Assignment 2 is available for you now.  It is located in week 7 (7-1). 

Instructions: 

1. Read all external resources for week 7. 
2. What role does translation play in Arabization? Address the question in a 500-word essay in a Word document, citing unique examples with sources.
3. Use the SDL library. 
4. References are mandatory

within 10 days 

2001c8c5coverv05b

In Other Words
In Other Words is the defi nitive coursebook for students studying translation.
Assuming no knowledge of foreign languages, it offers both a practical and theo-
retical guide to translation studies, and provides an important foundation for training
professional translators.
Drawing on modern linguistic theory, this best-selling text provides a solid base
to inform and guide the many key decisions trainee translators have to make. Each
chapter offers an explanation of key concepts, identifi es potential sources of trans-
lation diffi culties related to those concepts, and illustrates various strategies for
resolving these diffi culties. Authentic examples of translated texts from a wide
variety of languages are examined, and practical exercises and further reading are
included at the end of each chapter.
The second edition has been fully revised to refl ect recent developments in the
fi eld and new features include:
● A new chapter that addresses issues of ethics and ideology, in response to
increased pressures on translators and interpreters to demonstrate accounta-
bility and awareness of the social impact of their decisions.
● Examples and exercises from new genres such as audiovisual translation,
scientifi c translation, oral interpreting, website translation, and news/media
translation.
● New project-driven exercises designed to support MA dissertation work.
● Updated references and further reading.
● A companion website featuring further examples and tasks.
Written by Mona Baker, a leading international fi gure in the fi eld, this key text is the
essential coursebook for any student of translation studies.
Mona Baker is Professor of Translation Studies at the University of Manchester,
UK. She is co-founder and editorial director of St. Jerome Publishing which
specializes in translation studies. She is also co-Vice President of the International
Association of Translation and Intercultural Studies (IATIS).

In Other Words
A coursebook on translation
Second edition
Mona Baker

First published 1992
by Routledge
This edition published 2011
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 1992, 2011 Mona Baker
The right of Mona Baker to be identifi ed as author of this work has been asserted
by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized
in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or
hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Baker, Mona.
In other words : a coursebook on translation / Mona Baker. – [2nd ed.].
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Translating and interpreting. I. Title.
P306.B25 2011
418′.02–dc22
2010031445
ISBN: 978-0-415-46753-7 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-415-46754-4 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-203-83292-9 (ebk)
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2011.
To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s
collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.
ISBN 0-203-83292-2 Master e-book ISBN

To Ken

Contents
List of fi gures xi
List of tables xii
Preface to the second edition xiii
Preface to the fi rst edition xv
Acknowledgements xvii
1 Introduction 1
1.1 About the organization of this book 4
1.2 Examples, back-translations and the languages of illustration 6
Suggestions for further reading 8
Note 8
2 Equivalence at word level 9
2.1 The word in different languages 9
2.1.1 What is a word? 9
2.1.2 Is there a one-to-one relationship between word and meaning? 10
2.1.3 Introducing morphemes 10
2.2 Lexical meaning 11
2.2.1 Propositional vs expressive meaning 11
2.2.2 Presupposed meaning 12
2.2.3 Evoked meaning 13
2.3 The problem of non-equivalence 15
2.3.1 Semantic fi elds and lexical sets – the segmentation of
experience 16
2.3.2 Non-equivalence at word level and some common strategies
for dealing with it 18
Exercises 44
Suggestions for further reading 47
Notes 49

viii IN OTHER WORDS
3 Equivalence above word level 51
3.1 Collocation 52
3.1.1 Collocational range and collocational markedness 54
3.1.2 Collocation and register 56
3.1.3 Collocational meaning 57
3.1.4 Some collocation-related pitfalls and problems in translation 58
3.2 Idioms and fi xed expressions 67
3.2.1 Idioms, fi xed expressions and the direction of translation 68
3.2.2 The interpretation of idioms 69
3.2.3 The translation of idioms: diffi culties 71
3.2.4 The translation of idioms: strategies 75
Exercises 86
Suggestions for further reading 90
Notes 91
4 Grammatical equivalence 92
4.1 Grammatical vs lexical categories 93
4.2 The diversity of grammatical categories across languages 95
4.2.1 Number 96
4.2.2 Gender 99
4.2.3 Person 104
4.2.4 Tense and aspect 108
4.2.5 Voice 112
4.3 A brief note on word order 120
4.4 Introducing text 121
4.4.1 Text vs non-text 121
4.4.2 Features of text organization 123
Exercises 124
Suggestions for further reading 127
Notes 129
5 Textual equivalence: thematic and information structures 131
5.1 A Hallidayan overview of information fl ow 133
5.1.1 Thematic structure: theme and rheme 133
5.1.2 Information structure: given and new 156
5.2 The Prague School position on information fl ow: functional
sentence perspective 170
5.2.1 Linear arrangement and thematic status in FSP 173
5.2.2 Linear arrangement and marked structures in FSP 174

CONTENTS ix
5.2.3 The tension between word order and communicative function:
a problem in translation? 175
5.2.4 Suggested strategies for minimizing linear dislocation 176
Exercises 181
Suggestions for further reading 186
Notes 187
6 Textual equivalence: cohesion 190
6.1 Reference 190
6.2 Substitution and ellipsis 196
6.3 Conjunction 200
6.4 Lexical cohesion 210
Exercises 223
Suggestions for further reading 227
Notes 228
7 Pragmatic equivalence 230
7.1 Coherence 230
7.1.1 Coherence vs cohesion 230
7.1.2 Is coherence a feature of text or situation? 231
7.2 Coherence and processes of interpretation: implicature 234
7.3 Coherence, implicature and translation strategies 239
7.3.1 The conventional meanings of words and structures and the
identity of references 240
7.3.2 The Co-operative Principle and its maxims 244
7.3.3 The context, linguistic or otherwise, of the utterance 249
7.3.4 Other items of background knowledge 255
7.3.5 The availability of all relevant items falling under the
previous headings 259
Exercises 263
Suggestions for further reading 270
Notes 271
8 Beyond equivalence: ethics and morality 274
8.1 Ethics and morality 275
8.2 Professionalism, codes of ethics and the law 283
8.3 The ethical implications of linguistic choices 286
8.4 Concluding remarks 290
Exercises 290
Suggestions for further reading 296
Notes 298

x IN OTHER WORDS
Glossary 300
References 305
Name index 323
Language index 327
Subject index 329

Figures
Figure 1, Chapter 2 Panel from Tronchet’s Jean-Claude Tergal
and its Italian translation, Domenico Tergazzi 32
Figure 2, Chapter 2 Lipton Yellow Label tea packet for Arab market 44
Figure 3, Chapter 2 Trados advertisement 45
Figure 4, Chapter 2 Screen shot from Sizism Awareness Campaign
video 46
Figure 5, Chapter 3 Title of article in New Scientist 74
Figure 6, Chapter 3 Original version of Manchester Museum of
Science and Industry leafl et 79
Figure 7, Chapter 3 French translation of Manchester Museum of
Science and Industry leafl et 80
Figure 8, Chapter 3 Italian translation of Manchester Museum of
Science and Industry leafl et 80
Figure 9, Chapter 3 Spanish translation of Manchester Museum of
Science and Industry leafl et 80
Figure 10, Chapter 3 German translation of Manchester Museum of
Science and Industry leafl et 80
Figure 11, Chapter 3 Japanese translation of Manchester Museum of
Science and Industry leafl et 81
Figure 12, Chapter 3 Original version of Wedgwood leafl et 84
Figure 13, Chapter 3 Japanese translation of Wedgwood leafl et 85
Figure 14, Chapter 6 Caption of article in Wonderlust Guide to
Jordan 2010 87
Figure 15, Chapter 6 ‘Not Beyond Compare’, National Geographic
Magazine, 1 March 2010, p. 26 215
Figure 16, Chapter 6 Homepage of Katha 226
Figure 17, Chapter 6 Sub-page of Katha web site 227

Tables
Table 1, Chapter 3 Unpredictability of collocational patterning 53
Table 2, Chapter 6 Recurrence and collocational cohesion
(adapted from Mason 1994/2010:88) 222

Preface to the second edition
This second edition of In Other Words comes at a time of increased visibility for
translators and interpreters. We only need to look at the extent of reporting on trans-
lation and interpreting in the media to appreciate how visible the profession and the
activity have become. News of translation and interpreting now pervades our lives:
whether it is the lack of qualifi ed court interpreters in a remote part of Australia or
Canada, or the fate of translators and interpreters in zones of military confl ict; the
launching of a national initiative to encourage translation in one region or another, or
the decision by the Turkish government to reinterpret Islam through a new trans-
lation of the Prophet’s sayings; the impending decision by the European Commission
to limit the translation of patents to three languages, or the release of a feminist
translation of the Bible. Every aspect of our social and political life is now heavily
mediated by translators and interpreters, hence their increased visibility. Translation
and interpreting are also now fi rmly part of the professional and academic land-
scape, with practically every country in the world boasting at least one association
that represents the interests of the profession and numerous universities offering
full-blown undergraduate and postgraduate programmes in the fi eld. Technological
advances in the past two decades have further had a major impact on the profession,
resolving old challenges and raising new ones. I have tried to take stock of at least
some of these developments in the choice of additional examples and exercises in
this new edition. A new chapter on ethics attempts to respond to increased pres-
sures on translators and interpreters to demonstrate accountability and awareness
of the tremendous social and political impact of their decisions.
Since the publication of the fi rst edition of In Other Words, fortune has continued
to favour me with exceptionally gifted and supportive colleagues, students and
family whose input into this new edition must be acknowledged. I am grateful to my
niece, Hanan Rihan, for support in preparing the text for publication. Colleagues,
students and former students at the School of Languages, Linguistics and Cultures,
University of Manchester, helped me check the analysis of various examples and
key in text that I could not type myself. Luis Pérez-González and James St. André
helped with Spanish, French and Chinese examples and Morven Beaton-Thome
with German examples. Jonathan Bunt provided extensive support with Japanese,
Zhao Wenjing with Chinese, and Sofi a Malamatidou with Greek.

xiv IN OTHER WORDS
I am particularly grateful to Moira Inghilleri, Julie Boéri and Sofi a Garcia for their
extremely helpful, critical comments on the new chapter on ethics, and to Monika
Bednarek and her students at the University of Sydney for critical feedback on
several chapters. From Routledge, Russell George, Sophie Jacques, Nadia
Seemungal, Anna Callander and Lizzie Clifford have been extremely supportive.
Their help is much appreciated.
John Sinclair’s departure in 2007 left a considerable vacuum in the lives of
those who were fortunate enough to know him and benefi t from his immense expe-
rience. This new edition of In Other Words remains as indebted to his teachings as
the fi rst one.
Mona Baker
June 2010

Preface to the fi rst edition
The idea of this book initially grew out of discussions with a number of colleagues, in
particular with Dr Kirsten Malmkjaer, formerly of the University of Birmingham and
currently at the Centre of English as an International Language, Cambridge. It has
been considerably refi ned during the course of last year through discussions with
postgraduate students at the University of Birmingham and students at the Brass-
house Centre and Birmingham Polytechnic.
I am exceptionally lucky to have been able to draw on the outstanding expertise
of a number of colleagues, both at the University of Birmingham and at COBUILD,
a lexical project run jointly by the University of Birmingham and Collins Publishers.
From COBUILD, Stephen Bullon, Alex Collier and Gwyneth Fox provided initial help
with Russian, German and Italian texts respectively. From the Shakespeare Institute,
Katsuhiko Nogami helped with Japanese and Shen Lin with Chinese texts. From the
School of Modern Languages, James Mullen (Russian), Bill Dodd (German), Paula
Chicken (French) and Elena Tognini-Bonelli (Italian) helped me work my way through
various texts and took the time to explain the structural and stylistic nuances of each
language. From the School of English, Tony Dudley-Evans and Sonia Zyngier
helped with Brazilian Portuguese and Wu Zu Min with Chinese. Tim Johns read and
commented on Chapter 5 (‘Thematic and information structures’) and kindly allowed
me to use much of his own data and report some of his fi ndings on the subject.
Chinese and Japanese texts required additional help to analyse; this was compe-
tently provided by Ming Xie (Chinese) and Haruko Uryu (Japanese), both at the
University of Cambridge. Lanna Castellano of the Institute of Translation and Inter-
preting read a substantial part of the draft manuscript and her encouraging comments
were timely and well appreciated.
I owe a special debt to three people in particular: Helen Liebeck, Philip King and
Michael Hoey. Helen Liebeck and Philip King are polyglots; both kindly spent many
hours helping me with a variety of languages and both read and commented on
Chapters 2, 3 and 4. Philip King also provided the Greek examples and helped with
the analysis of several texts.
Michael Hoey is an outstanding text linguist. In spite of his many commitments,
he managed to fi nd the time to read through the last three chapters and to provide
detailed comments on each of them. His help has been invaluable. It is indeed a

xvi IN OTHER WORDS
privilege to work with so distinguished a scholar who is also extremely generous with
his time and expertise.
Last but not least, I must acknowledge a personal debt to John Sinclair. John
has taught me, often during informal chats, most of what I know about language,
and his own work has always been a source of inspiration. But I am grateful, above
all, for his friendship and continued support.
Mona Baker
May 1991

Acknowledgements
The author and publishers wish to thank the following for permission to reproduce
the quotations and illustrations appearing in this book:
Autoworld at the Patrick Collection, 180 Lifford Lane, Kings Norton, Birmingham.
Reproduced with permission.
Brintons press release, reproduced with permission.
Euralex (European Association for Lexicography), PO Box 1017, Copenhagen,
Denmark for extracts from conference circular. Reproduced with permission.
Stephen W. Hawking, Bantam Press, Space Time Publications and World House
Inc. for permission to reproduce extracts from A Brief History of Time (1988) by
Stephen W. Hawking. © (UK and Commonwealth) Space Time Publications; ©
(USA) Bantam Books, a division of Bantam Doubleday, Dell Publishing Group,
Inc.; © 1988 (Japan) World House Inc. All rights reserved.
Το χρονικό του Χρόνου (Από τη Μεγάλη Εκρηξη έως τις μαύρες τρύπες) (1988)
Translated from English by Konstantinos Harakas, Katoptro Publications. Repro-
duced with permission.
Extracts from Autumn of Fury: The Assassination of Sadat © 1983 Mohammed
Heikal. Reprinted by permission of André Deutsch Ltd.
John Le Carré and Hodder & Stoughton for extracts from The Russia House
(1989).
Lipton Export Limited, Stanbridge Road, Leighton Buzzard, Beds.
Lonrho plc (now Lonmin plc) for extracts from A Hero from Zero.
The Minority Rights Group, 379 Brixton Road, London, for Lebanon, Minority Rights
Group Report by David McDowall, London 1983.
Morgan Matroc – This extract was taken in 1986 from Morgan Matroc which is now
Morgan Technical Ceramics.
Museum of Science and Industry promotional leafl et (Manchester), shot reproduced
in six languages: English, French, Italian, Spanish, German, Japanese. Repro-
duced with permission.
National Geographic Magazine, 1 March 2010, page 26.
Article in New Internationalist (January/February 2010, special issue on population
growth), authored by Vanessa Baird. Reprinted by kind permission of New Inter-
nationalist. Copyright New Internationalist www.newint.org

xviii IN OTHER WORDS
Picture of the title of an article from New Scientist, 5 February 2000, p. 41. Repro-
duced with permission.
The Project for the New American Century Statement of Principles, www.newamer-
icancentury.org/statementofprinciples.htm (last accessed 21 March 2010).
Trados advertisement, reproduced with permission from SDL Plc www.sdl.com
Panel from Didier Vasseur Tronchet’s comic series Jean-Claude Tergal. French
original (Tronchet, Jean-Claude Tergal, Tome 3, 1993, p. 40). Italian translation
(Tronchet, Domenico Tergazzi, 1992, p. 36). Reproduced with permission.
Reprinted from The UNESCO Courier, April 1990, ¿Tiene la historia un destino?
Miguel León-Portilla. www.unesco.org/courier
Wedgwood promotional leafl et, shot in English and Japanese.
Shot of title and header of an article from the Wonderlust Guide to Jordan, 2010, p.
22. Reproduced with permission.
World Wide Fund for Nature, CH-1196 Gland, Switzerland. © WWF (panda.org).
Some rights reserved.
Screen shot from Youtube video. www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOxbi53J5SU
Reproduced with permission.

Do we really know how we translate or what we translate? … Are we to accept ‘naked ideas’
as the means of crossing from one language to another? … Translators know they cross over
but do not know by what sort of bridge. They often re-cross by a different bridge to check up
again. Sometimes they fall over the parapet into limbo.
(Firth 1957:197)
Translation is a point of contact between peoples, and since it is rare that two peoples have the
same access to power, the translator is in a privileged position as mediator, to make explicit the
differences between cultures, expose injustices or contribute to diversity in the world.
(Gill and Guzmán 2010:126)

CHAPTER 1
Introduction
Writing my own novels has always required a huge effort of organisation and imagination; but,
sentence by sentence, translation is intellectually more taxing.
(Parks 2010)
Professionals in every walk of life form associations and institutes of various kinds to
provide practising members with a forum to discuss and set standards for the
profession as a whole, to set examinations, assess competence and lay codes of
conduct. The standards set by a given profession may well be extremely high, but
this does not necessarily guarantee recognition by those outside the profession.
Notwithstanding the length and breadth of one’s experience, recognition, in our
increasingly qualifi cation-conscious society, comes mostly with proof of some kind
of formal education. Every respectable profession (or every profession which wants
to be recognized as such) therefore attempts to provide its members with systematic
training in the fi eld.
There are two main types of training that a profession can provide for its
members: vocational training and academic training. Vocational courses provide
training in practical skills but do not include a strong theoretical component. A good
example would be a course in plumbing or typing. At the end of a typing course, a
student is able to type accurately and at speed and has a piece of paper to prove it.
But that is the end of the story; what the student acquires is a purely practical skill
which is recognized by society as ‘skilled work’ but is not generally elevated to the
level of a profession. Like vocational courses, most academic courses set out to
teach students how to do a particular job such as curing certain types of illness,
building bridges or writing computer programs. But they do more than that: an
academic course always includes a strong theoretical component. The value of this
theoretical component is that it encourages students to refl ect on what they do, how
they do it and why they do it in one way rather than another. This last exercise,
exploring the advantages and disadvantages of various ways of doing things, is itself
impossible to perform unless one has a thorough and intimate knowledge of the
objects and tools of one’s work. A doctor cannot decide whether it is better to follow
one course of treatment rather than another without understanding such things as
how the human body works, what side effects a given medicine may have, what is
available to counteract these effects and so on.

2 IN OTHER WORDS
Theoretical training does not necessarily guarantee success in all instances.
Things still go wrong occasionally because, in medicine for example, the reaction of
the human body and the infl uence of other factors such as stress will never be totally
predictable. But the value of a theoretical understanding of, say, the human appa-
ratus and such things as the nature and make-up of various drugs is that (a) it mini-
mizes the risks involved on any given occasion and prepares the student for dealing
with the unpredictable, (b) it gives the practising doctor a certain degree of confi –
dence which comes from knowing that his or her decisions are calculated on the
basis of concrete knowledge rather than ‘hunches’ or ‘intuition’ and (c) it provides
the basis on which further developments in the fi eld may be achieved because it
represents a formalized pool of knowledge which is shared and can be explored and
extended by the professional community as a whole, not just locally but across the
world. Needless to say, this type of theoretical knowledge is itself of no value unless
it is fi rmly grounded in practical experience.
Throughout its long history, translation has never really enjoyed the kind of
recognition and respect that other professions such as medicine and engineering
have enjoyed. Translators have constantly complained that translation is underesti-
mated as a profession. In summing up the fi rst conference held by the Institute of
Translation and Interpreting in Britain, Professor Bellos (reported by Nick Rosenthal)
stated that ‘The main impetus and concern of this fi rst ITI Conference was the
unjustly low status in professional terms of the translator. An appropriate theme,
since it was one of the main reasons for the formation of the ITI’ (Bellos 1987:163).
Today, more than two decades later, the novelist and translator Tim Parks still has to
remind us that at least ‘for a few minutes every year we really must acknowledge
that translators are important’ (Parks 2010). There is no doubt that the low status
accorded to translation as a profession is ‘unjust’, but one has to admit that this is
not just the fault of the general public. The translation community itself has tradi-
tionally been guilty of underestimating not so much the value as the complexity of
the translation process and hence the need for formal professional training in the
fi eld, though this situation is thankfully changing quite rapidly. Since the fi rst edition
of this book was published, in 1992, numerous training programmes have been set
up for translators and interpreters across the world. Translation has become a highly
attractive career for young people with a love for languages and for engaging with
other cultures, as well as a growing area of research. Those entering the profession
now have to demonstrate that they can refl ect on what they do, that they have
invested in acquiring not only the vocational but also the intellectual skills required to
undertake such a complex and highly consequential task, one that has a major
impact on the lives of the many people who rely on them as mediators.
In the past, talented translators who had no systematic formal training in trans-
lation but who nevertheless achieved a high level of competence through long and
varied experience tended to think that the translation community as a whole could
achieve their own high standards in the same way:

INTRODUCTION 3
Our profession is based on knowledge and experience. It has the longest
apprenticeship of any profession. Not until thirty do you start to be useful as
a translator, not until fi fty do you start to be in your prime.
The fi rst stage of the career pyramid – the apprenticeship stage – is the
time we devote to investing in ourselves by acquiring knowledge and expe-
rience of life. Let me propose a life path: grandparents of different nation-
alities, a good school education in which you learn to read, write, spell,
construe and love your own language. Then roam the world, make friends,
see life. Go back to education, but to take a technical or commercial
degree, not a language degree. Spend the rest of your twenties and your
early thirties in the countries whose languages you speak, working in
industry or commerce but not directly in languages. Never marry into your
own nationality. Have your children. Then back to a postgraduate trans-
lation course. A staff job as a translator, and then go freelance. By which
time you are forty and ready to begin.
(Lanna Castellano 1988:133)
Lanna’s recommended career path no doubt worked for many people in the past.
Her own case proves that it did: she is a widely respected fi rst-class translator. The
question is whether it was ever feasible for most aspiring translators to pursue this
career path and whether this approach is or was right for the profession as a whole,
bearing in mind that it stresses, at least for the fi rst thirty or forty years of one’s
career, life experience rather than formal academic training. One obvious problem
with this career path is that it takes so long to acquire the skills you need as a trans-
lator that your career is almost over before it begins.
Lanna Castellano has never been opposed to formal academic training; on the
contrary, she has always encouraged it and recognized its value to the profession.
But I have met professional translators in the past, and still come across some very
occasionally today, who actually argue strongly against formal academic training
because, they suggest, translation is an art which requires aptitude, practice and
general knowledge – nothing more. The ability to translate is a gift, they say: you
either have it or you do not, and theory (almost a dirty word in some translation
circles) is therefore irrelevant to the work of a translator. To take the analogy with
medicine a step further: if we accept this line of thinking we will never be seen as
anything but witch doctors and faith healers. And while it may well suit some indi-
viduals to think that they can heal people because they have magic powers or a
special relationship with God, rather than because they have a thorough and
conscious understanding of drugs and of the human body, the fact remains that
witch doctory and faith healing are not recognized professions and that medicine is.
Most translators and interpreters prefer to think of their work as a profession
and would like to see others treat them as professionals rather than as skilled or
semiskilled workers. But to achieve this, they need to develop an ability to stand
back and refl ect on what they do and how they do it. Like doctors and engineers,

4 IN OTHER WORDS
they have to prove to themselves as well as others that they are in control of what
they do; that they do not just translate or interpret well because they have a ‘fl air’ for
it, but rather because, like other professionals, they have made a conscious effort to
understand various aspects of their work.
Unlike medicine and engineering, translation studies is a relatively young disci-
pline in academic terms, though it is increasingly featuring as a subject of study in its
own right in many parts of the world. Like any young discipline, it needs to draw on
the fi ndings and theories of numerous related disciplines in order to develop and
formalize its own methods – from linguistics to literary theory, from sociology to
cognitive science. This is not surprising, given that almost every aspect of life in
general and of the interaction between speech communities in particular can be
considered relevant to translation, a discipline which has to concern itself with how
meaning is generated within and between various groups of people in various
cultural settings, and with what impact on society. For translation to gain more
recognition as a profession, translators cannot resort to a mixture of intuition and
experience to think through and justify the decisions they have to make but must
constantly look to developments in neighbouring disciplines to appreciate the varied,
complex dimensions of their work. Among the many skills they need to acquire
through training is the skill to understand and refl ect on the raw material with which
they work: to appreciate what language is and how it comes to function for its users.
Linguistics is a discipline which studies language both in its own right and as a
tool for generating meanings. It should therefore have a great deal to offer to trans-
lation studies; it can certainly offer translators and interpreters valuable insights into
the nature and function of language. This is particularly true of modern linguistics,
which no longer restricts itself to the study of language per se but embraces such
sub-disciplines as textlinguistics (the study of text as a communicative event rather
than as a shapeless string of words and structures) and pragmatics (the study of
language in use rather than language as an abstract system). This book attempts to
explore some areas in which modern linguistic theory can provide a basis for training
translators and can inform and guide the decisions they have to make in the course
of performing their work.
1.1 ABOUT THE ORGANIZATION OF THIS BOOK
The organization of this book is largely hierarchical and is based on a straight-
forward principle: it starts at the simplest possible level and grows in complexity by
widening its focus in each chapter. Chapter 2, ‘Equivalence at word level’, initially
adopts a naive building-block approach and explores the ‘meaning’ of single
words and expressions. In Chapter 3, ‘Equivalence above word level’, the scope of
reference is widened a little by looking at combinations of words and phrases:
what happens when words start combining with other words to form convention-
alized or semi-conventionalized stretches of language. Chapter 4, ‘Grammatical
equivalence’, deals with grammatical categories such as number and gender.
Chapters 5 and 6 cover part of what might be loosely termed the textual level of

INTRODUCTION 5
language. Chapter 5 deals with the role played by word order in structuring
messages at text level and Chapter 6 discusses cohesion: grammatical and lexical
relationships which provide links between various parts of a text. Chapter 7, ‘Prag-
matic equivalence’, looks at how texts are used in communicative situations that
involve variables such as writers, readers and cultural context. Chapter 8, ‘Beyond
equivalence: ethics and morality’, is new. I have added it to this second edition in
order to encourage students to refl ect on the wider implications of their decisions
and the impact of their mediation on others. Again, like any other profession that
strives to be taken seriously, translators and interpreters have to engage refl ec-
tively with the ethical implications of their work and demonstrate that they are
responsible professionals and citizens of society.
To return to the bulk of this book, namely Chapters 2 to 7, it is important to point
out that the division of language into seemingly self-contained areas such as words,
grammar and text is artifi cial and open to question. For one thing, the areas are not
discrete: it is virtually impossible to say where the concerns of one area end and
those of another begin. Moreover, decisions taken at, say, the level of the word or
grammatical category during the course of translation are infl uenced by the perceived
function and purpose of both the original text and the translation and have implica-
tions for the discourse as a whole. But artifi cial as it is, the division of language into
discrete areas is useful for the purposes of analysis and, provided we are aware that
it is adopted merely as a measure of convenience, it can help to pinpoint potential
areas of diffi culty in translation and interpreting.
Like the division of language into discrete areas, the term equivalence is adopted
in this book for the sake of convenience – because most translators are used to it
rather than because it has any theoretical status. It is used here with the proviso that
although equivalence can usually be obtained to some extent, it is infl uenced by a
variety of linguistic and cultural factors and is therefore always relative. Kenny
(2009) offers an excellent overview of the notion of equivalence and the various
ways in which it has been approached in the literature.
The organization followed in this book is a bottom-up rather than a top-down
one: it starts with simple words and phrases rather than with the text as situated in
its context of culture. This may seem somewhat at odds with current thinking in
linguistic and translation studies. Snell-Hornby (1988:69) suggests that ‘textual
analysis, which is an essential preliminary to translation, should proceed from the
“top down”, from the macro to the micro level, from text to sign’, and Hatim and
Mason’s model of the translation process (1990, 1997) also adopts a top-down
approach, taking such things as text-type and context as starting points for discussing
translation problems and strategies. The top-down approach is the more valid one
theoretically, but for those who are not trained linguists it can be diffi cult to follow:
there is too much to take in all at once. Moreover, an excessive emphasis on ‘text’
and ‘context’ runs the risk of obscuring the fact that although ‘a text is a semantic
unit, not a grammatical one … meanings are realized through wordings; and without
a theory of wordings … there is no way of making explicit one’s interpretation of the
meaning of a text’ (Halliday 1985:xvii). In other words, text is a meaning unit, not a

6 IN OTHER WORDS
form unit, but meaning is realized through form and without understanding the
meanings of individual forms one cannot interpret the meaning of the text as a
whole. Translating words and phrases out of context is certainly a futile exercise, but
it is equally unhelpful to expect a student to appreciate translation decisions made at
the level of text without a reasonable understanding of how the lower levels, the indi-
vidual words, phrases and grammatical structures, control and shape the overall
meaning of the text. Both the top-down and the bottom-up approaches are therefore
valid in their own way; I have opted for the latter for pedagogical reasons – because
it is much easier to follow for those who have had no previous training in linguistics.
1.2 EXAMPLES, BACK-TRANSLATIONS AND THE
LANGUAGES OF ILLUSTRATION
In each chapter, an attempt is made to identify potential sources of translation diffi –
culties related to the linguistic area under discussion and possible strategies for
resolving these diffi culties. The strategies are not preconceived, nor are they
suggested as ideal solutions; they are identifi ed by analysing authentic examples of
translated texts in a variety of languages and presented as ‘actual’ strategies used
rather than the ‘correct’ strategies to use. The examples are quoted and discussed,
sometimes at length, to illustrate the various strategies identifi ed and to explore the
potential pros and cons of each strategy. Although the discussion is occasionally
critical of certain translations, fi nding fault with published translations is never the
object of the exercise. It is in fact virtually impossible, except in extreme cases, to
draw a line between what counts as a good translation and what counts as a bad
one. Every translation has points of strength and points of weakness, and every
translation is open to improvement.
The source language of most examples is English. This is because in both literary
and non-literary translation today, English is probably the most widely translated
language in the world. And since it also happens to be the language in which this
book is written, I feel justifi ed in assuming that all readers will have an adequate
command of it. Much as I would have liked to include examples of and exercises on
translation into English, I have had to accept that it is not possible to write a general
coursebook on translation unless the source language is kept constant. With a few
exceptions, the direction of translation is therefore assumed to be from English into a
variety of target languages. However, readers – particularly teachers of translation –
are invited to adapt the examples and exercises to suit their individual purposes. Once
a given topic is discussed and understood, alternative texts can be easily found in
other languages to replace the examples and exercises in which English is treated as
the source language.
The target languages exemplifi ed are by no means all European. They include
major non-European languages such as Arabic, Japanese and Chinese. The
emphasis on non-European languages, I hope, no longer seems unusual, although
it did when the fi rst edition of this book appeared, in 1992. Since then, much has
been done by scholars such as Diriker (2004), Hung and Wakabayashi (2005),

INTRODUCTION 7
Hermans (2006), Cockerill (2006), Cheung (2006, 2009), Gentzler (2008), Bandia
(2008), Curran (2008), Wakabayashi and Kothari (2009) and Selim (2009), among
others, to counterbalance the traditional preoccupation with European languages in
translation studies. Many more translators as well as teachers and scholars of trans-
lation now appreciate that there is life – and indeed translation – outside Europe, and
that professional non-European translators use a range of strategies that are at least
as interesting and as useful as those used by European translators. The reception of
the fi rst edition of this book over the past two decades has confi rmed that it is
instructive for translators of any linguistic background to explore diffi culties of trans-
lation in non-European languages, given that the structure of those languages and
their cultural settings raise important issues that could otherwise be easily over-
looked in discussions of language and translation.
The majority of readers will not be familiar with all the languages illustrated in
this book, but they should still be able to follow the discussion of individual
examples by using the back-translations provided. Back-translation, as used in
this book, involves taking a text (original or translated) which is written in a
language with which the reader is assumed to be unfamiliar and translating it as
literally as possible1 into English – how literally depends on the point being illus-
trated, whether it is morphological, syntactic or lexical for instance. I use the term
back-translation because, since the source language is often English, this involves
translating the target text back into the source language from which it was origi-
nally translated. A back-translation can give some insight into aspects of the
structure, if not the meaning of the original, but it is never the same as the original.
The use of back-translation is a necessary compromise; it is theoretically unsound
and far from ideal, but then we do not live in an ideal world – very few of us speak
eight or nine languages – and theoretical criteria cease to be relevant when they
become an obstacle to fruitful discussion.
All examples are quoted in the original language as well as in back-translation.
For instance, an English example is immediately followed by its German or Arabic
translation and then a back-translation of the German or Arabic. Technological
advances now allow me to manipulate different fonts and languages without too
much trouble, a feat that was well beyond my technical abilities in 1992. I have
therefore dispensed with appendices in this edition and have embedded all examples
in the body of the text – not only French, German, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian,
but also Russian, Greek, Arabic, Chinese and Japanese.
Finally, there is no shortage of discussions on the shortcomings and failures of
translation as a tool of language mediation across cultures. The literature abounds
with theoretical arguments which suggest that translation is an impossible task, that
it is doomed to failure because (a) languages are never suffi ciently similar to express
the same realities, and (b) even worse, ‘reality’ cannot be assumed to exist inde-
pendently of language. But in spite of these diffi culties, translation remains an ines-
capable part of our lives – more so today, perhaps, than at any time in the past. Even
in these days of aggressive globalization and pervasive violent confl icts, it
has brought and continues to bring people of different cultural and linguistic

8 IN OTHER WORDS
backgrounds closer together, has enabled many to share a more harmonious view of
the world, and has built bridges of understanding and appreciation among different
societies. We should also be aware that translation and interpreting can be used to
sow confl ict, support racist agendas, dispossess indigenous populations and manip-
ulate vulnerable groups and individuals (see Fenton and Moon 2003, Baker 2006,
2010b, Inghilleri 2008). The same can be said of all professions, of course. Medicine
heals people, but some doctors also use their skills to support torture. The additional
chapter on ethics in this edition will hopefully help translators and interpreters who
are committed to using their skills in positive rather than negative ways to think of the
impact of their decisions on others and to avoid being implicated in unethical
practices.
SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING
Baker, Mona (2000) ‘Linguistic Perspectives on Translation’, in Peter France (ed.) The
Oxford Guide to Literature in English Translation, Oxford: Oxford University Press,
20–26.
Baker, Mona (ed.) (2010a) Critical Readings in Translation Studies, London: Routledge.
Baker, Mona and Luis Pérez-González (2011) ‘Translation and Interpreting’, Handbook of
Applied Linguistics, London: Routledge, 39–52.
Baker, Mona and Gabriela Saldanha (eds) (2009) Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation
Studies, second edition, London: Routledge.
Munday, Jeremy (2001/2008) Introducing Translation Studies: Theories and Applications,
second edition, London: Routledge.
Pöchhacker, Franz (2004) Introducing Interpreting Studies, London: Routledge.
Venuti, Lawrence (2004) The Translation Studies Reader, second edition, London:
Routledge.
NOTE
1 It is important to stress that much of the back-translation provided in this book is very
literal. The quality of the English that appears in a given back-translation is not meant to
refl ect the quality of the translation itself. Readers, particularly those who are not native
speakers of English, should also be aware that the English used in the back-translations
is not necessarily correct and is not to be confused with natural English.

CHAPTER 2
Equivalence at word level
If language were simply a nomenclature for a set of universal concepts, it would be easy to
translate from one language to another. One would simply replace the French name for a
concept with the English name. If language were like this the task of learning a new language
would also be much easier than it is. But anyone who has attempted either of these tasks has
acquired, alas, a vast amount of direct proof that languages are not nomenclatures, that the
concepts … of one language may differ radically from those of another. … Each language
articulates or organizes the world differently. Languages do not simply name existing cate-
gories, they articulate their own.
(Culler 1976:21–22)
This chapter discusses translation problems arising from lack of equivalence at word
level; what does a translator do when there is no word in the target language which
expresses the same meaning as the source language word? But before we look at
specifi c types of non-equivalence and the various strategies which can be used for
dealing with them, it is important to establish what a word is, whether or not it is the
main unit of meaning in language, what kinds of meaning it can convey, and how
languages differ in the way they choose to express certain meanings but not others.
2.1 THE WORD IN DIFFERENT LANGUAGES
2.1.1 What is a word?
As translators, we are primarily concerned with communicating the overall meaning
of a stretch of language. To achieve this, we need to start by decoding the units and
structures which carry that meaning. The smallest unit which we would expect to
possess individual meaning is the word. Defi ned loosely, the word is ‘the smallest
unit of language that can be used by itself’ (Bolinger and Sears 1968:43).1 For our
present purposes, we can defi ne the written word with more precision as any
sequence of letters with an orthographic space on either side.
Many of us think of the word as the basic meaningful element in a language.
This is not strictly accurate. Meaning can be carried by units smaller than the word
(see 2.1.3 below). More often, however, it is carried by units much more complex
than the single word and by various structures and linguistic devices. This will be
discussed in more detail in the following chapters. For the moment, we will content

10 IN OTHER WORDS
ourselves with single words as a starting point before we move on to more complex
linguistic units.
2.1.2 Is there a one-to-one relationship between word
and meaning?
If you consider a word such as rebuild, you will note that there are two distinct
elements of meaning in it: re and build, that is ‘to build again’. The same applies to
disbelieve, which may be paraphrased as ‘not to believe’. Elements of meaning
which are represented by several orthographic words in one language, say English,
may be represented by one orthographic word in another, and vice versa. For
instance, tennis player is written as one word in Turkish: tenisçi; if it is cheap as one
word in Japanese: yasukattara; but the verb type is rendered by three words in
Spanish: pasar a maquina. This suggests that there is no one-to-one corre-
spondence between orthographic words and elements of meaning within or across
languages.
2.1.3 Introducing morphemes
In order to isolate elements of meaning in words and deal with them more effec-
tively, some linguists have suggested the term morpheme to describe the minimal
formal element of meaning in language, as distinct from word, which may or may
not contain several elements of meaning. Thus, an important difference between
morphemes and words is that a morpheme cannot contain more than one element
of meaning and cannot be further analysed.
To take an example from English, inconceivable is written as one word but
consists of three morphemes: in, meaning ‘not’, conceive meaning ‘think of or
imagine’, and able meaning ‘able to be, fi t to be’. A suitable paraphrase for incon-
ceivable would then be ‘cannot be conceived/imagined’. Some morphemes have
grammatical functions such as marking plurality (funds), gender (manageress) and
tense (considered). Others change the class of the word, for instance from verb to
adjective (like: likeable), or add a specifi c element of meaning such as negation to
it (unhappy). Some words consist of one morpheme: need, fast. Morphemes do not
always have such clearly defi ned boundaries, however. We can identify two distinct
morphemes in girls: girl + s, but we cannot do the same with men, where the two
morphemes ‘man’ and ‘plural’ are, as it were, fused together. An orthographic word
may therefore contain more than one formal element of meaning, but the bound-
aries of such elements are not always clearly marked on the surface.
The above theoretical distinction between words and morphemes attempts, by
and large, to account for elements of meaning which are expressed on the
surface. It does not, however, attempt to break down each morpheme or word into
further components of meaning, for instance, ‘male’ + ‘adult’ + ‘human’ for the
word man. Furthermore, it does not offer a model for analysing different types of
meaning in words and utterances. In the following section, we will be looking at

EQUIVALENCE AT WORD LEVEL 11
ways of analysing lexical meaning which will not specifi cally draw on the distinction
between words and morphemes. It is nevertheless important to keep this distinction
clearly in mind because it can be useful in translation, particularly in dealing with
neologisms in the source language (see section on common problems of non-
equivalence below, item (i)).
2.2 LEXICAL MEANING
every word (lexical unit) has … something that is individual, that makes it
different from any other word. And it is just the lexical meaning which is the
most outstanding individual property of the word.
(Zgusta 1971:67)
The lexical meaning of a word or lexical unit may be thought of as the specifi c
value it has in a particular linguistic system and the ‘personality’ it acquires through
usage within that system. It is rarely possible to analyse a word, pattern or structure
into distinct components of meaning; the way in which language works is much too
complex to allow that. Nevertheless, it is sometimes useful to play down the complex-
ities of language temporarily in order both to appreciate them and to be able to
handle them better in the long run. With this aim in mind, we will now briefl y discuss
a model for analysing the components of lexical meaning. This model is largely
derived from Cruse (1986), but the description of register (2.2.3 below) also draws
on Halliday (1978). For alternative models of lexical meaning see Zgusta (1971:
Chapter 1) and Leech (1974: Chapter 2).
According to Cruse, we can distinguish four main types of meaning in words and
utterances (utterances being stretches of written or spoken text): propositional
meaning, expressive meaning, presupposed meaning and evoked meaning.
2.2.1 Propositional vs expressive meaning
The propositional meaning of a word or an utterance arises from the relation
between it and what it refers to or describes in a real or imaginary world, as
conceived by the speakers of the particular language to which the word or utterance
belongs. It is this type of meaning that provides the basis on which we can judge an
utterance as true or false. For instance, the propositional meaning of shirt is ‘a piece
of clothing worn on the upper part of the body’. It would be inaccurate to use shirt,
under normal circumstances, to refer to a piece of clothing worn on the foot, such as
socks. When a translation is described as ‘inaccurate’, it is often the propositional
meaning that is being called into question.
Expressive meaning cannot be judged as true or false. This is because
expressive meaning relates to the speaker’s2 feelings or attitude rather than to what
words and utterances refer to. The difference between Don’t complain and Don’t
whinge does not lie in their propositional meanings but in the expressiveness of

12 IN OTHER WORDS
whinge, which suggests that the speaker fi nds the action annoying. Two or more
words or utterances can therefore have the same propositional meaning but differ in
their expressive meanings. This is true not only of words and utterances within the
same language, where such words are often referred to as synonyms or near-
synonyms, but also for words and utterances from different languages. The
difference between famous in English and fameux in French does not lie in their
respective propositional meanings; both items basically mean ‘well-known’. It lies in
their expressive meanings. Famous is (normally) neutral in English: it has no inherent
evaluative meaning or connotation. Fameux, on the other hand, is potentially evalu-
ative and can be readily used in some contexts in a derogatory way (for example,
une femme fameuse means, roughly, ‘a woman of ill repute’).
It is worth noting that differences between words in the area of expressive
meaning are not simply a matter of whether an expression of a certain attitude or
evaluation is inherently present or absent in the words in question. The same attitude
or evaluation may be expressed in two words or utterances in widely differing
degrees of forcefulness. Both unkind and cruel, for instance, are inherently
expressive, showing the speaker’s disapproval of someone’s attitude. However, the
element of disapproval in cruel is stronger than it is in unkind.
The meaning of a word or lexical unit can be both propositional and expressive,
as in whinge, propositional only, as in book, or expressive only, for example bloody
and various other swear words and emphasizers. Words which contribute solely to
expressive meaning can be removed from an utterance without affecting its infor-
mation content. Consider, for instance, the word simply in the following text:
Whilst it stimulates your love of action, the MG also cares for your comfort.
Hugging you on the bends with sports seats. Spoiling you with luxuries such
as electric door mirrors, tinted glass and central locking. And entertaining you
with a great music system as well as a simply masterful performance.
(Today’s Cars, Austin Rover brochure; my emphasis)
There are many highly expressive items in the above extract, but the word simply in
the last sentence has a totally expressive function. Removing it would not alter the
information content of the message but would, of course, tone its forcefulness down
considerably.
2.2.2 Presupposed meaning
Presupposed meaning arises from co-occurrence restrictions, that is restrictions on
what other words or expressions we expect to see before or after a particular lexical
unit. These restrictions are of two types:
1. Selectional restrictions: these are a function of the propositional meaning of
a word. We expect a human subject for the adjective studious and an inanimate

EQUIVALENCE AT WORD LEVEL 13
one for geometrical. Selectional restrictions are deliberately violated in the case
of fi gurative language but are otherwise strictly observed.
2. Collocational restrictions: these are semantically arbitrary restrictions which do
not follow logically from the propositional meaning of a word. For instance, laws
are broken in English, but in Arabic they are ‘contradicted’. In English, teeth are
brushed, but in German and Italian they are ‘polished’, in Polish they are ‘washed’
and in Russian they are ‘cleaned’. Because they are arbitrary, collocational restric-
tions tend to show more variation across languages than do selectional restric-
tions. They are discussed in more detail in Chapter 3, section 3.1.
The difference between selectional and collocational restrictions is not always as
clear cut as the examples given above might imply. For example, in the following
English translation of a German leafl et which accompanies Baumler products (men’s
suits), it is diffi cult to decide whether the awkwardness of the wording is a result of
violating selectional or collocational restrictions:
Dear Sir
I am very pleased that you have selected one of our garments. You have
made a wise choice, as suits, jackets and trousers eminating from our
Company are amongst the fi nest products Europe has to offer.
Ideas, qualities and feelings typically emanate (misspelt as eminate in the above
text) from a source, but objects such as trousers and jackets do not, at least not in
English. The awkwardness of the wording can be explained in terms of selectional or
collocational restrictions, depending on whether or not one sees the restriction
involved as a function of the propositional meaning of emanate.
2.2.3 Evoked meaning
Evoked meaning arises from dialect and register variation. A dialect is a variety of
language which has currency within a specifi c community or group of speakers. It
may be classifi ed on one of the following bases:
1. Geographical (e.g. a Scottish dialect, or American as opposed to British English:
cf. the difference between lift and elevator);
2. Temporal (e.g. words and structures used by members of different age groups
within a community, or words used at different periods in the history of a
language: cf. verily and really);
3. Social (words and structures used by members of different social classes: cf.
scent and perfume, napkin and serviette).
Register is a variety of language that a language user considers appropriate to a
specifi c situation. Register variation arises from variations along the following
parameters:

14 IN OTHER WORDS
1. Field of discourse: this is an abstract term for ‘what is going on’ that is relevant to
the speaker’s choice of linguistic items. Different linguistic choices are made by
different speakers depending on what kind of action other than the immediate
action of speaking they see themselves as participating in. For example, linguistic
choices will vary according to whether the speaker is taking part in a football match
or discussing football; making love or discussing love; making a political speech or
discussing politics; performing an operation or discussing medicine.
2. Tenor of discourse: an abstract term for the relationships between the people
taking part in the discourse. Again, the language people use varies depending on
such interpersonal relationships as mother/child, doctor/patient or superior/
inferior in status. A patient is unlikely to use swear words in addressing a doctor
and a mother is unlikely to start a request to her child with I wonder if you could …
Getting the tenor of discourse right in translation can be quite diffi cult. It depends
on whether one sees a certain level of formality as ‘right’ from the perspective of
the source culture or the target culture. For example, an American teenager may
adopt a highly informal tenor with his or her parents by, among other things, using
their fi rst names instead of Mum/Mother and Dad/Father. This level of informality
would be highly inappropriate in many other cultures. A translator has to choose
between changing the tenor to suit the expectations of the target reader and
transferring the informal tenor to give a fl avour of the type of relationship that
teenagers have with their parents in American society. What the translator opts
for on any given occasion will of course depend on what he or she perceives to be
the overall purpose of the translation.
3. Mode of discourse: an abstract term for the role that the language is playing
(speech, essay, lecture, instructions) and for its medium of transmission
(spoken, written).3 Linguistic choices are infl uenced by these dimensions. For
example, a word such as re is perfectly appropriate in a business letter or as part
of the subject line in an email communication, but it is rarely, if ever, used in
spoken English.
Different groups within each culture have different expectations about what kind of
language is appropriate to particular situations. The amusement and embarrassment
often engendered by children’s remarks to perfect strangers testifi es to this; more
seriously, people unused to highly ritualized situations like committee meetings and
job interviews may fi nd it diffi cult to make their points, and may even be ridiculed
because their language appears inappropriate to other participants. Translators
would normally wish to ensure that their products do not meet with a similar reaction,
that their translations match the register expectations of their prospective receivers,
unless, of course, the purpose of the translation is to give a fl avour of the source
culture or, as advocated by some scholars such as Venuti (1995:20), to deliberately
challenge the reader by deviating from target norms in order to ‘stage an alien
reading experience’.
Of all the types of lexical meaning explained above, the only one which relates to
the truth or falsehood of an utterance and which can consequently be challenged by

EQUIVALENCE AT WORD LEVEL 15
a reader or hearer is propositional meaning. All other types of lexical meaning
contribute to the overall meaning of an utterance or a text in subtle and complex
ways and are often much more diffi cult to analyse. To reiterate, it is rarely possible in
practice to separate the various types of meaning in a word or utterance. Likewise,
it is rarely possible to defi ne even the basic propositional meaning of a word or
utterance with absolute certainty. This is because the nature of language is such
that, in the majority of cases, words have ‘blurred edges’; their meanings are, to a
large extent, negotiable and are only realized in specifi c contexts. The very notion of
‘types of meaning’ is theoretically suspect. Yet, I believe that the distinctions drawn
above can be useful for the translator since one of the most diffi cult tasks that a
translator is constantly faced with is that, notwithstanding the ‘fuzziness’ inherent in
language, he or she must attempt to perceive the meanings of words and utterances
as precisely as possible in order to render them into another language. Even a trans-
lator who sets out to challenge the reader’s expectations cannot do so responsibly
without fi rst having understood the source text on its own terms. This requires trans-
lators to go beyond what the average reader has to do in order to reach an adequate
understanding of a text.
2.3 THE PROBLEM OF NON-EQUIVALENCE
Based on the above discussion, we can now begin to outline some of the more
common types of non-equivalence which often pose diffi culties for the translator
and some attested strategies for dealing with them. First, a word of warning. The
choice of a suitable equivalent in a given context depends on a wide variety of
factors. Some of these factors may be strictly linguistic (see, for instance, the
discussion of collocations and idioms in Chapter 3). Other factors may be extra-
linguistic (see Chapters 7 and 8). It is virtually impossible to offer absolute guide-
lines for dealing with the various types of non-equivalence which exist among
languages. The most that can be done in this and the following chapters is to
suggest strategies which may be used to deal with non-equivalence ‘in some
contexts’. The choice of a suitable equivalent will always depend not only on the
linguistic system or systems being handled by the translator, but also on the way
both the writer of the source text and the producer of the target text, that is the
translator, choose to manipulate the linguistic systems in question; on the expecta-
tions, background knowledge and prejudices of readers within a specifi c temporal
and spatial location; on translators’ own understanding of their task, including their
assessment of what is appropriate in a given situation; and on a range of restrictions
that may operate in a given environment at a given point in time, including censorship4
and various types of intervention by parties other than the translator, author and
reader.

16 IN OTHER WORDS
2.3.1 Semantic fi elds and lexical sets – the segmentation
of experience
The words of a language often refl ect not so much the reality of the world, but
the interests of the people who speak it.
(Palmer 1976:21)
It is sometimes useful to view the vocabulary of a language as a set of words that
refer to a series of conceptual fi elds. These fi elds refl ect the divisions and sub-
divisions ‘imposed’ by a given linguistic community on the continuum of experience.5
In linguistics, the divisions are called semantic fi elds. Fields are abstract concepts.
An example of a semantic fi eld would be the fi eld of SPEECH, or PLANTS or
VEHICLES. A large number of semantic fi elds are common to all or most languages.
Most, if not all, languages will have fi elds of DISTANCE, SIZE, SHAPE, TIME,
EMOTION, BELIEFS, ACADEMIC SUBJECTS and NATURAL PHENOMENA.
The actual words and expressions under each fi eld are sometimes called lexical
sets.6 Each semantic fi eld will normally have several sub-divisions or lexical sets
under it, and each sub-division will have further sub-divisions and lexical sets. So,
the fi eld of SPEECH in English has a sub-division of VERBS OF SPEECH which
includes general verbs such as speak and say and more specifi c ones such as
mumble, murmur, mutter and whisper. It seems reasonable to suggest that the
more detailed a semantic fi eld is in a given language, the more different it is likely to
be from related semantic fi elds in other languages. There generally tends to be more
agreement among languages on the larger headings of semantic fi elds and less
agreement as the sub-fi elds become more fi nely differentiated. Most languages are
likely to have equivalents for the more general verbs of speech such as say and
speak, but many may not have equivalents for the more specifi c ones. Languages
understandably tend to make only those distinctions in meaning which are relevant
to their particular environment, be it physical, historical, political, religious, cultural,
economic, legal, technological, social or otherwise.
Before we discuss how an understanding of the nature and organization of semantic
fi elds might be useful in translation, let me fi rst spell out the limitations of semantic fi elds
as a concept. The idea of semantic fi elds is inapplicable in many cases and is an over-
simplifi cation of the way language actually works. A large number of words in any
language defy being classifi ed under any heading (Carter and McCarthy 1988, Lehrer
1974). Words like just, nevertheless and only, to name but a few, cannot be easily fi led
under any particular semantic fi eld. The idea of semantic fi elds works well enough for
words and expressions which have fairly well-defi ned propositional meanings, but not for
all, or even most of the words and expressions in a language.
Limitations aside, there are two main areas in which an understanding of
semantic fi elds and lexical sets can be useful to a translator:
(a) appreciating the ‘value’ that a word has in a given system; and
(b) developing strategies for dealing with non-equivalence.

EQUIVALENCE AT WORD LEVEL 17
(a) Understanding the difference in the structure of semantic fi elds in the source
and target languages allows a translator to assess the value of a given item in a
lexical set. If you know what other items are available in a lexical set and how they
contrast with the item chosen by a writer or speaker, you can appreciate the signifi –
cance of the writer’s or speaker’s choice. You can understand not only what some-
thing is, but also what it is not. This is best illustrated by an example.
In the fi eld of TEMPERATURE, English has four main divisions: cold, cool, hot
and warm. This contrasts with Modern Arabic, which has four different divisions:
baarid (‘cold/cool’), haar (‘hot: of the weather’), saakhin (‘hot: of objects’) and
daafi ’ (‘warm’). Note that, in contrast with English, Arabic (a) does not distinguish
between cold and cool, and (b) distinguishes between the hotness of the weather
and the hotness of other things. The fact that English does not make the latter
distinction does not mean that you can always use hot to describe the temperature
of something, even metaphorically (cf. hot temper, but not *hot feelings). There are
restrictions on the co-occurrence of words in any language (see discussion of collo-
cation: Chapter 3, section 3.1). Now consider the following examples from Tai
Hung-chao’s The Private Life of Chairman Mao, one of the texts included in the
Translational English Corpus:7

1. The nights were cool, but after an hour or two, I was soaked with perspiration
and my body ached all over.
2. He was afraid of the Moscow cold, and nothing I said could convince him that
the buildings would be so well heated that he would never feel the weather.
Bearing in mind the differences in the structure of the English and Arabic fi elds, one
can appreciate, on the one hand, the difference in meaning between cold and cool
in the above examples and, on the other, the potential diffi culty in making such a
distinction clear when translating into Arabic.
(b) Semantic fi elds are arranged hierarchically, going from the more general to the
more specifi c. The general word is usually referred to as superordinate and the
specifi c word as hyponym. In the fi eld of VEHICLES, vehicle is a superordinate and
bus, car, truck, coach and so on are all hyponyms of vehicle. It stands to reason that
any propositional meaning carried by a superordinate or general word is, by necessity,
part of the meaning of each of its hyponyms, but not vice versa. If something is a
bus, then it must be a vehicle, but not the other way round. We can sometimes
manipulate this feature of semantic fi elds when we are faced with semantic gaps in
the target language. Translators often deal with semantic gaps by modifying a
superordinate word or by means of circumlocutions based on modifying superordi-
nates. More on this in the following section.
To sum up, while not always straightforward or applicable, the notion of
semantic fi elds can provide the translator with useful strategies for dealing with
non-equivalence in some contexts. It is also useful in heightening our awareness
of similarities and differences between any two languages and of the signifi cance

18 IN OTHER WORDS
of any choice made by a speaker or writer in a given context. One important thing
to bear in mind when dealing with semantic fi elds is that they are not fi xed.
Semantic fi elds are always changing, with new words and expressions being intro-
duced into the language and others being dropped as they become less relevant
to the needs of a linguistic community.
For a more extensive discussion of semantic fi elds, see Lehrer (1974).
2.3.2 Non-equivalence at word level and some common
strategies for dealing with it
Non-equivalence at word level means that the target language has no direct equiv-
alent for a word which occurs in the source text. The type and level of diffi culty
posed can vary tremendously depending on the nature of non-equivalence. Different
kinds of non-equivalence require different strategies, some very straightforward,
others more involved and diffi cult to handle. Since, in addition to the nature of non-
equivalence, the context and purpose of translation will often rule out some strat-
egies and favour others, I will keep the discussion of types of non-equivalence
separate from the discussion of strategies used by professional translators. It is
neither possible nor helpful to attempt to relate specifi c types of non-equivalence to
specifi c strategies, but I will comment on the advantages or disadvantages of certain
strategies wherever possible.
2.3.2.1 Common problems of non-equivalence
The following are some common types of non-equivalence at word level, with
examples from various languages:
(a) Culture-specifi c concepts
The source-language word may express a concept which is totally unknown in the
target culture. The concept in question may be abstract or concrete; it may relate to
a religious belief, a social custom or even a type of food. Such concepts are often
referred to as ‘culture-specifi c’. An example of an abstract English concept which is
notoriously diffi cult to translate into other languages is that expressed by the word
privacy. This is a very ‘English’ concept which is rarely understood by people from
other cultures. Speaker (of the House of Commons) has no equivalent in languages
such as Russian, Chinese and Arabic, among others. It is often translated into
Russian as ‘Chairman’, which does not refl ect the role of the Speaker of the House
of Commons as an independent person who maintains authority and order in
Parliament. An example of a concrete concept is airing cupboard in English which,
again, is unknown to speakers of most languages.
(b) The source-language concept is not lexicalized in the target language
The source-language word may express a concept which is known in the target
culture but simply not lexicalized, that is not ‘allocated’ a target-language word to

EQUIVALENCE AT WORD LEVEL 19
express it. The word savoury has no equivalent in many languages, although it
expresses a concept which is easy to understand. The adjective standard (meaning
‘ordinary, not extra’, as in standard range of products) also expresses a concept
which is very accessible and readily understood by most people, yet Arabic has no
equivalent for it. Landslide has no ready equivalent in many languages, although it
simply means ‘overwhelming majority’.
(c) The source-language word is semantically complex
The source-language word may be semantically complex. This is a fairly common
problem in translation. Words do not have to be morphologically complex to be
semantically complex (Bolinger and Sears 1968). In other words, a single word
which consists of a single morpheme can sometimes express a more complex set of
meanings than a whole sentence. Languages automatically develop very concise
forms for referring to complex concepts if the concepts become important enough
to be talked about often. Bolinger and Sears suggest that ‘If we should ever need to
talk regularly and frequently about independently operated sawmills from which
striking workers are locked out on Thursday when the temperature is between 500°
and 600°F, we would fi nd a concise way to do it’ (ibid.:114). We do not usually
realize how semantically complex a word is until we have to translate it into a
language which does not have an equivalent for it. An example of such a semanti-
cally complex word is arruação, a Brazilian word which means ‘clearing the ground
under coffee trees of rubbish and piling it in the middle of the row in order to aid in
the recovery of beans dropped during harvesting’ (ITI News 1988:57).8

(d) The source and target languages make different distinctions in meaning
The target language may make more or fewer distinctions in meaning than the
source language. What one language regards as an important distinction in meaning
another language may not perceive as relevant. For example, Indonesian makes a
distinction between going out in the rain without the knowledge that it is raining
(kehujanan) and going out in the rain with the knowledge that it is raining (hujan-
hujanan). English does not make this distinction, with the result that if an English
text referred to going out in the rain, the Indonesian translator may fi nd it diffi cult to
choose the right equivalent, unless the context makes it clear whether or not the
person in question knew that it was raining.
(e) The target language lacks a superordinate
The target language may have specifi c words (hyponyms) but no general word
(superordinate) to head the semantic fi eld. Russian has no ready equivalent for facil-
ities, meaning ‘any equipment, building, services, etc. that are provided for a
particular activity or purpose’.9 It does, however, have several specifi c words and
expressions which can be thought of as types of facilities, for example sredstva
peredvizheniya (‘means of transport’), naem (‘loan’), neobkhodimye pomesh-
cheniia (‘essential accommodation’) and neobkhodimoe oborudovanie (‘essential

20 IN OTHER WORDS
equipment’). Brennan (1999) discusses a range of interesting examples that
demonstrate this type of diffi culty in interpreting between English and British Sign
Language (BSL):
An ongoing problem for interpreters is that the speaker often uses an English
generic term for which BSL has no direct equivalent: the opposite problem is
that BSL is frequently much more specifi c than English. Some examples of
generic English terms … include: touch, hit, murder, assault, hold. While the
English word hit does not specify how someone was hit (for example with the
fl at hand, the fi st, the back of the hand, etc.) or where someone was hit (on
the face, head, legs, back, etc.), a signed version of hit would typically be
quite specifi c in relation to how and where.
(233-234; emphasis in original)
(f) The target language lacks a specifi c term (hyponym)
More commonly, languages tend to have general words (superordinates) but lack
specifi c ones (hyponyms), since each language makes only those distinctions in
meaning which seem relevant to its particular environment. There are endless
examples of this type of non-equivalence. English has many hyponyms under article
for which it is diffi cult to fi nd precise equivalents in other languages, for example
feature, survey, report, critique, commentary, review and many more. Under house,
English again has a variety of hyponyms which have no equivalents in many
languages, for example bungalow, cottage, croft, chalet, lodge, hut, mansion,
manor, villa and hall. Under jump we fi nd more specifi c verbs such as leap, vault,
spring, bounce, dive, clear, plunge and plummet.
(g) Differences in physical or interpersonal perspective
Physical perspective may be of more importance in one language than it is in
another. Physical perspective has to do with where things or people are in relation to
one another or to a place, as expressed in pairs of words such as come/go, take/
bring, arrive/depart and so on. Perspective may also include the relationship
between participants in the discourse (tenor). For example, Japanese has six equiv-
alents for give, depending on who gives to whom: yaru, ageru, morau, kureru,
itadaku and kudasaru (McCreary 1986).
(h) Differences in expressive meaning
There may be a target-language word which has the same propositional meaning as
the source-language word, but it may have a different expressive meaning. The
difference may be considerable or it may be subtle but important enough to pose a
translation problem in a given context. It is usually easier to add expressive meaning
than to subtract it. In other words, if the target-language equivalent is neutral
compared to the source-language item, the translator can sometimes add the eval-

EQUIVALENCE AT WORD LEVEL 21
uative element by means of a modifi er or adverb if necessary, or by building it in
somewhere else in the text. So, it may be possible, for instance, in some contexts to
render the English verb batter (as in child/wife battering) by the more neutral
Japanese verb tataku, meaning ‘to beat’, plus an equivalent modifi er such as
‘savagely’ or ‘ruthlessly’. Differences in expressive meaning are usually more diffi cult
to handle when the target-language equivalent is more emotionally loaded than the
source-language item. This is often the case with items which relate to sensitive
issues such as religion, politics and sex. Words like homosexuality and homosexual
provide good examples. Homosexuality is not an inherently pejorative word in
English, although it is often used in this way. On the other hand, the traditional
equivalent expression in Arabic, shithuth jinsi (literally: ‘sexual perversion’), is inher-
ently more pejorative and would be quite diffi cult to use in a neutral context without
suggesting strong disapproval.10
(i) Differences in form
There is often no equivalent in the target language for a particular form in the source
text. Certain suffi xes and prefi xes which convey propositional and other types of
meaning in English often have no direct equivalents in other languages. English has
many couplets such as employer/employee, trainer/trainee and payer/payee. It
also makes frequent use of suffi xes such as -ish (e.g. boyish, hellish, greenish) and
-able (e.g. conceivable, retrievable, drinkable). Arabic, for instance, has no ready
mechanism for producing such forms and so they are often replaced by an appro-
priate paraphrase, depending on the meaning they convey (e.g. retrievable as ‘can
be retrieved’ and drinkable as ‘suitable for drinking’). Affi xes which contribute to
expressive or evoked meaning, for instance by creating buzz words such as washa-
teria, carpeteria and groceteria (Bolinger and Sears 1968), and those which convey
expressive meaning, such as journalese, translationese and legalese (the -ese
suffi x usually suggests disapproval of a muddled or stilted form of writing), are more
diffi cult to translate by means of a paraphrase. It is relatively easy to paraphrase
propositional meaning, but other types of meaning cannot always be spelt out in a
translation. Their subtle contribution to the overall meaning of the text is either lost
altogether or recovered elsewhere by means of compensatory techniques.11
It is important for translators to understand the contribution that affi xes make to
the meaning of words and expressions, especially since such affi xes are often used
creatively in English to coin new words for various reasons, such as fi lling temporary
semantic gaps in the language and creating humour. Their contribution is also
important in the area of terminology and standardization. Examples of creative use of
affi xes can often be found in advertisements and other types of promotional liter-
ature. One advertisement for the chocolate Toblerone which appeared in many
outlets in the mid 1990s showed three chocolate triangles against a larger image of
the three pyramids in Egypt, with the caption ‘Ancient Tobleronism?’ appearing next
to the pyramids. Here, the -ism ending evokes spirituality (as in Buddhism) and,
possibly, tradition – the kind we associate with established schools of thought that
have large numbers of loyal followers, such as Marxism, Existentialism and so on.

22 IN OTHER WORDS
Eating Toblerone is thus likened to a spiritual experience; at the same time, the
making of the chocolate, as well as eating it, are presented as part of a tradition,
with a long and stable history.
(j) Differences in frequency and purpose of using specifi c forms
Even when a particular form does have a ready equivalent in the target language,
there may be a difference in the frequency with which it is used or the purpose for
which it is used. Thus, English uses the continuous -ing form for binding clauses
much more frequently than other languages which have equivalents for it, for
example German and the Scandinavian languages. Consequently, rendering every
-ing form in an English source text with an equivalent -ing form in a German, Danish
or Swedish target text would result in stilted, unnatural style.
(k) The use of loan words in the source text
The use of loan words in the source text poses a special problem in translation.
Quite apart from their respective propositional meaning, loan words such as au fait,
chic, Auf Wiedershen and alfresco in English are often used for their prestige value,
because they can add an air of sophistication to the text or its subject matter.
Japanese in particular tends to use loan words widely, ‘just for effect, for example
because they sound beautiful or look elegant’ (Jüngst 2008:61). This effect is often
lost in translation, both into the language from which the loan word is originally
borrowed and into other languages, where it is not always possible to fi nd a loan
word with the same meaning or associations. Dilettante is a loan word in English,
Russian and Japanese, but Arabic has no equivalent loan word. This means that only
the propositional meaning of dilettante can be rendered into Arabic; its stylistic
effect would almost certainly have to be sacrifi ced.
Loan words also pose another problem for the unwary translator, namely the
problem of false friends, or faux amis as they are often called.12 False friends are
words or expressions which have the same form in two or more languages but convey
different meanings. They are often associated with historically or culturally related
languages such as English, French, Spanish and German, but in fact false friends also
abound among totally unrelated languages such as English, Japanese and Russian.
Mayoral Asensio (2003:95–96) discusses several interesting examples of false friends
(which he refers to as ‘deceptive cognates’) in English and Spanish in the context of
translating offi cial documents, including college/colegio and graduate/graduado.
Once a word or expression is borrowed into a language, we cannot predict or
control its development or the additional meanings it might or might not take on.
Some false friends are easy to spot because the difference in their meanings is so
great that only a very inexperienced translator is likely to be unaware of it. The
average Japanese translator is not likely to confuse an English feminist with a
Japanese feminist (feminist in Japanese is usually used to describe a man who is
excessively soft with women). An inexperienced French or German translator may,
however, confuse English sensible with German sensibel (meaning ‘sensitive’), or
English sympathetic with French sympathique (meaning ‘nice/likeable’).

EQUIVALENCE AT WORD LEVEL 23
The above are some of the more common examples of non-equivalence among
languages and the problems they pose for translators. In dealing with any kind of
non-equivalence, it is important fi rst of all to assess its signifi cance and implications
in a given context. Not every instance of non-equivalence you encounter is going to
be signifi cant. It is neither possible nor desirable to reproduce every aspect of
meaning for every word in a source text. We have to try, as much as possible, to
convey the meaning of key words which are focal to the understanding and devel-
opment of a text, but we cannot and should not distract the reader by looking at
every word in isolation and attempting to present him or her with a full linguistic
account of its meaning.
2.3.2.2 Strategies used by professional translators
With the above proviso in mind, we can now look at examples of strategies used by
professional translators for dealing with various types of non-equivalence. In each
example, the source-language word which represents a translation problem is
underlined. The strategy used by the translator is highlighted in bold in both the
original translation and the back-translated version. Only the strategies used for
dealing with non-equivalence at word level will be commented on. Other strategies
and differences between the source and target texts are dealt with in subsequent
chapters.
(a) Translation by a more general word (superordinate)
This is one of the commonest strategies for dealing with many types of non-
equivalence, particularly in the area of propositional meaning. It works equally well in
most, if not all, languages, since the hierarchical structure of semantic fi elds is not
language-specifi c.
Example A
Source text (Kolestral Super – leafl et accompanying a hair-conditioning
product):
The rich and creamy KOLESTRAL-SUPER is easy to apply and has a
pleasant fragrance.
Target text (Arabic):

. . .
Kolestral super is rich and concentrated in its make-up which gives a
product that resembles cream, making it extremely easy to put on the hair.

24 IN OTHER WORDS
Example B
Source text (Kolestral Super):
Shampoo the hair with a mild WELLA-SHAMPOO and lightly towel
dry.
Target text 1 (Spanish):
Lavar el cabello con un champú suave de WELLA y frotar ligera-
mente con una toalla.
Wash hair with a mild WELLA shampoo and rub lightly with a towel.
Target text 2 (Arabic):
” ” . . .
The hair is washed with ‘wella’ shampoo, provided that it is a mild
shampoo …
Example C
Source text (A Brief History of Time – Hawking 1988:1):
A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave
a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits
around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the center of
a vast collection of stars called our galaxy.
Target text (Spanish):
Un conocido científi co (algunos dicen que fue Bertrand Russell)
daba una vez una conferencia sobre astronomía. En ella describía
cómo la Tierra giraba alrededor del Sol y cómo éste, a su vez,
giraba alrededor del centro de una vasta colección de estrellas
concida como nuestra galaxia.
A well-known scientist (some say that it was Bertrand Russell) once
gave a lecture on astronomy. In it he described how the Earth
revolved around the Sun and how the latter in its turn revolved
around the centre of a vast collection of stars known as our galaxy.

EQUIVALENCE AT WORD LEVEL 25
Example D
Source text (China’s Panda Reserves – World Wide Fund for Nature text
which accompanied a slide show):
Today there may be no more than 1000 giant pandas left in the wild,
restricted to a few mountain strongholds in the Chinese provinces of
Sichuan, Shaanxi and Gansu.
Target text (Chinese):
今天，仍处于野生状态的大熊猫可能只有一千只，仅限于中国的
四川、陕西和甘肃省内的一些山区。
Today there may be only 1000 big pandas which still remain in the
wild state, restricted to certain mountain areas in China’s Sichuan,
Shaanxi and Gansu.
The above examples illustrate the use of a general word (superordinate) to overcome
a relative lack of specifi city in the target language compared to the source language.
‘Shampooing’ can be seen as a type of ‘washing’ since it is more restricted in use:
you can wash lots of things but you can only shampoo hair. Similarly, ‘orbiting’ is a
type of ‘revolving’ because, unlike ‘revolving’, it only applies to a smaller object
revolving around a larger one in space. What the translators of the above extracts
have done is go up a level in a given semantic fi eld to fi nd a more general word that
covers the core propositional meaning of the missing hyponym in the target language.
(b) Translation by a more neutral/less expressive word
Example A
Source text: (Morgan Matroc – ceramics company brochure):
Today people are aware that modern ceramic materials offer unri-
valled properties for many of our most demanding industrial applica-
tions. So is this brochure necessary; isn’t the ceramic market already
over-bombarded with technical literature; why should Matroc add
more?
Because someone mumbles, ‘Our competitors do it.’ But why
should we imitate our competitors when Matroc probably supplies a
greater range of ceramic materials for more applications than any
other manufacturer.

26 IN OTHER WORDS
Target text: (Italian):
Qualcuno suggerisce: ‘i nostri concorrenti lo fanno.’
Someone suggests: ‘Our competitors do it.’
There is a noticeable difference in the expressive meaning of mumble and its
nearest Italian equivalent, mugugnare. The English verb mumble suggests confusion,
disorientation or embarrassment, as can be seen in the following examples:13

‘Sorry,’ she managed to mumble incoherently.
I was doing a three-point-turn manoeuvre to get us back onto the road when
he woke up, lifted his hat and mumbled: ‘Where are we?’
‘I didn’t mean to disturb you,’ I mumbled apologetically.
‘I’m in your hands,’ I mumbled and didn’t quite know why I said it.
Presented with a hard question, she’ll blush, stare at her feet and fi nally
mumble her answer.
The Italian near equivalent, mugugnare, on the other hand, tends to suggest dissat-
isfaction rather than embarrassment or confusion. Possibly to avoid conveying the
wrong expressive meaning, the Italian translator opted for a more general word,
suggerisce (‘suggest’).
Example B
Source text (A Study of Shamanistic Practices in Japan – Blacker 1975:315):
The shamanic practices we have investigated are rightly seen as an
archaic mysticism.
Target text (Japanese)
我々が探究してきたシャーマン的行為は、古代の神秘主義とし
て、考察されるべきものであろう。
The shamanic behaviour which we have been researching should
rightly be considered as ancient mysticism.
The translator could have used a Japanese phrase which means, roughly, ‘behind
the times’ and which would have been closer to both the propositional and expressive
meanings of archaic. This, however, would have been too direct, too openly disap-

EQUIVALENCE AT WORD LEVEL 27
proving by Japanese standards (Haruko Uryu, personal communication). The
expressive meaning of archaic is lost in the translation.
Example C
Source text (China’s Panda Reserves):
Many of the species growing wild here are familiar to us as plants
cultivated in European gardens – species like this exotic lily.
Target text (Chinese):
这里野生的许多种类我们很熟悉，是欧洲园林内种植的种类——
像这一奇异的百合花等种类。
We are very familiar with many varieties of the wild life here, they are
the kind grown in European gardens – varieties like this strange unique
lily fl ower.
Exotic has no equivalent in Chinese and other oriental languages. It is a word used
by westerners to refer to unusual, interesting things which come from a distant
country such as China. The orient does not have a concept of what is exotic in this
sense and the expressive meaning of the word is therefore lost in translation.
Example D
Source text (China’s Panda Reserves):
The panda is something of a zoological mystery.
Target text (Chinese):
熊猫可以被称为动物学里的一个谜。
The panda may be called a riddle in zoology.
There is an equivalent for mystery in Chinese, but it is mostly associated with
religion. The translator felt that it would be wrong to use it in a zoological context.14

28 IN OTHER WORDS
Example E
Source text (China’s Panda Reserves):
(i) The panda’s mountain home is wet and lush,
(ii) The panda’s mountain home is rich in plant life ….
Target text (Chinese):
熊猫的山区栖息地是潮湿、茂盛的。
熊猫的山区定居地有着丰富的植物种类，有着欧洲园林所珍视的
许多树木、灌木和草本植物的种类。
The mountain habitat of the panda is wet and lush,
The mountain settlements of the panda have rich varieties of plants
Home has no direct equivalent in Chinese; in fact, it is diffi cult to translate into many
languages. In the examples above, it is replaced by Chinese near-equivalents which
are both less expressive and more formal.
It is sometimes possible to retain expressive meaning by adding a modifi er, as in
the following example.
Example F
Source text (Soldati, ‘I passi sulla neve’):15

Ma già, oltre i tetti carichi di neve, a non piú di duecento metri dalla
parte di Torino, si vedevano altissimi, geometrici, tutti quadrettati in
mille fi nestre luminose e balconcini, i primi palazzi condominiali,
case a riscatto, falansteri di operai e di impiegati.
Target text (English: ‘Footsteps in the Snow’):
But already, beyond the snow-laden roofs, and no more than two
hundred metres in the direction of Turin, there were to be seen
towering, geometrical, chequered by a thousand lighted windows
and balconies, the first joint-owned buildings, houses under
mortgage, workers’ and clerks’ ugly blocks of fl ats.
The adjective ‘ugly’ does not actually appear in the source text. The following trans-
lator’s footnote explains why ugly was added in the target text:

EQUIVALENCE AT WORD LEVEL 29
Falansteri: communal dwellings which formed part of an ideal cooperative
life preached by the French philosopher and socialist writer Charles Fourier
(1772–1837). In Italian the word has a pejorative connotation.
(c) Translation by cultural substitution
This strategy involves replacing a culture-specifi c16 item or expression with a target-
language item which does not have the same propositional meaning but is likely to
have a similar impact on the target reader, for instance by evoking a similar context
in the target culture. The main advantage of using this strategy is that it gives the
reader a concept with which he or she can identify, something familiar and appealing.
On an individual level, the translator’s decision to use this strategy will largely
depend on (a) how much licence is given to him or her by those who commission the
translation; (b) the purpose of the translation; and (c) the translator’s own judgement
of the desirability or otherwise of obscuring the cultural specifi city of the source text.
On a more general level, the decision will also refl ect, to some extent, the norms of
translation prevailing in a given community.17 Tolerance of strategies that involve
signifi cant departure from the propositional meaning of the text varies considerably
across different communities and temporal locations.18
Example A
Source text (A Brief History of Time – Hawking 1988:1):
A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave
a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits
around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the center of
a vast collection of stars called our galaxy. At the end of the lecture, a
little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: ‘What you have
told us is rubbish. The world is really a fl at plate supported on the
back of a giant tortoise.’ The scientist gave a superior smile before
replying, ‘What is the tortoise standing on?’ ‘You’re very clever,
young man, very clever,’ said the old lady. ‘But it’s turtles all the way
down!’
Target text (Greek):
Η Αλίκη στη Χώρα των Θαυμάτων έδινε κάποτε μία διάλεξη για την
αστρονομία. Έλεγε ότι η Γη είναι ένας σφαιρικός πλανήτης του ηλιακού
συστήματος που κινείται γύρω από το κέντρο του, τον Ήλιο, και ότι ο
Ήλιος είναι ένα άστρο που, με τη σειρά του, κινείται γύρω από το κέντρο
του αστρικού συστήματος, που ονομάζουμε Γαλαξία. Στο τέλος της
διάλεξης, η Ντάμα την κοίταξε θυμωμένη με επιτιμητικό ύφος. «Αυτά
που λες είναι ανοησίες. Η Γη δεν είναι παρά ένα μεγάλο Τραπουλόχαρτο.

30 IN OTHER WORDS
Είναι λοιπόν επίπεδη σαν όλα τα Τραπουλόχαρτα.» της είπε, και
στράφηκε περήφανα προς τα μέλη της συνοδείας της, που έδειχναν
ικανοποιημένα από την εξήγησή της. Η Αλίκη χαμογέλασε υπεροπτικά.
«Και σε τι στηρίζεται αυτό το Τραπουλόχαρτο;» ρώτησε με ειρωνεία. Η
Ντάμα δεν έδειξε να αιφνιδιάζεται. «Είσαι έξυπνη, πολύ έξυπνη»,
απάντησε. «Μάθε λοιπόν μικρή μου πως αυτό το Τραπουλόχαρτο
στηρίζεται σε ένα άλλο, και εκείνο το άλλο σε ένα άλλο άλλο, και εκείνο
το άλλο άλλο σε ένα άλλο άλλο άλλο…». Σταμάτησε λαχανιασμένη. «Το
Σύμπαν δεν είναι παρά μια Μεγάλη Τράπουλα», τσίριξε.
Alice in Wonderland was once giving a lecture about astronomy.
She said that the earth is a spherical planet in the solar system which
orbits around its centre the sun, and that the sun is a star which in
turn orbits around the centre of the star system which we call the
Galaxy. At the end of the lecture the Queen looked at her angrily and
disapprovingly. ‘What you say is nonsense. The earth is just a giant
playing card, so it’s fl at like all playing cards,’ she said, and turned
triumphantly to the members of her retinue, who seemed clearly
satisfi ed by her explanation. Alice smiled a superior smile, ‘And
what is this playing card supported on?’ she asked with irony. The
Queen did not seem put out, ‘You are clever, very clever,’ she replied,
‘so let me tell you, young lady, that this playing card is supported
on another, and the other on another other, and the other other on
another other other …’ She stopped, out of breath, ‘The Universe is
nothing but a great big pack of cards,’ she shrieked.
The above example illustrates a very interesting use of the strategy of cultural substi-
tution. It is the opening passage in Stephen Hawking’s popular book A Brief History
of Time from the Big Bang to Black Holes (1988). Like Hawking in the original text,
the Greek translator sets out to capture the undivided attention of the reader imme-
diately. He decides that this is best achieved by introducing the reader to characters
which are familiar and interesting rather than to foreign characters and stereotypes
with which the reader may not identify. Alice in Wonderland is apparently well known
in Greece; the average educated Greek is clearly expected to know the story and to
be familiar with the characters of Alice and the Queen, as well as the playing-card
characters. For anyone who has read the story, the association with Alice recalls an
image of a topsy-turvy paradoxical world, which is particularly apposite in this
context. A little old lady at the back of the room is an English stereotype of someone
who is endearing but tends to get the wrong end of the stick, that is, to misunder-
stand what is being said. This stereotype image is not likely to be accessible to
people from other cultures. It is replaced by ‘the Queen’, and this is then followed by

EQUIVALENCE AT WORD LEVEL 31
a series of interesting substitutions, such as ‘giant playing card’ for fl at plate and ‘a
great big pack of cards’ for turtles all the way down.
Example B
Source text (The Patrick Collection – a leafl et produced by a privately
owned museum of classic cars):
The Patrick Collection has restaurant facilities to suit every taste –
from the discerning gourmet, to the Cream Tea expert.
Target text (Italian):
… di soddisfare tutti i gusti: da quelli del gastronomo esigente a quelli
dell’esperto di pasticceria.
… to satisfy all tastes: from those of the demanding gastronomist to
those of the expert in pastry.
In Britain, cream tea is ‘an afternoon meal consisting of tea to drink and scones with
jam and clotted cream to eat. It can also include sandwiches and cakes’.19

Cream
tea has no equivalent in other cultures. The Italian translator replaced it with ‘pastry’,
which does not have the same meaning (for one thing, cream tea is a meal in Britain,
whereas ‘pastry’ is only a type of food). However, ‘pastry’ is familiar to the Italian
reader and therefore provides a good cultural substitute.
Example C
Source text (Italian – Gadda, ‘La cenere delle battaglie’):20

Poi, siccome la serva di due piani sotto la sfringuellava al telefono
coll’innamorato, assenti i padroni, si imbizzì: prese a pestare i piedi
sacripantando ‘porca, porca, porca, porca …’: fi nché la non ismise,
che non fu molto presto.
Target text (English: ‘The Ash of Battles Past’):
Then, because the servant-girl two fl oors down was chattering at the
telephone with her young man, her employers being away, he lost
his temper: and began to stamp his feet, bellowing ‘Bitch, bitch,
bitch …’ until she gave up, which was not very soon.

