A Systemic Functional Approach to Translation Pedagogy in Japan

8/18/2019 A Systemic Functional Approach to Translation Pedagogy in Japan

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Nina Nørgaard (ed.) 2008. Systemic Functional Linguistics in Use. Odense Working Papers in Language and Communication vol. 29(ISSN 0906-7612, ISBN: 978-87-90923-47-1)

A Systemic Functional Approach to Translation Pedagogy in Japan

Mikako Naganuma

Abstract

This paper examines a possible application of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) to the

environment of teaching translation between English and Japanese in Japanese universities.

The translator is required to raise awareness of similarities and differences in use between the

two languages of ST (source text) and TT (target text), and SFL provides a useful tool to

explore various kinds of texts ideationally, interpersonally, and textually. As a case study, I

will focus on a pair of ST and TT and show how the texts can be analyzed for a pedagogical

purpose. The texts here are Memoirs of a Geisha written by Arthur Golden and its Japanese

translation. This pair of texts belongs to a narrative genre. The English ST begins with a

fictitious translator’s note which is followed by a fictitious translation of memoirs purportedly

dictated by a Japanese geisha. This English ST was then actually translated into Japanese by

a true translator. This means that the translator must have been very sensitive to the

relationship between the two texts and must have chosen a strategy of different degrees of

“domestication” in rendering the English ST into the Japanese TT.

1. Introduction

The main purpose of this paper is not to present immediate conclusive remarks, but rather to

bring to the surface a few pertinent issues by sharing tentative results from my recent research.

I would like to consider the application of text analysis based on SFL to translation education

in Japanese universities, including non-professional translator training by combining

translation and advanced language teaching. In this context of translation education, the

design of a new type of translation pedagogy is required in a Japanese university setting.

2. Background

Let me explain some background of translation education in Japanese universities to show

why SFL could be effectively applied to translation education in Japan. One of the important


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Systemic Functional Linguistics in Use, OWPLC 29, 2008590

factors in a Japanese university setting is how to raise the awareness of learners and enhance

their linguistic performance, regardless of their goal to learn translation, towards some critical

issues related to both translation and language learning, for example differences between

so-called grammar translation and authentic translation. Learners are university students who

are interested in translation but not necessarily aiming to become professional translators, and

this makes such translation classrooms in a Japanese university setting quite different from

ordinary translator training.

I have been teaching translation over the last several years in universities both at

undergraduate and graduate levels for non-professional education, as well as at a private

institution for professional training. In Japan, it is the latter type of training schools that still

play the main role for training professional translators and interpreters. The role of translation

education at universities has not been fully recognized yet by the translation industry or by

language teachers, who are lacking a pedagogical model for translation education in a

Japanese university setting. Over the last few years more and more Japanese universities have

started to provide classes entitled translation, partly because translation attracts more students

than ordinary English or other foreign language programs, and partly because students seem

to find translation interesting as a way to access various types of texts.

A project to survey translation education in Japanese universities is now under way by

our team (a special interest group of translation studies in the Japan Association of

Interpreting Studies), and data collected to date reveal that nearly 200 out of about 750

universities in Japan were providing translation-related subjects in 2007. Each university

usually has multiple classes, which means a surprisingly large number of translation classes

are now available in Japanese universities. A questionnaire survey is also being planned to

further study reality in the classroom. I believe that this burgeoning trend should be

considered seriously as a new field which is clearly different from the conventional


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Systemic Functional Linguistics in Use, OWPLC 29, 2008 591

relationship between foreign language pedagogy and the grammar-translation method. Then,

how can it be different? What do we expect as a possible new model to cope with this new

trend?

3. Research questions

My research questions for the long run are as follows:

1. What are the significant differences between the grammar-translation method and

translation as it is done whithinn the new trend of translation education in a Japanese

university setting?

2. What is expected as a pedagogical model in the reality of Japanese university

translation classrooms?

