), became an essential meal during the Passover period. It is, probably, in view of this particular practice that the Yiddish word developed a figurative meaning of ‘wine of inferior quality, vino’ and became incorporated in the set expression velveler far borsht (lit. ‘cheaper than borscht’) — ‘very cheap, dirt cheap’. And so, in the process of its importation into the Yiddish language, the corresponding Slavic lexeme saw considerable specialization of meaning (compare how the Ukrainian language reacted to the word’s new and ‘puzzling’ semantic shades by the emergence of the colloquial phrase гарячий, як єврейський борщ (у суботу), lit. ‘as hot (‘hot-tempered’) as Jewish borscht (on Saturday),’ its humorous effect based on similar culturally-conditioned peculiarities) (Zornytskyi, 2014: 153–161).

In case with semi-realia, the character of the subclass is conditioned by the fact that the semantemes of their denotata are extralinguistically grouped in such a way as is not found in a language / culture employed for comparison, thereby generating national specificity. For instance, the French term bureau de tabac is simultaneously equivalent in Russian to both табачный киоск and газетный киоск; the coverage of the American English lexeme drugstore is the same as in the British English chemist’s [shop] and corner shop / convenience store (the latter one a borrowed Americanism) if taken in the aggregate. What makes semi-realia akin to both quasi and latent realia is, on the one hand, the fact that they do have a denotational realonym, but it is not, as a rule, preserved in translation (as would be in, for the sake of argument, *драгстор), and yet, on the other hand, their alleged equivalents not always convey the more important segments of their meaning[13].

And finally, by performative realia we mean words or, more commonly, expressions that have no direct equivalents within a pair of languages and either accompany or substitute (and thus realonym=realodesignatum) certain culture-specific gestures, thereby inseparably linked to the materiality of a corresponding extralinguistic act. For instance, Накось выкуси! Зуб даю! Up yours! I bite my thumb at you! Cross my heart [and hope to die]! (Fr.) Mon œil! Ça me rase! and so on.     

Conclusions

And so, to conclude, it seems worthwhile to recapitulate that some realia can hardly be detected, let alone properly translated, unless by recognizing it that these are double-facet units consisting of their designata, onomata, or both (in the latter case the two may also coincide). In certain contexts, rather than searching for dictionary equivalents, it not infrequently proves necessary to undertake a deeper study of, first and foremost, a unit’s realodesignatum, if any, thereby determining the former’s typological character and, consequently, arriving at an acceptable variant of translation. Depending on the preference of either ‘domestication’ or ‘foreignization’ strategy, possible ways of rendition may vary, resulting, among other things, in the omission or preservation of certain types of realia, but what seems indispensable to a high-quality piece of translation is observance and not distortion of the original meaning and its connotations, embodied also in the phenomenon on hand.

About the author(s)

Andrii Zornytskyi is Candidate of Sc. in Philology, Associate Professor at Zhytomyr Ivan Franko State University, Ukraine. He lectures in Text Interpretation and is author of nine books of literary / non-fiction translations from English into Ukrainian. Besides, his scholarly interests include the Yiddish language.

Olena Mosiienko is Candidate of Sc. in Philology, Associate Professor at Zhytomyr Ivan Franko State University, Ukraine. She lectures in Translation History and her scholarly interests include discourse analysis, translation studies, cognitive linguistics, and pragmatics.

Svitlana Vyskushenko is Candidate of Sc. in Philology, Associate Professor at Zhytomyr Ivan Franko State University, Ukraine. She lectures in Comparative Lexicology of English and Ukrainian languages and is interested in terminology studies, translation studies, cognitive linguistics, and semantics.

Email: [please login or register to view author's email address]

Abstract

This study introduces Ömer Rıza Doğrul (1893-1952), a translator and agent of translation from the history of Turkey, and offers an account of Doğrul’s habitus and framing strategies in his Turkish translations of bestselling self-help manuals published in English in the 1930s. Focusing on Doğrul’s Turkish renderings of Dale Carnegie’s Public Speaking and Influencing Men in Business (1937) and Henry C. Link’s Return to Religion (1936), the study examines the translator’s agency and interventionist approaches embedded within the paratexts of these translations. By incorporating a sociological inquiry with paratextual exploration, the study also aims to illustrate that these two methodological approaches reinforce each other as complementary ways of analyzing translators’ agency.

Keywords: habitus, paratexts, Ömer Rıza Doğrul, translator's agency

1. Introduction

Agency has gained importance and attracted a great deal of attention as a research subject in Translation Studies owing to more interest in the role of individuals, that is all influential actors in the creation of translations, including translators, editors and patrons of literature such as publishers and politicians.[1] As shown in several studies focusing on different temporal and spatial settings, all these figures bring about changes and innovations in their cultures by means of translation (Milton and Bandia 2009). Agency has denoted such an essential and intricate aspect of translation processes that novel theoretical frameworks have been proposed to explore its complexities and to examine translation from a sociological perspective.[2] As well as considering translations as products of a culture, central concepts from Pierre Bourdieu’s cultural theory, such as “habitus,” “field” and “capital,” have been employed to delve into the dynamics of fields of translation and positions and practices of translators and other agents.[3] Translators’ agency, in particular, has constituted a substantial part of agency-focused research, and different methodologies, including the analysis of paratextual materials, have been utilized in the frameworks of historical and sociological approaches to translation.

The aim of this study is to explore the agency of a translator, namely Ömer Rıza Doğrul (1893-1952) from the translation history of Turkey, by analyzing his habitus, trajectory and framing strategies in his Turkish translations of bestselling self-help manuals published in English in the 1930s. The agency of Doğrul will be depicted through a sociological perspective, particularly by employing the concept of “habitus,” to elucidate the underlying factors for Doğrul’s translation practices. The sociological exploration will be complemented with a paratextual examination of Doğrul’s renderings.

Besides being an author, journalist, and politician, Doğrul also played a leading role in the translation of the English self-help literature into Turkish. He was very influential in the transfer of this new genre and its discourse based on the 20^th century interpretation of the Protestant ethics in light of capitalism, liberalism and individualism. However, the audience self-help literature addressed in the source culture, that is in the US during the Great Depression of the 1930s, and the readership in the target culture, that is in the early decades of the Turkish Republic, were not surrounded by the same social environments. Not only were their social, political or economic conditions dissimilar, but also their ethical traditions were entirely different. It is clear in Doğrul’s translations that these discrepancies triggered interventions and were handled through some framing strategies. While translating the bestsellers written by Dale Carnegie and Henry C. Link, two pioneers of the self-help literature in the American culture, into Turkish, Doğrul reframes the source texts mostly through paratextual elements such as prefaces, footnotes, and additions. Focusing on Doğrul’s Turkish renditions of Carnegie’s Public Speaking and Influencing Men in Business (1937), and Link’s Return to Religion (1936), this study will inquire Doğrul’s translation strategies in light of his habitus and through a paratextual critique, which will ultimately unveil his agency and extremely interventionist attitude.  

With this intention, first I start with a concise presentation of the theoretical framework and methodology employed in this study in part 2, by touching upon the notions: “habitus” based on Bourdieu’s theory of culture, “paratexts” through Gérard Genette’s introduction and its further elaboration for the context of translation, and “framing” by drawing on Mona Baker’s interpretation of Narrative Theory for the analysis of translation. Next, I will delve into Doğrul’s habitus, including a brief account of his journalism and political career as well as his activities as an author and as a translator in part 3. Then, in part 4, I will offer a case analysis of two of Doğrul’s translations, mainly focusing on paratexts, where the translator’s agency appears most explicitly and his interventions occur most expressly. The study will end with the main implications of this analysis in terms of research on translators’ agency.

2. Theoretical Framework and Methodology

2.1. Agency and Habitus

A key concept in the sociological analyses of agency is “habitus,” which has been frequently implemented to build a critical explanatory framework for the translators’ decisions and strategies in light of their experiences, trajectories and relations with(in) their environments. Habitus is the central notion in Bourdieu’s genetic sociology, encapsulating the understanding of human agency: “systems of durable, transposable dispositions, structured structures predisposed to function as structuring structures” (Bourdieu 1990: 53). The habitus of an agent is “neither innate nor a haphazard construction” (Simeoni 1998: 21) but it is “structured” (Hanna 2016: 43). It “is acquired and shaped, explicitly and implicitly, through the range of social experiences made available by socialization and education” (Hanna 2016: 43). Furthermore, habitus is composed of a system of dispositions that has a structuring function, which guides the practices of the individual within the social space. Finally and most importantly, habitus causes “dispositions,” that is, “strategies for action rather than rules for implementation” (Hanna 2016: 43). It is significant to note that habitus is “an open system of dispositions” whose structure is open to change and revision through the personal experiences of the individual (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992: 133).

On the relation between the habitus of an individual agent and their social development, the cumulative nature of habitus is also emphasized in Bourdieu’s framework. The habitus attained at a specific time along the trajectory of an agent underlies, and is exposed to restructuring by the habitus attained at later stages (Bourdieu 1977: 86-7; cited in Hanna 2016: 45). The habitus starts to be acquired in the family and continues to be accumulated and transformed through educational life and professional career. As stated above, habitus is regarded as a “historical and open system” in this context, and it needs to be noted that the translator’s habitus is not only affected by the professional field of translation but is also “open to transformation and restructuring” by historical experience obtained outside the domain of the professional field (Hanna 2016: 45). For this reason, the decisions of a translator are not only influenced by the prevailing norms of practice within their specific professional field of translation, but are also modified by a variety of circumstances, ranging from changes in the political field and social structure to the personal circumstances of the translator under concern (Hanna 2016: 45).