32 IN OTHER WORDS
Porca is literally the female of swine. A translator’s footnote explains that the Italian
word ‘when applied to a woman, … indicates unchastity, harlotry’ (Trevelyan
1965:196). Bitch represents a straightforward cultural substitute. Although the
literal meanings of porca and bitch are different, both items are used chiefl y for their
expressive value. Their literal meanings are not relevant in this context.
An interesting example of cultural substitution in the translation of comics is
discussed in Celotti (2008:40–41). In one panel from Didier Tronchet’s comic
series Jean-Claude Tergal (Figure 1), the translator adapts a sign above the door of
a bar which reads Chez Raoul (literally ‘At Raoul’, or ‘Raoul’s’ – Raoul being a
familiar French name), to read Bar Juventus in the Italian translation (Juventus is the
name of a well-known Italian football club).
Figure 1 Panel from Tronchet’s Jean-Claude Tergal and its Italian translation,
Domenico Tergazzi

EQUIVALENCE AT WORD LEVEL 33
(d) Translation using a loan word or loan word plus explanation
This strategy is particularly common in dealing with culture-specifi c items, modern
concepts and buzz words. Following the loan word with an explanation is very useful
when the word in question is repeated several times in the text. Once explained, the
loan word can then be used on its own; the reader can understand it and is not
distracted by further lengthy explanations.
Example A
Source text (The Patrick Collection):
The Patrick Collection has restaurant facilities to suit every taste –
from the discerning gourmet, to the Cream Tea expert.
Target text (German):
… vom anspruchsvollen Feinschmecker bis zum ‘Cream-Tea’-
Experten.
… from demanding gourmets to ‘Cream-Tea’-experts.
The Patrick Collection leafl et is translated for the benefi t of tourists visiting this
privately owned motor museum in the United Kingdom. As mentioned above, the
English cream-tea custom is culture-specifi c; Germans have coffee and cakes. The
German translator could have used the strategy of cultural substitution. ‘Coffee and
cakes’ could have replaced cream tea (cf. the Italian version of the same text in (c)
above), but the translator seems to have decided that the kind of educated German
who has access to this type of literature will know of the English cream-tea custom.
This also explains the use of the loan word on its own, without an explanation. Note
that the transferred English expression is, as is often the case with loan words in
translation, in inverted commas. In addition, compounding is much more common in
German than it is in English. ‘Tea expert’ would normally be one word in German (as
would, presumably, ‘cream tea expert’ if such a person existed). The use of a loan
word has restricted the German translator, however, since combining a loan word,
cream tea, with a German word, the equivalent of ‘experts’, would confuse the
reader. Likewise, combining two English words, cream and tea, would confl ict with
normal English usage. The use of hyphens is a compromise between the norms of
the two languages.
Compare the strategies used by the German and Italian translators with those
used by the French and Japanese translators of the same text:

34 IN OTHER WORDS
Target text (French):
… – de la table gourmande au Salon de Thé à l’anglaise.
… from the gourmet table to the English style tea salon.
Target text (Japanese):
パトリック・コレクションは、認識の鋭いグルメからクリーム
菓子とお茶の専門店に至るまであらゆる好みに合ったレストラ
ン施設を有しています。
… from the gourmet with keen recognition to a shop specializing in
cream cakes and tea.
Example B
Source text (A Study of Shamanistic Practices in Japan – Blacker 1975:315):
The shamanic practices we have investigated are rightly seen as an
archaic mysticism.
Target text (Japanese):
我々が探究してきたシャーマン的行為は、古代の神秘主義とし
て、考察されるべきものであろう。
The shamanic behaviour which we have been researching should
rightly be considered as ancient mysticism.
Shaman is a technical word used in religious studies to refer to a priest or a priest
doctor among the northern tribes of Asia. It has no ready equivalent in Japanese.
The equivalent used in the translation is made up of shaman as a loan word, written
in katakana script (the script commonly used to transcribe foreign words into
Japanese) plus a Japanese suffi x which means ‘like’ to replace the -ic ending in
English. The Japanese suffi x is written in the Kanji script (the Chinese system used
to transcribe ordinary Japanese).
Example C
Source text (Kolestral Super):
For maximum effect, cover the hair with a plastic cap or towel.

EQUIVALENCE AT WORD LEVEL 35
Target text (Arabic):
” ”
.
For obtaining maximum effectiveness, the hair is covered by means
of a ‘cap’, that is a plastic hat which covers the hair, or by means of
a towel.
Note that the explanation which follows the loan word is based on modifying a
superordinate/general word, namely the equivalent of ‘hat’. Note also the use of
inverted commas as in the German translation quoted above (from The Patrick
Collection).
Example D
Source text (The Patrick Collection):
Morning coffee and traditional cream teas are served in the
conservatory.
Target text (Japanese):
朝のコーヒーと伝統的午後のお茶とクリーム菓子類は来んサー
ヴァトリー（温室）で楽しめます。
Morning coffee and traditional afternoon tea and cream cakes can be
enjoyed in the conservatory (green house).
Example E
Source text (The Patrick Collection):
A UNIQUE MOTOR MUSEUM
TERRACED GARDENS AND GOURMET
RESTAURANT COMBINE TO MAKE
T H E U L T I M A T E A T T R A C T I O N

36 IN OTHER WORDS
Target text (back-translated from Japanese):21
Unique Motor Museum
Terraced Gardens Gourmet Restaurant
are gathered
T H E U L T I M A T E A T T R A C T I O N
The underlined words in the source text in both examples (D and E) are used as loan
words in the Japanese text, not because they have no equivalents in Japanese but
because they sound more modern, smart, high class. The emphasis here is on
expressive and evoked rather than propositional meaning.
Eirlys Davies (2003:77) discusses an interesting example from the French
translation of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, by Jean-François Ménard,
where the translator overcomes the lack of equivalent for prefect in French by using
a cognate word (préfet) and integrating an explanation of it in the dialogue rather
than placing it in a footnote. The English back-translation that follows the French
text is provided by Davies:
Préfet? Qu’est-ce que c’est que ça ? demanda Harry.
– C’est un élève chargé de maintenir la discipline, répondit Ron. Une
sorte de pion … Tu ne savais pas ça?
– Je ne suis pas beaucoup sorti de chez moi, confessa Harry.
‘A prefect? What’s that?’ asked Harry. ‘It’s a pupil whose job is to
keep order’, replied Ron. ‘A kind of “pion” (member of staff at a French
school whose role is to keep order). Didn’t you know that?’ ‘I haven’t
been around much’, confessed Harry.
As with the strategy of cultural substitution, the freedom with which translators use
loan words will often depend on the norms of translation prevailing in their societies.
Arabic and French, for instance, are much less tolerant of the use of loan words in
formal writing than Japanese, which may explain the preference for the use of a
cognate rather than a loan word in the French translation above.
(e) Translation by paraphrase using a related word
This strategy tends to be used when the concept expressed by the source item is
lexicalized in the target language but in a different form, and when the frequency
with which a certain form is used in the source text is signifi cantly higher than would
be natural in the target language (see section on common problems of non-
equivalence above, items (i) and (j)).

EQUIVALENCE AT WORD LEVEL 37
Example A
Source text (The Patrick Collection):
Hot and cold food and drinks can be found in the Hornet’s Nest,
overlooking the Alexick Hall.
Target text (German):
Im Hornet’s Nest, das die Alexick-Halle überblickt, bekommen Sie
warme und kalte Speisen und Getränke.
In the Hornet’s Nest, which overlooks the Alexick-Hall, you can
have hot and cold meals and drinks.
Example B
Source text (Kolestral Super):
The rich and creamy KOLESTRAL-SUPER is easy to apply and has a
pleasant fragrance.
Target text (Arabic):
. . .
Kolestral-super is rich and concentrated in its make-up which gives a
product that resembles cream …
The paraphrase in the Arabic text uses comparison, a strategy which can be used to
deal with other types of non-equivalence.
Example C
Source text (China’s Panda Reserves):
There is strong evidence, however, that giant pandas are related to
the bears.

38 IN OTHER WORDS
Target text (Chinese):
但是，也有较强的证据表明大熊猫与熊有亲属关系。这一亚洲黑
熊分享熊猫在中国境内的活动区域。
But there is rather strong evidence that shows that big pandas have a
kinship relation with the bears.
Example D
Source text (The Patrick Collection):
As well as our enviable location, other facilities include an excellent
Conference and Arts Centre, gourmet restaurant, and beautiful
terraced gardens.
Target text (French):
Outre une situation enviable, le Musée prévoit également un Centre
de Conférence et des Arts, un restaurant gourmand et de magnifi ques
jardins implantés en terrasse.
Besides its enviable location, the museum equally provides a
Conference and Arts Centre, a gourmet restaurant and magnifi cent
gardens created in a terrace.
(f) Translation by paraphrase using unrelated words
If the concept expressed by the source item is not lexicalized at all in the target
language, the paraphrase strategy can still be used in some contexts. Instead of a
related word, the paraphrase may be based on modifying a superordinate or simply
on unpacking the meaning of the source item, particularly if the item in question is
semantically complex.
Example A
Source text (‘A Secret Best Seller’, the Independent, November 1988):22

In the words of a Lonrho affi davit dated 2 November 1988, the
allegations …

EQUIVALENCE AT WORD LEVEL 39
Target text (Arabic):
2
1988 . . .
According to the text of a written communication supported by an
oath presented by the Lonrho organization and dated 2 November
1988, the allegations …
Example B
Source text (Palace and Politics in Prewar Japan – Titus 1974:11):
If the personality and policy preferences of the Japanese emperor
were not very relevant to prewar politics, social forces certainly were.
There are two reasons for giving them only the most tangential
treatment here.
Target text (Japanese):
だが、日本の天皇の人柄や政策上の好みが戦前の政治に大した
関係がなかったとしても、社会勢力の側は明らかにそうではな
い。社会勢力に対して本書がわずかにふれる程度の扱いしかし
なかったのには、二つの理由がある。
… There are two reasons for not having treated social power in
this book except to a very slight degree of referring .
Example C
Source text (Brintons – press release issued by carpet manufacturer,
1986):
They have a totally integrated operation from the preparation of the
yarn through to the weaving process.

40 IN OTHER WORDS
Target text (Arabic):
. . .
The company carries out all steps of production in its factories,
from preparing the yarn to weaving it …
Example D
Source text (The Patrick Collection):
You can even dine ‘alfresco’ in the summer on our open air terrace.
Target text (German):
Im Sommer können Sie auch auf der Terrasse im Freien sitzen und
essen.
In the summer you can also sit and eat on the terrace in the open.
Alfresco, ‘in the open air’, is a loan word in English. Its meaning is unpacked in the
German translation. The two expressions, alfresco and ‘in the open’, have the same
‘propositional’ meaning, but the German expression lacks the ‘evoked’ meaning of
alfresco, which is perhaps inevitable in this case. Note that the loan word is placed
in inverted commas in the source text.
Example E
Source text (A Study of Shamanistic Practices in Japan – Blacker 1975:315):
On the basis of the world view uncovered by the shaman’s faculties,
with its vision of another and miraculous plane which could interact
causally with our own, the more advanced mystical intuitions of
esoteric Buddhism were able to develop.
Target text (Japanese):
シャーマンの機能によって覆いをとられた世界観を基盤にし、
日常の世界と因果的にい影響し合うことができる他界の、奇跡

EQUIVALENCE AT WORD LEVEL 41
的な次元の幻影を伴って、より進歩した密教の秘教的な組織が
発展し得た。
… with the image of another miraculous dimension which can
causally infl uence each other mutually with the daily world …
Example F
Source text (China’s Panda Reserves):
… the lower mixed broadleaf forests … are the areas most accessible
to and disturbed by Man.
Target text (Chinese):
偶尔也见于较低地区的混合阔叶森林之中，因为这些地区是人类
最容易进入、干扰最多的地方。
… the mixed broadleaf forests of the lowland area … are the places
where human beings enter most easily and interfere most.
The main advantage of the paraphrase strategy is that it achieves a high level of
precision in specifying propositional meaning. One of its disadvantages is that a
paraphrase does not have the status of a lexical item and therefore cannot convey
expressive, evoked or any kind of associative meaning. Expressive and evoked
meanings are associated only with stable lexical items which have a history of recur-
rence in specifi c contexts. A second disadvantage of this strategy is that it is
cumbersome and awkward to use because it involves fi lling a one-item slot with an
explanation consisting of several items. In certain types of environment, such as
subtitling and the translation of advertising and packaging material, there are often
severe restrictions on space that preclude the use of any strategy that involves this
type of expansion. Similarly, a paraphrase is not normally practicable to use in book
or fi lm titles, which need to be sharp and snappy. The main title of Brian Whitaker’s
(2006) book about homosexuality in the Arab World, Unspeakable Love, inevitably
loses something of its propositional and expressive meanings when translated into
Arabic as Al-Hubb Al-Mamnu’ (literally: Forbidden Love). But Arabic has no equiv-
alent for unspeakable, and a paraphrase would render the title unwieldy and
unattractive.

42 IN OTHER WORDS
(g) Translation by omission
This strategy may sound rather drastic, but in fact it does no harm to omit translating
a word or expression in some contexts.23 If the meaning conveyed by a particular
item or expression is not vital enough to the development of the text to justify
distracting the reader with lengthy explanations, translators can and often do simply
omit translating the word or expression in question.
Example A
Source text (The Patrick Collection):
This is your chance to remember the way things were, and for younger
visitors to see in real-life detail the way their parents, and their
parents before them lived and travelled.
Target text (French):
Voici l’occasion de retrouver votre jeunesse (qui sait?) et pour les plus
jeunes de voir comment leurs parents et grands-parents vivaient et
voyageaient.
Here is the chance to rediscover your youth (who knows?) and for
the younger ones to see how their parents and grandparents used to
live and travel.
Example B
Source text (China’s Panda Reserves):
The panda’s mountain home is rich in plant life and gave us many of
the trees, shrubs and herbs most prized in European gardens.
Target text (Chinese):
熊猫的山区定居地有着丰富的植物种类，有着欧洲园林所珍视的
许多树木、灌木和草本植物的种类。像这一山杜鹃花等种类为十
九世纪的植物学家所集采，然后运回欧洲作为园林收藏品。
The mountain settlements of the panda have rich varieties of plants.
There are many kinds of trees, shrubs and herbal plants that are
preciously regarded by European gardens.

EQUIVALENCE AT WORD LEVEL 43
The source text addresses a European audience, and the use of gave us highlights
its intended orientation. The Chinese translation addresses a different audience and
therefore suppresses the orientation of the source text by omitting expressions
which betray its original point of view.
Example C
Source text (Brintons):
The recently introduced New Tradition Axminster range is already
creating great interest and will be on display at the Exhibition.
Target text (Arabic):
” ”
.
The ‘New Tradition Axminster’ collection has aroused a high degree
of interest since the company introduced it recently, and it is among
the types of carpets which will be displayed in the exhibition.
There is inevitably some loss of meaning when words and expressions are omitted in
a translation. For instance, already in the last example conveys the idea that the
New Tradition Axminster range is creating great interest ‘earlier than anticipated’,
and this is lost in the translation. It is therefore advisable to use this strategy only as
a last resort, when the advantages of producing a smooth, readable translation
clearly outweigh the value of rendering a particular meaning accurately in a given
context.
(h) Translation by illustration
This is a useful option if the word which lacks an equivalent in the target language
refers to a physical entity which can be illustrated, particularly if there are restrictions
on space and if the text has to remain short, concise and to the point.
Figure 2 appeared on a Lipton Yellow Label tea packet prepared for the Arab
market. There is no easy way of translating tagged, as in tagged teabags, into
Arabic without going into lengthy explanations which would clutter the text. An illus-
tration of a tagged teabag is therefore used instead of a paraphrase.

44 IN OTHER WORDS
e
x
e
r
c
is
e
s
Figure 2 Lipton Yellow Label tea packet for Arab market
The examples discussed in this chapter do not, by any means, represent an
exhaustive account of the strategies available for dealing with non-equivalence at
word level. You are encouraged continually to study and analyse texts prepared by
professional translators in order to discover more strategies and learn to assess the
advantages and disadvantages of using each strategy in various contexts.
1. Comment on any differences in meaning between the items in each of
the following sets. The differences may relate to expressive or evoked
meaning. For instance, some items may be register-specifi c or dialect-
specifi c, others may be derogatory or neutral. If you are not familiar
with a particular word or expression, consult a good dictionary of
English before you comment on its meaning.
car, auto, automobile, motor, limousine, limo, banger, jalopy
comfortable, comfy, homely, cosy, snug (of a place)
dad, daddy, pa, papa, pop, father, pater, sire, old man
Now list all the words and expressions you can think of which are
available in your target language for car, comfortable and father.
Comment on any differences in meaning between (a) the individual
items in each set, and (b) the English items above and the items in the
corresponding sets in your target language.
2. Make a list of all the English verbs you can think of which have to do
with speech, such as say, suggest, complain, mumble, mutter, murmur,
whisper, speak, tell and so on. Try to group them into sets, starting with
the more general ones.
Now list all the verbs of speech you can think of in your target
language, starting with the more general ones. Comment on the presence
or absence of any semantic gaps in your target language vis-à-vis
English.

EQUIVALENCE AT WORD LEVEL 45
e
x
e
r
c
is
e
s Repeat this exercise using nouns which may come under the general
heading of PUBLICATIONS. In English, this would include book,
newspaper, magazine, newsletter, bulletin, journal, report, pamphlet, peri-
odical and so on.
3. Make a list of ten English words which you feel are particularly diffi cult
to translate into your target language. Comment on the source of diffi –
culty in each case.
4. Make a list of some loan words that are used in your language, and
comment on the types of text in which such loan words tend to be used
freely (for instance in advertisements). Now consider how you might
translate the main text in Figure 3, an advertisement by Trados which
appeared in various magazines in 2001, and what loss of propositional,
expressive and/or evoked meaning might be involved if you cannot
render Dinero using a similar loan word in your target text.

Figure 3 Trados advertisement

46 IN OTHER WORDS
e
x
e
r
c
is
e
s 5. Make a list of three English affi xes which systematically produce forms
that have no direct equivalents in your target language. Suggest suitable
paraphrases for each affi x.
6. Make a list of all the English words you can think of that end in -ism or -ist
(such as racism/racist, sexism/sexist, ageism/ageist, extremism/extremist,
fanaticism/fanaticist). Comment on what these words have in common and
on the propositional and expressive meanings of the suffi x. Now attempt to
translate the screen shot in Figure 4, from a video released by the Sizism
Awareness Campaign (www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOxbi53J5SU).

Figure 4 Screen shot from Sizism Awareness Campaign video
7. Produce two translations in your target language of the following extract
from Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time (1988:1–2). One trans-
lation should aim at giving the target reader a straightforward account
of the contents of the text. In producing the second translation, assume
that Professor Hawking, or his publisher, has authorized you to use
whatever strategies are necessary to ensure that the reader’s attention is
captured in these opening passages.
A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once
gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth
orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the
center of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy. At the end of
the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and
said: ‘What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a fl at
plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise.’ The scientist gave
a superior smile before replying, ‘What is the tortoise standing
on?’ ‘You’re very clever, young man, very clever,’ said the old
lady. ‘But it’s turtles all the way down!’

EQUIVALENCE AT WORD LEVEL 47
e
x
e
r
c
is
e
s Most people would fi nd the picture of our universe as an infi nite
tower of tortoises rather ridiculous, but why do we think we know
better? What do we know about the universe, and how do we
know it? Where did the universe come from, and where is it
going? Did the universe have a beginning, and if so, what
happened before then? What is the nature of time? Will it ever
come to an end? Recent breakthroughs in physics, made possible
in part by fantastic new technologies, suggest answers to some of
these longstanding questions. Someday these answers may seem
as obvious to us as the earth orbiting the sun – or perhaps as ridic-
ulous as a tower of tortoises. Only time (whatever that may be)
will tell.
Comment on the different strategies used in each translation.
SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING
On words and morphemes
Bauer, Laurie (2001) Morphological Productivity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bolinger, Dwight and Donald Sears (1968) Aspects of Language, New York: Harcourt
Brace Jovanovich. Chapter 4: ‘Words and Their Make-up’.
Carter, Ronald (1987) Vocabulary: Applied Linguistic Perspectives, London: Allen & Unwin.
Chapter 1: ‘What’s in a Word?’.
Fawcett, Peter (1997) Translation and Language, Manchester: St. Jerome Publishing.
Chapter 2: ‘Sub-Word Components’.
Katamba, Francis (1993) Morphology, Basingstoke: Macmillan Press.
Katamba, Francis (1994) English Words, London: Routledge.
Palmer, Frank Robert (1976) Semantics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chapter
4, section 4.4: ‘The Word’.
On lexical meaning and semantic fi elds
Bolinger, Dwight and Donald Sears (1968) Aspects of Language. Chapter 6: ‘Meaning’.
Carter, Ronald and Michael McCarthy (1988) Vocabulary and Language Teaching, London:
Longman. Chapter 2: ‘Lexis and Structure’.
Cruse, D. A. (1986) Lexical Semantics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chapter
12: ‘Synonymy’, sections 12.1 and 12.2.
Fawcett, Peter (1997) Translation and Language. Chapter 3: ‘Semantics’.
Palmer, Frank Robert (1976) Semantics. Chapter 4: ‘Lexical Semantics: Fields and Collo-
cation’, sections 4.1–4.3.

48 IN OTHER WORDS
On dialect and register
Assis Rosa, Alexandra (2001) ‘Features of Oral and Written Communication in Subtitling’, in
Yves Gambier and Henrik Gottlieb (eds) (Multi)Media Translation, Amsterdam: John
Benjamins, 213–221.
Findlay, Bill (2000) ‘Translating Standard into Dialect: Missing the Target?’, in Carole-Anne
Upton (ed.) Moving Target: Theatre Translation and Cultural Relocation, Manchester:
St. Jerome Publishing, 35-46.
Hale, Sandra (1997) ‘The Treatment of Register Variation in Court Interpreting’, The Trans-
lator 3(1): 39–54.
Hatim, Basil and Ian Mason (1990) Discourse and the Translator, London: Longman.
Chapter 3: ‘Context in Translating: Register Analysis’.
Leppihalme, Ritva (2000) ‘The Two Faces of Standardization: On the Translation of Region-
alisms in Literary Dialogue’, The Translator 6(2): 247–269.
Miller, Katrina R. and Vernon McCay (2001) ‘Linguistic Diversity in Deaf Defendants and
Due Process Rights’, Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 6(3): 226–234.
Pettit, Zoë (2005) ‘Translating Register, Style and Tone in Dubbing and Subtitling’, JosTrans:
The Journal of Specialised Translation 4. Available at www.jostrans.org/issue04/art_
pettit.php.
Queen, Robin (2004) ‘“Du hast jar keine Ahnung”: African American English Dubbed into
German’, Journal of Sociolinguistics 8(4): 515–537; reprinted in Mona Baker (ed.)
(2009) Translation Studies, Volume III, London: Routledge, 169–192.
On the concept of equivalence
Hatim, Basil (2001) Teaching and Researching Translation, Harlow: Pearson Education.
Chapter 2: ‘From Linguistic Systems to Cultures in Contact’, and Chapter 3: ‘Equiva-
lence: Pragmatic and Textual Criteria’.
Kenny, Dorothy (2009) ‘Equivalence’, in Mona Baker and Gabriela Saldanha (eds) Routledge
Encyclopedia of Translation Studies, London: Routledge, 96–99.
Munday, Jeremy (2001) Introducing Translation Studies: Theories and Applications,
London: Routledge. Chapter 3; ‘Equivalence and Equivalent Effect’.
On non-equivalence and translation strategies
Barnwell, Katherine (1974) Introduction to Semantics and Translation, High Wycombe:
Summer Institute of Linguistics. Chapter 9: ‘Transferring Lexical Meaning from One
Language to Another’.
Beekman, John and John Callow (1974) Translating the Word of God, Michigan: Zondervan.
Chapters 12 and 13: ‘Lexical Equivalence across Languages’.
Chesterman, Andrew (1997) Memes of Translation, Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Chapter
4: ‘Translation Strategies’, section 4.2: ‘A Classifi cation’; pages 92–112.
Li, Chris Wen-Chao (2007) ‘Foreign Names into Native Tongues: How to Transfer Sound
between Languages – Transliteration, Phonological Translation, Nativization, and Impli-
cations for Translation Theory’, Target 19(1): 45–68.
Pedersen, Jan (2007) ‘Cultural Interchangeability: The Effects of Substituting Cultural
References in Subtitling’, Perspectives: Studies in Translatology 15(1): 30–48.

EQUIVALENCE AT WORD LEVEL 49
Tortoriello, Adriana (2006) ‘Funny and Educational Across Cultures: Subtitling Winnie the
Pooh into Italian’, JosTrans: The Journal of Specialised Translation 6. Available at www.
jostrans.org/issue06/art_tortoriello.php.
NOTES
1 Bolinger and Sears do not in fact adopt this defi nition. They prefer to defi ne words as
‘the least elements between which other elements can be inserted with relative freedom’
(1968:43).
2 I use ‘speaker’ as shorthand for ‘speaker and/or writer’.
3 Gregory (1980:464) suggests that ‘distinctions amongst modes of discourse, if they are
to be useful and revealing, have to be more delicate than the simple spoken–written
dichotomy’. He distinguishes, for instance, between speaking spontaneously and non-
spontaneously, and within spontaneous speech between conversing and monologuing.
In non-spontaneous speech, he distinguishes between reciting (i.e. performing in the
oral tradition) and the speaking of what is written. For a detailed discussion of these and
other distinctions in mode, see Gregory and Carroll (1978).
4 On issues of censorship in the context of translation, see Gutiérrez Lanza (2002),
Sturge (2002), Dunnett (2002), Linder (2004), Billiani (2006) and Chan (2007).
5 Some linguists would not accept this view, or at least not totally. See, for instance,
Lyons (1977:260): ‘The external world or reality is not just an undifferentiated
continuum’. I tend to agree with Lowe (1985:4):
Reality, the world of experience, consists of a continuous, uninterrupted fl ow of
impressions of all sorts which man can perceive with his physical senses. Human
language, by categorizing these impressions through the various representational
systems it has developed, has introduced some sort of discontinuity into this fl ow of
impressions – hence the expression ‘to split’ the world of experience – by providing
man with a mental vision or representation of experience. In fact, by providing man
with a certain conceptualization of reality, every language proposes an original,
discontinuous vision of the universe of experience. And in a sense, every mean-
ingful unit of a given language participates in some way in the creation of the global
mental vision of the world this particular language proposes to its speakers.
6 The notion of lexical set has a more specifi c defi nition in the study of lexis. Briefl y, a
lexical set consists of items which have a like privilege of collocation (see Chapter 3,
section 3.1 for a discussion of collocation).
7 The Translational English Corpus, or TEC for short, is a computerized collection of trans-
lated English text held at the Centre for Translation and Intercultural Studies, University
of Manchester, UK. See www.llc.manchester.ac.uk/ctis/research/english-corpus/.
8 ITI News, vol. 3, no. 3, December 1988. ITI is the Institute of Translation and Inter-
preting, United Kingdom. See www.iti.org.uk.
9 As defi ned by the COBUILD Dictionary of English (Sinclair 1987b).

50 IN OTHER WORDS
10 A less judgemental and pejorative neologism has now been introduced in Arabic and is
gaining considerable currency: the word mithliyuun, from mithl, meaning ‘alike’ or
‘similar’. Whitaker (2006:13–15) discusses this terminology in some detail.
11 For a detailed discussion and illustration of different types of compensatory technique,
see Harvey (1995, 1998)
12 For a detailed discussion of false friends and their implications for translators, see
Chamizo Domínguez and Nerlich (2002). Nilsson (2005) discusses false friends in the
context of sign language interpreting.
13 From the British National Corpus. See www.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/.
14 Ming Xie, translator (personal communication).
15 ‘I passi sulla neve’ (‘Footsteps in the Snow’), a short story by Mario Soldati, translated
by Gwyn Morris, in Trevelyan (1965).
16 For a detailed analysis and examples of culture-specifi c items and strategies for trans-
lating them, see Nedergaard-Larsen (1993), Aixelá (1996), Kwieciñski (1998), Desmet
(2001) and Hagfors (2003).
17 The notion of ‘norms’ has received considerable attention in the years that followed the
publication of the fi rst edition of this textbook, particularly through the work of Gideon
Toury (see Toury 1995). For an accessible summary of the literature on norms, see
Baker (2009a).
18 The section on different historical traditions in Baker (1998/2001) and Baker and
Saldanha (2009) reveals the extent to which forms of radical adaptation were not only
tolerated but also valued in different traditions in the past. They also continue to be
widely practised in some genres today, most notably drama translation; see Aaltonen
(2000), Hardwick (2001) and Anderman (2009).
19 As defi ned by the COBUILD Dictionary of English (Sinclair 1987b).
20 ‘La cenere delle battaglie’ (‘The Ash of Battles Past’), a short story by Carlo Emilio
Gadda, translated by I. M. Rawson, in Trevelyan (1965).
21 I have unfortunately lost the scan of the fi rst page of the Japanese leafl et, on which the
analysis was based for the fi rst edition of this book, and hence cannot reproduce the
original in this instance.
22 Article published in the Independent newspaper (8 November 1988) – copy attached to
Tiny Rowland’s A Hero from Zero, a document describing the acquisition of the House
of Fraser by Mohamed Fayed.
23 On the pros and cons of omission as a translation strategy, see E. Davies (2007).

CHAPTER 3
Equivalence above word level
No book was ever turned from one language into another, without imparting something of its
native idiom; … single words may enter by thousands, and the fabrick of the tongue continue
the same, but new phraseology changes much at once; it alters not the single stones of the
building, but the order of the columns.
(Samuel Johnson, Preface to the Dictionary, 1755:xii)
much of what we say and write in our own language is both routine and predictable because of
what we and others have already said and written. Routine is not a bad thing, however. It is
what allows the creative use of language to be identifi ed as such.
(Kenny 1998:515)
In the previous chapter, we discussed problems arising from non-equivalence at
word level and explored a number of attested strategies for dealing with such
problems. In this chapter, we will go one step further to consider what happens
when words start combining with other words to form stretches of language.
It goes without saying that words rarely occur on their own; they almost always
occur in the company of other words. But words are not strung together at random
in any language; there are always restrictions on the way they can be combined to
convey meaning. Restrictions which admit no exceptions, and particularly those
which apply to classes of words rather than individual words, are usually written
down in the form of rules. One of the rules of English, for example, is that a deter-
miner cannot come after a noun. A sequence such as beautiful girl the is therefore
inadmissible in English.1 Some restrictions are more likely to admit exceptions and
apply to individual words rather than classes of words. These cannot be expressed
in terms of rules, but they can nevertheless be identifi ed as recurrent patterns in the
language. In the following sections, we will concentrate on this type of lexical
patterning. We will discuss, for instance, the ‘likelihood’ of certain words occurring
with other words and the naturalness or typicality of the resulting combinations. In
particular, we will address the diffi culties encountered by translators as a result of
differences in the lexical patterning of the source and target languages.
Lexical patterning will be dealt with under two main headings: collocation and
idioms and fi xed expressions.

52 IN OTHER WORDS
3.1 COLLOCATION
Why do builders not produce a building or authors not invent a novel, since
they do invent stories and plots? No reason as far as dictionary defi nitions of
words are concerned. We don’t say it because we don’t say it.
(Bolinger and Sears 1968:55)
There are virtually no impossible collocations, but some are much more likely
than others.
(Sinclair 1966:411)
When I discussed lexical meaning in Chapter 2, I made a brief reference to collo-
cation under presupposed meaning and defi ned it tentatively as ‘semantically
arbitrary restrictions which do not follow logically from the propositional meaning of a
word’. Another way of looking at collocation would be to think of it in terms of the
tendency of certain words to co-occur regularly in a given language.
At one level, the tendency of certain words to co-occur has to do with their prop-
ositional meanings. For example, cheque is more likely to occur with bank, pay,
money and write than with moon, butter, playground or repair. As Sinclair explains
(1987a:320), ‘To some extent, the nature of the world around us is refl ected in the
organization of language. … Things which occur physically together have a stronger
chance of being mentioned together’. However, meaning cannot always account for
collocational patterning. If it did, we might expect carry out, undertake or even
perform to collocate with visit. Yet, English speakers typically pay a visit, less typi-
cally make a visit and are unlikely to perform a visit. We do not speak of grilling
bread, even though we put it under the grill (Newman 1988). When butter or eggs
go bad they are described in English as rancid and addled, respectively. Both rancid
and addled mean ‘stale/rotten’, but addled butter and rancid eggs are unacceptable
or at least unlikely collocations in English (Palmer 1976). Moreover, words which we
might think of as synonyms or near-synonyms will often have quite different sets of
collocates. English speakers typically break rules but they do not break regulations;
they typically talk of wasting time but not of squandering time. Both deliver a verdict
and pronounce a verdict are acceptable collocations in English. Likewise, pronounce
a sentence is acceptable and means more or less the same as deliver/pronounce a
verdict. And yet, deliver a sentence is an unlikely collocation. Cruse gives a similar
example (1986:281). The adjectives unblemished, spotless, fl awless, immaculate
and impeccable can be thought of as synonyms or near-synonyms, and yet they do
not combine freely with the same set of nouns (see Table 1).
When two words collocate, the relationship can hold between all or several of
their various forms, combined in any grammatically acceptable order. For example,
achieving aims, aims having been achieved, achievable aims and the achievement
of an aim are all equally acceptable and typical in English. On the other hand, it is
often the case that words will collocate with other words in some of their forms but

EQUIVALENCE ABOVE WORD LEVEL 53
Table 1 Unpredictability of collocational patterning
unblemished spotless fl awless immaculate impeccable
performance – – + + +
argument – – + – ?
complexion ? ? + – –
behaviour – – – – +
kitchen – + – + –
record + + – ? +
reputation ? + – ? ?
taste – – ? ? +
order – – ? + +
credentials – – – – +
+ = common/acceptable collocation
– = unacceptable/unlikely collocation
? = questionable/may be acceptable in some idiolects
not in others. We bend rules in English but are unlikely to describe rules as
unbendable. Instead, we usually talk of rules being infl exible.
It would seem, then, that patterns of collocation are largely arbitrary and inde-
pendent of meaning. This is so both within and across languages. The same degree of
mismatch that can be observed when comparing the collocational patterns of synonyms
and near-synonyms within the same language is evident in the collocational patterning
of dictionary equivalents/near equivalents in two languages. For example, the English
verb deliver collocates with a number of nouns, for each of which Arabic uses a
different verb. The Arabic ‘dictionary equivalent’ of deliver is yusallim.
English Arabic
deliver a letter/telegram yusallimu khitaaban/tillighraafan
deliver a speech/lecture yulqi khutbatan/muhaadaratan
deliver news yanqilu akhbaaran
deliver a blow yuwajjihu darbatan
deliver a verdict yusdiru hukman
deliver a baby yuwallidu imra’atan
The last Arabic expression, yuwallidu imra’atan, literally means something like
‘deliver a woman’ or ‘assist a woman in childbirth’. In the process of childbirth,

54 IN OTHER WORDS
Arabic focuses on the woman, whereas English prefers to focus on the baby; it
would be unacceptable, under normal circumstances, to speak of delivering a
woman in Modern English. This suggests that differences in collocational patterning
among languages are not just a question of using, say, a different verb with a given
noun; they can involve totally different ways of portraying an event. Patterns of collo-
cation refl ect the preferences of specifi c language communities for certain modes of
expression and certain linguistic confi gurations; they rarely refl ect any inherent order
in the world around us. As Sinclair so aptly puts it, ‘there are many ways of saying
things, many choices within language that have little or nothing to do with the world
outside’ (1987a:320). This is not to say that collocations do not often refl ect the
cultural setting in which they are embedded. Some collocations are in fact a direct
refl ection of the material, social or moral environment in which they occur. This
explains why bread collocates with butter in English but not in Arabic. Buy a house
is a frequent collocation in English, but in German it is rare because the practice of
house-buying is very different in the two cultures (Alexander 1987). Law and order
is a common collocation in English; in Arabic a more typical collocation would be
al-qanuun wa al taqaalid (‘law and convention/tradition’). The English collocation
refl ects the high value that English speakers place on order and the Arabic collo-
cation refl ects the high respect accorded by Arabs to the concept of tradition.
3.1.1 Collocational range and collocational markedness
Every word in a language can be said to have a range of items with which it is
compatible, to a greater or lesser degree. Range here refers to the set of collo-
cates, that is other words, which are typically associated with the word in question.
Some words have a much broader collocational range than others. The English verb
shrug, for instance, has a rather limited collocational range. It typically occurs with
shoulders and does not have a particularly strong link with any other word in the
language. Run, by contrast, has a vast collocational range, some of its typical collo-
cates being company, business, show, car, stockings, tights, nose, wild, debt, bill,
river, course, water and colour, among others.
Two main factors can infl uence the collocational range of an item (Beekman and
Callow 1974). The fi rst is its level of specifi city: the more general a word, the
broader its collocational range; the more specifi c, the more restricted its colloca-
tional range. The verb bury is likely to have a much broader collocational range than
any of its hyponyms, such as inter or entomb. Only people can be interred, but you
can bury people, a treasure, your head, face, feelings and memories. The second
factor which determines the collocational range of an item is the number of senses
it has. Most words have several senses and tend to attract a different set of collo-
cates for each sense. For example, in its sense of ‘manage’, the verb run collocates
with words like company, institution and business. In its sense of ‘operate or
provide’, it collocates with words like service and course. It is, of course, perfectly
reasonable to argue that the opposite is also true, that it is the collocational patterning
of a word that determines its different senses (see 3.1.3 below). Either way, it is

EQUIVALENCE ABOVE WORD LEVEL 55
clear that there is a strong relationship between the number of senses a word has
and its collocational range.
It will be obvious from our discussion of collocation so far that, unlike gram-
matical statements, statements about collocation are made in terms of what is
typical or untypical rather than what is admissible or inadmissible. This means that
there is no such thing as an impossible collocation. New and unusual combinations
of words occur frequently and we do not necessarily dismiss them as unacceptable.
The reason for this is that collocational ranges are not fi xed. Words attract new
collocates all the time; they do so naturally, through processes of analogy, or
because speakers create unusual collocations on purpose. But how does this work
in practice and what do unusual patterns of collocation achieve?
Patterns of collocation which have a history of recurrence in the language
become part of our standard linguistic repertoire and we do not stop to think about
them when we encounter them in text. By contrast, collocations which have little or
no history of recurrence catch our attention and strike us as unusual. In wording his
or her message, a speaker or writer has two broad options. He or she can reinforce
the patterns of collocation which already exist in the language by adhering to them:
Herman J. Mankiewicz had been a fi ne screenwriter … , a compulsive
gambler, a famous drunk, a slashing wit, and a man who was almost fero-
ciously accident prone.
(Shirley MacLaine, You Can Get There From Here, 1975:66–67; my
emphasis)
Alternatively, a speaker or writer can create variations on an existing pattern by, for
instance, extending the range of an item:
I fi rst met Hugh Fraser in 1977. Charming, rather hesitant, a heavy smoker
and heavy gambler, he had made such headway through his fortune that he
had decided to sell his last major asset, the controlling shares in the business
which his father had built up and named Scottish and Universal Investments.
(Lonrho, A Hero from Zero:1; my emphasis)
The difference between compulsive gambler and heavy gambler is that the fi rst is a
common collocation in English, whereas the second represents an attempt to
extend the range of heavy to include heavy gambler, by analogy with heavy smoker
and heavy drinker. The collocation heavy gambler does not strike us as particularly
unusual because it only involves a slight extension of an existing range. This kind of
natural extension of a range is far less striking than marked collocations which
involve deliberate confusion of collocational ranges to create new images – a
marked collocation being an unusual combination of words, one that challenges our
expectations as hearers or readers.2 Marked collocations are often used in fi ction,
poetry, humour, news reporting and advertisements precisely for this reason:

56 IN OTHER WORDS
because they can create unusual images, produce laughter or irony, and catch the
reader’s attention. Moon (1998:161) offers a good example from the Bank of
English corpus:
President Clinton fanned the fl ames of optimism in Northern Ireland.
The expression ‘to fan the fl ames’ is normally associated with very negative collo-
cates such as ‘racial tension’ and ‘hatred’. As Louw (2000) explains, what we
understand from this line is that the author is ironically suggesting that the peace
process in Northern Ireland is ‘almost as aggressive as the war it is designed to end’.
See also the discussion of semantic prosodies in Chapter 7, section 7.3.1.
The following example of marked collocation is from John Le Carré’s The
Russia House (1989:102; my emphasis):
Some tout at the book fair wanted me to take UK rights in a book on glasnost
and the crisis of peace. Essays by past and present hawks, reappraisals of
strategy. Could real peace break out after all?
War normally breaks out, but peace prevails. These unmarked collocations suggest
that war is a temporary and undesirable situation and that peace is a normal and
desirable one. The deliberate mixing of collocational ranges in the above extract
conveys the unexpected image of peace being an abnormal, temporary and possibly
even an undesirable situation.
To sum up, we create new collocations all the time, either by extending an
existing range or by deliberately putting together words from different or opposing
ranges. As well as being reinforced, the established patterns in a language can
therefore be used as a backdrop against which new images and new meanings can
be invoked. New collocations often catch on, are reinforced by usage and eventually
become part of the standard repertoire of the language. In turn, they can be used as
a backdrop for communicating new meanings by creating new collocations, and so
the cycle continues.
3.1.2 Collocation and register
Collocational patterns are not always typical/untypical in relation to the language
system as a whole. You may have noted that all the examples used so far have been
of common, everyday collocations which are more or less familiar to all of us,
regardless of our occupations, special interests or hobbies. Some collocations may
seem untypical in everyday language but are common in specifi c registers. Sinclair
(1966) explains that dull highlights and vigorous depressions may sound odd in
everyday English but are common collocations in the fi elds of photography and
meteorology, respectively. In statistics, collocations such as biased error and
tolerable error are common and acceptable. A reader who is not familiar with the
register of statistics may wrongly assume that these collocations are marked.

EQUIVALENCE ABOVE WORD LEVEL 57
However, collocational markedness is not an absolute quality; it always depends on
what the norm is in a given register.
Register-specifi c collocations are not simply the set of terms that go with a disci-
pline. They extend far beyond the list of terms that one normally fi nds in specialized
dictionaries and glossaries. It is not enough, for instance, to know that data in
computer language forms part of compound terms such as data processing and
data bank and to become familiar with the dictionary equivalents of such terms in the
target language. In order to translate computer literature, a translator must, among
other things, be aware that in English computer texts, data may be handled,
extracted, processed, manipulated and retrieved, but not typically shifted, treated,
arranged or tackled. A translator of computer literature must also be familiar with the
way in which the equivalent of data is used in his or her corresponding target texts,
that is, with the set of collocates which are compatible with the equivalent of data.
Being a native speaker of a language does not automatically mean that the trans-
lator can assess the acceptability or typicality of register-specifi c collocations. This is
largely why courses in specialized and technical language form an important
component of translation training syllabuses.
3.1.3 Collocational meaning
In Chapter 2, meaning was discussed almost as if it was a property that each word
possesses in its own right. It is, however, disputable whether a word on its own can
‘mean’ anything. What we do when we are asked to give an account of the meaning
of a word in isolation is to contextualize it in its most typical collocations rather than
its rarer ones. Asked to explain what dry means, we are likely to think of collocations
such as dry clothes, dry river and dry weather, which would prompt the defi nition
‘free from water’. As we move away from the most common collocations of dry, it
becomes clear that the meaning of dry depends largely on its pattern of collocation
and is not something that the word possesses in isolation.
Try paraphrasing the meaning of dry in each of the following combinations:
dry cow dry sound dry book
dry bread dry voice dry humour
dry wine dry country dry run
Most, if not all of the above collocations have unique meanings. This suggests that
what a word means often depends on its association with certain collocates. When
the translation of a word or a stretch of language is criticized as being inaccurate or
inappropriate in a given context, the criticism may refer to the translator’s inability to
recognize a collocational pattern with a unique meaning different from or exceeding
the sum of the meanings of its individual elements. As Hunston and Francis explain,
even in the case of a straightforward collocation such as start a family, where both
start and family retain their basic dictionary meaning as isolated words, ‘the meaning

58 IN OTHER WORDS
of the whole … includes also a further meaning: “have one’s fi rst child”’ (2000:9).
Collocations that involve one or both items being used in other than their discrete
dictionary meaning raise similar issues. A translator who renders dry voice for
instance as ‘a voice which is not moist’ would be mistranslating dry in this context,
having failed to recognize that when it collocates with voice it means ‘cold’, in the
sense of not expressing emotion. Likewise, a translator who renders run a car as
‘drive a car fast’ would be misinterpreting run in this context. Taking account of
collocational meaning rather than substituting individual words with their dictionary
equivalents is therefore crucial at the fi rst stage of translation, that is when the trans-
lator is interpreting the source text.
Note that even when there appears to be a close match between collocational
patterns in two languages, they may not carry the same meaning. For example, to
run a car in English means ‘to own, use, and be able to maintain a car fi nancially’. In
modern Greek, to speak of a car ‘running’ simply means that it is being driven fast or
with excessive speed.
3.1.4 Some collocation-related pitfalls and problems in
translation
Differences in the collocational patterning of the source and target languages create
potential pitfalls and can pose various problems in translation. Some of these
problems are more diffi cult to handle than others. The following are some of the
more common pitfalls and problems that are often encountered in translating non-
literary texts. Where applicable, examples are given of strategies used by profes-
sional translators to overcome the problems under discussion. The English collocation
which poses a translation problem is underlined. The collocation or expression which
substitutes it in the target text is highlighted in bold.
3.1.4.1 The engrossing effect of source text patterning
It is easy to assume that as long as a collocation can be found in the target
language which conveys the same or a similar meaning to that of the source collo-
cation, the translator will not be confused by differences in the surface patterning
between the two. For example, strong tea is literally ‘dense tea’ in Japanese;
break the law is an unacceptable collocation in Arabic, the common collocation
being, literally, ‘contradict the law’; likewise, keep a dog/cat is unacceptable in
Danish, where the usual expression is ‘hold a dog/cat’. A Japanese, Arabic or
Danish translator, one might assume, would not hesitate to make the necessary
adjustment since, to all intents and purposes, the English/Japanese, English/
Arabic and English/Danish collocations have the same meanings, respectively.
There are, nevertheless, many published translations which testify to the contrary.
Translators sometimes get quite engrossed in the source text and may produce
the oddest collocations in the target language for no justifi able reason. Here is an
example from A Hero from Zero (p. iv).

EQUIVALENCE ABOVE WORD LEVEL 59
Back at the dull mahogany tables of the Commission, I found myself again
seated opposite the familiar, tall, languid fi gure of Sir Godfray Le Quesne,
rocking gently on his chair, with his hands clasped behind his head, and his
eyes closed as he listened or slept through the hearings. He’d been looking
into us for four years, and knew our business backwards. What am I doing
here, I thought, as I gazed by the hour and by the month at the hole in the sole
of his leather shoe, and wondered why Lonrho’s bid was in the hands of a
man who couldn’t organise his own shoe repairs.
The French translator of A Hero from Zero (a document produced by Lonrho plc
about the acquisition of the House of Fraser by Mohamed Fayed) rendered shoe
repairs as réparer ses chaussures (‘to repair his shoes’), which is a literal translation
from English. In French, réparer collocates with things like ‘fridges’, ‘cars’ and
machines in general, but it does not collocate with chaussures. The translator should
have used ressemeler ses chaussures (‘resole his shoes’), which is a far more
natural collocation in French.3

Confusing source and target patterns is a pitfall that can easily be avoided once
the translator is alerted to the potential infl uence that the collocational patterning of
the source text can have on him or her. A good method of detaching oneself from
the source text is to put the draft translation aside for a few hours. One can then
return to the target text with a better chance of responding to its patterning as a
target reader eventually would, having not been exposed to and therefore infl uenced
by the source-text patterning in the fi rst place. At any rate, translators are well
advised to avoid carrying over source-language collocational patterns which are
untypical of the target language, unless there is a good reason for doing so.
3.1.4.2 Misinterpreting the meaning of a source-language
collocation
A translator can easily misinterpret a collocation in the source text due to inter-
ference from his or her native language. This happens when a source-language
collocation appears to be familiar because it corresponds in form to a common collo-
cation in the target language. I am assuming here that many professional translators
would normally work from a foreign language into their native language or language
of habitual use, but see Beeby Lonsale (2009) for a detailed overview of this contro-
versial issue, and Pokorn (2005) for a defence of translating into the foreign
language. The following example is also from A Hero from Zero (p. 59):
All this represents only a part of all that Forbes Magazine reported on
Fayed in the March issue mentioned before. In 1983, he had
approached the industrialist Robert O. Anderson under the cover of a
commission agent. The industrialist had been struck by his appearance
as someone with modest means. Mr. Anderson was therefore
astonished by his sudden acquisition of a considerable fortune.

60 IN OTHER WORDS
Target text (Arabic, p. 69):
. . . .
The industrialist saw in him a person whose appearance suggests
modesty and simplicity.
The collocation modest means suggests lack of affl uence in English. The equivalent
of ‘modest’ in Arabic (mutawaadi’) can suggest a similar meaning in some colloca-
tions such as dakhl mutawaadi’ (‘small income’). However, both the adjective muta-
waadi’ (‘modest’) and the noun tawaadu’ (‘modesty’) used in connection with a
person usually mean that he or she is unassuming. This interpretation is further rein-
forced by the addition of basaata (‘simplicity’). The translator of the above extract
seems to have confused the collocational patterns of English and Arabic, thus misin-
terpreting the source collocation and communicating the wrong meaning in the
target text.
3.1.4.3 The tension between accuracy and naturalness
In rendering unmarked source-language collocations into his or her target language,
a translator normally aims to produce a collocation which is typical in the target
language while preserving the meaning associated with the source collocation.4 This
cannot always be achieved. Translation often involves a tension – a diffi cult choice
between what is typical and what is accurate.
The nearest acceptable collocation in the target language will often involve some
change in meaning. This change in meaning may be minimal, or not particularly
sig nifi cant in a given context. On the other hand, it may be signifi cant; for example, a
good/bad law in English is typically a ‘just/unjust law’ in Arabic. The signifi cance of
this difference in meaning depends on whether the issue of ‘justice’ is in focus in a
given text or whether the context favours avoiding explicit reference to justice. Simi-
larly, the nearest acceptable collocation which can replace hard drink in Arabic is ‘alco-
holic drink’. But hard drink refers only to spirits in English, for example whisky, gin and
brandy. It does not include other alcoholic drinks such as beer, lager or sherry. The
Arabic collocation, however, refers to any alcoholic drink, including beer, lager, sherry,
as well as spirits. The meanings of the two collocations therefore do not map
completely. Whether the translator opts for the typical Arabic collocation or tries to
translate the full meaning of hard drink, possibly by a circumlocution, will depend on
whether the distinction between hard and soft alcoholic drinks is signifi cant or relevant
in a given context. A certain amount of loss, addition or skewing of meaning is often
unavoidable in translation; language systems tend to be too different to produce exact
replicas in most cases. The degree of acceptability or non-acceptability of a change in
meaning depends on the signifi cance of this change in a given context. Accuracy is no
doubt an important aim in translation, but it is also important to bear in mind that the
use of common target-language patterns which are familiar to the target reader plays

EQUIVALENCE ABOVE WORD LEVEL 61
an important role in keeping the communication channels open. The use of estab-
lished patterns of collocation also helps to distinguish a smooth translation that does
not require readers to labour unproductively over irrelevant linguistic infelicities from a
clumsy translation which might leave readers with the impression that the translator is
simply inexperienced or incompetent.
Here are some examples of translations which have opted for naturalness at the
expense of accuracy. The change in meaning involved in the following examples is
not signifi cant enough to justify cluttering the text with additional explanations or
using untypical target collocations:
Example A
Source text (Brintons – press release, 1986):
New Tradition offers a fascinating series of traditional patterns in
miniature using rich jewel-like colours that glow against dark
backgrounds.
Target text (Arabic):
” ”
.
The ‘New Tradition’ collection presents a number of fascinating
designs in a reduced size, in dazzling colours like the colours of
gems, the glowing of which is enhanced by the dark backgrounds.
Rich colours are vivid and deep. The Arabic collocation suggests brightness rather
than depth of colour.
Example B
Source text (China’s Panda Reserves – World Wide Fund for Nature text
which accompanied a slide show):
These young pandas in Bejing Zoo are great crowd pullers.
Target text (Chinese):
对大多数人来说，能看见大熊猫的唯一机会便是在动物园里。北
京动物园里的这些幼熊猫吸引着大量的观众。
These young pandas in the Bejing Zoo attract a lot of spectators.

62 IN OTHER WORDS
Crowd pullers is not an acceptable collocation in Chinese. In addition, the expression
is quite informal. Chinese does not favour informal style in written discourse.
Although much of the expressive and evoked meaning of crowd pullers is lost in the
Chinese translation, the collocation used to replace it is more natural and stylistically
more acceptable.
Example C
Source text (China’s Panda Reserves):
The Chinese people have already made substantial efforts to protect
the giant panda, which is considered to be a national treasure.
Nevertheless, we are at a critical time for this species.
Target text (Chinese):
中国人民已经做了许多工作来保护被视为国宝的大熊猫。但是，
我们正处在熊猫生死存亡的关键时刻。如果没有对大熊猫极其仅
剩的栖息地进行及时的、有效的保护和管理，这样的景象就将会
越来越难看到——这对中国和整个世界都将是个损失。
The Chinese people have already done a lot to protect the big panda
which is regarded as a national treasure. However, we are at the
crucial moment when the panda is in the condition of
life-death-existence-extinction.
Critical time is replaced by a more typical Chinese fi xed expression which has a
similar, though perhaps more emphatic meaning.
The following examples involve a more signifi cant change in meaning. You may
or may not agree with the translator’s decision to opt for a typical target collocation
in each case:
Example D
Source text (the Independent):
Tiny Rowland is a crisper writer than Peter Wright and has an even
stranger story to tell.

EQUIVALENCE ABOVE WORD LEVEL 63
Target text (Arabic):
” ” .
Tiny Rowland has a sharper pen than Peter Wright’s, and also the
story which he is narrating is much stranger.
Crisp writing is clear, concise writing. The collocation suggests approval. In Arabic,
‘sharp pen’ is a common and typical collocation. However, both its propositional and
expressive meanings are quite different from those of crisp writing in English. A
writer is described as having a ‘sharp pen’ in Arabic if he or she is a fi erce critic. The
collocation does not suggest approval.
Example E
Source text (A Hero from Zero, Lonrho:13):
In fact, the money came from the Sultan of Brunei, a naive individual,
easily romanced and seduced by the oily charm of Mohamed Fayed.
Target text (Arabic, p. 27):

.
But the fact is that this money had come from the Sultan of Brunei
and he is a naive person who believes imaginary, fake stories, and the
false charm of Mohammed Fayed tempted him.
To describe someone as having oily charm in English means not only that they are
insincere, but also that there is something particularly unpleasant, even sickening, in
the way they show excessive politeness or fl atter people. In Arabic, ‘false charm’
merely suggests that someone who appears charming at fi rst glance may not turn
out to be as good as they think or claim to be.
3.1.4.4 Culture-specifi c collocations
Some collocations refl ect the cultural setting in which they occur. If the cultural
settings of the source and target languages are signifi cantly different, there will be
instances when the source text will contain collocations which convey what to the

64 IN OTHER WORDS
target reader would be unfamiliar associations of ideas. Such culture-specifi c collo-
cations express ideas previously unexpressed in the target language. Like culture-
specifi c words, they point to concepts which are not easily accessible to the target
reader.
Example A
Source text (Euralex conference circular, 1987):
Papers relating to the lesser-known languages will be particularly
welcome.
Target text (Russian):
We intend to discuss separately questions concerning the so-called
‘small’, i.e. less widespread and ‘big’, i.e. more widespread
languages.
In English academic writing, it is common and acceptable to talk about ‘lesser-known
languages’, as well as ‘major languages’ and ‘minor languages’. Russian has no
equivalent collocations. Furthermore, the political and social setting of Russian makes
it potentially offensive to draw a distinction between better-known and lesser-known,
or major and minor languages. The translator of the above extract seems to be aware
of the oddity of such associations in Russian and their potential for causing offence.
Hence, inverted commas are used around ‘small’ and ‘big’, they are each followed by
a paraphrase, and the whole expression is preceded by ‘so-called’, which serves to
distance the writer/translator from the associations made.
Note that the translation of culture-specifi c collocations involves a partial
increase in information. This is unavoidable inasmuch as unfamiliar associations of
ideas cannot simply be introduced in a target text without giving the reader some hint
as to how to interpret them.
Example B
Source text (Kolestral Super – leafl et accompanying a hair-conditioning
product):
KOLESTRAL-SUPER is ideal for all kinds of hair, especially for
damaged, dry and brittle hair.

EQUIVALENCE ABOVE WORD LEVEL 65
Target text (Arabic):

.
Kolestral-super is ideal for all kinds of hair, especially for the split-
ends hair, harmed or damaged hair and also for hair which is
dry, of weak structure or liable to breaking.
The above extract is taken from an instruction leafl et which accompanies a hair
conditioner. Common collocates of hair in English include dry, oily, damaged,
permed, fi ne, fl yaway and brittle, among others. These collocations refl ect cultural
reality in the English-speaking world. A large number of English speakers have fi ne,
fl yaway hair, which also tends to be brittle. Common collocates of ‘hair’ in Arabic are
mainly ‘split-ends’, ‘dry’, ‘oily’, ‘coarse’ and ‘smooth’. These collocations also
refl ect the cultural reality of the Arabic-speaking world. The collocations damaged
hair and brittle hair have no close equivalents in Arabic. The translator of the above
extract nevertheless feels obliged to reproduce every possible aspect of meaning
conveyed in the source text, regardless of whether the source collocations are likely
to have any signifi cance in the Arabic context. The collocations and the lengthy
explanations given in Arabic ‘mean’ very little to the Arab reader. Moreover, it is
doubtful whether ‘damaged hair’ and ‘brittle hair’ would in fact be seen as problems
by the average Arab. It is reasonable to assume that people only seek solutions for
problems they are aware of or which they are likely to have.
3.1.4.5 Marked collocations in the source text
Unusual combinations of words are sometimes used in the source text in order to
create new images (see 3.1.1 above). Ideally, the translation of a marked collocation
will be similarly marked in the target language. This is, however, always subject to
the constraints of the target language and to the purpose of the translation in
question.
Example A
Source text (Language and Society – a bilingual journal published in
Canada (1985), 15:8):5

Canada has chosen to ‘entrench’ its dual cultural heritage in its
institutions and, as a result, offi cial translation has taken fi rm root.

66 IN OTHER WORDS
Target text (French, p. 8):
Canada a choisi «d’enchasser» – le mot est hélas! à la mode – son
double héritage culturel dans ses institutions et la traduction offi cielle
y est, par conséquent, solidement enracinée.
Canada has chosen to ‘insert’ – the word is alas in fashion! – its
double cultural heritage in its institutions and offi cial translation is,
as a consequence, solidly rooted there.
The reader of the source text is alerted to the writer’s wish to communicate an
unusual image by the inverted commas around entrench. In the target text, the
marked collocation is further highlighted by means of an interjection from the trans-
lator (‘the word is alas in fashion’).
Example B
Source text (Language and Society (1985), 15:22):
The young ethnic child begins to lose the fi rst language mainly
because of impoverishment of reference. What this means is that as
the child becomes more and more exposed to English outside the
home, he lacks the linguistic resources to deal with many topics in
the fi rst language, which tends to become restricted to household
matters. We call this phenomenon ‘kitchen German’, from the
observation among many adults of European background in Western
Canada whose only remembrance of their parents’ language consists
of a few words or phrases to do with household chores.
Target text (French, p. 22):
… Nous inspirant de la désignation «kitchen German», nous dirons
qu’il y a là une langue «popote» comme on a pu l’observer chez
nombre d’adultes d’origine européenne établis dans l’Ouest
canadien. La compétence langagière est toujours lieé par des
associations habituelles à des contextes particuliers.
… Inspiring us from the name ‘kitchen German’, we shall say that
there is a ‘cooking’ language as one has been able to observe among
a number of adults of European origin established in Western
Canada. The language competence is always connected by habitual
associations to particular contexts.

EQUIVALENCE ABOVE WORD LEVEL 67
Note again the use of inverted commas around marked collocations in the source
and target texts.
To conclude our brief discussion of collocation, I would reiterate that language is
not made up of a large number of words which can be used together in free vari-
ation. Words have a certain tolerance of compatibility. Like individual words, colloca-
tional patterns carry meaning and can be culture-specifi c. This, in addition to their
largely arbitrary nature, gives rise to numerous pitfalls and problems in translation.
3.2 IDIOMS AND FIXED EXPRESSIONS
Generally speaking, collocations are fairly fl exible patterns of language which allow
several variations in form. For example, deliver a letter, delivery of a letter, a letter
has been delivered and having delivered a letter are all acceptable collocations. In
addition, although the meaning of a word often depends on what other words it
occurs with, we can still say that the word in question has an individual meaning in a
given collocation. Thus, dry cow means a cow which does not produce milk. We can
still identify a particular meaning associated with the word dry in this collocation, and,
of course, cow still retains its familiar meaning of ‘a farm animal kept for its milk’.
Idioms and fi xed expressions are at the extreme end of the scale from collocations in
one or both of these areas: fl exibility of patterning and transparency of meaning.
They are frozen patterns of language which allow little or no variation in form and, in
the case of idioms, often carry meanings which cannot be deduced from their indi-
vidual components.
An idiom such as bury the hatchet (‘to become friendly again after a dis agreement
or a quarrel’) or the long and the short of it (‘the basic facts of the situation’) allows
no variation in form under normal circumstances. Unless he or she is consciously
making a joke or attempting a play on words, a speaker or writer cannot normally do
any of the following with an idiom:
1. change the order of the words in it (e.g. *‘the short and the long of it’);
2. delete a word from it (e.g. *‘spill beans’);
3. add a word to it (e.g. *‘the very long and short of it’; *‘face the classical music’);
4. replace a word with another (e.g. *‘the tall and the short of it’; *‘bury a hatchet’);
5. change its grammatical structure (e.g. *‘the music was faced’).
As their name suggests, fi xed expressions such as having said that, as a matter of
fact, Ladies and Gentlemen and all the best, as well as proverbs such as practise
what you preach and waste not want not, allow little or no variation in form. In this
respect, they behave very much like idioms. Unlike idioms, however, fi xed expres-
sions and proverbs often have fairly transparent meanings. The meaning of as a
matter of fact can easily be deduced from the meanings of the words which constitute
it, unlike the meaning of an idiom such as pull a fast one or fi ll the bill. But in spite of
its transparency, the meaning of a fi xed expression or proverb is somewhat more
than the sum meanings of its words; the expression has to be taken as one unit to

68 IN OTHER WORDS
establish meaning. This is true of any fi xed, recurring pattern of the language. A
fi xed expression evokes in the mind of the reader or hearer a range of associations
connected with the typical contexts in which the expression is used. It is precisely
this feature which lies behind the widespread use of fi xed and semi-fi xed expres-
sions in any language. They encapsulate stereotypical aspects of experience and
therefore perform a stabilizing function in communication. Situation- or register-
specifi c formulae such as Many happy returns, Merry Christmas, Further to your
letter of …, and Yours sincerely are particularly good examples of the stabilizing role
and the special status that a fi xed expression can assume in communication.
3.2.1 Idioms, fi xed expressions and the direction of
translation
Although most idioms resist variation in form, some are more fl exible than others.
For example, a BBC radio reporter once quoted a conference speaker as saying
‘There was too much buck passing’ (Baker and McCarthy 1988). The common
form of the idiom is pass the buck (‘refuse to accept responsibility for something’).
And yet, we would not expect to hear There was too much way giving for give way
(‘allow someone to do something you disapprove of’).
A person’s competence in actively using the idioms and fi xed expressions of a
foreign language hardly ever matches that of a native speaker. The majority of trans-
lators working into a foreign language cannot hope to achieve the same sensitivity
that native speakers seem to have for judging when and how an idiom can be manip-
ulated. This lends some support to the argument that translators should only work
into their language of habitual use or mother tongue, at least in genres which are
characterized by creative or playful use of language (but see Beeby Londsdale 2009
and Pokorn 2005 for alternative arguments). The Code of Professional Ethics of the
Translators’ Guild of Great Britain6 states:
A translator shall work only into the language (in exceptional cases this may
include a second language) of which he has native knowledge. ‘Native
knowledge’ is defi ned as the ability to speak and write a language so fl uently
that the expression of thought is structurally, grammatically and idiomatically
correct.
(quoted in Meuss, 1981:278; my emphasis)
Assuming that a professional translator would, under normal circumstances, work
only into his or her language of habitual use, the diffi culties associated with being
able to use idioms and fi xed expressions correctly in a foreign language need not be
addressed here. The main problems that idiomatic and fi xed expressions pose in
translation relate to two main areas: the ability to recognize and interpret an idiom
correctly; and the diffi culties involved in rendering the various aspects of meaning
that an idiom or a fi xed expression conveys into the target language. These diffi –

EQUIVALENCE ABOVE WORD LEVEL 69
culties are much more pronounced in the case of idioms than they are in the case of
fi xed expressions.
3.2.2 The interpretation of idioms
As far as idioms are concerned, the fi rst diffi culty that a translator comes across is
being able to recognize that he or she is dealing with an idiomatic expression. This is
not always so obvious. There are various types of idiom, some more easily recog-
nizable than others. Those which are easily recognizable include expressions that
violate truth conditions, such as It’s raining cats and dogs, throw caution to the
wind, storm in a tea cup, jump down someone’s throat and food for thought. They
also include expressions which seem ill-formed because they do not follow the
grammatical rules of the language, for example trip the light fantastic, blow someone
to kingdom come, put paid to, the powers that be, by and large and the world and
his friend. Expressions which start with like (simile-like structures) also tend to
suggest that they should not be interpreted literally. These include idioms such as
like a bat out of hell and like water off a duck’s back. Generally speaking, the more
diffi cult an expression is to understand and the less sense it makes in a given
context, the more likely that a translator will recognize it as an idiom. Because they
do not make sense if interpreted literally, the highlighted expressions in the following
text are easy to recognize as idioms (assuming one is not already familiar with them):
This can only be done, I believe, by a full and frank airing of the issues. I
urge you all to speak your minds and not to pull any punches.
(Language and Society (1985), 14:6)
Provided a translator has access to good reference works and monolingual diction-
aries of idioms, or, better still, is able to consult native speakers of the language,
opaque idioms which do not make sense for one reason or another can actually be a
blessing in disguise. The very fact that he or she cannot make sense of an expression
in a particular context will alert the translator to the presence of an idiom of some sort.
There are two cases in which an idiom can be easily misinterpreted if one is not
already familiar with it:
(a) Some idioms are ‘misleading’; they seem transparent because they offer a
reasonable literal interpretation and their idiomatic meanings are not necessarily
signalled in the surrounding text. A large number of idioms in English, and probably
all languages, have both a literal and an idiomatic meaning, for example go out with
(‘have a romantic or sexual relationship with someone’) and take someone for a ride
(‘deceive or cheat someone in some way’). Such idioms lend themselves easily to
manipulation by speakers and writers who will sometimes play on both their literal
and idiomatic meanings. In this case, a translator who is not familiar with the idiom in
question may easily accept the literal interpretation and miss the play on idiom. The

70 IN OTHER WORDS
following example illustrates how easy it is to accept a literal interpretation that
seems plausible in a given context. The text from which the extract is taken is quoted
in the Translator’s Guild Newsletter (January 1985, 10:1).
I’d just done my stint as rubber duck, see, and pulled off the grandma lane
into the pitstop to drain the radiator.
This is an extract from a highly idiomatic passage of Citizen Band (CB) Radio special
‘trucking talk’. Rubber duck is the fi rst trucker in a convoy, grandma lane is the slow
lane, and pitstop refers to services or a place where one stops for a rest. In the
context of trucks, motorways and stopping at a service station, a literal interpretation
of drain the radiator seems highly plausible. It is, however, a special idiom used by
CB drivers and means ‘to urinate; use the toilet’.
(b) An idiom in the source language may have a very close counterpart in the target
language which looks similar on the surface but has a totally or partially different
meaning. For example, the idiomatic question Has the cat had/got your tongue? is
used in English to urge someone to answer a question or contribute to a conversation,
particularly when their failure to do so becomes annoying. A similar expression is used
in French with a totally different meaning: donner sa langue au chat (‘to give one’s
tongue to the cat’), meaning to give up, for example when asked a riddle. To pull
someone’s leg, meaning to tell someone something untrue as a joke in order to shock
them temporarily and amuse them when they fi nd out later that it was a joke, is iden-
tical on the surface to the idiom yishab rijlu (‘pull his leg’) which is used in several
Arabic dialects to mean tricking someone into talking about something he or she would
have rather kept secret. In French, a similar expression: tirer la jambe (‘pull the leg’)
means to drag one’s steps. Instances of superfi cially identical or similar idioms which
have different meanings in the source and target languages lay easy traps for the
unwary translator who is not familiar with the source-language idiom and who may be
tempted simply to impose a target-language interpretation on it.
Apart from being alert to the way speakers and writers manipulate certain
features of idioms and to the possible confusion which could arise from similarities in
form between source and target expressions, a translator must also consider the
collocational environment which surrounds any expression whose meaning is not
readily accessible. Idiomatic and fi xed expressions have individual collocational
patterns. They form collocations with other items in the text as single units and enter
into lexical sets which are different from those of their individual words. Take, for
instance, the idiom to have cold feet. Cold as a separate item may collocate with
words like weather, winter, feel or country. Feet on its own will perhaps collocate
with socks, chilblain, smelly and so on. However, having cold feet, in its idiomatic
use, has nothing necessarily to do with winter, feet or chilblains and will therefore
generally be used with a different set of collocates.
The ability to distinguish senses by collocation is an invaluable asset to a trans-
lator working from a foreign language. It is often subsumed under the general

EQUIVALENCE ABOVE WORD LEVEL 71
umbrella of ‘relying on the context to disambiguate meanings’, which, among other
things, means using our knowledge of collocational patterns to decode the meaning
of a word or a stretch of language. Using our knowledge of collocational patterns
may not always tell us what an idiom means, but it could easily help us in many cases
to recognize an idiom, particularly one which has a literal as well as a non-literal
meaning.
3.2.3 The translation of idioms: diffi culties
Once an idiom or fi xed expression has been recognized and interpreted correctly,
the next step is to decide how to translate it into the target language. The diffi culties
involved in translating an idiom are totally different from those involved in interpreting
it. Here, the question is not whether a given idiom is transparent, opaque or
misleading. An opaque expression may be easier to translate than a transparent
one. The main diffi culties involved in translating idioms and fi xed expressions may be
summarized as follows:
(a) An idiom or fi xed expression may have no equivalent in the target language. The
way a language chooses to express, or not express, various meanings cannot be
predicted and only occasionally matches the way another language chooses to express
the same meanings. One language may express a given meaning by means of a single
word, another may express it by means of a transparent fi xed expression, a third may
express it by means of an idiom and so on. It is therefore unrealistic to expect to fi nd
equivalent idioms and expressions in the target language as a matter of course.
Like single words, idioms and fi xed expressions may be culture-specifi c.
Formulae such as Merry Christmas and say when which relate to specifi c social or
religious occasions provide good examples. Bassnett-McGuire (1980:21) explains
that the expression say when is ‘directly linked to English social behavioural patterns’
and suggests that ‘the translator putting the phrase into French or German has to
contend with the problem of the non-existence of a similar convention in either TL
culture’. Less problematic, but to some extent also culture-specifi c, are the sort of
fi xed formulae that are used in formal correspondence, such as Yours faithfully and
Yours sincerely in English. These, for instance, have no equivalents in Arabic formal
correspondence. Instead, an expression such as wa tafadalu biqbuul fa’iq al-ihtiraam
(literally: ‘and be kind enough to accept [our] highest respects’) is often used, but it
bears no direct relationship to Yours faithfully or Yours sincerely. The same mismatch
occurs in relation to French and several other languages.
Idioms and fi xed expressions which contain culture-specifi c items are not neces-
sarily untranslatable. It is not the specifi c items an expression contains but rather the
meaning it conveys and its association with culture-specifi c contexts which can
make it untranslatable or diffi cult to translate. For example, the English expression
to carry coals to Newcastle, though culture-specifi c in the sense that it contains a
reference to Newcastle coal and uses it as a measure of abundance, is nevertheless
closely paralleled in German by Eulen nach Athen tragen (‘to carry owls to Athens’).

72 IN OTHER WORDS
Both expressions convey the same meaning, namely: to supply something to
someone who already has plenty of it (Grauberg 1989). In French, the same
meaning can be rendered by the expression porter de l’eau à la rivière ‘to carry water
to the river’. Palmer (1976) explains that in Welsh it rains ‘old women and sticks’
rather than ‘cats and dogs’, and yet to most intents and purposes both expressions
mean the same thing.
(b) An idiom or fi xed expression may have a similar counterpart in the target
language, but its context of use may be different; the two expressions may have
different connotations, for instance, or they may not be pragmatically transferable.
To sing a different tune is an English idiom which means to say or do something that
signals a change in opinion because it contradicts what one has said or done before.
In Chinese, chang-dui-tai-xi (‘to sing different tunes/to sing a duet’) also normally
refers to contradictory points of view, but has quite a different usage. It has strong
political connotations and, in certain contexts, can be interpreted as expressing
complementary rather than contradictory points of view.7

To go to the dogs (‘to lose
one’s good qualities’) has a similar counterpart in German, but whereas the English
idiom can be used in connection with a person or a place, its German counterpart
can only be used in connection with a person and often means to die or perish.
Fernando and Flavell (1981) compare to skate on thin ice (‘to act unwisely or court
danger voluntarily’) with a similar Serbian expression: navuci nekoga na tanak led
(‘to pull someone onto the thin ice’). The Serbian idiom differs from the English one
in that it implies forcing someone into a dangerous position. Though similar in
meaning, the contexts in which the two idioms can be used are obviously different.
(c) An idiom may be used in the source text in both its literal and idiomatic senses at
the same time (see 3.2.2 (a) above). Unless the target-language idiom corresponds
to the source-language idiom both in form and in meaning, the play on idiom cannot
be successfully reproduced in the target text. The following extract is from a passage
which constituted part of the British Translators’ Guild Intermediate Examinations for
all languages (1986).
In creating Lord Peter Wimsey, Dorothy L Sayers demonstrated all the
advantages of the amateur private eye. As a wealthy dilettante he was able to
pursue the clues without the boring necessity of earning a living. His title as
the younger son of a duke pandered to reader snobbery and to the obsessive
fascination of some readers with the lifestyle of the aristocracy, or with what
they imagined that lifestyle to be. He had suffi cient infl uence to be able to
poke his nose into the private affairs of others where less aristocratic
noses might have been speedily bloodied.
The above play on idiom can only be reproduced in languages such as French or
German which happen to have an identical idiom, or at least an idiom which refers to
interfering in other people’s affairs and which has the equivalent of nose in it.

EQUIVALENCE ABOVE WORD LEVEL 73
Another example comes from Arab Political Humour by Kishtainy (1985).
Although this book was originally written in English, the writer quotes jokes and
anecdotes of Arab origin, so that English is in fact the target language here. The
following joke emerged after the defeat of the Arab forces in 1967, which resulted
in the annexation of Arab territory by Israel:
Egypt’s Commander-in-Chief, Field Marshal Amin, was horrifi ed to see Pres-
ident Nasser ordering a tattoo artist to print on his right arm the names of all
the territories seized by Israel like Sinai, Gaza, Sharm al-Shaykh, Jerusalem,
the Golan Heights.
‘Why are you doing this?’
‘Lest I should forget them.’
‘But why tattooed? What will you do if we get them back?’
‘If we get them back I’ll cut off my right arm.’
(Kishtainy 1985:157–158; my emphasis)
Unless you are an Arab speaker, you will fi nd it diffi cult to appreciate the humour of
the above passage, which relies totally on the manipulation of literal and idiomatic
meanings. To cut off one’s arm, or cut off one’s right arm for emphasis, is an idiom
which is similar in meaning to pigs might fl y in English. It means that something is
impossible or at least highly unlikely to happen. Neither this English expression nor
any other English idiom with a similar meaning can be used to replace ‘I’ll cut off my
right arm’ in the above passage, because the literal meaning of the Arabic expression
is as important as its idiomatic meaning in this context. The literal translation that the
author gives above is just as ineffective since the non-Arab reader has no access to
the idiomatic meaning. This book was translated into Arabic by Al-Yaziji in 1988 and,
not surprisingly, the jokes work much better in the Arabic version.
It is also possible, and with more recent technological developments increasingly
common, to produce plays on idiom by drawing on the visual and verbal channels
simultaneously. Chaume Varela (1997:323) discusses an example from Quentin
Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, where the following exchange takes place:
Vincent: Come on, Mia. Let’s go get a steak.
Mia: You can get a steak here, daddy-o. Don’t be a …
(Mia draws a square with her hands. Dotted lines appear on the screen,
forming a square. The lines disperse.)
Used idiomatically, as part of expressions such as ‘don’t be square’ and ‘you’re so
square’, square means ‘old-fashioned’, ‘boring’. Mia plays on both meanings, the
literal and the idiomatic, but uses a combination of verbal and visual channels to
communicate her message. According to Chaume Varela (ibid.), the Spanish dubbed
version of the fi lm adopts the following solution (back-translation added; italics in
original):

74 IN OTHER WORDS
Vincent: Vayamos a comernos un fi lete.
Mia: Puedes comerte uno aquí, colega. No me seas …
Back-translation:
Vincent: Let’s go and grab a steak.
Mia: You can eat one here, mate. Don’t be …
A better solution for Mia’s line, Chaume Varela argues, would have been ‘Puedes
comerte uno aquí, mente cuadriculada’ (lit.: You can eat one here, grid-mapped/
square mind). Someone who is described as ‘mente cuadriculada’ in Spanish is
understood to be very rigid and unwilling to accommodate other people’s sugges-
tions – a meaning that overlaps to some extent with ‘old-fashioned’ and ‘boring’ as
signalled by square in English.8 The play on idiom can be reproduced in this instance,
but not without some shift in meaning.
This type of verbal-cum-visual play on idioms is not restricted to multimodal envi-
ronments such as fi lm, web pages and television advertisements. In Figure 5, the
title of an article which appeared in New Scientist on 5 February 2000 (p. 41)
makes use of the same strategy. It plays on the idiomatic meaning of ‘It’s a funny old
world’, an expression normally used when something doesn’t make sense, when
some aspect of the world seems strange and incomprehensible, or when we wish to
communicate, more graphically, that ‘the world is upside down’, as it were.
Figure 5 Title of article in New Scientist

EQUIVALENCE ABOVE WORD LEVEL 75
(d) The very convention of using idioms in written discourse, the contexts in which
they can be used, and their frequency of use may be different in the source and
target languages. English uses idioms in many types of text, even in serious, inter-
national magazines such as New Scientist (see Figure 5), and especially frequently
in advertisements, promotional material and the tabloid press. The following example
from a glossy brochure released in 1989 by the former car manufacturer Austin
Rover illustrates the heavy use of idioms in this type of English written discourse.
The whole passage is highly idiomatic and very informal in style. The main idioms are
highlighted in bold:
METRO
Your own sense of style is all your own. Brilliant. Colourful. Original.
With loads of get up and go.
There’s a car after your own heart. The new 1989 Metro. Sporty new
models which look great – and don’t hang around. A new range. With vivid
new colours and trim. Full of fresh ideas. Luxurious. And wickedly stylish.
Get going in the new Metro GTa. Where else would you fi nd 73PS
performance, alloy wheels and looks like that – at such a price?
Or show what you’re made of at the wheel of the new Metro Sport. It’s
got style. And a performance engine that says it’s a lot more than just a
pretty face.
Fancy something really special in the sports luxury department? With a
sunroof, central locking, tinted glass and a lot more, the new Metro 1.3GS is
just the ticket. And so is the price.
(Today’s Cars, Austin Rover, 1989)
Using idioms in English is thus very much a matter of style. Languages such as
Arabic and Chinese, which draw a sharp distinction between written and spoken
discourse and where the written mode is associated with a high level of formality,
tend, on the whole, to avoid using idioms in written texts. Fernando and Flavell
(1981:85) discuss the difference in rhetorical effect of using idioms in general and
of using specifi c types of idiom in the source and target languages and quite rightly
conclude that ‘[t]ranslation is an exacting art. Idiom more than any other feature of
language demands that the translator be not only accurate but highly sensitive to the
rhetorical nuances of the language.’
3.2.4 The translation of idioms: strategies
The way in which an idiom or a fi xed expression can be translated into another
language depends on many factors. It is not only a question of whether an idiom with
a similar meaning is available in the target language. Other factors include, for
example, the signifi cance of the specifi c lexical items which constitute the idiom,
that is whether they are manipulated elsewhere in the source text, whether verbally

76 IN OTHER WORDS
or visually, as well as the appropriateness or inappropriateness of using idiomatic
language in a given register in the target language. The acceptability or non-
acceptability of using any of the strategies described below will therefore depend on
the context in which a given idiom is translated. The fi rst strategy described, that of
fi nding an idiom of similar meaning and similar form in the target language, may
seem to offer the ideal solution, but that is not necessarily always the case. Ques-
tions of style, register and rhetorical effect must also be taken into consideration.
Fernando and Flavell are correct in warning us against the ‘strong unconscious urge
in most translators to search hard for an idiom in the receptor-language, however
inappropriate it may be’ (1981:82).
(a) Using an idiom of similar meaning and form
This strategy involves using an idiom in the target language which conveys roughly
the same meaning as that of the source-language idiom and, in addition, consists of
equivalent lexical items. This kind of match can only occasionally be achieved.
Example A
Source text (A Hero from Zero, Lonrho:21):
The Sultan’s magnifi cent income was distributed impulsively at his
command. The rain fell on the just and on the unjust.
Target text (French, p. 21):
Le revenue fabuleux du Sultan était distribué sur un simple ordre de
sa part. La pluie tombait aussi bien sur les justes que sur les
injustes.
The fantastic income of the Sultan was distributed on a simple order
on his part. The rain was falling on the just as well as on the
unjust.
Example B
Source text (Language and Society (1985), 16:7):
Five days into what would be the fi nal clash, Pawley tried to force
Speaker Jim Walding’s hand into calling a vote with or without the
Tories.

EQUIVALENCE ABOVE WORD LEVEL 77
Target text (French, p. 7):
Au cinquième jour de ce qui allait se révéler l’affrontement fi nal, M.
Pawley tenta de forcer la main au président de la chambre Jim
Walding pour qu’il décrète une mise aux voix, avec ou sans la
participation des conservateurs.
On the fi fth day of what was going to prove to be the fi nal confron-
tation, Mr. Pawley tried to force the hand of the president of the
Chamber, Jim Walding, to declare a placement of the vote, with or
without the participation of the conservatives.
Example C
Source text (A Hero from Zero, Lonrho:85):
The Fayeds have turned the pre-bid House of Fraser strategy on its
head.
Target text (Arabic, p. 94):

.
And with this the Fayed brothers have turned the strategy of the
House of Fraser previous to the offer of ownership head over heel.
The Arabic expression, which means ‘upside down’, is similar in form only to another
English idiom, head over heels, meaning ‘very much in love’.
Example D
Source text (Masters of the Universe):
Perhaps Granamyr wanted to show us that things aren’t always what
they seem.

78 IN OTHER WORDS
Target text (French):
Peut-être Granamyr voulait-il nous montrer que les choses ne sont
pas toujours ce qu’elles paraissent.
Perhaps Granamyr wanted to show us that things are not always
what they seem.
(b) Using an idiom of similar meaning but dissimilar form
It is often possible to fi nd an idiom or fi xed expression in the target language which
has a meaning similar to that of the source idiom or expression, but which consists
of different lexical items. For example, the English expression One good turn
deserves another and the French expression À beau jeu, beau retour (‘a handsome
action deserves a handsome return’) use different lexical items to express more or
less the same idea (Fernando and Flavell 1981).
Example A
Source text (China’s Panda Reserves):
The serow, a type of wild mountain goat, is very much at home
among the rocky outcrops of Sichuan.
Target text (Chinese):
喜马拉雅山羚羊，是野生山羊的一种，在四川的多岩断层露头之
间十分自在。
The serow, a type of wild mountain goat, is totally at ease in Sichuan’s
many rocky levels.
The Chinese idiom used to replace very much at home is shi fen zi zai. It consists of
a measure word based on a ten-point scale, plus ‘self at ease’. The measure word
means ‘100 per cent’, but the scale used is out of 10 rather than out of 100.
Example B
Source text (Masters of the Universe):
Feel the force of my fi st, frozen fi end!

