New contexts in discourse analysis for translation and interpretation

This issue of Meta draws on the presentations given at the symposium on discourse analysis and translation/interpretation organised by the University Jaume I in Castellón, Spain, and held at the University of Alcalá de Henares in November 2018. The original papers presented in that forum have been supplemented by other thematically relevant contributions to create a volume that complements and enhances other recent collections around the topic. The results provide an opportunity to take stock and to examine new contexts and directions in discourse analysis applied to translation studies. It is one of a series of publications in recent years that have sought to highlight the role of discourse analysis in helping to uncover and explain meanings in source and target texts. This goes all the way back to the collected volume edited by Baker, Olohan, et al. (2010), inspired by a special panel of the IATIS conference held in Melbourne in 2009 in honour of Ian Mason.

New contexts and new methods are central to this issue. The first section gives room for reflection on discourse analysis from a perspective outside of translation studies. The first paper, by Sara Ramos Pinto and Elisabetta Adami, concentrates on multimodality and should be an important point of reference for those studying the theory and application of multimodality, an area which has been lacking in translation studies but now enjoys increased importance. This is not only because of the growth of audio-visual translation, whether it be subtitling or dubbing, but also because of the increased prevalence of images, audio, video, and hybrids of these with written text or spoken text. While many other forms of text and discourse analysis have been developed for predominantly written texts, there is a glaring lack of a robust analytical model, underpinned by a strong theoretical base. Ramos Pinto and Adami seek to address this gap, bringing together their specialisms in audio-visual translation and in theoretical multimodality in a rare and valued combination.

The other paper in this section is by Charlotte Taylor and Dario Del Fante, who bring to the collection an objective evaluation of tools refined for the study of monolingual texts in what is known as corpus-assisted discourse studies. They take a timely look at the methodology of cross-linguistic corpus and discourse research. Computing power has transformed the potential for individual or small groups of researchers to develop their own corpora for even a relatively small study. What is sometimes absent is a thorough theoretical understanding of the appropriate methodologies of corpus-based work and their limitations. This is where Taylor and Del Fante take up the story. They tackle some key questions raised by the need to find comparable units of text in the languages covered, moving from the lexical level to the higher levels of discourse.

The second section is entitled New contexts, since it examines a series of specific novel situations in which this discourse analysis takes place. There is continuity with the previous section since the methodology is critical discourse analysis, but the case study examples are new. Thus, Ji-Hae Kang and Jung-Wook Hong look at the way that ‘volunteer translators’ construct their status and identities online. This is rather a controversial issue, as discussed in this paper, because the translators may innocently provide a language service for free, yet the result potentially undermines their own status and risks depriving other translators of work. The boundary has also been blurred between for-profit and not-for-profit motives, and once again the repercussions of this for the translation profession are considerable. This is another example of how the act of translation has often lost commercial value, but also of how such a development is concealed through claims of a stronger ‘ethical’ stance.

The New contexts section includes two articles analysing what has come to be called transediting. Julie Boéri and Ashraf Fattah, focusing on the reporting of the Gulf crisis propose a new model of analysis combining appraisal theory (Martin and White 2005) and narrative theory (Baker 2006), two of the major approaches to discourse analysis of hard news stories in translation. This new article provides a strong theoretical foundation for future research, detailing the fundamentals and recent modifications to the theories. Binjian Qin and Meifang Zhang’s case study examines newspaper headlines during the China-US trade conflict of 2018. Headlines are regarded as major functional elements in a text, playing a role that is both textual (appearing together with the main body of the text) and paratextual (the headline is often written independently of the main text and it reflects the target text producer’s positioning). The methodology of stance taking here is derived from appraisal theory, which has become increasingly popular in translation studies in recent years. Each new study adds further to the picture of translation as constant evaluation/appraisal.

The fourth article in the section is by Eliisa Pitkäsalo and deals with the interesting case of comic contracts, specifically the use of intersemiotic translation, from a written and very formal genre, the legal contract, to a hybrid written/image-based text. Here we are also talking of accessibility, of ease of access to a form of communication that is adapted to the needs of the audience. The model of analysis is threefold: a Hallidayan perspective on context (Halliday 1994); multimodality following Kress and van Leuwen (2006); and, thirdly, an intersemiotic approach to translation that goes back to Jakobson (1959). The article also challenges the primacy of the written text by privileging the visual/comic format. This move towards the visual and towards the hybrid is in line with Ramos Pinto and Adami’s article in the first section and is, certainly, the direction in which translation studies is progressing.

Section three, Fine methods, comprises papers that are also noteworthy for the methodology adopted. The first three make use of the systemic functional (SFL) model which has proven to be useful for its analysis of the ideational, interpersonal, and textual metafunctions. Here, the three papers set out to join the strengths of SFL, which provides a comprehensive model of language and text function, with subjects and research questions that are firmly grounded in translation studies. So, María Calzada Pérez examines the difference between original and translated/interpreted language in the European Parliament while Long Li employs a transitivity-focused model of analysis to show the effect of apparently minor cumulative shifts on the ‘voice’ or ‘ideology’ of the text and the characters. Waleed Othman, for his part, creates a new model for the analysis of explicitation, merging a SFL perspective with existing translation theory. In combination, the new model may point the way forward for cooperation between the two fields. The openness of SFL to translation phenomena, and vice versa, has grown in recent years, as is evidenced by other publications, such as Calzada Pérez (2007), Munday (2012), and Kim, Munday, et al. (2020).

The second major trend in this final section is the use of corpora. All contributions in this section use a corpus-based/corpus-assisted approach, emphasising that discourse analysis is underpinned by empirical evidence. For Claudio Bendazzoli, Michela Bertozzi, and Mariachiara Russo, this involves making use of the existing EPIC corpus of the European Parliament to better understand the nature of interpreting. Of course, in all these examples, the analysis is based on the finished product, but draws inferences about the processes of decision-making which have led to a particular wording or structure in the target text. An important area for investigation, mentioned by several but emphasised by Elisa Calvo and Marián Morón, is the use of what they term qualitative corpora, which focuses on a bottom-up theoretical model.

The special issue therefore covers a variety of contexts and methods, some of which are new to translation studies and others used here with broadening effect. An important point to stress is that discourse analysis is in a state of constant innovation, enhancement, and renewal. The theoretical discussions and case studies in this collection will offer refined methodologies and results that may be tested, re-tested and modified. Translation and interpreting studies make use of multiple analytical models, often working in conjunction with descriptive translation studies, corpus-based studies and those projects which employ critical discourse analysis for the study of political texts. The recent interest in different forms of discourse analysis bears witness to the openness, enhancement, and innovation of existing practices. Some crucial considerations remain to be resolved: these include the desirability and feasibility of using models developed for monolingual studies (mainly English) for the investigation of multilingual, or at least bilingual, texts. The present collection has tried to be inclusive in its range of languages and in its geographical spread; in addition, a number of the articles are in French and Spanish, challenging the use of English as a lingua franca for the academic world, even in those disciplines such as ours which focus on language and culture. Our hope is that this issue will provide valuable examples and will contribute to the development of discourse analysis in translation and interpretation. We await publication of future volumes to observe how these contexts and methodologies are applied, accepted, modified, and refined, or rejected and superseded.