As a last point, in Bourdieu’s cultural theory, a “field” of cultural production is a dynamic structure, where agents strive to get the dominant positions by means of different forms of capital (Bourdieu 1996: 231). Bourdieu mainly describes three forms of capital, that is, “economic,” “cultural,” and “social,” not only to reveal the complex networks of relations and different positions in a field, but also to expound the (trans)formation of habitus (Bourdieu 1986: 243).

2.2. Paratexts and Framing

Gérard Genette, who first elaborated the concept, defines “paratexts” as additional elements which “present and comment on the text” (1997: 345). Paratexts are divided into two categories as “epitexts” and ”peritexts;” the former comprises the materials about a work that are found outside of the work, such as interviews and reviews, and the latter refers to all the accompanying parts of a text including prefaces, illustrations, forewords, epigraphs, book covers, footnotes and similar additional materials (Genette 1997). Paratexts have the potential of offering essential information for translation analysis, and in addition to several studies examining their role and functions, Translation and Paratexts (Batchelor 2018), a single volume specifically focusing on the subject, has been published recently. In this study, a paratext is defined as “a consciously crafted threshold for a text which has the potential to influence the way(s) in which the text is received” (Batchelor 2018: 142). Since paratexts serve various purposes in translated works, to highlight their significance for the translation analysis, Batchelor justifiably describes them “as sites of translator intervention or adaptation of the text to its new environment” (2018: 25). Şehnaz Tahir-Gürçağlar, who has previously drawn attention to the role of paratexts in translations, argues that paratexts can offer indispensable information regarding the production and reception of translations and the underlying factors shaping them in a given culture (2002: 58-59). For Theo Hermans, translators can “signal their agenda” (2007: 33) or show their ideological closeness or distance towards the author or text through paratexts (Hermans 2007: 53ff.; qtd. in Batchelor 2018: 145). This is exactly how Doğrul makes use of paratexts, where he explicitly states the aim of his translations and speaks to his readers. Prefaces and translators’ notes are widely analyzed types of paratexts in translation research (Tahir-Gürçağlar 2013: 91; Batchelor 2018: 26), and they provide substantial and significant information for this study too.

As well as drawing attention to the significance of paratextual materials in historical translation research, translation studies scholars have also questioned the effectiveness and validity of the information presented in paratexts and the role of translators in their creation. Tahir-Gürçağlar, for example argues for a cautious approach to the findings of paratextual analyses, especially when they are not complemented with the analysis of the translated texts, and claims that despite their mediating aspects, paratexts can only “show how translations are presented but not how they are” and their analysis cannot replace textual examination (Tahir-Gürçağlar 2011: 115; cited in Batchelor 2018: 26). Though she admits that some paratexts such as prefaces and translator’s notes can be “strong indicators of the translator’s agency” (Tahir-Gürçağlar 2011: 115), she reminds that paratexts can be prepared by other agents, such as editors and publishers. In a similar vein, Alexandra Lopes describes paratexts as a “rather poor indicator of the strategies employed by translators” since preface-like materials are mostly prepared in accordance with the accepted publishing norms (Lopes 2012: 130; qtd. in Batchelor 2018: 26). Likewise, in her comprehensive study on paratexts and translation, Kathryn Batchelor states that paratextual analysis sheds light on the agency of various actors involved in the publishing sector and that “translators are often marginalized with regard to paratextual publishing decisions” (Batchelor 2018: 39). As most of the research about paratexts have focused on literary translations (Batchelor 2018: 39), these arguments are generally put forward for the case of literary translations. This study draws attention to a counter example in a non-literary genre, however, where the translator seems quite actively involved in the paratextual publishing processes and appears very visible in the prefaces and supplementary notes.

One of the most relevant conceptual tools for paratextual analysis of translations is “framing.” In Translation and Conflict: A Narrative Account (2006), Mona Baker elaborates and implements the concept of framing to analyze translation in conflict situations. Baker uses the concept of framing to describe the ways in which translators and interpreters – in collaboration with other agents, such as editors or publishers – emphasize, weaken or alter aspects of the narrative(s) set in the source text. What is meant by narrative is not the text itself but refers to the meta-narrative embedded in the text, which is similar to a story or discourse in this approach (Baker also discusses different types of narratives). Framing is “an active strategy that implies agency and by means of which we consciously participate in the construction of reality” (Baker 2006: 105). Baker exemplifies various strategies to demonstrate how narratives are reframed in translation and considers translation as “not simply an interpretive frame but a performance that encompasses any number of interpretive frames” (2006: 107). Different strategies of framing are explained with examples in Baker’s account, and I will draw on the category of “selective appropriation of textual material” (Baker 2006: 114) for the analysis of Doğrul’s translations. Selective appropriation is “realized in patterns of omission and addition designed to suppress, accentuate or elaborate particular aspects of a narrative encoded in the source text or utterance, or aspects of the larger narrative(s) in which it is embedded” (Baker 2006: 114). Paratexts constitute the spaces of additions in the process of framing, where translators explicitly interfere with the content of the text they are translating and create their way of presenting a work.

In this analysis, paratextual materials offer a fruitful ground for revealing the agency and framing strategies of Doğrul, which will be explained in light of his habitus. In what follows, I will focus on Doğrul’s habitus and agency as a translator, and then I will present a paratextual analysis of two of his translations in section 4.

3. Ömer Rıza Doğrul (1893-1952): Habitus and Trajectory

Ömer Rıza Doğrul is a Turkish author, journalist, politician and translator, who lived during the final stage of the Ottoman Empire and the early decades of the Turkish Republic. Doğrul was a very active cultural agent of his milieu and played an important role in the transfer of the modern self-help literature into Turkish. To shed light on Doğrul’s agency in this field and critically analyze his translation strategies and decisions, this section will focus on his habitus; that is, his family background, educational and professional life, and social environment, all of which were influential in forming his habitus.

Doğrul’s journalism, ideological affiliation and political career constitute the most important factors that seem to have influenced his agency and practices about translation. As regards his background, Doğrul’s family was originally from Burdur, a city in southwestern Turkey but he was born and grew up in Cairo, where he had his university education and also started working as a journalist. Until 1915, Doğrul’s literary articles appeared both in Cairo and İstanbul, where he settled and got married to the daughter of Mehmed Akif Ersoy (1873-1936), the well-known Turkish poet, author and politician. Doğrul continued journalism in İstanbul and wrote in major newspapers including Vakit, where his writings on Turkey-Egypt relations led to a short prison term. In addition to numerous articles on politics, Doğrul also published several indigenous works and translations on Islam, including a translation of the Qur’an (Tanrı Buyruğu 1943) (Uzun 1994: 489). It is worth noting that he translated from both some Eastern and Western languages, and there are over 550 records with Doğrul’s name in the National Library of Turkey today, including the reprints of his translations. In addition to his intensive writing and translating activities, Doğrul also served as a publisher and issued a weekly magazine, Selamet Mecmuası, composed of topics such as religion, intellectual movements in the world of Islam, Islamic classics and religious education. Doğrul is also believed to have exerted considerable influence on the realization of religious freedom in Turkey and religious education in Turkish primary schools (Uzun 1994: 489). He also became a member of parliament in 1950, continued to write about the relationship between Turkey and other Muslim countries, and argued for the necessity of cooperation among them by underlining Turkey’s role in such collaboration. He actively took part in foreign affairs, with Pakistan in particular, and specifically analyzed and wrote about the role of Indian Muslims in their national struggle (Uzun 1994: 489).

Doğrul is considered as an “Ottoman-Republic intellectual” (Akpınar 2007: 439), which reveals both the conservative and the innovative aspects in his habitus. For some scholars of the Islamic tradition, Doğrul was a unique thinker who objectively analyzed the views of different cultures and traditions, and a real intellectual with a rationalist and open-minded perspective about science and innovation (Akpınar 2007: 442). For others, however, Doğrul was a controversial figure whose thoughts and actions led to disputes and criticisms. It is stated that Doğrul was severely criticized by religious circles especially for two reasons, namely for his masonry and the claims that he was spreading Kadıyani views, which mostly stemmed from the views he presented in his translations from Qur’an (Uzun 1994: 490). His works were thought to reflect the extremely rationalist approach of Mevlana Muhammed Ali, who was affiliated with Kadıyanilik, a religious sect founded in the nineteenth century in India. It is emphasized that Doğrul made replies to these criticisms in his writings (Uzun 1994: 490). Despite the differences in the historical evaluations on Doğrul’s intellectual identity and contributions, it is clear that his translation practices were strongly affected by his experiences and affiliations, which also shaped his habitus.

All the information regarding Doğrul’s habitus and trajectory is of specific importance for this study but two points emphasized in this context are particularly worthy of attention. Firstly, it is stated that from the beginning of the early periods of the Turkish Republic to the 1950s, Doğrul opposed to the attacks against religion, religiousness, and Islam in particular, consistently at every opportunity, which has also been received with appreciation in some studies (Uzun 1994: 489). This point can explain his interventionist strategies as a translator, driven by religious ideology of an active political figure. Besides, that he was actively involved in the selection of the source texts for his translations is also clear in his works. Secondly, it is significant that he was famous for his translations that are “yarı telif” (“semi-originals”) as a result of his additions and extensions (Uzun 1994: 490). This description of “yarı telif” (semi-original) is interesting as it also indicates the interrelatedness of translation and writing in Doğrul’s works. So, in a way, Doğrul is famous for raising his translations to the status of original writing by means of additions and annotations, which again shows and confirms his agency and interferences in translation.