EQUIVALENCE ABOVE WORD LEVEL 79
Target text (German):
Dir werde ich einheizen, du Scheusal!
I will make things hot for you, monster!
The above statement is addressed to an ice monster. The German expression Dir
werde ich einheizen means literally, or as near literally as possible, ‘I will put the
heating on to you’.
(c) Borrowing the source language idiom
Just as the use of loan words is a common strategy in dealing with culture-specifi c
items (see Chapter 2), it is not unusual for idioms to be borrowed in their original
form in some contexts. In Figure 6, taken from a promotional leafl et available to
visitors to the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester (UK), Out of this
World refers to a space gallery that is signposted as such throughout the Museum.
It is of course a play on the idiomatic meaning of out of this world (‘fantastic’,
‘superb’), and the more concrete meaning of ‘from another galaxy, beyond the earth
environment’, referring to what a visitor might expect to see in a space gallery.
Figure 6 Original version of Manchester Museum of Science and Industry leafl et

80 IN OTHER WORDS
All versions of this promotional leafl et (French, Italian, Spanish, German and
Japanese) retain the idiom/name of the space gallery in English, in the image as
well as the main text (see Figures 7–11).
(d) Translation by paraphrase
This is by far the most common way of translating idioms when a match cannot be
found in the target language or when it seems inappropriate to use idiomatic
language in the target text because of differences in stylistic preferences of the
source and target languages. You may or may not fi nd the paraphrases accurate;
the examples below are quoted as they appear in the original documents to illustrate
the strategy of paraphrase rather than to explain the meanings of individual idioms.
Figure 7 French translation Figure 8 Italian translation
Figure 9 Spanish translation Figure 10 German translation

EQUIVALENCE ABOVE WORD LEVEL 81
Figure 11 Japanese translation
Example A
Source text (Austin Montego – car brochure):
The suspension system has been fully uprated to take rough terrain
in its stride.
Target text (Arabic):
.
The capacity of the suspension system has been raised so as to
overcome the roughness of the terrain.
Example B
Source text (Language and Society (1985), 15:22):
Programmes to teach heritage languages to ethnic youngsters in
upper elementary or high school are all quite laudable, but if it is
merely a question of trying to reinforce or replant fi rst language
competence already lost for all practical purposes, then this is rather
like shutting the stable door when the horse has bolted.

82 IN OTHER WORDS
Target text (French, pp. 22–23):
Ces cours, qui seraient dispensés dans les dernières classes de
l’élémentaire ou au secondaire constituent certes une initiative
louable; mais c’est peut-être trop peu trop tard, car dans bien des
cas ces jeunes n’ont plus qu’un vague souvenir de leur langue
ancestrale.
These courses, which would be given in the last classes of elementary
or to the secondary, certainly constitute a laudable initiative; but it is
perhaps too little too late, because in a good many cases these
youngsters have no more than a vague memory of their ancestral
language.
Example C
Source text (A Hero from Zero, Lonrho:iii):
Lonrho’s directors then agreed not to bid without the prior permission
of the Department of Trade. We were to regret signing that
undertaking, and I do not think that any public company should
agree to open-ended ad hoc restraints of this kind. It was subsequently
used by Norman Tebbit, as Secretary of State at the Department of
Trade and Industry, to unfairly restrain a Lonrho bid while he pushed
another pony past the post.
Target text 1 (French, p. iii):
… Cela fut, par la suite, utilisé par Norman Tebbit, alors ministre du
Commerce et de l’Industrie, afi n de repousser injustement une offre
de Lonrho et dans le même temps favoriser un autre candidat.
… This was used afterwards by Norman Tebbit, then minister of
Commerce and Industry, in order to reject unfairly an offer from
Lonrho and at the same time to favour another candidate.
Target text 2 (Arabic, p. 9):

.

EQUIVALENCE ABOVE WORD LEVEL 83
… This undertaking was later exploited by Norman Tebbit in his
capacity as Minister of Trade and Industry when he unjustly restrained
Lonrho’s offer while helping another competitor to reach the end
of the race.
Example D
Source text (Language and Society (1985), 16:4):
One frequent criticism of the Manitoba Government throughout the
language controversy was that it never seemed to get a handle on the
issue.
Target text (French, p. 4):
Tout au long de la controverse linguistique, on reprocha fréquemment
au gouvernement du Manitoba de ne pas réussir, selon toute
apparence, à maîtriser la situation.
For the whole length of the linguistic controversy, the government of
Manitoba was reproached frequently for not succeeding, by all
appearances, in mastering the situation.
Example E
Source text (Saving China’s Tropical Paradise – World Wide Fund for
Nature text which accompanied a slide show):
Best news of all is the decision to develop a system of fi ve nature
reserves totalling 2000 sq.kms. where representative examples of the
region’s unique ecosystems will be protected for the future.
Target text (Chinese):

最好的消息是决定发展一个由五个自然保护区组成的共2000平方
公里面积的体系。在这一体系中该区独特生态系统中有代表性的
动植物得到保护。

84 IN OTHER WORDS
The best news is a decision to develop a system of 2000 sq.kms.
consisting of fi ve reserves. In such a system representative animal
and plant species within the unique ecosystem of this area will be
protected.
‘The best news is’ does not have the status of a fi xed expression in Chinese.
Although it looks very similar in back-translation to Best news of all, it is just a para-
phrase of the English expression.
(e) Translation by omission of a play on idiom
This strategy involves rendering only the literal meaning of an idiom in a context that
allows for a concrete reading of an otherwise playful use of language. The example
in Figure 12 comes from a promotional leafl et handed out to visitors at the Wedgwood
factory and exhibition – home of the famous British brand of pottery and ornamental
china, in Stoke-on-Trent, UK.
Something that comes or is handed on a plate is made easy to acquire. The
English text plays on the idiomatic meaning of the expression as well as the concrete
meaning of plate, which is particularly salient here given that Wedgwood are famous
for producing crockery. This play on idiom is very diffi cult to reproduce in other
languages. The Japanese translation (Figure 13) opts for sacrifi cing the idiomatic
meaning in this instance.
Figure 12 Original version of Wedgwood leafl et

EQUIVALENCE ABOVE WORD LEVEL 85
Figure 13 Japanese translation
The caption in Japanese literally reads: ‘The craft of famous people has been
continually poured for centuries into a single plate’.
(f) Translation by omission of entire idiom
As with single words, an idiom may sometimes be omitted altogether in the target
text. This may be because it has no close match in the target language, its meaning
cannot be easily paraphrased, or for stylistic reasons. Here is an example from A
Hero from Zero (p. vi):
It was bitter, but funny, to see that Professor Smith had doubled his
own salary before recommending the offer from Fayed, and added a
pre-dated bonus for good measure.
Target text (Arabic, p. 12):

.
It was regrettable, even funny, that Professor Smith had been able to
double his salary twice before offering his recommendation to accept
Fayed’s offer, and that he added to this a bonus, the date of which
had been previously decided on.

86 IN OTHER WORDS
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One strategy which cannot be adequately illustrated, simply because it would take
up a considerable amount of space, is the strategy of compensation. Briefl y, this
means that one may either omit or play down a feature such as idiomaticity at the
point where it occurs in the source text and introduce it elsewhere in the target text.
This strategy is not restricted to idiomaticity or fi xed expressions and may be used to
make up for any loss of meaning, emotional force or stylistic effect which may not be
possible to reproduce directly at a given point in the target text. Mason (1982:29)
explains that, because they were unable to translate specifi c puns at the points at
which they occurred in the text, the translators of Astérix ‘have sometimes resorted
to inserting English puns (of equivalent impact rather than equivalent meaning) in
different frames of the cartoon’. For a detailed discussion of compensation as a
translation strategy, see Harvey (1995, 1998).
Using the typical phraseology of the target language – its natural collocations, its
own fi xed and semi-fi xed expressions, the right level of idiomaticity, and so on – will
greatly enhance the readability of your translations. Getting this level right means
that you will avoid unintentionally producing a text that feels ‘foreign’.9 But natu-
ralness and readability are also affected by other linguistic features, and these will be
discussed at various points in the following chapters.
1. Choose one English word and fi nd its fi rst dictionary equivalent in your
target language. Make a list of some common collocations of the English
word. Make an independent list of the most typical collocations of your
target-language equivalent. Compare the two lists and comment on the
differences and similarities in the collocational patterning of the two
items.
2. Make a list of some common collocations of an English word of your
choice.
(a) Suggest some common collocations in your target language which
convey similar meanings to those of the English collocations.
Comment on any difference in meaning.
(b) If there are no common collocations in your target language which
express meanings similar to those conveyed by the English colloca-
tions, suggest circumlocutions which can be used either as para-
phrases or footnotes to convey the meanings of the English
collocations in question (if necessary) to a target reader.
3. Make a list of some English idioms with which you are familiar and
which have close counterparts in your target language. Comment on
any differences in meaning, form or context of use between each English
idiom and its ‘equivalent’ in your target language.
4. Make a list of some common English expressions or idioms that you
feel would be diffi cult to translate into your target language, for example
because they relate to specifi c English habits or social occasions. Try, to

EQUIVALENCE ABOVE WORD LEVEL 87
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s the best of your ability, to paraphrase each expression twice: the fi rst
time as briefl y as possible so that it can be inserted in a text, and the
second time more elaborately so that it can be included as a footnote to
a text.
5. Try your hand at translating this challenging title and header which
introduce an article promoting visits to the Dead Sea. The article
appeared in a Wonderlust Guide to Jordan, published in 2010 (p. 22).
The caption under ‘Mud, glorious mud’ reads: ‘As every schoolchild
worth their salt knows, the Dead Sea is the briniest lake on earth. But its
waters and mud offer unique spa experiences, as Gail Simmons
discovers.’

Figure 14 Caption of article in Wonderlust Guide to Jordan 2010
6. The Chronicle Review, a section of the US-based Chronicle of Higher
Education, published an article by Evan Goldstein on the renowned,
outspoken historian Tony Judt on 6 January 2010. Entitled ‘The Trials of
Tony Judt’, the article begins by explaining that ‘a little more than a year
ago, Judt was diagnosed with a progressive variant of amyotrophic lateral
sclerosis, better known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, a fatal condition that
gradually destroys a person’s ability to move, breathe, swallow, and talk’.
Imagine that you have agreed to translate this article for one of the
many activist websites that provide multiple translations of such
material. The full article is available at http://chronicle.com/article/
The-Trials-of-Tony-Judt/63449/. Comment on any collocations in the

88 IN OTHER WORDS
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s following stretch that might prove diffi cult to translate into your target
language and the strategies you have used to overcome these diffi –
culties, paying particular attention to the play on life/death sentence at
the end of the second paragraph.
At bedtime, having been maneuvered from his wheelchair to his
cot and positioned upright, his glasses removed, Judt is left alone
with his thoughts. In recent months, they have turned to his
youth – the charms of a curmudgeonly grade-school German-
language instructor, the shifting cultural mores of Cambridge in
the mid-60s, the comforting solitude of a train ride. At the encour-
agement of his friend Timothy Garton Ash, a professor of
European studies at Oxford, he has crafted those ‘little vignettes
from my past’ into a series of autobiographical sketches.
In one moving essay, recently published in The New York
Review, Judt addresses directly his life with ALS. ‘Helplessness,’
he writes, ‘is humiliating even in a passing crisis – imagine or
recall some occasion when you have fallen down or otherwise
required physical assistance from strangers. Imagine the mind’s
response to the knowledge that the peculiarly humiliating help-
lessness of ALS is a life sentence (we speak blithely of death
sentences in this connection, but actually the latter would be a
relief).’
7. Imagine that you have been asked by a client to translate the following
text into your target language. The text appeared in The Economist (UK
Edition, 6–12 February 2010, p. 68). Your target reader works in the
banking business and needs to follow international developments in this
fi eld.
How fi rms fool equity analysts
Stockpilers suckered
NEW YORK
Chief executives pull the wool over analysts’ eyes, again
How do you pump up the value of your company in these diffi cult
times? One tried and tested way is to hoodwink equity analysts,
according to a new study of 1,300 corporate bosses, board directors
and analysts.
The authors found that chief executives commonly respond to
negative appraisals from Wall Street by managing appearances,
rather than making changes that actually improve corporate

EQUIVALENCE ABOVE WORD LEVEL 89
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s governance: boards are made more formally independent, but
without actually increasing their ability to control management.
This is typically done by hiring directors who, although they may
have no business ties to the company, are socially close to its top
brass. According to James Westphal, one of the study’s co-authors,
some 45% of the members of nominating committees on the
boards of large American fi rms have ‘friendship’ ties to the boss –
though this varies widely from company to company.
…
Why do analysts swallow this self-interested narrative?
Respondents acknowledged that social ties could undermine
independence, but most said they do not have the time to look
into such issues. …
Depressingly, these market-distorting shenanigans are part of
a pattern. An earlier study found that public companies enjoy
lasting share-price gains from plans that please analysts, such as
share buybacks and long-term incentive schemes for executives,
even when they fail to follow through on announcements.
When you have translated the text, comment on the strategies you used
to deal with various collocations such as pump up value, tried and
tested, managing appearances, top brass and swallow a narrative,
including register-specific collocations such as share buybacks.
Comment also on your strategy for translating the idiom in the subtitle
(pull the wool over analysts’ eyes).
8. Try your hand at this challenging extract from an Austin Rover brochure
(Today’s Cars, 1989). Imagine that you have been asked to translate the
passage below into your target language, for distribution in your local
market. Do not be distracted by unfamiliar car terminology; this is not
the object of the exercise. If necessary, leave a gap if you cannot fi nd an
equivalent for a specialized term.
You will note that the passage includes several idioms and is highly
informal in style. Whatever strategies you decide to use in translating it,
remember that idioms are not just used for the meanings they convey
but also for the effect they produce on the reader, for their stylistic
value.
METRO SPORT
The new Metro Sport. Terrifi c looks. Loads of go. For a lot less
than you think.
The Sport looks just what it is – a hot little hatchback that
knows how to handle itself. With an aerodynamic tail spoiler;

90 IN OTHER WORDS
e
x
e
r
c
is
e
s all-white sports wheel trims; and special graphics and paint
treatment.
Under the bonnet is a 73 PS1.3 engine with a real sting in its
tail. (Relax – it’s also remarkably economical.)
You won’t have to put up with a spartan cockpit in return for
sparkling performance. Just try those stylishly trimmed sports
seats for size.
Now tune into the electronic stereo radio/stereo cassette player.
Four speakers, great sound. And a built-in security code theft
deterrent.
There’s a wealth of driving equipment too – including a
tachometer of course.
Right up your street? Choose your Sport in one of fi ve selected
colours. And paint the town red.
When you have translated the text, comment on any diffi culties involved,
the strategies you used and any change in the level of informality in
your target version.
SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING
On collocation
Barnwell, Katherine (1974) Introduction to Semantics and Translation, High Wycombe:
Summer Institute of Linguistics. Chapter 6, section 6.8: ‘Collocation’.
Beekman, John and John Callow (1974) Translating the Word of God, Michigan: Zondervan.
Chapter 11: ‘Collocational Clashes’.
Carter, Ronald and Michael McCarthy (1988) Vocabulary and Language Teaching, London:
Longman. Chapter 2, section 7: ‘Linguistic Goings-on’.
Hoey, Michael (2005) Lexical Priming: A New Theory of Words and Language, Abingdon,
Oxon: Routledge.
Mackin, R. (1978) ‘On Collocations: Words Shall Be Known by the Company They Keep’, in
P. Strevens (ed.) In Honour of A. S. Hornby, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 149–165.
Sinclair, John (1991) Corpus Concordance Collocation, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
On idioms and fi xed expressions
Carter, Ronald (1987) Vocabulary: Applied Linguistic Perspectives, London: Allen & Unwin.
Chapter 3, section 3.6: ‘Idioms Galore’, and section 3.7: ‘Fixing Fixed Expressions’.
Fernando, Chitra (1996) Idioms and Idiomaticity, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Moon, Rosamund (1998) Fixed Expressions and Idioms in English, Oxford: Clarendon.

EQUIVALENCE ABOVE WORD LEVEL 91
On the translation of collocations, idioms and fi xed expressions
Al-Wahy, Ahmed Seddik (2009) ‘Idiomatic False Friends in English and Modern Standard
Arabic’, Babel 55(2): 101–123.
Gottlieb, Henrik (1997) ‘Quality Revisited: The Rendering of English Idioms in Danish Tele-
vision Subtitles vs. Printed Translations’, in Anna Trosborg (ed.) Text Typology and
Translation, Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 309–338.
Laviosa, Sara (2007) ‘Learning Creative Writing by Translating Witty Ads’, The Interpreter
and Translator Trainer 1(2): 197–222.
Sheridan, Sarah (2009) ‘Translating Idiomatic Expressions from English to Irish Sign
Language (ISL): Theory and Practice’, The Sign Language Translator and Interpreter
3(1): 69–84.
NOTES
1 Rules are generally described in terms of grammatical statements; see Chapter 4.
2 Markedness is an important concept in language study. For a good treatment of
different types of markedness, see Lyons (1977:305–311). For a discussion of the
relationship between markedness, choice and meaning, see Chapter 5, section 5.1.1.3.
3 I am grateful for this information to Paula Chicken, formerly of French Studies, University
of Birmingham.
4 Much has been written in defence of literalism and various exoticizing and foreignizing
strategies since the fi rst edition of this book appeared. For an accessible overview and
an opportunity to rehearse some of the arguments for and against literalism and foreigni-
zation, see the editorial apparatus accompanying the articles by John Sturrock and
Lawrence Venuti in Baker (2010a).
5 In all the examples from Language and Society, I am not actually sure whether the
source language is English or French, but I am assuming it is English for convenience.
6 Superseded by the Code of Professional Conduct of the Institute of Translation and
Interpreting. The wording which features in the current Code for individual members,
available on the ITI website, is: ‘members shall translate only into a language which
is either (i) their mother tongue or language of habitual use , or (ii) one in which they
have satisfi ed the Institute that they have equal competence’ (article 4.1). See
www.iti.org.uk/.
7 I am grateful to Ming Xie, University of Cambridge, for this information.
8 I am grateful to Luis Pérez-González for assistance with the analysis of this example.
9 As explained in Chapter 2, section 2.2.3, a translator may deliberately wish to commu-
nicate the foreign feel of the text to the target readership. The issue here is ultimately
one of awareness of the effect that a given choice might have on the intended recipients
of the translation.

CHAPTER 4
Grammatical equivalence
Even the simplest, most basic requirement we make of translation cannot be met without diffi –
culty: one cannot always match the content of a message in language A by an expression with
exactly the same content in language B, because what can be expressed and what must be
expressed is a property of a specifi c language in much the same way as how it can be
expressed.
(Winter 1961:98)
language … gives structure to experience, and helps to determine our way of looking at things,
so that it requires some intellectual effort to see them in any other way than that which our
language suggests to us.
(Halliday 1970:143)
In Chapters 2 and 3 we saw that the lexical resources of a language exercise
considerable infl uence on what can be said in that language as well as how it can be
said. The lexical structure of a language, its stock of words and expressions and its
established patterns of collocation, provides its speakers with ready-made ways of
analysing and reporting experience. We do fi nd new ways of reporting experience
when necessary, but on the whole, we tend to rely heavily on existing lexical
resources in order to communicate successfully and easily with other members of
our language community.
Lexical resources are not the only factor that infl uences the way in which we
analyse and report experience. Another powerful factor which determines the kind
of distinctions we regularly make in reporting experience is the grammatical system
of our language. In the course of reporting events, every language makes a different
selection from a large set of possible distinctions in terms of notions such as time,
number, gender, shape, visibility, person, proximity, animacy and so on. There is no
uniform or objective way of reporting events in all their detail, exactly as they happen
in the real world; the structure of each language highlights, and to a large extent
preselects, certain areas which are deemed to be fundamental to the reporting of
any experience.
Grammar is the set of rules which determine the way in which units such as
words and phrases can be combined in a language and the kind of information which
has to be made regularly explicit in utterances. A language can, of course, express
any kind of information its speakers need to express, but the grammatical system of

GRAMMATICAL EQUIVALENCE 93
a given language will determine the ease with which certain notions such as time
reference or gender can be made explicit. Centuries ago, the Greeks and Romans
assumed that notional categories such as time, number and gender existed in the
real world and must therefore be common to all languages. All languages, they
thought, must express these ‘basic’ aspects of experience on a regular basis. With
greater exposure to other languages, it later became apparent that these so-called
‘basic’ categories are not in fact universal, and that languages differ widely in the
range of notions they choose to make explicit on a regular basis. In this chapter, we
will take a brief look at the variety of grammatical categories which may or may not
be expressed in different languages and the way this area of language structure
affects decisions in the course of translation. But before we do so, it may be helpful
to outline some of the main differences between lexical and grammatical
categories.
4.1 GRAMMATICAL VS LEXICAL CATEGORIES
the grammatical pattern of a language (as opposed to its lexical stock) deter-
mines those aspects of each experience that must be expressed in the given
language.
(Jakobson 1959:235–236)
Grammar is organized along two main dimensions: morphology and syntax.
Morphology covers the structure of words, the way in which the form of a word
changes to indicate specifi c contrasts in the grammatical system.1 For instance,
most nouns in English have two forms, a singular form and a plural form: man/men,
child/children, car/cars. English can therefore be said to have a grammatical
category of number. The morphological structure of a language determines the
basic information which must be expressed in that language. Syntax covers the
grammatical structure of groups, clauses and sentences: the linear sequences of
classes of words such as noun, verb, adverb and adjective, and functional elements
such as subject, predicator and object, which are allowed in a given language.2 The
syntactic structure of a language imposes certain restrictions on the way messages
may be organized in that language.
Choices in language can be expressed grammatically or lexically, depending on
the type and range of linguistic resources available in a given language. Choices
made from closed systems, such as the number system (singular/plural) or the
pronoun system in English, are grammatical; those made from open-ended sets of
items or expressions are lexical. Grammatical choices are normally expressed
morphologically, as in the case of the singular/plural contrast in English. They may
also be expressed syntactically, for instance by manipulating the order of elements
in a clause to indicate certain relations between them or to signal the function of the
clause (cf. the difference between the order of elements in a statement and a

94 IN OTHER WORDS
question in English: She had forgotten about the party./Had she forgotten about the
party?).
The most important difference between grammatical and lexical choices, as
far as translation is concerned, is that grammatical choices are largely obligatory
while lexical choices are largely optional. Languages which have morphological
resources for expressing a certain category such as number, tense or gender have
to express these categories regularly; those which do not have morphological
resources for expressing the same categories do not have to express them except
when they are felt to be relevant. Because a grammatical choice is drawn from a
closed set of options, it is (a) obligatory, and (b) rules out other choices from the
same system by default. The fact that number is a grammatical category in English
means that an English speaker or writer who uses a noun such as student or child
has to choose between singular and plural. Apart from a few nouns which allow a
choice of singular or plural concord (e.g. The committee is/are considering the
question), the choice of singular in English rules out the possibility of plural
reference by default, and vice versa. The same is not true in Chinese or Japanese,
where number is a lexical rather than a grammatical category (see 4.2.1 below). A
Chinese or Japanese speaker or writer does not have to choose between singular
and plural, unless the context demands that this information be made explicit.
Where necessary, number is indicated in these languages by means of adding a
word such as ‘several’ or a numeral such as ‘one’ or ‘fi ve’ to the noun, rather than
by changing the form of the noun itself.
Grammatical structure also differs from lexical structure in that it is more resistant
to change. It is much easier to introduce a new word, expression or collocation into
a language than to introduce a new grammatical category, system or sequence. The
grammatical structure of a language does, of course, change, but this does not
happen overnight. Grammatical change occurs over a much longer time scale than
lexical change. On the whole, the grammatical structure of a language remains fairly
constant throughout the lifetime of an individual, whereas one encounters new
words, expressions and collocations on a daily basis. Grammatical rules are also
more resistant to manipulation by speakers. A deviant grammatical structure may
occasionally be accepted in very restricted contexts, for instance in order to maintain
rhyme or metre in poetry. A very small number of text types, such as poems, adver-
tisements and jokes, will occasionally manipulate or fl out the grammatical rules of
the language to create special effect. The well-known poet e. e. cummings does
precisely that; he achieves special effect by using unusual grammatical confi gura-
tions, as he does in his poem ‘a pretty a day’, which starts as follows:
a pretty a day
(and every fades)
is here and away
(but born are maids
to fl ower an hour
in all, all)

GRAMMATICAL EQUIVALENCE 95
Likewise, modelled on Louis Jordan’s 1944 song ‘Is You Is or Is You Ain’t My
Baby’, the following advertisement by Access, a former credit card company,
provides an example of a similar type of manipulation in non- literary contexts:
Does you does or does you don’t take access?
7 million outlets worldwide does.
On the whole, however, deviant grammatical confi gurations are simply not acceptable
in most contexts. This means that, in translation, grammar often has the effect of a
straitjacket, forcing the translator along a certain course which may or may not
follow that of the source text as closely as the translator would like it to.
4.2 THE DIVERSITY OF GRAMMATICAL CATEGORIES
ACROSS LANGUAGES
It is diffi cult to fi nd a notional category which is regularly and uniformly expressed in
all languages. Even categories such as time and number, which many of us take as
refl ecting basic aspects of experience, are only optionally indicated in some Asian
languages such as Chinese and Vietnamese. On the other hand, a number of
American Indian languages such as Yana and Navaho have grammatical categories
which in many other languages would hardly ever be expressed even by lexical
means. These languages, for instance, have a category of ‘shape’, which means
that an object must be classifi ed according to whether it is long, round or sheet-like
(Sapir and Swadesh 1964). Some languages, such as Amuesha of Peru, regularly
indicate whether a person is dead or alive by adding a suffi x to the name of any
person referred to after his or her death (Larson 1984). The absence of the suffi x
indicates that the person concerned is alive, in much the same way as the absence
of a plural suffi x such as -s in English indicates a choice of singular as opposed to
plural reference.3 Languages therefore differ widely in the way they are equipped to
handle various notions and express different aspects of experience, possibly because
they differ in the degree of importance or relevance that they attach to such aspects
of experience. Time is regarded as a crucial aspect of experience in English, so that
it is virtually impossible to discuss any event in English without locating it in the past,
present or future. In Aztec, the notion of deference is regarded as crucial. Conse-
quently, according to Nida, ‘it is impossible to say anything to anyone without indi-
cating the relative degree of respect to which the speaker and hearer are entitled in
the community’ (1964:95). Korean and Japanese similarly draw on a complex
system of honorifi cs to signal the relative status of participants in an interaction.
Differences in the grammatical structures of the source and target languages
often result in some change in the information content of the message during the
process of translation. This change may take the form of adding to the target text
information which is not expressed in the source text. This can happen when the
target language has a grammatical category which the source language lacks. In
translating from English or French into an American Indian language such as Yana

96 IN OTHER WORDS
or Navaho, one would have to add information concerning the shape of any objects
mentioned in the text. Likewise, in translating into Amuesha, one would have to
indicate whether any person mentioned in the text is dead or alive. Details which are
ignored in the source text but which have to be specifi ed in the target language can
pose a serious dilemma for the translator if they cannot be reasonably inferred from
the context.
The change in the information content of the message may be in the form of
omitting information specifi ed in the source text. If the target language lacks a gram-
matical category which exists in the source language, the information expressed by
that category may have to be ignored. Jakobson suggests that ‘no lack of gram-
matical device in the language translated into makes impossible a literal translation
of the entire conceptual information contained in the original’ (1959:235). This is
true in theory, but in practice the lack of a grammatical device can make the trans-
lation of ‘the entire conceptual information’ very diffi cult indeed. First, the lack of a
grammatical category in a given language suggests that the indication of information
associated with that category is regarded as optional. The frequency of occurrence
of such optional information tends to be low, and a translation which repeatedly indi-
cates information that is normally left unspecifi ed in the target language is bound to
sound unnatural. Second, because such information would have to be expressed
lexically, it is likely to assume more importance in the target text than it does in the
source text. The fact that lexical choices are optional gives them more weight than
grammatical choices.
The following discussion of some major categories, with examples, is intended
to illustrate the kinds of diffi culty that translators often encounter because of differ-
ences in the grammatical structures of source and target languages.
4.2.1 Number
The idea of countability is probably universal in the sense that it is readily accessible
to all human beings and is expressed in the lexical structure of all languages.
However, not all languages have a grammatical category of number, and those that
do do not necessarily view countability in the same terms. As explained above,
English recognizes a distinction between one and more than one (singular and
plural). This distinction has to be expressed morphologically, by adding a suffi x to a
noun or by changing its form in some other way to indicate whether it refers to one
or more than one: student/students, fox/foxes, man/men, child/children. Some
languages, such as Japanese, Chinese and Vietnamese, prefer to express the same
notion lexically or, more often, not at all. The form of a noun in these languages does
not normally indicate whether it is singular or plural. For example, my book and my
books are both wo-de-shu in Chinese (Tan 1980).
Unlike Japanese, Chinese and Vietnamese, most languages have a gram-
matical category of number, similar but not necessarily identical to that of English.
Arabic, Inuit and some Slavonic languages formally distinguish between one, two
and more than two. These languages have a dual form in addition to singular and

GRAMMATICAL EQUIVALENCE 97
plural forms. In most European languages today, dual is a lexical rather than a gram-
matical category; it can only be indicated by the use of a numeral. And so English
regularly expresses a meaning contrast between house and houses, whereas Inuit
regularly expresses a meaning contrast between iglu, igluk and iglut (‘one/two/
more than two houses’). A small number of languages, such as Fijian, even distin-
guish between singular, dual, trial (covering three or a small number) and plural
(Robins 1964). Such additional refi nements to a system can sometimes pose
problems in translation.
A translator working from a language which has number distinctions into a
language with no category of number has two main options: he or she can (a) omit
the relevant information relating to number, or (b) encode this information lexically.
The following examples illustrate how information relating to number is often left out
in languages such as Chinese and Japanese. The source language in both examples
is English. Items in angle brackets are not specifi ed in the target text but they are not
ruled out either since Chinese and Japanese do not have a category of number. The
fi rst example is from China’s Panda Reserves (World Wide Fund for Nature text
which accompanied a slide show):
China’s Panda Reserves.
Target text (Chinese):
中国的熊猫保护区
China’s Panda Protection-zone.
‘Protection-zone’ is a literal rendering of the accepted Chinese translation of reserve.
It is not marked for number. The reader of the Chinese text has no way of knowing,
from this title, whether China has one or more than one panda reserve.
The following example is from The Fix: The Inside Story of the World Drug
Trade (Freemantle 1985:142):
Enforcement offi cials – particularly the front-line US Customs Service
– have produced a series of recognisable profi les in order to identify
and intercept drug runners. It is a system that works particularly well
with the Yakuza because of the bizarre but rigid code of ethics by
which the Japanese Mafi a conducts itself, quite different from any
other criminal society in the world. It concerns fi ngers, or rather the
lack of them. And tattoos.
Target text (Japanese):
アメリカの取締当局は、とくに合衆国関税局の第一線は、麻薬
の運び屋（ランナー）を識別、摘発するために一種の手配台帖
を作成してきた。日本のヤクザを対象とした場合に、ことのほ

98 IN OTHER WORDS
か有効なシステムである。日本のマフィアが自らに課している
不気味だが峻厳なヤクザ道の掟は、世界のいかなる犯罪社会の
それとも異なっているからだ。それは指と、つまり指の欠損に
関連する。さらに刺青とも。
… This concerns fi nger, or rather the lack of fi nger. And
tattoo.
Here again the highlighted nouns are not marked for number in any way, and the
Japanese reader can only guess whether the writer is talking about one or several
fi ngers and tattoos. This apparent lack of interest in the difference between one and
more than one is no more surprising than the lack of interest in duality in English and
most European languages. Chinese and Japanese speakers are not too concerned
with establishing in each case whether there is one or more than one of a given
referent, just as English speakers are not particularly interested in establishing
whether there are two or more than two persons or objects.
It may sometimes be necessary or desirable in certain contexts to specify
plurality or duality in languages which do not normally specify such information
because they do not have a category of number or a dual form. In this case, the
translator may decide to encode the relevant information lexically, as in the following
examples. The fi rst example is from Palace and Politics in Prewar Japan (Titus
1974:17); the source text is English:
The heads of the ministries created in 1869 were not directly
responsible for ‘advising and assisting’ (hohitsu) the emperor, though
they were to become so in 1889.
Target text (Japanese):
明治二年につくられた諸省の長は、天皇「輔弼」の直接責任者
ではない。そうなったのは明治二二年なのである。
The head of various ministry created in Meiji 2nd are not
directly responsible for ‘hohitsu’ the emperor.
A Japanese word meaning ‘various’ is added in the translation to indicate that
reference is made to more than one ministry and, by implication, more than one
head of ministry.
The second example is from an unpublished document about arbitration proce-
dures in Cairo. The source text is Arabic.

.

GRAMMATICAL EQUIVALENCE 99
When the appointment of three arbitrators is required, each party
chooses one arbitrator, and the arbitrators-dual appointed-dual in
this way choose the third arbitrator and it is he who takes on the
presidency of the arbitration authority.
English target text:
When the appointment of three arbitrators is required, each party
selects one arbitrator, and the two arbitrators thus appointed select
the third arbitrator who then heads the Arbitration Committee.
Where it is felt to be important, information on number can therefore be encoded
lexically. However, as with any grammatical category, a translator working from a
language with a category of number into one without such a category must be
careful not to overspecify this type of information in the target text. Unless the
context specifi cally demands it, regular reference to information normally left
un specifi ed in a given language will only make the translation awkward and unnatural
because it will not refl ect normal ways of reporting experience in the target language.
4.2.2 Gender
Gender is a grammatical distinction according to which a noun or pronoun is clas-
sifi ed as either masculine or feminine in some languages.4 The distinction applies to
nouns which refer to animate beings as well as those which refer to inanimate
objects. For example, French distinguishes between masculine and feminine gender
in nouns such as fi ls/fi lle (‘son’/‘daughter’) and chat/chatte (‘male cat’/‘female
cat’). In addition, nouns such as magazine (‘magazine’) and construction
(‘construction’) are also classifi ed as masculine and feminine respectively. Deter-
miners,5 adjectives, and sometimes verbs (as in the case of Arabic and Swahili),
usually agree with the noun in gender as well as in number.
English does not have a grammatical category of gender as such; English nouns
are not regularly infl ected to distinguish between feminine and masculine. The
gender distinction nevertheless exists in some semantic areas and in the person
system. Different nouns are sometimes used to refer to female and male members
of the same species: cow/bull, sow/boar, doe/stag, mare/stallion, ewe/ram. A
small number of nouns which refer to professions have masculine and feminine
forms, with the suffi x -ess indicating feminine gender. Examples include actor/
actress, manager/manageress, host/hostess and steward/stewardess. These,
however, do not always refl ect straightforward gender distinctions as in the case of
other European languages; some carry specifi c connotations. For instance, the
distinction between author and authoress may carry more expressive than proposi-
tional meaning: authoress tends to have derogatory overtones, with author being the
unmarked form for both sexes.6 In addition to gender distinctions in specifi c semantic
areas, English also has a category of person (see 4.2.3 below) which distinguishes

100 IN OTHER WORDS
in the third-person singular between masculine, feminine and inanimate (he/she/it).
This distinction does not apply to the third-person plural (they). Russian and German
make similar gender distinctions in the third-person singular pronouns and, like
English, do not apply these distinctions to the third-person plural. On the other hand,
languages like French and Italian maintain the gender distinction in the third-person
plural: for example, ils vs elles in French. In some languages, such as Arabic, gender
distinctions apply to second- as well as third-person pronouns. In addition to gender
distinctions in the third-person singular and plural, Arabic has different forms for
‘you’, depending on whether the person or persons addressed is/are male or
female. Other languages such as Chinese and Indonesian do not have gender
distinctions in their person systems at all.
In most languages that have a gender category, the masculine term is usually
the ‘dominant’ or ‘unmarked’ term. In French, elles is used only when all persons or
things referred to are feminine; if one or more persons or things in a group are
masculine the form used is ils, even if the feminine referents outnumber the
masculine ones. Similarly, if the sex of a referent is not known, the masculine rather
than the feminine form is used. In effect, this means that the use of feminine forms
provides more specifi c information than the use of masculine forms can be said to
provide; it rules out the possibility of masculine reference, whereas the use of
masculine forms does not rule out the possibility of feminine reference.
There is now a conscious attempt to replace the unmarked masculine form he in
English with forms such as s/he, he or she and him or her. This is particularly true of
academic writing. But even among the general public, overtly masculine nouns such
as chairman, spokesman and businessman are consciously and systematically
being replaced by more neutral ones such as chairperson and spokesperson, or by
specifi cally feminine nouns such as businesswoman when the referent is clearly
feminine. Viaggio (1996:189) reports an incident in a debate on linguistic sexism at
the United Nations where the delegates variously addressed the British female
presiding offi cer as Madam Chairman, Madam Chairperson, Madam Chairwoman
and Madam Chairlady. When one of the delegates fi nally addressed her as Madam
Chair, she responded ‘I’d rather you called me a man than a piece of furniture’.
Viaggio (ibid.) offers several possible strategies for dealing with this type of gender-
based humour in the context of simultaneous interpreting, including retaining the
key English nouns as loan words, and possibly adding an explanation. In Spanish,
the result would be:
Llámeme man pero no chair, que no soy un meuble.
Call me man but not chair: I’m no piece of furniture.
Gender-based humour and wordplay aside, another challenge comes from a growing
trend to use the feminine form as the unmarked form, especially in academic writing.
Diane Blakemore, for instance, uses she and her to mean any person, male or
female:

GRAMMATICAL EQUIVALENCE 101
It is clear that because of the role of the context in all aspects of utterance
interpretation, a speaker who intends her utterance to be taken in a particular
way must expect it to be interpreted in a context that yields that
interpretation.
(1987:27; my emphasis)
This ideological stance is somewhat diffi cult to transfer into languages in which
gender distinctions pervade the grammatical system. It is fairly easy to make the
switch from he to something like s/he or him/her in English because the change
affects these items only. But in a language such as Arabic, where gender distinc-
tions are refl ected not only in nouns and pronouns but also in the concord between
these and their accompanying verbs and adjectives, the resulting structures would
clearly be much more cumbersome than in English. With all the good will in the
world, an Arab writer or translator cannot side with this admittedly more enlightened
approach to gender without sacrifi cing the readability of the target text. By contrast,
the syntax of other languages offers much more fl exible ways of avoiding sexist
language. In revising the Irish and English versions of the Constitution of Ireland, for
example, in order to eliminate traces of sexist language, the Irish text posed much
fewer problems than the English (Ó Cearúil 1999:47):
While the clause ‘such resolution shall operate to remove the President from
his offi ce’ in Article 12.10.7° is gender-proofed in the version published by
the All-Party Oireachtas Committeee on the Constitution to ‘such resolution
shall operate to remove the President from his or her offi ce’, … the Irish text
needs no gender-proofi ng, reading ‘… is é is feidhm don rún sin an tUachtarán
a chur as oifi g’, literally ‘such resolution shall operate to remove the President
from offi ce’.
Ó Cearúil thus concludes that ‘[g]ender-proofi ng the English text from “from his
offi ce” to “from offi ce”, following the Irish text, would appear to be the better course
rather than emending to read ‘from his or her offi ce’’ (ibid.:47–48).
Gender distinctions are generally more relevant in translation when the referent
of the noun or pronoun is human. Gender distinctions in inanimate objects such as
‘car’ or ‘ship’ and in animals such as ‘dog’ and ‘cat’ are sometimes manipulated in
English to convey expressive meaning, particularly in literature, but they do not often
cause diffi culties in non-literary translation.7 Making the necessary adjustments, for
instance by adding the gender dimension in the target text (English table : French
la/une table) is usually straightforward and automatic because the distinctions
themselves are largely arbitrary. But gender distinctions in the case of human
referents are not arbitrary, and this is why Lyons (1968), for instance, suggests that
what is important in communication is the pronominal function of gender rather than
the category of gender in general. The pronominal function of gender refl ects a
genuine, non-arbitrary distinction between male and female. Although languages

102 IN OTHER WORDS
differ in the extent to which they regularly specify the gender of human referents (cf.
English they and French ils/elles), we all readily recognize the distinction and expect
it to refl ect a genuine aspect of experience.
The following text illustrates the kind of problem that the pronominal function of
gender can pose in translation. As in previous examples, the problematic items in the
source text are underlined and the items which replace them in the target text are
highlighted in bold. Only those strategies used to overcome diffi culties arising from
gender distinctions will be commented on.
Source text (English: Kolestral Super – leafl et accompanying a hair-
conditioning product):
Instructions for use:
– Shampoo the hair with a mild WELLA-SHAMPOO and lightly
towel dry.
– Apply KOLESTRAL-SUPER directly onto the hair and massage
gently.
– For maximum effect, cover the hair with a plastic cap or towel.
– KOLESTRAL-SUPER can be left on the hair for 10–20 minutes.
– After the developing time rinse off thoroughly before styling – no
shampooing required.
– Style the hair as usual.
Target text (Arabic):
:
− ” ”
.
− .
− ” ”
.
− 10 20 .
− ) (
. .
− .
Instructions and guide to use:
– The hair is washed with ‘Wella’ shampoo, provided that it is a
mild shampoo. Then the hair is dried by means of a towel, a
simple drying so that the hair is left damp.
– Kolestral-Super is put directly on the hair and massaged with
softness and gentleness.

GRAMMATICAL EQUIVALENCE 103
– For obtaining maximum effectiveness, the hair is covered by
means of a cap, that is a plastic hat which covers the hair, or by
means of a towel.
– Kolestral-Super is left for a period of 10–20 minutes.
– After the end of the reaction period, the hair should be rinsed
well and in depth before starting on the desired hair-do. No need
for shampoo in this fi nal stage.
– The hair is styled and combed as usual and in the desired fashion
and the result is ideal and marvellous.
I mentioned earlier that the gender distinction in Arabic applies to the second as well
as third person. An Arabic speaker or writer has to select between ‘you, masculine’
(anta) and ‘you, feminine’ (anti) in the case of the second-person singular. Moreover,
this type of information must be signalled in the form of the verb itself: an Arabic verb
has different forms depending on whether its subject is, for instance, second-person
singular feminine or third-person plural masculine. In fact, pronouns such as ‘she’
and ‘I’ are usually redundant in Arabic and are used mainly for emphasis, since all
the information they carry is incorporated in the form of the verb.
In translating the imperative verbs in the above text into Arabic, the translator
would normally have to choose, as far as gender is concerned, between a masculine
and a feminine form for each verb. As is the case in most languages which have a
gender category, the masculine form is the unmarked form in Arabic and is therefore
normally selected in most advertisements, leafl ets and in wording general instruc-
tions. However, the Kolestral Super text is a leafl et which accompanies a hair condi-
tioner, the sort of product which is predominantly used by women rather than men.
In the Arab context, it is likely to be used exclusively by women. This situation would
make the use of the masculine form in this instance highly marked. The translator
could have used the feminine form of the verb, but he or she possibly felt that it
would also have been marked or that it might have unnecessarily excluded potential
male users. The gender distinction is avoided by using a totally different structure
throughout the whole set of instructions. The use of the passive voice (see 4.2.5
below) instead of the imperative form of the verb allows the translator to avoid
specifying the subject of the verb altogether.
Although gender is also a grammatical category in French, gender distinctions are
only expressed in nouns, articles and adjectives, and in third-person pronouns; they do
not affect the form of the verb. The French translation of the Kolestral Super leafl et
can therefore follow the source text more closely than the Arabic translation. The
in fi nitive form of the verb is used, as is the norm in wording instructions in French. The
fi rst few lines of the instruction section are quoted below for illustration:
Laver le cheveux avec un shampooing doux Wella et bien les essorer.
Appliquer KOLESTRAL-SUPER directement sur les cheveux et
bien faire pénétrer.

104 IN OTHER WORDS
Finally, von Flotow (1991:75) discusses a very interesting example of an English
translation by Howard Scott of Louky Bersianik’s feminist novel L’Euguélionne.
Referring to a woman who is punished for aborting a baby, Bersianik writes:
Le ou la coupable doit être punie.
Literally: The masculine or feminine [le or la] guilty party must be
punished-feminine.
As von Flotow explains (ibid.), the ‘e’ at the end of the verb puni (‘punished’) makes
it clear that irrespective of whether the guilty party is male or female, it is the woman
who is ultimately punished for aborting. Given that English does not mark verbs for
gender, this information cannot be signalled in the same way. Scott’s creative
solution is to add the third-person feminine pronoun she and embed it in a semanti-
cally incongruous clause that further strengthens Bersianik’s critique of the politics
of abortion in a male-dominated society:
The guilty one must be punished, whether she is a man or a woman.
4.2.3 Person
The category of person relates to the notion of participant roles. In most languages,
participant roles are systematically defi ned through a closed system of pronouns
which may be organized along a variety of dimensions.
The most common distinction is that between fi rst person (identifying the
speaker or a group which includes the speaker: English I/we), second person (iden-
tifying the person or persons addressed: English you), and third person (identifying
persons and things other than the speaker and addressee: English he/she/it/they).
A number of languages spoken in North America have four rather than three distinc-
tions in the category of person. In these languages, the fourth person refers to ‘a
person or thing distinct from one already referred to by a third person form’ (Robins
1964:264). Russian similarly uses a form of the pronominal adjectives svoj
(masculine), svoja (feminine), svojo (neuter) and svoi (plural) to refer to a participant
already referred to in the same clause, but in Russian this is not restricted to third-
person forms; the participant referred to by the pronominal adjective may be fi rst,
second or third person. For instance, in I’m meeting my teacher, my would be trans-
lated by svoj or svoja (depending on the gender of the following noun). Likewise, in
He’s meeting his teacher, his would be translated by the appropriate case form of
svoj/svoja provided the referent of his is the same as the referent of he; otherwise
the pronoun used is jego (Halliday 1964).
In addition to the main distinction based on participant roles, the person system
may be organized along a variety of other dimensions. As mentioned earlier, the
person system in some languages may have a gender or number dimension which
applies to the whole system or to parts of it. Although number is not a grammatical
category in Chinese (see 4.2.1 above), the pronoun system in Chinese features a

GRAMMATICAL EQUIVALENCE 105
number distinction (e.g. Wo ‘I’ vs Wo-men ‘we’; Ni ‘you’ singular vs Ni-men ‘you’
plural). On the other hand, it does not feature any gender distinctions at all in speech
(e.g. Ta ‘he/she/it’ vs Ta-men ‘they’), though it does in writing, where different
characters are used for ‘he’, ‘she’ and ‘it’ and their plural forms.8 In Japanese, the
person system features distinctions in gender as well as social status and level of
intimacy (Levinson 1983). Some languages have rather elaborate person systems.
Catford (1965) explains that Bahasa Indonesia has a nine-term pronoun system
where English has only seven. The gender dimension is absent from Bahasa Indo-
nesia, but two other dimensions are of relevance:
1. the inclusive/exclusive dimension: English we has two translations in Bahasa
Indonesia, involving a choice between kami and kita, depending on whether the
addressee is included or excluded;
2. the familiar/non-familiar dimension, which necessitates a choice between, for
instance, aku and saja for English I, depending on the relationship pertaining
between speaker and hearer.
A large number of modern European languages, not including English, have a
formality/politeness dimension in their person system.9 In such languages, a pronoun
other than the second-person singular, usually the second- or third-person plural, is
used in interaction with a singular addressee in order to express deference and/or
non-familiarity: French vous as opposed to tu; Italian lei (third-person singular) and
in certain regions, classes and age groups voi (second-person plural) as opposed to
tu; Spanish usted as opposed to tu; German Sie as opposed to du; Greek esi as
opposed to esis; and Russian vy as opposed to ty. Some languages also have
different forms of plural pronoun which are used to express different levels of famil-
iarity or deference in interaction with several addressees.10
All languages have modes of address which can be used to express familiarity or
deference in a similar way: compare the difference between you, mate, dear, darling
and Mr Smith, Sir, Professor Brown, Mrs Jones, Madam. The difference between
modes of address and pronouns is that the use of pronouns is unavoidable, particu-
larly since pronominal reference is coded in the infl ection of verbs in many languages,
whereas one can often avoid addressing a person directly (Brown and Gilman
1960/1972).
What all this amounts to, among other things, is that in translating pronouns
from English to, say, French, Italian, Greek, Spanish, Russian, German or Bahasa
Indonesian, decisions may have to be made along such dimensions as gender,
degree of intimacy between participants, or whether reference includes or excludes
the addressee. This information may or may not be readily recoverable from the
context. Translating in the other direction, from one of the above languages into
English, will frequently involve loss of information along the dimensions in question.
It is possible in theory to encode all the relevant information in an English translation,
for example by using a circumlocution such as ‘he and I but not you’ for an exclusive
‘we’, but this kind of detail would be too cumbersome in most contexts.

106 IN OTHER WORDS
The following examples illustrate the more problematic situation of having to
make decisions in the target language along dimensions which are not explicitly
stated in the source text. The examples are taken from a French translation of one
of Agatha Christie’s thrillers, Crooked House (1949/1989). The events of the novel
involve a number of key characters who are related to one another in a variety of
ways. In the French translation, the nature of each relation has to be refl ected in the
choice of pronouns that various characters use in addressing each other. The char-
acters in the following dialogue are a young man, Charles, and a young lady, Sophia.
They have worked together and have been friends for some time. Charles has just
asked Sophia to marry him.
English source text (p. 9):
‘Darling – don’t you understand? I’ve tried not to say I love you—’
She stopped me.
‘I do understand Charles. And I like your funny way of doing
things …’
French translation (p. 9):
– Mais vous ne comprenez donc pas? Vous ne voyez donc pas que
je fais tout ce que je peux pour ne pas vous dire que je vous aime et
…
Elle m’interrompit.
– J’ai parfaitement compris, Charles, et votre façon comique de
presenter les choses m’est très sympathique …
Note the use of the vous form in the French translation, indicating a level of formality
and politeness which are not overtly conveyed in the English original. Compare the
level of formality in the above dialogue with that in the following extract from another
dialogue where Charles is talking to his father, who happens to be the Assistant
Commissioner of Scotland Yard:
English source text (p. 16):
‘But your police force is fully effi cient,’ I said. ‘A nice Army type
tracked her to Mario’s. I shall fi gure in the reports you get.’
French translation (p. 16):
– Mais ta police a l’oeil et un de tes hommes l’a suivie jusqu’au
restaurant. Je serai mentionné dans le rapport qui te sera remis.
The selective use of vous and tu forms in dialogues involving different characters
suggests that the French translator had to make conscious decisions about the

GRAMMATICAL EQUIVALENCE 107
nature of the relationships among different characters in the story and about the
social standing of these characters as refl ected in their adoption of certain conven-
tions to do with approved/non-approved expression of familiarity and/or deference.
You may agree or disagree with these decisions; the important thing is that we learn
to appreciate the infl uence that the grammatical system of a language has on the
way events are presented in that language. The diffi culties that arise from the
different demands made by the grammatical systems of different languages in
translation should not be underestimated.
The familiarity/deference dimension in the pronoun system is among the most
fascinating aspects of grammar and the most problematic in translation. It refl ects
the tenor of discourse (see Chapter 2) and can convey a whole range of rather
subtle meanings. The subtle choices involved in pronoun usage in languages which
distinguish between familiar and non-familiar pronouns is further complicated by the
fact that this use differs signifi cantly from one social group to another and that it
changes all the time in a way that refl ects changes in social values and attitudes.
Brown and Gilman suggest that the Gujarati and Hindi languages of India have very
strict norms of pronoun usage, refl ecting asymmetrical relations of power between,
for example, husband and wife. And yet, they explain, ‘the progressive young Indian
exchanges the mutual T with his wife’11 (1960/1972:269).
Pronominal shifts in translation and interpreting can also have ideological impli-
cations, for example in terms of strengthening institutional presence and constructing
in-group and out-group identities. Some simultaneous interpreters working between
English and German in the European Parliament have been shown to introduce the
inclusive we where it is not used by the speaker, partly by turning passive construc-
tions into active ones, as in the following example (Beaton-Thome 2010:133):
English speaker:
However, it was agreed last week that a common political response
would be desirable and that the possibility of coordinated European
action could be explored further.
German interpretation:
Aber letzte Woche haben wir gesagt, dass es natürlich wünschenswert
wäre, eine gemeinschaftlich politische Antwort zu fi nden und, dass
wir uns überlegen können, wie wir handeln wollen.
But last week we said that it would of course be desirable to fi nd a
common political answer and that we could think about how we
want to act.
They also tend to replace some instances of they with we, as in the following
example (ibid.:133):

108 IN OTHER WORDS
English speaker:
Ministers at last week’s Council discussed ways in which the member
states might be able to offer practical assistance to the US and, in
particular, whether they might accept former detainees.
German interpretation:
Die Frage ist natürlich, sind wir bereit ehemalige Häftlinge zu
übernehmen?
The question is of course, are we prepared to take on former
detainees?
Cumulatively, these choices tend to strengthen the institutional presence of the
European Parliament and to enhance in-group identifi cation with it.
These and similar examples suggest that in addition to developing strategies for
dealing with challenges posed by differences in pronominal systems, translators and
interpreters must also be alert to the overall impact of their cumulative choices,
whether or not these are made in response to local linguistic challenges.
4.2.4 Tense and aspect
Tense and aspect are grammatical categories in a large number of languages. The
form of the verb in languages which have these categories usually indicates two main
types of information: time relations and aspectual differences. Time relations have to
do with locating an event in time. The usual distinction is between past, present and
future. Aspectual differences have to do with the temporal distribution of an event, for
instance its completion or non-completion, continuation or momentariness.
In some languages, the tense and aspect system, or parts of it, may be highly
developed, with several fi ne distinctions in temporal location or distribution. Bali, for
instance, has a rather precise system of time reference. Apart from indicating past,
present and future reference, each past or future reference is marked to show whether
the event in question is immediately connected to the present, is separated from it by
a period of time but taking place on the same day, or is separated from the present by
at least one night. Wishram, an American Indian language, makes no fewer than four
distinctions in reference to past events alone, each distinction expressing a certain
degree of remoteness from the moment of speaking (Sapir and Swadesh 1964). In
some languages, it is obligatory to specify more unusual types of temporal and
aspectual relations. For instance, in the Villa Alta dialect of Zapotec (Mexico), it is
necessary to distinguish between events which take place for the fi rst time with
respect to particular participants and those which are repetitions (Nida 1959).
Some languages, such as Chinese, Malay and Yurok, have no formal category
of tense or aspect. The form of the verb in these languages does not change to
express temporal or aspectual distinctions. If necessary, time reference can be indi-

GRAMMATICAL EQUIVALENCE 109
cated by means of various particles and adverbials. The following examples show
how time relations are typically signalled in Chinese when the context demands that
such information be made explicit:
ta xian-zai zai bei-jing gong-zuo (lit.: ‘he now in Peking work’, i.e. ‘he is
working in Peking’)
ta dang-shi zai bei-jing gong-zuo (lit.: ‘he at that time in Peking work’,
i.e. ‘he was working in Peking’)
(from Tan 1980:111)
Because tense and aspect are not grammatical categories in Chinese, their specifi –
cation is largely optional. Context is relied on much more often than in English or Bali
to establish time reference. If the adverbials in the above examples were not included
in the clause, one would have to rely entirely on the context to establish the time of
the event. The following examples from China’s Panda Reserves illustrate (a) the
use of adverbials to indicate time reference where necessary and feasible in a
Chinese translation, and (b) the omission of time reference altogether where it can
be inferred from the context or where the information is not judged to be important.
Example A
This attractive black and white mammal has widespread human
appeal and has become a symbol for conservation efforts both within
China and internationally as the symbol of The World Wide Fund for
Nature (WWF).
Target text (Chinese):
这一吸引人的黑白哺乳动物为人们所广泛地喜爱。作为世界自然
基金会（WWF）的标记，熊猫已经成为中国和国际性自然保护努
力的象征。
This attractive black-white mammal widely liked by people and
already become a symbol of conservation efforts …
The adverbial yi-jing, meaning ‘already’, is added to the equivalent of become to
give the effect of the present perfect in English has become.

110 IN OTHER WORDS
Example B
Species like this mountain rhododendron were collected by 19th
century botanists and then transported back to Europe for horticultural
collections.
Target text (Chinese):
像这一山杜鹃花等种类为十九世纪的植物学家所集采，然后运回
欧洲作为园林收藏品。
Species like this mountain rhododendron collect by 19th
century botanists and then transport back to Europe for horti-
cultural collections.
The connotations of pastness in the above extract can be inferred from the context,
because of the reference to nineteenth-century botanists. There is therefore no
need to signal the past overtly in the Chinese text.
Although the main use of the grammatical categories of tense and aspect is to
indicate time and aspectual relations, they do not necessarily perform the same
function in all languages. For instance, the main function of the tense system in Hopi
is to signal modal meanings such as certainty, uncertainty, possibility and obligation.
Hockett (1958) describes Hopi as having three main ‘tenses’: the fi rst is used to
express timeless truths, as in ‘The sun is round’; the second is used in connection
with events which are either known or presumed to be known, as in ‘Paris is the
capital of France’; and the third is used for events which are in the realm of uncer-
tainty, as in ‘They will arrive tomorrow’.
Tense and aspect distinctions may also take on additional, more subtle meanings
in discourse. In a brief discussion of the use of tense in English and Brazilian
academic abstracts, Johns (1991) points out that some verbs refer to what is stated
in the academic paper itself (these he calls indicative verbs), while other verbs
refer to what was actually done in the research on which the paper reports (these he
calls informative verbs).12 Johns suggests that in both English and Brazilian
academic papers, the indicative/informative distinction correlates with the choice of
tense: the present tense is used for indicative and the past tense for informative
statements. Verbs such as present, mention, propose and refer to, which relate to
what the writer is doing in the paper itself, are usually in the present tense, while
verbs such as determine, record, select and detect, which have to do with actual
research, are usually in the past tense. This regular correlation infl uences the way
we interpet statements in academic papers. As Johns points out, ‘the fact that the
results of an experiment are analyzed reports the contents of the paper, but that they
were analyzed reports one of the procedures undertaken in the research’ (1991:5).

GRAMMATICAL EQUIVALENCE 111
Johns (personal communication) also suggests that in English science and
engineering academic abstracts, the present perfect is specifi cally used to refer to
the work of other scientists. For example, It is proposed that … suggests that the
writer of the abstract is doing the proposing, but It has been proposed that …
suggests that the proposing is done by someone other than the writer. This signalling
system is apparently more or less the same in Brazilian Portuguese. However,
Johns found that translated Brazilian abstracts tend to follow textbook rules of
grammar which favour ‘consistent’ use of tense and aspect. Many translators, for
instance, use the present perfect or the simple past throughout the abstract in order
to achieve ‘consistency’, thereby disrupting the natural signalling system of the
target language.
Signalling systems such as those outlined above can be signifi cantly different in
the source and target languages, even when the basic tense and aspect systems
are very similar. Japanese has a grammatical category of tense which is not too
dissimilar to that of English. The suffi xes -ru and -ta are regularly added to verbs to
indicate non-past and past reference respectively.13

However, this does not mean
that every past tense in an English text can be translated into Japanese with a -ta
form or that every present or future tense can be translated using a -ru form. A
translator has to bear in mind the additional meanings that these forms can assume
in a Japanese text. In the following example, the past tense in the English text is
rendered by a non-past form in the Japanese translation because the non-past is
often used in Japanese to express personal judgement.
Source text (Palace and Politics in Prewar Japan, Titus 1974:17):
The heads of the ministries created in 1869 were not directly
responsible for ‘advising and assisting’ (hohitsu) the emperor, though
they were to become so in 1889.
Target text (Japanese):
明治二年につくられた諸省の長は、天皇「輔弼」の直接責任者
ではない。そうなったのは明治二二年なのである。
The head of the various ministr which were created in Meiji
2nd are not directly responsible for ‘hohitsu’ the emperor. It was in
Meiji 22nd that it became so.
In this instance, the use of the non-past suggests that the statement made about
the role of the heads of the ministries prior to 1889 is based on the author’s personal
assessment of the situation, as opposed to the statement concerning their role from
1889 onwards, which, presumably, is supported by hard facts. (Meiji 2nd and Meiji
22nd refer to the equivalents of 1869 and 1889 respectively in the Japanese
calendar.)

112 IN OTHER WORDS
4.2.5 Voice
A Chinese translator … uses a preposition bei ‘by’ whenever he sees a
passive voice in the original verb, forgetting that Chinese verbs have no voice.
… Once this sort of thing is done often enough, it gets to be written in orig-
inals, even where no translation is involved. … Such ‘translatese’ is still
unpalatable to most people and no one talks in that way yet, but it is already
common in scientifi c writing, in newspapers, and in schools.
(Chao 1970; in Li and Thompson 1981:496)
The use of the passive voice is extremely common in many varieties of written
English and can pose various problems in translation, depending on the availability of
similar structures, or structures with similar functions, in the target language.
Because of its widespread use in technical and scientifi c English in particular, it has
had a strong infl uence on similar registers in other languages through translation.
The tendency to translate English passive structures literally into a variety of target
languages which either have no passive voice as such or which would normally use
it with less frequency is often criticized by linguists and by those involved in training
translators.
Voice is a grammatical category which defi nes the relationship between a verb
and its subject. In active clauses, the subject is the agent responsible for performing
the action. In passive clauses, the subject is the affected entity, and the agent may
or may not be specifi ed, depending on the structures available in each language.
Active: (a) Nigel Mansell opened the Mansell Hall in 1986.
Passive: (b) The Mansell Hall was opened in 1986.
(c) The Mansell Hall was opened by Nigel Mansell in 1986.
Note that the form of the verb changes in a passive structure to indicate that its
subject is the affected entity rather than the agent. Chao’s comment above about
Chinese verbs having no voice refers to the fact that the form of the verb in Chinese
does not change to indicate its relationship with the subject of the clause.
The structure illustrated in (c), where the agent is specifi ed in a passive clause,
is much less frequent than the structure illustrated in (b), where the agent is left
unspecifi ed. This is because the main function of the passive in most languages is to
allow the construction of ‘agentless’ clauses.14 In some languages, such as Turkish,
this seems to be its only function (Lyons 1968). In other languages, the use of the
passive is obligatory in certain contexts; for instance, the passive has to be used in
Yana, an American Indian language, when the agent is a third person acting upon a
fi rst or second person (Sapir and Swadesh 1964).
Most languages have a variety of mechanisms for constructing ‘agentless’
clauses; for instance, the French statement On parle anglais and the German Man
spricht Englisch leave the agent unspecifi ed by using a ‘dummy’ subject, on and
man respectively. They can be translated into English either by using a similar

GRAMMATICAL EQUIVALENCE 113
‘dummy’ subject, They speak English, where they does not refer to a specifi c agent,
or by using the passive voice, English is spoken (Lyons 1968).
Languages which have a category of voice do not always use the passive with
the same frequency. German uses the passive much less frequently than English.
The same is true of Russian and French, where refl exive structures15

are relied on
much more heavily to fulfi l similar functions. The frequency of use of the passive in
languages which have a category of voice usually expresses a stylistic choice and, in
some registers, may be a question of pure convention. Scientifi c and technical
writing in English, for instance, relies heavily on passive structures. This is done to
give the impression of objectivity and to distance the writer from the statements
made in the text.16 It has, however, come to represent the ‘norm’ in technical writing
to such an extent that, even if a writer was not particularly interested in giving an
impression of objectivity, he or she might fi nd it diffi cult to break away from the
convention of using predominantly passive structures in technical writing. The more
pervasive a structure becomes in a given context, the more diffi cult it becomes for
speakers and writers to select other structures or to depict events differently.
Some languages use the passive more frequently than English in everyday
contexts. In Tjolobal of Mexico, passive structures are the norm, with active struc-
tures being used very rarely (Beekman and Callow 1974). Nida similarly explains
that ‘in some Nilotic languages the passive forms of verbs are so preferred that
instead of saying “he went to town”, it is much more normal to employ an expression
such as “the town was gone to by him’” (1975:136).
Rendering a passive structure by an active structure, or conversely an active
structure by a passive structure in translation can have implications for the amount of
information given in the clause, the linear arrangement of semantic elements such as
agent and affected entity, and the focus of the message.17 However, one must weigh
this potential change in content and focus against the benefi ts of rendering a smooth,
natural translation in contexts where the use of the passive might, for instance, be
stylistically less acceptable than the use of the active or an alternative structure in the
target language. The conference circular (in English and Russian) and the back-
translated version of the Russian text that follow are quoted at length to illustrate that,
in some contexts, professional translators may decide to replace passive structures in
the source text with stylistically more acceptable alternative structures, such as the
active and refl exive in the case of Russian. The relevant structures are highlighted in
the English and back-translated Russian texts for ease of comparison.
Source Text (Euralex Conference Circular, 1987):
CALL FOR PAPERS
Papers are invited for the
EURALEX Third International Congress
4–9 September 1988
Budapest, Hungary.

114 IN OTHER WORDS
Papers are invited on all aspects of lexicography, theoretical and
practical, diachronic and synchronic. The main fi elds of interest
refl ected in the Congress programme will be:
general (monolingual or bilingual), computational
terminological and specialized translation
lexicography.
Papers relating to the lesser-known languages will be particularly
welcome.
The format of the Congress will embrace plenary sessions, symposia,
section meetings, workshop sessions, project reports and demon-
strations of computational and other work; there will also be ample
time for discussion.
Individual presentations should be timed to last 20 minutes, with a
discussion period to follow.
Abstracts (approximately 1,000 words) in any of the Congress
languages, English, French, German or Russian, should be sent to the
Lecture Programme Organizer, Dr. Tamas Magay, at the above
address by 15 November 1987. A response will be sent before the end
of February 1988. Any other correspondence should be addressed to
the Congress organizer, Ms Judit Zigany.
It is confi dently expected that a volume of collected papers from
this Congress will subsequently be published by Akademiai Kiado in
Budapest.
This Congress will, like its predecessors at Exeter and Zurich, be a
meeting place for lexicographers, academics and publishers. It will
also offer a unique opportunity for participants from the East and
from the West to strengthen professional and personal contacts and
thus to lay the foundations of further exchanges and cooperation in
the future.
We look forward to seeing you at BUDALEX ’88.
Russian translation

GRAMMATICAL EQUIVALENCE 115
We invite you to take part in the
Third International Congress of EURALEX
in Budapest (PRH)
4–9 September 1988.
The overall theme of the congress will include all the most
important aspects of lexicography. We intend to pay particular
attention to the following areas of lexicographical science:
general (mono- and bilingual) lexicography,
computational lexicography,
terminological and special lexicography.
We intend to discuss separately questions concerning the so-called
‘small’, i.e. less widespread and ‘big’, i.e. more widespread languages.
In the frames of the congress we intend to hold plenary sessions,
symposia, workshops, and also to discuss project reports. In addition
there will be section meetings of the congress and demonstrations of
the use of computer technology in lexicography.

116 IN OTHER WORDS
The envisaged length of individual papers is 20 minutes, not
counting supplementary speeches and discussions.
We ask for a short abstract of papers (up to 1000 words or up to 100
lines) by 15 November 1987, in any of the offi cial languages of the
conference, i.e. Russian, English, French or German, to be sent at the
above address to the chief coordinator of the congress Judit Zigany or
to the academic organizer of the congress Dr Tamas Magay. We ask
you to send further correspondence to Chief Editor Judit Zigany.
The Press of the Academy of Sciences of the PRH intends to
publish in the form of a collection all the academic material from the
congress.
We hope that this congress, like its predecessors in Exeter and
Zurich, will be not only a meeting place for lexicographers, philolo-
gists and publishers, but that also the opportunity will make itself
available to the participants coming from East and West by means of
personal and professional contacts to lay the foundations for further
collaboration.
Till we meet in BUDALEX ’88
English has many formulae or semi-fi xed expressions in formal correspondence which
rely heavily on using the passive for distancing, to project the writer as an agent of an
objective process. Russian, on the whole, does not favour this strategy. Common fi xed
and semi-fi xed phrases in Russian make use of the active voice. An expression such
as ‘we invite you to …’ is more natural in Russian than ‘you are invited to …’, although
both are possible. The last highlighted expression in the Russian back-translation, ‘the
opportunity will make itself available’, illustrates the use of the refl exive, which is partic-
ularly common in Russian and is generally considered stylistically equivalent to the
passive in English (James Mullen, personal communication).
As already mentioned, the main function of the passive in English and in a
number of other languages is to avoid specifying the agent and to give an impression
of objectivity. This is not necessarily the function of the passive in all languages
which have a category of voice. Larson explains that in Aguaruna, a language of
Peru, ‘the passive is used almost exclusively in introductions and conclusions, but
not in the body of the text. A shift to passive would indicate that the author is now
giving a summary statement’ (1984:226). In some languages, notably Japanese,
Chinese, Vietnamese and Thai, the main function of the passive, or passive-like
structures as in the case of Chinese, is to express adversity. In these languages, the
passive is traditionally used to report unfortunate events;18 for instance, one would
say something like ‘I was rained on’ in Japanese, rather than ‘It rained on me’ or ‘I
got wet in the rain’. Even events which would never be passivized in English because
they involve only one participant and therefore cannot ‘logically’ be passivized are
expressed in passive structures in these languages if they are unpleasant, for
example ‘I was died on by my father’ in Japanese.

GRAMMATICAL EQUIVALENCE 117
The regular association of passive structures with adversity in certain languages
means that the passive can often carry connotations of unpleasantness even when
the event depicted is not normally seen as unpleasant. Thus, using the passive in
Japanese can imply that a certain event is viewed by the speaker or writer in unfa-
vourable terms, as the following example illustrates. The source text, Palace and
Politics in Prewar Japan (Titus 1974:20), is English. However, the example used
here is originally a quotation from Japanese, translated into English and used in the
source text. The Japanese translator of the English book seems to have recovered
the original Japanese text (written in Classical Japanese) and quoted it in the
Japanese translation. The English text will still be quoted fi rst as this will hopefully
make it easier for the reader to follow the back-translation from Japanese. Items in
angle brackets in the back-translation do not actually occur in the Japanese text;
grammatical subjects are often suppressed in Japanese clauses (see Chapter 6,
section 6.1). Possible subjects are nevertheless inserted in the back-translation to
make the text readable.
English/Target text:
Komeda Torao, Jiho of the third rank, was the most blunt: ‘If in the
past [Your Majesty] had shown as much care for politics as he had
passion for horsemanship, no such criticism from the public as
“politics by two or three Ministers” would have occurred’.
Japanese/source text:
いちばんむきつけだったのは、三等侍補の米田虎雄だった。「
平素御馬術を好ませてもうほどに政治上に叡慮を注がせたまわ
ば、今日のごとく世上より二三大臣の政治などいわるることは
あるまじくとつねに苦慮つかまつりおれり」。
The most blunt one was Komeda Torao who was the third Jiho. ‘If
pours his wise consideration into politics as much as
likes riding in his daily life, would not think that would have been said as two or three ministers’ politics
by the public. So sincerely concerned.’
Because it is used in the passive, ‘said’ in the Japanese text is understood to mean
something like ‘criticized’, and this meaning is correctly rendered in the English
translation. Note that it is the use of the passive structure rather than the lexical item
‘said’ which signals this ‘adverse’ meaning of criticism.
The fact that the passive can and often does communicate adverse meanings in
languages such as Japanese and Chinese must be borne in mind by translators
working from or into these languages. Here are some examples which confi rm that
professional Japanese and Chinese translators are sensitive to the difference in
function of the passive in English and in their target languages and generally tend to

118 IN OTHER WORDS
replace a large number of English passive structures with active structures in their
target texts in order to avoid negative connotations.
Example A
Source text (A Study of Shamanistic Practices in Japan, Blacker 1975:315):
… there is no barrier to be crossed, no mysteriously other kind of
being to be met and placated.
Target text (Japanese):
そこには越えるべき障壁もなく、神秘的な異種の生きものに出
合い、なだめることもない。
There is no barrier that should go over, and do not
meet or placate a mysterious different being.
Example B
Source text (Palace and Politics in Prewar Japan, Titus 1974:11):
If the personality and policy preferences of the Japanese emperor
were not very relevant to prewar politics, social forces certainly were.
There are two reasons for giving them only the most tangential
treatment here. First, this study simply had to be controlled in scope.
Obviously not everything relevant to Japanese political development
could be encompassed.
Target text (Japanese):
だが、日本の天皇の人柄や政策上の好みが戦前の政治に大した
関係がなかったとしても、社会勢力の側は明らかにそうではな
い。社会勢力に対して本書がわずかにふれる程度の扱いしかし
なかったのには、二つの理由がある。第一は、研究範囲を抑え
ねばならなかった、という単純な理由である。日本の政治的発
展に関係のあることすべてをとりあげる、などというのは明ら
かに不可能事である。
… The fi rst reason was a simple reason which is had to limit
the area of research. It is obviously impossible to take up all the
matters which are related to Japan’s political development.

GRAMMATICAL EQUIVALENCE 119
Example C
Source text (China’s Panda Reserves):
… many have been nursed back to health from the brink of starvation.
Target text (Chinese):
该中心的成年熊猫睡于笼子里，供应的食物匀称、营养丰富；许
多熊猫已从饿死的边缘被护理恢复了健康。它们还享有一个大型
的户外院子，可以漫游于半野生状态的自然植物中。
… many pandas have already through nursing recovered health
from the brink of starvation and death.
The most important things to bear in mind as far as voice is concerned are the
frequency of use of active, passive and similar structures in the source and target
languages, their respective stylistic value in different text types, and – most important
of all – the function(s) of the passive and similar structures in each language. The
idea is not to replace an active form with an active one and a passive form with a
passive one; it is always the function of a category rather than the form it takes that
is of paramount importance in translation.
The categories discussed and exemplifi ed above are among the most prob-
lematic in translation but are by no means the only ones that cause diffi culty. The
expression of modal meanings, for instance, can vary widely from language to
language and has to be handled sensitively and carefully in translation. Modality has
to do with the attitude of the speaker to the hearer or to what is being said; in other
words, it has to do with such things as certainty, possibility and obligation. The
expression of modal meanings can take quite a different form in each language. In
an article on political interviews on Israeli television, Blum-Kulka (1983) explains that
English tends to use expressions such as Let’s … and Shall we … in directing the
actions of others, in controlling talk, and in making polite requests that have the
force of commands. Hebrew, on the other hand, expresses similar modal meanings
by ‘addressing a question about the possibility of getting something done. For
example, “Perhaps you’ll go to sleep” (ulay telex li[scaron]on) from a mother to a
child simply means “go to sleep”’ (ibid.:147). Throughout her article, Blum-Kulka
renders Hebrew expressions used by the interviewer to direct each talk with natural-
sounding English expressions which are not literal renderings of the Hebrew but
which express similar modal meanings. For example, she uses Let’s go on to
another topic where a literal translation of the Hebrew would be ‘Perhaps we shall/
should go on to another topic’, and Let’s begin with the question of defence policy
where the Hebrew is literally ‘Perhaps we shall start with the question of defence
policy’. Becker (2009) offers a similar analysis of differences in the use of modality

120 IN OTHER WORDS
in German and British political interviews; Kim and Thompson (2010) analyse the
use of modal expressions of obligation in English and Korean newspaper science
popularization texts and relate the fi ndings to cultural norms characteristic of the two
groups: individualism and task-orientatedness in the case of English and collectivism
and relation-orientatedness in the case of Korean.
Other grammatical categories which can pose diffi culties in translation include
mood, direct and indirect speech, and causativity, among many others. Translators
should fi nd it useful to investigate and compare the expression of such categories
and the meanings associated with various structures in their source and target
languages.
For a good overview of a number of grammatical categories and their expression
in various languages, see Robins (1964) and Lyons (1968). For a detailed discussion
of the main categories and their realization and function in English, see the Collins
COBUILD English Grammar (Sinclair 1990).
4.3 A BRIEF NOTE ON WORD ORDER
The syntactic structure of a language imposes restrictions on the way messages
may be organized in that language. The order in which functional elements such as
subject, predicator and object may occur is more fi xed in some languages than in
others.19 Languages vary in the extent to which they rely on word order to signal the
relationship between elements in the clause. Compared to languages such as
German, Russian, Finnish, Arabic and Eskimo, word order in English is relatively
fi xed. The meaning of a sentence in English, and in languages with similarly fi xed
word order such as Chinese, often depends entirely on the order in which the
elements are placed (cf. The man ate the fi sh and The fi sh ate the man).
Some languages have case infl ections which indicate the relationship between
the elements in a clause, for instance who does what to whom. In such languages,
the form of a noun changes depending on its function in the clause. In Russian, both
Ivan videl Borisa and Borisa videl Ivan mean ‘John saw Boris’ (Lyons 1968),
because -a marks Boris as the object, regardless of its position with respect to the
subject and verb.
Languages which have elaborate systems of case infl ection tend to have
fewer restrictions on word order than languages like English, which have very few
case infl ections. In languages with elaborate case infl ections, word order is largely
a matter of stylistic variation and is available as a resource to signal emphasis and
contrast and to organize messages in a variety of ways. Word order is extremely
important in translation because it plays a major role in maintaining a coherent
point of view and in orientating messages at text level. Because of its particular
importance to the overall organization of discourse, the next chapter will be
devoted to discussing word order at length from a purely textual point of view. But
before we move from discussing the lower levels of language – words, phrases,
grammatical categories – to talking about the text as a unit of meaning, it would
perhaps be useful to explain briefl y what a text is and why we identify a given

GRAMMATICAL EQUIVALENCE 121
stretch of language as a text rather than assume that it is a set of unrelated words
and sentences.
4.4 INTRODUCING TEXT
So far in this book we have attempted to deal with some of the basic ‘building
blocks’ of language: its lexical stock and grammatical structures. In order to make
some headway in describing and analysing language, we have had to treat linguistic
units and structures temporarily as if they had an independent status and possessed
‘meaning’ in their own right. We now need to take a broader look at language and to
consider the possibility that, as part of a language system, lexical items and gram-
matical structures have a ‘meaning potential’. This ‘meaning potential’ is only
realized in communicative events, that is, in text. Following Brown and Yule
(1983:6), text is defi ned here as ‘the verbal record of a communicative event’; it is
an instance of language in use rather than language as an abstract system of
meanings and relations.
4.4.1 Text vs non-text
The nearest we get to non-text in actual life, leaving aside the works of those
poets and prose writers who deliberately set out to create non-text, is probably
in the speech of young children and in bad translations.
(Halliday and Hasan 1976:24; my emphasis)
As translators, we have to operate with lexical items and grammatical structures at
various stages of the translation process. It is nevertheless imperative that we view
the text as a whole, both at the beginning and at the end of the process. With the
exception of extremely repetitive and predictable texts such as computer manuals, a
conscientious translator does not begin to translate until he or she has read the text
at least once and got a ‘gist’ of the overall message. But this is only the fi rst step.
Once the source text is understood, the translator then has to tackle the task of
producing a target version which can be accepted as a text in its own right. Depending
on the type of text being translated (e.g. an experimental novel vs a set of instruc-
tions for operating a machine) and the purpose assigned to the translation by the
translator or the commissioner,20 the phraseology and the collocational and gram-
matical patterning of the target version may – and usually do – have to conform to
target-language norms, but even then the translation may still sound foreign or
clumsy. Worse still, it may not even make sense to the target reader. Acceptable
collocational patterns and grammatical structures can only enhance the readability of
individual sentences, but they do not in themselves ensure that sentences and para-
graphs add up to a readable or coherent text. In an unpublished manuscript, ‘Ingre-
dients of good, clear style’, Wilson comments as follows on the difference between
an old and a revised version of the Bible in Dagbani:

122 IN OTHER WORDS
For a native speaker it was diffi cult to express what was wrong with the earlier
version, except that it was ‘foreign’. Since superfi cially there seemed to be no
obvious grammatical blunders, and the vocabulary was not obviously faulty,
the ingredients of this foreignness were not at fi rst apparent. Now, however,
a comparison … has made clear that what the older version mainly suffers
from are considerable defi ciencies in ‘discourse structure’, i.e., in the way the
sentences are combined into well-integrated paragraphs, and these in turn
into a well-constructed whole. The new version, on the contrary, shows
native-speaker mastery over the means of signposting the text into a
coherent, clear prose, which is … a real pleasure to read.
(quoted in Callow 1974:10–11)
A text, then, has features of organization which distinguish it from non-text, that is,
from a random collection of sentences and paragraphs. Just like collocational and
grammatical patterning and a host of other linguistic phenomena, these features of
text organization are language- and culture-specifi c. Each linguistic community has
preferred ways of organizing its various types of discourse. This is why target
readers can often identify what appears to be a lexically and grammatically ‘normal’
text as a translation, or as ‘foreign’.
A translation may be undertaken for a variety of purposes. However, in the
chapters that follow we will assume that the ultimate aim of a translator, in most
cases, is to achieve a measure of equivalence at text level, rather than at word or
phrase level.21 More often than not, a translator will want the reader to accept a given
translation as a text in its own right, if possible without being unduly alerted to the
fact that it is a translation. To achieve this, the translator will need to adjust certain
features of source-text organization in line with preferred ways of organizing
discourse in the target language. The following chapters will attempt to outline some
of the main features of discourse organization by looking at a number of factors
which constrain or aid the way we produce and understand text.
This area of language study is somewhat ‘messier’ than the study of lexis and
grammar. Texts may be organized in a variety of ways, the naturalness or otherwise
of their organization being determined by a multitude of factors. De Beaugrande and
Dressler rightly point out that it is ‘much more straightforward to decide what consti-
tutes a grammatical or acceptable sentence than what constitutes a grammatical or
acceptable sentence sequence, paragraph, text, or discourse’ (1981:17). More
importantly, text studies are a relatively recent development in linguistics. There is,
admittedly, a long tradition both in linguistics and in literary studies of analysing the
works of individual writers, particularly literary writers, but relatively little work has
been done on such areas of text studies as the conventions of non-literary writing
within a community or the preferred patterns of organization in different types of
discourse. Moreover, of the studies now available, most are concerned with
describing the patterning and conventions of spoken and written English. Very little
is available in the way of describing the types of text available in, say, Chinese or

GRAMMATICAL EQUIVALENCE 123
Spanish, or of how such texts are organized. Readers will note that the rest of this
book will sometimes raise more questions than it answers, but they will, I hope,
agree that raising questions is at least a step towards providing answers and solving
problems.
4.4.2 Features of text organization
Any text, in any language, exhibits certain linguistic features which allow us to
identify it as a text. We identify a stretch of language as a text partly because it is
presented to us as a text – and we therefore do our utmost to make sense of it as a
unit – and partly because we perceive connections within and among its sentences.
These connections are of several kinds. First, there are connections which are
established through the arrangement of information within each clause and the way
this relates to the arrangement of information in preceding and following clauses and
sentences; these contribute mainly to topic development and maintenance through
thematic and information structures (Chapter 5). Second, there are surface
connections which establish interrelationships between persons and events; these
allow us to trace participants in a text and to interpret the way in which different parts
of the text relate to each other (cohesion; Chapter 6). Finally, there are underlying
semantic connections which allow us to ‘make sense’ of a text as a unit of meaning;
these are dealt with under the heading of coherence and implicature in Chapter 7
(‘Pragmatic equivalence’).
Another important feature of text organization derives from the overlapping
notions of genre and text type. Both relate to the way in which textual material is
packaged by the writer along patterns familiar to the reader. Texts have been clas-
sifi ed in two main ways to capture this type of ‘packaging’. The fi rst and more
straightforward classifi cation is based on the contexts in which texts occur and
results in institutionalized labels such as ‘journal article’, ‘science textbook’, ‘news-
paper editorial’ or ‘travel brochure’. The second is a more subjective, less institution-
alized and therefore much vaguer classifi cation which does not normally apply to a
whole text but rather to parts of it. Typical labels used in this type of classifi cation
include ‘narration’, ‘exposition’, ‘argumentation’ and ‘instruction’. The fi rst classifi –
cation abstracts across contexts, the second abstracts across such factors as the
nature of the messages involved or the addresser/addressee relationship. Both
types of classifi cation are useful in defi ning translation problems and in justifying
specifi c strategies to overcome them. Reference to institutionalized genres, such as
‘religious texts’ and ‘newspaper editorial’, is made wherever applicable throughout
this book. For an interesting discussion of translation problems which makes
frequent references to the second type of classifi cation, see Hatim and Mason
(1990). For a broader discussion of the issue of text type and genres, see Trosborg
(1997).