4. Translation pedagogy and translation studies

I will briefly touch upon translation studies in general in order to locate translation pedagogy

in the larger environment. Teaching translation has been one of the major topics of translation

studies, and it could target not only future professional translators but also advanced language

learners. The following famous map of translation studies is from Toury (1995: 10) based on

Holms (1988). Translation studies is a relatively new field, and this map is generally accepted

as the starting point of this new discipline. Even though this map does not make a distinction

between training for professionals and non-professionals, and “translator training” might not

be exactly the same as translation education at university level, this framework explicitly

includes “translator training” in the applied part of the new discipline. Therefore, when

investigating translation education, all related factors within the discipline could be taken into

consideration. In particular, the area of “function oriented” is of great importance because it is

pertinent to register and its translation strategies.


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Figure 1: Map of translation studies (Toury 1995: 10 based on Homes 1988)

5. Text analysis for a “good” translation

Either for professional or non-professional education, teaching translation is surely expected

to result in a “good” translation. Then, how do we know whether the translation is good or not

good? In order to make a reasonable judgment on the quality of translation, it is requisite to

raise awareness of similarities and differences in the two languages and their preferred

choices based on translation strategies. Here the role of text analysis can come in to

investigate texts for a “good” translation. However, text analysis may only be effectively

conducted if it is based on an effective methodology. SFL provides a useful tool to explore

various texts ideationally, interpersonally, and textually, paying attention to different

grammatical resources and their functions.

Regarding text analysis, Halliday claims:

When we analyze a text linguistically, we usually have one of two possible goals. One

is to explain why the text means what it does: why it is understood the way it is—by

the analyst, or by anyone else. That is the lower of the two goals, the one that is easier

to attain. The higher goal is to explain why the text is valued as it is—again, by

anyone who may be evaluating it: this might be the case of a literary or religious text,

by a general consensus within the culture. (2001: 13)


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By analyzing ST and TT from the perspective of the three metafunctions with their register

and genre in mind, the translator can come up with appropriate strategies of how to produce a

“good” translation. The significance of SFL text analysis is to focus on those three

metafunctions simultaneously, although the translator often tends to focus on only the

ideational metafunction (i.e. what to translate). Halliday (2001: 17) points out that “in

metafunction, high value may be accorded to equivalence in the interpersonal or textual

realms – but usually only when the ideational equivalence can be taken for granted.”

How can a “good” translation be taught at a university level? Shore (2001: 269)

maintains:

The teaching of translation always needs to address the issue of what is generalisable

and what is not, and make students aware that a translation that is acceptable in one

context is not necessarily acceptable in another: there are different types of texts and

different kinds of translation.

She continues:

Not all university-level translation courses are designed to teach students to betranslators. If this is the case, a translation course can be used as a practical way of

investigating grammatical differences between languages, diatypic variation in and

across languages and cultures, and ways of negotiating, and it seems to me that, for the

most part, these are things that are teachable and can be learnt. (2001: 269)

We need translation quality assessment (TQA) to know a “good” translation. Munday (2002)

also proposes a systematic and replicable model for the analysis of ST and TT based on SFL

or the three main strands of meaning, which are ideational, interpersonal, and textual. The

model presented is within the framework of Toury’s Descriptive Translation Studies. Munday

(1997: 2) maintains:

The major contribution of textlinguistic and pragmatic approaches to TQA is an

increased awareness of the fact that the linguistic format of the TT is above all

determined by target language text-typological conventions, as well as by aspects of

the communicative situation in the target culture in which the TT is to fulfill its


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function (e.g. time and place, knowledge and expectations of the TT addressees), and

not primarily by the linguistic structures of the ST. A “good” translation is thus no

longer a correct rendering of the ST, in the sense of reproducing the ST meaning of

micro-level units. It is rather a TT which effectively fulfils its intended role in the

target culture. Instead of “good”, some translation scholars prefer to speak of

“(pragmatically) adequate” or “functionally appropriate” translations.

6. SFL text analysis in translation at Japanese universities

How can the above-mentioned frameworks of text analysis fit into translation education in

Japanese universities? In the context of translation in a Japanese university setting, a long

tradition of the grammar-translation method cannot not be ignored. After Chinese script had

been introduced to Japan in ancient times, a unique method of reading Chinese texts in

accordance with Japanese grammar, in particular Japanese word order, was developed by the

9th century. This annotation system is called kanbun kundoku (reading Chinese in Japanese),

which could be termed the ultimate literal translation. A similar translation style based on the

grammar-translation method is also possible in rendering English into Japanese by replacing

English words with their corresponding Japanese equivalents and by reorganizing them into

Japanese word order, even though the translated text sounds unnatural in Japanese. This

unnaturalness may not be wrong as far as the context of translation requires this type of text

production (for example when a lexical or clause level correspondence is highly valued). But

if not, depending on the translation purpose or skopos (Vermeer 2000), this kind of translation

is not appropriate, typically when “domestication” (Venuti 1995) of a foreign text is necessary.