Doğrul has been mentioned in previous research on translation history in Turkey and described as an “extremely efficient and productive” translator of literary, historical and religious books (Tahir-Gürçağlar 2008: 178), who worked “systematically and industriously” from 1920s to 1940s (Tahir-Gürçağlar 2008: 173). Doğrul has also been considered as one of the first translators of realist works into Turkish (Bozkurt 2011: 258).[4] Müge Işıklar-Koçak extensively analyzes one of the translations of Doğrul, namely Evlilik Hayatında Daha Bahtiyar Olmanın Yolları (1942) with a special focus on Doğrul’s manipulations through his religious ideology (2007: 196). It is explained in this analysis that in the preface to this translation, Doğrul makes a reference to his translation of Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People (1938), and how the chapter on marriage in that translation attracted the readers’ attention and eventually paved the way for this translation. An example of Doğrul’s interventionist strategies examined by Işıklar-Koçak is his addition of a chapter with a list of advice for women as ideal wives at the end of the book (Işıklar-Koçak 2007: 215). It is interesting to see that this list in fact belongs to Dale Carnegie and is in fact given at the end of the chapter on marriage in How to Win Friends and Influence People. This point went unnoticed in Işıklar-Koçak’s study as the focus was not Carnegie’s works. Another remarkable detail Işıklar-Koçak offers is an anecdote by Sabiha Sertel, an editor who worked with Doğrul. In this anecdote, Doğrul translates a work on socialism but because of his textual interferences arising from his religious ideology, Sertel fires him (Işıklar-Koçak 2007: 206).

Doğrul was definitely a dominant agent in the formation of a self-help field in Turkish, who acted like a cultural entrepreneur and whose translations have still been published since the 1930s. Not only did Doğrul contribute to the emergence and development of the field of self-help in Turkey, but he also determined the main trends in this field of cultural production. What is more, his translation practices remarkably reveal the underlying cultural dynamics between the self-help literature and the religious tradition in the Turkish culture. Doğrul both translated the works of Carnegie, the famous pioneer of the success books based on the Protestant ethics in the source culture, and also some other self-help works with a more explicit religious content. It is clearly reflected in his works that Doğrul was supported by his main publisher Ahmet Halit Yaşaroğlu and was actively involved in the selection of the source texts for his translations. He had a certain amount of cultural capital as a result of his political and professional titles in addition to the social capital he provided through his relations with the publishers and some other authoritative figures.

An interesting case about Doğrul’s Carnegie translations is that he renders two different translations of the same text, that is How to Stop Worrying and Start Living (1948) in the same year for two different publishing houses with different titles: Üzüntüyü Bırak Yaşamaya Bak (Ahmet Halit Kitabevi) and Üzüntüsüz Yaşamak Sanatı (Arif Bolat Kitabevi). Figure 1 is the cover of the latter, which clearly proves Doğrul’s visibility[5] as the translator:

Fig. 1 The Front cover of Ömer Rıza Doğrul’s translation of Dale Carnegie’s
How to Stop Worrying and Start Living (in Carnegie 1948, Üzüntüsüz Yaşamak Sanatı)

In this book cover, Doğrul’s photo is given under the source author Dale Carnegie’s photo, representing an extreme case of visibility, which also highlights the translator’s agency.

Doğrul’s political endeavors and publishing activities clearly indicate that he was a strong figure of his milieu, possessing both cultural and social capital on account of his background, affiliations and relations. All his experiences, especially his political career and journalism played a role in forming his habitus, which is clearly manifested in his interventionist translation strategies and decisions. Doğrul is extremely visible as a translator, and overtly states the rationale behind his translations, which indicates his strong agency. Doğrul’s writings in the form of prefaces and footnotes reflect his habitus as a translator and the critical aspects of his agency, which will be depicted in the following section.

4. The Analysis of Paratextual Framing in Doğrul’s Translations

In this section, I will explore Doğrul’s agency through his translations, particularly by analyzing his framing strategies, that is, selective appropriations through additions and omissions. For the additions, I will offer a critical examination of the paratexts, namely prefaces and footnotes, and for the omissions I will give examples of the parts that are eliminated in the translations. To complement the paratextual analysis, I will briefly touch upon Doğrul’s general translation approach in the text, rather than providing a full-fledged textual analysis as that would extend the scope of this study. Two translations of Doğrul will be examined in this respect, which are Söz Söylemek ve İş Başarmak Sanatı (1939), the translation of Dale Carnegie’s Public Speaking and Influencing Men in Business and Dine Dönüş (1949), the rendition of Henry C Link’s Return to Religion (1936). For both cases, I will first introduce the source author and the source text, and then offer an analysis of the paratextual framing in the target text.

4.1. Case Analysis 1

Source Text: Public Speaking and Influencing Men in Business (1937)
Target Text: Söz Söylemek ve İş Başarmak Sanatı (1939)

The source author is Dale Carnegie (1888-1955), who was the pioneer of the mainstream and success oriented self-help literature in English in the twentieth century. As self-help has gradually become a key characteristic of the popular culture in the US[6], and its role has been consolidated in the capitalistic and consumerist world order, Carnegie has become an iconic figure and been addressed more often in different contexts. Carnegie started to teach public speaking at an uptown YMCA[7], and as his courses got popular, he started to travel around the country, offering trainings and collaborating with big corporations to instruct their employees (Vanderkam 2014). The Depression years helped him improve his career path as well, which led to the publication of his first book How to Win Friends and Influence People, a success manual composed of anecdotes and advice, in 1936. Then, Carnegie suddenly became popular and published Public Speaking and Influencing Men in Business in 1937 (Lippy 2005: 148). His first blockbuster, How to Win., was chosen one of the All-Time 100 Best Nonfiction Books since 1923[8] by the Time Magazine in 2011 (Sun 2011). Indeed, his books have been edited, re-edited and repacked for a number of times in English and retranslated and republished on so many occasions in Turkish since the 1930s.

There is obviously a strong connection between capitalism and the ethos Carnegie promotes as a prerequisite for success. Although his books are identified as the first examples of a commercial literature and not attributed any value, Carnegie is considered as “a key figure in the intellectual history of capitalism in the US” today (Seal 2014). He is believed to have contributed to the development of a capitalistic business ethics by reforming the Protestant work ethic into a modern morality based on personality and self- fulfillment. A closer look illustrates that what Carnegie offers in his texts, in essence, is an ethos of self-improving supported with principles of religion and psychology. Although Carnegie very often refers to sincerity and empathy, winning friends in his discourse is not for the sake of friendship but it is to win people to your way of thinking. All his works endorse individualistic values with a manipulative attitude and pragmatic tone. They speak to a certain type of personality, that is the businessmen in the US after the Depression; and that’s why, applying such principles across cultures is far more difficult (Cummings 2016: 19).

In the Turkish context, Doğrul translated all three bestsellers of Carnegie in the 1930s. He first translated How to Win Friends and Influence People (1936), where his approach seems moderate and his agency is not explicit. In his second translation however, that is in the rendition of Public Speaking and Influencing Men in Business, Doğrul becomes more visible as the translator and appears more influential as an agent of translation. This source text targets businessmen who need to improve their speaking, communication and public relations skills. Some chapter titles are: “Developing Courage and Self-confidence,” “How to Be Impressive and Convincing,” and “How to Interest Your Audience.” Doğrul’s translation starts with an addition, a preface before the introduction, entitled “Eser Hakkında Birkaç Söz” (A Few Words about the Work). This preface is written by Doğrul and illustrates his agency in this translation project clearly. In this preface, Doğrul states in a nationalist tone that one of the most important outcomes of the Republican Period is the freedom of speech. However, he argues, Turkish people, in general, suffer from the lack of public speaking skills:

hepimiz de söz söylemek, söylediğimiz sözlerle muhataplarımızı ikna ederek iş başarmak, bir maksadı gerçekleştirmek ve bir hedefe varmak isteriz. Fakat çoğumuz da ele aldığımız mevzuu nasıl ileri süreceğimizi, mevzuumuzun en bellibaşlı noktalarını nasıl işliyeceğimizi bilmediğimiz için, bütün ciddiyet ve samimiyetimize rağmen, muvaffakiyetsizliğe uğrarız ve bu yüzden ızdırap çekeriz. Sebebi, söz söylemek ve söz söyliyerek iş başarmak sanatine vukufsuzluğumuzdur. Dilimizde, maalesef, bu yolda yazılmış eserler de pek yoktur. Onun için, memleketimizde çok büyük rağbet kazanan “Dost Kazanmak” adlı eserin müellifi Dale Carnegie’nin “Söz Söylemek ve İş Başarmak” üzerinde yazdığı eseri tercüme etmekle bir boşluğu doldurmak istedim. Okuyucularımızın “Dost Kazanmak”dan elde ettikleri istifadenin daha büyüğünü bu eserden temin etmelerini umarak, gösterdikleri teveccüh ve rağbeti şükranla karşılamayı bir vazife tanırım. (Doğrul’s preface in Carnegie’s Söz Söylemek ve İş Başarmak Sanatı 1948)

English translation:

we all want to speak, to accomplish a work by persuading our addressees through our words, to fulfill a goal and reach a target. However, since most of us do not know how to raise the point we are dealing with, how to process its major aspects, despite all our seriousness and sincerity, we fail, and therefore, suffer. The reason is our lack of knowledge about the art of speaking and accomplishing a work by speaking. Unfortunately there are not many works written on this subject in our language. For this reason, I wanted to fill this gap by translating the work he has written on “Public speaking and Succeeding a work,” of Dale Carnegie, the author of “How to Win Friends,” which has been sought after a lot in our country. Hoping that our readers would reap more benefit from this work than they did from “How to win friends,” I would regard it a duty to welcome the complaisance and demand they offered with gratitude. (translation by the author)

This excerpt shows that Doğrul is actively involved in the selection process of the source text and he gives his previous translation from Carnegie as an example to praise this work.