124 IN OTHER WORDS
e
x
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s 1. Choose a notional category such as time reference, gender, countability,
visibility, modality or animacy and compare the way it is expressed in
your target language with the way it is expressed in English. Comment
in particular on the sort of problems that could arise in translation from
differences in the way the notion in question is expressed in the two
languages. You may fi nd it helpful to refer to grammars of your source
and target languages and to base your discussion on an analysis of
authentic translated texts.
2. Imagine that you have been provisionally asked to translate John Le
Carré’s The Russia House (1989) into your target language. Before you
can sign the translation contract, the publishers insist that you provide a
sample translation of a couple of pages to allow them to assess your
competence as a translator of this type of literature. They choose the
following extract and ask you to submit a target version of it, stating that
they appreciate that you may not have had time to read the whole novel
but that they just want to see how you might handle Le Carré’s distinctive
use of language. They provide you with a short summary of the context
to help you assess the tone of the extract.
Note to the translator:
John Le Carré’s The Russia House is a spy thriller which revolves
around the then new era of glasnost in the Soviet Union. The
general feeling that one gets from reading this novel is that
nothing much has changed and that the cold-war machinations
are still at play and are as irrelevant and as brutal as ever. The
narrator in the following extract is Palfrey, legal adviser to the
British secret service or, in his own words, ‘Legal adviser to the
illegals’ (p. 47). In this passage, which is very near the end of the
book, he ironically sums up the manner in which the hypocritical
bureaucrats of Whitehall and Washington dealt with their own
inadequacies when their major spying operation went wrong. The
various people mentioned, such as Ned and Barley, had all been
involved in the operation in one way or another.
Extract for translation:
Oh, and note was taken. Passively, since active verbs have an
unpleasant way of betraying the actor. Very serious note. Taken
all over the place.
Note was taken that Ned had failed to advise the twelfth fl oor
of Barley’s drunken breakout after his return from Leningrad.
Note was taken that Ned had requisitioned all manner of
resources on that same night, for which he had never accounted,

GRAMMATICAL EQUIVALENCE 125
e
x
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is
e
s among them Ben Lugg and the services of the head listener Mary,
who suffi ciently overcame her loyalty to a brother offi cer to give
the committee a lurid account of Ned’s high-handedness.
Demanding illegal taps! Imagine! Faulting telephones! The
liberty!
Mary was pensioned off soon after this and now lives in a rage
in Malta, where it is feared she is writing her memoirs.
Note was also taken, if regretfully, of the questionable conduct
of our Legal Adviser de Palfrey – I even got my de back* – who
had failed to justify his use of the Home Secretary’s delegated
authority in the full knowledge that this was required of him by
the secretly agreed Procedures Governing the Service’s Activities
as Amended by etcetera, and in accordance with paragraph some-
thing of a deniable Home Offi ce protocol.
The heat of battle was however taken into account. The Legal
Adviser was not pensioned off, neither did he take himself to
Malta. But he was not exonerated either. A partial pardon at best.
A Legal Adviser should not have been so close to an operation. An
inappropriate use of the Legal Adviser’s skills. The word injudi-
cious was passed around.
It was also noted with regret that the same Legal Adviser had
drafted a glowing testimonial of Barley for Clive’s signature not
forty-eight hours before Barley’s disappearance, thus enabling
Barley to take possession of the shopping list,** though
presumably not for long.
In my spare hours, I drew up Ned’s terms of severance and
thought nervously about my own. Life inside the Service might
have its limitations but the thought of life outside it terrifi ed me.
(pp. 412–413)
* Palfrey’s full name is Horatio Benedict de Palfrey, but, as he
explains earlier (p. 47), ‘you may forget the fi rst two [names]
immediately, and somehow nobody has ever remembered the
“de” at all’.
** A document detailing information required by Whitehall and
Washington from the informant/potential defector on the Russian
side.
When you have translated the above text into your target language,
discuss any differences between the source and target versions in terms
of grammatical meaning, paying particular attention to the use of
passive structures22 and the refl exive take himself to Malta (paragraph
6). You may also wish to use this opportunity to consolidate your

126 IN OTHER WORDS
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s knowledge of other areas covered so far, namely semantics and lexis.
Consider, for instance, the evoked meaning of an expression such as all
over the place (paragraph 1), or the impact of an unusual collocation
such as lives in a rage (paragraph 4); how well do these expressions
translate into your target language?
Comment at length on the strategies you used to overcome diffi –
culties at the grammatical level in particular.
3. Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow is the title of one of two English transla-
tions of an award-winning novel by the Danish author Peter Høeg,
which fi rst appeared in 1992. On the surface, the story revolves around
Smilla Qaaviqaaq Jaspersen, daughter of a Greenlandic Inuit mother
and a rich Danish dentist, who becomes suspicious about the death of a
Greenlandic child in Copenhagen and decides to investigate it. At a
deeper level, the story is about Denmark’s colonial history and the rela-
tionship between different groups in Danish society today.
In the following extract (Høeg 2005:262–263), Smilla switches from
refl ecting on her current situation to remembering aspects of her past
life.
I put on my tracksuit. I knot the steel ball into a long white bath
towel that I’ve folded double. Then I hang it back on its hook.
And I sit down to wait.
If you have to wait for a long time, you have to seize hold of the
waiting or it will become destructive. If you let things slide, your
consciousness will waver, awakening fear and restlessness, then
depression strikes, and you’re pulled down.
To keep up my spirits I ask myself, What is a human being?
Who am I?
Am I my name?
The year I was born my mother travelled to West Greenland
and brought home the girl’s name Millaaraq. Because it reminded
Moritz of the Danish word mild, which didn’t exist in the vocab-
ulary of his love relationship with my mother, because he wanted
to transform everything Greenlandic into something that would
make it European and familiar, and because I apparently had
smiled at him – the boundless trust of an infant, which comes
from the fact that she still doesn’t know what’s in store for her –
my parents agreed on Smillaaraq. With the wear and tear that
time subjects all of us to, it was shortened to Smilla.
Imagine that Peter Høeg and the English publisher of this novel have
commissioned you and various other translators to render a number of

GRAMMATICAL EQUIVALENCE 127
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e
s passages, including this one, into your target language(s) in order to
establish whether the English translation can serve as a source text in
situations where translators from Danish (for example into languages
like Ukranian or Kurdish) are unlikely to be available. When you have
translated it, comment on the relevant diffi culties and the strategies you
used to convey the function(s) of each tense and the impact of the switch
in tenses. Your comments need to be clear and accessible, because they
will be passed on to the translators who will eventually be commis-
sioned to render the full novel into a range of languages. These trans-
lators will need to be sensitized to the impact of the interplay of tenses,
among other things, in the English translation – because they will use
this English translation as a source text.
SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING
Beekman, John and John Callow (1974) Translating the Word of God, Michigan: Zondervan;
Chapter 3: ‘Implicit and Explicit Information’, and Chapter 14: ‘Multiple Functions of
Grammatical Structures’.
Downing, Angela and Philip Locke (2006) English Grammar: A University Course, second
edition, Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.
Huddleston, Rodney and Geoffrey K. Pullum (2005) A Student’s Introduction to English
Grammar, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lyons, John (1968) Introduction to Theoretical Linguistics, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press; Chapter 7: ‘Grammatical Categories’, and Chapter 8 : ‘Grammatical
Functions’.
Robins, R. H. (1964) General Linguistics: An Introductory Survey, London: Longman;
Chapter 6, sections 6.4 and 6.6: Grammatical classes, structures and categories.
Sinclair, John McH. (1990) Collins COBUILD English Grammar, London: Collins.
On gender
Chan Ho-yan, Clara (2009) ‘Third Person Pronouns in Indigenous Chinese Texts and Trans-
lated Chinese Texts: The Westernization of Modern Written Chinese’, New Voices in
Translation Studies 5. Available at www.iatis.org/newvoices/issues/2009/article-
chan-2009 .
Clason, Marmy A. (2006) ‘Feminism, Generic “He”, and the TNIV Bible Translation
Debate’, Critical Discourse Studies 3(1): 23–35.
Hébert, Lyse (2009) ‘Feminization: A Socially and Politically Charged Translation Strategy’,
in Raquel de Pedro, Isabelle Perez and Christine Wilson (eds) Interpreting and Trans-
lating in Public Service Settings: Policy, Practice, Pedagogy, Manchester: St. Jerome
Publishing, 127–140.

128 IN OTHER WORDS
Nissen, Uwe Kjaer (2002) ‘Aspects of Translating Gender’, Linguistik online 11(2). Available
at www.linguistik-online.de/11_02/nissen.html.
Sánchez, Dolores (2007) ‘The Truth about Sexual Difference: Scientifi c Discourse and
Cultural Transfer’, The Translator 13(2): 171–194.
Shurbanov, Alexander (2002) ‘Translation Across Gender Discrepancies’, Textus, English
Studies in Italy 15(1): 45–63.
On person (including T/V distinction)
Beaton-Thome, Morven (2010) ‘Negotiating Identities in the European Parliament: The Role
of Simultaneous Interpreting’, in Mona Baker, Maeve Olohan and María Calzada Pérez
(eds) Text and Context: Essays on Translation and Interpreting in Honour of Ian Mason,
Manchester: St. Jerome Publishing, 117–138.
Brown, Penelope and Albert Gilman (1960/1972) ‘The Pronouns of Power and Solidarity’,
in Pier Paulo Giglioli (ed.) Language and Social Context, Harmondsworth: Penguin,
252–281.
Guillot, Marie-Nöelle (2010) ‘Film Subtitles from a Cross-cultural Pragmatics Perspective:
Issues of Linguistic and Cultural Representation’, The Translator 16(1): 67–92.
Hatim, Basil and Ian Mason (1997) The Translator as Communicator, London: Routledge.
Chapter 5: ‘Politeness in Screen Translation’.
On tense and aspect
Cockerill, Hiroko (Shimono) (2003) ‘Futabatei Shimei’s Translations from Russian: Verbal
Aspect and Narrative Perspective’, Japanese Studies 23(3): 229–238.
Engel, Dulcie M. (2002) ‘Radio Talk. French and English Perfects on Air’, Languages in
Contrast 2(2): 95–118.
Gadalla, Hassan A. H. (2006) ‘Arabic Imperfect Verbs in Translation: A Corpus Study of
English Renderings’, Meta 51(1): 51–71.
Gentry El-Dash, Linda and JoAnne Busnardo (2003) ‘Interaction of Semantic and Prag-
matic Choices in the Translation of Verb Forms: English and Portuguese’, Journal of
Pragmatics 35(12): 1823–1841.
Lathey, Gillian (2003) ‘Time, Narrative Intimacy and the Child. Implications of the Transition
from the Present to the Past Tense in the Translation into English of Children’s
Texts’, Meta 48(1–2): 233–240.
May, Rachel (1994) The Translator in the Text: On Reading Russian Literature in English,
Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.
Polezzi, Loredana (1998) ‘Rewriting Tibet: Italian Travellers in English Translation’, The
Translator 4(2): 321–342.
Williams, Christopher (2002) Non-Progressive and Progressive Aspect in English, Bari:
Schena Editore.
On voice
Farghal, Mohammed and Mohammed O. Al-Shorafat (1996) ‘The Translation of English
Passives into Arabic: An Empirical Perspective’, Target 8(1): 97–118.

GRAMMATICAL EQUIVALENCE 129
Fujii, Yasunari (2008) ‘The Asymmetrical Relationship between the Active and Passive
Voice: Implications for Teaching Japanese-to-English Translation of Specialized Scien-
tifi c Texts’, The Linguistics Journal 3(1): 40–74. Available online: www.linguistics-
journal.com/April_2008 .
Kinsui, Satoshi (1997) ‘The Infl uence of Translation on the Historical Development of the
Japanese Passive Construction’, Journal of Pragmatics 28(6): 759–779.
NOTES
1 A system is a set of options or contrasting choices.
2 See Chapter 5 for a discussion of word-order patterns and note 1 of the same chapter
for an explanation of the functional elements subject, predicator and object.
3 The lexical item late, as in the late Graham Greene, can be used to convey a similar
meaning in English. The difference is that this information is optional in English and the
absence of late therefore does not necessarily indicate that a certain referent is alive.
4 And sometimes as masculine, feminine or neuter, as in the case of German. In some
languages, the gender category is expressed in terms of animate vs inanimate rather
than masculine vs feminine. Southern Paiute, an American Indian language, combines
the animate/inanimate distinction with a further dimension, namely that of visibility
(Sapir and Swadesh 1964). A given entity must be classifi ed (a) as either animate or
inanimate, and (b) according to whether or not it can be seen from the standpoint of the
action’s main setting.
5 A determiner is a word such as the, this or some, which is used with a noun to limit its
meaning or specify its reference in some way.
6 Unmarked here means that it is the form normally used unless the speaker specifi cally
wishes to highlight the distinction.
7 The reason that gender distinctions can be manipulated in this way in English is that they
are not a regular feature of the grammar of English. An English speaker can convey
certain expressive meanings by using she (rather than it) to refer to an inanimate object
such as a car or ship, for instance. It would be diffi cult to transfer this type of manipu-
lation into a language such as French, where gender is a regular grammatical feature. A
French speaker has to use the feminine form for ‘car’, voiture, and the masculine form
for ‘ship’, bateau; he or she has no other choice.
8 I am grateful to Monika Bednarek and her students for this information.
9 Elizabethan English made a distinction between thou (second-person singular) and you
(second-person plural). The singular form was used to express familiarity and the plural
form to express respect or distance. This distinction no longer exists in Modern English.
10 The most detailed study of this issue remains Brown and Gilman (1960/1972).
11 Brown and Gilman use T to refer to the familiar form and V to refer to the polite form in
any language.
12 This classifi cation is taken from St John (1983).
13 Distinguishing between the present and the future in non-past reference is achieved by
adding a time adverbial such as ‘now’ or ‘tomorrow’ (Netsu 1981).

130 IN OTHER WORDS
14 For a good, accessible summary of the functions of the passive in English, see The
Collins COBUILD English Grammar (Sinclair 1990), sections 10.10 to 10.14 (pp.
404–405).
15 Refl exive structures involve a refl exive pronoun such as myself or himself as object. They
suggest that the person or thing affected by the action is the same as the person or
thing doing it, for example I blame myself for not paying attention, He introduced
himself to me (examples from Sinclair 1990). Like passive structures, refl exive struc-
tures are sometimes used to suppress the agent. For example, ‘the opportunity made
itself available’, which is a perfectly natural expression in Russian, allows the speaker to
avoid specifying who made the opportunity available in much the same way as The
opportunity was made available.
16 See Bennett (2007) for an interesting discussion of various features of English academic
discourse, including the passive voice.
17 See Chapter 5 for a discussion of the role of voice in organizing messages.
18 This is still true to a large extent, even though passive structures are becoming more
common in various contexts because of the infl uence of translation.
19 See Chapter 5, note 1, for an explanation of the functional elements subject, predi-
cator, object, complement and adjunct.
20 For an excellent and accessible discussion of various considerations that impact on the
translator’s choice of strategy and degree of adherence to source- or target-culture
norms, see Nord (1997).
21 This is not to say that equivalence at word level is not or should not be given priority in
some contexts. The biblical or koranic translator, for instance, will often be at least
equally concerned, if not more concerned, with equivalence at the level of the word or
phrase.
22 I imagine that the extensive use of the passive in this particular text will not prove prob-
lematic in languages such as Japanese and Chinese, where the passive is associated
with adversity. It may well be that the adversity function will be compatible with the tone
of the text and the implications of cowardice and denial of responsibility.

CHAPTER 5
Textual equivalence: thematic and
information structures
Given and new … differ from theme and rheme … in that ‘given’ means ‘here is a point of
contact with what you know’ … whereas ‘theme’ means ‘here is the heading to what I am
saying’.
(Halliday 1970:354)
There is a need for analysis of thematic progression in different languages over a range of text
types. We know little about what patterns there are and how equivalence could be achieved
between them. One thing of which we can be confi dent, nevertheless, is that the patterns are
always employed in the service of an overriding rhetorical purpose. This is an aspect of texture
which is of crucial importance to the translator.
(Hatim and Mason 1990:220)
We ended the last chapter with a brief discussion of word order and of text. It was
suggested then that the linear arrangement of linguistic elements plays a role in
organizing messages at text level. In this chapter, we resume our discussion of word
order as a textual strategy (rather than a grammatical feature) and explore a number
of ways in which its role in controlling information fl ow can be explained.
To illustrate what is meant by ‘information fl ow’, consider some possible formu-
lations of sentence (2) in the following extract from Stephen Hawking’s A Brief
History of Time (1988:3).
(1) Ptolemy’s model provided a reasonably accurate system for predicting
the positions of heavenly bodies in the sky.
(2) a. But Ptolemy b. But an assumption c. But in order to
had to make an that Ptolemy had predict these
assumption that to make in order to positions correctly,
the moon predict these Ptolemy had to
followed a path positions correctly make an
that sometimes was that the moon assumption that the
brought it twice followed a path moon followed a
as close to the that sometimes path that

132 IN OTHER WORDS
earth as other brought it twice as sometimes brought
times, in order close to the earth it twice as close to
to predict these as at other times. the earth as at
positions
correctly.
other times.
(3) And that meant that the moon ought sometimes to appear twice as big as
at other times!
Sentences (2a–c) consist of the same elements, but the sequencing of elements is
different in each one. The progression of links between each of the middle formula-
tions and the preceding and following sentences can be visually represented as
follows:
a. the positions … an assumption … the moon … these positions … that … the moon
b. the positions … an assumption … these positions … the moon … that … the moon
c. the positions … these positions … an assumption … the moon … that … the moon
It should be clear from the above diagram that the sentence which forms the most
readily accessible link between (1) and (3) is (2c) (it is also the one that appears in
the actual text). The fl ow of information is smoother in (2c) because the progression
of links is less messy and therefore easier to follow than in (2a) and (2b). Another
factor which makes the extract easier to process if (2c) is selected is that sentences
(2c) and (3) both start with an element that has already been established before
presenting new information. The starting point of (2c), these positions, is already
known to the reader because it occurs at the end of sentence (1). Similarly, the
starting point of sentence (3), that, is an assumption already explained in the
previous sentence.
Linear arrangement, then, has a role to play in processing information and
organizing messages at text level. Of the numerous formulations available for
expressing a given message, a speaker or writer will normally opt for one that makes
the fl ow of information clearer in a given context. In order to appreciate the factors
that motivate a writer or speaker to make this kind of selection, one needs to think
of the clause as a message rather than as a string of grammatical and lexical
elements. Over and above its propositional organization in terms of elements such
as subject/object and agent/patient, a clause also has an interactional organization
which refl ects the addresser/addressee relationship. This interactional organization
generally motivates us to make choices that ensure a clear progression of links is
achieved and a coherent point of view is maintained throughout a text. But it also
allows us to exploit word order occasionally in order to generate special effects, such
as emphasis, by employing marked structures.

TEXTUAL EQUIVALENCE: THEMATIC AND INFORMATION STRUCTURES 133
Clause as a message can be analysed in terms of two types of structure:
(a) thematic structure (5.1.1) and (b) information structure (5.1.2). The Halli-
dayan approach to the analysis of the clause as a message treats thematic and infor-
mation structures as separate, though often overlapping features of discourse
organization. The two structures are seen to be essentially distinct from each other.
Linguists belonging to the Prague School, on the other hand, by and large confl ate the
two structures and combine them in the same description (see section 5.2 below). The
two approaches are often at odds with each other and can produce completely
different analyses of the same clause. However, translators with different linguistic
backgrounds should benefi t from a brief exposure to both points of view. Here, as
elsewhere, a translator would be well advised to use those explanations which are
compatible with the languages that are of interest to him or her and ignore the rest.
Both approaches are outlined below, starting with a general overview which
follows the Hallidayan or ‘separating’ approach. For a good overview of both posi-
tions, see Fries (1983), who refers to them as the ‘separating’ approach and the
‘combining’ approach.
5.1 A HALLIDAYAN OVERVIEW OF INFORMATION
FLOW
5.1.1 Thematic structure: theme and rheme
One way of explaining the interactional organization of sentences is to suggest that
a clause consists of two segments. The fi rst segment is called the theme. The
theme is what the clause is about. It has two functions: (a) it acts as a point of orien-
tation by connecting back to previous stretches of discourse and thereby main-
taining a coherent point of view, and (b) it acts as a point of departure by connecting
forward and contributing to the development of later stretches. In Ptolemy’s model
provided a reasonably accurate system for predicting the positions of heavenly
bodies in the sky, the theme is Ptolemy’s model. This is what the clause is about. At
clause level, a speaker announces the topic of his or her message by thematizing it,
that is, by putting it in initial position.
The second segment of a clause is called the rheme. The rheme is what the
speaker says about the theme. It is the goal of discourse. As such, it is the most
important element in the structure of the clause as a message because it represents
the very information that the speaker wants to convey to the hearer. It is the rheme
that fulfi ls the communicative purpose of the utterance. In the above example, the
rheme is: provided a reasonably accurate system for predicting the positions of
heavenly bodies in the sky, which is what the writer has to say about Ptolemy’s
model. This basically means that every clause has the structure of a message: it
says something (the rheme) about something (the theme).
Let us now look at a slightly more extended example of how a Hallidayan -style
thematic analysis of a text might proceed in English. The following short extract
selected for analysis is from Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time (1988:2):

134 IN OTHER WORDS
Aristotle thought that the earth was stationary and that the sun, the moon, the
planets, and the stars moved in circular orbits about the earth. He believed
this because he felt, for mystical reasons, that the earth was the center of the
universe, and that circular motion was the most perfect.
Suggested analysis:
T
1
Aristotle
thought that
t
2
the earth
R
1
r
2
was stationary (and that)
t
3
the sun, the moon, the planets, and the stars
r
3
moved in circular orbits about the earth.
T
1
He
believed this (because)
t
2
he
felt, for mystical reasons, (that)
R
1
t
3
the earth
r
3
was the center of the universe, (and that)
r
2
t
4
circular motion
r
4
was the most perfect.
A number of interesting points arise from the above analysis:
(a) Thematic analysis can be represented hierarchically. Since sentences often
consist of more than one clause, they will have several layers of thematic structure.
Each clause will have its own theme–rheme structure which may be subordinate to
a larger theme–rheme structure. The above visual representation of the hierarchical
nature of theme–rheme structures is meant to illustrate the point without having to
go through complex technical discussions.
(b) You will note that I have put some elements in parentheses, for example
because, to suggest that they do not quite fi t into the analysis. The reason is that,
strictly speaking, some elements are not part of the basic thematic structure of the
text because they are not part of the propositional meaning of the message. These
include special linking devices such as however, nevertheless, because and
moreover, which are called conjunctions (see Chapter 6, section 6.3). They also
include items which express the attitude of the speaker, such as unfortunately, in
my opinion, frankly and clearly (these are called disjuncts). Both conjunctions and
disjuncts usually come at the beginning of English clauses; it is natural for the
speaker to place in initial position an element which relates what he or she is about
to say to what has been said before (conjunction) or an element which expresses his
or her own judgement on what is being said (disjunct). In this sense, conjunctions
and disjuncts are inherently thematic (Halliday 1985). However, because conjunc-
tions and disjuncts are not part of the propositional content of the message, they are
{
{ {

TEXTUAL EQUIVALENCE: THEMATIC AND INFORMATION STRUCTURES 135
not considered thematic in the same way as the main clause elements subject,
predicator, object, complement and adjunct.1

There are ways of incorporating
conjunctions and disjuncts into thematic analysis, but this type of detailed analysis is
not necessary for our current purposes. For a fuller discussion of this subject, see
Halliday (1985:Chapter 3, ‘Clause as message’).
(c) Conjunctions and disjuncts aside, there tends to be a very high correlation
between theme/rheme and subject/predicate in the Hallidayan model (cf. the
Prague position, section 5.2). The correlation does not hold in the case of marked
themes as we shall see shortly (section 5.1.1.3), but, generally speaking, the
distinction between theme and rheme is more or less identical to the traditional
grammatical distinction between subject and predicate. In fact, Plato, who as far
back as the fourth century BC had divided the sentence into what we now know as
subject and predicate, used the terms ónoma and rhema (which originally meant
‘name’ and ‘saying’ respectively). However, the modern distinction between theme
and rheme differs from Plato’s original dichotomy in one important respect. The
theme–rheme distinction is text-based. Its real value does not lie in explaining the
structure of individual sentences but rather in shedding light on a number of important
areas which control information fl ow. These are discussed briefl y in sections 5.1.1.1–
5.1.1.3 below.
5.1.1.1 Thematic structure: grammaticality vs
acceptability
Unlike the subject–predicate distinction, the notions of theme and rheme can be
used to account for the acceptability (rather than grammaticality) of a given sequence
in a given context. Theme and rheme are not grammatical notions. They have little to
do with whether a given sequence is or is not grammatical.2 Grammatical sequences
are part of the abstract system of language. In context, grammaticality does not
necessarily ensure acceptability or coherence. For example, the following text is
well-formed grammatically, but is ill-formed in terms of its thematics:
Now comes the President here. It’s the window he’s stepping through to
wave to the crowd. On his victory his opponent congratulates him. ‘Gentlemen
and ladies. That you are confi dent in me honours me …’
(from Halliday 1978:134)
A grammatical sequence such as On his victory his opponent congratulates him can
be reordered in a number of different ways without affecting its propositional content.
The writer could have selected a sequence such as His opponent congratulates him
on his victory or He is congratulated on his victory by his opponent. The accepta-
bility, rather than grammaticality, of any of these sequences in a given context
depends on how it fi ts into its surrounding textual environment. Reasons for the
thematic ill-formedness of the above extract will become clear as we explore various

136 IN OTHER WORDS
aspects of thematic organization. At this stage, it is suffi cient to point out that it is
diffi cult to see a link between the themes of the above clauses, or even between a
rheme and a following theme, for instance. The result is that the text feels disjointed
and lacks orientation. The individual clauses are perfectly grammatical but, taken
together, they are not acceptable as a stretch of discourse.
The above text is fabricated for the purposes of illustration. Halliday argues that
one does not normally meet non-text of this sort in real life (1978). Those of us who
read a lot of translated texts of a particular type, for instance tourist brochures, know
otherwise. Unlike the above constructed text, the following is an authentic adver-
tisement for Mazda cars (most likely a translation of an Italian text) which appeared
in the Alitalia in fl ight magazine (February 1991, 20–21).
What inspired that rebellious young poet called Rimbaud? What drove him to
reach into the innermost part of his soul in search of the undiscovered? It
allowed him to take words that already existed and yet express himself in a
completely new way. Some creators are brave enough to realise their dreams
without compromise. It is men like this who created the MX-5 in 1989. By
ignoring the rules they are constantly reshaping the future. Even now they are
realising a new dream. They work for Mazda.
The Mazda text has the same feel of awkwardness and lack of orientation about it as
Halliday’s constructed example. To start with, none of the themes seem to link in
with a previous theme or rheme; each sentence seems to stand on its own in a sort
of vacuum. For instance, the theme of the third sentence, It, does not relate to either
of the previous themes or rhemes. The theme of the fourth sentence, Some
creators, relates to Rimbaud only indirectly on the basis that poets are some sort of
creators, but it does not link in with the theme or rheme of the previous sentence.
The reader initially gets the impression that the purpose of the text is to identify
Rimbaud’s source of inspiration. In the fourth sentence, the focus suddenly shifts to
talking about creators in general and how they realize their dreams.
Another source of distraction is that the initial what-questions (fi rst and second
sentences) are followed not, as one might expect, by an identifi cation of the thing
that inspired Rimbaud and drove him to reach into his soul, but by the pronoun It. It
suggests that the reader should know what inspired Rimbaud. But the reader has no
way of knowing because the relevant information has not been given by the writer.
The arrangement of given and new elements is discussed in detail under infor-
mation structure (section 5.1.2).
The Mazda text illustrates that, quite apart from any considerations of grammat-
icality, it is necessary to take account of thematic structure and to maintain a
coherent point of view in any act of communication.

TEXTUAL EQUIVALENCE: THEMATIC AND INFORMATION STRUCTURES 137
5.1.1.2 Thematic structure: text organization and
development
In addition to complementing the notion of grammaticality with notions of accept-
ability and naturalness, the theme–rheme distinction can also be useful in explaining
methods of organization and development in different types of text; see Hatim and
Mason (1990, Chapter 10) and Hatim (1997, Chapter 8) for extensive discussion of
this issue.
In this area, a great deal of emphasis has traditionally been placed on theme
rather than on rheme. By defi nition, theme represents the speaker’s or writer’s point
of departure in each clause, which suggests that its organizational role is more
important than that of rheme. The selection of an individual theme of a given clause
in a given text is not in itself particularly signifi cant. But the overall choice and
ordering of themes, particularly those of independent clauses, plays an important
part in organizing a text and in providing a point of orientation for a given stretch of
language. It is no surprise, for instance, that travel brochures, at least in English, are
characterized by a proliferation of place adjuncts in theme position. In the context of
travel, location provides a natural point of orientation around which the text as a
whole can be organized.
The following extract from Lonrho’s A Hero from Zero shows how a series of
homogeneous themes can provide a point of orientation and a method of devel-
opment for a given stretch of language. The extract comes right at the end of
the Foreword. Here, Tiny Rowland concludes his version of events leading up to
the Fayed brothers’ acquisition of the House of Fraser with a fi rst-hand account
of the situation in question against the background of his personal experience in
business. The high frequency of I as theme helps to maintain a sense of conti-
nuity and a coherent point of view.
I had nothing against his [Fayed’s] being a wealthy commission agent – I had
everything against his cheating his way into House of Fraser, helped by
Kleinwort Benson and Norman Tebbit.
It was bitter, but funny, to see that Professor Smith had doubled his own
salary before recommending the offer from Fayed, and added a pre-dated
bonus for good measure.
I saw how Brian Basham of Broad Street Associates and the barrister,
Royston Webb, helped venal journalists to turn a sow’s ear into a golden
purse, and how that golden purse was well received everywhere that it
opened.
I saw how the well-documented material containing the truth about Fayed
that we began to put before the DTI was received in embarrassed silence.
I saw how Leon Brittan, the incoming Secretary of State for Trade, was
prepared to say he could fi nd nothing wrong with the matter.
I took my fi rst job in the City in 1936, working for Kittel and Company at 5
Fenchurch Street. I’ve been a director of British public companies for thirty-
one years. It is the worst thing I’ve ever seen in business, that deceits triumph

138 IN OTHER WORDS
so well, and can even fi nd apologists when they are exposed. I am glad that
after two years inspectors were appointed, and that they have expended 18
months upon investigating the take-over of House of Fraser.
The above pattern can be reproduced in many, but not in all, languages. The Arabic
translation adopts a very different pattern of organization.
ًاليآو بالعمولة من األثرياء، ولكنى آنت أعارض تمام ً ولم يكن لدى أى اعتراض على آونه ا
هاوس أوف فريزر، بمساعدة آالينوورت بنسون و نورمان تيبيت . سيطرته بالخداع على

وآان من المؤسف، بل ومن المضحك، أن يتمكن البروفسور سميث من مضاعفة راتبه مرتين قبل
ًافلس موعد حصوله عليها . أن يتقدم بتوصيته لقبول عرض فايد، وأن يضيف الى ذلك مكافأة يتحدد

آيف أن براين باشام المسؤول فى برود ستريت اسوشييتس، والمحامى رويستن ويب قد ورأيت
هذه الخزانة آانت وآيف ذهبية، ساعدا الصحفيين المرتشين على تحويل شىء مبتذل الى خزانة
آلما فتحت لبقتسُت أحسن استقبال الذهبية .

والصدق عن فايد، والتى بدأنا ورأيت آيف أن المواد الحسنة التوثيق التى تشتمل على الحقيقة
لبقتسُت بصمت مشوب بالحرج . نعرضها على وزارة التجارة والصناعة، آيف أنها بدأت

ًادعتسم للقول بأنه اليجد أى خطأ فى آان ورأيت آيف أن ليون بريتن وزير التجارة الجديد
. اإلجرائات

آيتل ، وذل1936لقد شغلت أول وظيفة لى فى حى السيتى بلندن سنة ك عندما التحقت بمؤسسة
لشرآات بريطانية عامة على مدى إحدى . فينتشرش ستريت5وشرآـاه فى ًاريدم ومنذ ذاك اصبحت
هذا الفوز . وثالثين سنة ومن أسوأ ما عرفته فى المعامالت المالية والتجارية أن يفوز اإلحتيال
لجنة من المفتشين بعد انقضاء ويسعدنى أن تعين . الكبير، وأن يجد من يبرره حتى بعد فضحه
هذه اللجنة هاوس أوف فريزر18سنتين، وأن تقضى ًارهش للتحقيق فى واقعة امتالك مؤسسة .
The thematic structure of the Arabic translation of this extract deviates from the
original for a number of reasons. First, Arabic rarely uses independent pronouns
because Arabic verbs are infl ected for person, number and gender. This means that
any combination of pronoun plus verb, such as I took or I saw, is rendered by an
infl ected verb as theme in Arabic. It is important to bear in mind that while infl ected
verbs in languages such as Arabic, Spanish and Portuguese (to name but a few) do
carry the same information as an English pronoun-plus-verb combination, the effect
of placing them in theme position is not the same. The impact of a series of Is in
theme position is not the same as the impact of a series of verbs infl ected for fi rst
person, such as ‘saw-I’, ‘took-I’ and so on, where it is diffi cult to discern a theme
line as clearly as in the pronoun-plus-verb combination. Second, Arabic negative
particles come in front of the verb, so that an expression such as I had nothing
against becomes literally ‘not was for me any objection’, thus pushing the ‘me’
further away from thematic position. Third, Arabic does not have an equivalent of the
present perfect: I’ve been a director is rendered into Arabic as ‘since then become-I’,

TEXTUAL EQUIVALENCE: THEMATIC AND INFORMATION STRUCTURES 139
thus putting a temporal adjunct in theme position and pushing the infl ected verb
further towards the rheme. Here is a summary of the elements occurring in initial
position in the English and Arabic versions of the extract. A literal translation is given
of the Arabic themes to highlight the partial loss of orientation through discontinuity
of theme.
English: I, I, It, I, I, I, I, I, It, I.
Arabic: not-was, but-I, was-it, saw-I, saw-I, saw-I, occupied-I, since
then, among the worst saw-I, pleases-me.
Having said that there is a partial loss of orientation in the Arabic version, it must be
emphasized that it does display a reasonable level of thematic continuity in its own
right. What gives the Arabic version its sense of continuity is not, as in the case of
English, the use of a series of identical themes (I, I, I, . . .) but rather the frequent
thematization of processes as expressed in verbs, mainly ‘saw’ but also ‘occupied’
and ‘pleases’.
Attempting to analyse verb-initial languages such as Arabic in terms of Halli-
day’s model highlights the fact that, for some languages, this type of analysis may
not be as workable as it is in English. But whatever its status in other languages,
exploring the thematic analysis of English is useful in illuminating certain areas of
discourse organization. In so far as it applies to Arabic, for instance, it suggests that
an ego-centred pattern which is perfectly feasible and natural in English has to be
replaced in most contexts by a process-centred pattern which is far more typical of
Arabic.
It seems to me that at this level of textual analysis translators generally face
three main possibilities:
(a) You may fi nd that you can preserve the thematic patterning of the original
without distorting the target text. If the elements placed in theme position in the
source text can easily and naturally be placed in theme position in the target text, the
method of development of the two texts will be the same or very similar. The French
translation of the above extract from A Hero from Zero manages to maintain ‘I’ as
theme in all instances as the original and even adds one of its own: instead of It was
bitter, but funny, the French literally goes ‘I felt bitterness, but also amusement’.
Je n’avais rien contre le fait qu’il fût un riche agent commissionné, mais je
m’élevais fermement contre le fait qu’il ait obtenu House of Fraser par escro-
querie, aidé par Kleinwort Benson et Norman Tebbit.
Je ressentis de l’amertume, mais aussi de l’amusement, en voyant que le
professeur Smith avait doublé son propre salaire avant de recommander
l’offre de Fayed, et qu’il avait même ajouté un bonus antidaté pour faire
bonne mesure.
Je vis comment Brian Basham de Broad Street Associates et l’avocat,
Royston Webb, aidèrent des journalistes mercenaires à transformer un tas de

140 IN OTHER WORDS
cailloux en un sac d’or, et comment ce sac d’or fut bien accueilli partout où il
était ouvert.
Je vis comment les documents constitués avec sérieux, que nous commen-
çions à présenter au ministère du Commerce et de l’Industrie et qui révélaient
la vérité sur Fayed, étaient accueillis par un silence gêné.
Je vis comment Leon Brittan, le nouveau ministre du Commerce et de l’In-
dustrie, était prêt à déclarer qu’il ne trouvait rien à redire sur cette affaire.
J’ai commencé à travailler dans la City en 1936, chez Kittel and Company
au numéro 5 de Fenchurch Street. Je suis administrateur de sociétés
anonymes depuis trente et un ans. La pire chose que j’ai constatée dans les
affaires, c’est la supercherie triomphant si facilement, et trouvant, même
lorsqu’elle est démasquée, des apologistes. Je suis heureux qu’au bout de
deux ans des inspecteurs aient été nommés, et qu’ils aient passé dix-huit
mois à enquêter sur l’acquisition de House of Fraser.
Here is a summary of the elements placed in theme position in the French version:

Je, Je, Je, Je, Je, Je, J’ai, Je, La pire chose, Je.
The method of development in both extracts is therefore the same, and the French
translation manages to retain the egotism of the original.
(b) You may fi nd that you cannot preserve the thematic patterning of the original
without distorting the target text. There are many factors which can restrict the
choice and ordering of themes in translation. These factors may be grammatical;
for instance it is ungrammatical to put verbs in theme position in English,3 though
not in Arabic or Spanish. On the other hand, the restriction on placing inde-
pendent pronouns in theme position in Arabic is not, strictly speaking, gram-
matical. An independent pronoun may occasionally be placed in theme position
for emphasis, but a series of independent pronouns in theme position would be
highly unnatural.
If the thematic patterning of the original cannot be reproduced naturally in the
target language, then you will have to abandon it. If you do, you must ensure that
your target version has its own method of development and maintains a sense of
continuity in its own right.
(c) You may fi nd that Halliday’s model of thematic analysis does not apply to your
language at all or does not apply to some of its sentence patterns. If this is the case,
you may fi nd the Prague model discussed in section 5.2 more helpful.
Whatever the diffi culties involved in applying Halliday’s model of thematic
analysis to a given language, and irrespective of whether it is possible to reproduce
the thematic patterning of the source text on a given occasion, one thing is certain:
translators must not underestimate the cumulative effect of thematic choices on the
way we interpret text. As Fries (1983:135) points out:

TEXTUAL EQUIVALENCE: THEMATIC AND INFORMATION STRUCTURES 141
if the themes of most of the sentences of a paragraph refer to one semantic
fi eld (say location, parts of some object, wisdom vs chance, etc.) then that
semantic fi eld will be perceived as the method of development of the para-
graph. If no common semantic element runs through the themes of the
sentences of a paragraph, then no simple method of development will be
perceived.
And this is why you have to ensure that whatever elements you put in initial-clause
position in your target text or in a given part of your target text add up to something
that can be understood as a method of development and that can provide a point of
orientation for that part of the text.
5.1.1.3 Thematic structure: marked vs unmarked
sequences
A further area in which the notions of theme and rheme have proved very useful
relates to marked and unmarked structures. This particular aspect of thematic
organization is of special relevance in translation because understanding it can help
to heighten our awareness of meaningful choices made by speakers and writers in
the course of communication.
Thematic choice involves selecting a clause element as theme. The main clause
elements are subject, predicator, object, complement and adjunct.4 In the
Hallidayan model, thematic choice is expressed by placing one of these elements in
initial position in the clause. Thematic choice is always meaningful because it indi-
cates the speaker’s/writer’s point of departure. But some choices are more mean-
ingful than others, because they are more marked than others.
Meaning, choice and markedness are interrelated concepts. A linguistic
element carries meaning to the extent that it is selected. Meaning is closely asso-
ciated with choice, so that the more obligatory an element, the less marked it will
be and the weaker will be its meaning. The fact that adjectives have to be placed
in front of nouns in English, for instance, means that their occurrence in this
position has little or no signifi cance because it is not the result of choice. On the
other hand, putting a time or place adverbial, such as today or on the shelf, at the
beginning of the clause carries more meaning because it is the result of choice:
there are other positions in which it can occur. This is one aspect of the rela-
tionship between meaning, markedness and choice. A second aspect has to do
with the degree of expectedness or unexpectedness of a choice. The less expected
a choice, the more marked it is and the more meaning it carries; the more
expected, the less marked it is and the less signifi cance it will have. For example,
it is possible but uncommon to place a complement in initial position in an English
clause (as in Beautiful were her eyes, rather than Her eyes were beautiful). A
complement is therefore highly marked in this position and indicates a more
conscious effort on the part of the speaker or writer to highlight this particular
element as his or her point of departure. It carries more textual meaning than an
adverbial occurring in the same position. The more marked a choice the greater

142 IN OTHER WORDS
the need for it to be motivated. Conversely, unmarked options are those which are
normally selected unless the context motivates the selection of another option
from the same system.
It follows from the above discussion that placing a certain element in theme
position does not necessarily constitute a marked thematic choice. The degree
of markedness involved will depend on the frequency with which the element in
question generally occurs in theme position and the extent to which it is normally
mobile within the clause. A given type of clause will therefore have one unmarked
thematic structure, variations of which will produce different types of marked
theme. In English, it has been shown that an unmarked theme is one that signals
the mood of the clause: in declarative clauses the unmarked theme is the
subject (Jane said nothing for a moment); in interrogative clauses it is the
wh-word (What did Jane say?), or the auxiliary in the case of polar questions
(Did Jane say anything?); in imperative clauses it is the verb (Say something).
These unmarked choices are a natural extension of the function of theme, which
is to provide a point of departure and orientation. Speakers normally signal their
point of departure by indicating whether they are making a statement, asking a
question or giving an order. Thus, in the case of an imperative clause, for
instance, the verb naturally occupies thematic position because that is what the
message is about: getting the addressee to do something. Going back to the
question of markedness, we can say that subject as theme in a declarative
clause is not marked at all because this is the position it normally occupies in
English declarative clauses. In other words, the subject is never selected as
theme in an English declarative clause, it occupies that position by default.5 By
contrast, a predicator hardly ever occurs in theme position in English declarative
clauses, and so, when it does, it is highly marked. The same cannot be said
about languages in which the predicator frequently comes at the beginning of
the clause and therefore represents an unmarked – or at least less marked –
thematic choice.
So far so good, but what is the function of marked theme? Is it, as one might
expect, a question of rejecting the default option (such as thematizing the subject
in English declarative clauses) in favour of an element which provides a smoother
link with the preceding discourse? This may partly explain why a speaker or writer
opts for a marked theme in a given context. However, there are always unmarked
options in every language which provide ways of changing the position of
elements in a clause to fi t in with the surrounding context. The passive is one
such option in English (cf. John gave me this book and This book was given to
me by John, which are both unmarked). This suggests that a marked theme has
an additional or different function. A marked theme is selected specifi cally to
foreground a particular element as the topic of the clause or its point of departure.
This is often explained in terms of making the element in question more prom-
inent or emphasizing it, an explanation which some may fi nd confusing. I have
already suggested (p. 133) that rheme, which comes in fi nal position in the
clause, is more important than theme, which comes in initial position. We might

TEXTUAL EQUIVALENCE: THEMATIC AND INFORMATION STRUCTURES 143
then expect that fi nal rather than initial position in the clause is where prominence
can be achieved. How can this statement be reconciled with the suggestion that
in order to make an element prominent a speaker places it in theme position? The
answer may lie in making a distinction between local prominence and overall
discourse prominence (John Sinclair, personal communication). In marked
thematic structures, theme position is associated with local prominence at the
level of the clause. Rheme position, on the other hand, is prominent on an overall
discourse level. In other words, placing an element in theme position gives that
element local, temporary prominence within the clause. Putting an element in
rheme position means that it is part of what the speaker has to say, and that is
the very core of any message. Kirkwood, who adopts the Prague School rather
than the Hallidayan defi nition of theme and rheme, suggests that placing an
element in initial position will give it a certain prominence but that it will still ‘carry
less weight than the actual rheme’ (1979:73).
It may be helpful at this point to illustrate the function of marked theme by
discussing some examples of the way it works in one language, English. Hallidayan
linguists identify three main types of marked theme in English: fronted theme,
predicated theme and identifying theme. These are explained below with examples
from translated texts where applicable.
(A) FRONTED THEME
Fronting involves ‘the achievement of marked theme by moving into initial position
an item which is otherwise unusual there’ (Greenbaum and Quirk 1990:407).
Taking an unmarked structure such as The book received a great deal of publicity in
China as a starting point, we can suggest a number of possible thematic structures
in English, starting with the least marked and ending with the most marked. Fronted
thematic elements are underlined.
Fronting of time or place adjunct
In China the book received a great deal of publicity.
This is a marked structure, but it is not highly marked because adverbials are fairly
mobile elements in English. As I suggested earlier, thematizing place adjuncts is very
common in certain types of text in English, such as travel brochures, where locative
themes offer a natural method of text development. Enkvist (1987) found that the
same is true of guidebooks. Thematizing temporal adjuncts is similarly common in
any type of narrative text, that is, any text which recounts a series of events. In the
following example from the Foreword to A Hero from Zero, Tiny Rowland presents a
summary of the events leading up to the Fayed brothers’ acquisition of the House of
Fraser. Thematized temporal adjuncts are highlighted in bold.
On 4th March 1985, the Fayed brothers made an offer of four pounds a
share for House of Fraser. We applied twice more to the DTI for release.

144 IN OTHER WORDS
We immediately notifi ed the Department of Trade that Mohamed Fayed’s
representations were incorrect, and gave what information we had at the
time, which was suffi cient to alarm, or at least give pause for basic
investigations.
On 11th March the merchant bank Kleinwort Benson announced on
behalf of its brand new client, Fayed, that they had acceptances from House
of Fraser shareholders for more than fi fty per cent of the issued share capital.
Three hours later a junior offi cial of the DTI sent a note, uselessly
releasing Lonrho from the undertakings not to bid.
In ten days, the unknown Fayeds gained permission to own House of
Fraser, and throughout the ten days they put continuous lies before the
public to justify the Government permissions they had got with such ease.
Thematizing place and time adjuncts is less marked in some languages, such as
Spanish and Portuguese, than in English. In German, a structure such as Hier
steigen wir aus (literally: ‘Here we get out’) is totally unmarked (Kirkwood 1979).
Similar choices in other languages may, on the other hand, be even more marked
than in English. Wilkinson (1990) suggests that temporal adjuncts are rarely placed
in theme position in Dutch. A temporal adjunct therefore represents a more marked
thematic choice in Dutch than in English.
The series of marked themes in the above extract from A Hero from Zero basi-
cally foreground temporal sequence as the writer’s point of departure. They can be
reproduced with similar effect in French and Arabic. The French and Arabic trans-
lators of the above extract are therefore able to follow the same method of thematic
development by placing the temporal adjuncts in theme position. This document has
not been translated into Dutch, but I imagine that, had it been, extracts such as the
one quoted above would have presented the Dutch translator with a problem –
bearing in mind that the above is only a short extract and that a similar pattern of
thematic development runs throughout the Foreword. On the one hand, placing all
the above temporal adjuncts in theme position would be highly marked in Dutch; on
the other hand, changing the thematic structure of the original may disrupt the
natural development of the text – unless the translator fi nds a thematic element
other than time which can provide a consistent point of orientation.
Fronting of object or complement
Object: A great deal of publicity the book received in China.
Complement: Well publicized the book was.
The fronting of objects and complements is much more marked than the fronting of
adjuncts in English because objects and complements are fairly restricted in position.
Again, the same is not true of other languages. Fronting an object is less marked in
Chinese than in English. In German, it is totally unmarked if accompanied by a
defi nite determiner (Kirkwood 1979).

TEXTUAL EQUIVALENCE: THEMATIC AND INFORMATION STRUCTURES 145
Note that, unlike fronting, using the passive voice allows the speaker to select
as theme what would have been the object of an active clause without making it
marked. Fronting the object, on the other hand, foregrounds it and gives it local
prominence (cf. A great deal of publicity was received in China and A great deal of
publicity the book received in China).
You are unlikely to fi nd a series of fronted objects or complements similar to the
series of fronted temporal adjuncts quoted above. This is because, unlike adjuncts,
objects and complements are not usually fronted to provide a point of orientation or
method of development for a stretch of language. The effect of thematizing an
object or complement in English is to provide contrast and to emphasize the speaker’s
attitude to the message.6 It foregrounds the expressive meaning of the utterance.
This can be seen in the following examples. The fi rst, from John Le Carré’s The
Russia House (1989:19), illustrates a fronted nominal object:
But Landau’s clients were young and rich and did not believe in death. ‘Niki
boy,’ said Bernard, walking round behind him and putting a hand on his
shoulder, which Landau didn’t like, ‘in the world today, we’ve got to show the
fl ag. We’re patriots, see, Niki? Like you. That’s why we’re an offshore
company. With the glasnost today, the Soviet Union, it’s the Mount Everest
of the recording business. And you’re going to put us on the top, Niki.
Because if you’re not, we’ll fi nd somebody who will. Somebody younger,
Niki, right? Somebody with the drive and the class.’
The drive Landau had still. But the class, as he himself was the fi rst to tell
you, the class, forget it.
It is also possible to front a that-clause as object, as in the following example from
Le Carré’s Our Game (1995:150):
But after a time my revulsion gave way to a furtive curiosity and the house
attracted me despite myself. I would leave the tube a stop early and scurry
across the Heath just to peer into its lighted windows. How do they live?
What do they talk about, apart from me? Who was I when I lived there? That
Diana had left the Offi ce I knew only too well, for she had written Merriman
one of her letters.
The next two examples illustrate a fronted complement. The fi rst comes from Le
Carré’s The Little Drummer Girl (1983:19):
In my next life I shall be a Jew or a Spaniard or an Eskimo or just a fully
committed anarchist like everybody else, Alexis decided. But a German I shall
never be – you do it once as a penance and that’s it.
The following example comes from Le Carré’s Our Game (1995:218):

146 IN OTHER WORDS
Crammed against the stone wall stood the old school trunk I used as a fi ling
box for my CC archive.
Fronting of predicator
They promised to publicize the book in China, and publicize it they did.
This is the most marked of all thematic choices in English. In addition to fronting the
predicator, this choice also involves re-arranging other clause elements and adjusting
the form of the verbal group. Authentic examples are hard to fi nd because fronted
predicators are rather uncommon in English. This one comes from Le Carré’s Our
Game (1995:30):
… He licked a fi nger and gaily fl ipped a page. ‘Then all of a sudden you turn
round and cut off the Doctor without a shilling. Well, well. No more incomings,
no more outgoings, for three whole weeks. What you might term a radio
silence. Slammed the door in his face, you did, Mr Cranmer, sir, and me and
Oliver here were wondering why you did that to him. …
In languages such as Arabic, verbs frequently occur in thematic position, and the
fronting of a predicator is therefore not a marked thematic choice. In translating from
a language such as Arabic to a language such as English, the unmarked predicator
+ subject structure would normally be translated by an equally unmarked structure
such as subject + predicator, rather than by an identical but highly marked structure
which places the predicator in initial position. Going in the other direction, say from
English into Arabic, a translator should try to fi nd some way of conveying the
emphasis attached to a fronted predicator. I cannot comment on the devices available
in other languages, but in Arabic, for instance, the particle qad may be used with the
past tense of the verb to convey emphasis. A lexical item such as ‘in fact’ may also
be used to convey even stronger emphasis. The effect would be similar to some-
thing like and they did in fact publicize it in English, except that the verb in Arabic
would be in theme position (literally: qad publicize-they-it in fact).
(B) PREDICATED THEME
Predicating a theme involves using an it-structure (also called a cleft structure) to
place an element near the beginning of the clause, as in It was the book that
received a great deal of publicity in China, It was a great deal of publicity that the
book received in China or It was in China that the book received a great deal of
publicity. Apart from conjunctions and disjuncts which we have decided not to take
into account for our current purposes, this is the only instance in which the theme of
the clause is not the element that occurs in initial position. The theme of an
it-structure is not it but rather the element which occurs after the verb to be. It simply
acts as an empty subject which allows a certain element such as the book or in

TEXTUAL EQUIVALENCE: THEMATIC AND INFORMATION STRUCTURES 147
China to be placed near the beginning of the clause and to be interpreted as its
theme, that is, what the message is about.
Predicating an element foregrounds it by placing it in theme position. One of the
options it allows a speaker is to select the element acting as subject as a marked
thematic choice, an option not normally available since the subject is the unmarked
theme of a declarative clause in English.
Like all marked themes, predicated themes often imply contrast. It was in China
that the book received a great deal of publicity would generally suggest that in
China contrasts with other places where the book did not receive a great deal of
publicity. The predicated theme in the following example, from Thomas Bernhard’s
Wittgenstein’s Nephew (translated into English by Ewald Osers),7 fulfi ls a similar
function by contrasting the years during which Wittgenstein didn’t drink with the rest
of his life:
At the Obenaus, a small restaurant on Weihburggasse, he would drink several
litres of white wine during an evening. He suffered for that. I believe it was
fi ve or six years before his death that he gave up drinking. Otherwise he
would probably have died three or four years earlier, which, at least I think so,
would have been a terrible pity.
The following example comes from an article entitled ‘Rock that burns’ (New Inter-
nationalist NI 431, April 2010, p. 16). The article discusses the practices of oil
companies that extract crude oil from tar sands by methods that involve deforesting
and subjecting the land to extreme temperatures. The reference in this specifi c
extract is to the eastern desert of Jordan:
Many Bedouin continue to live in the badia; the name itself means ‘the place
the Bedouin came from’. Small villages slide past, with tents, concrete block
houses and large fl ocks of sheep and goats. Most Bedouin are ‘settled’ into
these villages, but a signifi cant number continue to live as nomads.
It is here that Shell plans to introduce its tar sands extraction practices –
well known from the images of torn up Alberta.
The predicated theme in this case effects spatial rather than temporal contrast: it
foregrounds here, as opposed to other places. The implication is that the choice of
location for such environmentally destructive practices is particularly relevant –
specifi cally shocking from the writer’s perspective.
Another important function of predicated theme is to signal information
structure by presenting the element following It + BE in the main clause as the new
or important item to which the hearer’s or reader’s attention is drawn. For a detailed
discussion of information structure, see section 5.1.2. below.

148 IN OTHER WORDS
(C) IDENTIFYING THEME
Identifying themes are very similar to predicated themes. Instead of using It (a cleft
structure), an identifying theme places an element in theme position by turning it into
a nominalization using a wh-structure (called a pseudo-cleft structure), as in
What the book received in China was a great deal of publicity, or What was
received by the book in China was a great deal of publicity. The following example
comes from the March 2010 issue of Cosmopolitan (p. 125); Cosmopolitan is a
woman’s magazine that is regularly translated from English into a variety of
languages, including Spanish, Hungarian, Russian and Thai:
Whether you’re a single mother or not, being a parent can be one of the most
challenging, but rewarding, experiences of your life. What you need to do
before you go ahead with fi nding a sperm donor is ensure that you’re
completely clear about what you’re getting yourself into.
A second example comes from an article entitled ‘I’ll die doing this’ which appeared
in New Internationalist (NI 431, April 2010, p. 12), about the effect of tar sands
pollution on indigenous people:
Little is yet known about how the different toxic metals and petrochemicals
interact, or how their effects could be magnifi ed given that the fl ow of contam-
inants into the rivershed during spring melt coincides with when fi sh fry are
growing.
What Fort Chipewyan needs, argues George, is a comprehensive, baseline
health study that would do a thorough analysis of the entire community, and
then track changes in the future based on that.
Both predicated and identifying themes are often associated with implicit contrast.
They tend to imply that the item in theme position (in the case of predicated themes)
or the item in rheme position (in the case of identifying themes) is chosen from a set
of possible items as the one worthy of the hearer’s or reader’s attention: It was the
book (rather than something else) which received a great deal of publicity in China;
What the book received in China was a great deal of publicity (rather than bad
reviews, for instance). In the example from Cosmopolitan above, the implication is
that being clear about the consequences of becoming a parent is more important
than other things (such as fi nding the sperm donor or the necessary cash to cover
the relevant costs). In the example from New Internationalist, the implication is that
the baseline health study is a priority: everything else is less important and less
pressing than ensuring that this study is undertaken. Items in theme position are
thus prominent in both structures – predicated and identifying. The difference is that
in predicated themes, the thematic element is presented as new information; in
identifying themes, the thematic element is presented as known information (see
section 5.1.2 below for a discussion of known vs new information).

TEXTUAL EQUIVALENCE: THEMATIC AND INFORMATION STRUCTURES 149
Predicated and identifying themes are marked but fairly common in English
because they offer a thematization strategy that overcomes restrictions on word
order. They also offer a way of signalling known vs new information independently of
the use of intonation. Stress offers a reliable signal of information status in spoken
English (see 5.1.2 below) but it is not available as a signalling device in written
English. For this reason, predicated and identifying themes tend to be more common
in written than in spoken English. By contrast, the two structures are of equal
frequency in spoken and written Chinese because stress is not available as a device
for signalling information structure in spoken Chinese (Tsao 1983).
Predicated and identifying themes must be handled carefully in translation
because they are far more marked in languages with relatively free word order, such
as German, than they are in English. Transferring all instances of predicated and
identifying themes into a German translation would make it sound very un-German.
An experienced German translator will normally replace all or most predicated and
identifying themes with less marked German structures. An example of this can be
found in the Morgan Matroc ceramics company brochure.
English original (Morgan Matroc):
And yet there are some customers who in their search for a suitable
material prefer to study complex tables of technical data. It is for such
customers that we have listed the properties of Matroc’s more widely
used materials.
German translation:
… Für solche Kunden haben wir die Eigenschaften der gängigsten
Matroc Werkstoffe aufgelistet.
Back-translation:
… For such customers have we the properties of the most popular
Matroc materials listed.
Another example comes from an interview with the chairman of the Japanese Sony
organization, Akio Morita, published in an edition of Playboy magazine and trans-
lated into Brazilian Portuguese.8 Predicated themes are more marked in Brazilian
Portuguese than they are in English:
English extract from the Playboy text:
It was about thirty years ago that a young Japanese businessman
visited the West and was deeply humiliated to learn that ‘Made in
Japan’ was an international synonym for shoddiness – a phrase that
produced jokes and laughter. Today, the laughter is heard mainly on

150 IN OTHER WORDS
the way to the bank as Akio Morita, 61, the cofounder and the
chairman of the Sony Corporation, continues to make his fi ve-billion
dollar corporation a fount of ever newer and more dazzling
inventions.
It was Sony that gave the world mass-produced transistor radios,
Trinitron television sets, Betamax video recorders and Walkman
portable cassette players.
Portuguese translation:
Há trinta anos, um jovem homem de negócias japonês. exfabricante
– malsucedido – de panelas de cozinhar arroz, visitou o Ocidente, e
fi cou profundamente humilhado ao perceber que a expressão ‘Made
in Japan’ era um sinônimo internacional para mal-acabado. Era uma
expressão que produzia piadas e risos. Hoje, os risos são ouvidos
apenas quando se contabilizam os lucros de Akio Morita, 61 anos,
co-fundador e presidente da Sony Corporation, que continua a usar a
sua empresa de 5 bilhôes de dólares (algo como um quarto das expor-
taçôes brasileiras em 81) como fonte de novas e fantásticas invençôes.
Foi a Sony que deu ao mundo rádios transistorizados produzidos
em massa, os inovadores aparelhos de televisão Triniton, os vídeo-
gravadores Betamax e os toca-fi tas portáteis Walkman.
Back-translation:
Thirty years ago, a young man of Japanese business …
Was Sony that gave to the world transistor radios …
In the Portuguese translation, the fi rst cleft structure is rendered by an unmarked
fronting of a time adjunct. The second cleft structure is rendered by a marked (but
not highly marked) structure in which the verb is fronted.
Here is a further example, this time of identifying theme, from an article from the
British newspaper the Independent (8 November 1988), attached to A Hero from
Zero:
English extract from the Independent article:
The report had meanwhile been referred to the Serious Fraud Offi ce.
A reference to that offi ce is made only where an inquiry concludes
that an offence may have been committed. Lonrho has been informed
that the report made no criticism of its conduct.
What Mr Rowland wants is the early publication of this report.

TEXTUAL EQUIVALENCE: THEMATIC AND INFORMATION STRUCTURES 151
Arabic translation:
.
.
.

.
And seeks Mr Rowland now to publish this report as soon as
possible.
The Arabic predicator + subject structure is not marked at all, and it therefore fails to
convey the emphasis signalled by the English identifying structure. It can be argued
that ‘normalizing’ the marked English structure is not a good strategy in this instance
and that a slightly different but similarly marked Arabic structure (using a particle
such as inna) would have preserved the prominence given by the writer to the fi rst
part of the statement (Mr Rowland wants) and still sounded natural in Arabic:
. . .
Inna Mr Rowland seeks now …
Or
. . .
Inna what seeks Mr Rowland now is …
Generally speaking, languages with relatively free word order like German can
thematize clause elements simply by fronting them. They therefore rarely use
intricate structures that languages with relatively fi xed word order resort to in order to
thematize elements. Apart from being aware of the level of markedness of a given
structure in the source and target languages, a translator should also learn to make
use of the thematization devices available in each language. For instance, Wilkinson
(1990:81) suggests that ‘information which has been highlighted by being fronted
in the Dutch clause lends itself to a translation in English using an IT cleft’, but notes
that trainee translators working from Dutch into English fail to make use of predi-
cated and identifying themes in their English translations.
In addition to fronted, predicated and identifying themes, other types of
marked theme exist in English, but they tend to be much more restricted and more
likely to be used in informal language. These are preposed theme and post-
posed theme (Young 1980). Both involve using a gloss tag. In preposed theme,
the gloss tag occurs at the beginning of the clause, in postposed theme, it occurs

152 IN OTHER WORDS
at the end of the clause. The following examples of both types are from Young
(1980:145):
Preposed theme: The fi tter, he sent these documents to the offi ce.
These documents, the fi tter sent them to the offi ce.
Postposed theme: He sent these documents to the offi ce, the fi tter.
He sent these documents to the offi ce, the fi tter did.
The fi tter sent them to the offi ce, these documents.
An authentic example of a preposed theme can be found in the extract from Le
Carré’s The Russia House quoted on page 145 above:
With the glasnost today, the Soviet Union, it’s the Mount Everest of the
recording business.
The following two examples of postposed theme come from an interview with Sade,
the well-known singer, published in The Sunday Times Magazine on 31 January
2010 (pp. 14, 17):
It can be very hostile, England.
He was a very strange man, my father, very boyish.
5.1.1.4 A brief assessment of the Hallidayan position
on theme
Any approach to describing information fl ow in natural language will generally
recognize that clauses are organized in terms of theme and rheme. But, as already
noted, different linguists offer different accounts of the way in which theme and
rheme are realized in discourse. Each account is naturally biased towards the native
language of the linguist in question as well as other languages with which he or she
may be familiar. One of the main differences between the Hallidayan and other
approaches is that Halliday has always insisted that, at least in English, the theme–
rheme distinction is realized by the sequential ordering of clause elements. Theme is
the element placed by the speaker in fi rst position in the clause; rheme is whatever
comes after the theme. A rheme–theme sequence therefore has no place in Halli-
day’s system.9 This position contrasts sharply with that taken by Prague linguists,
such as Firbas, who reject sentence position as the only criterion for identifying
theme and rheme (see section 5.2 below).
The attraction of the Hallidayan view is that, unlike the rather complex expla-
nations of the Prague School, it is very simple to follow and apply. To some extent,
it is also intuitively satisfying to suggest that what one is talking about always
comes before what one has to say about it. Its disadvantages, on the other hand,
include (a) its partial circularity:10 theme is whatever comes in initial position and
whatever comes in initial position is theme; and (b) its failure to relate descriptions
of SVO languages,11

particularly those with relatively fi xed word order such as

TEXTUAL EQUIVALENCE: THEMATIC AND INFORMATION STRUCTURES 153
English, to descriptions of languages with relatively free word order in which, for
instance, the verb often occurs in initial position. If theme is whatever occurs in
initial position we would have to acknowledge that some languages prefer to
thematize participants (expressed as subjects in SVO and SOV languages) on a
regular basis while other languages prefer to thematize processes (expressed as
verbs in VSO languages). But Halliday does not attempt to address these prefer-
ences, nor does he discuss language features which restrict a speaker’s choice of
thematic elements. For instance, in Harway (a Papuan language) where the verb
is always fi nal, a speaker or writer does not have the option of thematizing
processes.12
It is possible to see Halliday’s view of theme – as whatever comes in initial
position in the clause – as a refl ection of (a) the nature of English as a language with
relatively fi xed word order,13 and (b) his study of Chinese, this being a language with
a special category of topic which always occurs at the beginning of the clause.
It may be useful at this point to explore the possible link between Halliday’s
notion of theme and the category of topic in Chinese and other topic-prominent
languages. Apart from providing some insight into Halliday’s view of the way in
which theme is realized in discourse, the discussion of topic is also of particular
interest here because it highlights an area of considerable potential confusion for
translators interested in the thematic analysis of topic-prominent languages.
THEME AND CHINESE-STYLE TOPIC
Chinese has been identifi ed by Li (1976) as a topic-prominent language. Unlike
subject-prominent languages such as English, French and German, topic-
prominent languages appear to have double subjects. Li gives the following examples
from a variety of topic-prominent languages. The topic of each sentence is
underlined:
Animals, I advocate a conservation policy. (Mandarin)
This fi eld, the rice is very good. (Lahu)
The present time, there are many schools. (Korean)
Fish, red snapper is delicious. (Japanese)
Several questions need to be raised here to explore the relationship between theme
and topic, if any exists. For instance, how do topics relate to themes? Do they
behave in the same way syntactically, or, to put it more accurately, do topics, like
themes, have no syntax? Does topic mean the same thing as theme, that is, what
the message is about? Can topics be translated into languages which are not
topic-prominent?
The topic of a clause in topic-prominent languages always occurs in initial
position (Li 1976). In this respect, it coincides with theme in Halliday’s model. If
initial position is reserved for theme and if topic always occurs in initial position, then
theme and topic are presumably the same thing.

154 IN OTHER WORDS
In some languages such as Lisu, Japanese and Korean, topics are further
marked by the addition of a morpheme: for example, the suffi x -nya is always added
to the topic of a sentence in Lisu. Japanese has two suffi xes, -wa and -ga, the func-
tions of which are explained in different ways by different linguists but which are said
to mark, among other things, topic and non-topic respectively. Another syntactic
feature of topic is that it controls anaphoric reference14 so that (a) once an element
is announced as topic, this element may be omitted altogether in subsequent
clauses, hence the proliferation of subjectless clauses in languages such as Chinese
and Japanese (see Chapter 6, p. 195, for an example of Japanese subjectless
clauses), and (b) an element announced as topic overrides possible co-referential
links with other elements in the sentence. Li gives the following example from
Mandarin Chinese (1976:469):
Nèike shù yèzi dà, suǒyi wǒ bu xı̌huãn
that tree leaves big so I not like
‘That tree (topic), the leaves are big, so I don’t like .’
Topic–comment structures such as those given above are sometimes translated into
English as, for instance, Concerning animals …, About this fi eld …, As for fi sh …
and so on. There is, of course, a limit to how often this can be done in English. It is
a marked structure in the sense of being relatively infrequent. Its overuse by
Japanese and Chinese learners of English, for instance, is immediately noticeable.
King (1990) similarly suggests that topicalization, as evident in the use of expres-
sions such as os pros, oson afora and oso ya (all of which mean something like ‘as
for’ or ‘with regards to’), is more common in Greek than in English and that Greek
learners of English tend to overuse this structure. Translators are in a position similar
to that of advanced learners of a language in some respects, and pitfalls of this sort
become more common when the direction of translation is into the non-native
language rather than the translator’s mother tongue.
Li (1976:484) suggests more natural structures for achieving something similar
to topicalization in English:
Remember Tom?
Well, he fell off his bike yesterday.
You know Tom?
These structures may be natural in some situations, particularly in informal spoken
exchanges, but they are undoubtedly inappropriate for many contexts. Like all the
English structures suggested above for expressing Chinese-style topics, they remain
far more restricted than the normal topic–comment structure in languages such as
Chinese and Korean. In topic-prominent languages, these structures are the norm
rather than the exception.

TEXTUAL EQUIVALENCE: THEMATIC AND INFORMATION STRUCTURES 155
Chafe (1976) suggests that it is incorrect to translate a Chinese-style topic with
an English expression such as As for. This is because the English expression
suggests contrastiveness. A statement such as As for animals, I advocate a conser-
vation policy implies that animals are being contrasted with something else for which
the speaker perhaps does not advocate a conservation policy. The Chinese structure,
on the other hand, need not imply any contrast, and Chafe therefore concludes that:
Chinese seems to express the information in these cases in a way that does
not coincide with anything available in English. In other words, there is no
packaging device in English that corresponds to the Chinese topic device,
and hence no fully adequate translation.
(1976:50)
Syntactic behaviour and contrastiveness aside, it is tempting to interpret a Chinese-
style topic in the same way as theme, that is, as meaning something like ‘This is my
starting point; this is what I am talking about’. But the scope of a topic is not
restricted to the clause as the example on page 154 might suggest. Topic does not
just control reference within clause boundaries, it controls reference outside clause
boundaries as well. This is why once a topic is announced, the subject(s) of subse-
quent clauses can be omitted. Also, unlike themes (and subjects) which may be
defi nite or indefi nite, topics are always defi nite (Li 1976). This indicates a possible
difference in meaning or function between the two. Chafe (1976:51) suggests that
the function of topic is to specify some kind of framework, for instance in terms of
time, location or individual reference, within which the main statement applies and
that ‘“real” topics (in topic-prominent languages) are not so much “what the sentence
is about” as “the frame within which the sentence holds”’. Li agrees with Chafe’s
interpretation of topic and links this to the observation that topics are always defi nite.
A topic has to be defi nite because of its function of setting the framework for inter-
preting the sentence as a whole.
To my knowledge, no one has yet addressed the relationship between topic and
theme in topic-prominent languages in a sustained fashion. These languages,
presumably, have clause themes as well as sentence topics. Their organization into
topic–comment structures must add to the complexity of their thematic analysis and
to the diffi culty of identifying signals of thematic status. There are, for instance,
several confl icting claims concerning the function of the Japanese suffi x -wa: some
suggest that it is an obligatory marker of topic (this claim is implicit in Li 1976:465);
others suggest that it marks given information (see 5.1.2. below for an explanation
of given vs new information). Maynard (1981:124) seems to suggest that -wa
marks topic, although she uses the term ‘theme’:
-WA serves to create a theme by identifying NP’s [i.e. noun phrases] that are
to be placed on what we may call the ‘thematic stage’. The thematic stage
may be defi ned as the conceptual framework within which the story is told,

156 IN OTHER WORDS
presented and performed. The choice of using -WA … refl ects the writer’s
thematic choice.
This is clearly an area of some diffi culty for translators working from or into a topic-
prominent language such as Korean, Japanese or Chinese.
The above discussion does not cover all aspects of thematic structure, but it is
probably suffi cient for our current purposes. We now turn our attention to the
second aspect of the interactional organization of messages: information structure.
5.1.2 Information structure: given and new
The distinction between theme and rheme is speaker-oriented. It is based on what
the speaker wants to announce as his or her starting point and what he or she goes
on to say about it. A further distinction can be drawn between what is given and what
is new in a message. This is a hearer-oriented distinction, based on what part of the
message is known to the hearer and what part is new. Here again, a message is
divided into two segments: one segment conveys information which the speaker
regards as already known to the hearer. The other segment conveys the new infor-
mation that the speaker wishes to convey to the hearer. Given information repre-
sents the common ground between speaker and hearer and gives the latter a
reference point to which he or she can relate new information.
Like thematic structure, information structure is a feature of the context rather
than of the language system as such. One can only decide what part of a message
is new and what part is given within a linguistic or situational context. For example,
the same message may be segmented differently in response to different
questions:
What’s happening tomorrow? We’re climbing Ben Nevis.
NEW
What are we doing tomorrow? We’re climbing Ben Nevis.
Given New
What are we climbing tomorrow? We’re climbing Ben Nevis.
Given New
(examples from Morley 1985:75)
The organization of the message into information units of given and new refl ects the
speaker’s sensitivity to the hearer’s state of knowledge in the process of communi-
cation. At any point of the communication process, a certain linguistic and non-
linguistic environment will have already been established. The speaker can draw on
this in order to relate new information that he or she wants to convey to elements
that are already established in the context. The normal, unmarked order is for the
speaker to place the given element before the new one. This order has been found

TEXTUAL EQUIVALENCE: THEMATIC AND INFORMATION STRUCTURES 157
to contribute to ease of comprehension and recall, and some composition specialists
therefore explicitly recommend it to writers (Vande Kopple 1986).
The given-before-new principle infl uences other sequencing decisions in
language. Greenbaum and Quirk posit a principle of end-focus to account for the
tendency to process information ‘so as to achieve a linear presentation from low to
high information value’ (1990:395). Moreover, they suggest that:
Since the new information often needs to be stated more fully than the given
(that is, with a longer, ‘heavier’ structure), it is not unexpected that an organ-
ization principle which may be called END-WEIGHT comes into operation
along with the principle of end-focus.
(ibid.:398)
In other words, the same principle which motivates speakers to place given before
new information also motivates them to place longer and heavier structures towards
the end of the clause, as in the following examples (ibid.):
She visited him that day.
She visited her best friend that day.
She visited that day an elderly and much beloved friend.
A similar principle seems to operate in German where, Herbst et al. suggest, ‘there
is a stylistic tendency to place the more complex element (ie the one containing rela-
tively more words) after the less complex’ (1979:165).15 At least one genre of
Brazilian Portuguese, that of academic abstracts, also seems to follow the principle
of end-weight. The results of a study carried out by Johns (1991) suggest that in
this genre simple verbs without modals or closely linked prepositional phrases are
regularly fronted while long and syntactically complex subjects are not. Problems
arise in translation when a principle such as end-weight or end-focus seems to clash
with more basic grammatical principles in the target language. For instance, one of
the basic grammatical principles in English involves placing the subject before the
predicate. In translating from Brazilian Portuguese, which allows the fronting of
simple verbs, into English, a translator may be tempted to ignore the principle of
end-weight in order to preserve the subject-before-predicate arrangement. The
following example from a Brazilian Portuguese academic abstract illustrates the
problem:16

Foram estudados os efeitos de luz, de temperatura e dos
were studied the effects of light, of temperature and of
tegumentos na germinação de sementes de limãocravo
presence/absence in germination of seeds of limão-cravo

158 IN OTHER WORDS
(Citrus limonia, Osb.). Foi também verifi cada a infl uência da
(Citrus limonia, Osb.). Was also verifi ed the infl uence of
velocidade de reidratação de sementes secas artifi cialmente.
the speed of rehydration of seeds dried artifi cially
The above extract was rendered as follows by the writer/translator:
The effects of light, temperature and the presence or absence of the seed
coat on limão-cravo (Citrus limonia) seed germination have been studied.
The infl uence of rehydration rate on germination of artifi cially dried seed has
been also verifi ed.
Note that by adhering to the subject-before-predicate principle, the translator of the
above extract has had to ignore the principle of end-weight. The result is awkward,
unnatural and recognizably un-English. Each sentence consists of a very heavy
subject followed by a very light verb. The clash between the end-weight and subject-
before-predicate principles could have been avoided by switching from passive to
active and inserting a subject such as We or This paper:
This paper examines the effects of light, temperature and the presence or
absence of the seed coat on limão-cravo (Citrus limonia). In addition, it verifi es
the infl uence of rehydration rate on germination of artifi cially dried seed.
5.1.2.1 How are given and new signalled in discourse?
As far as Halliday and Hasan are concerned, information structure is a feature of
spoken rather than written English:
The information systems are those concerned with the organization of the
text into units of information. This is expressed in English by the intonation
patterns, and it is therefore a feature only of spoken English.
(Halliday and Hasan 1976:325)
Strictly speaking (for them), the domain of information structure is not the clause as
a grammatical unit but the tone group as a phonological unit. Each information unit
consists of either a combination of given-plus-new elements or of just a new
element. This is realized phonologically as a tone group, with the peak of promi-
nence or tonic accent falling on the new element. The new element on which the
tonic accent falls carries the information focus. This is the device used by English
speakers to highlight the core of a message. The tonic accent is what we normally
perceive as stress. In the following examples (from Halliday 1985), the element
which receives the tonic accent is underlined. The symbol // marks the boundary of
a tone unit.

TEXTUAL EQUIVALENCE: THEMATIC AND INFORMATION STRUCTURES 159
// now silver needs to have love //
// I haven’t seen you for ages //
While clearly relevant to interpreting activities, this approach may seem of limited
applicability in translation since it appears to rely heavily on phonological evidence.
This, however, is not the case, for there is undoubtedly more to the distinction
between given and new than the assignment of phonological stress.
Halliday (1985) explains that the boundaries of given and new elements are
undecidable on phonological evidence alone. The tonic accent normally falls on the
last item, but this does not tell us where the given element ends and the new one
begins. To establish this, we have to look at other evidence in the surrounding
context. For instance, by expanding the context of the fi rst example above, we can
establish which element is given: In this job, Anne, we’re working with silver. Now
silver needs to have love. The context, rather than phonological evidence, tells us
that silver is given in the above example and that the new element therefore starts at
needs. The analysis of the tone group is now as follows:
// now silver needs to have love //
This is an example of a normal, unmarked structure (see sections 5.1.2.3 and
5.1.2.4 below for a discussion of marked information structure). Here, the tone unit
coincides with the clause as a grammatical unit, theme coincides with given, and
rheme coincides with new.
The importance of context in establishing the boundaries of given and new
elements is worth noting because it suggests that analysing written language in
terms of given and new is feasible. In written language, as in spoken language, one
can refer to the context to establish whether a piece of information has or has not
been introduced earlier. Moreover, many of the devices used to signal information
status are common to both spoken and written language. For instance, in both
spoken and written English defi niteness is generally associated with given infor-
mation and indefi niteness with new information. The girl walked into the room
suggests, in most contexts, that the identity of the girl has already been established.
This contrasts with A girl walked into the room, which suggests that a new entity is
being introduced into the discourse. Similarly, in both spoken and written English
given information tends to be grammatically subordinate to other information. In
Heseltine’s appointment as Minister of the Environment came as no surprise, the
event of Heseltine’s appointment is presented as given; the reader is assumed to
know about it. Had it been new information, it would have been presented independ-
ently in the predicate, because this is where new information normally occurs in
English: Heseltine has been appointed as Minister of the Environment. This comes
as no surprise. The use of subordination as a syntactic device for marking given
information may be a common feature of information structure in many languages:
for instance, Maynard (1981) suggests that given information in Japanese also
tends to be subordinate.

160 IN OTHER WORDS
Some items are inherently given because of their meaning, and this generally
applies not only to spoken and written English but also to most languages. Pronouns
present the most obvious case, with fi rst- and second-person pronouns being the
prime example of items whose givenness is determined contextually.
Because stress is not available in written language, intricate syntactic devices
have to be used to perform a similar function. For example, one of the most
important functions of cleft and pseudo-cleft structures in English (discussed under
predicated and identifying theme, section 5.1.1.3) is to signal information status. In
cleft structures, the item in theme position is presented as new and the item in
rheme position is presented as given. In the following extract from Morgan Matroc’s
brochure, the new item is underlined:
And yet there are some customers who in their search for a suitable material
prefer to study complex tables of technical data. It is for such customers that
we have listed the properties of Matroc’s more widely used materials.
A shorthand representation of the above structure would be ‘It is for X that we have
listed the properties …’, where the element presented as given is ‘we have listed the
properties … for X’ and the element presented as new is ‘X = such customers’.
Compare this with the following pseudo-cleft structure from the Independent:
Lonrho has been informed that the report made no criticism of its conduct.
What Mr Rowland wants is the early publication of this report.
Here, the information presented as given is that Mr Rowland wants something, and
the information presented as new is that this something is the early publication of the
report.
Failure to appreciate the functions of specifi c syntactic structures in signalling
given and new information can result in unnecessary shifts in translation. The
following example is from Arab Political Humour (Kishtainy 1985:x). The source text
is English.
The kind of joke related by any man is a good indicator of his character,
mood and circumstance – a fact which is as valid when applied to the
nation as a whole. It is a general picture this book tries to depict
rather than the detailed idiosyncrasies of any political leader.
Arabic translation:
.
.

.

TEXTUAL EQUIVALENCE: THEMATIC AND INFORMATION STRUCTURES 161
Back-translation:
… And this general picture is, primarily, that which we attempt to
draw in this book, not the detailed personal characteristics which
distinguish any of the political leaders.
An exact translation of the above English cleft structure would be very unnatural in
Arabic but the structure opted for is also clumsy. Apart from being awkward, the
Arabic version also distorts the information structure of the original by presenting the
fi rst element (‘general picture’) as given when the point of the cleft structure is to
present it as the new information worth attending to. The cleft structure quite
reasonably presents as given the assumption that the book is trying to depict some-
thing (all books do). The Arabic version, on the other hand, presents ‘general
picture’ as given and offers as new information in the predicate a defi nition or iden-
tifi cation of what this general picture is. The shift in information structure could have
been avoided by using a pseudo-cleft structure (a marked but natural structure in
Arabic). Rewording the message as:
. . .
‘What we are attempting to draw in this book is a general picture, not …’ could have
preserved the given/new status of the relevant elements, although their order would
have changed. This pseudo-cleft structure would signal that the fi rst part, ‘we are
attempting to draw something in this book’, is given and the second part, ‘this some-
thing is a general picture’, is new.
Although unavailable in written language, stress is often implicit in certain struc-
tures which involve emphasis. We generally assume that stress falls on DO when
used for emphasis, as in I did see him. The same applies to the repetition of an
auxiliary, particularly if it can be replaced by a contracted form.
A: It’s about time you went home.
B: I am going. (cf. I’m going.)
Apart from syntactic structure, punctuation can also be used as a device for signalling
information structure in written language.17 It is used, for example, to distinguish
between a defi ning relative clause such as He was waving to the girl who was
running along the platform and a non-defi ning relative clause such as He was
waving to the girl, who was running along the platform. In the fi rst example, who
was running along the platform identifi es the girl and therefore does not add new
information (if it did, it would be useless as a way of identifying the girl). In the
second example, the comma is used to signal that the same clause represents new
information.
The above discussion suggests that, when needed, clear signals of information
status can be employed in written language. Different languages use different

162 IN OTHER WORDS
devices for signalling information structure, and translators must develop a sensi-
tivity to the various signalling systems available in the languages they work with. This
is, of course, easier said than done because, unfortunately, not much has been
achieved so far in the way of identifying signals of information status in various
languages. As is the case with most areas of textlinguistics, linguists tend to concen-
trate on the analysis of signalling devices in English and extrapolate from that to
other languages. For example, Chafe sums up the expression of givenness as
follows:
The principal linguistic effects of the given-new distinction, in English and
perhaps all languages, reduce to the fact that given information is conveyed
in a weaker and more attenuated manner than new information. This attenu-
ation is likely to be refl ected in two principal ways: given information is
pronounced with lower pitch and weaker stress than new and it is subject to
pronominalization.
(1976:31; my emphasis)
Brown and Yule reiterate Chafe’s views in suggesting that ‘speakers usually refer to
current given entities with attenuated syntactic and phonological forms’ (1983:189).
These comments may well apply to English, and perhaps even a large number of
languages, but they certainly do not apply to all. It is well known, for instance, that
pronominalization is rare in Japanese, and it is therefore unlikely to play a signifi cant
role in signalling givenness. On the other hand, some languages (Japanese included)
use special affi xes to mark given and new information or thematic and non-thematic
elements. This kind of feature is diffi cult to describe in terms of attenuation. In some
languages, stress and intonation are not available as devices for signalling new infor-
mation. They are not available, or not as readily available, in Chinese (Tsao 1983) or
in French (Paula Chicken, personal communication). These languages rely on lexical
and syntactic devices to signal information status. For instance, in Chinese defi –
niteness and indefi niteness (which refl ect given and new information respectively)
are typically signalled by means of word order:
The most usual way of showing defi niteness [in Chinese] is by means of
word-order arrangement. And the most general principle is: nominals
occurring before the main verb of a sentence tend to be defi nite while those
occurring after the main verb can be either defi nite or indefi nite.
(Tsao 1983:104)
Finnish is another language that does not have an article system. It uses case
endings and word order to signal defi niteness and indefi niteness (Sunnari 1990).
This type of signalling does not seem to support the attenuation theory. Similarly,
one could argue that the attenuation theory does not apply to languages such as
Arabic, which have a defi nite article but no explicit marker of indefi niteness. Like

TEXTUAL EQUIVALENCE: THEMATIC AND INFORMATION STRUCTURES 163
English, these languages tend to use defi niteness as a signal of givenness and
indefi niteness as a signal of newness. However, if anything, it is the new rather
than the given entity which is regularly referred to by an attenuated syntactic
structure.
5.1.2.2 How is givenness determined?
Identifying signals of information status is one area of information structure that is
clearly relevant in translation. Another area which can pose problems in translation
relates to the ability to determine when a certain item of information can and cannot
be treated as given.
Most commonly, a given element is an element which is recoverable because it
has been mentioned before. This is the basis on which the various elements in the
answers to the questions given on page 156 have been labelled as given or new.
But information may be treated by the speaker as given for a variety of other
reasons. It may be predictable, or it may be contextually salient, as in the case of
fi rst-person pronouns. Rather than use a variety of notions such as recoverability,
predictability and saliency to explain givenness, Chafe suggests that the key to
givenness lies in the notion of consciousness:
Given (or old) information is that knowledge which the speaker assumes to be
in the consciousness of the addressee at the time of the utterance. So called
new information is what the speaker assumes he is introducing into the
addressee’s consciousness by what he says.
(1976:30)
The fact that the speaker and addressee themselves are regularly treated as
given (and pronominalized as I and you respectively) stems from the same
consideration. The speaker is conscious of the addressee, and the addressee
is conscious of the speaker.
(ibid.:31–32)
An important question with implications for some translation-related activities such
as abridging, expanding or any form of rewriting that introduces or deletes gaps
between a certain item and its subsequent mention in a text is this: how long can an
element be assumed to remain in the addressee’s consciousness? In other words,
under what circumstances would a previously mentioned item have to be re-
introduced as new? Chafe suggests two variables which can be used to determine
whether an item may or may not have left the addressee’s consciousness:
The number of intervening sentences in which the item was not mentioned is
one obvious variable, but more interesting would be the effect of such
discourse boundaries as a change of scene, where a whole set of items can

164 IN OTHER WORDS
be assumed to enter the consciousness of the addressee, presumably
pushing out old ones.
(ibid.:32–33)
The following example from Autumn of Fury: The Assassination of Sadat (Heikal
1983) illustrates the effect of both variables: number of intervening sentences and
change of scene. This book was originally written in English and then later translated
into Arabic (with considerable additions) by the author himself. Possible explanations
for these additions are discussed in Chapter 7. The extract forms part of the
description of events that followed the shooting of Anwar Sadat, former President of
Egypt who was assassinated in 1981 (English version: p. 271; Arabic version: pp.
527–531). Items relevant to the present discussion of givenness are underlined.
According to Heikal, Sadat was put into a helicopter, accompanied by his wife
Jihan. But instead of fl ying straight to the hospital, the helicopter fi rst stopped by
Sadat’s residence:
Jihan is known to have rushed into the house and put through two telephone
calls to the United States. One was to her elder son Gamal, who was then in
Florida. She learnt that Gamal had gone with some friends to an island off the
coast of Florida, so she told the person who answered the telephone to get
hold of him immediately at any cost and tell him to call his mother on a matter
of the greatest urgency. Who the other call was to Jihan has never revealed,
but it is certain that it must have been someone of the highest importance,
and that her purpose was to obtain from the most authoritative source possible
some outside indication of what was happening in Egypt. After these two
telephone calls had been made Jihan rejoined the helicopter which continued
its course up the Nile to the Maadi hospital.
The offi cial report from the hospital stated that when the President arrived he
was in a state of complete coma, with no recordable blood pressure or pulse,
‘the eyes wide open, with no response to light’, and no refl exes anywhere. The
report went on to list his injuries, which included two bullet entrances under the
left nipple, one entering below the knee and exiting at the top of the left thigh,
as well as several wounds in the right arm, chest, neck and round the left eye.
There was ‘a foreign substance which can be felt by touch under the skin of the
neck’, which was presumably the fi rst and fatal bullet fi red by Abbas Mohamed.
The doctors detailed the attempts made at resuscitation, but by 2.40 it was
concluded that there was no activity in either heart or brain and that the Pres-
ident must be declared dead. The cause of death was given as shock, internal
haemorrhage in the chest cage, lesions in the left lung and all main arteries.
The report was signed by twenty-one doctors.
From the outset Jihan had realized that there was no hope of her husband’s
survival. As she waited outside the room where the doctors were operating
the call came through from Gamal in Florida.