In order to avoid a translation which is grammatically correct but sounds unnatural, the

translator must be aware of similarities and differences in term of how to make use of

grammatical resources regardless of what is available in English and Japanese.

It is against this background that we should consider a model of translation education in

Japanese universities. Searching for and reading several syllabi of translation classes in Japan


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reveals one common feature: how to get free from the grammar-translation method and seek

for naturalness in Japanese texts. However, it is extremely difficult to clearly define what

constitutes naturalness or the value of naturalness because it depends on the norm of

translations and text types in the context. Intuitively, we can easily say it does (not) sound

right, but in order to explain reasons of unnaturalness or naturalness, the text must be

purposefully analyzed in a systemic and replicable manner.

7. SFL application in the case study

In order to produce a “good” translated text which functions as it is expected in the target

contexts of situation and culture, it is indispensable for the translator to raise her or his

awareness of similarities and differences metafunctionally. If the ST is just reproduced by

using the same grammatical resources in the TT simply because of their availability, the

translation is then based on the grammar-translation method and cannot function properly

even though it is grammatically correct.

This case study of analyzing a narrative text, which is the beginning of a long novel and

its translation, focuses on one of the grammatical resources: personal pronouns. Because both

English and Japanese have this grammatical resource as a system, translation learners tend to

use them very often in Japanese texts as a result of mechanical replacement of English

pronouns with Japanese equivalents without knowing their functions in use. The personal

pronouns are one of the most troublesome resources in translation from English to Japanese.

It is worth paying attention to this resource because it is related to the realization of the

textual metafunction, to THEME and COHESION, by way of identification of participants.

Martin and Rose (2003: 145) explain:

Identification is concerned with tracking participants: with introducing people and

things into a discourse and keeping track of them once there. There are textual

resources, concerned with how discourse makes sense to the reader, by keeping track

of identities.


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In English, once somebody is introduced, the person is often identified by a personal pronoun,

as Martin and Rose (2003: 145) claim:

In order to make sense of discourse, one thing we need is to be able to keep track of

who or what is being talked about at any point. When we first start talking about

somebody or something, we may name them, but then we often just identify them as

she, he, or it.

In Japanese, the nearly corresponding pronouns symmetrically exist as a system, but this

grammatical resource functions quite differently partly because the third person pronouns, in

particular, were newly coined in the Meiji period about 150 years ago when translating texts

imported from the western countries (Yanabu 1976). Therefore, the literal translation of

pronouns is quite possible but becomes problematic when the context of translation demands

the exclusion of foreignness. However, it is important to bear in mind that not only text types

but also translation strategies affect the frequency of personal pronoun usage in Japanese.

8. Case study

This case study focuses on one of the textual resources with reference to identification by

tracking participants in narrative texts of ST and TT. The texts analyzed here are the

beginning of a novel titled Memoirs of a Geisha (Golden 1997) written in English by an

American author and its translation (Ogawa 2004) in Japanese. My motivation for choosing

these texts is related to the context of situation of the ST and its translation strategy,

“domestication”. The English ST begins with a fictitious translator’s note which is followed

by a fictitious translation of memoirs purportedly dictated by a Japanese geisha. This English

source text was actually translated into Japanese by a true translator. This means that the

Japanese translator must have been very sensitive to the relationship between the two texts

and must have chosen to “domesticate” the English ST into the Japanese TT, which means


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that naturalness is radically required in the TT as if the translated Japanese text were original.

The first 3139 words of a long novel in English are first analyzed in this case study. This

part can be divided into two clearly distinctive portions, 1571 words and 1568 words

respectively. The first half is titled “translator’s note” in which a story is told by a fictitious

translator who is a professor translating the memoirs into English. The second half is the

beginning of chapter 1 in which the protagonist (a Japanese geisha) starts telling her story.