Doğrul generally has a domesticating strategy throughout the translation. He replaces the names of people and events with some Turkish equivalents or makes explanations through footnotes. Carnegie, the source author, frequently uses American presidents as his examples of superior speakers, and presents stories about figures like Abraham Lincoln by quoting from their memoirs. In the translation, Doğrul intervenes in some of these references. For example, the following is an excerpt from one of his interventions to the author’s frequent references to Lincoln, with a four-paragraph footnote in a quite nationalist tone:

Muharrir, Amerikalılara hitap ettiği için, onun Abraham Lincoln’nun hayatını ve muvaffakıyetlerini birer örnek olarak göstermesi, gayet tabiidir. Burada bize düşen bir vazife, kendi öz tarihimizde en güzel ve en yüksek nümuneyi göstermektir. Şüphe yok ki bu nümune, başka her nümuneden daha yüksektir ve daha çok değerlidir. Bu nümune, bizim Milli Rehberimiz, Ulu ve Ebedi Şefimiz, Atatürktür. Siz bu eserde Lincoln’dan Roosevelt’ten bahsolunduğunu gördükçe Atatürkün nutuklarını okuyunuz. Yalnız iki kat istifade etmekle kalmazsınız. Üstelik, hayatta muvaffak olmak için, muhtaç olduğunuz cesaret, itimat ve kudreti, kendi milli kaynağımızdan almış olur, ve bu mübarek kaynakta birçok yeni kuvvetler keşfetmek fırsatını da elde edersiniz. (Carnegie, Söz Söylemek., 1948: 136)

English translation:

As the author addresses the Americans, it is very natural that he shows the life and achievements of Abraham Lincoln as an example. One of our duties here is to show the best and highest ensample in our own history. There is no doubt that this ensample is higher than any other ensample, and much more precious. This ensample is our National Mentor, Our Supreme and Forever Chief, Atatürk. In this work, whenever you see that Lincoln or Roosevelt is mentioned, read the speeches of Atatürk. You will not only get double the benefit. What is more, you will also acquire the courage, confidence and strength that you need from your own national source, and get the opportunity to discover many new strengths in this blessed source. (translation by the author)

Furthermore, as Carnegie’s discourse on public speaking derives from the author’s experiences in YMCA (Young Men’s Christian Association), and public speaking is also a major skill for men of religion, the source text is heavily loaded with references and allusions to Christianity. The examples Carnegie presents to support his principles rely mostly on proofs from the experiences of ministers or scholars of religious institutions. All these references and allusions to Christianity, preaching, baptists, ministers and divinity schools are totally erased in Doğrul’s translation.[9] In order to validate his arguments and prove that what he teaches is universally accepted, Carnegie also draws on some other belief systems such as Buddhism or Islam. If the reference is to Islam, Doğrul’s voice becomes dominant again and makes use of every opportunity to instruct his readers about Islam and Islamic tradition through footnotes.

4.2. Case Analysis 2

Source Text: The Return to Religion: Developing Personality and Finding Happiness in Life (1936)
Target Text: Dine Dönüş (DD) (1949)

The source author, namely Henry C. Link (1889-1952), was a psychologist and his Return to Religion was one of the bestsellers of self-help in English in the 1930s. In this book, Link explains his own gradual return to religion in the course of his profession as a psychologist, and aims to illustrate the necessity of religion for happiness and success in life. Link’s main argument throughout the book is that psychological facts are verified by the principles of religion, and logic or reason can never replace religious virtues. The way Link uses psychology and religion in a constitutive way is very interesting. By constantly quoting from the Bible and making references to Psychology surveys, Link establishes a connection between the two domains, and encourages some religious practices by supporting them with scientific facts.

Regarding the target text, the most striking aspect is the translator’s additions in the form of paratexts. Doğrul appends a preface, an introductory passage about the author, footnotes and supplementary notes within the text, and some other additions at the end. The preface both foregrounds him as the translator and also explicitly reveals his agency. It exposes Doğrul’s religious ideology, an important aspect of his habitus, and the encounter of the two religious traditions, Christianity and Islam, as the underlying narratives in the text. Doğrul first expresses his heartfelt gratitude to Ahmet Hamdi Akseki in the preface, who was the Director of Religious Affairs (“Diyanet İşleri Reisi Ahmet Hamdi Akseki Hazretleri”), for helping him find this book. Doğrul’s framing starts just here because by emphasizing that the source text was provided by a dignitary, he legitimizes his translation. The following is Doğrul’s description of this work in the preface, where his agency is strongly implied:

Bu eserin esas konusu, dindir ve insanın ancak din sayesinde insan olabildiğini, yani karakter ve şahsiyet sahibi olabildiğini, psikoloji ilminin buluşlariyle anlatmaktır. (…) Fakat müellifin dinden anladığı şey, hıristiyanlıktır. Çünkü muhitinde hakim olan din odur. Ancak bu eser, hıristiyanlığı propaganda etmek için yazılmamıştır. Din hissini uyandırmak, din zevkini yaşatmak ve din terbiyesini açıklamak için yazılmıştır. Bu böyle olmakla beraber eserin istinad ettiği esaslar, hep hıristiyanlıktan alınma olduğu için bu esasları kendi esaslarımızla karşılaştırmak, icap ettikçe okurlarımızın dikkatine kendi esaslarımızın üstünlüğünü arzetmek vazifesi baş göstermiştir. Biz de elimizden geldiği kadar bu vazifeyi yapmağa çalıştık ve eserin metnini olduğu gibi muhafaza ederek ilave ettiğimiz notlarla kendi esaslarımızı izah ettik. (...) modern psikolojinin teyid ettiği hakikatler, halis muhlis İslami hakikatlerdir. Umarız ki modern psikoloji bizim yurdumuzda da kök saldıktan sonra bir Türk-İslam psikoloğu çıkar ve bize bu eserden kat kat alasını yazarak psikolojinin İslam hakikatlerini nasıl desteklediğini anlatır. Fakat muhitimizde henüz böyle eser yazılmadığı için, şimdiki halde bu eserle ve bu esere ilave ettiğimiz notlarla iktifa ediyoruz. (Doğrul’s preface in Link’s Dine Dönüş, 5-6)

English translation:

The main subject of this work is religion and to explain by the findings of psychology that a human can become a human, that is, can have a character and personality only through religion. (…) But religion means Christianity for the author because it is the dominant religion in his environment. However, this work has not been written to propagate Christianity. It has been written to evoke the feeling of religion, to make the readers experience the pleasure of religion and to explain the education of religion. On the other hand, as this work relies on principles of Christianity, there has arisen the mission of comparing these principles with those of our own, of presenting the superiority of our own principles to the attention of our readers. We have tried to fulfill this mission as much as we could and explained our principles through the notes we added, while preserving the text of the work as it is. (…) the truths confirmed by modern psychology are genuine Islamic truths. We hope that after modern psychology has also taken root in our country, there would appear a Turkish-Islam psychologist and write a much more superior work explaining how psychology supports the truths of Islam. But since such a work has not been written in our own environment yet, we feel satisfied with this work and the notes we added. (translation by the author)

As this excerpt illustrates, Doğrul openly proclaims that the focus of this work is religion in the general sense, and not in the sense of Christianity specifically (DD, p.6). He states his belief that it would appeal to the interests of intellectuals, and would especially benefit the ones involved with education such as parents and teachers. He also expresses his hope that the book will not only help correct the deviant thoughts about religion but also eliminate the invalid opinions causing the negligence of religion education (DD, p. 7). As shown in the excerpt above, Doğrul targets some public opinions about religion, which again brings to light his agency in this translation project.

After the preface, there is another paratextual addition entitled “Müellif Hakkında” (About the Author), where Link is introduced with some information about his academic degrees and professional success (DD, pp. 8-10). The writer of this piece is most probably Doğrul, though it is not specified in the text. It is also worth noting that this addition about the author does not have a neutral tone since some of the information such as Link’s scientific discoveries seem overstated, and it is underlined many times that Link has been read by millions of people.

There are two sections inserted at the end of the book entitled “Dale Carnegie’den Bir Bölüm” (A Chapter from Dale Carnegie) and “Pazar Okulları” (Sunday Schools). The first addition is a 21-page chapter from Doğrul’s own translation of Dale Carnegie’s How to Stop Worrying and Start Living. This is a long chapter about the necessity of belief and prayer in one’s life. By adding a chapter of Carnegie’s work to Link’s book, Doğrul both promotes his own translation of Carnegie’s work, and enhances the prestige of Link’s work, as Carnegie is a better-known author. The second additional section, “Pazar Okulları” (Sunday Schools), is a one-page explanation about the informal education offered to children at church on Sundays, and it also highlights the prevalence of church attendance among Americans. This addition reflects Doğrul’s political agency in the target culture in line with his habitus.