TEXTUAL EQUIVALENCE: THEMATIC AND INFORMATION STRUCTURES 165
The middle paragraph, which summarizes Sadat’s condition on arriving at the
hospital and the doctors’ report, is expanded into three pages in the Arabic version.
Furthermore, the whole list of injuries is set aside as a sort of sub section, marked by
three asterisks at the top and three at the bottom, so that the change of topic or
scene is explicitly signalled to the reader. The following condensed extract (pp.
527–531 in the Arabic version, followed by a back-translation) illustrates the main
differences:

.
.

. . . .

* * *

.
.
… Some reliable sources report that the President’s wife, Mrs Jihan, rushed
to the telephone to make some telephone calls to the United States.
Among these was defi nitely a call to her only son Gamal, who was then in
Florida. During the call she discovered that Gamal had gone with some of his
friends to an island on the coast of Florida. She asked the person who
answered her to try and fi nd him as soon as possible and to ask him to
contact her in Cairo immediately as there is an extremely urgent matter she
needs to talk to him about. There were other telephone calls that Mrs Jihan
made to the United States …
* * *
The offi cial report of the Maadi Hospital states that when Sadat arrived at the
hospital and was examined he was in a state of complete coma. The offi cial
report issued by the Maadi Hospital was as follows:
[complete report quoted – three pages, ending with signatures of members
of the medical team]
* * *

166 IN OTHER WORDS
Mrs Jihan was waiting outside the examination room, knowing in her heart of
hearts that her husband has departed. A telephone call came from the
United States. It was her son Gamal on the line calling from Florida …
Unlike the English version, the last paragraph in the Arabic version re introduces
Gamal’s telephone call to his mother as new information. This is signalled in Arabic
through the use of an indefi nite noun group: ‘a telephone call’ rather than ‘the call’.
It would have been unreasonable of the author/translator to expect this item of infor-
mation to remain in the reader’s consciousness after three intervening pages and an
explicitly marked change of scene or topic.
A fi nal point to bear in mind is that givenness is assigned by the speaker, and as
such does not necessarily correlate with the reality of the linguistic or extra-linguistic
situation. A speaker may decide to present an element as given even when there is
no suffi cient reason to assume that it is in the addressee’s consciousness. This may
be done for rhetorical purposes and is a common ploy in politics. Presenting a piece
of information as given suggests that it is already established and agreed and is
therefore non-negotiable. Similarly, an element which has been mentioned before
may be presented as new because it is unexpected or because the speaker wishes
to present it in a contrastive light.
5.1.2.3 Marked vs unmarked information structure
Unlike thematic structure (at least in English), information structure is not realized by
the sequencing of elements. It is realized chiefl y by tonicity. In unmarked information
structure, the information focus falls on something other than the theme. It falls on
the whole rheme or part of it; for example, in John was appointed Chairman, the
tonic accent will normally fall on Chairman:
// John was appointed Chairman //
This information structure would give the message the meaning of a statement of
what happened or what John was appointed as.
Other options are available to the speaker, depending on where he or she feels
the burden of the message lies. For instance, the information focus may be placed
on John, and in this case the message will be understood as a statement of who was
appointed Chairman and may imply surprise or contrast:
// John was appointed Chairman //
Similarly, the focus may be placed on was to stress the truth of the utterance:
// John was appointed Chairman //
In written language, marked information structure is often signalled by means of
typography or punctuation devices. In the following example from Agatha Christie’s

TEXTUAL EQUIVALENCE: THEMATIC AND INFORMATION STRUCTURES 167
Crooked House (1949/1989:61), italics are used to highlight the elements on
which the information focus falls:
‘The family! Beasts! I hate them all.’
She looked at me, her mouth working. She looked sullen and frightened
and angry.
‘They’ve been beastly to me always – always. From the very fi rst. Why
shouldn’t I marry their precious father? What did it matter to them? They’d
all got loads of money. He gave it to them. They wouldn’t have had the
brains to make any for themselves!’
She went on:
‘Why shouldn’t a man marry again – even if he is a bit old? And he wasn’t
really old at all – not in himself. I was very fond of him. I was fond of him.’
She looked at me defi antly.
Here, the elements which are selected as focal (them, he and was) are not new in
the sense of not having been mentioned before, but they are new in the sense of
being in some way contrastive. For instance, the last item, was, contrasts with what
the speaker thinks the hearer believes about her feelings. In the French translation
of this extract, the italics are left out. As mentioned earlier, French does not generally
use phonological stress to highlight a clause element; instead, lexical means are
employed to signal what would normally be conveyed by means of intonation in
English. Thus
The English have changed
can be rendered as
Les Anglais, eux aussi, ont évolué
where the lexical item eux aussi (‘as well’) replaces stress in highlighting the previous
item Les Anglais. Instead of italics, the French translator of the above extract opts
for repeating the last statement to achieve similar emphasis:
… D’ailleurs, il n’était pas vieux du tout! Il y a vieux et vieux. Je l’aimais
bien.
Comme me défi ant des yeux, elle répéta:
– Oui, je l’aimais bien. …
The emphasis in the French version does not just come from the repetition of je
l’aimais bien, which also occurs in the original, but rather from the fact that the repe-
tition is labelled as repetition: elle répéta.

168 IN OTHER WORDS
5.1.2.4 Marked information structure and marked rheme
To my knowledge, Hallidayan linguists have always concentrated on marked theme
and do not seem to have considered that a rheme can also be marked. But the
notion of marked rheme may prove helpful in accounting for the communicative
force of some utterances. For instance, there are times when a speaker or writer
seems to be deliberately highlighting a rheme by stripping the message of its initial
element, that is, the theme. The following example illustrates the point.
English extract from A Hero from Zero (p. v)
House of Fraser shares were highly sensitive to any rumours of a bid,
and we waited with caution and anxiety for the green light from the
ministry. And waited.
It seems reasonable to suggest that the natural theme we is omitted in the second
sentence in order to foreground the rheme. The rheme is all there is in the clause
and thus receives the reader’s undivided attention. To distinguish between the
function of marked theme and that of marked rheme, we could say that marked
theme gives prominence to an element as linking information, whereas marked
rheme gives prominence to an element as the core of the message.
Another reason for the prominence of And waited in the above example is that it
repeats verbatim information that has already been established in the previous
sentence. It therefore has a surprise effect on the reader, who expects each new
clause to move the discourse forward. In cases of this sort, the pure repetition of
information and the reader’s expectation that the discourse should be moving
forward are reconciled by fi nding an indirect interpretation of the message. In this
particular instance, we interpret And waited as meaning something like ‘we went on
waiting and nothing happened’ or ‘we waited in vain’. In French, it is impossible to
reproduce the above themeless clause. A French verb has to be accompanied by an
immediate subject. This is, of course, also true of English grammar (taken as an
abstract system), but unlike French, English employs themeless sentences as a
fairly common stylistic device which is both acceptable and effective in many
contexts. The French translation overcomes the problem by spelling out the inter-
pretation: Nous attendîmes en vain (literally: ‘we waited in vain’), but loses the
surprise element because it conforms to the given-plus-new pattern. The Arabic
translation preserves the surprise element by employing a mixture of repetition and
temporal signalling:
.
literally ‘and waited-we then waited-we’, that is, ‘we waited and then we waited
some more’, meaning ‘we waited in vain’.
Apart from deleting the theme in order to highlight the rhematic element, it is
also possible to use punctuation in written language to signal an unusual arrangement

TEXTUAL EQUIVALENCE: THEMATIC AND INFORMATION STRUCTURES 169
of clause elements into tone groups. Consider the following example from Le
Carré’s The Little Drummer Girl (1983:8):
As a further precaution, the addresses of Israeli staff were not printed in
offi cial diplomatic lists for fear of encouraging the impulsive gesture at a time
when Israel was being a little hard to take. Politically.
The full stop before Politically does a number of things simultaneously. First, it
forces an end of a tone group on the previous stretch of language, thus presenting
what follows as a separate unit of information. A unit of information must include a
new element (the given element being optional). The new element, a complete unit
of information in this case, is a simple adverb: Politically. This in itself is unusual and
therefore marked in English. Second, in order to interpret Politically as a unit of
information, we have to assume that it is meant as a foregrounded rheme – fore-
grounded by omitting the thematic element Israel was being a little hard to take.
Third, in forcing an end of a tone group at this point, the full stop also foregrounds
the previous rheme. It gives greater rhematic emphasis to the previous chunk of
information: was being a little hard to take.
Here is another example of marked information structure, this time from an
advertising leafl et which accompanies a range of cosmetic products by Estée
Lauder:
Extraordinary new colors.
Extraordinary new compacts.
ESTÉE LAUDER SIGNATURE.
Singular. Intense.
Privileged. Provocative.
Colors to astonish.
Make resistance impossible.
Consider them. Yours.
Like a fi ngerprint.
The strategy used to foreground rhematic elements and to create highly marked
information structures in the above extract is the same as that used by Le Carré in
The Little Drummer Girl example. Thematic elements are omitted to foreground a
rheme, for example Make resistance impossible (They/These colors?). Full stops
are inserted in unexpected places to force the reader to treat certain elements as
complete units of information. This is particularly effective in the case of Consider
them. Yours, where one automatically gets the two interpretations: ‘consider them’
(i.e. think about them), ‘they are yours’ and ‘Consider them yours’. Only the fi rst

170 IN OTHER WORDS
interpretation is successfully conveyed in the French version of the leafl et (Regardez-
les. Elles sont à vous).
Since information focus normally falls on the rheme or part of it, and since
unmarked information structure involves placing the given element before the new
one and unmarked thematic structure involves placing theme before rheme, it is not
surprising that theme often coincides with given, and rheme often coincides with
new. This is probably why, for most Prague linguists, part of the defi nition of theme
is that it is given and part of the defi nition of rheme is that it is new. We will now look
at this alternative view to explore its relevance to translation activities.
5.2 THE PRAGUE SCHOOL POSITION ON
INFORMATION FLOW: FUNCTIONAL SENTENCE
PERSPECTIVE
The Prague School position on theme/rheme and given/new is quite distinct from
Halliday’s and results in a signifi cantly different explanation of how these categories
are realized in discourse. This approach is generally referred to as functional
sentence perspective (FSP).18

The theory of functional sentence perspective was developed by a group of
Czech linguists who pioneered most studies investigating the interaction between
syntax and communicative function. The details of FSP theory are rather complex,
and there are several distinct approaches within the Prague tradition itself. Never-
theless, it is important for translators to become familiar with at least one of the
major models proposed within this alternative tradition. For one thing, a functional
sentence perspective approach may prove more helpful in explaining the interac-
tional organization of languages other than English, particularly languages with free
or relatively free word order. For another, FSP theory often forms the basis for highly
relevant discussions of translation problems and strategies (see, for example, Hatim
1984, 1987, 1988, 1989, Hatim and Mason 1990, Rogers 2006), and basic famil-
iarity with this approach tends to be taken for granted by those exploring its rele-
vance to translation studies. A simplifi ed general outline of one FSP model is
therefore given below in the hope that it will prove useful to translators interested in
resolving, or at least identifying, translation problems relating to information fl ow.19

The main premise in FSP theory is that the communicative goals of an inter-
action cause the structure of a clause or sentence to function in different kinds of
perspective. Jan Firbas,20 one of the main proponents of this approach, gives the
following example (1986). A sentence such as John has been taken ill has a certain
syntactic structure which remains unchanged in different communicative settings. In
context, it will function in a certain kind of perspective, depending on the purpose of
communication; for instance, it may function as a statement of a person’s state of
health (John has been taken ill), as an identifi cation of the person affected (John
has been taken ill), or as an affi rmation that the information conveyed is really valid
(John has been taken ill). Note that what Firbas describes as functional sentence

TEXTUAL EQUIVALENCE: THEMATIC AND INFORMATION STRUCTURES 171
perspective in this example would be analysed purely in terms of information structure
in Halliday’s model.
The concepts of theme/rheme and given/new are supplemented in Firbas’
model with a non-binary notion that determines which elements are thematic and
which are not thematic in a clause. This is the notion of communicative dynamism
(CD). Firbas (1972:78) explains it as follows:
communicative dynamism … is based on the fact that linguistic communi-
cation is not a static, but a dynamic phenomenon. By CD I understand a
property of communication, displayed in the course of the development of the
information to be conveyed and consisting in advancing this development. By
the degree of CD carried by a linguistic element, I understand the extent to
which the element contributes to the development of the communication, to
which, as it were, it ‘pushes the communication forward’.
In order to relate the notion of CD to the question of identifying theme/rheme and
given/new in discourse, Firbas suggests the following. A clause consists of different
types of element. Some elements lay the foundation on which other elements may
convey a message. These foundation-laying elements are context-dependent and
constitute the theme. They carry a low degree of CD because, being context-
dependent, they do not play a major role in pushing the communication forward. If
we take the example of John has been taken ill (as a statement of John’s state of
health), the foundation-laying element would be John. The remaining elements
complete the information and fulfi l the communicative purpose of the utterance.
These core-constituting elements form the non-theme, are context-independent
and carry a higher degree of CD.
What Firbas seems to be suggesting so far is that theme consists of context-
dependent and rheme of context-independent items. He does, however, modify this
position slightly in his later writings as we shall see shortly. It is also important to
point out at this stage that Firbas’ notions of context-dependence/independence
are much more restricted than Halliday’s notions of given/new:
context dependence/independence is judged by a very narrow criterion. Any
kind or aspect of information that is not present in the immediately relevant
verbal or situational context is to be regarded as irretrievable and hence
context-independent.
(Firbas 1987:30–31)
Firbas’ notions of context-dependence/independence are therefore purely linguistic
and do not extend to the psychological aspect of communication as Halliday’s
notions do.
Firbas goes on to explain that the non-theme consists of two elements: the
transition and the rheme. The transition consists of elements which perform the

172 IN OTHER WORDS
function of linking the foundation-laying and the core-constituting parts of the
clause. It generally consists of the temporal and modal exponents of the verb,
which are ‘the transitional element par excellence: They carry the lowest degree of
CD within the non-theme and are the transition proper’ (Firbas 1986:54). In the
example given above, John has been taken ill, the transition would be has been +
-en. The transition may also consist of a link verb such as be or seem, or any verb
whose main function is simply to link the foundation-laying and core-constituting
elements of a clause. In The weather is fi ne, for example, is would normally
constitute the transition (assuming the communicative purpose of the utterance is
to state what the weather is like). The rheme represents the core of the message
and carries the highest degree of CD. It consists of the notional component of the
fi nite verb and the rest of the message. In John has been taken ill, the rheme is
take + ill. In The weather is fine, the rheme is fi ne.
Apart from the notion of transition outlined above, and unlike the Hallidayan
approach, where the verb is generally considered part of the rheme, FSP theory
assigns thematic or rhematic status to the verb depending on the context and the
semantics of the verb itself. Semantically, the less of a notional component the verb
has, the more naturally it goes with the theme as a foundation-laying element. Link
verbs are a clear case of verbs with a very limited notional component whose
function seems to be simply linking the theme to the rest of the message. In fact, in
many languages (for instance, Arabic and Russian) equative sentences such as The
weather is fi ne are verbless. It is also possible to omit a link verb in English in some
contexts, as in the following example from Le Carré’s The Russia House (1989:18):
And in the corner of his eye – an anxious blue blur was all that she amounted
to – this Soviet woman he was deliberately ignoring.
This seems to support the view that link verbs play little or no role in pushing the
communication forward and therefore have no rhematic status.
Contextually, the notional component of the verb is assigned thematic status if it
has already been mentioned. Scinto (1983:80) gives the following example:
Consider the following utterance:
Leander bought a new book.
To this sentence we can pose the wh-question: What did Leander buy? or,
What did Leander do? In the case of the fi rst question the response is ‘a new
book’. In the case of the second, ‘bought a new book’. What these answers
demonstrate is that the verb may be part of either Theme or Rheme proper.
In the case of the fi rst question the verb is thematicized; in the second it is
rhematic and is substituted for by a categorical verb, i.e. to do.
Which question to ask will, of course, depend on whether the context already tells us
that Leander bought something. Note that this approach tends, by and large, to
equate theme with given (context-dependent) and rheme with new (context-

TEXTUAL EQUIVALENCE: THEMATIC AND INFORMATION STRUCTURES 173
independent) elements. However, Firbas does modify this position when he insists
that, as far as he is concerned, this is not necessarily the case:
I consider rhematic information to be always new, but thematic information
old and/or new. On the other hand, old information is always thematic, but
new information thematic or rhematic.
(1987:46)
In other words, Firbas, like Halliday, acknowledges that a unit of information may
consist of a given plus new element, or of just a new element. In the fi rst case, the
given element would be considered thematic and the new element would be
considered rhematic. In the second case, a theme still has to be identifi ed and, for
Firbas, this would be the least context-independent element (i.e. the element with
the lowest degree of CD).
So far, Firbas’ approach to information fl ow can be summed up as follows. A
clause consists of two types of element: foundation-laying/context-dependent
elements and core-constituting/context-independent elements. The former have a
lower degree of CD and are always thematic. The latter, however, may be thematic
or rhematic. A clause may totally consist of context-independent elements and, in
this case, the theme will be the element with the lowest degree of CD and the rheme
will be the element with the highest degree of CD.
5.2.1 Linear arrangement and thematic status in FSP
It should be clear by now that, unlike Hallidayan linguists, FSP theorists do not see
theme and rheme as being realized chiefl y by their relative positions in the clause.
This is not to say that they do not acknowledge the role played by sequential ordering
in signalling the communicative function of an utterance. Firbas, for instance,
suggests that ‘the basic distribution of CD is implemented by a series of elements
opening with the element carrying the very lowest and gradually passing on to the
element carrying the very highest degree of CD’ (1974:22). This is more or less the
same as saying that theme normally precedes rheme. However, as can be seen
from the above brief discussion of the verb as a thematic or rhematic element, FSP
theorists also acknowledge semantic structure and context as factors which further
determine the distribution of CD. Communicative dynamism is therefore assumed to
be achieved by the interplay of these three factors: linear modifi cation (i.e. gradation
of position, syntax), semantic structure and context. Semantic structure and context
‘operate either in the same direction as or counter to’ linear modifi cation (Firbas
1974:22), but both are hierarchically superior to it. For example, with the exception
of contexts in which they are presented contrastively, pronouns, being context-
dependent, always carry a low degree of CD irrespective of where they occur in the
clause. In I gave the book to him or I gave him the book, him would normally be
considered thematic in FSP theory. Similarly, defi nite expressions would be

174 IN OTHER WORDS
considered thematic and indefi nite expressions rhematic in most contexts. The
following examples, adapted from Firbas (1986:58) illustrate the priority given to
context over linear arrangement. Rhematic elements are italicized.
(1) A heavy dew (Rh) had (TME) fallen (Th; TME).
(2) The grass (Th) was (TME) blue (Rh).
(3) Big drops (Rh) hung (TME) on the bushes (Th).
(Rh = rheme; TME = temporal modal exponent/transition; Th = theme)
The analysis of clause elements in terms of FSP is clearly a complex business. It is
not as easy to apply or follow as Halliday’s system. However, as explained earlier, a
basic understanding of this approach may well prove helpful in some contexts.
5.2.2 Linear arrangement and marked structures in FSP
Since FSP theorists do not take sentence position as the only criterion for assigning
thematic status to clause elements, it follows that two alternative formulations of the
same message can have the same thematic analysis. For example, In China the
book received a great deal of publicity and The book received a great deal of
publicity in China would be analysed in the same way. In China would be considered
rhematic in both formulations (unless stress is used to signal a difference in its
thematic/rhematic status). Compare this with the Hallidayan approach, where In
China would be considered rheme in the second and marked theme in the fi rst
example. It also follows that one cannot talk specifi cally about ‘marked theme’ in
FSP theory, since the question of producing a marked theme by putting an element
in initial position in the clause assumes that initial position is reserved for theme. FSP
theorists do, however, acknowledge that there are marked and unmarked structures
in every language. They also attempt to explain the difference in terms of theme/
rheme, though their explanation is somewhat different from Halliday’s.
Very briefl y, according to Prague linguists such as Mathesius and Firbas, the
nature of interaction suggests that the usual, unmarked order of message
segments is that of theme followed by rheme. It is clearly easier to follow a
message that announces its subject and then says something about it than the
other way round. Weil (1844, discussed in Firbas 1974), one of the pioneers of
this area of study, suggested that the movement from the initial notion of subject
of utterance (theme) to the goal of utterance (rheme) represents the movement of
the mind itself.21 The organization of a message into a theme + rheme sequence
therefore represents the unmarked, normal order. He further suggested that
sequences which deviate from this normal order do occur, and he called a rheme–
theme organization of a message the ‘pathetic order’ (Firbas 1974). The pathetic
order is marked; its function is to convey emotion of some sort: it may be contrastive
or contradictory, for example. Instead of conveying a message in a straightforward
way, the pathetic order allows the speaker to add an emotional layer to it. An

TEXTUAL EQUIVALENCE: THEMATIC AND INFORMATION STRUCTURES 175
English clause such as Well-publicized the book was would therefore be considered
marked in both Hallidayan and Prague linguistics. However, a Hallidayan linguist
would analyse it as a fronted theme + rheme sequence, whereas a Prague linguist
would analyse it as a rheme–theme sequence.
What we have here, then, are two different explanations of the feature of
marked organization of the clause as a message. The Hallidayan approach explains
it in terms of the fronting of an element to make it thematic. The Prague linguists’
approach explains it in terms of reversing the theme–rheme sequence. For the
purposes of translation, what matters is that both types of analysis recognize the
sequence as marked.
5.2.3 The tension between word order and communicative
function: a problem in translation?
According to FSP scholars, restrictions on word order in various languages result in
a linear arrangement that may or may not coincide with the interpretative arrangement
of an utterance. Firbas (1986:47) gives the following examples (always assuming a
neutral context for each utterance):
Interpretative arrangement Linear arrangement
I him used to know. I used to know him.
Ich ihn habe gekannt. Ich habe ihn gekannt.
Je l’ai connu. Je l’ai connu.
Irrespective of the specifi c examples used by Firbas, this view implies that, generally
speaking, in languages with relatively free word order there will be less tension
between the requirements of syntax and those of communicative function.
Conversely, in languages with relatively fi xed word order there will be greater
instances of tension between syntax and communicative function.
Word-order patterns fulfi l a number of functions in all languages: syntactically,
they indicate the roles of subject, object and so on; semantically, they indicate roles
such as actor, patient, benefi ciary; communicatively, they indicate the fl ow of infor-
mation (however we may wish to represent this: in terms of theme/rheme, given/
new or communicative dynamism). Several linguists have suggested that different
languages give different priorities to each of these functions, depending on the
extent to which their system of word-order is fi xed. Mathesius (quoted in Firbas
1974:17) compares English and Czech in this respect and concludes that in English,
the grammatical principle (i.e. syntax) plays the leading role in the hierarchy of word
order principles and that ‘English differs from Czech in being so little susceptible to
the requirements of FSP as to frequently disregard them altogether’. De Beau-
grande and Dressler (1981:75) make the same assertion:22
In English, the lack of a differentiated morphemic system in many areas
places heavy constraints on word-order patterns. In Czech, with its richer

176 IN OTHER WORDS
morphemic systems, word order can follow the functional sentence
perspective much more faithfully.
Johns (1991:10–11) makes similar claims with respect to topic-prominent vs
subject-prominent languages: ‘in a topic-prominent language linear arrangement
follows the scale of CD far more closely than it does in a subject-prominent
language’. This is an interesting view of word order vs communicative function. It
suggests that translating between languages with different priorities and different
types of syntactic restriction necessarily involves a great deal of skewing of patterns
of information fl ow. The question is: can translators do anything to minimize this
skewing?
5.2.4 Suggested strategies for minimizing linear
dislocation
A number of linguists have suggested a variety of strategies for resolving the tension
between syntactic and communicative functions in translation and language learning.
In this section, I will attempt to explore some of these strategies, with examples from
translated texts where possible. The strategies discussed are drawn from two main
sources: Johns (1991) and Papegaaij and Schubert (1988).
Strategy no. 1: voice change
This strategy involves changing the syntactic form of the verb to achieve a different
sequence of elements. A good example of this is voice change in languages with a
category of voice. The following examples, from Johns (1991), involve the substi-
tution of active for passive. The reverse, the substitution of passive for active, is of
course also possible.
Example A
Portuguese text (Ciência e cultura (1980), 32(7):936)
Neste trabalho são apresentadas observaçôes fenológicas sobre
In this paper are presented observations phenological about
Magonia pubescens St. Hil.
Magonia pubescens St. Hil.
English Text
This paper reports observations about the phenology of Magonia
pubescens St. Hil.

TEXTUAL EQUIVALENCE: THEMATIC AND INFORMATION STRUCTURES 177
Example B
Portuguese text (Ciência e cultura (1980), 32(7):941)
Estudaram-se a morfologia e a histologia do aparelho
Were studied the morphology and the histology of system
reprodutor masculine do camarão de água doce,
reproductive male of prawn of fresh water,
Macrobrachium acanthurus (Wiegmann, 1836).
Macrobrachium acanthurus (Wiegmann, 1836).
English text
This paper deals with the anatomy and histology of the male
reproductive system of the freshwater prawn Macrobrachium
acanthurus (Wiegmann, 1836).
Johns notes that the strategy of substituting active for passive raises the problem of
providing a subject for the active clause. He rightly points out that the subject of the
active clause must preserve the impersonality we normally associate with passive
structures in many European languages. In the above examples, the choice of This
paper as subject satisfi es this condition of impersonality.
Ergative structures may provide a strategy similar to that of voice change in
some languages. Ergativity involves using the object of a transitive verb as the
subject of an intransitive verb: compare An explosion shook the room and The room
shook (with the explosion). This type of structure is very common in some languages,
such as Finnish.
Strategy no. 2: change of verb
This involves changing the verb altogether and replacing it with one that has a similar
meaning but can be used in a different syntactic confi guration. Examples of pairs of
verbs that describe an event from different perspectives in English include give/get
and like/please. These often allow reordering the sequence of elements in a clause
without a signifi cant change of meaning (cf. I like it and It pleases me).
I have not been able to fi nd any examples of this strategy in my data or in Johns’
data. The reluctance of translators to use it is understandable to some extent.
Expressions such as I like it and It pleases me are ‘equivalent’ only in theory. In real
life, one of the options – in this case, It pleases me – tends to be very unnatural.
Each language has its own phraseology, its own idiom which rules out many options
that are potentially available as grammatical sequences.

178 IN OTHER WORDS
Reciprocal pairs that offer more natural alternatives than like/please do exist,
however. For instance, I bought it from John and John sold it to me, or I received/
got a letter from John and John sent me a letter are equally ‘natural’ as far as the
phraseology of English is concerned; their ‘acceptability’ is, of course, determined
by the context in which they occur.
Strategy no. 3: nominalization
Some languages allow the order verb + subject. If the translator wishes to maintain this
thematic organization and, at the same time, adhere to an obligatory order of subject +
verb in the target language, nominalization could probably provide a good strategy in
many contexts. Nominalization involves replacing a verbal form with a nominal one
(e.g. describe → description). This can then be followed by a semantically ‘empty’
verb such as give or take in the passive. For example, the Portuguese sequence:
Estudou-se o comportamento de Drosophila sturtevanti
were-studied the behaviour of Drosophila sturtevanti
can be turned into
A study was carried out of the behaviour of …
Alternatively, the nominalization can follow a ‘weak’ subject such as This in the
following example (from Johns 1991):
This is a study of the behaviour of …
I have not found any examples of the use of this strategy in actual translations.
Johns similarly confi rms that, in his own data, this ‘sophisticated strategy of nomi-
nalisation is under-represented’ (1991:7). The fact that it is underrepresented high-
lights the need to draw translators’ attention to it. If sophisticated strategies such as
nominalization have not so far been recognized as viable options in resolving the
tension between syntax and communicative function, this does not imply that they
are not viable – just that they have been largely overlooked.
To illustrate the potential usefulness of the strategy of nominalization, we could
perhaps look at how it might be used to improve an existing translation. Below is a
Brazilian academic abstract (from Ciência e cultura (1980), 32(7): 857), followed
by its existing English translation. Initial verbs are highlighted in the Portuguese text.
Analisou-se as relaçôes da dopamina cerebral com as funçôes
motoras. O trabalho discute as evidências de que drogas que
incrementam a transmissão dopaminérgica central produzem
aumento da atividade locomotora, estereotipia e hipercinesia,
enquanto que drogas neurolépticas como o haloperidol, bloqueadoras
de receptores dopaminérgicos centrais, induzem hipocinesia e

TEXTUAL EQUIVALENCE: THEMATIC AND INFORMATION STRUCTURES 179
rigidez. Associou-se o efeito do tratamento prolongado com
neurolépticos e os sintomas das discinesias tardias ao desenvolvimento
da supersensibilidade dopaminérgica central.
Existing English translation:
Dopamine and motor function. The relations between dopamine and
motor functions were analyzed. Several references were presented
suggesting not only that drugs that increase central dopaminergic
transmission increase locomotor activity and induce stereotypy and
hyperkinesia but also that neuroleptic drugs like haloperidol, that
block dopamine receptors, induce hypokinesia and rigidity. The
effects of long-term neuroleptic treatment and the symptoms of
tardive dyskinesia were associated to the development of central
dopaminergic supersensitivity.
Suggested version:
Dopamine and motor function. An analysis is carried out of the relations
between dopamine and motor functions. Several references are
presented which suggest not only that drugs that increase central
dopaminergic transmission increase locomotor activity and induce
stereotypy and hyperkinesia but also that neuroleptic drugs like
haloperidol, that block dopamine receptors, induce hypokinesia and
rigidity. An association is established between the effects of long-term
neuroleptic treatment and the symptoms of tardive dyskinesia on the
one hand and the development of central dopaminergic
supersensitivity on the other.
With the exception of the use of nominalizations and a change from the past to the
present tense, my suggested version is identical to the existing translation (the
present tense is the correct one to use here because it signals that the abstract
reports the contents of the paper, not the procedures undertaken in the research –
see discussion of tense as a signalling device in academic abstracts, Chapter 4,
section 4.2.4). The nominalizations offer a way of presenting the information from a
perspective similar to that of the Portuguese text. This is not a question of adhering
to the structure of the source text for the sake of preserving form. The placement of
verbs in initial position in the Portuguese text has a communicative function: it
thematizes processes as the writer’s point of departure, an arrangement particularly
suited to the reporting of academic research and scientifi c methods.23

Strategy no. 4: extraposition
Extraposition involves changing the position of the entire clause in the sentence, for
instance by embedding a simple clause in a complex sentence. Cleft and

180 IN OTHER WORDS
pseudo-cleft structures, discussed under predicated and identifying themes in
5.1.1.3 above, provide good examples. Papegaaij and Schubert (1988:182) explain
that the main advantage of extraposition is that it ‘provides an escape to a higher
and, in this particular respect, freer level’ when word order is relatively fi xed at clause
level. For various examples of cleft and pseudo-cleft structures, see sections 5.1.1.3
and 5.1.2.1 of this chapter.
The above strategies are potentially available for resolving the tension between word
order and communicative function. In practice, syntactic and semantic considera-
tions often override or interact with communicative considerations to produce struc-
tures that do not follow the arrangement of the source text.
I have to admit that it is very diffi cult indeed to fi nd clear examples of any of the
above strategies in authentic translations. If anything, the most common strategy by
far seems to be to abandon the thematic organization of the source text in favour of
adhering to whatever word-order principles may be operating in the target language.
In other words, most translators seem to give priority to the syntactic principles of the
target language rather than to the communicative structure of the source text.
Generally speaking, this strategy does not, in itself, seem to interfere with the
natural fl ow of information in the target text. In his study of Portuguese and English
versions of Brazilian academic abstracts, Johns (1991:6) found that abandoning the
thematic organization of the source language, in this case Portuguese, ‘often gives
a perfectly acceptable English text’. In outlining the strategies potentially available to
a translator, I am therefore not suggesting that translators should necessarily follow
the thematic organization of every clause in the source text. Nor am I suggesting
that these strategies are in fact used by professional translators in any signifi cant
way; one has to acknowledge that, in spite of being available in theory, they are in
fact rarely used in practice. What I am suggesting, however, is that an awareness of
aspects of information fl ow and potential ways of resolving tension between syntactic
and communicative functions is important in translation. The fact that certain strat-
egies which can be shown to be useful in translation tend not to be made use of
suggests that translators are simply not aware of them, rather than that they are
familiar with them but consciously or subconsciously choose not to use them.
To sum up, a translator cannot always follow the thematic organization of the
original. If at all possible, and unless the translation is designed to achieve a different
effect, he or she should make an effort to present the target text from a perspective
similar to that of the source text. But certain features of syntactic structure such as
restrictions on word order, the principle of end-weight and the natural phraseology
of the target language often mean that the thematic organization of the source text
has to be abandoned. What matters at the end of the day is that the target text has
some thematic organization of its own, that it reads naturally and smoothly, does not
distort the information structure of the original (see 5.1.2 above) and that it preserves,
where possible, any special emphasis signalled by marked structures in the original
and maintains a coherent point of view as a text in its own right.

TEXTUAL EQUIVALENCE: THEMATIC AND INFORMATION STRUCTURES 181
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s 1. John Le Carré’s novel The Russia House opens with the following three
paragraphs (1989:17–18):
In a broad Moscow street not two hundred yards from the
Leningrad station, on the upper fl oor of an ornate and hideous
hotel built by Stalin in the style known to Muscovites as Empire
During the Plague, the British Council’s fi rst ever audio fair for
the teaching of the English language and the spread of British
culture was grinding to its excruciating end. The time was half
past fi ve, the summer weather erratic. After fi erce rain showers
all day long, a false sunlight was blazing in the puddles and
raising vapours from the pavements. Of the passers-by, the
younger ones wore jeans and sneakers, but their elders were still
huddled in their warms.
The room the Council had rented was not expensive but neither
was it appropriate to the occasion. I have seen it – Not long ago, in
Moscow on quite another mission, I tiptoed up the great empty
staircase and, with a diplomatic passport in my pocket, stood in
the eternal dusk that shrouds old ballrooms when they are asleep
– With its plump brown pillars and gilded mirrors, it was better
suited to the last hours of a sinking liner than the launch of a
great initiative. On the ceiling, snarling Russians in proletarian
caps shook their fi sts at Lenin. Their vigour contrasted unhelp-
fully with the chipped green racks of sound cassettes along the
walls, featuring Winnie-the-Pooh and Advanced Computer English
in Three Hours. The sack-cloth sound-booths, locally procured
and lacking many of their promised features, had the sadness of
deck chairs on a rainy beach. The exhibitors’ stands, crammed
under the shadow of an overhanging gallery, seemed as blas-
phemous as betting shops in a tabernacle.
Nevertheless a fair of sorts had taken place. People had come,
as Moscow people do, provided they have the documents and
status to satisfy the hard-eyed boys in leather jackets at the door.
Out of politeness. Out of curiosity. To talk to Westerners. Because
it is there. And now on the fi fth and fi nal evening the great farewell
cocktail party of exhibitors and invited guests was getting into its
stride. A handful of the small nomenclatura of the Soviet cultural
bureaucracy was gathering under the chandelier, the ladies in
their beehive hairstyles and fl owered frocks designed for slenderer
frames, the gentlemen slimmed by the shiny French-tailored suits
that signifi ed access to the special clothing stores. Only their
British hosts, in despondent shades of grey, observed the monotone
of socialist austerity. The hubbub rose, a brigade of pinafored

182 IN OTHER WORDS
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s governesses distributed the curling salami sandwiches and warm
white wine. A senior British diplomat who was not quite the
Ambassador shook the better hands and said he was delighted.
Imagine that you have been asked to translate Le Carré’s novel into your
target language. You have not yet read the whole novel – and you would
normally read a text all the way through before you seriously get down to
translating it. However, you decide that it might be helpful to ‘warm up’ to
Le Carré by translating a few extracts to get the hang of his unusual style.
Translate the above extract into your target language and comment on
any diffi culties involved in maintaining the fl ow of information in terms of
thematic and information structures. You should pay particular attention to
marked information structures in the third paragraph. How does Le Carré’s
manipulation of English syntax foreground certain items of information?
Can this be successfully conveyed in your target language?
2. The following extract is from Swee Chai Ang, From Beirut to Jeru-
salem: A Woman Surgeon with the Palestinians (1989:299–300). This
book gives a fi rst -hand account of death and suffering in Palestinian
refugee camps in war- torn Beirut in the 1980s. Ms Ang, a surgeon,
volunteered to provide medical assistance to Palestinians and was with
them during the Israeli invasion of West Beirut in 1982. She also lived
through the appalling 1982 massacres in the Sabra and Shatila camps.
Since then, she has returned repeatedly to Lebanon and the Occupied
Territories to help Palestinians.
Israeli bomber planes were breaking the sound barrier in south
Lebanon. Villages in the south, as well as the Palestinian refugee
camps, were attacked. In May 1988, two thousand Israeli troops
crossed into southern Lebanon. People in Lebanon told me: ‘The
Israelis failed to stifl e the uprising in the occupied territories, so
they take it out on us by threatening to invade Lebanon again.’
It was a multi-pronged attack on the Palestinians in Lebanon.
Saida and the south were bombed by Israeli aeroplanes, and
shelled from the sea by Israeli gunboats. The Beirut camps were
attacked from the mountains, not by the Israelis, but by anti-PLO
forces. Shatila and Bourj el-Brajneh were shelled incessantly
from the month of May 1988. Both camps were fl attened; homes
and hospitals demolished.
Shatila fi nally collapsed on 27 June 1988, followed by Bourj
el-Brajneh a few days later. I got the news of the fall of Shatila in
London, having just returned from a fund-raising trip in the Gulf
countries. People all over the Gulf wanted to support the uprising
and build hospitals and clinics to mend the wounds of the Pales-

TEXTUAL EQUIVALENCE: THEMATIC AND INFORMATION STRUCTURES 183
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s tinians. What can I say? Each time I think of Shatila, I still cry. It
was nearly six years since I fi rst met the people of Sabra and
Shatila. My understanding of the Palestinians began with them.
It was they who taught a naive woman surgeon the meaning of
justice. It was they who inspired me to struggle incessantly for a
better world. Each time I felt like giving up, they would strengthen
me with their example.
the uprising:
Saida:
PLO:
Bourj el-Brajneh:
commonly known in the West as the intifada
– the Palestinian uprising against Israeli
occupation in Gaza and the West Bank of
Jordan
Lebanese town
Palestine Liberation Organization
Palestinian refugee camp
Imagine that you have been asked to translate the above extract for
inclusion in a review of the book, to be published in one of the leading
newspapers in your country. Various reviews of the book in English
papers have suggested that the poignancy of Dr Ang’s narrative is
enhanced by her unadorned style, by her awkward, artless prose which
has the raw immediacy of everyday speech. Consider how this straight-
to-the-point, free-from-rhetoric, ‘artless’ style is reflected in the
simplicity of the thematic and information structures in the above
extract. How does the contrast between this general feature and the
build-up of emotion, culminating in marked thematic structures towards
the end of the extract, enhance the emotional impact of the message?
How successfully are these features refl ected in your target version?
3. The Project for the New American Century is a neoconservative think
tank that exercised considerable infl uence on US foreign policy between
1997 and 2006. Imagine that you have been asked to translate its
Statement of Principles into your target language, for inclusion in a
forthcoming volume of scholarly articles intended to critique American
foreign policy under George W. Bush (2001–2009). The Statement,
reproduced in full below, is available at www.newamericancentury.org/
statementofprinciples.htm.
Statement of Principles
June 3, 1997
American foreign and defense policy is adrift. Conservatives have
criticized the incoherent policies of the Clinton Administration.

184 IN OTHER WORDS
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s They have also resisted isolationist impulses from within their
own ranks. But conservatives have not confi dently advanced a
strategic vision of America’s role in the world. They have not set
forth guiding principles for American foreign policy. They have
allowed differences over tactics to obscure potential agreement
on strategic objectives. And they have not fought for a defense
budget that would maintain American security and advance
American interests in the new century.
We aim to change this. We aim to make the case and rally support
for American global leadership.
As the 20th century draws to a close, the United States stands as
the world’s preeminent power. Having led the West to victory in
the Cold War, America faces an opportunity and a challenge:
Does the United States have the vision to build upon the achieve-
ments of past decades? Does the United States have the resolve to
shape a new century favorable to American principles and
interests?
We are in danger of squandering the opportunity and failing the
challenge. We are living off the capital – both the military invest-
ments and the foreign policy achievements – built up by past
administrations. Cuts in foreign affairs and defense spending,
inattention to the tools of statecraft, and inconstant leadership
are making it increasingly diffi cult to sustain American infl uence
around the world. And the promise of short-term commercial
benefi ts threatens to override strategic considerations. As a conse-
quence, we are jeopardizing the nation’s ability to meet present
threats and to deal with potentially greater challenges that lie
ahead.
We seem to have forgotten the essential elements of the Reagan
Administration’s success: a military that is strong and ready to
meet both present and future challenges; a foreign policy that
boldly and purposefully promotes American principles abroad;
and national leadership that accepts the United States’ global
responsibilities.
Of course, the United States must be prudent in how it exercises
its power. But we cannot safely avoid the responsibilities of global
leadership or the costs that are associated with its exercise.
America has a vital role in maintaining peace and security in

TEXTUAL EQUIVALENCE: THEMATIC AND INFORMATION STRUCTURES 185
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s Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. If we shirk our responsibil-
ities, we invite challenges to our fundamental interests. The
history of the 20th century should have taught us that it is
important to shape circumstances before crises emerge, and to
meet threats before they become dire. The history of this century
should have taught us to embrace the cause of American
leadership.
Our aim is to remind Americans of these lessons and to draw their
consequences for today. Here are four consequences:
• we need to increase defense spending signifi cantly if we are
to carry out our global responsibilities today and modernize
our armed forces for the future;
• we need to strengthen our ties to democratic allies and to
challenge regimes hostile to our interests and values;
• we need to promote the cause of political and economic
freedom abroad;
• we need to accept responsibility for America’s unique role in
preserving and extending an international order friendly to
our security, our prosperity, and our principles.
Such a Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity
may not be fashionable today. But it is necessary if the United
States is to build on the successes of this past century and to
ensure our security and our greatness in the next.
When you have translated the text, comment on the ease or diffi culty of
maintaining the contrastive thematic choices of we and they and any
resulting loss or shift in thematic patterning. You might also like to
consider the various senses of we (inclusive of the American nation,
exclusive to the group which drafted the Statement) and whether these
senses can be maintained in your translation while retaining the repe-
tition of the same pronoun as theme.

186 IN OTHER WORDS
SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING
On Halliday’s model of thematic and information structures
Eggins, Suzanne (2004) An Introduction to Systemic Functional Linguistics, second edition,
London: Continuum. Chapter 1: ‘The Grammar of Textual Meaning: Theme’.
Halliday, M. A. K. (1985) An Introduction to Functional Grammar, London: Edward Arnold.
Chapter 3: ‘Clause as Message’, and Chapter 8: ‘Beside the Clause: Intonation and
Rhythm’.
Young, David (1980) The Structure of English Clauses, London: Hutchinson. Chapter 12:
‘Theme’.
On functional sentence perspective
Firbas, Jan (1986) ‘On the Dynamics of Written Communication in the Light of the Theory of
Functional Sentence Perspective’, in C. R. Cooper and S. Greenbaum (eds) Studying
Writing: Linguistic Approaches, New York: Sage, 40–71.
Firbas, Jan (1992) Functional Sentence Perspective in Written and Spoken Communi-
cation, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
For a general overview and discussion of aspects of information fl ow
Brown, Gillian and George Yule (1983) Discourse Analysis, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press. Chapter 4 : ‘“Staging” and the Representation of Discourse Structure’,
and Chapter 5 : ‘Information Structure’.
Fries, Peter H. (1983) ‘On the Status of Theme in English: Arguments from Discourse’, in
J. S. Petöfi and E. Sözer (eds) Micro and Macro Connexity of Texts, Hamburg: Helmut
Buske, 116–152.
Ward, Gregory and Betty Birner (2005) ‘Information Structure and Non-canonical Syntax’,
in Laurence R. Horn and Gregory Ward (eds) The Handbook of Pragmatics, Oxford:
Blackwell Reference Online. Available to subscribers at www.blackwellreference.com/
public/tocnode?id=g9780631225485_chunk_g97806312254859#citation.
On aspects of word order and information fl ow in the context of translation
De Regt, Lenart J. (2006) ‘Hebrew Syntactic Inversions and their Literary Equivalence in
English: Robert Alter’s Translations of Genesis and 1 and 2 Samuel’, Journal for the
Study of the Old Testament 30(3): 287–314.
Fawcett, Peter (1997) Translation and Language, Manchester: St. Jerome Publishing.
Chapter 8: ‘Text Structure’.
Firbas, Jan (1999) ‘Translating the Introductory Paragraph of Boris Pasternak’s Doctor
Zhivago: A Case Study in Functional Sentence Perspective’, in Gunilla Anderman and
Margaret Rogers (eds) Word, Text, Translation, Clevedon: Multilingual Matters,
129–141.
Hasselgård, Hilde (1998) ‘Thematic Structure in Translation between English and
Norwegian’, in Stig Johansson and Signe Oksefjell (eds) Corpora and Cross-linguistic
Research: Theory, Method and Case Studies, Amsterdam: Rodopi, 145–167.

TEXTUAL EQUIVALENCE: THEMATIC AND INFORMATION STRUCTURES 187
Hatim, Basil and Ian Mason (1990) Discourse and the Translator, London: Longman.
Chapter 10: ‘Discourse Texture’, pages 212–222: ‘Thematisation: Functional Sentence
Perspective’.
Lorés Sanz, Rosa (2003) ‘The Translation of Tourist Literature: The Case of
Connectors’, Multilingua 22(3): 291–308.
Mason, Ian (1994/2010) ‘Discourse, Ideology and Translation’, in Robert de Beaugrande,
Abdullah Shunnaq and Mohamed Heliel (eds) Language, Discourse and Translation in
the West and Middle East, Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 23–34; reprinted, with a post-
script, in Mona Baker (ed.) Critical Readings in Translation Studies, London: Routledge,
83–95.
Rogers, Margaret (2006) ‘Structuring Information in English: A Specialist Translation
Perspective on Sentence Beginnings’, The Translator 12(1): 29–64.
Schmid, Monika S. (1999) Translating the Elusive. Marked Word Order and Subjectivity in
English–German Translation, Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Williams, Ian A. (2009) ‘Discourse Style and Theme–Rheme Progression in Biomedical
Research Article Discussions: A Corpus-based Contrastive Study of Translational and
Non-translational Spanish’, Languages in Contrast 9(2): 225–266.
NOTES
1 The subject of a clause is traditionally defi ned as the noun group which refers to the
person or thing that does the action. More accurately, it is the noun group which usually
comes in front of the verb group in English and with which the verb agrees in terms of
number, person and, in some languages, gender:
Ellen laughed.
Her sudden death had surprised everybody.
Blue suits you.
This view has been challenged by a number of workers.
The predicator is the verb or verb group in a clause:
Bob coughed.
He had always liked Mr Phillips.
What am I doing? I’m looking out of the window.
An object is a noun or noun group which refers to a person or thing, other than the
subject, which is involved in or affected by the action of the verb:
My questions angered the crowd.
The trial raised a number of questions.
She had friends.
The object of an active clause can often be made the subject of a passive clause:
The crowd were angered by my questions.
A number of questions were raised by the trial.

188 IN OTHER WORDS
A complement is a noun group or an adjective which comes after a link verb such as
be, remain and look and gives more information about the subject:
The results of the experiment remain a secret.
We were very happy.
A complement may also give more information about the object:
They’re driving me crazy.
She painted her eyelids deep blue.
An adjunct is a word or group of words added to a clause to give more information
about the circumstances of an event or situation, for instance in terms of time, place or
manner:
I’ve been here all night.
Donald was lying on the bed.
He acted very clumsily.
All examples from the Collins COBUILD English Grammar (Sinclair 1990).
2 But see section 5.2.3 for a discussion of the potential tension between word order and
communicative function.
3 But see section 5.1.1.3 (c).
4 See note 1 above.
5 On the other hand, the noun or noun group functioning as subject can be selected as
theme. This can be done by using an it-structure such as It was John who told me about
it. The theme in it-structures is not It but the noun or noun group which comes after the
verb to be. In effect, an it-structure selects what would have been the subject as a
marked theme. See discussion of predicated theme later in this section.
6 Fronted adjuncts can also signal contrast: In China, the book received a great deal of
publicity (but in other places it didn’t).
7 Accessed through the Translational English Corpus. Available at www.llc.manchester.
ac.uk/ctis/research/english-corpus/.
8 I am unable to trace the date of publication.
9 The only instance in which Halliday seems to depart from this position is in a brief
discussion of postposed theme, which he calls substitution (1967). He gives
examples such as They don’t match, these colours and He’s always late, John is and
suggests that substitution ‘reverses the normal sequence of theme–rheme and intro-
duces a delayed theme after the remainder of the message’ (ibid.:240). He further
explains that the meaning of this structure ‘is, as it were, “fi rst I’ll say what I have to say
and then I’ll remind you what I’m talking about”’ (ibid.).
10 I use ‘partial circularity’ rather than ‘circularity’ because initial position is identifi ed inde-
pendently of theme. I am grateful to Mike Hoey for drawing my attention to this.
11 Languages are usually classifi ed according to their normal ordering of clause elements.
For instance, English is classifi ed as an SVO language because the normal order of
clause elements in English is subject–verb–object. Japanese is classifi ed as an SOV
language because the normal order in Japanese is subject–object–verb.

TEXTUAL EQUIVALENCE: THEMATIC AND INFORMATION STRUCTURES 189
12 A verb in Harway can only be followed (optionally) by a locative (Comrie 1987).
13 It is fair to say that Halliday’s view is also shared by some linguists interested in
languages with relatively free word order, for example German. Herbst et al. (1979:166)
report that ‘some linguists … have suggested that the status of theme should be
assigned to the element in initial position in all cases’.
14 Anaphoric reference involves using a word or phrase to refer back to another word or
phrase that occurred earlier in the text, for example John is a scientist. He studied
physics at university, where He refers back to John. For a detailed discussion of
anaphoric reference, see Chapter 6, section 6.1.
15 For a specifi c discussion of problems associated with the principles of end-focus and
end-weight in German–English translation see Snell-Hornby (1985).
16 I am grateful to the late Tim Johns, University of Birmingham, for providing all the data
from Brazilian academic abstracts and for assisting me with the analysis of relevant
extracts. This particular extract is from Ciência e cultura (1980), 32(8): 1094.
17 Halliday and Hasan recognize that punctuation plays a role in signalling information
structure, but suggest that it cannot express it fully in English and that ‘most punctuation
practice is a kind of compromise between information structure (punctuating according
to intonation) and sentence structure (punctuating according to the grammar)’
(1976:325).
18 Functional sentence perspective is sometimes used as a cover term for any approach
based on a theme–rheme or given–new type of analysis. For most linguists, however, it
applies only to the work of Prague scholars such as Mathesius, Firbas and Daneš.
19 For a more detailed discussion of FSP theory, see Firbas (1974, 1986, 1999).
20 Jan Firbas is a Brno scholar, but he works within the Prague theoretical tradition.
21 Weil did not actually use the terms ‘theme’ and ‘rheme’; Firbas only reports him as using
‘initial notion’ and ‘goal of discourse’.
22 Halliday expresses a totally different view of the importance of FSP in English. For
instance, when claiming that an unmarked theme in English is one that signals the mood
of the clause (see 5.1.1.3), he says:
It may not be unreasonable to suggest that the preference for the ‘inverted’ inter-
rogative structure in English, by contrast with a number of other languages that
have basically the same resources, is due to the relative importance assigned to
thematic organisation in the syntax of the English clause.
(1976:180)
23 Mike Hoey (personal communication) suggests that, compared to languages such as
Portuguese and Arabic which can easily and naturally thematize verbs, that is pro cesses,
English is a rather clumsy language for reporting scientifi c research.

CHAPTER 6
Textual equivalence: cohesion
Each language has its own patterns to convey the interrelationships of persons and events; in no
language may these patterns be ignored, if the translation is to be understood by its readers.
(Callow 1974:30)
The topic of cohesion … has always appeared to me the most useful constituent of discourse
analysis or text linguistics applicable to translation.
(Newmark 1987:295)
The last chapter dealt with one type of connectivity which helps to distinguish text
from non-text, namely thematic and information structure. In this chapter, we
resume our discussion of translation diffi culties and strategies at the level of text by
looking at cohesion, the second feature of text organization which was mentioned at
the end of Chapter 4.
Cohesion is the network1 of lexical, grammatical and other relations which
provide links between various parts of a text. These relations or ties organize and, to
some extent, create a text, for instance by requiring the reader to interpret words
and expressions by reference to other words and expressions in the surrounding
sentences and paragraphs.2 Cohesion is a surface relation; it connects together the
actual words and expressions that we can see or hear (cf. coherence, Chapter 7).
This chapter draws heavily on the best known and most detailed model of cohesion
available: the model outlined by Halliday and Hasan in Cohesion in English (1976).
It is worth noting, however, that other models have been proposed by various
linguists (see, for instance, Callow 1974, Gutwinski 1976, de Beaugrande and
Dressler 1981, Hoey 1988, 1991).
Halliday and Hasan identify fi ve main cohesive devices in English: reference,
substitution, ellipsis, conjunction and lexical cohesion. Each device is explained
below in some detail, followed by an attempt to explore its relevance to translation.
6.1 REFERENCE
The term reference is traditionally used in semantics for the relationship which
holds between a word and what it points to in the real world. The reference of chair
would therefore be a particular chair that is being identifi ed on a particular occasion.
In Halliday and Hasan’s model of cohesion, reference is used in a similar but more

TEXTUAL EQUIVALENCE: COHESION 191
restricted way. Instead of denoting a direct relationship between words and extra-
linguistic objects, reference is limited here to the relationship of identity which holds
between two linguistic expressions. For example, in
Mrs Thatcher has resigned. She announced her decision this morning
the pronoun she points to Mrs Thatcher within the textual world itself. Reference, in
the textual rather than the semantic sense, occurs when the reader has to retrieve the
identity of what is being talked about by referring to another expression in the imme-
diate context. The resulting cohesion ‘lies in the continuity of reference, whereby the
same thing enters into the discourse a second time’ (Halliday and Hasan 1976:31).
Every language has certain items which have the property of reference in the
textual sense. These reference items have the potential for directing readers to look
elsewhere for their interpretation. The most common reference items in English and
a large number of other languages are pronouns. Third-person pronouns are
frequently used to refer back (and occasionally forward) to an entity which has
already been introduced (or is about to be introduced) into the discourse. Apart from
personal reference, English also uses items such as the, this and those to establish
similar links between expressions in a text. In
Mrs Thatcher has resigned. This delighted her opponents
the reader has to go back to the previous stretch of discourse to establish what This
refers to.
Reference, then, is a device that allows the reader or hearer to trace partici-
pants, entities, events and so on in a text. One of the most common patterns of
establishing chains of reference in English and a number of other languages is to
mention a participant explicitly in the fi rst instance, for example by name or title, and
then use a pronoun to refer back to the same participant in the immediate context.
Languages that have number and gender distinctions in their pronoun system are
less constrained in using this cohesive device, since different pronouns can be used
to refer to different entities within a text with less possibility of confusion. The
following example, from Agatha Christie’s Triangle at Rhodes (1936), illustrates
networks of personal reference in a short paragraph:
Hercule Poirot sat on the white sand and looked out across the
sparkling blue water. He was carefully dressed in a dandifi ed
fashion in white fl annels and a large panama hat protected his
head. He belonged to the old-fashioned generation which believed
in covering itself carefully from the sun. Miss Pamela Lyall, who
sat beside him and talked carelessly, represented the modern
school of thought in that she was wearing the barest minimum of
clothing on her sun-browned person.
(Christie 1936: 196)

192 IN OTHER WORDS
Although Halliday and Hasan use a restricted notion of reference based on textual
rather than extralinguistic relations, they still acknowledge that the relationship of
reference may be established situationally. For example, a given pronoun may refer
to an entity which is present in the context of situation rather than in the surrounding
text. First- and second-person pronouns (I, you, we in English) are typical examples
in that they do not refer back to a nominal expression in the text but to the speaker
and hearer (or writer and reader) respectively. Third-person pronouns typically refer
back (or forward) to a nominal expression in the text but may also be used to refer to
an entity which is present in the immediate physical or mental context of situation.
An utterance such as He’s not back yet is perfectly feasible provided the speaker
and hearer are clear about the identity of ‘he’, for example in the case of a couple
referring to their son.
Another type of reference relation which is not strictly textual is that of
co-reference. An example of a chain of co-referential items is Mrs Thatcher → The
Prime Minister → The Iron Lady → Maggie. Halliday and Hasan do not discuss this
type of referential linkage, and Hoey (1988:162) points out that co-reference ‘is not
strictly a linguistic feature at all but a matter of real-world knowledge’. It is of course
true that recognizing a link between Mrs Thatcher and The Iron Lady, for instance,
depends on knowledge of the world rather than on textual competence. However, it
is generally diffi cult and, for the purposes of translation not particularly helpful, to
attempt to draw a line between what is linguistic or textual and what is extralinguistic
or situational. For example, in the following extract from an article entitled ‘Cultural
Revolutionary’ (The Economist, 6–12 February 2010, p. 66), recognizing the
co-referential link between Google and the Silicon Valley fi rm is based on both
linguistic and situational knowledge:
Now Mr Lu faces a new challenge. His job at Microsoft, where he moved a
year ago, is to take on Google in the online search and advertising business,
where the Silicon Valley fi rm rules supreme.
Here, we recognize Google as a fi rm partly because we know from real world expe-
rience that it is, and partly because the fact that it is capitalized makes it a good
candidate for what is signalled, through the use of the defi nite article preceding fi rm,
as an entity already identifi ed in the text. The reference to Silicon Valley, on the
other hand, relies heavily on our knowledge of the world.
It may be useful at this point to suggest, following Halliday and Hasan, that
there is a continuum of cohesive elements that may be used for referring back to an
entity already mentioned in the discourse. This continuum stretches from full repe-
tition at one end of the scale to pronominal reference at the other. The following
example is adapted from Halliday and Hasan (1976: 283) to illustrate the point:
There’s a boy climbing that tree.
a. The boy’s going to fall if he doesn’t take care. (repetition)
b. The lad’s going to fall if he doesn’t take care. (synonym)

TEXTUAL EQUIVALENCE: COHESION 193
c. The child’s going to fall if he doesn’t take care. (superordinate)
d. The idiot’s going to fall if he doesn’t take care. (general word)
e. He’s going to fall if he doesn’t take care. (pronominal reference)
Co-reference can be incorporated somewhere around the repetition/synonym level
of the continuum if we decide to adopt a more fl exible notion of reference for our
current purposes.
Patterns of reference (also known as anaphora) can vary considerably both
within and across languages. Within the same language, text type seems to be an
important factor in determining the choice of pattern. Fox (1986) examined patterns
of reference in three genres of American English: spontaneous conversation, written
expository prose and written fast-paced popular narratives. She found that ‘the
distribution of pronoun versus full noun phrase differed dramatically from one
discourse type to the next’ (ibid.:27). Based on an extensive study of the language
of advertising in English, Cook (1992:154) explains the preference in advertising for
repeating the name of the product instead of using a pronominal reference such as
it as follows:
One obvious function of repetition is to fi x the name of the product in the
mind, so that it will come to the lips of the purchaser lost for a name. But
nominal repetition is also an index of rank, esteem, intimacy or self-
confi dence: consider the repetition of names in ceremonies, prayers, by
lovers, or by arrogant individuals who just ‘like the sound of their own name’.
Each language thus has what we might call general preferences for certain patterns
of reference as well as specifi c preferences that are sensitive to text type.
In terms of broad, language-specifi c preferences, Callow (1974) explains that
Hebrew, unlike English, prefers to use proper names to trace participants through
a discourse. So, where English would normally use a pronoun to refer to a
par ticipant who has already been introduced, provided there is no possibility of
confusing reference, Hebrew is more likely to repeat the participant’s name. Simi-
larly, she explains, for the Bororos of Brazil the normal pattern is to refer to a
participant by using a noun several times in succession before eventually shifting
into a pronominal form.
Unlike English, which tends to rely heavily on pronominal reference in tracing
participants, Brazilian Portuguese generally seems to favour more lexical repetition.
In addition, Portuguese infl ects verbs for person and number. This grammatical
feature provides additional means of relating processes and actions to specifi c
participants without the use of independent pronouns. The following example is from
an article on Akio Morita, Chairman of the Sony Corporation. The article was
published in the English and Portuguese editions of Playboy magazine. References
to Akio Morita are highlighted in both extracts (and the back-translation), with the
exception of verb infl ections in Portuguese. Items in angle brackets are not in the
Portuguese text – they are inserted to make the back-translation readable.

194 IN OTHER WORDS
English text:
Surrounded by the toys and the gadgets of his calling – tape recorders,
mini television sets, world-band radios – he is the quintessential
Japanese combination that has conquered the world: a tinkerer
turned businessman.
As the eldest son of a wealthy sake and soy-sauce producer in
conservative Nagoya, he was expected to take over the family
business – and perhaps become the 15th generation of Morita Mayors
in the local community. Instead, he spent his time taking apart clocks
and listening to Western classical music and preferred the study of
physics to business. During World War Two, he went into naval
research as a lieutenant, working on a thermal-guided missile and
other projects, and it was there that he met his future partner, Ibuka.
After the war, the two set up a business after a false start in the home-
appliance market – manufacturing rice cookers. Total production:
100. Total sales: 0.
Portuguese text:
Produto de uma cultura que valoriza a sutileza e as maneiras indi-
retas, Morita, com seu jeito franco, é a ponte ideal entre o Japão e o
Ocidente.
Filho mais velho de um próspero produtor de óleo de soja e de
saquê, em Nagoya, os pais de Morita esperavam que ele assumisse o
controle dos negócios da famlia. Ao invés disso, Morita passava o
tempo desmontando relógios, ouvindo música clássica ocidental e
preferindo estudar Fisica a se meter em negócios. Durante a Segunda
Guerra Mundial dedicou-se à pesquisa naval, como civil, e foi nessa
época que fez a sociedade numa fábrica de panelas de cozinhar arroz.
Produção total: 100 panelas. Total de vendas: 0.
Product of a culture that values subtlety and indirect manners,
Morita, with his frank way, is an ideal bridge between Japan and
the West:
The eldest son of a prosperous producer of soya oil and saki, in
Nagoya, the parents of Morita expected that he should take over the
control of the family business. Instead of this, Morita spent the time
taking clocks apart, listening to Western classical music and preferring
to study physics to putting himself into business. During the Second
World War dedicated himself to naval research, as a civilian,
and it was in this period that made a partnership in a factory of
rice cooking pots. Total production: 100 pots. Total sales: 0.

TEXTUAL EQUIVALENCE: COHESION 195
The fi rst sentence in each of the above extracts occurs at the end of the paragraph
immediately before the one we are examining.3 The two sentences are not ‘equiva-
lents’ of each other, but they are quoted here to show that, in spite of the fact that
the last mention of the particular participant being traced is by pronominal reference
in the English version and by a proper noun in the Portuguese version, English still
prefers to pick up the reference in the new paragraph by means of a pronoun while
Portuguese prefers lexical repetition. Within the main paragraph under examination,
Portuguese further repeats Morita twice while English persists in using pronominal
reference. Note that the fi nite verbs in the Portuguese text establish additional
cohesive links with Morita because they are marked for person.
In some languages, such as Japanese and Chinese, a totally different pattern
seems to be in operation. Pronouns are hardly ever used, and once a participant is
introduced, continuity of reference is signalled by omitting the subjects of following
clauses. This is a sort of default mechanism which tells the reader that the par ticipant
last mentioned or, alternatively, the one in focus or the one that can be inferred on
grounds of logic or context, is the subject of the following clause(s) unless otherwise
indicated (see discussion of theme and Chinese-style topic in Chapter 5, section
5.1.1.4). In the following example from Palace and Politics in Prewar Japan (Titus
1974:23), we already know that the person addressed is the Emperor. The reader
has to provide all the missing subjects and create his or her own chains of reference.
Possible subjects and other pronominal references are inserted here in angle
brackets for the reader’s benefi t – they do not appear in the Japanese text:
いちばんむきつけだったのは、三等侍補の米田虎雄だった。「平素
御馬術を好ませてもうほどに政治上に叡慮を注がせたまわば、今日
のごとく世上より二三大臣の政治などいわるることはあるまじくと
つねに苦慮つかまつりおれり」。
The most blunt one was Komeda Torao who was the third Jiho. ‘If the
pours wise consideration into politics
as much as likes riding in daily life, I would not think
that would have been said as ‘two three ministers’
polities’ by the public. So sincerely concerned.
The English translation (Titus 1974:20) naturally tries to approximate as much as
possible to English patterns of cohesion:
Komeda Torao, Jiho of the third rank, was the most blunt: ‘If in the past [Your
Majesty] had shown as much care for politics as he had passion for horse-
manship, no such criticism from the public as “politics by two or three
Ministers” would have occurred.’
Note the various rewordings and omissions in the English version. These allow the
translator to use a chain of reference which is typical of English (Your Majesty → he)

196 IN OTHER WORDS
as well as avoid creating other chains which can only be inferred. The square
brackets around Your Majesty in the English translation are presumably meant to
alert the reader to the fact that the expression does not occur in the original, or that
the translator is ‘guessing’ what might fi ll the subject slot in this case. Note also the
use of the colon after blunt to provide additional cohesion.
The above examples illustrate that different preferences exist across languages
for certain general patterns of reference. But these preferences can also be genre-
specifi c; a good example of a pattern which is both language- and genre-specifi c is
explained in Hatim and Mason (1990:97):
It is a recognised text convention governing the fi eld of discourse of news
reporting/investigative journalism in French that a concept referred to in a
noun phrase will not be expressed in the same way twice running in a text.
Thus, le dollar américan will, in a subsequent lexicalisation, become le billet
vert; le Président de la République will become, as well as the anaphoric il,
perhaps le chef de l’Etat or even l’Elyée see.
6.2 SUBSTITUTION AND ELLIPSIS
Unlike reference, substitution and ellipsis are grammatical rather than semantic rela-
tionships. In substitution, an item (or items) is replaced by another item (or items):
I like movies.
And I do.
In the above example, do is a substitute for like movies. Items commonly used in
substitution in English include do, one and the same, as in the following examples
from Halliday and Hasan (1976:89, 105):
You think Joan already knows? – I think everybody does. (Does replaces
knows)
My axe is too blunt. I must get a sharper one. (One replaces axe).
A: I’ll have two poached eggs on toast, please.
B: I’ll have the same. (The same replaces two poached eggs on toast).
Ellipsis involves the omission of an item. In other words, in ellipsis, an item is
replaced by nothing. This is a case of leaving something unsaid which is never-
theless understood. It does not include every instance in which the hearer or reader
has to provide missing information, but only those cases where the grammatical
structure itself points to an item or items that can fi ll the slot in question. Here are
some examples of ellipsis:

TEXTUAL EQUIVALENCE: COHESION 197
Joan brought some carnations, and Catherine some sweet peas. (ellipted
item: brought in second clause)
Here are thirteen cards. Take any. Now give me any three. (ellipted items:
card after any in second clause and cards after any three in third clause)
Have you been swimming? – Yes, I have. (ellipted items: been swimming
in second clause)
(Halliday and Hasan 1976:143, 158, 167)
The following example of ellipsis comes from an article entitled ‘Wolf Wars’, by
Douglas H. Chadwick, which appeared in the March 2010 issue of National
Geographic (p. 38):
In 1995 and 1996, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service captured wolves in
Canada and released them into 2.2-million-acre Yellowstone National Park
and central Idaho’s wilderness areas. The unprecedented federal action trig-
gered such an eruption of hope, fear, resentment, lawsuits, and headline
news that most people assume the whole return of the wolf to the West
began that way. It didn’t, but those reintroductions worked like a rocket
booster. Populations grew, and the war escalated.
Halliday and Hasan give a detailed description of several types of substitution and
ellipsis in English. Since substitution and ellipsis are purely grammatical relations
which hold between linguistic forms rather than between linguistic forms and their
meanings, the details are highly language-specifi c and are therefore not worth going
into here.
Note that the boundary lines between the three types of cohesive device
(reference, substitution and ellipsis) are not clear cut. Hoey (1991) gives the
following example. A question such as Does Agatha sing in the bath? may elicit
three answers, of which answer (a) is an example of substitution, answer (b) of
ellipsis and answer (c) of reference:
(a) No, but I do.
(b) Yes, she does.
(c) Yes, she does it to annoy us, I think.
Answer (b) is an example of ellipsis because does cannot be said to be a substitute
for sing in the above question. The ellipted items in Yes, she does are sing in the
bath. The fuzziness of the boundaries and the technical differences between the
three types of cohesive device need not concern us here; after all, they may not
even operate in the same way in other languages. At this stage, the translator need
only be aware that there are different devices in different languages for creating

198 IN OTHER WORDS
‘texture’, and that a text hangs together by virtue of the semantic and structural rela-
tionships that hold between its elements. This has clear implications in practice.
Every language has its own battery of devices for creating links between textual
elements. Unless the translator is carrying out some kind of linguistic exercise, for
instance for research purposes, transferring the devices used in the source text into
the target text will not do. Under normal circumstances, what is required is a
reworking of the methods of establishing links to suit the textual norms of the target
language. The grammatical system of each language will itself encourage the use of
certain devices in preference to others. The textual norms of each genre will further
suggest certain options and rule out others that are grammatically acceptable and
may, in other genres, be textually acceptable as well.
Here is an example of the way in which changes at this textual level are normally
handled, consciously or subconsciously, by a professional translator. The original
text is Arabic, the target text is English. It is part of a document explaining arbitration
procedures at the International Centre for Arbitration in Cairo.
Arabic original:

.

.
Back-translation of Arabic:
If thirty days elapse from the date on which one of the parties received
a proposal submitted according to the fi rst item without the parties
agreeing to appoint the one arbitrator, his appointment is done by
the appointing authority which the parties agreed to name. If the
parties had not agreed on the naming of the appointing authority, or
if the authority which they agreed on nominating declines to appoint
the arbitrator or is unable to nominate him within sixty days of the
date of receiving the request which one of the parties presented to it
in this regard, each of the parties may ask the Secretary-General of
the Permanent Arbitration Court to nominate an appointing
authority.
English translation:
If thirty days elapse from the date on which either party received a
proposal – submitted according to the fi rst item [(a)] – without the
two parties agreeing on appointing one arbitrator, the authority

TEXTUAL EQUIVALENCE: COHESION 199
nominated by the two parties undertakes to appoint the arbitrator. If
the parties had not agreed on nominating such authority, or if the
nominated authority declines to appoint an arbitrator or is unable to
nominate one within sixty days of its receipt of either party’s request
to that effect, both parties may ask the Secretary-General of the
Permanent Arbitration Court to nominate an appointing authority.
The length and complexity of the sentences in the above extracts, and hence the
potential diffi culty of tracing participants, makes it necessary to use a variety of
devices for establishing cohesive links in both texts. The level of linkage is quite
dense in both extracts, but there are striking differences in the choice of devices
used in each case. Arabic uses a number of devices which cannot be easily repre-
sented in back-translation. For instance, all verbs agree with their subjects in gender
and number, which means that links between the two are clear even when they are
separated by a number of embedded clauses with their own subjects and verbs. In
addition to using the equivalent of ‘which’ to establish linkage, as in ‘receiving the
request which one of the parties presented to it’, the verb that follows is further
suffi xed for pronominal reference (literally: ‘which one of the parties presented-it-
masculine to it-feminine’). With ‘request’ being a masculine noun and ‘authority’ a
feminine noun in Arabic, the referential chains are not confused. The grammatical
structure of Arabic therefore favours pronominal reference as a common device for
tracing participants and establishing cohesive links in general.4 In addition, however,
this type of text tends to favour a high level of lexical repetition, and so the Arabic
noun for ‘parties’, which is marked for duality, is repeated even in instances where
no ambiguity would arise from using a pronoun or pronominal suffi x.
English, like most languages, will generally use whatever means are necessary
to reduce ambiguity in tracing participants. Unlike the Arabic grammatical system,
the English system makes very few distinctions in terms of number, gender and verb
agreement. Lexical repetition is therefore a much safer option in cases where ambi-
guity of reference may arise and in contexts which do not tolerate ambiguity in
general and ambiguity of reference in particular. In legal and semi-legal texts, it has
become the norm to use lexical repetition even in instances where no ambiguity
might result from using pronominal reference. Although the Arabic text makes
considerable use of pronominal reference, there are no instances of pronominal
reference at all in the English text. It would be possible, but textually odd, to replace
several of the lexical repetitions in the English text with the appropriate pronouns.
In addition to lexical repetition, the English version also uses substitution to
establish cohesive links (if the nominated authority declines to appoint an arbi-
trator or is unable to nominate one). There are also several instances of ellipsis. In
the example just quoted to illustrate substitution, the subject of the second clause
(‘the nominated authority/it’) is ellipted.
To reiterate: every language has its own devices for establishing cohesive links.
Language and text-type preferences must both be taken into consideration in the
process of translation. With this in mind, let us now move on to examine other types
of cohesive device that often require careful handling in translation.

200 IN OTHER WORDS
6.3 CONJUNCTION
Conjunction involves the use of formal markers to relate sentences, clauses and
paragraphs to each other. Unlike reference, substitution and ellipsis, the use of
conjunction does not instruct the reader to supply missing information either by
looking for it elsewhere in the text or by fi lling structural slots. Instead, conjunction
signals the way the writer or speaker wants the reader or hearer to relate what is
about to be said to what has been said before.
Conjunction expresses one of a small number of general relations. The main
relations are summarized below, with examples of conjunctions which can or typi-
cally realize each relation.
(a) additive: and, or, also, in addition, furthermore, besides,
similarly, likewise, by contrast, for instance;
(b) adversative: but, yet, however, instead, on the other hand,
nevertheless, at any rate, as a matter of fact;
(c) causal: so, consequently, it follows, for, because, under
the circumstances, for this reason;
(d) temporal: then, next, after that, on another occasion, in
conclusion, an hour later, fi nally, at last;
(e) continuatives
(miscellaneous):
now, of course, well, anyway, surely, after all.
A number of points need to be borne in mind here. First, the same conjunction may
be used to signal different relations, depending on the context. Second, these rela-
tions can be expressed by a variety of means; the use of a conjunction is not the only
device for expressing a temporal or causal relation, for instance. In English, a
temporal relation may be expressed by means of a verb such as follow or precede,
and a causal relation is inherent in the meanings of verbs such as cause and lead to.
In fact, a language user will often recognize a semantic relation such as time
sequence even when no explicit signal of such a relationship exists in the text. Third,
conjunctive relations do not just refl ect relations between external phenomena, but
may also be set up to refl ect relations which are internal to the text or communicative
situation. For instance, temporal relations are not restricted to sequence in real time;
they may refl ect stages in the unfolding text. A good example is the use of fi rst,
second and third in this paragraph.
There is some uncertainty in the literature as to whether conjunctions which
occur within sentences can be considered cohesive, since cohesion is considered by
some linguists to be a relation between sentences rather than within sentences (see
Halliday and Hasan 1976:232; see also note 2 of this chapter). This means that
subordinators are not, strictly speaking, considered a type of conjunction. For
example, Halliday and Hasan (ibid.:228) do not consider after a conjunction in

TEXTUAL EQUIVALENCE: COHESION 201
After they had fought the battle, it snowed.
because it subordinates one part of the sentence to another but does not directly
establish a link with another sentence. In the following example, by contrast, after-
wards is considered a conjunction because it establishes a link between two
sentences:
They fought a battle. Afterwards, it snowed.
In this book, and for the purposes of translation, it makes more sense to take a
broader view of cohesion and to consider any element cohesive as long as it signals
a conjunctive-type relation between parts of a text, whether these parts are
sentences, clauses (dependent or independent) or paragraphs. To reiterate,
subtleties of technical defi nition are not the main issue here and are not likely to
prove directly relevant in translation.
The following example from A Study of Shamanistic Practices in Japan (Blacker
1975:315) illustrates the use of conjunctions:
The shamanic practices we have investigated are rightly seen as an archaic
mysticism. On the basis of the world view uncovered by the shaman’s
faculties, with its vision of another and miraculous plane which could interact
causally with our own, the more advanced mystical intuitions of esoteric
Buddhism were able to develop.
Today, however, this world view is fast disappearing. The vision of another
plane utterly different from our own, ambivalent, perilous and beyond our
control, has faded. Instead the universe has become one-dimensional; there
is no barrier to be crossed, no mysteriously other kind of being to be met and
placated.
Languages vary tremendously in the type of conjunctions they prefer to use as well
as the frequency with which they use such items. Also, since conjunction is a device
for signalling relations between chunks of information, it is naturally bound up with
both the chunking of information, how much to say in one go, and with how the rela-
tions between such chunks of information are perceived and signalled. In fact, the
use of conjunction provides an insight into the whole logic of discourse (Smith and
Frawley 1983).
Some languages, such as German, tend to express relations through subordi-
nation and complex structures. Others, such as Chinese and Japanese, prefer to
use simpler and shorter structures and to mark the relations between these struc-
tures explicitly where necessary. One noticeable difference in the use of conjunc-
tions which is well documented in the literature is that between English and Arabic.
Compared to Arabic, English generally prefers to present information in relatively
small chunks and to signal the relationship between these chunks in unambiguous
ways, using a wide variety of conjunctions to mark semantic relations between

202 IN OTHER WORDS
clauses, sentences and paragraphs. In addition to the types of conjunction discussed
by Halliday and Hasan, English also relies on a highly developed punctuation system
to signal breaks and relations between chunks of information. Unlike English, Arabic
prefers to group information into very large grammatical chunks. It is not unusual for
Arabic paragraphs to consist of one sentence. This is partly because punctuation
and paragraphing are a relatively recent development in Arabic (Holes 1984).
Moreover, Arabic tends to use a relatively small number of conjunctions, each of
which has a wide range of meanings which depend for their interpretation on the
context, thus relying heavily on the reader’s ability to infer relationships which are
only vaguely alluded to by the writer. The most frequently used conjunctions in
Arabic are wa and fa (Al-Jubouri and Knowles 1988). According to Holes, ‘/wa/
can mark temporal sequence, simultaneous action, semantic contrast and semantic
equivalence, amongst other things; /fa/ can be a marker of temporal sequence,
logical consequence, purpose, result or concession’ (1984:234). Short sentences,
a varied array of conjunctions, and absence of the typical conjunctions (mainly wa, fa
and a few other particles) are associated with translated Arabic texts – original
Arabic texts do not normally display these features.
The following is an example of a fairly free translation into Arabic. The source
text uses no conjunctions but relies instead on punctuation devices. The translated
version conforms more to Arabic than to English norms of cohesion. Note, in
particular, the use of typical Arabic conjunctions: wa (roughly: ‘and’),5

hatha-wa
(literally: ‘this and’) and kama (roughly: ‘also’/ ‘in addition’). Note also that there are
fewer sentence breaks in the Arabic version (sentence breaks are highlighted by
slashes in both texts).
English source text (Brintons – press release issued by carpet
manufacturer):
Brintons have been manufacturing fi ne quality woven carpet over
200 years /./ They are a privately owned company specializing in
Axminster and Wilton carpets, using wool-rich blends /./ They have a
totally integrated operation from the preparation of the yarn through
to the weaving process /./ All their products are made on looms
designed and built by their own engineers, and recognized as the
most technically superior weaving plant in the World /./ Brintons are
one of the largest weavers with a production capacity in excess of
100,000 square metres per week /./
Arabic text:
200

/./

TEXTUAL EQUIVALENCE: COHESION 203

100,000
/./
Brintons company has been manufacturing the fi nest quality of
woven carpets for over 200 years, and it is a private company which
specializes in producing Axminster and Wilton carpets in which
enters a high percentage of wool /./ This and the company carries
out all steps of production in its factories, from preparing the yarn to
weaving it on looms designed and manufactured by company engi-
neers, and Brintons factories are considered the most advanced
weaving factories from the technical aspect in the whole world, also
Brintons company is considered among the largest weaving
companies with a production capacity exceeding 100,000 square
metres per week /./
The above example illustrates how conjunctions which are typically used in Arabic
discourse are added to a translation to make it smoother, even when no conjunc-
tions are used in the source text. But given the greater semantic generality of typical
Arabic conjunctions, what does an Arab translator do when faced with an array of
explicit conjunctions in the source text? Should preference be given to producing a
smooth text with typical but semantically less precise conjunctions, or should the
translator give priority to ‘meaning’ by opting for an equally varied array of conjunc-
tions with precise meanings? What happens in practice is often something in
between the two extremes outlined here. Most translators will try to do a bit of both.
Here is an example from the preface to Arab Political Humour by Kishtainy (1985).
Conjunctions are highlighted in both texts. Arabic conjunctions follow their English
back-translations in italics to show the variety of items used.
English text:
Writing on the political humour of the Arab World, past and present,
is a hazardous undertaking which I was resolved to risk, much against
the advice of many friends. Some felt a shudder at the thought of
tackling the sense of humour of the Prophet Muhammad and the
holy imams of Islam, and counselled that the subject matter should
be confi ned to modern times. Others, however, felt a similar shudder
at the thought of telling and discussing the political jokes about
contemporary leaders of the modern Arab World and advised me to
confi ne myself to the days of the Prophet and the early imams. After
all, these are men of God and are guided by his spirit of indulgence
and forgiveness. They are, furthermore, dead and buried and have
no recourse to the revenge squads despatched from the Middle East
to the four corners of the world. Yet, a full picture of Arab political

204 IN OTHER WORDS
humour truly refl ecting the psychology, thought and politics of the
Arab peoples cannot be adequately drawn without covering the
entire span of Arab history, at least from the rise of Islam.
Arabic text:

.
.