The register of each portion is analyzed as follows.

Translator’s Note

(1571 words)

Beginning of Chapter 1

(1568 words)

Field Introduction of background of the whole

story

Self-Introduction by the protagonist and the beginning

of her life history

Tenor A fictitious translator and university

professor explains the story’s background to

the readers

The protagonist (a Japanese geisha) tells her story to the

professor

Mode Written to be read Spoken to be written

Table 1: Register analysis of the two portions of ST

Identification by introducing and tracking participants concerns textual resources. The

following table shows how frequently personal pronouns are used in the two different portions

of both ST and TT to track participants.

ST

Translator’s note

ST

Chapter 1

TT

Translator’s note

TT

Chapter 1

First person, singular 56 89 26 21

First person, plural 17 8 0 0

Second person 2 13 0 3

Third person, singular, male 7 34 0 0

Third person, singular, female 79 24 5 0

Third person plural 10 8 0 0

Total 171 176 31 (18% of ST) 24 (13% of ST)

Table 2: Summary of frequency of personal pronouns


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9. Concluding remarks

Findings of this case study are shown in Table 2. We may simply say, compared to the ST in

English, that the textual choices for tracking participants are less dependent on personal

pronouns in the Japanese TT. This tendency is more obvious in chapter 1 than in the

translator’s note of the case study texts because of translation strategy or a “domestication”

pressure from the context of translation. Then, what are alternative choices for tracking

participants in the Japanese TT? We might easily imagine ellipsis could be a major alternative,

but the real answer is not that simple. Let’s take a close look at the following example,

extracted from the very beginning of the case study texts.

ST

One evening in the spring of 1936, 1when I was a boy of fourteen, my father took me

to a dance performance in Kyoto. I remember only two things about it. The first is that2he and I were the only westerners in the audience; we had come from our home in

the Netherlands only a few weeks earlier, so I had not yet adjusted to the cultural

isolation and still felt it acutely. (Golden 1997)

TT

一九三六年、ある春の宵、1 十四歳の私は父に連れられて、京都で舞を見に行

った。いまでは二つのことしか覚えていない。まず、2 見物席にいた西洋人は

父と私だけであり、つい数週間前にオランダから来たばかりであって、私は異

文化の真っ只中に放り込まれた気分を抜けていなかったこと。(Ogawa 2004)

(partial back translations)

1. I of fourteen years old was taken by father (qualified “I”)

2. The westerners being in the audience were only father and me (reversed Theme)

Nine personal pronouns in this portion of the ST are reduced to three in the TT mainly

because of ellipsis. However, more careful examination reveals that even if pronouns are

maintained as is shown in the above back translations, the thematic choices are completely

changed after the translation. How can this degree of detail be analyzed effectively in the


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classroom to further raise awareness affecting the quality of translation? This is still an open

question in this case study. As indicated in this case study so far, how often a certain

grammatical resource is chosen in translation is closely motivated by translation strategies.

Even though the same grammatical resources are available in both ST and TT, respective texts

in the two languages prefer to use them differently. In this text analysis, I have limited myself

to look only at one of the textual resources to track participants. Obviously, more extensive

analysis will lead to a better understanding of translation. Here, however, my question is how

detailed an analysis is necessary and yet sufficient in a translation classroom in order to make

a language learner-translator free from the grammar-translation method and produce a “good”

translation? This paper is a part of my ongoing research, which surely awaits further detailed

investigations.

Mikako Naganuma, Associate Professor

Graduate School of Intercultural Communication,

Rikkyo University, Tokyo

[email protected]

References

Golden, A. (1997). Memoirs of a geisha. London: Vintage.


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Halliday, M. A. K. (2001). “Towards a theory of good translation” in E. Steiner & C. Yallop

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translation studies reader. London & New York: Routledge: 172-185.

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76-92.

Ogawa, T. (2004). Sayuri. Tokyo: Bungeishunju.

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Steiner, E., & Yallop, C. (eds.) (2001). Exploring translation and multilingual text production:

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Venuti, L. (1995). The translators invisibility. London & New York: Routledge.

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A Systemic Functional Approach to Translation Pedagogy in Japan

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