As in his other translation, Doğrul omits all the passages and references about Christianity in this work. His most remarkable intervention however, is his extensive additions of notes, through which he recontextualizes the source text with an Islamic frame, as in the following footnote:

Müellif eserin metninde Evamiri Aşere (on emirden) bahsettikçe siz İslamın bu on iki emrini göz önüne getirin. (DD, p. 24)… Müellif Hıristiyanlığın bu cephesini tebarüz ettirmekle Hıristiyanlığın değil, fakat İslamiyetin tesiri altında kalmıştır… İman ile beraber ameli ahlaka değer vermek İslamiyetin en bariz vasfıdır ve müellifin en fazla bu eser üzerinde durması, Dine Dönüşün daha fazla İslami bir hamlenin eseri olduğunu belirtmektedir. (DD, p. 27)… Görülüyor ki, müellif, dine, hakiki manasını vermek için daima İslamlaşmakta, fakat İslamiyeti bilmediği için bunun farkına varamamaktadır. (DD, p. 43)…

English translation:

As the author mentions the ten commandments, you envision the following twelve commandments of Islam…While making this aspect of Christianity clear, the author is under the influence of Islam not Christianity…Cherishing practical morality with faith is the most obvious feature of Islam and the fact that the author emphasizes this work most indicates that Return to Religion is more a result of an Islamic move… Obviously, the author constantly gets Islamic to give its real meaning to religion but is unaware of this fact as he does not know Islam… (translation by the author)

These additions in the form of supplementary notes reflect Doğrul’s framing strategies clearly, as shown in the example above. Through his explications offering information on the history of Islam and Islamic ethics, and quotations of some verses from the Qur’an, Doğrul regularly instructs his readers about the target culture religion and religious tradition. He rewrites the original by totally modifying its religious core and appropriating it according to Islamic ideology. In parallel with his paratextual framing, Doğrul has the same approach while translating the main text, where he consistently replaces the words and references to Christianity with their equivalents in Islam or omits those parts totally if it is impossible to substitute the reference. All throughout this translation, Doğrul is very visible and sounds more powerful than the author.

The back cover of the translation presents a list of Doğrul’s works in Turkish and his translations from Arabic and Persian. This list is a part of framing and reveals Doğrul’s habitus and how he was involved with the religious tradition, history of religion and religious education in the target culture. As it is shown through case analyses, Doğrul’s selections and interventions as a translator serve some ideological purposes. He plays a major role in the initiation of his translations and explicitly attempts to generate public opinions about the content of the source texts.

5. Conclusion

The analysis of agency reveals the complex relationships between agents, their environments and other driving forces underlying their strategies and decisions. It sheds light on various dynamics affecting agents, who take different positions and attain different types of capital through their actions and practices in a field of cultural production. The subject of this study is a complicated example of agency, where the agent is both a translator and a journalist-politician who overtly reflects his ideological stance in his translations. As a translator, Doğrul introduces a new genre and literature to the Turkish culture, that is the self-help manuals and the ethical guidelines they promote, and that he actively initiates his translations is explicitly stated in his works. Doğrul’s prefaces and notes offer abundant evidence of his agency, unveiling his discursive role as a translator, decision maker and initiator in the translation processes. Doğrul’s political identity is also powerfully implicated in his paratextual additions, and he seems to have promoted a certain nationalist and religious ideology. As the analysis of his habitus shows, Doğrul’s professional activities in different domains, that is, in journalism, politics and translation, mutually enhance each other, and foster his reputation as well as his social and cultural capital attained in these fields. That he was a very strong figure of his era is evident in his comments in the prefaces and notes, where he also mentions his relations with some dignitaries. Doğrul’s voice generally evokes a political authority in these paratexts, making frequent warnings and offering advice to his readers. Doğrul’s dominance as a translator and agent of translation is also proved by the fact that he rendered two different translations of the same source text for two different publishing houses. Another clear indication of Doğrul’s agency and visibility is his photo that appears under the photo of the author on the cover of one of his renditions.

Doğrul’s framing strategies clearly reflect his habitus. The most important stages in the formation of his habitus, that is, his writing experiences as a journalist and his diplomatic practices as a politician, manifest themselves in his translation decisions. Likewise, his statements and interferences imply that Doğrul’s translations aim to serve a social and political mission and to generate public opinions. Doğrul handles the differences between the source culture and target culture through selective appropriations, that is, additions and omissions in his translations, mainly under the influence of a nationalist and religious ideology. In some cases, Doğrul adopts such an interventionist approach that the religious narrative underlying the English self-help manuals is totally altered and reframed with an Islamic ideology. Doğrul not only endorses certain political viewpoints in his translations, but also frequently interferes with the information in the source materials. All in all, he uses each and every opportunity to instruct his readers about the target culture norms based on the religious tradition, which again underlines his agency in the process of translation.

Along with the critical explanatory framework provided through the exploration of the translator’s habitus, the analysis of paratexts constitutes an essential part of this study, and has further implications beyond the Turkish context, regarding the agency-oriented translation research. First of all, prefaces and translators’ notes have been the most commonly analyzed types of paratexts so far (Tahir-Gürçağlar 2013: 91; cited in Batchelor 2018: 26), which is also the case in this study, as they are the most revealing parts in terms of agency. Secondly, most research about paratexts has focused on literary translations (Batchelor 2018: 39), and by examining the translations of self-help books, this study provides the paratextual analysis of a non-literary genre in translation. Thirdly, as well as drawing attention to the importance of paratexts in translation research, some researchers have also questioned the legitimacy of paratextual information and the role of translators in their creation. It has also been argued “translators are often marginalized with regard to paratextual publishing decisions” (Batchelor 2018: 39). This study draws attention to a counter example in a non-literary genre, where the translator seems quite actively involved in the paratextual publishing processes and appears very visible in the paratexts. With a similar line of thought, some scholars have approached to the findings of paratextual analyses more cautiously, and claimed that despite their mediating aspects, paratexts can only “show how translations are presented but not how they are” and their analysis cannot replace textual examination (Tahir-Gürçağlar 2011: 115; cited in Batchelor 2018: 26). Paratexts are regarded as a “rather poor indicator of the strategies employed by translators” (Lopes 2012: 130; qtd. in Batchelor 2018: 26). By depicting a case of paratextual framing that indicates the translator’s strategies unequivocally, this study demonstrates that paratextual materials can offer essential information regarding translators’ agency. The case analyses show that paratexts can even reveal more about how the translations are than what the translated texts indicate themselves. This becomes especially clear when paratextual examination is verified with sociological exploration. As illustrated in the analyses of his translations, Doğrul’s paratextual interferences are more influential in shaping his works than his translation strategies and decisions within the texts.

In conclusion, this study does not only introduce an agent-translator, namely Ömer Rıza Doğrul, from translation history in Turkey but also exemplifies an extreme and explicit form of translators’ agency through sociological interrogation and case analysis. By combining a sociological inquiry employing the concept of “habitus” with paratextual exploration through the notion of “framing,” the study illustrates that these two methodological approaches reinforce each other as complementary ways of analyzing translators’ agency.

About the author(s)

Fazilet Akdoğan Özdemir is Assistant Professor of Translation Studies at Boğaziçi University, İstanbul Turkey. Her doctoral study examined the translation history of the success-based self-help literature in Turkish from the 1930s to the 1990s, focusing on the habitus, trajectories and translating/writing practices of the leading translators/authors. Her research interests include translation sociology, history of translation in Turkey, philosophy translations and the Turkish translations of self-help narratives. Dr. Akdoğan Özdemir is also a freelance translator and translation editor.

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Abstract

This article aims to investigate the role that translation officials played in the Qing dynasty (1636/1644-1912). Drawing from Han-language Qing historical records as well as secondary sources, the authors present the case of a non-Han dynasty embedding translation officials in almost all governmental agencies, and argue that such a strategic choice was a direct result of the non-Han dynasty’s reliance on translation officials in the process of State governance. This article also explains why the traditional system of translation officials implemented by previous Han Chinese dynasties underwent a dramatic change in the rule of non-Han dynasties and illustrates the impact this exerted on the status of translation officials.

Keywords: translation history, translation officials, government agencies, state governance, Qing dynasty

1. Introduction

Koskinen claims that the first step of governing by translation, that is, “using translating as a technique for ‘directing the conduct of the governed’ in multilingual government” (2014: 481), is to decide the governing language as well as how and to what extent translation is going to be institutionalized, which in turn implies a decision on the language and translation policies. However, ad hoc government institutions must be established prior to implementing linguistic or translation policies. Translators, as the main agents undertaking translation tasks, ought to be included in these ad hoc institutions. Scholars have investigated the roles that translators have played in the evolution of human thought, including inventing alphabets, enriching languages, encouraging the emergence of national literatures, disseminating knowledge, propagating religions, transmitting cultural values, writing dictionaries, and making histories (Delisle and Woodsworth 2012). Yet, the role that translators have played in the broad realm of State governance throughout history, and especially in dynastic China, has not received enough scholarly attention.

According to “Royal Regulations” (Wang zhi王制), included in The Classic of Rites (Liji 禮記), also known as Book of Rites, government translation posts in China date back to approximately 1000 BCE. “Existing Chinese translation histories all quote the Liji [Book of Rites] as the earliest record for translation posts (Ji, Xiang, Diti, and Yi) in the Zhou dynasty” (Hung 2005: 77). Under the policy of shutongwen,[1] Chinese, intended as the Han dialect, was regarded as the sole national language and Han script – what we now refer to as Chinese characters – as the exclusive national script of the entire nation. The ease of internal communication, or “interlingual communication” (ibid.: 75), that is to say communication among different domestic ethnic groups, was not a priority for the successive governors in the Han Chinese dynasties; therefore, translation activities were mainly relegated to the service of foreign affairs (ibid.:77) and domestic translation was seldom perceived as necessary.