.

.
.

.

.
Writing on the topic of political humour in the Arab World, past
and present, is a task full of danger. But [laakin] I made the decision
of taking the risk, against the advice of a large number of friends to
avoid the dangers involved. For [fa] some of them felt a strong
shock just at my thinking of tackling the subject of the sense of
humour of the Prophet Muhammad and the holy imams of Islam
and advised me to confi ne my research to modern times. And [wa]
others felt a similar shock at my intention to talk about political
jokes relating to contemporary leaders of the modern Arab World
and suggested that I should confi ne myself to the days of the
Prophet and the early imams. For [fa] these, after all considera-
tions, are men of God and they follow in their indulgence and
forgiveness the spirit of God. Furthermore [thumma anna] they
are dead and cannot come back to join the revenge squads in the
Middle East and the four corners of the world. And yet [wa ma’a
thaalik], it is impossible to draw a full picture of Arab political
humour, refl ecting the psychology of the Arab peoples, their way of
thinking and their politics without casting an overall glance on
Arab history, beginning at least with the rise of Islam.
The translator of the above passage attempts, as most translators do in practice, to
strike a balance between accuracy and naturalness. At the level of cohesion, natu-
ralness is enhanced by using typical Arabic conjunctions such as wa and fa, some-
times at the expense of accuracy. For instance, using wa rather than something
closer to English however (third sentence in the English text), reads smoothly in

TEXTUAL EQUIVALENCE: COHESION 205
Arabic but sacrifi ces some of the precision of the English conjunction. On the other
hand, the direct translation of After all (Fourth sentence in the English text) into
‘after all considerations’, which is a paraphrase of the meaning of After all rather
than an established conjunction in Arabic, represents a sacrifi ce of naturalness for
the sake of accuracy.
You will have noted from the Brintons extract on page 202 that some English
texts make little or no use of conjunctions. There are often pragmatic reasons for the
preference for certain types of conjunction and the frequency with which conjunc-
tions are used in general. Smith and Frawley’s (1983) study of the use of conjunction
in different genres of English suggests that some genres are generally ‘more
conjunctive’ than others and that each genre has its own preferences for certain
types of conjunction. Religion and fi ction use more conjunctions than science and
journalism. Religion displays a particular preference for negative additive conjunc-
tions such as nor. Smith and Frawley explain this feature by suggesting that ‘the
high percentage of negative additive conjunctions … indicates a tendency toward
falsifi cation, the most consistent method of proof’ (1983:358). Religious texts also
make heavy use of causal conjunctions such as because, since and for. In science
and journalism, by contrast, conjunctions in general and causal conjunctions in
particular are relatively infrequent. This is partly explained by the high level of
assumed shared knowledge in science and by the need to give an impression of
objectivity in both genres. Restrictions on space and the need to avoid giving an
overt explanation of reported events which risks the danger of legal suits and liability
further restrict the use of conjunctions, particularly causal conjunctions, in
journalism.
Adjusting patterns of conjunction in line with target-language general and
specifi c text-type preferences is less straightforward than adjusting patterns of
reference. The problem with conjunction is that it refl ects the rhetoric of a text and
controls its interpretation. This suggests that adjustments in translation will often
affect both the content and the line of argumentation. Let us look at an example of
a German translation of an English text, the fi rst page of Morgan Matroc’s company
brochure: Technical Ceramics. The German version conforms to German style to
such an extent that it is generally taken by German speakers to be a very well written
‘original’. Conjunctions are highlighted in both texts.
The English source text consists of six paragraphs; the German translation, on
the other hand, consists of eleven paragraphs. This rechunking of the text may be
an idiosyncratic adjustment on the part of the German translator, as it appears that
German does not generally favour more breaks than English. Generally speaking,
rechunking is done for two main reasons: (a) the source text is divided into chunks
(whether sections, paragraphs, sentences or clauses) that are either too long or too
short in terms of target-language average chunking of similar material; or (b) the
nature of the target audience is different in terms of level of specialization, age and
so on. A text addressing an audience of specialists will tend to group information into
larger chunks than one addressing laymen or children, for instance. It may be that
the target reader of the German translation is not envisaged to have the same

206 IN OTHER WORDS
familiarity with or interest in the ceramics industry as the prospective readers of the
English version.
Moving on to the use of conjunctions, here is an initial breakdown of the ones
used in each text:
English: Today (temporal);
so (causal);
because (causal), but (adversative);
and yet (additive + adversative), however (adversative);
and fi nally (additive + temporal);
however (adversative)
German: Today (temporal);
so (causal);
on the one hand (additive, comparison), but on the other
hand (adversative + additive, comparison);
fi nally (temporal);
now (continuative, with additional force of adversative);
yet (adversative), because (causal);
and then (adversative), for this purpose (causal);
lastly (temporal);
now6 (continuative or concession – see below);
however/in any event (adversative).
Source text – English:
Today people are aware that modern ceramic materials offer unri-
valled properties for many of our most demanding industrial applica-
tions. So is this brochure necessary; isn’t the ceramic market already
over-bombarded with technical literature; why should Matroc add
more?
Because someone mumbles, ‘our competitors do it.’ But why
should we imitate our competitors when Matroc probably supplies a
greater range of ceramic materials for more applications than any
other manufacturer.
And yet there are some customers who in their search for a suitable
material prefer to study complex tables of technical data. It is for such
customers that we have listed the properties of Matroc’s more widely
used materials. Frankly however without cost guides which depend
so much on shape such an exercise is of limited value.
There are others in the market place who simply want to know
more about us and what we are doing. For them we offer illustrated
commentaries on Matroc applications in many market sectors – from
gas heaters to medical implants.

TEXTUAL EQUIVALENCE: COHESION 207
And fi nally there is a third class of customer who knows that a
brief telephone conversation with a skilled Matroc engineer and the
subsequent follow-up are more effective than 50 pages of technical
data – such customers are our life blood – as we are theirs. For them
this brochure is unnecessary.
Matroc like other Morgan subsidiaries acknowledges that
customers and engineers will have a variety of approaches to problem
solving. We hope that this publication will aid that process. We have
no doubt about the most effective route however and suggest that
the starting point should be the list of telephone numbers and
addresses on the fi nal page of this brochure.
Target text – German:
Heutzutage sind sich Fachleute völlig darüber einig,daß moderne
Keramikwerk stoffe unerreichteEigenschaften für viele der anspruch-
vollsten industriellenAnwendungen bieten.
Wir haben uns daher gefragt, ob bei der Flut von technischer Lite-
ratur, die derzeit auf den Keramikmarkteinwirkt, dieser Katalog noch
eine entsprechende Resonazfi nden wird. Sollte Matroc das Seine
noch hinzutun?
Einerseits meint so mancher: “das ist doch branchenüblich” aber
erreichen wir andererseits unsere Kunden, in dem wir anderen
nacheifern?
Schließlich bietet Matrocein größeres Keramiksortiment für mehr
Anwendungen als manch andere Unternehmen.
Nun gibt es Kunden, die es auf der Suche nach geeigneten Werk-
stoffen vorziehen,umfangreiche technische Datenblätter zu
studieren. Für solche Kunden haben wir dieEigenschaften der
gängigsten Matroc Werkstoffe aufgelistet.
Allerdings muß man bedenken, daß bei solchemVorgehen ohne
Kostenerfah rung nur eine begrenzteAussagefähigkeit zu erwarten
ist, denn der Fertigungsauf wand hängt wesentlich von der Geometrie
der Teile ab.
Da gibt es andere in dem Markt, die einfach nur wissen wollen,
was wir machen. Zu diesem Zweck haben wir illustrierte
Kommentare aus den verschiedensten Marktbereichen von Matroc
ausgewählt. – von Gasheizgeräten bis hin zu medizinischen Implan-
taten. –
Letztlich gibt es für uns noch eine dritte Gruppe von Kunden, die
wissen, daß ein kurzer Telefonanruf mit einem erfahrenen Matroc
Techniker und der dann folgenden systematischen Bearbeitung
wesentlich mehr bringt, als 50 Seiten technischer Daten. – Auf
solchen Kunden fußt unsere Existenz – und umgekehrt!

208 IN OTHER WORDS
Was bringt diesen Leuten noch eine Brochüre?
Nun, Matroc wie andere Morgan Tochterunternehmen bestä-
tigen, daß Kunden und Techniker in der Regel mehrere Wege zur
Problemlösung beschreiten.
Wir hoffen daß diese Publikation diesem Zweck dienlich ist. Aller-
dings haben wir eine feste Vorstellung über den effektivsten Weg
und empfehlen bei Projektbeginn unbedingt die Liste mit den Tele-
fonnummern und der Adressen auf der letzten Seite dieser Brochüre
einzusehen.
Back-translation:
Today experts are fully agreed that modern ceramic materials offer
unsurpassed qualities for many of the most demanding industrial
applications.
So we asked ourselves whether this catalogue would still fi nd a
corresponding resonance, given the fl ood of technical literature
which is currently circulating in the ceramics market. Should Matroc
also add its contribution to this?
On the one hand, some would say: ‘that is quite usual for business’
but on the other hand will we reach our customers just by eagerly
imitating others?
Finally, Matroc offers a greater range of ceramics for more appli-
cations than most other fi rms.
Now, there are customers who in their search for suitable mate-
rials prefer to study copious technical data sheets. For such customers
we have listed the properties of the most popular Matroc materials.
Yet one must consider that such an undertaking without cost
information can only be expected to give a limited explanation
because the production yield depends considerably on the geometry
of the articles.
And then there are others in the market who simply want to know
what we make. For this purpose we have chosen illustrated
commentaries from the most wide-ranging market sectors of Matroc
– from gas heaters to medical implants.
Lastly we have a third group of customers who know that a brief
telephone call with an experienced Matroc technician and the subse-
quent systematic processing would bring them signifi cantly more
than 50 pages of technical details. Our existence rests on such
customers – and vice versa!
What does yet another brochure offer these people?
Now, Matroc like other fi rms in the Morgan Group acknowledge
that customers and technicians as a rule follow more than one path in
solving a problem.

TEXTUAL EQUIVALENCE: COHESION 209
We hope that this publication serves its purpose. Yet/in any event
we have a fi rm idea about the most effective path and unreservedly
recommend that at the beginning of the project one looks at the list
of telephone numbers and addresses on the last page of this brochure.
There are noticeably fewer conjunctions in the English text (eight) than in the
German (twelve). German seems to be generally more conjunctive than English.7
The use of explicit conjunction makes the structure of the text more transparent. For
instance, the ‘reason’ relation between the limited value of the brochure and cost
information (English, third paragraph; German, sixth paragraph) is made more
explicit in German by the addition of denn ‘because’.
Both texts proceed by questioning the need for a company brochure. To start
with, an attempt is made to fi nd the answer by considering what Matroc’s com petitors
do and weighing up two possibilities: (a) Matroc’s competitors have company
brochures and therefore Matroc has to do the same; and (b) Matroc does not need
to imitate its competitors. The German conjunctions used to signal this structure
(Einerseits ‘on the one hand’, aber … andererseits ‘but on the other hand’) are
more transparent than the mixture of causal Because and adversative But used in
the English text. Both texts then seem to abandon the question of what Matroc’s
competitors do and move on to consider the types of customer in the market place
and whether the brochure would be of any value to them. This departure is signalled
more fi rmly in the German text through the use of Schließlich (‘fi nally’) and the addi-
tional paragraph break. None of this means that the German text is ‘better’ or
‘worse’ than its English counterpart. The two texts simply address different reader-
ships and in so doing refl ect different textual preferences. If the English text seems
less straightforward than the German one so far, it is not without reason. The
English text achieves a higher level of informality by appearing to consider various
angles of the problem in a relaxed, casual way, as if the writer is simply taking up
issues as they occur to him or her. The use of And yet in the third paragraph, for
instance, gives the impression that the writer is thinking aloud, or perhaps just
moving back and forth along the same line of argument – as one would do in chatting
to a friend – rather than fi rmly wrapping up one stage in the argument before moving
on to the next as is the case in the German text. Both styles, the chatty English and
the formal German, seem appropriate to their particular contexts.
There are other interesting differences between the two texts. The German
translation makes a further internal relation between two parts of the text clearer by
using Zu diesem Zweck (‘for this purpose’; seventh paragraph), instead of the
English For them (fourth paragraph). However, it loses the contrast that is developed
in the fourth and fi fth paragraphs in English: ‘There are others … For them we offer
…’ / ‘And fi nally there is a third class of customer. … For them this brochure is
unnecessary.’ In fact, this last sentence, ‘For them this brochure is unnecessary’,
does not appear in the German text at all but is replaced by ‘What does another
brochure offer these people?’ This is particularly interesting because the conjunction
in the fi nal paragraph of the German text, Allerdings, allows two alternative interpre-
tations in this context:

210 IN OTHER WORDS
We hope that this publication serves its purpose,
(i) However (adversative) we know the most effective path …
(ii) In any event (concession: whether it does or not, implying it may do) we
know the most effective path …
Deleting ‘For them this brochure is unnecessary’ ties in with the second interpre-
tation. Germans have a reputation for being highly logical and systematic in their
approach to things. In a way, it seems rather illogical to dismiss the value of the
brochure altogether, for all types of customer, and at the same time suggest that the
best way a customer can get the information he or she needs is to use a list of tele-
phone numbers printed in the very brochure that is being dismissed.
Whether a translation conforms to the source-text patterns of cohesion or tries
to approximate to target-language patterns will depend in the fi nal analysis on the
purpose of the translation and the amount of freedom the translator feels entitled to
in rechunking information and/or altering signals of relations between chunks.
Whatever the translator decides to do, every option will have its advantages and
disadvantages. Following source-language norms may involve minimal change in
overall meaning (other factors excluded). On the other hand, noticeable deviation
from typical target-language patterns of chunking information and signalling rela-
tions is likely to result in the sort of text that can easily be identifi ed as a translation
because it sounds ‘foreign’.
Apart from questions of naturalness, accuracy and the ‘logic’ of a text, there are
sometimes stylistic considerations which may make the translation of conjunctions
particularly diffi cult. For instance, Milic (1970) suggests that one of the most striking
features of Jonathan Swift’s style relates to the way he uses conjunction. Swift’s
favourite conjunctions, according to Milic, are and, but and for. He apparently makes
‘unusually heavy use’ of these items (ibid.:246). Moreover, he does not use them as
precise logical connectives but only to indicate that ‘one sentence is connected with
another without reference to the nature of the connection’ (ibid.:247). In other
words, Swift’s use of conjunction is very similar to that of Arabic (see page 202). In
both cases, two or three ‘favourite’ items are used very frequently in a semantically
‘imprecise’ way. The question then arises as to how one might translate Swift into
Arabic when the hallmark of his style is a commonplace feature of Arabic prose.
6.4 LEXICAL COHESION
Lexical cohesion refers to the role played by the selection of vocabulary in organ-
izing relations within a text. A given lexical item cannot be said to have a cohesive
function per se (cf. reference, conjunction), but any lexical item can enter into a
cohesive relation with other items in a text. Whereas on encountering a pronoun
such as he or they the reader will automatically look to the surrounding text for its
referent, he or she will not automatically look for a link between an item such as
socialism and other items in the following example (from the book jacket of Arab
Political Humour, Kishtainy 1985):

TEXTUAL EQUIVALENCE: COHESION 211
Ready suppliers of fun throughout the thirties and forties were the decadent
pseudo-sovereign regimes of the West. More recently people have turned
East for their targets, refl ecting the new contact with communist countries
and also the growing disenchantment with socialism.
And yet, one intuitively recognizes a sort of lexical chain which links socialism with
communist and East. Moreover, this chain stands in some kind of opposition to the
West and, for some people, to decadent as well. We could say then that lexical
cohesion covers any instance in which the use of a lexical item recalls the sense of
an earlier one.
Halliday and Hasan divide lexical cohesion into two main categories: reiteration
and collocation. Reiteration, as the name suggests, involves repetition of lexical
items. A reiterated item may be a repetition of an earlier item, a synonym or near-
synonym, a superordinate, or a general word. In this sense, reiteration can be placed
along the same continuum presented on pages 192–3 (with the exception of
pronominal reference). This is repeated below for convenience:
There’s a boy climbing that tree.
(a) The boy is going to fall if he doesn’t take care. (repetition)
(b) The lad’s going to fall if he doesn’t take care. (synonym)
(c) The child’s going to fall if he doesn’t take care. (superordinate)
(d) The idiot’s going to fall if he doesn’t take care. (general word)
Reiteration is not the same as reference, however, because it does not necessarily
involve the same identity. If the above sentence is followed by a statement such as
‘Boys can be so silly’, the repetition of boy → boys would still be an instance of reit-
eration, even though the two items would not be referring to the same individual(s).
Collocation, as a sub-class of lexical cohesion in Halliday and Hasan’s model,
covers any instance which involves a pair of lexical items that are associated with
each other in the language in some way. Halliday and Hasan (ibid.:285–286) offer
the following types of association as examples, but admit that there are other
instances where the association between lexical items cannot readily be given a
name but is nevertheless felt to exist. In the fi nal analysis, they suggest, it does not
matter what the relation is as long as we are aware of it and react to it as a cohesive
device.
Various kinds of oppositeness of meaning: e.g. boy/girl; love/hate; order/
obey.
Associations between pairs of words from the same ordered series: e.g.
Tuesday/Thursday; August/December; dollar/cent.
Associations between pairs of words from unordered lexical sets: e.g.
part–whole relations: car/brake; body/arm; bicycle/wheel;
part–part relations: mouth/chin; verse/chorus;
co-hyponymy: red/green (colour); chair/table (furniture).

212 IN OTHER WORDS
Associations based on a history of co-occurrence (collocation proper – see
Chapter 3): e.g. rain, pouring, torrential, wet; hair, comb, curl, wave; etc.
Lexical cohesion is not a relation between pairs of words as the above discussion
might suggest. On the contrary, lexical cohesion typically operates through lexical
chains (such as socialism, communist, East) that run through a text and are linked
to each other in various ways. The following example shows how patterns of lexical
cohesion might be traced in a relatively straightforward piece of text. Sentences are
numbered for ease of reference in the following discussion.
(1) I fi rst met Hugh Fraser in 1977. (2) Charming, rather hesitant, a heavy
smoker and heavy gambler, he had made such headway through his fortune
that he had decided to sell his last major asset, the controlling shares in the
business which his father had built up and named Scottish and Universal
Investments. (3) Scottish and Universal had, among its assets, 10% of the
British stores group, House of Fraser. (4) Lonrho bought 26% of Scottish
and Universal.
(5) It was part of Lonrho’s understanding with Hugh that he would stay
on as Chairman of House of Fraser, but it gradually became clear that Sir
Hugh was not on terms of mutual respect with most of his Board, and that
the loyalty of his colleagues had been to his formidable father rather than to
him. (6) They did not welcome the sale of Hugh’s shares to Lonrho – and it
was only natural, as a change was obviously in the air. (7) Lonrho was an
expanding and acquisitive company, and House of Fraser was a quiet and
pedestrian one.
(from A Hero from Zero, Lonrho:i)
Instances of lexical cohesion in the above text include the repetition of items such as
Scottish and Universal (sentences 2, 3 and 4), Lonrho (4, 5, 6 and 7) and assets (2
and 3). There is a superordinate–hyponym relation between assets/shares, oppo-
siteness of meaning between sell/bought, reiteration by general word: Lonrho/
company, and a relation of synonymy or near-synonymy between expanding/
acquisitive. Smoker/ gambler are co- hyponyms of something like ‘behavioural vice’
and respect/loyalty are co- hyponyms of ‘institutional virtue’. Most important of all, of
course, is the main collocational chain which helps to establish and maintain the
subject of the text: fortune, shares, assets, business, Chairman, Board, sale,
expanding, acquisitive, company and so on. Many more cohesive relations can be
traced in the above text, which illustrates the typical density of networks of lexical
cohesion in any stretch of language.
Another example from a different genre will serve to demonstrate the sort of
manipulation of lexical associations available to speakers and writers. The following
extract is from John Le Carré’s The Russia House (1989:40):

TEXTUAL EQUIVALENCE: COHESION 213
The whole of Whitehall was agreed that no story should ever begin that way
again. Indoctrinated ministers were furious about it. They set up a frightfully
secret committee of enquiry to fi nd out what went wrong, hear witnesses,
name names, spare no blushes, point fi ngers, close gaps, prevent a recur-
rence, appoint me chairman and draft a report. What conclusions our
committee reached, if any, remains the loftiest secret of them all, particu-
larly from those of us who sat on it. For the function of such committees, as
we all well knew, is to talk earnestly until the dust has settled, and then
ourselves return to dust. Which, like a disgruntled Cheshire cat, our
committee duly did, leaving nothing behind us but our frightfully secret
frown, a meaningless interim working paper, and a bunch of secret annexes
in the Treasury archives.
Two main collocational chains are cleverly interwoven in the above passage. One
has to do with high-powered offi cial institutions and practices: committees, enquiries,
chairman, witnesses, Whitehall, ministers, Treasury, report, interim working paper
and so on. The other evokes the theme of intrigue: the word secret is repeated
several times and expressions such as name names and point fi ngers are used. But
this is not genuine intrigue, because the two collocational chains are overlaid with
ironic descriptive expressions which ridicule the institutions and practices in question
and give an impression of ‘mock suspense’: frightfully secret committee, indoctri-
nated ministers, the loftiest secret of them all, like a disgruntled Cheshire cat,
frightfully secret frown, meaningless interim working paper, a bunch of secret
annexes and so on.
The notion of lexical cohesion as being dependent on the presence of networks
of lexical items rather than the presence of any specifi c class or type of item is
important. It provides the basis for what Halliday and Hasan call instantial meaning,
or text meaning (1976:289):
Without our being aware of it, each occurrence of a lexical item carries with it
its own textual history, a particular collocational environment that has been
built up in the course of the creation of the text and that will provide the
context within which the item will be incarnated on this particular occasion.
This environment determines the ‘instantial meaning’, or text meaning, of the
item, a meaning which is unique to each specifi c instance.
The importance for translators of the notion of instantial meaning is obvious. Lexical
networks do not only provide cohesion, they also determine collectively the sense in
which each individual item is used in a given context. As Hoey (1991:8) points out,
‘the text provides the context for the creation and interpretation of lexical relations,
just as the lexical relations help create the texture of the text’.
The idea that the meanings of individual lexical items depend on the networks of
relations in which they enter with other items in a text is now taken as axiomatic in
language studies in general and in translation studies in particular. Snell-Hornby

214 IN OTHER WORDS
stresses the importance of this approach in translation, arguing that in analysing a
text a translator ‘is not concerned with isolating phenomena or items to study them
in depth, but with tracing a web of relationships, the importance of individual items
being determined by their relevance and function in the text’ (1988:69).
It is certainly true that individual lexical items have little more than a ‘potential’ for
meaning outside text and that their meanings are realized and can be considerably
modifi ed through association with other lexical items in a particular textual envi-
ronment. And yet, the potential for meaning which a given lexical item has is not
totally unrestricted. You simply cannot make any word mean whatever you want it to
mean. What this suggests, in effect, is that as hard as one might try, it is impossible
to reproduce networks of lexical cohesion in a target text which are identical to those
of the source text. If you cannot make a word mean what you want it to mean, you
might have to settle for one with a slightly different meaning or different associa-
tions. Every time this happens it introduces a subtle (or major) shift away from the
lexical chains and associations of the source text. Signifi cant shifts do occur, even in
non-literary text. They include, for instance, cases where the source text uses a play
on idiom to create a lexical chain or a number of separate chains that are linked
together by virtue of relating to the literal or non-literal interpretation of the idiom. An
example of this was given in Chapter 3 (p. 73). A similar example comes from an
advertisement promoting a woman’s magazine (Woman’s Realm) which shows a
woman wearing a large hat, accompanied by the following caption: ‘If you think
Woman’s Realm is old hat … think again’ (Cosmopolitan, October 1989). Old hat
means ‘boringly familiar/uninteresting’, but the literal meaning of hat is used here to
create a lexical/visual chain by tying in with the actual hat in the photograph. This
type of chain often has to be sacrifi ced in translation because interweaving idiom-
based chains can only be reproduced if the target language has an idiom which is
identical to the source idiom in both form and meaning.
As the Cosmopolitan example demonstrates, cohesive links are often estab-
lished between textual and other types of element,8 including visual elements such
as photographs and drawings, layout elements such as position on the page, and, in
the case of multimodal environments such as web sites, elements of navigation such
as hypertext links and widgets. The example in Figure 15, from National Geographic
Magazine, features a clever play on an idiom/fi xed expression, a visual play based
on image and colour, and a layout format that foregrounds and strengthens the
textual-visual network of cohesive links.
In the original, full-colour image, the lefthand column above the image of the
orange is printed in the same colour as the apple (red), and the righthand column
is printed in the same colour as the orange; the column in the middle is printed in
regular black. The dense network of cohesive links further features a visual/
textual play on the idiom ‘like comparing apples and oranges’ (used to indicate a
false analogy, an attempt to compare two things that are quite different in nature)
and the actual images of an apple and an orange, repetition of items such as
compare, and the synonymy between dissimilar and different, among other
cohesive relations.

TEXTUAL EQUIVALENCE: COHESION 215
Figure 15 ‘Not Beyond Compare’, National Geographic Magazine,
1 March 2010, p. 26
Apart from the challenge posed by the manipulation of idioms and visual elements in
a source text, the lack of ready equivalents will sometimes require the translator to
resort to strategies such as the use of a superordinate, paraphrase or loan word (see
Chapter 2). These naturally result in producing different lexical chains in the target
text. Likewise, the grammatical structure of the target language may require the
translator to add or delete information and to reword parts of the source text in a

216 IN OTHER WORDS
variety of ways. Admittedly, in non-literary translation new networks of lexical rela-
tions created in the target text during the course of translation will often be very
close overall to those of the source text. But they will still be different, and the
difference, subtle though it may be, may affect the cohesiveness and coherence
(see Chapter 7) of the target text in varying degrees, depending on the skill and
experience of the translator. Whatever lexical and grammatical problems are encoun-
tered in translating a text and whatever strategies are used to resolve them, a good
translator will make sure that, at the end of the day, the target text displays a suffi –
cient level of lexical and other types of cohesion in its own right. Subtle changes –
and sometimes major changes – are often unavoidable. But what the translator must
always avoid is the extreme case of producing what appears to be a random
collection of items which do not add up to recognizable lexical chains that make
sense in a given context.
The Brintons press release is an example of the sort of subtle changes that
typically take place on the level of lexical cohesion in non-literary translation. A
quick look at the two versions presented below reveals considerable differences in
patterns of reiteration and collocation. We do not have to analyse the two texts in
detail to see that there is far more repetition in the Arabic version than there is in
the English text. For instance, company occurs only once in the English text; its
Arabic equivalent, sharika, is repeated eight times. Similarly, colour(s) occurs
three times in the English text; its Arabic equivalent occurs seven times. Some of
the subtle associations created by a careful selection of lexical items in the English
text are inevitably lost in the translation. The choice of items such as plant (rather
than factory), qualities (rather than kinds or types), complementary (rather than
matching colours) and select (rather than choose) plays a role in creating a
certain image of Brintons and their products in the perception of the reader. These
items, plus others such as discerning in the fi nal sentence, collectively enhance
the image of Brintons as a sophisticated company producing a select range of
products. These subtle associations are lost in the Arabic version because the
lexical structure of Arabic does not offer the translator the same range of choices;
for instance, the distinction between plant/factory or choose/select does not exist
in Arabic. Moreover, Arabic has no ready equivalents for complementary and
discerning. The fi rst item, complementary, is paraphrased in the Arabic version as
‘the colours of which match the rest of the colours of the collection’. A paraphrase
of course cannot create the same kinds of association as a lexical item. The
second item, discerning, is omitted altogether.
Source text (Brintons press release):
Brintons have been manufacturing fi ne quality woven carpet for over
200 years. They are a privately owned company specializing in
Axminster and Wilton carpets, using wool-rich blends. They have a
totally integrated operation from the preparation of the yarn through
to the weaving process. All their products are made on looms

TEXTUAL EQUIVALENCE: COHESION 217
designed and built by their own engineers, and recognized as the
most technically superior weaving plant in the world. Brintons are
one of the largest weavers with a production capacity in excess of
100,000 square metres per week.
The recently introduced New Tradition Axminster range is already
creating great interest and will be on display at the Exhibition. New
Tradition offers a fascinating series of traditional patterns in mini-
ature using rich jewel-like colours that glow against dark back-
grounds, suitable for a wide variety of heavy wear locations from
hotels, restaurants and leisure areas to high quality residential
situations.
The successful Finesse and Palace Design qualities will also be
displayed. Both carpets have geometrically styled designs suitable for
both residential and contract use. Palace Design also incorporates a
border and plain range in complementary colours.
Other Brintons products suitable for the commercial world, such as
Bell Twist, Heather Berber, Broadloop, Bell Trinity and Trident Tile
will also be on display.
Brintons will be delighted to solve any carpeting problems as
special designs and qualities can be produced for minimum quan-
tities. Their standard range of colours offers over 200 possibilities for
the discerning designer to select from.
Target text:
200

.

100 000 .

” ”
.
” ”
.

.

” ” ” ”
.
.
” ”
.

218 IN OTHER WORDS

” ” ” ” ” ” ” ” ”
.”

.
Brintons company has been manufacturing the fi nest quality of
woven carpets for over 200 years, and it is a private company, special-
izing in the production of Axminster and Wilton carpets in which
enters a high percentage of wool. This and the company carries out
all steps of production in its factories, from preparing the yarn to
weaving it on looms designed and manufactured by the company
engineers, and Brintons factories are considered the most advanced
weaving factories from the technical aspect in the whole world, also
Brintons company is considered among the largest weaving
companies with a production capacity which exceeds 100,000 square
metres per week.
The ‘New Tradition Axminster’ collection has aroused a high
degree of interest since the company undertook its introduction
recently, and it is among the types of carpets which will be displayed
at the exhibition. The ‘New Tradition’ collection presents a number
of fascinating traditional designs in a reduced size, in dazzling colours
like the colours of gems, the glowing of which is increased by the
dark backgrounds. And it is suitable for fi tting in many commercial
locations with heavy use, such as hotels and restaurants and leisure
places and some residential locations of fi ne standard.
Also the exhibition includes samples of ‘Finesse’ and ‘Palace
Design’ carpets which have been marketed with great success. And
these two types of carpet are characterized by their geometrical
designs and are suitable for use in both residential and commercial
locations. This and the ‘Palace Design’ collection comprises several
plain colours and designs in the shape of a border, the colours of
which match the rest of the colours of the collection.
This and Brintons company will undertake to display several other
types of carpet suitable for commercial use, such as ‘Bell Twist’ and
‘Heather Berber’ and ‘Broadloop’ and ‘Bell Trinity’ and Trident Tile’.
Brintons company is pleased to assist you in solving any problems
concerning carpets, as it can produce designs and special types in
limited quantities, also the collection of colours available at the
company exceeds 200 colours which allows any designer a big oppor-
tunity for choice.

TEXTUAL EQUIVALENCE: COHESION 219
The above differences in patterns of reiteration and collocation do not mean that the
Arabic text lacks lexical cohesion. We have noted, for instance, that there is an
increase in the repetition of items such as ‘company’ and ‘colours’. The Arabic text,
then, has its own networks of lexical cohesion, but these do not match the networks
created in the English text and do not trigger the same kinds of association in the
mind of the target reader. Note that part of the lexical cohesion of any text is inevi-
tably obscured by back-translation because it derives from the morphological
structure of the language. For instance, in the Arabic version of the above text,
cohesive links exist between the Arabic words for ‘display’ and ‘exhibition’, because
they are derived from the same root. Unfortunately, links of this sort cannot be easily
shown in back-translation.
One point that should be borne in mind is that languages differ in the level of
lexical repetition they will normally tolerate. The above example suggests that Arabic
tolerates a far higher level of lexical repetition than English. Greek seems to behave
more like Arabic than English in this respect. Consider, for instance, the following
extract from Hawking’s A Brief History of Time (1988:1–2):
Most people would fi nd the picture of our universe as an infi nite tower of
tortoises rather ridiculous, but why do we think we know better? What do we
know about the universe, and how do we know it? Where did the universe
come from, and where is it going? Did the universe have a beginning, and if
so, what happened before then? What is the nature of time? Will it ever come
to an end? Recent breakthroughs in physics, made possible in part by
fantastic new technologies, suggest answers to some of these longstanding
questions. Someday these answers may seem as obvious to us as the earth
orbiting the sun – or perhaps as ridiculous as a tower of tortoises. Only time
(whatever that may be) will tell.
If you examine the above extract, you will fi nd that six lexical items (not including
function words such as the and where) are repeated as follows:
know (3 times) universe (4) time (2)
answers (2) ridiculous (2) tower of tortoises (2)
The pattern in the Spanish translation is very similar: 9
saber ‘know’ (2) universo ‘universe’ (4)
tiempo ‘time’ (3) respuestas ‘answers’ (2)
ridiculo ‘ridiculous’ (2) torre de tortugas ‘tower of tortoises’ (2)
Compare this with the Greek translation,10 where the number of items repeated (13)
and the number of times that some items are repeated, for example ‘universe’ (6),
are both much higher than in the English and Spanish texts:

220 IN OTHER WORDS
anthropi ‘people’ (2) ikona ‘picture’ (2)
simpan ‘universe’ (6) gnorizo ‘know’ (3)
iparkho ‘exist’ (6) khronos ‘time’ (5)
arkhi ‘beginning’ (2) apandisi ‘answers’ (2)
yi ‘earth’ (3) evnoitos ‘obvious’ (2)
anoitos ‘silly’ (2) stirizo ‘supported’ (2)
apiri sira apo trapulo kharta ‘infi nite series of cards’ (2)
As far as I can tell from talking to native speakers of Greek, the Greek version of
Hawking’s book reads extremely well. It may be that one of the reasons it reads like
an original is that it uses patterns of reiteration that are typical of Greek discourse
instead of copying those of the English source text.
Shifts in patterns of lexical cohesion can however have important ideological
implications in some contexts. Mason (1994/2010:95) offers an excellent example
from a text about Mexican history which appeared in Spanish and English translation
in the April 1990 edition of the UNESCO Courier. Here are the two texts:
¿Tiene la historia un destino?
Miguel León-Portilla
Antiguos y prolongados esfuerzos por conservar la memoria de sucesos que
afectaron a la comunidad integran el primer gran capítulo de la búsqueda del
ser y del destino mexicanos. Así, ya en la época prehispánica se afi rma una
forma característica de interesarse por preservar la memoria de sí mismo y
luchar contra el olvido. Esa memoria era indispensable a los viejos sacerdotes
y sabios para prever los destinos en relación con sus cálculos calendáricos.
Tal quehacer de elaboración y registro de una historia divina y humana
perdura en miles de vestigios arqueológicos que abarcan más de veinte
siglos antes de la llegada de los españoles en 1519. Así, por ejemplo, las
estelas de ‘Los Danzantes’ en Monte Albán, Oaxaca, fechadas entre 600 y
300 a.C., constituyen en el Nuevo Mundo el más antiguo registro de aconte-
ceres, con sus años y días, nombres de lugares, de reyes y señores.
El destino – o los destinos – de los muchos pueblos que han vivido y viven
en tierras mexicanas tuvo tiempos propicios y tiempos funestos. Hubo épocas
de gran creatividad y otras de crisis y enfrentamientos, que llevaron a dramá-
ticas desapariciones de hombres y de formas de exisitir. Los mitos y leyendas,
la tradición oral y el gran conjunto de inscripciones perpetuaron la memoria
de tales aconteceres.
Del más grande y trágico de los encuentros que experimentó el hombre
indígena habrían de escribir personajes como el propio conquistador Hernán
Cortés en sus Cartas de Relación y el soldado cronista Bernal Díaz del
Castillo en su Historia verdadera de la Nueva España. Pero también los

TEXTUAL EQUIVALENCE: COHESION 221
vencidos dejaron sus testimonios. Entre otros, un viejo manuscrito fechado
en 1528, que se conserva ahora en la Biblioteca Nacional de Par’s, consigna
en lengua náhuatl (azteca) la memoria de lo que fue para los antiguos mexi-
canos el más grande de los traumas.
History or Destiny?
Miguel León-Portilla
Mexicans have always exhibited an obstinate determination to safeguard the
memory of the major events that have marked their society and this has
coloured the way in which they view their identity and destiny. From pre-
Columbian times they have been engaged in a continuous battle to save their
history from oblivion. Knowledge of the past was the foundation on which
their priests and diviners based their astronomic calculations and their predic-
tions of the future. Countless archaeological remains from the two thousand
years before the arrival of the Spaniards in 1519 bear witness to the Mexican
desire to interpret and record the history of gods and man. The stelae known
as danzantes (‘dancers’) at Monte Albán in the Oaxaca valley, on which are
inscribed a record of the passing days and years, place-names and the
names of kings and other notables, constitute the oldest known chronicle
(600 to 300 BC) of the New World.
The people, or rather peoples, who succeeded one another on Mexican
soil met with mixed fortunes. Bursts of creativity were punctuated by times of
crisis and war which even led to the abrupt disappearance of entire popula-
tions and civilizations. The memory of these events lives on in the thousands
of inscriptions and the legends of oral tradition.
The greatest and most tragic clash of cultures in pre-Columbian civilization
was recorded by some of those who took part in the conquest of Mexico.
Hernán Cortés himself sent fi ve remarkable letters (Cartas de relación) back
to Spain between 1519 and 1526; and the soldier-chronicler Bernal Díaz del
Castillo (c. 1492–1580), who served under Cortés, fi fty years after the event
wrote his Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España (‘True
History of the Conquest of New Spain’). The vanquished peoples also left
written records. A manuscript dated 1528, now in the Bibliothèque Nationale
in Paris, recounts in Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs, the traumatic fate
of the Indians.
Mason shows how networks of lexical cohesion in the source text that rely on repe-
tition of items such as memoria and destino and on the semantic relationship
between items such as esfuerzos (efforts), luchar (struggle) and quehacer (task)
are disrupted in the English translation, resulting in what he describes as a ‘radical
shift of values’ (ibid.:89); see Table 2. As Mason explains, the Spanish source text
concedes that ‘the Spanish Conquistadors were the offi cial chroniclers of Mexican
history’ but insists that ‘there are indigenous voices, under-represented hitherto,

222 IN OTHER WORDS
which are equally worth listening to and which have preserved the precious legacy of
“memory” in their own written records’ (ibid.:91). Failure to reproduce the relevant
lexical chain in the source text, Mason suggests, does not allow the reader of the
English text to appreciate the link between the past and the present for the source
community. The result is that ‘[m]emory as such is downplayed, and the active
search for the past and the task of recording it turn into a passive view of the past
and a desire to interpret it’ (ibid.:88).
Table 2 Recurrence and collocational cohesion (adapted from Mason
1994/2010:88)
SOURCE TEXT TARGET TEXT
memoria memory
memoria history
memoria knowledge of the past
memoria memory
memoria ——
destino destiny
destinos the future
destino ——
destinos ——
esfuerzos (efforts) obstinate determination
búsqueda (search) the way in which they view
luchar contra (struggle against) to save … from
quehacer (task) desire
épocas de gran creatividad (ages of great
creativity)
bursts of creativity
Reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction and lexical cohesion are the devices
identifi ed by Halliday and Hasan for establishing cohesive links in English. These
devices are probably common to a large number of languages. However, different
languages have different preferences for using specifi c devices more frequently
than others or in specifi c combinations which may not correspond to English patterns
of cohesion. For instance, pronominalization is very frequent in English but is rarely
used in Japanese and Chinese. Lexical repetition is far more frequent in Hebrew
than it is in English (Berman 1978, in Blum-Kulka 1986:19).
Cohesion is also achieved by a variety of devices other than those mentioned by
Halliday and Hasan and discussed above. These include continuity of tense,
consistency of style, and punctuation devices such as colons and semi-colons,
which, like conjunctions, indicate how different parts of the text relate to each other.
It is worth noting here that unmotivated shifts in style, a common pitfall in translation,
can seriously disrupt the cohesion and coherence (see Chapter 7) of a text.

TEXTUAL EQUIVALENCE: COHESION 223
e
x
e
r
c
is
e
s
Some languages have different or additional devices: for example, some
languages such as Aguaruna use ‘chaining’, where part of the preceding infor-
mation, for instance the predicate of the preceding sentence, is repeated in the
following sentence (Larson 1984), as demonstrated earlier in this chapter. Cohesion
can also be established between textual and non-textual elements, including visual
material, layout, and search and retrieval elements such as hypertext links on the
internet.
Finally, the overall level of cohesion may vary from one language to another;
even within the same language, different texts will vary in the density of their
cohesive ties. Vieira (1984, quoted in Blum-Kulka 1986), suggests that Portuguese
prefers a higher level of explicit cohesiveness than English. Cohesion contributes to
patterns of redundancy, and these vary both across languages and across text
types. Explicit markers of cohesion raise the level of redundancy in text; their
absence lowers it. Blum-Kulka notes that there is a general tendency in translation
to raise the level of explicitness, that is, increase the level of redundancy in the target
text, and suggests that ‘it might be the case that explicitation is a universal strategy
inherent in the process of language mediation, as practiced by language learners,
non-professional translators and professional translators alike’ (1986:21). This
claim has been subjected to close scrutiny in several studies since the mid-1990s,
with varying results. See, in particular, Olohan and Baker (2000), Kenny (2004),
Englund Dimitrova (2005) and Mauranen (2008).
1. Choose one cohesive device and explore its function in your source
and target languages, preferably in a specifi c genre. To do this, start by
looking at a number of original texts in the two languages and compare
the use of the particular cohesive device in them. For instance, if you
choose reference, note how participants and entities are typically
traced in both texts: by pronominal reference, by repetition, by
co-reference and so on. Next, look at a number of translated texts from
the same genre. Compare patterns of cohesion in the translated target
texts with those in the original ones. Comment on differences and,
where necessary, suggest ways in which patterns of cohesion in the
translated texts may be adjusted to reflect target language
preferences.
This is a time-consuming but useful exercise and is best done as a
project. Its aim is to help you become familiar with cohesive devices
typically used in your language and in the special types of text you hope
to specialize in.
2. Imagine that you have been invited to join a team of translators to
produce a version of the Macmillan Encyclopedia in your target
language. Your assignment is to translate all the entries on people
(rather than those on countries or political terms, for instance). You will

224 IN OTHER WORDS
e
x
e
r
c
is
e
s therefore need to be particularly careful about handling referential
chains in your translated version. Below are a couple of typical entries
from The Macmillan Encyclopedia (1986):
Elizabeth I (1533–1603) Queen of England and Ireland (1558–1603),
daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. Her mother’s execution
and Elizabeth’s imprisonment by Mary I made her cautious and
suspicious but her devotion to England made her one of its greatest
monarchs. Her religious compromise (1559–63) established Protes-
tantism in England (see Reformation). Several plots to place her
Roman Catholic cousin, Mary, Queen of Scots, on the throne led to
Mary’s execution (1587). England won a great naval victory in 1588
by destroying the Spanish Armada. Elizabeth never married and
was called the Virgin Queen, although her relationships with, among
others, the Earl of Leicester and the 2nd Earl of Essex caused consid-
erable speculation.
Van Gogh, Vincent (1853–90) Dutch postimpressionist painter,
born at Zundert, the son of a pastor. He worked as an art dealer, a
teacher in England, and a missionary among coalminers before
taking up painting in about 1880. His early works were chiefl y
drawings of peasants. After a limited training in The Hague and in
Antwerp, where he studied the works of Rubens and Japanese
prints, he moved to Paris (1886). Here he briefl y adopted the style of
impressionism and later of pointillism. In Arles in 1888 he painted
his best-known works – orchards, sunfl owers, and the local postman
and his family – but only one painting was sold during his lifetime.
The visit of his friend Gauguin ended in a quarrel during which Van
Gogh cut off part of his own left ear. In 1889 he entered a mental
asylum at Saint Rémy. The ominous Wheatfield with Crows
(Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam) was painted shortly before his
suicide. His letters to his brother (Theo) contain the best account of
his life and work. See expressionism.
Translate the above entries into your target language, paying particular
attention to the ways in which different participants are traced in each
entry. Comment on any differences in patterns of reference in the source
and target versions of each entry.
3. The following is an extract from a Minority Rights Group Report on
Lebanon (McDowall 1983:7):
It might initially seem puzzling for a Minority Rights Group Report
to examine a whole country as a minority problem. Yet there can be

TEXTUAL EQUIVALENCE: COHESION 225
e
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e
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is
e
s few countries which can claim to be so deeply and intrinsically
composed of minorities as Lebanon – especially one so small that it
could fi t into one quarter of Switzerland. There is not a single
resident in Lebanon who cannot, in one sense or another, truthfully
claim to belong to a minority. It is the confl icting aspirations and
fears of these different components of Lebanese society confi ned in a
small and rapidly urbanizing area which lie at the heart of the
continuing crisis in Lebanon today.
Outside the Lebanon the international media have frequently
portrayed the confl icts within this unhappy country as the product
of Christian–Muslim hatred, or in the political arena as a contest
between the Left and Right, or as the product of outside (normally
Palestinian or Syrian) subversion. These interpretations can be
crude and dangerously misleading, but they tend to be repeated
time and again, doing little to assist international understanding of
Lebanon’s ills. The non-Lebanese ingredients to the confl ict, the
Syrian, Israeli and Palestinian armed presence and the interference
of the two super-powers have certainly exacerbated the confl ict, but
none of them started it. Civil confl ict feeds on internal divisions, and
had these not existed the Lebanese people would undoubtedly have
closed ranks against the behaviour of their neighbours. Despite the
departure of the PLO from Beirut and south Lebanon, which some
wishful thinkers believed would presage an end to the confl ict in
Lebanon, no such thing has happened and the main Lebanese
contestants during the Civil War period 1975–77 seem as much at
loggerheads as ever.
It is not the primary cause of this paper to explain the Civil War,
or indeed the two Israeli invasions of Lebanon in 1978 and 1982.
Rather, its purpose is to provide a background to the hopes, fears
and aspirations of these communities which have, all of them,
already suffered too much. People in Lebanon have very long
memories indeed, and their outlook can be considerably infl uenced
by community experience – even centuries ago. For this reason I
have given what may, to some, seem like undue attention to the past.
Study the above extract carefully, paying particular attention to the use
of (a) conjunctions and the way they structure the argument, and (b)
networks of lexical cohesion and the images and associations they
trigger off in the mind of the reader.
Imagine that you have been asked to translate the above extract for
inclusion in a review of the MRG report, to be published in one of the
leading newspapers in your country. Translate the text into your target
language and comment on any differences in the use of cohesive

226 IN OTHER WORDS
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s devices. If you decide to make adjustments that lead to noticeable
departure from the content or structure of the argument, justify your
decision by reference to the purpose for which the translation is required.
4. An Indian non-profi t organization, Katha, wishes to commission trans-
lations of selected pages of its web site into a range of languages in
order to enhance its presence on the web and encourage the involvement
of potential supporters in other countries. Examine Figure 16 carefully:
this was the home page of Katha (www.katha.org/) until the organi-
zation revamped its website in August 2010. Make a note of the main
cohesive links you can identify, both textual and visual. Clicking on the
‘ENTER OUR WORLD’ slogan at the bottom would have taken you to
the page depicted in Figure 17. Examine the cohesive links on that page.
Translate the homepage and the fi rst four paragraphs of the sub-page
into your target language, bearing in mind that visuals, headings and
hyperlinks will also need to be copied over or translated for the new web
site. Comment on any challenges you encounter and strategies you use
to maintain or adapt different types of cohesive link, both within the
textual material and between text and visuals, and within each page as
well as between different pages. For example, how do you render (or
compensate for) the cohesive link between children and kids (or rather
kidz as it is spelled here)? How do you deal with instances of ‘phonetic
cohesion’ (cohesive links established through sound patterns), such as
Figure 16 Homepage of Katha

TEXTUAL EQUIVALENCE: COHESION 227
e
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s
Figure 17 Sub-page of Katha web site
the link between Mission and Vision (righthand section of the sub-page)?
Would you retain kidzzone as a loanword, given that it appears on both
pages – in the visuals, the main text and as a hyperlink on the sub-page?
SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING
Blum-Kulka, Shoshana (1986/2004) ‘Shifts of Cohesion and Coherence in Translation’, in
Juliane House and Shoshana Blum-Kulka (eds) Interlingual and Intercultural Commu-
nication: Discourse and Cognition in Translation and Second Language Acquisition
Studies, Tübingen: Gunter Narr, 17–35; reprinted in Lawrence Venuti (ed.) The Trans-
lation Studies Reader, London: Routledge, 290–305.
Brown, Gillian and George Yule (1983) Discourse Analysis, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press. Chapter 6 : ‘The Nature of Reference in Text and Discourse’.
Callow, Kathleen (1974) Discourse Considerations in Translating the Word of God,
Michigan: Zondervan. Chapter 3: ‘Cohesion’.
Cook, Guy (1992) The Discourse of Advertising, London: Routledge. Chapter 7: ‘Connected
Text’.
de Beaugrande, Robert and Wolfgang Dressler (1981) Introduction to Text Linguistics,
London: Longman. Chapter 6: ‘Cohesion’.
Fawcett, Peter (1997) Translation and Language, Manchester: St. Jerome Publishing.
Chapter 8: ‘Text Structure’.
Giora, Rachel (1983) ‘Segmentation and Segment Cohesion: On the Thematic Organization
of the Text’, Text 3(2): 155–181.
Halliday, Michael A. K. and Ruqaiya Hasan (1976) Cohesion in English, London: Longman.

228 IN OTHER WORDS
Hasan, Ruqaiya (1984) ‘Coherence and Cohesive Harmony’, in James Flood (ed.) Under-
standing Reading Comprehension: Cognition, Language and Structure of Prose,
Newark: International Reading Association, 181–219.
Hoey, Michael (1991) Patterns of Lexis in Text, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Shlesinger, Miriam (1995) ‘Shifts in Cohesion in Simultaneous Interpreting’, The Translator
1(2): 193–214.
NOTES
1 Throughout this chapter, I use ‘network’ in its non-technical sense and not as a systemic
term.
2 Halliday and Hasan (1976:9) suggest that while cohesive ties do exist within a sentence:
it is the intersentence cohesion that is signifi cant, because that represents the
variable aspect of cohesion, distinguishing one text from another. But this should
not obscure the fact that cohesion is not, strictly speaking, a relation ‘above the
sentence’. It is a relation to which the sentence, or any other form of grammatical
structure, is simply irrelevant.
The defi nition of ‘sentence’ is problematic even in English, with its highly developed
punctuation system. In some languages, the notion of sentence is even more elusive.
For instance, full stops in Arabic often occur only at the end of paragraphs, so that a
whole paragraph will often consist of one very long ‘sentence’. Even Halliday and
Hasan, who argue that the notion of sentence is essentially valid, admit that the punc-
tuation system in general is very fl exible and that ‘the sentence itself is a very indeter-
minate category’ (1976:232). The discussion of cohesion in this chapter will therefore
not be restricted to intersentential ties.
3 The Portuguese text is much shorter than the English, possibly because of restrictions
on space.
4 Arabic makes heavy use of pronominal suffi xes but not of independent pronouns. All
pronouns in this text are suffi xed to verbs, nouns or prepositions; they are not free-
standing as the back-translation suggests. Independent pronouns are not generally
used to trace participants in Arabic discourse. They are mainly used to signal emphasis
or contrast. Occasionally, they may be used to disambiguate reference, a function
normally realized by lexical repetition in English.
5 The boundary between conjunctive and and coordinating and is generally fuzzy, but it is
even more so in Arabic, where it is often very diffi cult to distinguish between the two.
6 Unlike the fi rst Nun (fi fth paragraph in the German text; see below), this second Nun is
not adversative. The difference in meaning is highlighted by the use of a comma after
the second Nun. Commas usually delineate clauses in German and are rarely used at
phrase level, unless there is a good reason for doing so.
7 This may have something to do with the complexity of German syntax. It may be that
conjunctions are needed to disentangle the relationships between chunks of text
embedded in long and complex structures.
8 Halliday and Hasan do not engage with non-textual links.

TEXTUAL EQUIVALENCE: COHESION 229
9 La mayor parte de la gente encontraría bastante ridícula la imagen de nuestro
universe como una torre infi nita de tortugas, pero ¿en qué nos basamos para creer
que lo conocemos mejor? ¿Qué sabemos acerca del universe, y cómo hemos
llegado a saberlo? ¿De dónde surgió el universe, y a dónde va? ¿Tuvo el universo
un principio, y, si así fue, qué sucedió con anterioridad a él? ¿Cuál es la naturaleza
del tiempo? ¿Llegará éste alguna vez a un fi nal? Avances recientes de la física,
posibles en parte gracias a fantásticas nuevas tecnologías, sugieren respuestas a
algunas de estas preguntas que desde hace mucho tiempo nos preocupan. Algún
día estas respuestas podrán parecernos tan obvias como el que la Tierra gire alre-
dedor del Sol, o, quizás, tan ridículas como una torre de tortugas. Sólo el tiempo
(cualquiera que sea su signifi cado) lo dirá.
10 Φυσικά, οι περισσότεροι θα έβρισκαν γελοία αυτήν την εικόνα για το Σύμπαν και
τη Γη να στηρίζεται σε μία άπειρη σειρά από τραπουλόχαρτα. Θα μπορούσαν
όμως να εξηγήσουν το γιατί; Θα μπορούσαν να περιγράψουν τη δική τους εικόνα
για το Σύμπαν και να αποδείξουν πως είναι η σωστή; Τι γνωρίζουν οι άνθρωποι
για το Σύμπαν και πως το γνωρίζουν; Από πού προέρχεται το Σύμπαν και που
πηγαίνει; Υπήρξε αρχή του Σύμπαντος και, αν ναι, τι υπήρξε πριν από αυτήν; Θα
υπάρξει τέλος του Σύμπαντος και, αν ναι, τι θα υπάρξει μετά από αυτό; Τι
γνωρίζουν οι άνθρωποι για το χρόνο; Υπήρξε αρχή του χρόνου; Θα υπάρξει τέλος
του χρόνου; Η σύγχρονη φυσική, με τη βοήθεια και των καταπληκτικών νέων
τεχνολογιών, προτείνει απαντήσεις σε αυτά τα αιώνια ερωτήματα. Στο μέλλον
αυτές οι απαντήσεις θα μας φαίνονται τόσο ευνόητες όσο μας φαίνεται σήμερα
ότι η Γη είναι σφαιρική και κινείται γύρω από τον Ήλιο – ή τόσο ανόητες όσο ότι
η Γη είναι επίπεδη και στηρίζεται σε μια άπειρη σειρά από τραπουλόχαρτα.
Ευνόητες ή ανόητες; Μόνον ο χρόνος θα δείξει – ό,τι κι αν είναι αυτό που ονομά-
ζεται «χρόνος».

CHAPTER 7
Pragmatic equivalence
translating is an act of communication, involving texts as sets of mutually relevant intentions, in
which users (including translators) pre-suppose, implicate and infer meaning.
(Mason 1998:170)
All successful translation is premised on the fact that it is addressed within a specifi c language,
and therefore also to a specifi c set of practices, a specifi c form of life.
(Asad 1986/2010:21)
In this chapter we move our discussion of language and translation forward with a
brief look at how a given text comes to ‘make sense’ to a given readership. In doing
this, we will be venturing beyond the textual level of connecting sentences and para-
graphs together and identifying various textual features. Here, we will be concerned
with the way utterances are used in communicative situations and the way we
interpret them in context. This is a highly complex but fascinating area of language
study, known as pragmatics. Pragmatics is the study of language in use. It is the
study of meaning, not as generated by the linguistic system but as conveyed and
manipulated by participants in a communicative situation. Of the variety of notions
that are central to this particular area of language study, I have chosen two which I
believe to be particularly helpful in exploring the question of ‘making sense’ and in
highlighting areas of diffi culty in cross-cultural communication. These are coherence
and implicature. Those interested in exploring this area further will fi nd references
to other relevant notions in the notes at the end of this chapter.
7.1 COHERENCE
7.1.1 Coherence vs cohesion
Like cohesion, coherence is a network of relations which organize and create a
text: cohesion is the network of surface relations which link words and expressions
to other words and expressions in a text, and coherence is the network of conceptual
relations which underlie the surface text. Both concern the way stretches of language
are connected to each other. In the case of cohesion, stretches of language are
connected to each other by virtue of lexical and grammatical dependencies. In the

PRAGMATIC EQUIVALENCE 231
case of coherence, they are connected by virtue of conceptual or meaning depend-
encies as perceived by language users. Hoey (1991:12) sums up the difference
between cohesion and coherence as follows:
We will assume that cohesion is a property of the text and that coherence is a
facet of the reader’s evaluation of a text. In other words, cohesion is objective,
capable in principle of automatic recognition, while coherence is subjective and
judgements concerning it may vary from reader to reader.
We could say that cohesion is the surface expression of coherence relations, that it
is a device for making conceptual relations explicit. For instance, a conjunction such
as therefore may express a conceptual notion of reason or consequence. However,
if the reader cannot perceive an underlying semantic relation of reason or conse-
quence between the propositions connected by therefore, he or she will not be able
to make sense of the text in question; in other words, the text will not ‘cohere’ for
this particular reader. Generally speaking, the mere presence of cohesive markers
cannot create a coherent text; cohesive markers have to refl ect conceptual relations
which make sense. Enkvist (1978:110–111) gives an example of a highly cohesive
text that is nevertheless incoherent:
I bought a Ford. The car in which President Wilson rode down the Champs
Elysees was black. Black English has been widely discussed. The discus-
sions between the presidents ended last week. A week has seven days.
Every day I feed my cat. Cats have four legs. The cat is on the mat. Mat has
three letters.
The possibility of creating a semblance of cohesion which is not supported by under-
lying semantic relations is sometimes exploited in a few restricted genres, for
instance in comedy. However, the fact that we cannot normally make sense of
stretches of language like the one quoted above, in spite of the presence of a
number of cohesive markers, suggests that what actually gives texture to a stretch
of language is not the presence of cohesive markers but our ability to recognize
underlying semantic relations which establish continuity of sense. The main value of
cohesive markers seems to be that they can be used to facilitate and possibly control
the interpretation of underlying semantic relations.
7.1.2 Is coherence a feature of text or situation?
No text is inherently coherent or incoherent. In the end, it all depends on the
receiver, and on his ability to interpret the indications present in the discourse
so that, fi nally, he manages to understand it in a way which seems coherent
to him – in a way which corresponds with his idea of what it is that makes a
series of actions into an integrated whole.
(Charolles 1983:95)

232 IN OTHER WORDS
The ability to make sense of a stretch of language depends on the hearer’s or
reader’s expectations and experience of the world. Different societies, and indeed
different individuals and groups of individuals within the same society, have different
experiences of the world and different views on the way events and situations are
organized or related to each other. A network of relations which is valid and makes
sense in one society may not be valid in another. This is not just a question of
agreeing or disagreeing with a certain view of the world but of being able to make
sense of it in the fi rst place. Whether a text is judged as acceptable or not does not
depend on how closely it corresponds to some state of affairs in the world, but rather
on whether the reader fi nds the presented version of reality believable, homoge-
neous or relevant.
The coherence of a text is a result of the interaction between knowledge
presented in the text and the reader’s own knowledge and experience of the world,
the latter being infl uenced by a variety of factors such as age, sex, race, nationality,
education, occupation, and political and religious affi liations. Even a simple cohesive
relation of co-reference cannot be recognized, and therefore cannot be said to
contribute to the coherence of a text, if it does not fi t in with a reader’s prior
knowledge of the world. Consider, for instance, the following extract from A Hero
from Zero (p. i) where Tiny Rowland gives an account of how he lost control of the
House of Fraser:
The purchasing power of the proposed fi fteen hundred shop outlets would
have meant excellent price reductions to customers across Britain and the
United States. The fl agship, Harrods, had never been integrated with the rest
and would demerge to retain its particular character and choice.
It’s often written, as a handy journalist’s tag, that I suffered from an
obsession to control the splendid Knightsbridge store. It would be a very
static and limited aim, I think. For Lonrho’s purpose, it could have been any
well-spread stores group. It was chance, and also roulette, that brought
Hugh Fraser, the seller, and Lonrho, the buyer, together in 1977.
There is no explicit cohesive relation in the above extract which tells us that Harrods
and the splendid Knightsbridge store refer to the same thing, except perhaps the
use of the defi nite article in the splendid Knightsbridge store and the synonymy
between shop outlets and store (but even that depends for its interpretation on
recognizing that Harrods is a shop or store of some sort). There is no pronominal
reference, for instance, or direct repetition. The relation between the two, and
therefore the continuity of sense between the two paragraphs, is, of course, perfectly
accessible to any British reader as well as to anyone who is familiar with the famous
Harrods store and knows that it is located in Knightsbridge. In translating a document
like this, however, one cannot take it for granted that the target reader will have the
necessary background knowledge to interpret the co-reference successfully, unless,
of course, the translation is aimed at expatriate or immigrant communities in Britain.
The Arabic translation provides an explicit link through repetition of ‘store’. This

PRAGMATIC EQUIVALENCE 233
makes it clear that Harrods is a store and also establishes continuity of sense in the
mind of the target reader by linking Harrods in the fi rst paragraph and the splendid
Knightsbridge store in the second:
Arabic translation:
1500
.

.

. .
The combined purchasing power of 1500 stores meant excellent
reductions in prices for buyers in all parts of Britain and the United
States. As for the main store Harrods, it was not integrated with the
rest of the stores and was kept separate from the rest in order to
retain its distinctive character and the areas of choice available in it.
It has often been written about me in journalistic circles that I
suffer from a sick obsession which pushes me to try and control the
splendid Knightsbridge store …
We could perhaps say that texts are neither coherent nor incoherent by themselves,
that whether a text coheres or not depends on the ability of the reader to make
sense of it by relating it to what he or she already knows or to a familiar world,
whether this world is real or fi ctional. A text which coheres for one reader may
therefore not cohere for another. Different linguists have different views as to
whether this phenomenon implies that meaning is a property of a text or a property
of a communicative situation involving participants and settings in addition to a text.
Blum-Kulka’s defi nition of coherence as ‘a covert potential meaning relationship
among parts of a text, made overt by the reader or listener through processes of
interpretation’ (1986:17) implies that she sees meaning, or coherence, as a property
of a text, even though it is only accessible through processes of interpretation.
Sinclair (personal communication) similarly states that processes such as ‘the recall
of past experience and knowledge of the world … are not part of the meaning of a
text, but part of the human apparatus for working out the meaning of a text’, which
again suggests that meaning exists in texts but can only be accessed through
various processes of interpretation on the part of the reader. By contrast, Firth
(1964:111) asserts that ‘“meaning” is a property of the mutually relevant people,
things, events in the situation’, and Kirsten Malmkjær (personal communication)
does not accept the view that meaning is in text and suggests instead that ‘meanings
arise in situations involving language’.

234 IN OTHER WORDS
Whether one holds the view that meaning exists in text or in situations involving
text in addition to other variables such as participants and settings, one cannot deny
that a reader’s cultural and intellectual background determine how much sense he
or she gets out of a text. In the fi nal analysis, a reader can only make sense of a text
by analysing the linguistic elements which constitute it against the backdrop of his or
her own knowledge and experience. It therefore seems reasonable to suggest that,
regardless of whether meaning is a property of text or situation, coherence is not a
feature of text as such but of the judgement made by a reader on a text. As far as
translation is concerned, this means that the range and type of diffi culties encoun-
tered will not so much depend on the source text itself as ‘on the signifi cance of the
translated text for its readers as members of a certain culture, or of a sub-group
within that culture, with the constellation of knowledge, judgement and perception
they have developed from it’ (Snell-Hornby 1988:42). Even when addressing
members of their own linguistic community, writers will word their messages differ-
ently depending on the nature of the audience they have in mind, whether it consists
of adults or children, specialists or non-specialists, and so on. Like any writer, a
translator has to take account of the range of knowledge available to his or her
target readers and of the expectations they are likely to have about such things as
the organization of the world, the organization of language in general, the organi-
zation and conventions of particular text types, the structure of social relations, and
the appropriateness or inappropriateness of certain kinds of linguistic and non-
linguistic behaviour, among other things. These are all factors which infl uence the
coherence of a text in varying degrees because, as human beings, we can only
make sense of new information in terms of our own knowledge, beliefs and previous
experience of both linguistic and non-linguistic events.
7.2 COHERENCE AND PROCESSES OF
INTERPRETATION: IMPLICATURE
Charolles (1983) suggests that a reader may see a certain continuity of sense
between parts of an utterance and still fail to understand it fully (inasmuch as it is
possible to understand any stretch of language ‘fully’). Consider, for instance, the
following stretch of language:
I went to the cinema. The beer was good.
This is a perfectly coherent, if decontextualized, piece of language. Charolles
explains that anyone who hears or reads it will reach the following interpretation: the
speaker says that he or she went to the cinema, that he or she drank beer at
the cinema and that the beer in question was good. Note that we naturally provide
the necessary links to render the discourse coherent. There is nothing in the above
utterance which tells us explicitly that the speaker drank the beer or that he or she
did so at the cinema. Charolles calls this type of minimal coherence supplemental
coherence. He suggests that there is another type of coherence, which he calls

PRAGMATIC EQUIVALENCE 235
explanatory coherence, which not only establishes continuity of senses but,
unlike supplemental coherence, also justifi es it. The difference between supple-
mental interpretations and explanatory interpretations, Charolles suggests
(1983:93), is that:
the former never lead to the explication of a thematic continuity (they indicate
that an element is repeated from one segment to another), whereas the latter
justify this continuity (they lead to the manifestation of the reason why a
certain thing is said supplementally about an element).
Explanatory coherence is achieved when, given the right context and the necessary
knowledge of setting and participants, one can reach an interpretation such as this:
the speaker says he or she went to the cinema. The fi lm the speaker saw was bad –
so bad that the only good thing he or she can fi nd to say about it is that the beer he
or she drank there was good. But how does a speaker signal or a hearer interpret
this kind of implied meaning? How do we achieve explanatory coherence?
One of the most important notions to have emerged in text studies in relatively
recent years is that of implicature – the question of how it is that we come to
understand more than is actually said. Grice (1975) uses the term implicature to
refer to what the speaker means or implies rather than what he or she literally says.
Implicature is not to be confused with non-literal meaning, for instance with idiomatic
meaning. Idiomatic meaning is conventional, and its interpretation depends on a
good mastery of the linguistic system in question rather than on a successful inter-
pretation of a particular speaker’s intended or implied meaning in a given context.
For instance, in the following exchange
A: Shall we go for a walk?
B: Could I take a rain check on that?
the successful interpretation of B’s response depends on knowing the conventional
meaning of take a rain check in American English (‘to decline to accept an offer or
invitation immediately but indicate willingness to accept it at a later date’). No
conversational implicature is involved here. Compare this with a similar exchange
which does not involve the use of an idiom:
A: Shall we go for a walk?
B: It’s raining.
How does A, or anyone observing the scene, know how to relate the utterance ‘It’s
raining’ – a mere comment on the weather – to the question of going for a walk?
Why do we assume that ‘It’s raining’ is meant as an answer to the above question?
One answer which has already been suggested is that we do it in order to maintain
the assumption of coherence. If we do accept it as an answer, how do we know how
to interpret it? Does it mean ‘No, we’d better not because it’s raining’, ‘OK, but

236 IN OTHER WORDS
we’d better take an umbrella’, or perhaps ‘Yes – we both like walking in the rain’?
Note also that the same utterance It’s raining can mean something totally different
in a different context:
A: What is Jane up to these days?
B: It’s raining!
Here, Speaker A would probably interpret B’s comment on the weather as meaning
something like ‘I don’t want to talk about this subject’ or possibly, depending on B’s
tone of voice and facial expression, ‘You’re out of line – you shouldn’t be asking me
this question’.
Grice suggests that a speaker can signal an implied meaning conventionally or
non-conventionally. To signal an implied meaning conventionally, a speaker uses the
textual resources which are conventionally understood to signal certain relationships
between propositions. Conjunctions such as therefore, because and in spite of are
one such textual resource. Grammatical structure is another. For instance, in ‘It’s
money that they want’ the grammatical structure itself conventionally presupposes
what is expressed in the subordinate clause, in this case ‘they want something’ (see
discussion of information structure in Chapter 5, section 5.1.2).1

But how does a speaker signal (or a hearer interpret) meaning which is not
conventionally coded in the language? Before I proceed to give an account of
Grice’s answer to this question, I have to point out that Grice is not primarily
concerned with written text. In fact, not only does he restrict his comments to
spoken exchanges, he restricts them to a very small sub-set of these – namely
question/answer sequences. There is no doubt that Grice’s preoccupation with
speech means that his views are sometimes diffi cult to relate to written communi-
cation. Although speech and writing share many features, they are not the same
thing. Having said that, I believe that Grice’s views do have important applications in
translation. I therefore propose to play down the inadequacy of Grice’s theory of
implicature in terms of its application to written discourse in order to explore its
general relevance to translation.
Grice suggests that discourse has certain important features: for instance, it is
connected (i.e. it does not consist of unrelated sequences); it has a purpose; and it
is a co-operative effort. These features give rise to a general principle of communi-
cation, the Co-operative Principle, which participants are expected to observe:
Make your conversational contribution such as is required, at the stage at
which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in
which you are engaged.
(Grice 1975:45)
Implied meaning which is not signalled conventially derives from the Co-operative
Principle and a number of maxims associated with it: Quantity, Quality, Relevance
(Relation) and Manner:

PRAGMATIC EQUIVALENCE 237
1. Quantity
(a) Make your contribution as informative as is required (for the current purposes
of the exchange).
(b) Do not make your contribution more informative than is required.
2. Quality
‘Try to make your contribution one that is true’, specifi cally:
(a) Do not say what you believe to be false.
(b) Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence.
3. Relevance
Make your contributions relevant to the current exchange.
4. Manner
Be perspicuous, specifi cally:
(a) Avoid obscurity of expression.
(b) Avoid ambiguity.
(c) Be brief (avoid unnecessary prolixity).
(d) Be orderly.
The principles outlined above provide points of orientation rather than strict rules
which have to be followed by language users. We can and do refuse to adhere to
the maxims in some situations: for instance, a participant may try to avoid adhering
to one or more of the maxims in order to evade a topic or question. This is often
the case in political interviews. In spoken discourse, the other participant can
always request that the maxims be adhered to. Blum-Kulka (1983) gives several
such examples from political interviews on Israeli television. When an interviewer
says to Mr Peres ‘Mr Peres, if we can get down to concrete facts …’ (ibid.:138),
he is in effect invoking the maxims of manner and relation by asking Mr Peres to
address the point being raised. Grice’s maxims thus provide a point of orientation
for participants even when they are fl outed, so that fl outing them is recognized as
a way of exploiting the convention in order to convey an intended meaning. This is
explained in more detail below. For the moment, it is suffi cient to note that
conversational maxims and the implicatures that result from observing or fl outing
them are adapted to serve the purpose of the communication in hand. This
purpose will vary according to the situation and participants: it may be conveying
information, infl uencing the opinions or emotions of hearers, directing their
actions and so on.
Now, if as language users we recognize and generally abide by something like
Grice’s Co-operative Principle, then the reason we assume that an utterance which
follows a question provides an answer to that question becomes obvious: we assume
that both addresser and addressee are operating the Co-operative Principle, and in
particular the maxim of Relevance. We will therefore go out of our way to fi nd an
interpretation that will connect it to the previous utterance. We attribute relevance to
what we hear and read even when it appears, on the surface, to be unrelated to the
preceding discourse, and regardless of whether a relation is explicitly signalled. For
example, on hearing or seeing the statement

238 IN OTHER WORDS
Elizabeth is putting on a lot of weight. She smokes very heavily.
we will naturally strive to relate the two propositions somehow. We may infer that the
speaker implies that Elizabeth is putting on a lot of weight because she is smoking
too heavily, or the other way round: that she is smoking too heavily because she is
putting on a lot of weight, perhaps as a way of controlling her appetite. A less likely,
but nevertheless feasible, inference is that Elizabeth is putting on a lot of weight in
spite of the fact that she is smoking too heavily. Yet another possible inference
would be that Elizabeth is letting herself go, her health is on the decline, she is not
looking after herself as she should do. Pragmatic inferences of this type are essential
to maintaining the coherence of discourse. Levinson (1983) overstates the case a
little when he suggests that such inferences arise to preserve the assumption of
co-operation and that without them many adjacent utterances would appear to be
unrelated to each other or to the discourse in hand. Nevertheless, there is a great
deal of truth in what he says. Which inferences we do draw will naturally depend on
a variety of factors such as our knowledge of the world, of such things as the rela-
tionship between smoking, appetite and weight; our knowledge of participants in the
discourse, of the speaker, and of Elizabeth; our knowledge of and fl uency in the
specifi c language being used, and so on.
Implicatures, then, are pragmatic inferences which allow us to achieve something
like Charolles’ explanatory coherence. They are aspects of meaning which are over
and above the literal and conventional meaning of an utterance and they depend for
their interpretation on a recognition of the Co-operative Principle and its maxims. Apart
from observing the maxims, a language user can deliberately fl out a maxim and in
doing so produce what Grice calls a conversational implicature. For instance, if
used as a genuine question the utterance Do you know what time it is? conveys the
meaning ‘I do not know the time; I wish to know the time’. Levinson (1983) calls this
type of meaning a standard implicature. If the same utterance is used as a rhetorical
question, in the right context and with the appropriate intonation, it could convey a
meaning such as ‘You are very late’. This is what Grice would call a conversational
implicature. It is achieved by fl outing the maxim of Quality which demands sincerity.
Conversational implicature can be conveyed by fl outing any or several of the maxims.
To use one of Grice’s examples: imagine that a professor of philosophy is asked to
supply a testimonial for a candidate for a position in the fi eld of philosophy. He or she
replies that the candidate’s manners are impeccable and his or her handwriting is
extremely legible. How does the addressee interpret this testimonial? Knowing that
the professor in question is in a position to comment directly on the candidate’s
strengths and weaknesses in the area of philosophy but apparently refuses to do so,
he or she must still assume that the professor is observing the maxims, particularly the
maxim of Relevance. According to Grice, what is implicated by the speaker ‘would be
what he might expect the hearer to suppose him to think in order to preserve the idea
that the maxims are, after all, not being violated’ (1981:185). The addressee therefore
infers that the professor is implying something by his or her reply, in this case that the
candidate is no good at philosophy.

PRAGMATIC EQUIVALENCE 239
The Co-operative Principle and its maxims can account for the fact that we do
not abandon contributions such as those described above as irrelevant, but they do
not directly explain how we arrive at a particular inference or, in Grice’s terms, a
conversational implicature.2 This is a diffi cult topic which remains largely unresolved.
For one thing, conversational implicatures are often indeterminate. For another, an
utterance may be open to several possible interpretations. This may or may not be
intentional on the part of the speaker. In either case, it complicates the task of the
translator who may knowingly or unknowingly eliminate certain possible interpreta-
tions of the original from the target text. The translator may even inadvertently give
rise to other interpretations which are not derivable from the original text. Both
situations can arise because of constraints imposed on the translator by the structure
of the target language, the nature of the target audience and the conventions of the
target culture.
Indeterminacy aside, Grice details a number of factors which can contribute to
our success or failure in working out implicatures. These are:
1. the conventional meaning of the words and structures used (i.e. a mastery of
the language system), together with the identity of any references that may be
involved;
2. the Co-operative Principle and its maxims;
3. the context, linguistic or otherwise, of the utterance;
4. other items of background knowledge; and
5. the fact (or supposed fact) that all relevant items falling under the previous
headings are available to both participants and both participants know or assume
this to be the case.
7.3 COHERENCE, IMPLICATURE AND TRANSLATION
STRATEGIES
Let us now look at the above factors in some detail. Grice himself suggested them
as, in his own words, ‘data’ on which ‘the hearer will reply’ in working out whether a
particular conversational implicature is present (1975:50). But they also provide a
good basis for exploring the whole question of coherence. The following discussion
will therefore consider how these factors might relate not only to working out impli-
catures but to the question of coherence in general and to common problems and
strategies in translation.
For an alternative view of inferential processes in communication see Sperber
and Wilson (1986) and Gutt (1991/2000, 2005).