To understand the historical situation, we must first come to grips with the fact that there were two kinds of governments in historic China: 1) Han-Chinese dynasties; 2) dynasties founded by foreigners. In the former type (such as Han, Tang, Song and Ming), translation work was related exclusively to foreign affairs; in the latter type (such as Liao, Jin, Yuan and Qing), a very substantial amount of administrative work involved translation because these governments had bilingual or multi-lingual policies. This meant that the government structures reflected the difference in translation needs and translator deployment. (ibid.: 76-7).

In other words, in previous Han-dynasties, due to the impact of the tongwen policy, the ease of internal communication was beyond the consideration of the governors, and the posts of translation officials were mainly under the departments of protocol and foreign affairs. For instance, there were three kinds of translation officials in the Han dynasty (202 BCE-220 CE): Director of Interpreting Prefects for Envoys from Surrendered States (jiuyiling 九譯令),[2] a subordinate of the Supervisor of Dependent States (dianshuguo 典屬國);[3] Director of Interpreting Prefects for Envoys from Vassal States (yiguanling 譯官令),[4] a subordinate of the Court for Diplomatic Receptions of Chamberlain for Dependencies (dahonglu 大鴻臚);[5] and Chief of Interpreters (yizhang 譯長), a eunuch responsible for greeting and assisting foreign envoys in court audiences, whose departmental affiliation was “protocol at court audiences for foreign envoys” (ibid.: 77). The Tang dynasty (618-907) witnessed the establishment of two types of translation officials, namely the official translators (yiyu 譯語) belonging to the Court of Dependencies also known as Court of State Ceremonial or Court of Diplomatic Receptions (honglusi 鴻臚寺) and the translators of foreign letters/writings, also known as fanshu yiyu (蕃書譯語),[6] in the Secretariat (zhongshu sheng 中書省), which was a department for making and drafting ordinances. Fanshu yiyu were “unranked functionaries” (ibid.) within the department of “foreign affairs” (ibid.). In the Song dynasty (960-1279), the Song government was often at war with the Khitans, Jurchens, Mongols, and Tangut people in the northern region. Interpreters were essential for negotiating with these peoples. Therefore, the government set the translation post of Interpreter-clerk (yiyu tongshi 譯語通事) in the Office for Tribute Envoys (sifang gongfeng shi 四方貢奉使) to overview interpreting between Han Chinese and foreign languages (Hsiao 1997: 35). In the Ming dynasty (1636/1644-1912), interpreters (tongshi 通事) and apprentice translators (yizi sheng譯字生) were embedded in the Interpreters Institute (huitong guan 會同館), a department of foreign affairs, and in the Translators Institute (siyi guan 四譯館),[7] an institute dedicated to the training of translators in foreign affairs (Hung 2005: 78).

Hung (1999: 225) argues that “the Chinese dynastic histories show that translation officials were under departments of protocol, and were never important posts.” It is true that translation officials in the Chinese dynasties were always in less important posts due to the fact that Han culture was historically regarded as superior and that the “mainstream Chinese intellectuals never considered it their duty to learn about the languages and cultures of other peoples in the region” (ibid.: 224).

This phenomenon, however, was disrupted in the foreign dynasties, that is, dynasties established by non-Han ruling groups.[8] In the alien regimes, as they are defined by Franke and Twitchett (2008), the ruling group maintained its own cultural identity while ruling over a multiethnic state including a large number of Han Chinese subjects, and controlled large territories that had long been ruled by the Han people. As argued by Sinor (1982: 176),

a powerful people will often impose its language on others, either by sheer force or, more often and more efficiently, by the prestige of its culture and by the material advantages attached to its knowledge.

In a multilingual and multiethnic context, the emperors of the non-Han dynasties saw it necessary to adopt ad hoc measures to implement effective governance. Therefore, under the rule of ethnic minorities, the political importance of the ruling group’s language noticeably increased. Nevertheless, the majority of the population was still ethnically Han; therefore, the new governors had to adapt their governance to the multilingualism of their territories. As Franke and Twitchett (2008: 30) emphasize, “the problems of governing and administering a polyethnic society are inevitably linked with the linguistic situation.” In the circumstance of multilingualism, the foreigner officials in the bureaucracy admittedly had to rely on interpreters and translators if their Chinese language skills were not sufficient. Likewise, those Han officials who were not proficient in the language of the ruling group also had to rely on interpreters and translators to communicate with the emperor as well as their foreign colleagues.

In other words, the ruling group in the alien regimes was keen to maintain its own cultural identity. At the same time, it had to rule over a multiethnic State in which a large part of the population was ethnically Han Chinese. In this context, the rulers were inclined to learn from the governance experience of previous Han Chinese dynasties because, while wanting to preserve their cultural identity and political status, they lacked practical governance experience within territories mostly inhabited by the Hans. Translation thus became an essential way to govern and administer a polyethnic and polyphonic empire as well as to maintain the language and cultural identities of the ruling group. In such a multilingual scenario, officials in the bureaucracy relied largely on interpreters and translators. In addition, the communication between the ruling class and the governed also relied on translation. All non-Han Chinese dynasties had translation officials embedded in different levels of the governmental departments.

The methods of State governance in the non-Han dynasties were quite different from the traditional systems of the previous Han dynasties, and their translation practices were no exception. This was exemplified by the posts of translation officials in governmental agencies. For instance, in the Yuan dynasty (1271-1368),[9] in order to facilitate domestic communication among peoples belonging to a different ethnicity, different kinds of translation officials including bičikeči (clercs, scribes, and secretaries), yishi (translator-clerks), tongshi (interpreter-clerks), kelemurci (Mongolian word for translators and interpreters), and shuxie (scribes or secretariat drafters), were embedded in almost all governmental agencies. This system of translation officials was inherited and developed in the Qing dynasty, which was also governed by a non-Han ruling class, namely the Manchus.

Compared to the Yuan dynasty, the categories of translation officials in the Qing dynasty were more varied. There were dorgi bithesi (translators and scribes in the Grand Secretariat), bithesi (translators and scribes designed for the Eight Banners),[10] geren giltusi (a scholastic title during the Ming and Qing dynasty which means “all good men of virtue”), ubaliyambure hafan (officials responsible for translating), and tongshi (interpreters).

The translation officials in the Qing dynasty have drawn much scholarly attention. Numerous scholars focus on the basic historical facts of the translation officials in the Qing dynasty. For example, some scholars in the field of Qing historical studies have explored, among others, the figure of bithesi (e.g. Yang 1984; Li 1994; Shen 2006a; Zhao 2006; Shi and Wei 2015; Wang 2015a), geren giltusi (e.g. Zou 2010, 2013; Wang 2015b), and qixinlang (e.g. Shen 2006b). Some scholars (e.g. Yeh 2017; Shi 2018; Song 2019) have also examined the quota of different translation posts. Based on these studies, this article sets out to review the role that translation officials played in the Qing dynasty. There is an important scholarship, especially in Chinese, on Qing translation policies and/or Manchu-Mongolian translation. Here, in particular, we would like to mention Bagen 巴根 (2004) and Sun Zhongqiang 孫中強 (2017) . The former makes use of Manchu and Mongolian historical sources to examine in detail the institutional arrangements of translation institutions, staffing and talent cultivation, while the latter consciously evaluates the translation policies of the Qing Dynasty from the perspectives of language planning and ethnic integration. These two scholars particularly highlight translation as an important aspect of linguistic and ethnic policies. This paper sets out to review the positions responsible for translations in the Qing government and their attributes, as well as the content of their work. As will be argued, these translators were indispensable in facilitating communication within the empire, maintaining imperial government, ethnic policy, and even protecting the privileges of elite groups.

As far as historical materials are concerned, this paper focuses on Han Chinese documents, supplemented by observations on the Manchu language archives from secondary sources, including the Veritable Records (Shilu 實錄) of the rulers of the Qing dynasty or the Collected Statutes of the Qing Dynasty (Da-Qing huidian 大清會典), which is the largest jurisdictional corpus on administrative matters compiled during the Qing period.[11] The Qing dynasty entered Beijing in 1644 and ruled China proper from 1644 to 1912. This was the period when the Qing government ruled the vast Central Plains, mainly inhabited by the Hans, and Chinese was already the main target language for the Qing government to maintain imperial communication. Many of the translation positions and jobs can be analyzed and reviewed from Chinese language historical archives. In addition, the preservation of Chinese language translation activities and related archival records helped to consolidate the legitimacy of the empire. Therefore, by focusing on Chinese language historical materials, this paper can provide a preliminary clarification of the overall situation of translation activities in the Qing Empire.

On a final note, we attempted to identify and analyze written historical records of official history due to the fact that evidence about language policy in imperial China comes from more systematically collected records in standard histories across the dynasties. As Lung (2011, XIII) argues, “the limitation of these official histories has, nevertheless, been that they were largely commissioned by the ruling dynasties and therefore could be taken to be suspect in their descriptive honesty.” “Historical filtering undoubtedly darkens the glass we are looking through” (Pym 2014, 85). Even so, the Chinese voluminous written compilation of histories from various sources in the tradition of Chinese historiography provides relatively complete accounts of people and events throughout the five thousand years of Chinese history. However, such a historiographical method is to be adopted with the due caveats and cannot be said to be without pitfalls, yet it is a widely used methodology in Chinese historiography (e.g., Hung 1999; Lung 2009; Lotze 2016; Chi 2019).

2. Duties and distribution of translation officials in the Qing dynasty

According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, “the Qing dynasty was first established in 1636 by the Manchus to designate their regime in Manchuria (now the Northeast region of China). In 1644 the Chinese capital at Beijing was captured by the rebel leader Li Zicheng, and desperate Ming dynasty officials called on the Manchus for aid. The Manchus took advantage of the opportunity to seize the capital and establish their own dynasty in China. By adopting the Ming form of government and continuing to employ Ming officials, the Manchus pacified the Chinese population.”[12] In 1644, Manchu troops entered Beijing, and the Shunzhi Emperor[13] (r. 1644-1661), who was then six years old, ascended the throne. Prior to his enthronement, Nurhaci[14] (r. 1559-1626) had set out to establish an empire which allowed the co-participation of Han Chinese and Mongols. After Nurhaci’s death, Huang Taiji (1592-1643), formerly referred to as Abahai in Western literature and father of the Shunzhi Emperor (r. 1643-1661), built on the accomplishments of his father and consolidated the conceptual and institutional foundation for a Qing empire by drawing heavily on Ming traditions.[15] Therefore, numerous officials from the former Ming dynasty (1368-1644) were recruited in the governmental agencies of the Qing dynasty (Xu 2009: 17).

In this context, considering the linguistic differences between Han Chinese and Manchu, how did Manchus and Han officials communicate? How did the Manchus come to rule the vast territories of the former Ming dynasty? These became urgent issues for the Qing emperor to tackle. Embedding translation officials, such as dorgi bithesi, bithesi, geren giltusi, ubaliyambure hafan and tongshi (interpreters), at different levels of governmental institutions was thus perceived as one of the ways to solve this problem. Among the translation officials, tongshi was the only translational post in charge of interpreting. It was also known as tongguan, tongshiguan, or tongshi sheren (通事舍人 Secretarial Receptionist). Since there was no main difference between the duties of tongshi in the Qing dynasty and in the previous dynasties, we will only analyze the duties and distribution of other translation officials.

2.1 Duties and distribution of Dorgi bithesi

In Manchu, which was one of the official languages of the Qing dynasty, dorgi bithesi means “secretariat drafter.” Dorgi bithesi served as clerical workers in the Grand Secretariat, which was established in 1659, on the basis of the previous Ming system (Yeh 2017: 5). In the Collected Statutes of the Qing Dynasty, Era of Kangxi (Daqing huidian kangxi chao大清會典·康熙朝), it is recorded that,

Routine memorials submitted by all Yamen [the administrative office or residence of a local bureaucrat or mandarin in imperial China] and memorials submitted by all officials, if written in Manchu, should be endorsed by the Grand Academician together with Academicians prior to being presented to the emperor; if drafted solely in Chinese or Mongolian, they must be translated by dorgi bithesi [the translators and scribes in the Grand Secretariat]. They should be either translated completely or paraphrased by summarizing the main points. (The Grand Secretariat, in Collected Statutes of the Qing Dynasty, Era of Kangxi, Vol. 2; Isangga 2016: 8)[16]

Therefore, one main duty of dorgi bithesi was to translate official documents. The Collected Statutes of the Qing Dynasty, Era of Jiaqing (Qinding daqing huidian, jiaqing chao 欽定大清會典·嘉慶朝) records that the Chinese Documents Section was “responsible for receiving and sending the routine memorials submitted by the local officials and decide which one should be translated first according to the degree of urgency. The routine memorials written only in Chinese without a Manchu translation, should be translated into Manchu according to the summary of the Chinese version by the translation officials in this section” (Collected Statutes of the Qing Dynasty, Era of Jiaqing [Qinding daqing huidian, jiaqing chao 欽定大清會典·嘉慶朝], Vol.2; Tojin 1991: 70). After being translated, these documents would be transcribed by the Manchu Documents Section, and then handed over to the Registry, whence officials would send them out according to the degree of urgency. In addition, “the routine memorials submitted by the provinces, which were not drafted in Manchu, should be sent to the Grand Secretariat by the Office of Transmission (tongzheng shi 通政使). Then, the Grand Secretariat would hand such routine memorials over to the Chinese Documents Section to translate them into Manchu” (Collected Statutes of the Qing Dynasty [Qinding daqing huidian zeli 欽定大清會典則例], Vol. 2; Yūn too 1983: 4). The Mongolian Documents Section was in charge of translating from the other ethnic languages or languages of the tributary countries into Manchu.

According to Yeh (2017), there were three types of dorgi bithesi: Manchurian dorgi bithesi, Mongolian dorgi bithesi, and Han Chinese dorgi bithesi. These three types of dorgi bithesi were clerical workers in the Manchu Documents Section, the Mongolian Documents Section and the Chinese Documents Section (Collected Statutes of the Qing Dynasty [Qinding daqing huidian zeli 欽定大清會典則例], Vol. 2; Yūn too 1983: 3). Based on the records in the Daqing wuchao huidian (大清五朝會典),[17] Yeh (2017: 5-6) counted the quota of different types of dorgi bithesi under the reigns of different Qing emperors: there were 107 dorgi bithesi (75 Manchurian, 19 Mongolian and 13 Han Chinese) in the Kangxi Emperor’s reign (1661-1722); there were 88 dorgi bithesi (64 Manchurian, 16 Mongolian and 8 Han Chinese) in the Yongzheng Emperor’s reign (1723-1735). Since the Qianlong Emperor’s reign (1735-1795), there were 94 dorgi bithesi (64 Manchurian, 16 Mongolian and 8 Han Chinese) with 46 additional aisilambi dorgi bithesi (40 Manchurian and 6 Mongolian). From the Jiaqing Emperor’s reign (1796-1820) to the Guangxu Emperor’s reign (1875-1908), there were 106 dorgi bithesi (90 Manchurian, 18 Mongolian and 8 Han Chinese) with 54 extra aisilambi[18] dorgi bithesi (48 Manchurian and 6 Mongolian).

The number of dorgi bithesi during the Yongzheng Emperor’s reign decreased significantly from 107 to 88. This is due to the fact that in 1699 “Guo Jincheng (郭金城 1660-1700), a royal scribe (yushi 御史), submitted a memorial to suggest that the redundant staff of the administrative offices should be cut” (Kurene 2009, T07248). That is when the governmental agencies began to shed workers (Yeh 2017: 6). In addition, since the Council of State (junjichu 軍機處) was established in 1730, part of the translation tasks were undertaken by the Council of State (Zhao 1992: 26). From the beginning of the Qianlong Emperor’s reign (1736-1796), the number of dorgi bithesi began to increase due to the appointment of Manchurian aisilambi dorgi bithesi and Mongolian aisilambi dorgi bithesi (Yeh 2017: 6-7). According to the History Compiled on Imperial Command (Huangchao wenxian tongkao 皇朝文獻通考), an administrative history compiled on imperial command between 1747 and 1784, in 1738 at the request of Ortai[19] (1677-1745), a Manchurian aisilambi dorgi bithesi was appointed for the first time; the reason is explained in the following record:

[The third year of the Qianlong Emperor’s reign] The Grand Academicians including Ortai submitted a memorial to the emperor: there are 72 Manchurian dorgi bithesi in our Yamen [the administrative office or residence of a local bureaucrat or mandarin in imperial China], nine from each banner [Eight Banners]. Of them, 40 in the Manchu Documents Section are in charge of the transcription of the Manchu imperial edicts, patents by command conferring titles of honor of officials below rank 5, palace memorials and routine memories […]. The other 32 in the Chinese Documents Section are responsible for the translation of the imperial edicts, palace memorials, and routine memories. With so much translation work, the existing dorgi bithesi in the Manchu and Chinese documents sections do not suffice. At the request of the Grand Ministers, 24 Manchurian aisilambi dorgi bithesi are attached to the Manchu Documents Section. Conventionally, these posts should be selected through translation examination from tribute students and national university students, official students and unofficial students by our Yamen together with the senior officials. 16 Manchurian aisilambi dorgi bithesi are added to the Chinese Documents Section. Conventionally, these posts should also be selected through translation examination from registered translators by our Yamen together with the senior officials in the Ministry of Personnel. (Selection, Vol. 50, in Huangchao wenxian tongkao; Ji 1983a: 15-16)

In 1744, the ninth year of the Qianlong Emperor’s reign (1735-1795), six Mongolian aisilambi dorgi bithesi were also attached to the Grand Secretariat (Authorized Records of the Eight Banners [Qinding baqi tongzh i欽定八旗通志],Vol. 51; in Tiyeboo 1983: 18; Yeh 2017: 7). Therefore, during the Qianlong Emperor’s reign, the number of dorgi bithesi increased to 140. Later, during the reigns of Jiaqing and Guangxu, the number reached 170, almost doubling compared to the amount during the reign of the Yongzheng Emperor. The increase of Manchurian dorgi bithesi, as illustrated in the previous record, not only demonstrates that the governors in the Qing dynasty attached great importance to translation,[20] but also seems to prove that the implemented system of translation officials was an effective method to maintain the interests and status of the banners, because only eight banners could be appointed as dorgi bithesi. However, this preliminary conclusion warrants further investigation of both primary and secondary sources to reach a more rigorous and comprehensive understanding.