240 IN OTHER WORDS
7.3.1 The conventional meanings of words and structures
and the identity of references
7.3.1.1 The conventional meanings of words and
structures
This is an obvious point. If we do not understand the meanings of the words and
structures used in a text, we cannot work out its implied meanings. Knowledge of
the language system may not be suffi cient, but it is essential if one is to understand
what is going on in any kind of verbal communication. This means that any mistrans-
lation of words and structures in the source text may well affect the calculability of
implicatures in the target text. An example of this was given in Chapter 3, repeated
here for convenience. The example is from A Hero from Zero (p. 59):
All this represents only a part of all that Forbes Magazine reported on Fayed
in the March issue mentioned before. In 1983, he had approached the indus-
trialist Robert O. Anderson under the cover of a commission agent. The
industrialist had been struck by his appearance as someone with modest
means. Mr. Anderson was therefore astonished by his sudden acquisition of
a considerable fortune.
The mistranslation of the description of Mohamed Fayed’s appearance in the Arabic
text, where modest means was rendered as ‘his appearance suggests modesty and
simplicity’, makes the original implicature quite incalculable. The reader of both
source and target texts must assume that the writer’s description of Fayed’s
appearance is relevant and is meant to be as informative as is necessary for the
purposes of the communication. The writer cannot be disregarding the maxims of
Relevance and Quantity unless the Co-operative Principle is not being adhered to,
and there is no reason to suspect that it is not. Therefore, the writer is implying
something by describing Fayed’s appearance. Given the co-text and context of the
above extract and the relevant background knowledge, most readers of the source
text will infer that Fayed has come to wealth suddenly and, quite possibly, by
dishonest means. This implicature is diffi cult to calculate in Arabic because of the
mistranslation of modest means. The Arab reader is left feeling somewhat unsure of
how to interpret the favourable description of Fayed as simple and modest in a
context which otherwise seems to suggest that he is anything but a ‘nice person’.
As well as the conventional meaning of words, each language also employs
conventionalized expressions and patterns of conveying implicatures. In other words,
in every language there will be conventional associations between certain linguistic
patterns and certain inferable meanings. These patterns are identifi able and are
sometimes recorded in grammars. They are not necessarily associated with the
same range of meanings in other languages. For instance, rhetorical questions such
as Isn’t that an ugly building? (instead of ‘This is an ugly building’) or How can you
be so cruel? (instead of ‘You are very cruel’) are regularly used in English to express
a range of emotive meanings such as indignation, shock and amusement (COBUILD

PRAGMATIC EQUIVALENCE 241
English Grammar, Sinclair 1990:205–206). Fixed expressions modelled on
rhetorical questions, such as Haven’t you done well? or Don’t I know it?, are often
ironic.3 Likewise, far from being a literal request for feedback, the expression
Correct me if I’m wrong suggests ‘I know I’m right’ (Duff 1990) and can therefore
be quite irritating.
Louw (1993, 2000) and Sinclair (1999) discuss a fascinating feature of
language patterning which was fi rst identifi ed, without being named as such, by
Sinclair (1987a, 1991). Now known as semantic prosody, this feature gives rise
to very subtle implicatures which are often processed subliminally, without the
speaker or hearer necessarily being conscious of the attitude being expressed by
the item in question.4 Louw (1993:157) defi nes semantic prosody as ‘a consistent
aura of meaning with which a form is imbued by its collocates’;5 this ‘aura of
meaning’ can be positive or negative, but more commonly it is negative (Louw
2000). Sinclair (1999) considers it an aspect of ‘attitudinal or pragmatic meaning’
and gives the example of happen in English. Here are some of the concordance
lines he uses to demonstrate that despite its standard, attitudinally neutral meaning
of ‘take place’, happen is often imbued with negative meaning:
Something is going to happen to him unless he pulls himself together.
I knew something terrible would happen.
Accidents can happen in spite of rules and regulations.
What I had feared might happen was happening.
I was worried about what would happen when the public realized this.
I’m always expecting something calamitous to happen.
Semantic prosody is not restricted to single words such as verbs and nouns. The
expression with/to/by the naked eye, for example, has a semantic prosody of diffi –
culty (Sinclair 1991), as is evident in the following examples from the Translational
English Corpus:6
In painting, as in music and literature, what is often termed abstract strikes
me as being simply representative of a more delicate and elusive reality which
is barely visible to the naked eye. (Source: Discovering the World, by Clarice
Lispetor; translated from Brazilian Portuguese by Giovanni Pontiero)
Her eyesight was so strong that she was able to extract a tiny piece of glass,
hardly visible to the naked eye, from Aziza’s fi ngertip using a pair of eyebrow
tweezers. (Source: The Golden Chariot, by Salwa Bakr; translated from
Arabic by Dinah Manisty)
… the dislocation could not be observed, at this altitude a speed of seven
hundred and fi fty metres per hour cannot be captured by the naked eye, …
(Source: The Stone Raft, by José Saramago; translated from Portuguese by
Giovanni Pontiero)

242 IN OTHER WORDS
What is particularly interesting about this feature of language patterning is that
departure from the typical prosody of an item can generate irony or sarcasm, among
other rhetorical effects, as is evident in this example of with the naked eye, also from
the Translational English Corpus:
I was confronted with bags and boxes of provisions, and my mother tasting a
bit of rice and saying, ‘They’re obviously mean. God help us! You can count
the cardamon pods and cumin seeds with the naked eye.’ (Source: Women
of Sand and Myrrh, by Hanan Al-Shaykh; translated from Arabic by Catharine
Cobham)
Translators need to be alert to the subtle implicatures conveyed by semantic prosody
as well as those communicated when a prosody is exploited for rhetorical effect.
Kenny (1998:520) explains why:
There are instances, for example, where the reader of an original text and its
translation may feel that the translation is somehow tamer than the original, or
that it paints a less bleak picture of a situation than did the original. It is often
diffi cult, however, to say precisely why one has this feeling. One might be
able to put one’s fi nger on particular points in the text where certain passages
have been toned down …, but one may be left with a vague suspicion that
there is more to it than that; that there is somehow a different attitude
dispersed over the pages of the target text.
Finally, typographic features also play a role in conveying certain implicatures. In
English, the use of inverted commas around a word or expression in the body of a
text can suggest a range of implied meanings. It can suggest disagreement with the
way a word or expression is used, emphasis, irony or tentativeness about the appro-
priateness or applicability of an expression. Other languages may prefer to convey
similar meanings lexically or grammatically. Problems arise in translation when the
function of such patterns is not recognized and a literal or near-literal transfer of form
distorts the original implicature or conveys a different one. For example, Loveday
(1982b:364) explains that in Japanese ‘it is generally regarded as unrefi ned to
clearly mark the end of one’s utterance, and so the ending is frequently left hanging
with a word like “nevertheless”’. A literal translation of this type of pattern into
English would no doubt confuse a reader and may encourage him or her to read
more into the utterance than might be intended.
7.3.1.2 The identity and import of any references
mentioned in the text
The ability to identify references to participants, entities, events and practices is
essential for drawing inferences and for maintaining the coherence of a text. A
proper name or even a reference to a type of food or gadget which is unknown to the
reader can disrupt the continuity of the text and obscure the relevance of any

PRAGMATIC EQUIVALENCE 243
statement associated with it. Many of the examples discussed under translation by
cultural substitution in Chapter 2 illustrate the translator’s awareness of this
problem and offer one type of strategy for overcoming it. A further example is given
below, from A Hero from Zero. The source language of this particular extract is
French. It is the opening paragraph of an article on Mohamed Fayed which appeared
in one of Haiti’s leading daily newspapers, Le Matin. The article is translated into
English and incorporated into the English source document. The Arabic version of
the article may have been translated from the French original or the English
translation:
French source text (p. 51):
Il y avait nombre d’années qu’on avait pas entendu parler de lui. Et
voilà que dans son numéro du 7 Mars 1988. Le Magazine Américain
‘forbes’ le campe sous son vrai visage. Le qualifi catif ‘d’aventurier
oriental’ que lui avait collé un journal Haitien édité par des membres
de la diaspora à New-York n’est rien au regard de ce qu’il représente
vraiment. En vérité, il ferait pâlir Arsène Lupin.
English translation (p. 57):
It’s been quite a few years since we have heard him mentioned. And
then, in its 7th March 1988 issue, the American Forbes Magazine
painted his true picture. The description of ‘oriental adventurer’ given
to him by a Haitian paper edited by members of the ‘Diaspora’ in
New York is nothing in relation to what he really is. Indeed, he would
frighten even Arsène Lupin. (A French version of Boris Karloff.)
Arabic translation (p. 67):
. . . .
For the truth is that he is a character capable of frightening Arsène
Lupin himself.
The reference to Arsène Lupin in the above extract may not cause a problem to
many Arab readers, or at least the Arab translator does not seem to think it would.
Most of Arsène Lupin’s stories are translated into Arabic and his name will probably
suggest the familiar image of a resourceful and cunning thief. The Arabic translation
therefore does not provide an elaboration of the reference.7 By contrast, Arsène
Lupin is virtually unknown to the average English reader. The English translator
attempts to bridge the gap between the textual world and the world of the target
reader by explaining the unfamiliar (Arsène Lupin) in terms of the familiar (Boris
Karloff). The strategy itself is fi ne, but Arsène Lupin has very little in common with

244 IN OTHER WORDS
Boris Karloff. The former is the hero of a series of French detective-type stories: a
thief; fl amboyant, resourceful and elusive, but nevertheless a thief. The latter is a
British actor associated mainly with horror fi lms.
Identifying reference is not just a question of identifying roughly who or what the
referent is but, crucially, of knowing enough about the referent to interpret the
particular associations it is meant to trigger in our minds in a given context. Referents
are not featureless beings and entities; they have specifi c histories, physical and
social features, and are associated with particular contexts. It is the ability to interpret
the signifi cance of a given reference and the way it links with other features of the
context and co-text that contributes to the continuity of sense or coherence of a text
and enables us to draw any intended implicatures. The distinction between identi-
fying reference and other items of background knowledge (7.3.4. below) is perhaps
not a useful one to draw.
The ability to identify a referent may also be infl uenced by one’s perspective. In
the following example from China’s Panda Reserves, ‘we’ is ambiguous in the
Chinese translation:
English source text:
Many of the species growing wild here are familiar to us as plants
cultivated in European gardens – species like this exotic lily.
Target text (Chinese):
这里野生的许多种类我们很熟悉，是欧洲园林内种植的种类 – 像
这 – 奇异的百合花等种类。
many varieties of the wild life here we are very familiar, are the kinds grown in European gardens – varieties like this
strange unique lily fl ower.
The Chinese reader may fi nd it diffi cult to identify the referent of ‘we’, particularly
since it contrasts with ‘European gardens’. It may not be clear whether the text is
written from the European or Chinese perspective.
7.3.2 The Co-operative Principle and its maxims
Grice suggests that the Co-operative Principle and its maxims are not arbitrary but
are a feature of any rational behaviour, be it linguistic or non-linguistic. He gives
examples of non-linguistic events in which all the maxims are seen to apply as they
would in any verbal encounter. If someone is assisting you to mend a car and you
ask for four screws, you do not expect to be handed two or six (Quantity); if you are
mixing ingredients for a cake you do not expect to be handed a good book (Rele-
vance), and so on. This suggests that the Co-operative Principle and its maxims are
universal, on the assumption that linguistic behaviour is just one type of rational

PRAGMATIC EQUIVALENCE 245
behaviour and that all human beings are rational. Levinson (1983) seems to support
this suggestion. However, not all linguists would accept it quite so readily, and there
is, in fact, some evidence to the contrary. Bible translators who regularly work with
languages and cultures considerably different from those at the centre of linguistic
and academic enquiry are quicker to voice their suspicion and to consider the possi-
bility that the Co-operative Principle and its maxims are not universal. Thomson
(1982:11) considers the possibility that:
a certain type of implicature, say quality implicature, is never used by the
speakers of a particular language, or that the contexts in which a type of
implicature will be used will differ from one language community to the next.
Even within the same cultural and linguistic community, there are sometimes special
contexts in which one or more of the maxims do not apply. The maxim of Quantity is
usually in abeyance in adversarial court questioning (Levinson 1983). Here, it is
mutually understood that it is the legal counsel’s job to extract damaging statements
from the defendant and that the latter’s job is to resist that. This is an example of a
non-co-operative context in which one participant, the defendant, tries to be as
unco-operative as possible.
There is also the question of whether the list of maxims proposed by Grice is
exhaustive and whether the maxims have the same value in different cultures. Grice
himself conceded that the four maxims do not represent an exhaustive list and
suggested that other maxims such as ‘Be polite’ may be added. In some cultures,
‘Be polite’ indeed seems to override all other maxims. Loveday (1982b:364)
explains that ‘“No” almost constitutes a term of abuse in Japanese and equivo-
cation, exiting or even lying is preferred to its use’. If this is true, it would suggest
that the maxims of Quality and Manner are easily overriden by considerations of
politeness in some cultures. At any rate, it certainly seems to cause cross-cultural
diffi culties, with serious consequences in some cases. When President Nixon
expressed his concern about excessive Japanese textile exports to the United
States to Premier Sato in 1970, ‘Sato answered zensho shimasu, a phrase literally
translated as “I’ll handle it as well as I can”. To Nixon, this meant, “I’ll take care of it”,
that is Sato would settle the problem and fi nd some way to curtail the exports. To
Sato, however, it was merely a polite way of ending the conversation’ (Gibney,
quoted in Loveday 1982a:14).
Different cultures have different norms of ‘polite’ behaviour. They also have
different ideas about what is and what is not a ‘taboo’ area. Sex, religion and defe-
cation are taboo subjects in many societies, but not necessarily to the same degree
within similar situations. Whatever the norms of polite behaviour in the target culture,
it is important to note that in some translation contexts being polite can be far more
important than being accurate. A translator may decide to omit or replace whole
stretches of text which violate the reader’s expectations of how a taboo subject
should be handled – if at all – in order to avoid giving offence. For example, if trans-
lated ‘accurately’ into Arabic, the following extract from Arab Political Humour by

246 IN OTHER WORDS
Kishtainy would no doubt be very offensive to the average Arab reader, for whom
God is not a subject of ridicule and sexual organs are strictly taboo:
The intricate and delicate confi guration of the characters of the Arabic alphabet
together with the customary omission of the vowels helped to create endless
jibes and jokes which are completely confi ned to the Arabic reader. You only
need a tiny dot, for example, to turn the letter R into Z. With the playful or acci-
dental addition of such a dot the word rabbi (my God) can be turned into zubbi
(my penis)! The door was thus opened for one satirical wit to make his dutiful
comment and correct an otherwise unwarranted statement. Some humble
person married a rich widow with whose money he built himself an imposing
mansion which he piously adorned with the legend, carefully engraved over the
door, ‘Such are the blessings of my God’ (Hada min fadl rabbi). The local wit
hastened under cover of darkness to put matters right by adding the missing
dot to change the hallowed phrase into ‘Such are the blessings of my penis’.
(1985:12–13)
In the published Arabic translation, all reference to rabbi and zubbi is omitted. The
above example is replaced by a much ‘tamer’ one8 where, by adding and omitting
dots on various letters, the local wit turns a poem which is originally written in praise
of Arabs into one that ridicules them. A similarly offensive extract (p. 14 in the
English text), does not appear in the Arabic translation at all:
The sarcastic misuse of names has not been always as polite or free from
resort to the equivalent of the English four-letter words. In the fi erce and
often bloody strife between the Ba’th Party and the Nasserists and Commu-
nists, the opponents of the Ba’th played on the strange name of the founder
and leader of the Ba’th Party, Michel Afl aq. One of the latest exercises in this
respect was the discovery in Al-Muhit lexicon that Afl aq meant in archaic
Arabic ‘wide and loose vagina and stupid, sluttish woman’.
The existence of the additional maxim ‘Be polite’ and the overriding importance it
tends to assume in many cultures may explain intelligent decisions taken in the
course of translation which could otherwise seem haphazard and irresponsible. For
interesting discussions and exemplifi cation of the notion of politeness in the context
of translation and interpreting, see Berk-Seligson (1988), Hatim and Mason (1997,
Chapter 5), Hickey (2000), Arnáiz (2006) and Glinert (2010).
Going back to the question of whether Grice’s proposed maxims have the same
value in different cultures, Headland (1981) explains that the Dumagats have great
diffi culty in understanding the scriptures because of what he calls ‘information
overload’. By Dumagat standards, the Bible apparently gives far too much infor-
mation. He illustrates his point through an overstatement of the case (ibid.:20):

PRAGMATIC EQUIVALENCE 247
A Koine Greek and a Dumagat would both describe the shooting of a duck,
but in different ways. The Greek would say, in describing the event, ‘A few
minutes after dawn, a large and beautifully plumed white female duck fl ew
overhead just south of my hiding place. I quickly fi red two shells with number
sixteen lead shot, and the duck dropped nicely in front of me just fi ve yards
away, at the edge of the lake.’ A Dumagat who had had the same experience
would say, ‘Yesterday I shot a duck.’
If Headland’s comments are accurate, then how does the phenomenon of ‘infor-
mation overload’ relate to Grice’s maxim of Quantity? For one thing, it seems to
suggest that the instruction ‘do not make your contribution more informative than is
required’ can be interpreted quite differently by different cultures. Hatim and
Mason’s comment on this particular maxim is that ‘What is “required” for any given
communicative purpose within a TL cultural environment is … a matter for the trans-
lator’s judgement’ (1990:94).
An important factor which seems to override Grice’s maxims and support the
possibility that they are both language- and culture-specifi c relates to norms of
discourse organization and rhetorical functions in different languages. Clyne (1981)
suggests that, unlike English, German discourse is non-linear and favours digres-
sions. In some extreme cases, such as Fritz Schutze’s Sprache soziologisch
gesehen, there are ‘not only digressions [Exkurse], but also digressions from digres-
sions. Even within the conclusion, there are digressions’ (ibid.:63). Not only does
the maxim of Relevance need to be redefi ned in view of these comments, but the
non-linear organization of German discourse also seems to require a reassessment
of another maxim: ‘Be brief’. Clyne (ibid.) explains how ‘every time the author
returns to the main line of argument, he has to recapitulate up to the point before the
last digression, resulting in much repetition’. One wonders how an organizational
feature such as this relates to the maxims of Relevance and Manner. Can this
apparent violation of the maxims render a German text partially incoherent if it is not
adjusted in translation? An English translation of a German book, Norbert Dittmar’s
Soziolinguistik, was apparently felt to be chaotic and lacking in focus and cohe-
siveness, although the original was considered a landmark in its fi eld by Germans
(Clyne 1981).
Arabic is well known to use repetition as a major rhetorical device. This includes
repetition of both form and substance, so that the same information is repeated
again and again in a variety of ways in an effort to convince by assertion. This style
of argumentative prose is seen by non-Arabs as too verbose and certainly anything
but brief. The Japanese favourite ‘dot-type’ pattern in which anecdotes are strung
together without an explicit link or conclusion can infuriate western readers who
demand relevance of a type familiar to them. Loveday notes that ‘westerners often
react to this with “so what!!”, considering the presentation shallow’ (1982b:364).
Different rhetorical conventions are therefore seen to apply in different cultures, and
they can override a maxim such as ‘Be brief’ or ‘Be relevant’. In fact, these conven-
tions provide a context for interpreting the maxims.

248 IN OTHER WORDS
Grice’s notion of implicature is extremely useful to anyone engaged in cross-
cultural communication, but it cannot be taken at face value. The maxims on which
the Co-operative Principle is based have rightly been criticized as vague and ill-
defi ned by various linguists. Sperber and Wilson, for instance, suggest that ‘appeals
to the “maxim of relation” are no more than dressed-up appeals to intuition’
(1986:36). One question which readily comes to mind is this: how does Grice’s
notion of Relevance relate to the issue of a participant’s level of interest in a
particular topic and the way this, in turn, relates to the maxim of Quantity? Does
‘relevant’ imply ‘of personal interest’ and does it control the interpretation of ‘Make
your contribution as informative as is required’? This issue is particularly important in
any translation activity which involves some form of rewriting, such as editing or
summarizing. It raises questions which are not easy to answer because they have to
do with how well the maxims transfer from speech to writing, that is, from a context
which involves a single receptor to one which often involves an undefi ned range of
receptors. An example from a translation which involves a signifi cant degree of
rewriting may help to illustrate the problem.
A well-known Egyptian journalist, Mohammed Heikal, published a book in 1983
about the assassination of the former Egyptian president Anwar Sadat. He wrote the
book, Autumn of Fury, originally in English and later translated it himself into Arabic.
Being in the rather special position of author/translator, Heikal clearly felt free to
make whatever changes seemed necessary to appeal to the Arab reader in the
translated version. The Arabic version is signifi cantly longer and more detailed than
the English original. For instance, the description of Sadat’s wounds and his state on
arrival at the hospital is done in one paragraph in the English version (see Chapter 5,
p.164) but is expanded into four pages in the Arabic version. A chapter entitled
‘Organized loot’ in the English version describes the systematic looting of Egypt’s
resources by Sadat’s relatives and favourites. The description is far more detailed in
the expanded Arabic version (twenty-nine pages compared with seventeen pages in
the English version). How do writers/translators such as Heikal balance the two
maxims of Relevance and Quantity in renegotiating a text for a different
readership?
Weaknesses of defi nition aside, it is interesting that Grice’s maxims seem to
refl ect notions which are known to be valued in the English-speaking world, for
instance sincerity, brevity and relevance. Robinson suggests that they are even
more restricted in their applicability, describing them as ‘redolent of the white
masculine professional middle-class culture of the past hundred-odd years in
England and the U.S.’ (2003:128). The values they encode do not necessarily have
the same resonance or relevance in other cultures, nor should they be expected to
represent any ideal basis for communication. Loveday (1982b:363) asserts that
‘the highly cherished norm of linguistic precision in Western culture cannot be taken
for granted and is not universally sanctioned by every society’, and Clyne (1981:65)
rightly suggests that the emphasis on relevance ‘may impede cross-reference, one
of the most important aspects of discourse’, and wonders whether it might lead to
the suppression of associations. ‘Just as there are Anglo-Saxon readers who

PRAGMATIC EQUIVALENCE 249
dismiss some German academic writings as “chaotic”’, he suggests in another
article, ‘there are German readers who fi nd English-language publications too
“narrow” or conclude that they are not saying very much’ (1983:43).
We have seen that the suggestion that Grice’s maxims are universal is diffi cult
to justify. A more plausible suggestion would be that all discourse, in any language,
is essentially co-operative, and that the phenomenon of implicature (rather than the
specifi c maxims suggested by Grice) is universal. In other words, the interpretation
of a maxim or the maxims themselves may differ from one linguistic community to
another, but the process of conveying intended meaning by means of exploiting
whatever maxims are in operation in that community will be the same. This position
is much more tenable, particularly since it seems to be a feature of language use in
general that it is based partly on adhering to constraints and partly on manipulating
constraints to produce special effects.
7.3.3 The context, linguistic or otherwise, of the utterance
The context in which an utterance occurs determines the range of implicatures that
may sensibly be derived from it. Sperber and Wilson suggest that ‘the context does
much more than fi lter out inappropriate interpretations; it provides premises without
which the implicature cannot be inferred at all’ (1986:37). Apart from the actual
setting and the participants involved in an exchange, the context also includes the
co-text and the linguistic conventions of a community in general.
Tse (1988) explains that in translating a text which describes an experiment in
which the medical histories of patients were recorded on micro-chip medical record
cards, one of the main diffi culties resulted from differences in the source and target
contexts. The text, ‘Patients test micro-chip medical record card’ (the Independent,
28 April 1988), states:
Dr. Robert Stevens, whose study in Wales involves one group practice and
one pharmacy, said patients’ reaction to the cards had been favourable.
In the United Kingdom, a pharmacy is an establishment which dispenses medicine
on the basis of prescriptions signed by a doctor. For an English reader, therefore, it
makes sense to suggest that both group practices (i.e. groups of doctors working
through the same clinic) and pharmacies can be involved in recording the medical
histories of patients. Tse explains that ‘both in China and in Hong Kong, a patient
can receive medical treatment and medicines from a doctor’s surgery. A pharmacy
is a place where one can buy tablets without prescriptions’ (1988:38). It would thus
not make sense to a Chinese reader to suggest that pharmacies can or should be
involved in an exercise of this sort. If they do not dispense medicine on the basis of
prescriptions, how can they be expected to monitor patients’ medical histories?
The inability to relate a piece of information to his or her own context can lead
the reader to draw the wrong inferences from a text. Rommel (1987) explains that
whereas the size of a house or fl at is indicated in Britain by the number of

250 IN OTHER WORDS
bedrooms, it is normally indicated in Switzerland by the total number of rooms. A
German version of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest which was
shown in Zurich some time ago drew what Rommel refers to as a ‘vulgar snigger’
from the audience when Lady Bracknell asked Wieviel Schlafzimmer (literally
‘How many bedrooms?’) instead of adjusting the question to the realities of the
Swiss context. The sexual connotations inferred by the Swiss audience were not
intended by Oscar Wilde.
In addition to the actual ‘realities’ of a situation, the context also includes certain
strategies that people regularly employ in order to impose some kind of structure on
the world around them. When a person describes something, recounts an event or
lists a number of items, he or she will normally follow a preferred sequence rather
than a random one. For instance, in recounting a series of events, one would
normally follow a temporal order, listing events in the order in which they occurred.
This temporal order can, of course, be modifi ed or even reversed provided appro-
priate signals such as tense markers or time adjuncts are used to clarify the alter-
native ordering. It nevertheless represents a ‘preferred’ or ‘normal’ ordering strategy
which is regularly employed by most people.
Levinson relates the question of normal ordering of events in the real world to
the sub-maxim of Manner, ‘Be orderly’. He suggests that it is because we expect
participants in a discourse to respect the maxim ‘Be orderly’ that we expect them to
recount events in the order in which they happened (1983:108). This explains why
we would fi nd an utterance such as The lone ranger rode into the sunset and
jumped on his horse odd. Temporal order may be a widespread or universal ordering
strategy, but there are other types of preference for ordering strategies which tend
to be language- and culture-specifi c. If we accept that the linguistic conventions of
a community can provide a context for interpreting a maxim, then the relation which
exists between ‘being orderly’ and following a ‘normal’ ordering of events can also
be said to exist between ‘being orderly’ and following whatever ordering strategies
are considered normal in relation to such things as the listing of entities and linguistic
items.
Brown and Yule suggest that constraints on the ordering of events and entities
are usually followed by language users and that when the normal ordering is reversed
‘some “special effect” (staging device, implicature) would be being created by the
speaker/writer’ (1983:146). It is generally conceded that it is impossible to
determine exactly what ‘natural orders’ there are in different types of discourse and
in different languages, though one intuitively knows when a deviant order is being
used. Part of the problem is that the ordering of events and entities may be adapted
to maintain point of view or thematic progression for instance. Nevertheless, it is
worth noting that even though an occasional divergence from preferred ordering
strategies may not noticeably affect the coherence of a text, repeated minor distur-
bances of preferred sequences may have a cumulative effect on the ease with which
a reader can make sense of a stretch of language. The following examples illustrate
adjustments made in the course of translation to fulfi l target readers’ expectations of
normal ordering.

PRAGMATIC EQUIVALENCE 251
English source text:
In the Devon study, 8,500 patients will carry the cards, which can be
both read and updated by GPs, a pharmacist, a local dentist, and by
hospital clinics at Exmouth and the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital.
Back-translation of target text (Chinese):
8,500 patients will take part in the Devon experiment, using the
medical cards. Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital, Exmouth
Hospital clinic, and doctor, pharmacist, and local dentist,
may use a machine reader to read the medical card’s content and
store new information.
The source text (‘Patients test micro-chip medical record card’, the Independent,
28 April 1988) and its Chinese translation are cited in Tse (1988). Tse explains that
the order of the nominal groups underlined in the English text is modifi ed in the
Chinese translation to fulfi l the expectations of the Chinese reader, who is used to
listing entities in order of size, from ‘large’ to ‘small’. In this case, the normal ordering
strategy in Chinese would be to start with the larger entities, that is, hospitals. The
same strategy is used in listing addresses. An address in Chinese, as well as
Russian, would start with the largest entity, the country, and work its way down to
county, town, area, street, fl at, name and so on. In English, addresses are presented
in the reverse order, starting with the name and ending with the country of desti-
nation. Any deviation from this normal order would encourage a reader to search for
some kind of implicature or to reassess the context in which a text is encountered.
Ordering strategies may also be infl uenced by physical or emotional factors. It is
normal to expect entities which are closer to one’s own environment to be mentioned
fi rst in a list. Note the different ordering of languages in the following example from
the Euralex Circular:
English text:
Abstracts (approximately 1,000 words) in any of the Congress
languages, English. French, German or Russian, should be sent to the
Lecture Programme Organizer, …
German text:
Abstracts (etwa 1000 Wörter bzw. 80–100 Zeilen) in einer beliebigen
Konferenzsprache (Deutsch, Englisch, Französisch, Russisch) …
We request abstracts (about 1,000 words or 80–100 lines) in any
conference language (German, English, French, Russian) …

252 IN OTHER WORDS
Russian text:
We ask for a short abstract of papers (up to 1,000 words or up to 100
lines) by 15 November 1987, in any of the offi cial languages of the
conference, i.e. in Russian, English, French or German, …
Another point which may be subsumed under the vast heading of ‘context’ is the
language user’s sense of what is socially and textually appropriate or normal. This
does not have much to do with what the reader thinks the world is like, but rather
with what he or she is prepared to accept as an appropriate behaviour (linguistic or
otherwise) in a given situation. This ‘sense of appropriateness’ could provide the
context for interpreting the additional maxim ‘Be polite’ discussed earlier. The varied
use of pronouns of address in different cultures is a good example (see Chapter 4,
section 4.2.3). However, appropriateness is not restricted to the notion of politeness;
it covers a multitude of other things. Even something as simple as the use of a
particular calendar, where the reader has access to more than one, can be more or
less sensitive to readers’ expectations in a given context. Note, for instance, the use
of the Japanese calendar in the following example:
English source text (Palace and Politics in Prewar Japan, Titus 1974:17):
The heads of the ministries created in 1869 were not directly
responsible for ‘advising and assisting’ (hohitsu) the emperor, though
they were to become so in 1889. According to the 1871 reorganization
of the ministries, for example, the privilege of assisting the throne
directly was in theory limited to the Chancellor (Dajo Daijin), Minister
of the Left (Sa Daijin), Minister of the Right (U Daijin), and the
Councillors (Sangi).
Japanese text (p. 23):
明治二年につくられた諸省の長は、天皇「輔弼」の直接責任者
ではない。そうなったのは明治二二年なのである。たとえば、
明治四年の官制改革によれば、理論上、天皇を直接補佐する特
権は、太政大臣、左大臣、右大臣、それに参議たちに限られて
いた。
The heads of ministries which were created in Meiji 2nd are not
directly responsible for ‘hohitsu’ the emperor. It was in Meiji 22nd

PRAGMATIC EQUIVALENCE 253
that it became so. For example, according to the government refor-
mation of the fourth year of Meiji, theoretically, the privilege of
assisting the emperor directly was limited to Dajo Daijin, Sa Daijin, U
Daijin, and Sangi.
Because the above text relates directly to Japanese culture, the Japanese reader
would expect any reference to dates to be based on the Japanese rather than
western calendar. The translation fulfi ls this expectation and therefore does not
convey any unwanted implicatures. Compare the above with the following translation
of a more modern text:
English source text (The Patrick Collection – a leafl et produced by a
privately owned museum of classic cars):
In the Mansell Hall – named after Britain’s race ace Nigel Mansell,
who opened the Hall in 1986 – there’s a unique display of eighties
supercars.
Japanese text:
マンセル・ホール（英国のレースのエースであるナイジェル・
マンセルにちなんでつけられた名で、かれは１９８６年にこの
ホールを開館しました。）では、１９８０年代のスーパーカー
のユニークな展示が見られます。
In the Mansell Hall (named after Nigel Mansell who is the ace in Brit-
ain’s race, and he opened this Hall in 1986) a unique display of super
cars of the 1980s can be seen.
For the Japanese reader, it is acceptable to use the western calendar in texts which
relate directly to the western world. However, texts which deal with topics that are
closer to home, such as Japanese heritage or history, are expected to use the
Japanese calendar.
An interesting area in which a translator needs to be particularly sensitive to the
reader’s expectations in a given context concerns modes of address. This covers far
more than the use of pronouns as discussed in Chapter 4. It includes the use of
appropriate personal and occupational titles, various combinations of fi rst names and
surnames, title and surname, or title and fi rst name, the use of nicknames, and even
the use of terms of affection such as dear or darling. Certain linguistic items may be
used to address certain types of participant in order to convey implicatures which are
highly language- and culture-specifi c. The following widely quoted example fi rst
appeared in Ervin-Tripp (1972). It is used by Blum-Kulka (1981:94) in a discussion
of the diffi culties associated with the translation of indirect speech acts9 (emphasis
added):

254 IN OTHER WORDS
The scene takes place on a public street in contemporary U.S.
‘What’s your name, boy?’ the policeman asked.
‘Dr. Poussaint, I’m a physician.’
‘What’s your fi rst name, boy?’
‘Alvin.’
As Blum-Kulka explains, anyone familiar with address rules in American English will
know that Dr Poussaint is black. They will also realize that by refusing to accept the
normal address of occupational title plus surname and by using the term boy and
requesting Dr Poussaint’s fi rst name, the policeman means to insult the doctor.
Blum-Kulka rightly suggests that the meaning conveyed by deliberately misusing a
socio-cultural rule would be diffi cult to transfer into another language.
However, not all contexts in which modes of address are used will involve delib-
erate violation of socio-cultural norms to convey implicatures. As long as the translator
is aware that the norms of the target language will not necessarily match those of the
source language, an appropriate adjustment in the target text should solve the problem
and avoid conveying unintended implicatures. In English, for instance, a common and
acceptable form of address in a formal context such as a business letter consists of
title plus surname, for example Mr Brown, Mrs Keith, Dr Kelly. This would normally be
replaced in Arabic by a combination of title plus fi rst name or title plus full name. Trans-
lators often make adjustments in this area to conform to their readers’ expectations.
Note the adjustment made by the Russian translator of the following text:
English text (Euralex conference circular, 1987):
Ms. Judit Zigany
Akademiai Kiado
1363 Budapest
P.O. Box 24
Hungary
Target text (Russian):
Ch. editor
Judit Zigany
Hungarian Academy of Sciences Press
1363 Budapest
P.O. Box 24
Hungary

PRAGMATIC EQUIVALENCE 255
The equivalent of a title such as Mr or Mrs in Russian is to use the fi rst name plus the
patronymic (middle name derived from the father’s name) in formal address to other
Russians and people from former socialist countries. Another polite form of address
is tovarishch (i.e. ‘comrade’, used for both sexes), but some intellectuals now feel
uneasy about it because of its associations with the Marxist era. For foreigners,
Russians will typically use the terms of address gospodin (‘Mr’) and gospozha
(‘Mrs’), or the loan words Mister, Missis and Miss. All these, however, suggest
‘foreignness’. They would be inappropriate – and even insulting – to use in addressing
another Russian or even someone from a socialist country such as Cuba or Hungary.10
Only foreigners from capitalist countries are normally addressed by these terms, and
when they are, the terms are neutral – they simply denote polite address. Since Judit
Zigany was a member of a socialist country (Hungary) at the time the Circular was
issued, the mode of address in the Russian text appropriately consists of occupa-
tional title, followed by full name; no personal titles are used.
7.3.4 Other items of background knowledge
In order to make sense of any piece of information presented in a text, the reader or
hearer has to be able to integrate it into some model of the world, whether real or
fi ctional. Text-presented information can only make sense if it can be related to
other information we already have. A text may confi rm, contradict, modify or extend
what we know about the world, as long as it relates to it in some way.
As explained under 7.3.1 above, there is a great deal of overlap between identi-
fying reference and accessing relevant background information. Whether a trans-
lator decides to explain a reference or not depends on whether the target reader is
assumed to be familiar with it and the extent to which the translator feels inclined to
intervene. In the following example, from A Hero from Zero, both the French and
Arab translators of the English source document must have either assumed that
Clive of India is familiar to the average French and Arab reader, or decided that it is
inappropriate for them as translators to comment directly on the source text. The
Sultan referred to in the extract below is the Sultan of Brunei who, according to this
document, gave Mohamed Fayed a power of attorney which put a considerable
amount of his (the Sultan’s) funds under Fayed’s control.
English source text (p. 27):
The incident that destroyed the Sultan’s trust in Fayed (which the
Sultan discovered later) was Fayed’s taking for himself the $86 million
from Hirschmann upon the cancellation of the contract for the 747-SP
aeroplane. According to Barican, the Sultan never agreed to this and it
was this incident that cost Fayed the Sultan’s confi dence …
Like Clive of India, Fayed must have stood amazed at his own
restraint. According to Barican, the Sultan’s funds in Swiss banks

256 IN OTHER WORDS
were around fi ve billion dollars at the time, and the power of attorney
unlocked the door to all of them.
French text (p. 27):
Tout comme Clive of India, Fayed a dû s’étonner de sa propre retenue.
… Just like Clive of India, Fayed must have been amazed at his own
restraint.
Arabic text (p. 40):
– –
.
… There is no doubt that Fayed – like Clive of India – stood amazed
at his ability to restrain himself.
Lord Clive, Proconsul of India, was a British soldier and statesman. He is remem-
bered for defeating the nawab of Bengal and for reforming the British administration
in India. Following the Bengal famine of 1769–1770, he was accused of famine
profi teering, of creating monopolies in cotton and diamonds, and of taking presents
from Indian leaders after the Battle of Plassey in 1757. When Clive was questioned
about the presents, he made the following remark, to which the above extract
alludes:
Consider the situation in which the victory of Plassey placed me. A great
prince dependent on my pleasure; an opulent city lay at my mercy; its richest
bankers bid against each other for my smiles; I walked through vaults which
were thrown open to me alone, piled on either hand with gold and jewels. Mr
Chairman, at this moment I stand astonished at my own moderation.
(Lawford 1976:393; emphasis added)
Interestingly enough, I have not yet found an English speaker who could recall any
details in connection with Clive of India, except that he was a military leader who
secured victory for the British in India. The above supposedly famous remark and the
context in which it was uttered are highly unlikely to be recalled by, and may not even
be known to, many British readers. I suspect that many will therefore be unable to
interpret the relevance of the reference to Clive of India in the above passage. The
writer seems to have misjudged the reader’s access to details which are needed to
establish the relevance of part of what he says to the discourse in hand. This is not
uncommon. It is very diffi cult indeed – for writers and translators alike – to judge
what the average reader may or may not have at his or her disposal in terms of back-

PRAGMATIC EQUIVALENCE 257
ground information. Moreover, in the majority of cases, the translator is likely to be
not as knowledgeable as the writer but rather as ignorant as the average reader, so
that the translator’s judgement is further hampered by his or her own lack of
knowledge. The translator should, in theory, be able to do the kind of research that I
have done here to access the relevant background knowledge, but this is not always
feasible. The quality of research facilities, for example, varies tremendously among
different settings, be they countries or institutions.
A second example, with a different assessment of the target reader’s access to
background information, comes from Autumn of Fury: The Assassination of Sadat
by Mohamed Heikal (1983:3). Speaking of Sadat, Heikal says:
While fully conscious of his shortcomings I hoped that the
responsibilities of offi ce would strengthen the positive elements in
his character and enable him to overcome the weak ones. The
example of Truman was always present in my mind. I managed
Sadat’s campaign …
Arabic translation (p. 6):

. ” ”
” ”
. ” ” – ” “–

” “– –
.
) . . . . .6(
I also believe that I was not unaware of some of his shortcomings, but
I imagined that the burden of office and responsibility would
strengthen all the positive elements in his character and help him to
overcome the areas of weakness in it. In my mind there was always
the example of the American President Harry Truman, who
succeeded Franklin Roosevelt towards the end of World War II.
At that time – and after Roosevelt – Truman seemed a rather
nondescript/bland and unknown character who could not lead
the great human struggle in World War II to its desired and inev-
itable end. But Truman – faced with the challenge of practical
experience – grew and matured and became one of the most
prominent American presidents in modern times. I imagined
that the same thing could happen to Sadat. I managed his
campaign …

258 IN OTHER WORDS
The additional background knowledge about Truman in the Arabic version is clearly
there for the benefi t of the Arab reader, who may well know that Truman was a
former president of America but is not expected to know enough about him to draw
the specifi c analogy between him and Sadat that the writer wishes him or her to
draw. What is largely implied in the English version is spelt out in detail in the Arabic
version. Heikal could, of course, have included this information in a footnote rather
than in the body of the text. In this respect, it is interesting to note Thomson’s advice
about what should or should not be relegated to footnotes in translation (1982:30):
The study of implicature may provide a practical solution to the well known
problem of deciding what parts of the original shared context should be built
into the text of the translation and what should be provided separately, for
example in footnotes. Information essential to the success of conversational
implicatures should be included in the text if the translation is to be coherent
and sensible. It is unrealistic and working against the pragmatic nature of
language to put such information into footnotes.
Without necessarily knowing anything about Grice or implicatures, Heikal may well
have followed a similar course of reasoning in deciding to include the above infor-
mation in the body of the text.
As well as expanding a text to provide the necessary background information, a
translator may decide to delete information with which the target readership may be
assumed to be familiar. In the same text, Autumn of Fury, Heikal explains the word
zamzam in the following extract with a footnote:
Another example of how the President could over-reach himself in his desire
to accommodate his new friends came over his offer of Nile water to Israel.
After his visit to Haifa in September 1979 Sadat confi ded to a group of Israeli
editors that he was thinking of diverting some of the Nile waters through Sinai
to the Negev: ‘Why not? Lots of possibilities, lots of hope.’ Jerusalem, he
said, was a city sacred to the three faiths. What could be more appropriate in
the new climate of peace than to supply all the believers in Jerusalem with a
new zamzam.
Footnote: The sacred well in the Haram of Mecca whose water is drunk by
pilgrims. It was by tradition opened by the Angel Gabriel to prevent Hagar and
her son Ismail from dying of thirst in the desert.
This footnote is omitted in the Arabic version. The author/translator rightly assumed
that it would be redundant as far as the Arab (predominantly Muslim) reader is
concerned.
The following example illustrates what happens when the translator anticipates a
serious clash between assumed and actual background knowledge of the reader.
What is involved here is the diffi culty of dealing with a vast gap between source and

PRAGMATIC EQUIVALENCE 259
target cultures’ versions of the world. It is not, in fact, a translation, but rather a
comment on the translation of a whole chunk of text. The source text is Arabic; the
target text is English. It is the twelfth ‘surah’ (verse) of the Qur’an which recounts the
story of Joseph. The story of Joseph also appears in the Bible. However, the story
presented in the Qur’an is quite different from that presented in the Bible. The trans-
lator of the text anticipates the clash with the Christian reader’s version of the story and
provides the following comment in a separate introduction:
Yusuf takes its name from its subject which is the life-story of Joseph. It
differs from all other Surahs in having only one subject. The differences from
the Bible narrative are striking. Jacob is here a Prophet, who is not deceived
by the story of his son’s death, but is distressed because, through a
suspension of his clairvoyance, he cannot see what has become of Joseph.
The real importance of the narrative, its psychic burden, is emphasized
throughout, and the manner of narration, though astonishing to Western
readers, is vivid.
(The Holy Qur’an, translated by Pickthall 1982:51)
The above comment is clearly meant to warn readers that they are about to encounter
a different view of the world. It is important to note that in translation, as in any act of
communication, a text does not necessarily have to conform to the expectations of
its readership. Readers’ versions of reality, their expectations and their preferences
can be challenged without affecting the coherence of a text, provided the challenge
is motivated and the reader is prepared for it. Like creativity in literature, for example,
radically different versions of reality need not result in incoherence. It is well within
our capacity as human beings to make sense of versions of reality which differ
greatly from our own provided the differences are motivated and adequately
signalled.
7.3.5 The availability of all relevant items falling under the
previous headings
The fi nal factor on Grice’s list of ‘data’ on which ‘the hearer will reply’ in working out
an implicature is, in his own words, ‘the fact (or supposed fact) that all relevant items
falling under the previous headings are available to both participants and both
par ticipants know or assume this to be the case’ (1975:50).
In order to convey an intended meaning, the speaker or writer must be able to
assume that the hearer or reader has access to all the necessary background infor-
mation, features of the context and so on, that is, items 7.3.1–7.3.4 above, and that
it is well within his or her competence to work out any intended implicatures. The
less the writer assumes that the reader has access to, the more he or she will
provide in the way of explanation and detail. As previous examples demonstrate,
translators often fi nd themselves in the position of having to reassess what is and

260 IN OTHER WORDS
what is not available to target readers to ensure that implicatures can be worked out.
Apart from fi lling gaps in the reader’s knowledge (which would cover the availability
of relevant items of background knowledge, non-linguistic context, identity of
reference, etc.), there is also the question of the reader’s expectations. These are
part of the ‘data’ available to the reader under the various headings 7.3.1–7.3.4
above. In translation, anything that is likely to violate the target reader’s expectations
must be carefully examined and, if necessary, adjusted in order to avoid conveying
the wrong implicatures or even failing to make sense altogether.
Among the strongest expectations we bring to bear on any communicative event
involving verbal behaviour are expectations concerning the organization of language.
Unless motivated,11 a deviant confi guration at any linguistic level (phonological,
lexical, syntactic, textual) may block a participant’s access to ‘the conventional
meaning of the words and structures used’ – item 7.3.1 above – and can directly
affect the coherence of a text. The main function of linguistic elements and patterning
is to organize the content of a message so that it is easily accessible to a reader or
hearer. Any disturbance to the normal organizational patterns of language must
therefore be motivated, otherwise the reader will not be able to make sense of it. To
repeat an example which was discussed in Chapter 3, collocations such as ‘harmed
hair’, ‘damaged hair’ and ‘breakable hair’ which appear in the Arabic translation of
the Kolestral text are so deviant that the Arab reader is unlikely to be able to make
any sense of that part of the text. Being both deviant and unmotivated, such unex-
pected organization of the language tends to render a text incoherent to its readers.
Most professional translators appreciate the need to fulfi l a reader’s expecta-
tions about the organization of the target language in order to maintain the coherence
of a text and avoid giving rise to unwanted implicatures. Some of the adjustments
that a translator may need to make in order to conform to readers’ expectations in
this area have been discussed and exemplifi ed in previous chapters. However, there
are instances in which deviation from normal patterning is a feature of the source
text itself. If deviation is motivated, and especially if it is necessary for working out an
intended meaning, the translator may well decide to transfer it to the target text. As
discussed above, readers’ expectations do not necessarily have to be fulfi lled.
Writers, and translators, often appeal to their readers to modify their expectations if
such modifi cations are required in a given context. We are normally prepared to
accept a great deal of unusual and even bizarre linguistic behaviour provided it can
be justifi ed, for instance on the basis of poetic creativity or humour.
The suggestion that deviations from normal patterning have to be motivated
implies that they have to occur in a context that is ‘interpretable’ by the hearer or
reader. Blakemore suggests that a speaker or writer who wants his or her utterance
to be interpreted in a certain way ‘must expect it to be interpreted in a context that
yields that interpretation’ (1987:27). The following example illustrates a situation
where deviation from normal organization of the language seems justifi ed in trans-
lation and where the translator has to enlarge the shared context of writer and reader
in order to accommodate this feature in such a way that its relevance is made explicit
and coherence is therefore maintained. The extract is from a transcript of conver-

PRAGMATIC EQUIVALENCE 261
sation which is appended to A Hero from Zero (p. 143) and translated from English
into French and Arabic. The three people taking part in the conversation (Mohamed
Fayed, Shri Chandra Swamiji and Kailish Nath Agarwal) are all non-native speakers
of English. The conversation is conducted partly in English and partly in Hindi. The
speakers, particularly Mohamed Fayed, have a rather poor command of English.
Here is an extract from the conversation to illustrate Mohamed Fayed’s level of
competence in English:
M. Fayed: Sultan, you know, he gets infl uenced. I can’t go sit with
him all the time, you know. It’s impossible for me, you
know. Because he has one terrible, evil man, his aide,
Ibnu.
Mamaji: Pardon?
M. Fayed: General Ibnu.
Mamaji: Uh-huh.
M. Fayed: Terrible man. This man takes money from everybody,
everybody.
Swamiji: I think girls also.
M. Fayed: Yeah.
Mamaji: Girls?
Swamiji: Girls.
M. Fayed: Girls, everything, everything, everything. He is the big
man, but the Sultan don’t trust him at all. Bad man. And
this Ibnu and Zobel are like that. Build the palace together.
Ibnu gives permission to all those people go inside, take
pictures of his bedroom, everything, anything. And he’s a
bad man, you know. But for me, I don’t – you know, er I
don’t need the Sultan. Sultan doesn’t need me. But I
made so much good for him, you know, with support him
with the British Government, you know.
The problem that the Arab translator faces in rendering this text into Arabic is that
Mohamed Fayed is Egyptian; his fi rst language is Arabic. To simply transfer the
deviant syntax into Arabic without any comment would leave the Arab reader
puzzled as to why a native speaker of Arabic should speak in ‘broken’ Arabic. To
adjust Fayed’s speech to refl ect normal patterns of Arabic would considerably
weaken the carefully structured argument put forward by Tiny Rowland, the ‘jilted
suitor’ who wants to show that Fayed is unworthy of the privilege of owning the
House of Fraser and incapable of running such a prestigious British concern. After
all, Fayed is portrayed here, among other things, as a ‘foreigner’, not very bright
and rather incoherent! The translator decides to compromise by transferring the

262 IN OTHER WORDS
deviant organization into Arabic in order to convey something of the ‘stupid foreigner’
image of Fayed, while at the same time explaining the situation to the reader so that
he or she can make sense of it. The following comment is inserted by the translator
at the beginning of the transcript of conversation (p. 139):
.

.
.
Note: It is clear from reading the English text of the conversation transcribed
on the tape that the three people who participated in it do not have suffi cient
command of the English language. This is also very clear from the use of sub-
standard and loosely structured sentences which do not conform to the rules
of the language. Therefore, these points of weakness have to be refl ected in
the Arabic translation in order to maintain accuracy, as far as possible, in the
transfer of meaning.
Coherence is a very problematic and elusive notion because of the diversity of
factors, linguistic and non-linguistic, that can affect it and the varying degrees of
importance a particular factor can assume in a given context. Even a single lexical
item, if mistranslated, can have an impact on the way a text coheres. A polysemous
item in the source text will rarely have an equivalent with the same range of meanings
in the target language. If the source text makes use of two or more meanings of an
item and the translation fails, for whatever reason, to convey any of those meanings,
whole layers of meaning will be lost, resulting in what Blum-Kulka (1986) refers to
as a ‘shift in coherence’.
It is impossible to itemize the various factors that can contribute to or detract
from the coherence of a text. The variables involved and the processes of interpre-
tation we employ in trying to make sense of a text are far too numerous and often
too elusive to be pinned down and described. The fact that many of these factors are
language- and culture-specifi c adds to the complexity of the problem. What most of
the examples given in this chapter seem to suggest is that in order to maintain
coherence translators often have to minimize discrepancies between the model of
the world presented in the source text and that with which the target reader is likely
to be familiar. The extent of intervention varies considerably and depends in the fi nal
analysis on two main factors. The fi rst is the translator’s ability to assess the
knowledge and expectations of the target reader – the more the target reader is
assumed to know, the less likely that the translator will be inclined to intervene with
lengthy explanations. Likewise, the more harmony is assumed to exist between the
model of the world presented in the source text and the target culture’s version of
the world, the more inclined the translator will be to refrain from direct intervention.
The second factor is the translator’s own view of his or her role and of the whole

PRAGMATIC EQUIVALENCE 263
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question of where his or her loyalties ought to lie – whether they ought to lie with the
source text or with the target reader.
I hope that the above discussion will provide the reader with some basis on which to
detect and explore areas in which a translation may or may not succeed in making
sense to its readers. The main diffi culties seem to be concerned with the ability to
assess the target readers’ range of knowledge and assumptions about various
aspects of the world, and to strike a reasonable balance between, on the one hand,
fulfi lling their expectations and, on the other hand, maintaining their interest in the
communication by offering them new or alternative insights. Brown and Yule
(1983:67) suggest that:
the principles of analogy (things will tend to be as they were before) and local
interpretation (if there is a change, assume it is minimal) form the basis of the
assumption of coherence in our experience of life in general, hence in our
experience of discourse as well.
This is true, but we must also remember that readers in general, and readers of
translated texts in particular, are prepared to accept a great deal of change and a
view of the world which is radically different from their own, provided they have a
reason for doing so and are prepared for it. In attempting to fi ll gaps in their readers’
knowledge and fulfi l their expectations of what is normal or acceptable, translators
should be careful not to ‘overdo’ things by explaining too much and leaving the
reader with nothing to do.
1. The following is a short essay from J. B. Priestley’s Delight, a small
collection of personal essays:
Giving advice
Giving advice, especially when I am in no position to give it and
hardly know what I am talking about. I manage my own affairs
with as much care and steady attention and skill as – let us say – a
drunken Irish tenor. I swing violently from enthusiasm to disgust.
I change policies as a woman changes hats. I am here today and
gone tomorrow. When I am doing one job, I wish I were doing
another. I base my judgments on anything – or nothing. I have
never the least notion what I shall be doing or where I shall be in
six months time. Instead of holding one thing steadily, I try to
juggle with six. I cannot plan, and if I could I would never stick to
the plan. I am a pessimist in the morning and an optimist at
night, am defeated on Tuesday and insufferably victorious by
Friday. But because I am heavy, have a deep voice and smoke a

264 IN OTHER WORDS
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s pipe, few people realize that I am a fl ibbertigibbet on a weath-
ercock. So my advice is asked. And then, for ten minutes or so, I
can make Polonius look a trifl er. I settle deep in my chair, two
hundred pounds of portentousness, and with some fi rst-rate char-
acter touches in the voice and business with pipe, I begin: ‘Well, I
must say that in your place —’ And inside I am bubbling with
delight.
Try translating the above essay into your target language, paying
particular attention to the question of implicature and the whole image
that the writer draws of himself. If necessary, consider possible expla-
nations (or other strategies) that could help the target reader draw the
right inferences from the author’s statements. Consider, for instance,
whether an analogy such as changing policies as a woman changes hats
is likely to have the same implicature in your target language.
This essay appeared in Literature in English, one of the English for
Today Series, published by the National Council of Teachers of English
(1964), McGraw-Hill. The editors provide the following explanations
of key words and expressions in footnote form. You may fi nd these
helpful.
drunken Irish tenor: A drunken singer is not in control of himself.
Priestley is suggesting that he manages his own affairs badly.
fl ibbertigibbet on a weathercock: A fl ibbertigibbet is a frivolous
and giddy person. A weathercock is a wooden or metal rooster
that turns on top of a building and shows the direction of the
wind. The whole expression suggests a very undependable person.
Polonius: a character in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, noted for giving
advice.
two hundred pounds of portentousness …: In other words, a large
man (‘two hundred pounds’) using an impressive voice and using
impressive gestures with his pipe (‘some fi rst-rate character
touches’) gives grave (‘portentous’) advice. This is a humorous
description of the author’s pose.
2. The following extract from an article by Vanessa Baird which appeared
in the New Internationalist (January/February 2010, special issue on
population growth) raises similar challenges, but the article does not
come with notes and explanations this time. You may therefore need to
undertake some research of your own to ensure that you understand the
references and relevant implicatures before translating it into your target
language. A good starting point would be to visit the New Internation-
alist web site,12 unless you are already familiar with the magazine, to

PRAGMATIC EQUIVALENCE 265
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s establish what type of publication it is and where the sympathies of its
contributors are likely to lie, especially since the author in this case is
also one of the editors of the magazine.
Too many people?
When she was young, my great aunt – a tiny sprightly woman
who painted vast canvasses – had wanted to become a nun. Then
she met a Flemish poet and they fell in love. She agreed to marry
him on one condition: that they have 12 children. True to the old
baking tradition, they made 13.
Her niece, my mother, also briefl y fl irted with the holy life. Her
tryst with celibacy was equally convincing. As the eighth of her
brood, I approach the subject of global population with a touch of
trepidation. By anyone’s standard of reasonable family size I
really shouldn’t be here.
But then the subject of population – and in particular popu-
lation growth – is one that seems capable of provoking all kinds of
emotions.
…
Often the cause of concern is the speed at which others – be
they people of other races or social classes or religions or political
allegiances – are reproducing themselves, threatening,
presumably, to disturb the wellbeing of whatever dominant group
the commentator belongs to.
This was epitomized recently by Michael Laws, Mayor of
Wanganui District in New Zealand, who proposed that in order
to tackle the problems of child abuse and murder, members of the
‘appalling underclass’ should be paid not to have children. ‘If we
gave $10,000 to certain people and said “we’ll voluntarily sterilize
you” then all of society would be better off,’ he told the Dominion
Post newspapers.
Most contemporary worries about population are less offen-
sively expressed. For many, the issue is primarily an environ-
mental one. The logic is simple. The more people there are, the
more greenhouse gas is emitted, the more damage is done. Any
attempts to reduce carbon emissions will be negated by runaway
population growth.
This was echoed recently by the Financial Times when it called
for an international debate on population. A leader column
argued: ‘World population growth is making it harder to achieve
cuts in carbon emissions’ and went on to quote a disputed London
School of Economics study* maintaining that spending on family
planning is ‘fi ve times more cost effective at cutting carbon

266 IN OTHER WORDS
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s dioxide emissions than the conventional low carbon
technologies’.
The UK-based Optimum Population Trust goes further,
suggesting that to achieve sustainability we should be aiming to
reduce global population by at least 1.7 billion people.
…
* Since found to be the work of a student funded by the Optimum
Population Trust.
Imagine that you have been asked to translate this article for an activist
site that is committed to promoting global justice and wishes to make
key counter arguments on sensitive issues such as population growth
available in a wide range of languages. In this context, it is vital that you
convey the attitude of the author to the topic. You therefore need to pay
particular attention to linguistic and typographic signals of this attitude,
such as presumably and the use of scare quotes. Note also the reference
to ‘work of a student’ in the footnote. What implicature might the author
be trying to communicate here, and how would you ensure its accessi-
bility to the target reader? Similarly, how would you handle the reference
to ‘baker’s dozen’ and the use of ‘made’ (rather than ‘have’) at the end
of the fi rst paragraph? How do you ensure that the target reader will
understand these references and associated implicatures?
3. Here is a particularly challenging extract to translate. It is part of the
well-known scene in Shakespeare’s Othello (Act III, Scene iii), in which
Iago deliberately violates Grice’s maxims, certainly the maxim of rele-
vance, in order to convey certain implicatures. Othello recognizes the
violations and tries to get Iago to spell out what he means.
Iago: My noble lord –
Oth: What dost thou say, Iago?
Iago: Did Michael Cassio, when you woo’d my lady, Know of
your love?
Oth: He did, from fi rst to last. Why dost thou ask?
Iago: But for a satisfaction of my thought; No further harm.
Oth: Why of thy thought, Iago?
Iago: I did not think he had been acquainted with her.
Oth: O, yes, and went between us very oft.
Iago: Indeed?
Oth: Indeed? Ay, indeed! Discern’st thou aught in that? Is he
not honest?
Iago: Honest, my lord?
Oth: Honest? Ay, honest.

PRAGMATIC EQUIVALENCE 267
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s Iago: My lord, for aught I know.
Oth: What dost thou think?
Iago: Think, my lord?
Oth: Think, my lord? By heaven, he echoes me,
As if there were some monster in his thought
Too hideous to be shown. Thou dost mean something.
I heard thee say even now, thou lik’st not that,
When Cassio left my wife. What didst not like?
And when I told thee he was of my counsel
In my whole course of wooing, thou cried’st ‘Indeed?’
And didst contract and purse thy brow together,
As if thou hadst shut up in thy brain
Some horrible conceit. If thou dost love me,
Show me thy thought.
Consider how Iago conveys his intended meanings, both conventionally
and non-conventionally. What adjustments, if any, do you feel you have
to make to the lexis, syntax, or the way in which the maxims are violated
in order to convey similar implicatures in your translated version?
4. Stephen Hawking’s popular science book, A Brief History of Time from
the Big Bang to Black Holes (1988) includes a number of appendices,
each giving an insight into the life and personality of a famous scientist.
This is one of them:
Isaac Newton
Isaac Newton was not a pleasant man. His relations with other
academics were notorious, with most of his later life spent
embroiled in heated disputes. Following publication of Principia
Mathematica – surely the most infl uential book ever written in
physics – Newton had risen rapidly into public prominence. He
was appointed president of the Royal Society and became the fi rst
scientist ever to be knighted.
Newton soon clashed with the Astronomer Royal, John Flam-
steed, who had earlier provided Newton with much needed data
for Principia, but was now withholding information that Newton
wanted. Newton would not take no for an answer; he had himself
appointed to the governing body of the Royal Observatory and
then tried to force immediate publication of the data. Eventually
he arranged for Flamsteed’s work to be seized and prepared for
publication by Flamsteed’s mortal enemy, Edmond Halley. But
Flamsteed took the case to court and, in the nick of time, won a
court order preventing distribution of the stolen work. Newton

268 IN OTHER WORDS
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s was incensed and sought his revenge by systematically deleting
all references to Flamsteed in later editions of Principia.
A more serious dispute arose with the German philosopher Gott-
fried Leibniz. Both Leibniz and Newton had independently
developed a branch of mathematics called calculus, which underlies
most of modern physics. Although we now know that Newton
discovered calculus years before Leibniz, he published his work
much later. A major row ensued over who had been fi rst, with
scientists vigorously defending both contenders. It is remarkable,
however, that most of the articles appearing in defense of Newton
were originally written by his own hand – and only published in the
name of friends! As the row grew, Leibniz made the mistake of
appealing to the Royal Society to resolve the dispute. Newton, as
president, appointed an ‘impartial’ committee to investigate, coin-
cidentally consisting entirely of Newton’s friends! But that was not
all: Newton then wrote the committee’s report himself and had the
Royal Society publish it, offi cially accusing Leibniz of plagiarism.
Still unsatisfi ed, he then wrote an anonymous review of the report
in the Royal Society’s own periodical. Following the death of
Leibniz, Newton is reported to have declared that he had taken
great satisfaction in ‘breaking Leibniz’s heart.’
During the period of these two disputes, Newton had already
left Cambridge and academe. He had been active in anti-Catholic
politics at Cambridge, and later in Parliament, and was rewarded
eventually with the lucrative post of Warden of the Royal Mint.
Here he used his talents for deviousness and vitriol in a more
socially acceptable way, successfully conducting a major
campaign against counterfeiting, even sending several men to
their death on the gallows.
Imagine that you have been asked to translate the above appendix into
your target language. Your translated version is to be included in a port-
folio of light-hearted but factual background material for science
students in secondary education, designed to stimulate their interest in
the world of science at large.
Comment on the strategies you decide to use to convey Hawking’s
implied meanings to your target audience. For instance, do you transfer
typographic signals such as exclamation marks and the inverted commas
around impartial (third paragraph), or are there better ways of signalling
similar meanings in your target language? Does the text, as it stands,
convey the same image of Newton in your target language as it does in
English, or do you have to make adjustments to accommodate your
target reader’s cultural background?

PRAGMATIC EQUIVALENCE 269
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s 5. Much of our discussion of pragmatics concerned ways of ‘making
sense’ of a text or interaction and fi nding ways of communicating our
interpretation to the target reader. But some texts deliberately set out to
undermine sense – nonsense literature is a good, extreme example.
Other texts stretch the limits of ‘sense’ in less radical ways, using struc-
tures and expressions that would normally fail to cohere in less experi-
mental texts but that are part of the message being communicated in this
context. With this in mind, try your hand at the following opening para-
graph of Robert Young’s article ‘The Procrastinator’ (Young 1999:7):
Too close to call, whether I am yet beyond the real deadlines that
followed the fi nal deadline because of course with deadlines there
is always the possibility of a later insertion, at proof stage or even
second proof stage, or even perhaps – No. That is no longer
procrastination, that is living dangerously, the very thing the
procrastinator wishes to avoid. The procrastinator is no revolu-
tionary, leaping into the future: every procrastinator is at heart a
conservative creature, cautious, politic, wishing to live on without
the jolt of completion and the rush of emptiness that follows the
offering up of a piece of writing no longer just one’s own, now
exposed to the possibility of being read, ridiculed, rejected – and
producing the inevitable question of what is coming next. Publish
and perish. Unwilling to become the productive academic presti-
gateur, pulling ever more startlingly innovative writings out of a
glamorous top hat, the procrastinator eyes the enfeebled mortar
board warily. No key player he.
Nor she – though there is something very gendered about
procrastination, an inexorable maleness in the spirit of Tristram
Shandy, Leopold Bloom or Saleem Sinai. Viagra falls. The
procrastinator hangs over the past, furtively stealing time’s
proferred moments, seeking to retrieve what has already past, to
delay what has not been done. He who hesitates is rarely lost. It
may never happen. The present must live on into the future, at all
costs it must be kept going, not detached from the past, but
nurtured and maintained for its familiar comfort, recognisable,
known, safe. Let us linger on, procrastinate that act of fulfi lment
that belongs to tomorrow, meanly measure out our lives as they
unroll slowly through the debris of what has long since lapsed and
elapsed. Stay with me, delay with me. Hang on a while.
Consider what Young is trying to achieve by the various structures he opts
for. To what extent can you reproduce this effect in your translation, while
still producing a coherent text that can make sense to the target readers?

270 IN OTHER WORDS
SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING
Bednarek, Monika A. (2005) ‘Frames Revisited – The Coherence-Inducing Function of
Frames’, Journal of Pragmatics 37: 685–705.
Blum-Kulka, Shoshana (1986) ‘Shifts of Cohesion and Coherence in Translation’, in Juliane
House and Soshana Blum-Kulka (eds) Interlingual and Intercultural Communication:
Discourse and Cognition in Translation and Second Language Acquisition Studies,
Tubingen: Gunter Narr, 17–35; reprinted in Lawrence Venuti (ed.) The Translation
Studies Reader, London: Routledge, 290–305.
Brown, Gillian and George Yule (1983) Discourse Analysis, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press. Chapter 7: ‘Coherence in the Interpretation of Discourse’.
de Beaugrande, Robert and Wolfgang Dressler (1981) Introduction to Text Linguistics,
London: Longman. Chapter 5: ‘Coherence’, and Chapter 6: ‘Intentionality and
Acceptability’.
Enkvist, N. E. (1985) ‘Coherence and Inference’, in Ursula Pieper and Gerhard Stickel (eds)
Studia Linguistica Diachronica et Synchronica, Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 233–248.
Hickey, Leo (ed.) (1998) The Pragmatics of Translation, Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
Valdés, Cristina and Adrián Fuentes Luque (2008) ‘Coherence in Translated Television
Commercials’, European Journal of English Studies 12(2): 133–148.
On politeness
Arnáiz, Carmen (2006) ‘Politeness in the Portrayal of Workplace Relationships: Second
Person Address Forms in Peninsular Spanish and the Translation of Humour’, Journal
of Politeness Research, Language, Behaviour, Culture 2(1): 123–141.
Berk-Seligson, Susan (1988) ‘The Impact of Politeness in Witness Testimony: The Infl uence
of the Court Interpreter’, Multilingua 7(4): 411–439.
Brown, Penelope and Stephen Levinson (1987/1999) Politeness. Some Universals in
Language Usage, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; excerpted as ‘Politeness:
Some Universals in Language Usage’, in Adam Jaworski and Nikolas Coupland (eds)
The Discourse Reader, London: Routledge, 321–335.
Cambridge, Jan (1999) ‘Information Loss in Bilingual Medical Interviews through an
Untrained Interpreter’, in Ian Mason (ed.) Dialogue Interpreting, special issue of The
Translator 5(2): 201–219.
Glinert, Lewis (2010) ‘Apologizing to China: Elastic Apologies and the Meta-discourse of
American Diplomats’, Intercultural Pragmatics 7(1): 47–74.
Hatim, Basil and Ian Mason (1997) The Translator as Communicator, London: Routledge.
Chapter 5: ‘Politeness in Screen Translating’.
Hickey, Leo (2000) ‘Politeness in Translation between English and Spanish’, Target 12(2):
229–240.
House, Juliane (1998) ‘Politeness and Translation’, in Leo Hickey (ed.) The Pragmatics of
Translation, Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, 54–71.

PRAGMATIC EQUIVALENCE 271
On semantic prosody (and attitudinal meaning in general)
Louw, Bill (1993) ‘Irony in the Text or Insincerity in the Writer? The Diagnostic Potential of
Semantic Prosodies’, in Mona Baker, Gill Francis and Elena Tognini-Bonelli (eds) Text
and Technology: In Honour of John Sinclair, Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 157–176.
Louw, Bill (2000) ‘Contextual Prosodic Theory: Bringing Semantic Prosodies to Life’, in
Chris Heffer and Helen Sauntson (eds) Words in Context, A Tribute to John Sinclair on
His Retirement, CDRom. Available at www.revue-texto.net/docannexe/fi le/124/louw_
prosodie .
Munday, Jeremy (2010) ‘Evaluation and Intervention in Translation’, in Mona Baker, Maeve
Olohan and María Calzada Pérez (eds) Text and Context: Essays on Translation and
Interpreting in Honour of Ian Mason, Manchester: St. Jerome Publishing, 77–94.
Stewart, Dominic (2010) Semantic Prosody: A Critical Evaluation, London: Routledge.
NOTES
1 Conventionally signalled implicatures are also known as presuppositions. Like implica-
tures, presuppositions are pragmatic inferences. They are based on the linguistic
structure of an utterance, though they are still context-sensitive. For a detailed discussion
of presupposition, see Levinson (1983, Chapter 4).
2 Grice’s notion of conversational implicature and his proposed four maxims overlap with
several notions discussed by other linguists, most notably in speech-act theory.
Speech-act theory complements Grice’s approach to meaning. Like Grice, speech-act
theorists attempt to go beyond the literal meaning of words and structures by classifying
utterances according to their implicit rather than explicit functions. For instance, a
speaker may use a declarative/assertive structure to make a request or an interrogative
structure to express reproof. The notions of illocutionary meaning and indirect
speech acts in particular highlight an obvious area of overlap. Illocutionary meaning has
to do with the speaker’s intentions rather than his or her actual words. An indirect
speech act is an utterance whose ‘literal meaning and/or literal force is conversationally
inadequate in the context and must be “repaired” by some inference’ (Levinson
1983:270). It is, in fact, the fl outing of a maxim such as Quantity or Relevance which
results in an utterance having an indirect illocutionary meaning.
There is also some overlap between the maxim of relevance and the principle of local
interpretation which ‘instructs the hearer not to construct a context any larger than he
needs to arrive at an interpretation. Thus, if he hears someone say “Shut the door” he
will look towards the nearest door available for being shut’ (Brown and Yule 1983:59).
Finally, Grice’s division of implicature into conventional implicature and conversational
implicature also overlaps with Beekman and Callow’s distinction between two major
types of implicit information:
There is the implicit information conveyed in the written document itself by the
vocabulary and grammatical constructions of the language, and there is the implicit
information which lies outside the document, in the general situation which gave

272 IN OTHER WORDS
rise to the document, the circumstances of the writer and readers, their rela-
tionship, etc.
(1974:48)
3 Haven’t you done well? can also be patronizing, and Don’t I know it? can be
self-recriminating.
4 As defi ned here and in the work of Sinclair, Louw and others, semantic prosody is not
the same as ‘invoked attitudinal meaning’ in appraisal theory (Martin and White 2005,
Munday 2010). Munday (2010:85–87) discusses Victorian arcades and cobbled
streets as examples of invoked attitudinal meaning: these items are perceived in a
particular communicative context (rather than the language at large) as having positive
values; for many people in the English-speaking world, they are associated with tradition,
authenticity and quality of life. Semantic prosody is a much more subtle feature of
language patterning. It is not dependent on specifi c communicative contexts and tends
to be less subjective in its interpretation.
5 Louw (2000) offers a more extended defi nition:
A semantic prosody refers to a form of meaning which is established through the
proximity of a consistent series of collocates, often characterisable as positive or
negative, and whose primary function is the expression of the attitude of its speaker
or writer towards some pragmatic situation. A secondary, although no less important
attitudinal function of semantic prosodies is the creation of irony through the delib-
erate injection of a form which clashes with the prosody’s consistent series of
collocates.
6 See www.llc.manchester.ac.uk/ctis/research/english-corpus/.
7 For a fascinating discussion of some aspects of the history of Arsène Lupin translations
into Arabic, specifi cally in Egypt, see Selim (2010).
8
9 See note 2 above: an indirect speech act is an utterance whose ‘literal meaning and/
or literal force is conversationally inadequate in the context and must be “repaired” by
some inference’ (Levinson 1983:270).

PRAGMATIC EQUIVALENCE 273
10 At the time when the Euralex Circular was prepared and circulated, Hungary was still a
socialist country.
11 Motivation has to be seen from the point of view of the reader rather than the translator.
In a sense, all deviant confi gurations are ‘motivated’ from the translator’s point of view:
they are ‘equivalents’ that can be slotted in at some point to allow the translator to get
on with the rest of the job. This type of motivation, however, does not make a given
confi guration acceptable from the reader’s point of view. To be justifi ed, motivation has
to be available to the reader.
12 www.newint.org.

CHAPTER 8
Beyond equivalence:
ethics and morality
Whatever the limitations on their social or interactional status in a given context, in situations
where confl icting agendas arise or where the proper exercise of human or legal rights may be
in doubt, translators’ ethical and political judgments become as central to their task as cultural
or linguistic competence. Translators cannot escape the burden of their moral proximity to
others.
Inghilleri (2010a:153)
to become a point of contact can involve becoming a point of confl ict.
(Maier 2007:256)
Various associations that represent translators and interpreters have long developed
codes of practice, often referred to as codes of ethics, in order to ensure the
accountability of their members to other parties involved in the interaction, particu-
larly clients who pay their wages. In this chapter, we attempt to move beyond such
codes in order to think critically about some of the concrete ethical choices and
dilemmas that translators and interpreters often encounter and for which they are
rarely prepared.
Of central concern in this chapter is the need to develop critical skills that can
enable translators and interpreters to make ethical decisions for themselves, rather
than have to fall back uncritically on abstract codes drawn up by their employers or
the associations that represent them. This is important for at least three reasons.
The fi rst is that no code can ever predict the full range of concrete ethical issues that
may arise in the course of professional practice, and hence translators – like other
professionals – are often faced with situations in which it is diffi cult to interpret or
apply the relevant code. Second, codes, like laws, are elaborated by people like us,
and are therefore never infallible, ethically or otherwise. You might fi nd yourself
dis agreeing with the code, perhaps because you believe it could result in tolerating
certain types of injustice in some contexts. If so, it is your responsibility to question
the code in order to avoid causing harm to others or perpetuating potential forms of
injustice. And fi nally, it is in the interest of society as a whole for individuals to be
accountable for their decisions, in professional life as elsewhere. Adopting the

BEYOND EQUIVALENCE: ETHICS AND MORALITY 275
default position of applying a professional code unquestioningly undermines this
accountability.1
We start, as elsewhere in this book, by defi ning the main concepts that will
inform the discussion, including ‘ethics’ and ‘morality’.
8.1 ETHICS AND MORALITY
Ethics and morality are generally understood to concern our ability to make decisions
on the basis of what we believe to be morally right or wrong in a specifi c context.
Those who follow what is known as virtue ethics, however, would argue that ethics
is not just about knowing what to do on a given occasion. For them, rather than
focusing on the question ‘What should I do?’, we must each be concerned with the
question ‘What kind of person should I be?’ – or, more specifi cally, ‘What kind of
parent should I be?’, ‘What kind of politician should I be?’, ‘What kind of translator
should I be?’ and so on. As Cheney et al. explain, ‘virtue ethics takes a long view of
ethical issues, framing them not as merely momentary or episodic concerns but
rather as issues relevant across all domains of life and one’s entire lifespan’
(2010:238). Ethics is thus understood as a lifelong process of learning and
improvement, of nurturing the right virtues in ourselves and those in our care. But
the two issues are clearly inseparable, since in striving to be a better person an indi-
vidual must refl ect on the same principles and ideals that inform his or her decision
about what is ethical to do in a specifi c context.
The decision we take on any given occasion is generally judged as ethical or
unethical to the extent that it affects others, for example in terms of their survival,
freedom, well-being, comfort, happiness or success. Unethical behaviour thus
causes harm to others. A person who behaves in a way that affects only him- or
herself negatively is imprudent, not unethical (Driver 2007). It is unethical to torture,
rape or deal in drugs. It is imprudent not to brush one’s teeth regularly, or study for
an exam, or save towards one’s retirement. However, as is evident even from these
examples, the distinction between the self and others is never straightforward; if it
were, committing suicide would not be the subject of ethical debate. Because it is
diffi cult to extract oneself from others, to act in a way that has no impact on the lives
of at least those in our immediate vicinity, ‘prudent’ and ‘ethical’ are best thought of
as points on a continuum rather than absolute values.
Cheney et al. (2010:3–4) reiterate a commonly held lay view, namely, that
discussions of ethics revolve around ‘dry, abstract’ principles that are negatively
formulated in the form of ‘don’ts’ rather than ‘dos’, while morality concerns everyday
decisions, features prominently in public debates about the rights and wrongs of
specifi c events, and therefore seems more relevant to our lives. Prado (2006) draws
a similar distinction, adding that ethics has now come to be associated with the right
conduct in professional life (hence our use of labels such as ‘business ethics’ and
‘medical ethics’), whereas morality refers to the right conduct for everyone. Focusing
on ethics in the context of translation, Koskinen (2000:11) makes the same
distinction in slightly different terms:

276 IN OTHER WORDS
I see morality as a characteristic not of communities but of individuals, and
ethics as ‘collectivised’ morality, as a collective effort of a community to
formulate a set of rules or recommendations of accepted moral behaviour.
The common threads here are that ethics is collective, involves conscious elabo-
ration of codes and principles that constrain the behaviour of those obliged to abide
by them, and is increasingly associated with professional and institutional contexts,
all of which explains why various institutions and associations have codes of ethics,
rather than codes of morality. Despite its popularity, this distinction will not be main-
tained here: I will be using ethics, morality and their derivatives interchangeably, as
they are often used in lay discussions. On the whole, I will also assume, with Cheney
et al. (2010:237), that ‘ethics is about the stream of life rather than just its turbulent
moments’, and that many default choices that do not necessarily give rise to
conscious decision-making can have important ethical implications.
How do we decide what is ethical?
We might begin to address this question by drawing a broad distinction between
teleological and deontological approaches to the issue of ethical decision-making.
Deontological models defi ne what is ethical by reference to what is right in and of
itself, irrespective of consequences, and are rule-based.2 Kantian ethics (discussed
below) is a good example. A deontological approach would justify an action on the
basis of principles such as duty, loyalty or respect for human dignity; hence: ‘I refrain
from intervening because it is my duty as a translator to remain impartial’, or ‘I
intervene where necessary because it is the duty of a responsible interpreter to
empower the deaf participant’. Teleological approaches, on the other hand, defi ne
what is ethical by reference to what produces the best results. Utilitarianism (also
discussed below) is a teleological theory that is more concerned with consequences
than with what is morally right per se. A teleological approach would justify an action
on the basis of the envisaged end results; hence: ‘Making a conscious effort [in
community interpreting] to remain impartial can help avoid emotional involvement
and possible burn-out’ (Hale 2007:121–122), or ‘I translate as idiomatically as
possible because fl uent translations receive good reviews’. The distinction between
deontological and teleological approaches cuts across the various models of ethics
discussed here, and others not dealt with in this chapter.
In the following discussion of specifi c approaches to ethics, you will note that
different approaches can sometimes lead to the same decision, based on quite
different arguments. As you refl ect on each approach, it is important to bear in mind
that the issue of why we opt for one decision rather than another is just as important
as what decision we opt for. This is because the arguments we use to justify our
actions to ourselves and others contribute to shaping the moral outlook of our
communities. For example, whether we argue that torture is wrong because it
produces what is referred to sometimes as ‘low grade information’3 or because it is
a gross violation of human rights, whatever the quality of information it produces, is

BEYOND EQUIVALENCE: ETHICS AND MORALITY 277
in itself a moral statement that refl ects our attitude to others. The cumulative weight
and balance of such arguments in any society will gradually incline its members to be
more or less compassionate, more or less tolerant and so on. The arguments we
use, like the specifi c linguistic choices we make (whether we call someone disabled
or a cripple, for instance), are not without their own consequences.
The attempt to separate morality from ethics and to restrict it to the individual
might suggest that what is moral is a matter of opinion, like an aesthetic judgement
of beauty or elegance. This type of relativism can take various forms. Some rela-
tivists suggest that what is moral varies from one society to another and at different
points in history, and that we must therefore refrain from judging others on the basis
of our own, current values. This is like saying that different communities have
different cultural beliefs, and that tolerance requires us to accept their way of life and
expect them to accept ours. By this argument, societies that deny women access to
education, for instance, would simply be abiding by a different moral code that we
must not judge as wrong by our own values. Extending the same argument further,
some relativists insist that each individual has his or her own set of moral values, and
that no individual is in a position to judge the moral claims of another. Both of these
positions are at the opposite extreme from any deontological model, since they offer
no scope for defi ning an action as right in and of itself. But they are not teleological
either, since they refrain from defi ning what is ethical for anyone other than the
agent, with his or her own unique set of values. And it is precisely because they
undermine the possibility of any moral judgement that both forms of relativism are
intuitively unsatisfying for many people. If we follow them we would have to accept
that slavery and apartheid practices should be tolerated, and that a paedophile who
believes it is morally acceptable to rape children should not be punished. Moreover,
belief in absolute relativism, whether at individual or collective level, would ultimately
encourage conformity to the status quo and hence stifl e critical thinking and action,
to the detriment of society as a whole. As Driver argues, ‘moral progress is often
achieved through the efforts of rebellious individuals with beliefs that do not conform
to popular cultural beliefs’ (2007:18). Such individuals do not just hold different
beliefs – they have the moral courage to act on them, to question the dominant
beliefs of their societies and to resist practices that they consider ethically unac-
ceptable. Martin Luther King in the United States, Mahatma Ghandi in India, Aung
San Suu Kyi in Burma and Nelson Mandela in South Africa are good examples of
individuals whose legacies challenge extreme relativism. At any rate, in practice rela-
tivism is a comfortable doctrine to hold on to only when the issue in question does
not touch an aspect of our lives that really matters to us. As Blackburn explains,
‘[those] who say, “Well, it’s just an opinion,” one moment, will demonstrate the most
intense attachment to a particular opinion the next, when the issue is stopping
hunting, or preventing vivisection, or permitting abortion – something they care
about’ (2001:28).
Nevertheless, cultural relativism has many followers, and its main argument has
a certain appeal in the context of translation and interpreting in particular, since it
supports tolerance and cultural diversity. Relativism also alerts us to the fact that

278 IN OTHER WORDS
what is deemed controversial, and hence requires more sensitivity from a translator
or interpreter to communicate, varies from one social environment to another. The
right to wear the hijab is not a controversial issue in Saudi Arabia – if anything, it is
the right not to wear the hijab that is controversial. A text about banning the hijab in,
say, Belgium or France will therefore be more challenging to a mainstream Saudi
audience than to the average Korean or Chinese reader. The extent to which one
can challenge the values and expectations of readers and still maintain their
involvement and treat them with dignity is an issue that occupies the minds of many
translators and infl uences their choice of wording as well as what to include and
what to omit, often with the involvement of their commissioner or other parties in the
interaction.
Some aspects of relativism are thus helpful in thinking about certain issues in
translation and interpreting. At the same time, we must remember that morality is
not the same as good manners or socially approved habits, which do vary consid-
erably from one cultural environment to another (Driver 2007:16). If translators
are to behave in an ethically responsible manner, their decisions must be informed
by principles that take account of the impact of their actions on others, principles
such as ‘do no harm’ or ‘do not acquiesce in injustice’, irrespective of the prevailing
moral code and social norms of the source or target culture. Universalists believe
that such basic moral principles do exist and that they apply universally, but the
way we interpret them can vary from one context to another. This context-sensitive
version of universalism seems to strike a reasonable balance between pure,
unbridled relativism and rigid, intolerant forms of moralizing, or as Blackburn puts
it, ‘between the saggy sands of relativism and the cold rocks of dogmatism’
(2001:29). But this deontological approach does not solve all problems, partly
because there is no general agreement about the set of relevant principles and
partly because the principles often clash in real life. Causing no harm to one
person can result in causing harm to another, and there are of course different
types and degrees of harm.
Consequentialist theories, the best known among which is utilitarianism,
bypass the issue of principles and their variation across cultures by assessing moral
conduct purely on the basis of a cost-benefi t analysis of the consequences of an
action or behaviour. At one extreme, egoists maintain that an action is moral or
ethical if its consequences are favourable for its agent. At the other extreme,
altruists maintain that an action is moral if its consequences are favourable for
everyone except the agent. Striking a middle course between the two, utilitarianism
considers an action moral to the extent that its consequences are favourable for
everyone, including the agent. Utilitarianism comes in two versions: act-utilitarianism
and rule-utilitarianism.
Act-utilitarianists argue that an ethical decision is one that results in the most
favourable consequences for the largest number of people in a given context.
Torture would thus be acceptable if those authorizing it believed it could lead to infor-
mation that would prevent death and injury to many innocent civilians. It is unac-
ceptable by the same logic if, as Brigadier General David R. Irvine argued in 2005,4

BEYOND EQUIVALENCE: ETHICS AND MORALITY 279
it is found to produce unreliable information, because those being tortured will say
anything to put an end to their ordeal. The argument here is not concerned with the
rights of those being tortured, but merely with the effi cacy of the practice. In one of
many such incidents reported in the media since 2001, the decision taken by the
cabin crew and Spanish airport police on a fl ight from Malaga to Manchester in 2006
could be thought of as ethical in the same terms. In this case, several passengers
who had ‘overheard two men of Asian appearance apparently talking Arabic’,
according to the British newspaper the Daily Mail,5 decided that they may be
terrorists and refused to allow the fl ight to take off. The men were then removed,
and the fl ight proceeded on its course. The decision to comply with the passengers’
demands produced the ‘best’ consequences in the sense of avoiding major disruption
to the plans of a large number of people and dealing effectively with their anxieties.
However, many would consider it unethical, both because of its violation of the rights
of two passengers who had committed no crime, and for its larger implications in
terms of sustaining racism and vigilante practices.
In translation, act-utilitarian logic would support a decision that results in the
largest number of participants, including the translator, achieving their objectives on
a given occasion, even if the rights of one participant, perhaps an immigrant or the
foreign author, are undermined. Like almost all ethical arguments, this statement is
not straightforward and can be interpreted in a variety of ways. Someone could
argue, for instance, that the ‘participants’ include not only those involved in the
immediate interaction, but also the profession represented by the translator, the
society in which translation takes place, the community to which the immigrant
belongs and indeed the whole of humanity. This would fi t in with the second version
of utilitarianism, namely rule-utilitarianism, which considers that ‘the right action is
that action which is performed in accordance with a rule, or set of rules, the following
of which maximizes utility’ (Driver 2007:64).6 Act-utilitarianism and rule-
utilitarianism can thus yield quite different decisions based on utilitarian principles.
The classic case here would be the typical hostage crisis: an act-utilitarian would
probably opt for yielding to the hostage-takers’ demands, while a rule-utilitarian
would not, because doing so would not maximize utility overall. However defi ned,
any form of utilitarianism can lead to some very questionable decisions. Following
the rule ‘don’t steal’ because it maximizes utility overall when one’s family is starving
and their lives can be saved by taking food from someone who has more than
enough does not seem fair or realistic. Act-utilitarianism is similarly problematic and
can lead to gross injustices, although it does refl ect the decision-making processes
that many people seem to adopt in real life.7
The ethical dilemmas that can lead many to adopt utilitarian decisions are
brought to life vividly in Khaled Hosseini’s bestselling novel, The Kite Runner. In the
following scene, the main character returns to war-torn, Taliban-controlled Kabul to
fi nd his nephew and take him to safety. He is led by a taxi driver named Farid to the
orphanage where his nephew was last seen. In talking to the director, Zaman, he
discovers that like a number of other children his nephew had been handed over to
the local war lords. The following exchange captures the ethical dilemma of the

280 IN OTHER WORDS
director, which he chooses to resolve on the basis of utilitarian principles (Hosseini
2003:235–236, 237):
‘There is a Talib offi cial,’ he muttered. ‘He visits once every month or two. He
brings cash with him, not a lot, but better than nothing at all.’ His shifty eyes
fell on me, rolled away. ‘Usually he’ll take a girl. But not always.’
‘And you allow this?’ Farid said behind me. He was going around the table,
closing in on Zaman.
‘What choice do I have?’ Zaman shot back. He pushed himself away from
the desk.
‘You’re the director here,’ Farid said. ‘Your job is watch over these
children.’
‘There’s nothing I can do to stop it.’
‘You’re selling children!’ Farid barked.
…
Zaman dropped his hands. ‘I haven’t been paid in over six months. I’m
broke because I’ve spent my life’s savings on this orphanage. Everything I
ever owned or inherited I sold to run this godforsaken place. You think I don’t
have family in Pakistan and Iran? I could have run like everyone else. But I
didn’t. I stayed. I stayed because of them [the children in the orphanage].’ …
‘If I deny him one child, he takes ten. So I let him take one and leave the
judging to Allah. I swallow my pride and take his goddam fi lthy … dirty money.
Then I go to the bazaar and buy food for the children.’
This is clearly an extreme case, but it captures the nature of ethical dilemmas and
the appeal of utilitarianism in some contexts.
Particularly taxing ethical dilemmas, then, arise when the consequences of any
decision we make are morally reprehensible, however small the number of people
affected by them; in this rather exceptional case, the director cannot avoid doing
serious harm to others, whatever his choice. It is worth noting here that one of the
weaknesses of utilitarianism is that it does not take account of emotional factors,
which come into play strongly when one or more of those who may be negatively
affected by a diffi cult decision are very close to the agent: few people would in
practice be able to sacrifi ce their son or daughter to save others, whatever the
outcome of an abstract cost-benefi t analysis.8 But ethical dilemmas also arise if we
follow universalist ethics, specifi cally when two or more of what we might think of as
universal principles come into confl ict, as when following the principle of truth or
honesty would result in doing harm to someone.
Because of the diffi culty of reconciling principles on the basis of consequences
or universal values, some argue that Kantian ethics is a better option than both util-
itarianism and universalism. Broadly speaking, Kantian ethics maintains that actions
are right or wrong in and of themselves, irrespective of their consequences and of
contextual considerations. A similar logic, or sentiment, is often expressed in the
blogs and writings of professional translators. In an article which appeared in the