2.2 Duties and distribution of Bithesi

Bithesi was a translation post designed for the banners. Only the Eight Banners, the Manchus in particular, could serve as bithesi. According to the Provisional History of the Qing Dynasty, “the ways the Manchus began a career in government service included examination, inheritance, donation, or evaluation. There was no difference with the Han people, except for the recruitment of bithesi” (Provisional History of the Qing Dynasty [Qingshi Gao 清史稿], Vol. 110; Zhao 1977: 3213). That is to say, “bithesi was a shortcut for the Manchus to work in governmental agencies.” (Provisional History of the Qing Dynasty [Qingshi Gao 清史稿], Vol. 114; Zhao 1977: 3265) In the early days of the Qing dynasty, the Grand Academicians such as Dahai (1595-1632), Erdeni (1592-1634), Sonin (1601-1667) were all military officials in the beginning (ibid.: 3265). With the mastery of the national script, they were granted the role of baksi [teacher], which was later renamed bithesi” (ibid.:3265). Therefore, bithesi was also known as a “place where civil servants can be cultivated and many senior officials once worked in this post” (Miscellaneous Discussions Whilst Listening to The Rain [Ting yu cong tan 聽雨叢談], Vol.1; Fuge 1984: 22).

The post of bithesi, formerly called baksi, was established during the Tianming Emperor’s reign (1616-1626) (Zhao 2006:59).[21] The first time it was referred to as bithesi was in 1629 (ibid.), when the Wenguan[22] (Literary Institute) was established (Shen 2006a: 58). In Veritable Records of Emperor Taizong (Daqing taizong huangdi shilu 大清太宗文皇帝實錄), it is recorded that,

The emperor ordered the scholar-officials to be divided into two groups. Dahai, who was a baksi, together with four bithesi, Ganglin, Sukai, Gûlmahûn and Tuobuqi were in charge of translating Chinese books. Kūrcan, who was also a baksi, that is a teacher, together with four bithesi, Wubashi, Zhasuga, Huqiu, and Zhanba were in charge of recording state affairs. (Veritable Records of the Qing Dynasty, Veritable Records of Emperor Taizong, Vol. 5, Ortai 1985: 70)

In 1629, both bithesi and baksi were used. Even so, here baksi only refers to the title which was granted by the emperor rather than common clerks. In 1631, Six Ministries were established (Shen 2006a: 58; Zhao 2006: 59). The status of bithesi was determined in the official system, consisting of Prince of the Third Rank or Beile (貝勒), Executive (Chengzheng 承政), Assistant or Vice Minister (Shilang 侍郎), Qixinlang (啟心郎, literally clerks who clarify thoughts or interpreters), Bithesi (筆帖式, translators and scribes designed for the Eight Banners), Zhangjing (章京, secretary [civil] or adjutant [military]), and Chairen (差人, yamen runners) (Zhao 2006: 59). At the same time, “it was stipulated that the title baksi would be renamed bithesi, and it should no longer be used, except for the position granted directly by the emperor” (System of Functioning Officials, part 1, in History Compiled on Imperial Command [Huangchao wenxian tongkao 皇朝文獻通考], Vol. 77; Ji 1983a: 14-15).

Li (1994: 90-91) argues that bithesi had three main duties: translation, transcription, and management of archives. In the Imperial Comprehensive Treatises (Huangchao tongzhi 皇朝通志) it is recorded that,

In all the Si [police office for a small area distant from a district town] and Yamen [the administrative office or residence of a local bureaucrat or mandarin in imperial China], there are Manchurian bithesi, Mongolian bithesi, and Han Chinese bithesi in charge of translating Manchu and Chinese memorials and official documents. It corresponds to the post of lingshi [clerks] and yishi [translators] in the Jin dynasty established by Jurchens, as well as the Mongolian bičikeči in the Yuan dynasty. The system of bithesi has inherited the system of lingshi [clerks] from the previous dynasties. Unlike the Tang and Song dynasties, in which the post was trivial, the distribution of bithesi is wide and there are numerous promotion opportunities. Therefore, compared to the previous dynasties, the position has acquired an unprecedented dignity. (Imperial Comprehensive Treatises, Vol. 64; Ji 1983b: 14-15）

Therefore, one of the main duties of bithesi was the translation of official documents from Chinese to Manchu, or vice versa. The Provisional History of the Qing Dynasty records that there were translation bithesi, transcription bithesi, and aisilambi bithesi (Provisional History of the Qing Dynasty [Qingshi Gao 清史稿], Vol. 110; Zhao 1977: 3213).[23] According to the Imperial Comprehensive Treatises, we can see that in terms of family background and ethnic origin, bithesi could be divided into Manchus, Mongols, and Chinese Armies. In addition, there were also imperial clansmen serving as bithesi.

Bithesi were to be found in almost all governmental agencies. “The posts of bithesi were attached to all departments at the capital [Beijing], the five ministries in the old capital [Shenyang], as well as offices lead by the Generals, Commander-in-chief and Vice Commander-in-chief” (Provisional History of the Qing Dynasty [Qingshi Gao 清史稿], Vol. 110; Zhao 1977: 3213). As for the number of bithesi in different governmental agencies, scholars hold different opinions. On the basis of the Provisional History of the Qing Dynasty and History Compiled on Imperial Command, Zhao (2006:65-67) calculates that there were more than 1650 bithesi. Shi and Wei (2015:48-50) calculate that there were 1571 bithesi based on historical records such as the Provisional History of the Qing Dynasty, History Compiled on Imperial Command and Precedents and Regulations Supplementary to the Collected Statutes of the Great Qing Dynasty (Daqing huidian shili 大清會典事例), while Yeh (2017: 7-8) argues that the number of bithesi was 1919 during the Kangxi Emperor’s reign, 1802 during the Yongzheng Emperor’s reign, 1901 during the Qianlong Emperor’s reign, 2039 during the Jiaqing Emperor’s reign, and 2029 during the Guangxu Emperor’s reign. Scholars draw different conclusions because they adopt different statistical approaches. Regardless of the adopted method, the above statistics show that there were at least 1500 bithesi: a number which was larger than the total number of translation officials in the Yuan dynasty,[24] for example, another non-Han dynasty. Therefore, it is reasonable to say that as one indispensable element of the bureaucratic system, bithesi were embedded in all the central and local governments of the Qing dynasty. They had formed a large interconnected group, which was in charge of translation prior to decision-making, transcription after the decision-making, and the daily management of archives (Shi and Wei 2015: 47).

The status and recruitment of bithesi are documented in the Provisional History of the Qing Dynasty as follows: 

[Bithesi] rank from 7A to 9B.[25] Bithesi may begin their career in government service by inheritance, donation, evaluation, and examination. All persons including civil and military provincial graduates of translation, tribute and national university students, civil and military government students of translation, official students and unofficial students, courageous guards and unassigned bannermen, imperial armies and lingcui [also known as bošokū, the lowest ranking banner officers] and ulin i niyalma can take the examination. The candidate provincial graduates and tribute students may be granted rank 7A and 7B; government students and national university students may be granted rank 8A and 8B; official and unofficial students, courageous guards and unassigned bannermen may be granted rank 9A and 9B. The established vacancies of administrative aide in the Six Ministries are 140, among which, 85 are for the Manchus and the Mongols. Therefore, these vacancies are easily filled. It only takes a few years for bithesi to be promoted to administrative aides. (Selection Officials, Vol. 110, in the Provisional History of the Qing Dynasty; Zhao 1977: 3213-14)

As for the duties of bithesi, different scholars hold different views. Yang (1984: 87) notes that bithesi played a significant role in the decision-making system of the Qing dynasty. Yang argues that bithesi helped supervise the words and deeds of local officials, investigated their loyalty to the central government, and then promptly reported to the emperor. On the other hand, they were directly stationed in the prefectures and yamen [the administrative office or residence of a local bureaucrat or mandarin in imperial China] of all provinces and the main armies in the war zones to follow the army, inspect and supervise the implementation of the central decision-making; then they transmitted the military information to the top decision-makers through the communication system (ibid.).

2.3 Duties and distribution of Geren giltusi

In Manchu the noun phrase Geren giltusi, also known in Chinese as shujishi (庶吉士), means “all good men of virtue” or “a host of fortunate scholars”. This post was installed in 1385 by Emperor Taizu (1559-1626) in the Ming dynasty (Wu 1997: 33). The title shujishi was granted solely to the metropolitan graduates (jinshi 進士), that is those intellectuals who passed the imperial exams (選舉二，志46，Vol. 70, History of Ming Dynasty; Wu 1997: 33). The system of shujishi was followed by the Qing dynasty. In the Ming dynasty, shujishi had nothing to do with translation work. This post was regarded as a rigorous training program to prepare future high-ranking civil officials for political office so that persons who took these posts would be capable of serving as prime ministers (Wu 1997: 35). Thus, to some extent, the shujishi system, as a pre-service training program for senior officials in the bureaucracy, reflected the pinnacle of the imperial examination system in late imperial China (Wu 1997: 33). In the Qing dynasty, since the selection of candidates for the shujishi was dominated by Han metropolitan graduates, and the Manchu emperors expected these Han metropolitan graduates to be fluent in Manchu, the shujishi system in that period was not only the inheritance of the Ming ruling system, but also served as a tool by the Manchu rulers to popularize the Manchu language among Han officials, bring together Han intellectuals, and promote Manchu-Chinese communication (Wang 2015: 37). It was only in this way that shujishi had the function of translation.