BEYOND EQUIVALENCE: ETHICS AND MORALITY 281
journal of the Medical Division of the American Translators’ Association, Michael
McCann (2006), former Chairman of the Irish Translators’ Association, insists:
The principles of ethics governing a translator’s work are applications of the
great moral principles, based not on the quicksand of relativism, but solidly
founded on the absolute foundation of what is good in itself, to the avoidance
of what is wrong, for the pure, simple and unadulterated reason, that good is
right, and that bad is wrong.
More specifi cally, however, Kantian ethics maintains that our actions must ulti-
mately be motivated by a sense of duty. Some duties are so important that they
admit of no exceptions: such is our duty to tell the truth at all times, because it is a
necessary part of our duty to treat others with respect and dignity. Treating others
with dignity means respecting their autonomy by allowing them access to all the
information they need to make decisions that affect their lives and well-being. It
requires us to acknowledge the right of all human beings ‘to act for reasons they
have formulated for themselves’ (Benn 1998:208). Kantian ethics has had consid-
erable infl uence on formulating ethical policy in several fi elds (Driver 2007),
including medicine, where misleading patients about the nature of their treatment
or their chances of recovery is no longer permissible in many parts of the world,
irrespective of the negative psychological impact this can have on them or their
loved ones.
Like all theories of ethics, taken individually, Kantian ethics falls short of offering
us satisfying solutions in some situations which we might experience as morally
taxing. It also does not refl ect the way people often behave intuitively. In one of many
such examples cited in the literature, the bilingual daughter of an Italian immigrant in
Canada interprets between her father and an English-speaking Canadian in a
business negotiation. When her father loses his temper and calls the Canadian busi-
nessman a fool (Digli che è un imbecile!), she renders this as ‘My father won’t
accept your offer’ (Mason 1999:156). Following Kantian principles, this must be
considered unethical behaviour, because it violates the requirements of truth and
autonomy. But we get different assessments if we draw on alternative models of
ethical behaviour. Kantian ethics aside, whether we think the interpreter’s behaviour
is ethical or not will depend on at least two considerations. First, what we believe is
likely to be the best outcome for all participants (both short term and long term), if
we follow utilitarian logic. Second, whether we think the father’s behaviour is guided
by different norms and expectations operative in his own cultural setting, where
perhaps calling someone a fool to express dissatisfaction does not carry the same
weight as it does in the Canadian context – a partially relativist position. If so, there
is no point in causing unintended offence (unnecessary harm), we might argue, and
the young interpreter will have made an ethically responsible decision. An egoist, on
the other hand, would consider the interpreter’s behaviour ethical on the basis that
she is protecting herself from being caught up in a stressful confrontation or
being blamed for it. No doubt this kind of egoist logic motivates many decisions in

282 IN OTHER WORDS
translation and interpreting. As Donovan (2011) argues, conference interpreters’
(and translators’) insistence on ‘professional neutrality and confi dentiality as the
pillars of their professional codes of practice’ is at least partly motivated by the fact
that ‘this position protects them from awkward and even threatening criticism and
defl ects potential pressure from powerful clients’. Assuming we are not egoists,
however, how ethical or unethical we think the resulting behaviour is will depend
primarily on the extent to which we believe it impacts negatively on other partici-
pants, rather than merely on ourselves.
Other situations present different types of ethical challenge, for both Kantian
and other approaches. What should a sign language interpreter do, for instance,
when asked to make a phone call to a sex service on behalf of a deaf client?9 On the
one hand, the interpreter may feel that the sex industry is demeaning and exploit-
ative, and that by supporting it he or she would be doing harm to others. On the
other hand, it is possible to argue, in Kantian terms, that the interpreter has a duty to
empower the deaf person, who should be able to make his or her own ethical deci-
sions. Similarly, in a focus group study undertaken in several US hospitals in order to
explore the diffi culties encountered by interpreters in implementing standards drawn
up by healthcare organizations in California, Angelelli (2006:182, 183–184) quotes
two participants expressing quite different views, with different implications for the
autonomy of the patient in a medical encounter:
Let’s say you are a good interpreter, right? And you are interpreting every-
thing that is going on. All of a sudden, I am a nurse, I come in the room and I
tell the doctor, ‘you are giving the patient erythromycin and he is allergic to it.
Do you still want to give him that or change it?’ Now there is no need for you
to interpret that. It has nothing to do with the patient.
Sometimes when there is an English-speaking patient, the doctor and the
nurse do not discuss certain things in front of the patient. They go outside.
But when the patient is non-English-speaking, I have been in that situation. I
had someone, an older person, come in and he was dying and the two
doctors were standing in front of the patient saying ‘he is going to keep
coming here until he dies, until he gets pneumonia and fi nally …’ I can’t
translate that for the patient. And I ask the doctors, ‘Would you like me to
translate that?’ And they say, ‘Oh, no. This is among ourselves.’ ‘Then
please step outside.’ That is what I said.
The fi rst interpreter is clearly not aware of any ethical questions relating to the
patient’s right to have access to the full interaction in which he or she is not only
involved but is also the subject of conversation and decision-making. The second
interpreter fi nds it unethical to exclude a participant from an ongoing conversation in
which he or she is physically present, and acts accordingly. A utilitarian approach
would minimize the ethical implications here: there is no physical or psychological
harm done to patients, as long as they do not fi nd out that something was said about

BEYOND EQUIVALENCE: ETHICS AND MORALITY 283
them to which they were not privy (‘what you don’t know can’t hurt you’ is a
common, utilitarian saying in English that probably has its counterpart in many other
languages). But a Kantian would point out that by allowing one participant to be
excluded from the interaction and failing to inform him or her about an exchange that
impacts his or her well-being, the interpreter has effectively failed to treat that
par ticipant with the dignity he or she deserves. A similar argument could be advanced
with respect to signifi cant shifts introduced in some forms of translation, such as
literary translation, without the knowledge and consent of the author10 and/or without
alerting the target reader. A good example is the 1969 English translation of Milan
Kundera’s The Joke, in which the chapters of the book are reordered to refl ect the
chronological development of the plot, even though Kundera had specifi cally opted
for a different order in the original (Kuhiwczak 1990). Kundera’s subsequent
outrage, expressed in a letter published in The Times Literary Supplement in the
same year, is understandable in ethical terms on the basis that he remains a key
participant in any interaction that involves a text which still bears his name, and as
such is entitled to be treated with dignity and respect: his consent should have been
sought for such a major form of intervention.
Whatever theory of ethics informs our thinking, when principles clash or our
choices are severely restricted there will be no easy answer, no ready-made solution
that can be extracted from any code. Ethical dilemmas are just that: dilemmas. As
Goodwin explains in his discussion of the choice of subtitles in a politically charged
documentary, ‘like the technical question,11 the ethical question does not admit of an
easy answer’ (2010:25). And yet, we have to be able to anticipate ethical diffi culties
in our professional life and to think of the various options available to us critically,
because however diffi cult the decisions we have to make we are still accountable for
them, to ourselves as well as others.
8.2 PROFESSIONALISM, CODES OF ETHICS AND
THE LAW
Most professions have codes of ethics that regulate the behaviour of their members
and demonstrate to those who depend on their services that they have mechanisms
for ensuring accountability. In principle, professional codes can – and should – have
a positive impact on the community to which they apply, and cannot be dismissed as
irrelevant unless they prove to be out of touch with the realities of practice and with
the moral outlook of practitioners. But they must always be approached critically,
assessed on their own merits, and not used to ‘defl ect the necessity of ongoing
personal and systemic refl ection and adaptation’ (Cheney et al. 2010:181).
Cheney et al. (ibid.:15) argue that the term ‘professional’ can have negative
ethical implications, and may be used simply to constrain behaviour, to the detriment
of moral standards in society. The phrase ‘acting like a professional’, they suggest,
‘can be … code for not “rocking the boat” or not being fully human’. Moreover, in
elaborating their codes of ethics, institutions sometimes negotiate the rules sensi-
tively with their members and take account of their experience and values, but more

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often they impose these codes from the top down, as a response to some legal or
public relations concerns. The resulting codes then tend to be ‘oriented toward
encouraging compliance with regulations far more than they are with elevating
behavior’ (ibid.).
Similarly, as Driver explains (2007:5), ‘ethics and the law are distinct’, and while
one hopes that ‘ethical norms will inform the content and enforcement of the law’,
we know that many laws have been used in the past and continue to be used today
to discriminate against certain minorities, including women in some societies and
blacks in many countries in the past, and to assist in various forms of colonial
violence. This is perhaps why the World Medical Association’s International Code of
Ethics stipulates that ‘a doctor’s or investigator’s conscience and duty of care must
transcend national laws’ (Godlee 2009). Consequently, where most professional
codes of ethics understandably discourage members from breaking the law, some
people will occasionally decide that it is unethical to do otherwise. In our specifi c
context, some scholars have recently warned against ‘restricting the notion of ethics
in translation to questions … [of] contractual or legal obligations related to terms of
employment’ (Tymoczko 2007:219) because it turns translators into unthinking
cogs in the wheel of an established social system rather than refl ective and ethically
responsible citizens.
Nevertheless, for many scholars and practitioners, professional codes of trans-
lation and interpreting are and must remain the reference point for ethical behaviour
in the fi eld. To resolve a range of ethical dilemmas for which the code offers no
satisfying answers, some have argued that ‘the code applies to the interpreted
encounter, and not to any interactions before or after the professional encounter’
(Hale 2007:130–131). Thus, the principle of confi dentiality, which is central to all
professional codes of interpreting and translation, does not necessarily have to apply
when a patient tells an interpreter in the waiting room of a clinic that he or she
intends to commit suicide but does not wish this to be revealed to the doctor. In
deciding how to act ethically in this instance, the interpreter has to use his or her own
judgement or appeal to some other code, perhaps the medical code, to resolve this
dilemma. But this separation of pre/post-encounter and the encounter itself is
arguably artifi cial and diffi cult to maintain in practice. At any rate, similar dilemmas
often emerge during the professional encounter itself, and are no less ethically
taxing for the translator or interpreter than those that arise outside the encounter
proper.
When translators and interpreters are faced with serious ethical dilemmas,
within or around the encounter proper, one way in which they might attempt to
negotiate the need to abide by professional and legal codes on the one hand, and to
act ethically on the other, is to reinterpret the key terms of the code. Almost all
codes drawn up by associations that represent translators and interpreters consider
impartiality to be a prerequisite for professional behaviour. Erik Camayd-Freixas was
one of twenty-six interpreters called in to provide interpreting between US Immi-
gration and Customs Enforcement offi cials and illegal immigrants arrested during a
major raid on a slaughterhouse in Iowa in May 2008. In a long statement he

BEYOND EQUIVALENCE: ETHICS AND MORALITY 285
published afterwards, he describes some of the harrowing scenes he witnessed
when he and his fellow interpreters unexpectedly found themselves party to major
abuses of the rights of these vulnerable immigrants. He quotes one of his fellow
interpreters saying ‘I feel a tremendous solidarity with these people’, then comments:
‘Had we lost our impartiality? Not at all: that was our impartial and probably
unanimous judgment’ (Camayd-Freixas 2008a). Rather than question the principle
of impartiality, Camayd-Freixas thus chooses to interpret it as compatible with
feelings of compassion and solidarity with the oppressed. His acceptance note
when he was offered the Inttranews Linguist of the Year Award in 2008 further
reveals his awareness of the potential confl ict between various key principles that
feature in almost all professional codes in the fi eld:12
We live in changing times where the canons of ethics are being redefi ned in
many professions. For translators and interpreters, the prime imperative is
Accuracy, followed by Impartiality and Confi dentiality. In cases of confl ict,
Accuracy governs. And today there are cases in which Accuracy must be
regarded as something more than mere literal correctness. If we are to be
more than translation machines, more than automatons, if we strive to have a
conscience and a heart, we must go beyond the words, to the deeper struc-
tures of meaning. For long, linguists have taken refuge in the comfort of
formal correctness, but our world has closed that loophole. That ethical
shelter is no more. Our Oath of Accuracy – we now realize – means a
commitment to Truth.
Hale (2007:117–124) similarly accepts that impartiality does not mean lack of feelings
on the part of the interpreter, but argues that interpreters must not allow their personal
opinions or feelings to interfere with their work; if necessary, they can always declare
a confl ict of interest and decline the job. In Camayd-Freixas’ case, however, things did
not prove quite so straightforward, not least because he did not realize what was going
on until he arrived on the scene and began interpreting.13 He also had to weigh the
ethical implications of ignoring injustice by simply walking away from it, as opposed to
intervening to change the situation in the longer term. In an article about his experience
that appeared in The New York Times (Preston 2008), he is reported to have
‘considered withdrawing from the assignment, but decided instead that he could play
a valuable role by witnessing the proceedings and making them known’. He then took
‘the unusual step of breaking the code of confi dentiality among legal interpreters about
their work’ (ibid.) by publishing a fourteen-page essay describing what he witnessed
and giving interviews about his experience.14 While maintaining his ‘impartiality’ during
the assignment, to the best of his ability, he nevertheless arguably violated another
professional and legal principle that could have had serious consequences for him
personally, namely the principle of confi dentiality.15
Donovan (in press) describes another situation that made adhering to the prin-
ciple of impartiality ethically problematic, and that she chose to resolve by distancing
herself from the utterance linguistically and justifying her intervention from a different

286 IN OTHER WORDS
perspective this time – not with reference to what occurs within or outside the
encounter proper, but with reference to what might be considered standard practice
within a specifi c type of event involving a conference interpreter. The ‘interpreter’
she refers to in the third person here is herself:
During a lunch discussion, a Brazilian participant began to justify the assassi-
nation of street children by paramilitaries. The interpreter, taken aback, intro-
duced her rendition with ‘the speaker seems to be saying that …’, thus
distancing herself doubly from the content. This is a clear and deliberate
break with standard practice. Thus, by using the third person the interpreter
indicates disapproval and in effect comments on the speaker’s remarks. …
This would generally be perceived as an unethical rendition by the standards
of professional practice. The distancing was possible because the interpreter
felt her obligation of complete, impartial rendition was weakened by the non-
representational (i.e. personal) nature of the statement and its occurrence
outside the offi cial proceedings.
Commenting on the ethical implications of following the same principle in a very
different context, Inghilleri (2010b) explains that impartiality for Sadi Othman, a
trusted interpreter who worked with the US forces and local offi cials in Iraq following
the invasion of the country in 2003, simply means that he does not side with one
party or the other, whatever the nature of the interaction he mediates. As Inghilleri
points out, what adherence to the principle of impartiality does in this case is ‘to
shield Othman, an avowed pacifi st, from any moral responsibility for his direct
par ticipation in a war which has caused the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians’
(ibid.: 191). Ultimately, then, impartiality, like almost any principle you will encounter
in a legal or professional code, can be interpreted in different ways – by translators/
interpreters and by other parties involved in the encounter or those who are in a
position to comment on their behaviour.
8.3 THE ETHICAL IMPLICATIONS OF LINGUISTIC
CHOICES
Accuracy, as already pointed out, is one of the principles included in most codes of
ethics, and like impartiality and confi dentiality can be diffi cult to adhere to for ethical
reasons. But accuracy focuses specifi cally on the relationship between the source
and target text, or source and target utterance in the case of interpreting.
The following extracts are from an article that appeared in the June 2010 issue
of the KLM infl ight magazine Holland Herald (Lapiere 2010:45–48). Translating
this article would raise diffi cult ethical issues for many people, especially those who
believe that some linguistic choices are demeaning for women and strengthen
perceptions of them as objects to be possessed rather than equal members of
society.

BEYOND EQUIVALENCE: ETHICS AND MORALITY 287
Tour of beauty
She was the loveliest baby any man could dream of marrying. The pale green,
eight-cylinder Corniche I was contemplating in the window of London’s
Conduit Street Rolls-Royce showroom was the ultimate symbol of beauty and
motor perfection.
… Driving throughout India aboard a Rolls-Royce and coming back home
through Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran and the whole Middle East at the wheel
of such a mythical car was the ultimate dream I could think of. Though I did
not possess a bowler hat and an umbrella to establish my credibility, I entered
the showroom absolutely determined to make that Corniche my bride.
…
I had her spend her fi rst Indian night in one of the majestic garages of the
Royal Bombay Yacht Club that had formerly housed the Silver Phantoms and
Silver Ghosts of the empire’s high dignatories.
…
In a few months, I covered almost 20,000 kilometres throughout the former
British Empire, often on terrible roads, under the pouring rains of the monsoon
as well as in the blazing heat of summer. In spite of the fi lthy petrol with which
I quenched her thirst, my Rolls-Royce never complained. She proudly sailed
everywhere like her ancestors had in the times of the viceroys and the
maharajas.
…
Since then, the beautiful car bought with the blessings of Lord Mountbatten
has continued to be part of my life. Like an old couple that love has united for
eternity, together we have covered many more thousands of kilometres
across France and Europe. It is now 51 years old, and I am 78. She is parked
under the red tiles of a garage just opposite the room where I have my work
table. I have only to look up and glance out of the window to see the symbol
of the greatest joys of my life, and draw from it the inspiration for further
dreams.
This article, which is worth reading in full,16 is problematic at more than one level –
among other things, it paints a rather romantic and rosy picture of a colonial world
that in reality was far from romantic for those at the receiving end of colonial
violence. The car is explicitly associated with the ‘grandeur’ of that imperial past and
referred to as ‘she’, ‘loveliest baby’ and ‘bride’. Such gendered references and the
idea of driving this obedient ‘bride’ who never complains through the lands of
the former maharajas and viceroys are likely to trouble translators who are alert to
the gender issue and to the violence of colonialism. For those who believe that such
language and imagery can have negative ethical implications for society as a whole,
and that it is therefore unethical to perpetuate this type of discourse through trans-
lation, the answer is still not easy. They still have to address the implications of

288 IN OTHER WORDS
eliminating or even reducing the gendered references, downplaying the sexualized
tenor of the original, or omitting some of the implicit praise of Britain’s imperial past.
Although it would be easy to achieve in many languages, without departing signifi –
cantly from the content of the article, altering the tenor of the source text entails a
certain disrespect for the autonomy of others involved in the encounter. In Kantian
terms, we would have to acknowledge that the author has a right to express his own
world view, and the reader has a right to access and judge that world view for him-
or herself. Unfortunately, many contexts of translation do not afford translators the
opportunity to include footnotes or even prefaces in which they might comment on
unsavoury aspects of a source text that they wish to dissociate themselves from,17
thus forcing them to make a decision that involves doing harm to one or more parties
in the encounter: the author, the reader, their own values, a social or ethnic group,
or even society as a whole. Some translators might attempt to resolve the dilemma
by declining the assignment altogether. This option is available in principle to free-
lance translators, but a staff translator (someone employed by the Holland Herald in
this case) cannot normally refuse to translate texts that raise ethical issues for him or
her. In one real-life instance, a staff translator working for an agency was asked by
her employer to translate a glossary of slaughterhouse terms. As a vegetarian and
animal lover, she found this ethically taxing and asked to be relieved of the task. As
she puts it, her employers:
were quite happy to humour me in that instance (it was not a terribly long text)
but … the confl ict between my ethical position and professional requirements
would have been much more of an issue had my employers gained a
substantial contract with the meat industry.
(Myriam Salama-Carr, personal communication)
These examples bring us to the broader issue of our ethical responsibility as
producers of language and discourse, irrespective of – or in addition to – the
question of whether the wording we use in a translation is semantically ‘accurate’ in
relation to the source text. Our wording will always, inevitably, be different from the
wording of the source text, since it will be realized in a different language. Ultimately,
however, ‘[w]hat is at stake’ when we render a stretch of text or utterance from one
language into another ‘is not so much linguistic difference, as the social and cultural
representations of the Other that linguistic difference invariably presupposes’ (Lane-
Mercier 1997:46). Like the decision to replicate or tone down the gendered
language of the ‘Tour of beauty’ article above, the choice of a particular dialect,
idiolect or register with which to render the speech of a character in the source text
or the defendant in a courtroom is potentially an ethical choice, one that has an
impact on the way our readers or hearers will perceive the character in question (and
consequently the community he or she represents), the veracity of a defendant’s
testimony, the reliability of a witness’s statement, the credibility of an asylum
seeker’s account of his or her persecution.

BEYOND EQUIVALENCE: ETHICS AND MORALITY 289
In 2001, BBC News published extracts from a purported English translation of
secret Chinese offi cial documents on the 1989 events in Tiananmen Square in
Beijing.18 The article which featured these extracts began as follows (bold in original):
Meeting between Premier Li Peng and paramount leader Deng
Xiaoping, 25 April, 1989:
Li Peng: ‘The spear is now pointed directly at you and the others of the elder
generation of proletarian revolutionaries …’
Deng Xiaoping: ‘This is no ordinary student movement. A tiny minority is
exploiting the students – they want to confuse the people and throw the
country into chaos. This is a well-planned plot whose real aim is to reject the
Communist Party …’.
Li Peng, Premier of the People’s Republic of China at the time, comes across in this
translation as at best quaint and at worst incoherent, perhaps even eccentric. In
deciding how to represent the speech of a character in another language, whether
this character is fi ctional or real, we have to consider not only the semantics and
aesthetics of the source and target utterances but also the values and attitudes we
attribute to these characters and their communities through the choices we make.
Do our choices make the character appear more or less intelligent than we might
reasonably assume they are or than they appear to their own communities? Do they
make the character and their community seem ordinary, human (like us), or radically
different, and hence incomprehensible or even threatening? How far should we go
to mediate the distance between the source and target cultures, to ensure that
members of the former are understood and respected by members of the latter?
These are not easy or straightforward questions, and different translators will want
to draw the line at different points of the continuum between rigid adherence to the
semantics of an utterance and active intervention in reformulating a character’s
speech to enhance their chances of being taken seriously or treated with empathy in
the target context. Ultimately, however, as Lane-Mercier argues in the context of
literary translation (1997:46):
Far from constituting a neutral operation, both the stylization process to which
literary sociolects are exposed and the comic, picturesque or realistic effects
they generate involve the authorial manipulation of real-world class determi-
nations, ethnic and gender images, power structures, relations of hierarchy
and exclusion, cultural stereotypes and institutional roles.
These observations are as pertinent to the translation (and interpreting) of political
fi gures in the news and defendants and witnesses in the court as they are to literary
characters in a novel.

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8.4 CONCLUDING REMARKS
In an article about the importance of translators that appeared in the Observer news-
paper in April 2010, Tim Parks, a well-known novelist and literary translator, writes:
Occasionally, a translator is invited to the festival of individual genius as the
guest of a great man whose career he has furthered; made, even. He is Mr
Eco in New York, Mr Rushdie in Germany. He is not recognised for the
millions of decisions he made, but because he had the fortune to translate
Rushdie or Eco. If he did wonderful work for less fortunate authors, we would
never have heard of him.
Leaving aside the fact that Parks assumes great novelists and their translators to be
male by default, there is much truth in this statement. Nevertheless, I hope that our
brief excursion into the creativity and ethics of translation in this book will encourage
readers to think of translation and interpreting as diverse, challenging, exciting and
highly consequential activities, whether undertaken for great literary writers or
destitute immigrants, whether awarded with glamorous literary prizes or treated as
run-of-the-mill, everyday jobs. Indeed, it is the largely invisible and the least glam-
orous aspects of translators’ and interpreters’ work that can often have the greatest
impact on the lives of those around them, and hence require them to approach every
assignment not just as a technical but as a primarily ethical challenge, one that calls
on us to recognize the humanity of others and treat them accordingly. As you expe-
rience the highs and lows of your career as a translator or interpreter, it is important
not to lose sight of this simple truth.
1. Goodwin (2010:26–27) proposes two ways of looking at the issue of
ethics in translation:
For one group, ethics may be regarded as important but extrinsic
to translation itself, so that the latter should be ethically governed
(as all human activities are) but, once it is set within an overall
moral framework, can proceed without it. An analogy might be
mining exploration: there is such a thing as the ethics of mining
exploration, but mining itself is a technical activity quite separate
from the ethical framework within which it is conducted. Thus,
we might send a geological mission to a foreign country to explore
the potential for mining its natural resources: on one piece of
paper we could write technical instructions for mining, and on
another, quite separately, we could write an ethical code of
conduct we wished the mission to observe. In sympathy with such
an approach would be any translator who regards the activity

BEYOND EQUIVALENCE: ETHICS AND MORALITY 291
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s itself as a technical procedure, in principle susceptible to remain-
derless scientifi c description.
The other way of thinking about translation … is that it is
intrinsically ethical: that the activity itself cannot proceed without
an account (explicit or implicit) of how the encounter with the
‘other’ human being should be conducted. An analogy might be
trade: suppose that instead of a mining mission, we sent a trade
mission to our imagined foreign country. In this case, the activity
involves the other human beings which the mission will encounter,
and the activity must be consensual (non-consensual trade is not
trade, but pillage), such that the activity itself cannot take place
other than in the context of an ethical framework which provides
a basis for concepts such as volition, consent and exchange. It
would perhaps be possible in such a case to divide our instruc-
tions into the ‘technical’ and the ‘ethical’, but only with diffi culty,
and the latter would play a much more important and integral
role in the activity itself.
Consider the two scenarios outlined by Goodwin. To what extent is the
distinction he draws applicable to mining, trading or any other human
activity? Would you consider yourself part of the fi rst or second group
he refers to? Playing the devil’s advocate, irrespective of your own
position, how would you explain to a potential client why translation is
extrinsically or intrinsically ethical, in Goodwin’s terms? What impact
might each explanation have on different types of client and their trust
in translators?
2. Writing as a literary translator who had to make diffi cult ethical deci-
sions about whether or not to translate different Serbian authors whose
works ‘could be used by nationalists to justify a campaign of hatred and
genocide’ (2004:719), Jones (ibid.:723) presents two opposing argu-
ments – one he dubs ‘Olympianism’ and the other Realpolitik:
The former [Olympianism] argues that translators should remain
true to texts that are artistically good, even in tainted social
circumstances of production and reception – such as a source
culture hijacked by extreme nationalism – in the knowledge or
hope that the culture will recover. The latter [Realpolitik] claims
that a text cannot remain separate from and thus untainted by its
social context. Thus, for example, a translator should refuse to
translate works whose imagery is being exploited to justify
genocide, no matter how innocuous that imagery might have
seemed at the time of fi rst writing.

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s Discuss the ethical implications of both positions, bearing in mind that
carefully considered ethical arguments can be presented in each case,
and as Jones points out, the balance in such diffi cult situations may at
times be tipped by the nature of the agent’s personal relations, rather
than abstract ethical considerations: ‘In the end’, Jones explains:
a key reason that I did not break with Serbian and Croatian
poetry was that it would have meant breaking personal ties built
up over many years. I tended to be very wary of building up new
ties, however, except on the rare occasions when I felt that my
translation work supported some sort of opposition to the nation-
alist mindset.
(ibid.:719)
3. A number of translation agencies in various parts of the world increas-
ingly offer work to student translators, many of whom undertake this
work either free of charge or for a low rate, as a way of gaining expe-
rience. Aurora Humarán, one of the founding members of AIPTI (Asoci-
ación Internacional de Profesionales de la Traducción y la Interpretación/
International Association of Professional Translators and Interpreters,
based in Argentina), has this to say on the subject:19
Does a dentistry student perform root canals? No. Does an archi-
tecture student build anything? Not a thing. Does a law school
student defend anyone? No one.
Students from any of those career fi elds can, of course, perform
some sort of work ‘within their areas’ of study. A dentistry student
can work as an assistant in a dental offi ce. An architecture student
can get a handle on his/her future profession by doing adminis-
trative work in an architect’s offi ce. And anyone in the legal fi eld
is certainly aware of how many law students act as paralegals,
traipsing from one court to another every morning.
In our profession, however, there is no place, really, in which
translation students can learn to take their fi rst steps. There is no
such job as dictionary handler, word researcher, glossarist or
anything of the kind for those who are trying their hand at these
tasks for the fi rst time. No such position exists. Well, let me
correct myself: It didn’t exist. It didn’t, that is, until some slick
operators threw together an agency  – the way you might slap
together a stand for a rummage sale  – and (voila!) translation
students suddenly had a place to work. So, let’s translate! But
translate just like a professional translator? No way! This is
cut-rate translation in which students do the work professionals

BEYOND EQUIVALENCE: ETHICS AND MORALITY 293
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s usually do, but for ridiculous rates, turning themselves into veri-
table ‘beggar translators’.
Compare the above statement with the following argument about
volunteer translation and interpreting offered by ECOS, a socially
committed group of lecturers and students of translation in Spain
(Manuel et al. 2004):
In the association ECOS, Translators and Interpreters for Soli-
darity, we perform volunteer work of translation and interpreting
for NGOs, social forums and other nonprofi t organisations with
affi nities to the philosophy of our organisation. In no case would
we wish to accept a continuous role in the performance of a
service which ought to be supplied by professionals under
contract.
In other words, we do not intend that the voluntary nature of
work performed should serve as an excuse for the creation of
what is beginning to be called a ‘third sector,’ which would
amount to the utilisation of volunteer work and non-profi t organ-
izations together with private initiative to organise, at low cost,
services which in our opinion ought to be supplied by the public
sector, the only one capable of the coverage necessary. … our
work is like that of volunteers who supply medicines to third-
world communities completely outside the trade network known
as globalization.
… we consider it indispensable to broaden the concept of profes-
sional ethics in these times of neo-liberal globalization, which
deepens the inequalities between peoples and within them. We
can no longer limit our aims merely to defending decent working
conditions and rejecting the intrusion of non-qualifi ed persons
into the profession. It would be hypocritical to bemoan the price
per word paid by such-and-such a company, or the size of the
interpreter’s booths in this or that convention centre, while feeling
no scruples at working for those who organise exploitation,
misery and war in this world.
Would you argue that translating and interpreting by students and/or
volunteers of various levels of expertise is (a) always, (b) never or (c)
sometimes unethical? If the latter, under what conditions might it be
considered ethical, in the sense of doing no harm, or doing positive
good, to various parties in the interaction and to other professional
translators and interpreters?

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s 4. Based on research into actual practice in a pediatric outpatient clinic in
Switzerland, Leanza (2005) draws up an extended typology of roles
assumed by interpreters in this setting. Merlini (2009:64–65) offers the
following potted summary of these roles:
(1) Translator: the interpreter minimizes her/his presence and
simply facilitates communication;
(2) Active translator: the interpreter engages either primary party
to clarify minor points or linguistic details;
(3) Cultural informant: the interpreter addresses the service
provider to inform her/him about the service user’s cultural
norms and values;
(4) Advocate: the interpreter addresses the service provider to
defend and promote the service user’s interests;
(5) Culture broker or cultural mediator: the interpreter negotiates
between two confl icting value systems and helps parties arrive
at a shared model;
(6) Bilingual professional: the interpreter leads the interview with
the service user and reports to the service provider;
(7) Monolingual professional: the interpreter expresses her/his
views on the matter at hand to the service provider, acting as
her/his peer;
(8) Welcomer: the interpreter welcomes service users before the
service provider meets them;
(9) Support: the interpreter meets the service users in the community,
as a follow-up to the encounter.
What are the ethical implications of each of the above roles, from the
perspective of various participants, including the interpreter?
If we replace service provider and service user with categories such
as author and target reader, or fi lm producer and viewer in the case of
subtitling and dubbing, can a similar typology be drawn up for different
types of translation, where we might, for instance, consider certain
types of intervention or of footnotes added by the translator, as evidence
that they are playing the role of cultural informant or culture broker? In
the case of face-to-face interpreting, the immediacy of the interaction
means that most of the above roles are performed, or otherwise, ‘on the
spot’ (but note that item 9 refers to activities undertaken outside the
interpreted encounter). In the case of translation, more activities might
be undertaken outside the immediate context of translation. For
example, literary translators often work as advocates for authors with
whom they empathize, and this might involve acting as their ‘agents’ in
some respects, as when they arrange for them to receive invitations to

BEYOND EQUIVALENCE: ETHICS AND MORALITY 295
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s speak at literary festivals or be interviewed by the press, and often
accompany them and interpret for them on such occasions. How do all
these activities relate to ethical principles as expressed in professional
codes? How might a translator or interpreter argue that acting in any of
these capacities is ethical (or unethical) despite (or because of) the
ethical values that regulate the profession – including impartiality,
neutrality and accuracy?
5. Consider the following two statements:
There is … a category of texts which, at fi rst sight, appear to be
positively illegal. If a translator agreed to translate bomb-making
instructions, would he be responsible for attacks committed with
the bombs produced with the help of such instructions? He
certainly would, in our view, if he did not take the trouble of
fi nding out who needed the translation, and for what purpose it
was required. If the nature of the client were suffi ciently obscure
to raise even the slightest concern, no translator in his right mind
would accept such an order. However, if the translation was
commissioned by a government authority as part of efforts to
study terrorists’ practices, the translator might actually contribute
to a good cause by translating even the most reprehensible texts.
(Simons 2010)
The law may itself be unjust. It may not serve the common good,
but the good of the tyrant or the party. The apartheid laws in
South Africa were a case in point. Laws that in certain countries
discriminate against women or against minority groups pose a
problem and the moral dilemma of whether obedience is appro-
priate. Such dilemmas have to be faced and require more than a
simple injunction to ‘obey the law of the land’.
(Wright, undated)
What issues do these statements raise in relation to the link between
ethics and legality? Are practices and objectives promoted by a
government and enshrined in law necessarily ethical? Under what
conditions do you believe the translator may be justifi ed in breaking the
law and entitled to receive support from fellow translators and the
professional associations that represent them?
6. One of the cornerstones of all professional codes of ethics, including
those relating to translation, is confi dentiality. And yet, speaking of
professional ethics in general, Cheney et al. argue that ‘[s]ometimes
being morally responsible may mean resisting an order, going public
with private information, or leaving a job or career altogether’

296 IN OTHER WORDS
e
x
e
r
c
is
e
s (2010:153). Refl ect on this issue in the context of a real life case, like
that of Katharine Gun, former translator working for a British intelli-
gence agency who leaked secret documents to the press in 2003; the
documents related to illegal activities by the United States and Britain
in relation to the then impending invasion of Iraq. For this particular
case, you can consult Solomon (2003), Burkeman and Norton-Taylor
(2004), Tyler (2004), BBC News (2004), Davies (2004) and Institute for
Public Accuracy (undated). Much more material on this case can be
retrieved by searching for ‘Katharine Gun’ on the web.
7. Barsky (1996, 2010) notes that immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers
are ill-served by a system that is inclined to criminalize them as a group,
that treats them as ‘guilty by virtue of being there’ (2010:292). ‘The
intrinsic shortcomings of the system’, he suggests, ‘are such that the
poor and the persecuted are disadvantaged from the outset’ (1996:61).
While accepting that interpreters cannot be expected to ensure justice
for the vulnerable (ibid.), he argues that they:
can help redress the wrongs of the system to some extent. … they
can assist the persecuted by allowing them to articulate their
claims and negotiate their ‘difference’ in an environment which is
less sympathetic the more ‘different’ the claimant is seen to be.
They can fi ll in cultural gaps and compensate for tactical errors to
ensure that genuine stories of suffering and persecution are
properly ‘heard’.
Consider the ethical implications of each type of assistance Barsky
suggests an interpreter could offer. How would a Kantian balance the
rights of different parties in the interaction, including the right of legal
personnel to be allowed to assess each case on its own merits, and the
rights of immigrants and asylum seekers to be treated with dignity?
How would an interpreter’s ‘duty’ be defi ned in Kantian terms in this
instance? How would a utilitarian assess the various consequences of
intervention and lack of intervention on the part of interpreters? On
balance, what would you view as the more ethical approach to adopt,
and why?
SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING
Ethics
Benn, Piers (1998) Ethics, London: Routledge.
Cheney, George, Daniel J. Lair, Dean Ritz and Brenden E. Kendall (2010) Just a Job?
Communication, Ethics and Professional Life, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

BEYOND EQUIVALENCE: ETHICS AND MORALITY 297
Driver, Julia (2007) Ethics: The Fundamentals, Oxford: Blackwell.
Godlee, Fiona (2009) ‘Rules of Conscience’, BMJ (British Medical Journal), 14 May.
Available at www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/338/may14_1/b1972. (In addition to the
main article, scroll to the bottom of the page and read at least some of the rapid
responses to it.)
Sternberg, Robert J. (2009) ‘A New Model for Teaching Ethical Behavior’, The Chronicle
Review (The Chronicle of Higher Education), 24 April. Available for purchase at http://
chronicle.com/article/A-New-Model-for-Teaching-Et/36202/.
Ethical issues in translation and interpreting
Angelelli, Claudia V. (2006) ‘Validating Professional Standards and Codes: Challenges and
Opportunities’, Interpreting 8(2): 175–193.
Baker, Mona (2008) ‘Ethics of Renarration – Mona Baker is Interviewed by Andrew Ches-
terman’, Cultus 1(1): 10–33. Available at http://manchester.academia.edu/docu-
ments/0074/9064/Baker_Ethics_of_Renarration .
Baker, Mona and Carol Maier (eds) (2011) Ethics and the Curriculum: Critical Perspec-
tives, Special Issue of The Interpreter and Translator Trainer 5(1).
Batchelor, Kathryn (2009) Decolonizing Translation: Francophone African Novels in English
Translation, Manchester: St. Jerome Publishing. Chapter 8: ‘Exploring the Postcolonial
Turn in Translation Theory’.
Chesterman, Andrew (2001) ‘Proposal for a Hieronymic Oath’, The Translator 7(2):
139–154.
Diriker, Ebru (2004) De-/Re-Contextualizing Conference Interpreting: Interpreters in the Ivory
Tower? Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Esp. Chapter 2 ‘Broader Social Context in SI’.
Goodwin, Phil (2010) ‘Ethical Problems in Translation: Why We Might Need Steiner After
All’, The Translator 16(1): 19–42.
Hale, Sandra (2007) Community Interpreting, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Chapter 4:
‘Analysing the Interpreter’s Code of Ethics’.
Hermans, Theo (2009) ‘Translation, Ethics, Politics’, in Jeremy Munday (ed.) The Routledge
Companion to Translation Studies, Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 93–105.
Inghilleri, Moira (2008) ‘The Ethical Task of the Translator in the Geo-political Arena: From
Iraq to Guantánamo Bay’, Translation Studies 1(1): 212–223.
Inghilleri, Moira (2009) ‘Ethics’, in Mona Baker and Gabriela Saldanha (eds) Routledge
Encyclopedia of Translation Studies, second edition, London: Routledge, 100–104.
Jones, Francis R. (2004) ‘Ethics, Aesthetics and Decision: Literary Translating in the Wars
of the Yugoslav Succession’, Meta 49(4): 711–728.
Koskinen, Kaisa (2000) Beyond Ambivalence: Postmodernity and the Ethics of Translation,
Tampere, Finland: University of Tampere.
Maier, Carol (2007) ‘The Translator’s Visibility: The Rights and Responsibilities Thereof’, in
Myriam Salama-Carr (ed.) Translating and Interpreting Confl ict, Amsterdam: Rodopi,
253–266.
Manuel Jerez, Jesús de, Juan López Cortés and María Brander de la Iglesia (2004) ‘Social
Commitment in Translation and Interpreting; A View from ECOS, Translators and Inter-
preters for Solidarity’. Available at www.translationdirectory.com/article366.htm.

298 IN OTHER WORDS
Pöchhacker, Franz (2004) Introducing Interpreting Studies, London: Routledge. Chapter 8:
‘Practice and Profession’.
NOTES
1 It is also the case that some translation and interpreting activities take place in contexts
where no codes are available for practitioners to fall back on. Inghilleri (forthcoming)
notes that:
[f]or interpreters in war zones, the absence of any offi cial institutional location
means that they cannot justify their actions through appeals to organizational rules
and principles as can members of the military. They cannot claim to be just following
orders. There are no professional codes of duty and service or of neutrality and
impartiality to shield them from the consequences of their ethical subjectivity.
2 Being rule-based does not mean that one cannot or should not refl ect critically on the
rules and amend them on the basis of good reason and experience.
3 See discussion of act-utilitarianism below.
4 See www.alternet.org/rights/28585/. Brigadier General David R. Irvine is a retired
Army Reserve strategic intelligence offi cer who taught prisoner interrogation and military
law for eighteen years with the Sixth Army Intelligence School in the US.
5 ‘Mutiny as passengers refuse to fl y until Asians are removed’, the Daily Mail, 20 August
2006. Available at www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-401419/Mutiny-passengers-
refuse-fl y-Asians-removed.html.
6 As Driver (2007:64) notes, act-utilitarians also recognize rules, but they are rules of thumb
that can be overridden by the assessment of potential consequences in a given context.
7 One of the positive aspects of utilitarianism is that it stresses negative responsibility, that
is, the idea that the individual is ethically responsible for maximizing the good and can
therefore be held accountable for failure to act – not just for acting unethically (Driver
2007:72).
8 See exercise (2) at the end of this chapter for a concrete example of the impact of
emotional factors on translators’ decisions.
9 This example was discussed by Jeff McWhinney in his keynote speech at the third IATIS
conference in Melbourne, July 2009. See www.iatis.org/content/conferences/
melbourne.php.
10 Not all source texts have single authors, or even an identifi able set of authors. Similarly,
dead authors cannot be made aware of changes introduced to their texts, though these
changes are often quite signifi cant, as when a Shakespearean play is adapted to a
variety of political contexts (see Abend-David 2003).
11 By this he means the question of what strategy or lexical choice is the correct one to
adopt, semantically and stylistically.
12 See www.prlog.org/10157687-dr-erik-camayd-freixas-is-elected-inttranet-linguist-of-
the-year-for-2008.html.
13 ‘The more I found out’, he says in his subsequent public statement, ‘the more I felt
blindsighted into an assignment in which I wanted no part. … nothing could have

BEYOND EQUIVALENCE: ETHICS AND MORALITY 299
prepared me for the prospect of helping our government put hundreds of innocent
people in jail’ (Camayd-Freixas 2008a).
14 Camayd-Freixas has been quite critical of The Times’ reporting on his case. In an article
he subsequently published in Proteus (the Newsletter of the National Association of
Judiciary Interpreters and Translators, Camayd-Freixas 2008b), he states the following:
When I sent the essay to the Times, my intention was for them to conduct an inves-
tigative report on some of the problems mentioned therein. Instead, the Times jour-
nalist decided – which is her prerogative – to write an article about my speaking out,
more than about the contents of my message. As such, the Times article raised a
question that needed to be asked and answered before one could discuss the real
issues documented in the essay. That question regarded the propriety of my
decision to speak out despite the confi dentiality clause in the interpreters’ code of
ethics.
By so doing, the Times article adopted a polemical strategy designed to spark a
general readership’s interest, but not specifi cally addressed to the professional. As
a result, it answered only partially the question it raised, and lacked the rigor that an
interpreter readership would require.
15 Camayd-Freixas (2008b) offers a detailed rebuttal of the suggestion that his actions
imply general support for intervention on the part of interpreters and, more importantly,
that he broke the code of confi dentiality:
The interpreter code of ethics, in particular the clause of confi dentiality, has as its
meaning and rationale that the interpreter must not infl uence the outcome of the
case. The Postville case had been closed, and its 10-day deadline for appeal had
expired before I even began the essay. I do not mention any names and aside from
anecdotal information of a general nature, all the facts mentioned are either in the
public record or freely available on the internet. So I was careful not to break the
code of confi dentiality.
Moreover, confi dentiality is not absolute. There are other ethical requirements
which override confi dentiality. For example, a medical interpreter, in whom a patient
confi des that he has an epidemic disease, has the obligation to report it because it
is in the public interest to do so. Similarly, in the Postville case, there were higher
imperatives arising not only out of public interest but also out of the legal role of the
court interpreter.
16 The full article is available at http://holland-herald.com/2010/06/the-silver-cloud/.
17 Hermans (2007) offers some interesting examples of such paratextual interventions,
including prefaces to translations of Hitler’s Mein Kampf.
18 The extracts are from The Tiananmen Papers, edited by Andrew Nathan and Perry Link.
See http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacifi c/1106614.stm. The status and
authenticity of this document remain highly contested (see, for example, Chan 2004).
19 See www.aipti.org/eng/articles/art7-iapti-decries-student-exploitation.html for the full
article.

Glossary
Note: This glossary is offered as a quick look-up facility. It includes technical terms
which are used repeatedly in the book and which can be defi ned in a straightforward
way. Other technical terms which require more involved explanations have not been
included. Their defi nitions can be traced through the subject index.
Words are quoted in block letters in the body of a defi nition if they appear as
separate entries.
Act-utilitarianism See UTILITARIANISM.
active See VOICE.
adjunct A word or group of words added to a CLAUSE to give more information
about the circumstances of an event or situation, usually in terms of time, place or
manner, e.g. I’ve known him for years.
anaphora The use of a word or group of words to refer back to someone or some-
thing that has already been mentioned in a text, e.g. The Chancellor remarked that
he had no inferiority complex about the Soviet Union.
aspect A grammatical category which involves using affi xes and/or changing the
form of the verb to indicate the temporal distribution of an event, for example
whether an event is completed, whether it is momentary or continuous.
case A grammatical category which indicates the function of a noun or noun group
in a CLAUSE. For example, in Arabic al-waladu is in the nominative case (usually
indicating that it is the SUBJECT of the CLAUSE), and al-walada is in the accu-
sative case (usually indicating that it is the OBJECT of the verb). In some languages,
such as English, similar functions are indicated mainly by word order.
clause A group of words which form a grammatical unit containing a SUBJECT and
a verb.
coherence The network of semantic relations which organize and create a text by
establishing continuity of sense.

GLOSSARY 301
cohesion The network of lexical, grammatical and other relations which provide
formal links between various parts of a text.
collocation The tendency of certain words to co-occur regularly in a given language.
collocational restrictions Semantically arbitrary restrictions which do not logically
follow from the PROPOSITIONAL MEANING of a word (cf. SELECTIONAL
RESTRICTIONS).
complement A noun group or adjective which comes after a link verb such as is,
was or remain and gives more information about the SUBJECT, e.g. The child
looked neglected.
conjunction A word or phrase which links together two CLAUSES, groups or
words. And, but and on the other hand are conjunctions. In the model of COHESION
used in this book, conjunction is also the process by which this type of linkage takes
place.
consequentialism An approach to ethics which assesses moral conduct on the
basis of a cost-benefi t analysis of the consequences of an action or behaviour. At
one extreme, egoists maintain that an action is moral or ethical if its consequences
are favourable for its agent. At the other extreme, altruists maintain that an action is
moral if its consequences are favourable for everyone except the agent. Striking a
middle course between the two, UTILITARIANISM considers an action moral to the
extent that its consequences are favourable for everyone, including the agent.
deontological models of ethics defi ne what is ethical by reference to what is right
in and of itself, irrespective of consequences, and are rule-based (cf. TELEO-
LOGICAL MODELS).
dialect A variety of language which has currency within a specifi c community or
group of speakers.
duty ethics See KANTIAN ETHICS.
evoked meaning Meaning which arises from variations in DIALECT and REGISTER.
expressive meaning Meaning which relates to the speaker’s feelings or attitude.
gender A grammatical distinction according to which a noun or pronoun (and some-
times an accompanying adjective, verb or article) are marked as either masculine or
feminine in some languages.

302 IN OTHER WORDS
genre A set of texts, spoken or written, which are institutionalized in so far as they
are considered by a given speech community to be of the same type, for example
the genre of political speeches or the genre of editorials.
hyponym A specifi c word in a SEMANTIC FIELD. In the fi eld of ‘plants’, conifer is
a hyponym of tree and tree is a hyponym of plant (cf. SUPERORDINATE).
implicature A term used in PRAGMATICS to refer to what the speaker means or
implies rather than what he or she literally says.
intransitive verb A verb which does not take an OBJECT, e.g. The lorry stopped
(cf. TRANSITIVE VERB).
Kantian ethics A DEONTOLOGICAL, duty-based approach to ethics which is
concerned with what is right or wrong per se, irrespective of consequences. A moral
action, according to Kant, is one that is motivated by a sense of duty and respect for
the autonomy and dignity of others.
lexical set This term has two meanings. It may refer to the actual words and
expressions within a SEMANTIC FIELD. In lexical studies, a lexical set is also used
to refer to a list of items which have a like privilege of COLLOCATION, i.e. items
which collocate with a specifi c word or expression.
morpheme The minimal formal element of meaning in language. The word unhappy
consists of two morphemes: un- and happy.
morphology The study of word structure, the way in which the form of a word
changes to indicate contrasts in grammatical systems such as TENSE and GENDER.
object (of verb) A noun or noun group which refers to a person or thing, other than
the SUBJECT, which is involved in or affected by the action of the verb, e.g. They
treated him for a stomach ulcer. The object of an ACTIVE clause can often be made
the subject of a PASSIVE clause: He was treated for a stomach ulcer.
passive See VOICE.
person A grammatical category which defi nes participant roles through a closed
system of pronouns, such as I, you, he, she and it in English.
pragmatics The study of language in use: of meaning as generated by specifi c
participants in specifi c communicative situations, rather than meaning as generated
by an abstract system of linguistic relations.
predicator The verb or verb group in a CLAUSE.

GLOSSARY 303
presupposed meaning Meaning which arises from co-occurrence restrictions,
namely SELECTIONAL RESTRICTIONS and COLLOCATIONAL RESTRICTIONS.
propositional meaning Meaning which arises from the relationship between a
word or utterance and what it refers to.
range The set of collocates which are typically associated with a given word defi ne
its collocational range (see COLLOCATION).
refl exive Refl exive structures are structures in which the SUBJECT and the
OBJECT of the verb are the same. The OBJECT is a refl exive pronoun such as
myself or himself, e.g. I blame myself.
register A variety of language that a language user considers appropriate to a
specifi c situation.
selectional restrictions Restrictions which follow logically from the PROPOSI-
TIONAL MEANING of words (cf. COLLOCATIONAL RESTRICTIONS).
semantic fi elds Conceptual fi elds which refl ect the divisions and sub-divisions
imposed by a given linguistic community on the continuum of experience, e.g. the
fi eld of ‘plants’ with sub-divisions such as ‘fl owers’, ‘shrubs’ and ‘trees’.
semantic prosody Louw (2000) defi nes semantic prosody as ‘a form of meaning
which is established through the proximity of a consistent series of collocates, often
characterisable as positive or negative, and whose primary function is the expression
of the attitude of its speaker or writer towards some pragmatic situation. A secondary,
although no less important attitudinal function of semantic prosodies is the creation
of irony through the deliberate injection of a form which clashes with the prosody’s
consistent series of collocates.’
subject The noun or noun group which comes in front of the verb group in English
and with which the verb agrees in terms of number and PERSON, e.g. He had
always liked her.
superordinate A general word in a SEMANTIC FIELD. The meaning of a superor-
dinate includes the meaning of all its HYPONYMS. In the fi eld of ‘trees’, tree is the
superordinate of conifer, oak, maple and so on (cf. HYPONYM).
syntax The study of the way in which classes of words such as nouns and verbs and
functional elements such as SUBJECT and OBJECT combine to form CLAUSES
and sentences.

304 IN OTHER WORDS
teleological models of ethics defi ne what is ethical by reference to what produces
the best results (cf. DEONTOLOGICAL MODELS). See also UTILITARIANISM.
tense A grammatical category which involves changing the form of the verb to
refl ect the location of an event in time. The usual distinction is between past, present
and future.
transitive verb A verb which takes an OBJECT, e.g. Everyone put their pens
down (cf. INTRANSITIVE VERB).
utilitarianism is a DEONTOLOGICAL approach to ethics which assesses moral
conduct purely on the basis of a cost-benefi t analysis of the consequences of an
action or behaviour (see CONSEQUENTIALISM). Act-utilitarianism considers an
action or behaviour as ethical if it results in the most favourable consequences for
the largest number of people in a given context. Rule-utilitarianism considers an
action or behaviour as ethical if it follows a rule or set of rules that maximize utility
overall.
voice A grammatical category which defi nes the relationship between a verb and its
SUBJECT. In an active CLAUSE, the subject is the agent, e.g. He never writes
letters. In a passive clause, the subject is the person or thing affected by the action,
e.g. Letters are never written in this way. The difference is refl ected in the form of
the verb (cf. writes and are written in the above examples).

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Name index
Aaltonen, Sirkku 50 (n. 18)
Abend-David, Dror 298 (n. 10)
Aixelá, Javier Franco 50 (n. 16)
Alexander, R. J. 54
Al-Jubouri, Adnan 202
Al-Shorafat, Mohammed 128
Anderman, Gunilla 50 (n. 18), 186
Ang, Swee Chai 182
Angelelli, Claudia 282, 297
Arnáiz, Carmen 246, 270
Asad, Talal 231
Assis Rosa, Alexandra 48
Baker, Mona 8, 48, 50 (n. 17), 68, 91, 128,
187, 223, 271, 297, 297
Bandia, Paul 7
Barnwell, Katherine 48, 90
Barsky, Robert 296
Bassnett-McGuire, Susan 71
Batchelor, Kathryn 297
Bauer, Laurie 47
Beaton-Thome, Morven xiii, 107, 128
Becker, Annette 119
Bednarek, Monika xiv, 129, 270
Beeby-Lonsdale, Allison 59, 68
Beekman, John 48, 54, 90, 113, 127, 271
Bellos, David 2
Benn, Piers 281, 296
Bennett, Karen 130
Berk-Seligson, Susan 246, 270
Berman, R. 222
Bersianik, Louky 104
Billiani, Francesca 49
Birner, Betty 186
Blackburn, Simon 277–278
Blacker, C. 26, 34, 40, 118, 201
Blakemore, Diane 100, 260
Blum-Kulka, Shoshana 119, 222–223, 227,
233, 237, 253–254, 262, 270
Boéri, Julie xiv
Bolinger, Dwight 9, 19, 21, 47, 49 (n. 1), 52
Brennan, Mary 20
Brown, Gillian 121, 162, 186, 227, 250, 263,
270–271
Brown, Penelope 105, 107, 128, 129 (n. 10,
11), 270
Burkeman, Oliver 296
Busnardo, JoAnne 128
Callow, John 48, 54, 90, 113, 127
Callow, Kathleen 122, 190, 193, 227
Camayd-Freixas, Erik 284–285, 298–299
(n. 12, 13, 14, 15)
Cambridge, Jan 270
Carroll, Susanne 49
Carter, Ronald 16, 47, 90
Castellano, Lanna xv, 3
Catford, J. C. 105
Celotti, Nadine 32
Chafe, Wallace L. 155, 162–163
Chamizo Domínguez, Pedro 50 (n. 12)
Chan, Alfred L. 299 (n. 18)
Chan Ho-yan, Clara 127
Chan, Red 49 (n. 4)
Charolles, Michel 231, 234–235, 238
Chaume Varela, Federic 73–74
Cheney, George 275–276, 283, 295–296
Chesterman, Andrew 48, 297
Cheung, Martha 7
Christie, Agatha 106, 166, 191
Clason, Marmy 127
Clyne, Michael 247–248
Cockerill, Hiroko 7, 128
Comrie, Bernard 189 (n. 12)
Cook, Guy 193, 227
Cruse, D. A. 11, 47, 52
Culler, Jonathan 9
cummings, e. e. 94
Curran, Beverly 7
Daneš, František 189 (n. 18)
Davies, Ben 296

324 IN OTHER WORDS
Davies, Eirlys E. 36, 50 (n. 23)
de Beaugrande, Robert 122, 175, 187, 190,
227, 270
De Regt, Lenart 186
Desmet, Mieke 50
Diriker, Ebru 6, 297
Donovan, Clare 282, 285
Downing, Angela 127
Dressler, Wolfgang 122, 175, 190, 227, 270
Driver, Julia 275, 277–278, 279, 281, 284,
297, 298 (n. 6), 298 (n. 7)
Duff, Alan 241
Dunnett, Jane 49
Eggins, Suzanne 186
Engel, Dulcie 128
Englund Dimitrova, Birgitta 223
Enkvist, Nils E. 143, 231, 270
Ervin–Tripp, Susan 253
Farghal, Mohammed 128
Fawcett, Peter 47, 186, 227
Fenton, Sabine 8
Fernando, Chitra 72, 75–76, 78, 90
Findlay, Bill 48
Firbas, Jan 152, 170–175, 186, 189 (n.18,
19, 20, 21)
Firth, J. R. xix, 234
Flavell, Roger 72, 75–76, 78
Fox, Barbara 193
Francis, Gill 57
Frawley, William 201, 205
Freemantle, Brian 97
Fries, Peter 133, 140–141, 186
Fuentes Luque, Adrián 270
Fujii, Yasunari 129
Gadalla, Hassan 128
Gentry El-Dash, Linda 128
Gentzler, Edwin 7
Gill, Rosalind xix
Gilman, Albert 105, 107, 128, 129 (n. 10, 11)
Giora, Rachel 227
Glinert, Lewis 246, 270
Godlee, Fiona 284, 297
Goodwin, Phil 283, 290, 297
Gottlieb, Henrik 48, 91
Grauberg, Walter 72
Greenbaum, Stephen 143, 157, 186
Gregory, Michael 49 (n. 3)
Grice, H. P. 235–239, 244–249, 258–259,
266, 271
Guillot, Marie-Noëlle 128
Gun, Katharine 296
Gutiérrez Lanza, Camino 49 (n. 4)
Gutt, Ernst-August 239
Gutwinski, Waldemar 190
Guzmán, María Constanza xix
Hagfors, Irma 50 (n. 16)
Hale, Sandra 48, 276, 284–285, 297
Halliday, Michael A. K. 5, 11, 92, 104, 121,
131, 133–136, 139–141, 143, 152–153,
158–159, 168, 170–175, 186, 188 (n.
9), 189 (n. 13, 17, 22), 190–192,
196–197, 200, 202, 211, 213, 222,
227, 228
Hardwick, Lorna 50 (n. 18)
Harvey, Keith 50 (n. 11), 86
Hasan, Ruqaiya 121, 158, 189 (n. 17), 190,
191–192, 196–197, 200, 202, 211, 213,
222, 228, 228 (n. 2, 8)
Hasselgård, Hilde 186
Hatim, Basil 5, 48, 123, 128, 131, 137, 170,
187, 196, 246–247, 270
Hawking, Stephen xvii, 24, 29–30, 46, 131,
133, 219–220, 267–268
Headland, Thomas 246–247
Hébert, Lyse 127
Heikal, Mohammed xvii, 164, 248, 257–258
Herbst, Thomas 157, 189 (n. 13)
Hermans, Theo 7, 297, 299 (n. 17)
Hickey, Leo 246, 270
Hockett, Charles 110
Høeg, Peter 126
Hoey, Michael xv, 90, 188 (n. 10), 189, 190,
192, 197, 213, 228, 231
Holes, Clive 202
Hosseini, Khaled 279–280
House, Juliane 227, 270
Huddleston, Rodney 127
Humarán, Aurora 292
Hung, Eva 6
Hunston, Susan 57
Inghilleri, Moira xiv, 8, 274, 286, 297, 298
(n. 1)
Jakobson, Roman 93, 96
Johns, Tim xv, 110, 111, 157, 176–178, 180,
189 (n. 16)
Johnson, Samuel 51
Jones, Francis 291–292, 297
Jüngst, Heike 22

NAME INDEX 325
Katamba, Francis 47
Kenny, Dorothy 5, 48, 51, 223, 242
Kim, Chul-Kyu 120
King, Philip xv, 154
Kinsui, Satoshi 129
Kirkwood, Henry 143–144
Kishtainy, Khalid 73, 160, 203, 210, 246
Knowles, Frank 202
Koskinen, Kaisa 275, 297
Kothari, Rita 7
Kuhiwczak, Piotr 283
Kundera, Milan 283
Kwieciñski, Piotr 50 (n. 16)
Lane-Mercier, Gillian 288–289
Lapiere, Dominique 286
Larson, Mildred 95, 116, 223
Lathey, Gillian 128
Laviosa, Sara 91
Lawford, James 256
Le Carré, John xvii, 56, 124, 145–146, 152,
169, 172, 181–182, 212
Leanza, Yvan 294
Leech, Geoffrey 11
Lehrer, Adrienne 16, 18
Leppihalme, Ritva 48
Levinson, Stephen 105, 238, 245, 250, 270,
271 (n. 1, 2), 272
Li, Charles 112, 153–155
Li, Chris Wen-Chao 48
Linder, Daniel 49 (n. 4)
Locke, Philip 127
Lorés Sanz, Rosa 187
Louw, Bill 56, 241, 271, 272 (n. 4, 5), 303
Lowe, R. 49 (n. 5)
Loveday, Leo 242, 245, 247–248
Lyons, John 49, 91 (n. 2), 101, 112–113,
120, 127
McCann, Michael 281
McCarthy, Michael 16, 47, 68, 90
McCay, Vernon 48
McCreary, Don 20
McDowall, David xvii, 224–225
McWhinney, Jeff 298 (n. 9)
Mackin, Ronald 90
MacLaine, Shirley 55
Maier, Carol 274, 297
Malmkjær, Kirsten xv, 233
Manuel Jerez, Jesús de 297
Martin, James 272
Mason, Ian xii, 5, 48, 86, 123, 128, 131, 137,
170, 187, 196, 220–222, 230, 246–247,
270–271, 281
Mathesius, V. 174–175, 189 (n. 18)
Mauranen, Anna 223
May, Rachel 128
Maynard, Senko 155, 159
Mayoral Asensio, Roberto 22
Merlini, Raffaela 294
Meuss, A. R. 68
Milic, Louis 210
Miller, Katrina 48
Moon, Paul 8
Moon, Rosamund 56, 90
Morley, George 156
Munday, Jeremy 8, 48, 271, 272 (n. 4), 297
Nedergaard-Larsen, Birgit 50 (n. 16)
Nerlich, Brigitte 50 (n. 12)
Netsu, Machiko 129 (n. 13)
Newman, Aryeh 52
Newmark, Peter 190
Nida, Eugene A. 95, 108, 113
Nilsson, Anna-Lena 50 (n. 12)
Nissen, Uwe Kjaer 128
Nord, Christiane 130 (n. 20)
Norton-Taylor, Richard 296
Ó Cearúil, Micheál 101
Olohan, Maeve 128, 223, 271
Othman, Sadi 286
Palmer, Frank 16, 47, 52, 72
Papegaaij, Bart 176, 180
Parks, Tim 1, 2, 290
Pedersen, Jan 48
Pérez-González, Luis xiii, 8, 91 (n. 8)
Pettit, Zoë 48
Pöchhacker, Franz 8, 298
Pokorn, Nike 59, 68
Polezzi, Loredana 128
Prado, C. G. 275
Preston, Julia 285
Pullum, Geoffrey 127
Queen, Robin 48
Quirk, Randolph 143, 157
Robins, R. H. 97, 104, 120, 127
Robinson, Douglas 248
Rogers, Margaret 170, 186–187

326 IN OTHER WORDS
Rommel, Birgit 249–250
St John, M. 129 (n. 12)
Salama-Carr, Myriam 297
Saldanha, Gabriela 8, 48, 50 (n. 18), 297
Sánchez, Dolores 128
Sapir, Edward 95, 108, 112, 129 (n. 4)
Schmid, Monika 187
Schubert, Klaus 176, 180
Scinto, Leonard 172
Scott, Howard 104
Sears, Donald 9, 19, 21, 47, 49 (n. 1), 52
Selim, Samah 7, 273
Sheridan, Sarah 91
Shlesinger, Miriam 228
Shurbanov, Alexander 128
Simons, Fay 295
Sinclair, John xiv, xvi, 49 (n. 9), 50 (n. 19), 52,
54, 56, 90, 120, 127, 130 (n. 14, 15),
143, 188 (n. 1), 233, 241, 271, 272 (n. 4)
Smith, Raoul 201, 205
Snell-Hornby, Mary 5, 189 (n. 15), 213, 234
Solomon, Norman 296
Sperber, Dan 239, 248–249
Sternberg, Robert 297
Stewart, Dominic 271
Sturge, Kate 49 (n. 4)
Swadesh, Morris 95, 108, 112, 129 (n. 4)
Sunnari, Marianna 162
Tan, T. 96, 109
Thompson, Geoff 120
Thompson, Sandra 112
Thomson, Gregory 245, 258
Titus, David Anson 39, 98, 111, 117–118,
195, 252
Tortoriello, Adriana 49
Toury, Gideon 50 (n. 17)
Trevelyan, R. 32, 50 (n. 15, 20)
Trosborg, Anna 91, 123
Tsao, F. 149, 162
Tse, Y. 249, 251
Tyler, Patrick 296
Tymoczko, Maria 284
Valdés, Cristina 271
Vande Kopple, William 157
Venuti, Lawrence 8, 14, 91 (n. 14), 227, 270
Viaggio, Sergio 100
Vieira, E. 223
von Flotow, Luise 104
Wakabayashi, Judy 6–7
Ward, Gregory 186
Whitaker, Brian 50 (n. 10)
White, Peter 272
Wilkinson, R. 144, 151
Williams, Christopher 128
Williams, Ian 187
Wilson, Deirdre 239, 248–249
Winter, W. 92
Wright, Clive 295
Young, David 151–152, 186
Young, Robert 270
Yule, George 121, 162, 186, 227, 250, 263,
270–271
Zgusta, Ladislav 11

Language index
Aguaruna 116, 223
Amuesha 95–96
Arabic 6, 7, 13, 17–19, 21–24, 35–37,
39–41, 43, 50 (n. 10), 53–54, 58, 60–61,
63, 65, 70–71, 73, 75, 77, 81–82, 85, 91,
96, 98–103, 120, 128, 138–140, 144,
146, 151, 160–162, 164–166, 168, 172,
189, 198–199, 201–205, 210, 216, 219,
228 (n. 2, 4, 5), 232–233, 240–243,
245–248, 254, 256–262, 272, 279, 300
Aztec 95, 221
Bali 108–109
Brazilian Portuguese xv, 19, 110–111, 149,
157, 178, 180, 189 (n. 16), 193, 241,
286; see also Portuguese
British Sign Language
Chinese xiii, xv, 6–7, 18, 25, 27–28, 34, 38,
41–43, 61–62, 72, 75, 78, 83–84, 94–98,
100, 104, 108–110, 112, 116–117,
119–120, 122, 127, 130, 144, 149,
153–156, 162, 195, 201, 222, 244, 249,
251, 278, 289; see also Mandarin
Czech 170, 175
Dagbani 121
Danish 22, 58, 91, 126–127
Dumagat 246–247
Dutch 144, 151, 224
Eskimo 120, 145; see also Inuit
Fijian 97
Finnish 120, 162, 177
French xiii, xv, 7, 9, 12, 22, 29, 32–34, 36,
38, 42, 59, 66, 70–72, 76–78, 80, 82–83,
91 (n. 2, 5), 95, 99–103, 105–106,
112–114, 116, 128, 127 (n. 7), 139–140,
144, 153, 162, 167–168, 170, 181, 196,
243–244, 251–252, 255–256, 261
German xiii, xv, 7, 13, 22, 33, 35, 37, 40, 48,
54, 66, 71–72, 79–80, 88, 100, 105, 107,
108, 112–114, 116, 120, 129 (n. 4),
144–145, 149, 151, 153, 157, 187, 189
(n. 13, 15), 201, 205–207, 209–210, 228
(n. 6, 7), 247–252, 268, 290
Greek xiii, xv, 7, 29, 30, 58, 93, 105, 154,
219, 220, 247
Gujarati 107
Harway 153, 189 (n. 12)
Hebrew 119, 186, 193, 222
Hindi 107, 261
Hopi 110
Indonesian 19, 100, 105
Inuit 96–97, 126
Italian xv, 7, 13, 26, 29, 31–33, 49, 80, 100,
105, 128, 136, 281
Japanese xiii, xv, 6–7, 10, 20–22, 26–27,
33–36, 39–40, 50 (n. 21), 58, 80–81,
84–85, 94–98, 105, 111, 116–118,
128–129, 130 (n. 22), 149–150,
153–156, 159, 162, 188 (n. 11),
194–195, 201, 222, 242, 245, 247,
252–253
Korean 95, 120, 153, 154, 156, 278
Lahu 153
Lisu 154
Malay 108
Mandarin 153–154; see also Chinese
Navaho 9–96
Nilotic languages 113
Polish 13

328 IN OTHER WORDS
Portuguese 7, 128, 138, 144, 150, 176–180,
189, 193–195, 223, 228 (n. 3), 241; see
also Brazilian
Russian xv, 7, 13, 18–19, 22, 64, 100,
104–105, 113–114, 116, 120, 125, 128,
130 (n. 15), 148, 172, 181, 251–252,
254–255
Scandinavian languages 22
Serbian 72, 291
Slavonic 96
Southern Paiute 129 (n. 4)
Spanish xiii, 7, 10, 22, 24, 73, 74, 80, 100,
105, 123, 138, 140, 144, 148, 187, 219,
220, 221, 224, 270, 279
Swahili 99
Swedish 22
Thai 116, 148
Tjolobal (Mexico) 113
Turkish xiii, 10, 112
Vietnamese 95–96, 116
Welsh 72
Wishram 108
Yana 95, 112
Yurok 108
Zapotec (Mexico) 108

Subject index
acceptability (vs. grammaticality) 52–57, 58,
60, 62, 64, 67, 76, 95, 113, 121, 122,
135–136, 137, 168, 178, 180, 198, 232,
253–254, 263, 270, 273 (n. 11)
accountability xiii, 274–275, 283, 298 (n.7)
accuracy 11, 43, 57, 60, 61, 75, 80, 204,
205, 210, 245, 262, 285–286, 288, 295
active see voice
adaptation 32, 50 (n. 18), 298 (n. 10)
address see modes of address
adjunct 130, 135, 188, 251, 300; as theme
137, 139, 141, 143–144, 145, 150, 188
(n. 6)
affi xes 21, 46, 162, 300; prefi xes 21;
suffi xes 21, 34, 46, 95, 96, 99, 111,
154–155, 199, 228 (n. 4); see also
morpheme
AIPTI see Asociación Internacional de
Profesionales de la Traducción y la
Interpretación
American Translators’ Association 281
analogy 3, 55, 214, 258, 264, 290; principle
of 263
anaphora/anaphoric 154, 189 (n. 14), 193,
196, 300
Asociación Internacional de Profesionales de la
Traducción y la Interpretación (AIPTI) 292
aspect 108–111, 128, 300
back-translation 6–7, 8 (n. 1); diffi culties 199,
219
Bank of English 56
Bible (translation) xiii, 121, 127, 245–246,
259
borrowing 22, 79; see also loan word
British National Corpus 50 (n. 13)
case (grammatical) 104, 120, 300
CD see communicative dynamism
censorship 15, 49 (n. 4)
chain, chaining 191, 192, 195–196, 199,
211–216, 223
chunking (of information) 169, 201–202, 205,
210
circumlocution 17, 60, 86, 105; see also
paraphrase
cleft structures 146–147, 148, 150, 160–161,
179–180; see also it-structures
COBUILD xv, 49 (n. 9), 50 (n. 19), 120, 127,
130 (n. 14), 188 (n. 1), 240
codes (of ethics, practice) 91 (n. 6), 97,
274–276, 282–286, 290–291, 295–296,
298 (n. 1), 299 (n. 14, 15)
cognates 22, 36
coherence 123, 135, 190, 216, 222–227,
230–234, 235, 238–239, 242, 244, 250,
259–260, 262–263, 270, 300;
explanatory 235, 238; supplemental
234–235
cohesion 5, 123, 190, 191, 195–196,
200–202, 204, 210, 213, 216, 222–224,
225, 228 (n. 2), 270, 301; vs. coherence
230–231; see also lexical cohesion,
reiteration, collocation, reference,
conjunction, ellipsis, substitution
collocation 15, 17, 47, 49 (n. 6), 51, 52–54,
58, 59, 60–63, 67, 70–71, 86–87, 89–92,
94, 121–122, 126, 260, 301; culture-
specifi c 63–65; markedness 54, 55–56,
65–67; meaning 57–58; range 54–55; and
register 56–57, 89; restrictions 13, 301; as
category of lexical cohesion 211–213, 216,
219, 222
communicative dynamism (CD) 171, 172–173,
175–176; see also Prague School
compensation/compensatory 21, 50 (n. 11),
86, 226
complement 130 (n. 19), 135, 188, 301; as
theme 141, 144–145
confi dentiality 282, 284–286, 295, 299 (n.
14, 15)
conjunction(s)/conjunctive 134–135, 146,
236, 301; as cohesive device 190,
200–210, 222, 225, 228 (n. 5, 7), 231

330 IN OTHER WORDS
consequentialism 278, 301; see also
utilitarianism
conversational implicature see implicature
conversational maxims 236–238, 239–240,
244–250, 252, 266–267, 271 (n. 2); see
also manner, quality, quantity, politeness,
relation/relevance
Co-operative Principle 236, 237–240,
244–245, 248–249
co-reference 154, 192–193, 223, 232
court interpreting xiii, 48, 270, 299 (n. 15)
cultural substitution 29–33, 36, 243
defi nite(ness) 144, 155, 159, 162–163, 166,
173–174, 192, 232
deontological 276, 278, 301
determiner 51, 99, 129 (n. 5), 144
dialect 13, 44, 48, 70, 108, 288, 301
direction of translation 6, 59, 68, 70, 105,
146, 154
disjuncts 134–135, 146
ECOS (Translators and Interpreters for
Solidarity) 293
egoism 278, 281–282, 301; see also
utilitarianism
ellipsis 190, 196–197, 199–200, 222
end-focus 157, 189 (n. 15)
end-weight 157–158, 180, 189 (n. 15)
ergative/ergativity 177
ethics 5, 8, 68, 97, 274–299; virtue ethics
275; Kantian ethics 280, 281–282; vs. the
law 283–284; vs. morality 275–277; and
professionalism 283–284; and linguistic
choices 286–288; see also codes (of ethics,
practice)
European Union/Commission/Parliament xiii,
107, 108, 128
evoked meaning 11, 13–14, 21, 40, 42,
44–45, 62, 126, 301
expressive meaning 11–12, 20–21, 26–28,
41, 46, 63, 101, 129 (n. 7), 145, 301
extraposition 179–180
false friends/faux amis 22, 50 (n. 12), 91
feminist/feminism xiii, 22, 104, 127
fi eld, of discourse 14; semantic 16, 47, 303
fi xed expressions 67, 90, 241; see also
idioms
fronted theme 143–146, 151, 157, 175, 188
(n. 6); see also predicated theme
FSP see functional sentence perspective
functional elements 93, 120, 129 (n. 2), 130
(n. 19)
functional sentence perspective
(FSP) 170–176, 186–187, 189 (n. 18)
gender 4, 10, 92–94, 99–104, 105, 124,
127–128, 129 (n. 4, 7), 138, 187, 191,
199, 270, 287–289, 301
general word 17, 19, 20, 23, 25–26, 35, 54,
193, 211–212; see also superordinate
genre 50 (n. 18), 68, 123,157, 193, 196,
198, 205, 212, 223, 231, 302; see also
text type
given 131, 136, 155, 156–158; determining
givenness 163–166; signalling givenness
158–163; see also known, new
humour 21, 55, 73, 100, 203–204, 260, 270;
see also jokes
hyponym 17, 19, 20, 25, 54, 212, 302;
co-hyponym 211–212
IATIS see International Association for
Translation and Intercultural Studies
identifying theme 143, 148–152, 160, 171, 180
idiolect 53, 288
idioms/idiomatic 15, 51, 67–91, 177,
214–215, 235, 276; see also fi xed
expressions
illocutionary meaning 271 (n. 2)
illustration (as translation strategy) 43–44
impartiality 276, 284–286, 295, 298 (n. 1)
implicature 123, 230, 234–260, 264,
266–267, 271 (n. 1), 302;
conventional 271 (n. 2); conversational
235, 238, 239, 258, 271 (n. 2); standard
238
implicit information 127, 271
indefi nite(ness) see defi niteness
indicative verbs 110
indirect speech act see speech act
infer(ence) 96, 109–110, 195–196, 202, 230,
238–240, 242, 249–250, 264, 270, 271
(n. 1, 2), 272
information focus 158, 166–167, 170
information overload 246–247
information status 149, 159–163
information structure xv, 123, 133, 136,
147–149, 151, 180, 182–183, 186–187,
189 (n. 17), 190, 237; 156–170
(Hallidayan model), 171–176 (Prague
model); information fl ow 131–133, 135,

SUBJECT INDEX 331
152, 155, 170, 173, 175–176, 180, 182,
186; marked 159, 166–170; see also new
information
information unit 156, 158
informative verbs 110
instantial meaning 213
Institute of Translation and Interpreting (ITI) xv,
2, 49 (n. 8), 91 (n. 6)
International Association for Translation &
Intercultural Studies (IATIS) 298 (n. 9)
interpreting xx; interpreter roles 294–295
intonation 149, 158, 162, 167, 186, 189 (n.
17), 238
ITI see Institute of Translation and Interpreting
it-structures 146–147, 188 (n. 5); see also
cleft structures
jokes 67, 70, 73, 94, 140, 160, 203, 204,
246; see also humour
Kantian ethics see ethics
known 132, 148, 149, 156; see also given,
new
lexical chain 211, 214–216; cohesion 190,
210–222, 225; meaning 11–15, 47–48,
52; networks 213; patterning 51; repetition
193, 195, 199, 219, 222, 228 (n. 4); set
16–17, 49 (n. 6), 70, 211, 302; unit 12
lexicalization 18, 36, 38
linear dislocation 176
loan word 22, 33–36, 40, 45, 79, 100, 215,
227, 255; see also borrowing
local interpretation, principle of 263, 271
manner 236, 237, 245, 247, 250 see also
conversational maxims
marked information structure 156, 159, 161,
166–170, 182
marked rheme 168–169
marked thematic structure 141–156, 170, 180,
183
marked theme 135, 143–152, 168, 174, 188
(n. 5), 189 (n. 22); function of 142–143
markedness (marked/unmarked) 91 (n. 2), 99,
100, 103, 129 (n. 6), 132, 141–142, 187;
in FSP 174–175; see also collocational
markedness
maxims see conversational maxims
mode 14, 49 (n. 3), 75
modes of address 105, 253–255
mood 120, 142, 189 (n. 22)
morality see ethics
morpheme 10–11, 19, 47, 154, 175, 176,
302; see also affi xes
morphology/morphological 7, 19, 47, 93, 94,
96, 219, 302
motivation 132, 142, 157, 222, 259–260,
273 (n. 11)
multimodal, multimodality 74, 214
neologisms 11, 50 (n. 10)
neutrality 282, 289, 295, 298 (n. 1)
new information 131–132, 136, 147–149,
155, 156, 157, 166–173, 175, 189 (n.
18); signalling of 158–163
nominalization 148; as strategy 178–179
norms 14, 29, 33, 36, 50 (n. 17), 57, 103,
107, 113, 120–121, 130 (n. 20), 154,
198–199, 202, 210, 245, 247–248, 254,
278, 281, 284, 294
number 4, 92–95, 96–99, 104–105, 138, 187
(n. 1), 191, 193, 199
object 93, 120, 129 (n. 2), 130 (n. 15, 19),
132, 135, 141, 175, 177, 187 (n. 1), 188
(n. 1, 11), 302; as theme 141–146
omission 42–43, 50 (n. 23), 84–86, 96–97,
109, 216, 245–246, 258, 278, 288; of
syntactic elements 154–155, 195–196; of
theme 168–169; of link verbs 172
paraphrase 10, 21, 36–38, 41, 43, 46, 64, 80,
84–87, 205, 215–216; see also
circumlocution
passive see voice
person 92, 99–100, 103, 104–108, 112,
127–128, 129 (n. 9), 138, 160, 163,
187 (n. 1), 191–193, 195, 270, 286,
302
politeness 63, 105–106, 119, 128, 129 (n.
11), 245–246, 252, 255, 270
postposed theme 151–152, 188 (n. 9)
Prague School 133, 135, 140, 143, 152,
170, 174–175, 189 (n. 18, 20)
predicated theme 143, 146–147, 148–149,
151, 160, 180, 188 (n. 5); see also fronted
theme
predicator 93, 120, 129 (n. 2), 130 (n. 19),
135, 187 (n. 1), 302; as theme 141–142,
146, 151
prefi xes see affi xes
preposed theme 151–152
presupposed meaning 11, 12–13, 52, 303

332 IN OTHER WORDS
presupposition 236, 270 (n. 1)
prominence 142–143, 145, 148, 151, 158,
168; topic-prominence 153–156, 176
pronominalization 162–163, 222
propositional meaning 11–12, 13, 15–17,
20–23, 25, 29, 36, 40–41, 52, 99, 134,
303
pseudo-cleft 148, 160–161, 179–180; see
also wh-structures
punctuation 161, 166, 168, 189 (n. 17), 202,
222, 228 (n. 2)
quality see conversational maxims
quantity see conversational maxims
Qur’an 259
range see collocational range
reference (as cohesive device) 189 (n. 14),
190–196, 197, 199–200, 205, 210–212,
222, 223–224, 228 (n. 4), 232, 287–288
refl exive 113, 116, 125, 130 (n. 15), 303
register 11, 113–14, 44, 48, 68, 76, 89,
112–113, 288, 303; and collocation 56–57;
see also fi eld, mode, tenor
reiteration 211–212, 216, 219–220
relation/relevance 236–237, 239–240, 242,
244, 247–248, 256, 260, 266, 271 (n. 2);
see also conversational maxims
relativism 277–278, 281
repetition 108, 161, 167–168, 185, 192–193,
195, 199, 211–212, 214, 216, 219,
221–222, 223, 228 (n. 4), 232, 247
rhematic status 172–174
rheme 131, 133–137, 139, 141–143, 148,
152, 156, 159–160, 166, 168–175, 187,
188 (n. 9), 189 (n. 18, 21); see also
marked rheme, thematic structure
selectional restrictions 12–13, 303
semantic fi eld see fi eld
semantic prosody 241–242, 271, 272 (n. 4, 5),
303
sign language 20, 50 (n. 12), 91, 282
speech act 253, 271 (n. 2), 272 (n. 9)
stress (as signal of information status) 149,
158–162, 166–167, 174
subject 12, 93, 103, 112–113, 117, 120, 129
(n. 2), 130 (n. 19), 132, 135, 141, 187 (n.
1), 188 (n. 1, 5, 11), 195–196, 199, 303;
and thematic structure 142, 146–147, 151,
153–154, 157–158, 168, 174–175,
177–178
subject-prominent languages 153, 176; see
also topic-prominent languages
substitution, grammatical 176, 188 (n. 9); as
cohesive device 190, 196–197, 199–200,
222; see also cultural substitution
suffi xes see affi xes
superordinate 17, 19–20, 23, 25, 35, 38, 193,
211–212, 215, 303; see also general word
teleological 276, 277, 304
tenor 14, 20, 107, 288
tense 10, 94, 108–111, 127–128, 146, 179,
222, 250, 304
text type 5, 94, 119, 123, 131, 193, 199,
205, 223, 234; see also genre
thematic choice 141–142, 144, 146–147,
156, 185
theme, thematic element/structure xv, 123,
133–156, 162, 169–173, 178, 180,
182–183, 186; and grammaticality
135–136, 190, 228, 235; and markedness
141–152; progression 131, 166, 250;
status (in FSP) 173–175
topic (Chinese-style) 153–156, 195; see also
topic-prominent languages
topicalization 154
topic-prominent languages 153–155, 176; see
also subject-prominent languages
transition 171–172, 174
Translational English Corpus 17, 49 (n. 7), 188
(n. 7), 241, 242, 272 (n. 6)
Translators’ Guild 68, 70, 72
universalism 278, 280
utilitarianism 276, 278, 280–283, 296, 298
(n. 3, 6), 298 (n. 7), 304; act-utilitarianism
279; rule utilitarianism 279; see also
consequentialism
virtue ethics see ethics
voice (active vs. Passive) 103, 107, 112–120,
124,128, 129, 130 (n. 14, 15, 16, 17, 18,
22), 142, 145, 158, 176, 177, 178, 187,
222, 304
websites/pages, translation of 74, 87, 214,
226–227, 264
wh-structures 148; see also pseudo-cleft
structures

Book Cover
Title
Copyright
Contents
Figures
Tables
Preface to the second edition
Preface to the first edition
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 2: Equivalence at word level
Chapter 3: Equivalence above word level
Chapter 4: Grammatical equivalence
Chapter 5: Textual equivalence: thematic and information structures
Chapter 6: Textual equivalence: cohesion
Chapter 7: Pragmatic equivalence
Chapter 8: Beyond equivalence: ethics and morality
Glossary
References
Name index
Language index
Subject index