conceptual work and the `translation' concept

7272019 Conceptual Work and the `Translation Concept

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullconceptual-work-and-the-translation-concept 131

Conceptual Work and

the Translation Concept1

Sandra Halverson

University of Bergen

Abstract The concept of translation is required to carry a considerable load at several levels of inquiry It functions as a causal element in sociological theoriesand as a methodological tool when used extensionally Most importantly it is theconcept which in some way structures the field which we take as our object of inquiry As such it has particular functions in serving as a basis for generalizations and as a means of determining category membership In response to what are perceived as difficulties in some of these areas some scholars have hinted that the concept of translation might be fruitfully viewed as a prototype

category In this paper I review the philosophical and empirical argumentswhich support such a move and outline some of the programmatic consequencesThe focus is on the resolution of current conceptual problems and on thetheoretical and metatheoretical implications

Reacutesumeacute Le concept de traduction est mis en œuvre agrave diffeacuterents niveaux de larecherche comme eacuteleacutement causal en sociologie et par extension comme outilmeacutethodologique Mais il permet surtout de structurer le champ mecircme de linvestigation au point de former la base des geacuteneacuteralisations et decirctre un instrument de cateacutegorisation Face aux problegravemes souleveacutes par ces diverses fonctionscertains chercheurs sont ameneacutes agrave deacutefinir la traduction comme une cateacutegorie

prototypique Larticle examine les arguments philosophiques et empiriques quieacutetayent cette reacuteorientation conceptuelle puis esquisse les conseacutequences qu elle

entraicircne Laccent est mis sur des problegravemes conceptuels et sur les implicationsaux plans theacuteorique et meacutetatheacuteorique

1 Introduction

In a paper which in many ways is a forerunner to the present one I argued that

major philosophical differences underlie much of the past and some of the present theoretical dissension in the field of Translation Studies (Halverson

Target 111 (1999) 1ndash31 DOI 101075target11102halISSN 0924ndash1884 E-ISSN 1569ndash9986 copy John Benjamins Publishing Company



2 SANDRA HALVERSON

1997) I also argued that what evidence there is of a rapprochement hassuggested that scholars are falling down on the side of relativity which I believe to be the lesser of two evils though still problematic in the long runAs has been pointed out so many times before a complete surrender to thestrongest form of relativity leaves us quite unsatisfied in our efforts to accountfor or motivate the comparability of concepts and theories and the ultimateselection of one over the other (see Lakatos and Musgrave 1970 Putnam1981 Shapere 1981 Laudan 1990) In short concepts whose validity iscompletely relative to a particular constellation mdash either a real-world time-

space one or a theoretical one mdash do not provide an adequate basis for scientific generalizations one of the major pieces of work that we need our concepts to do is not getting done

The problem of the relativity of certain basic concepts in TranslationStudies has also been emphasized in earlier publications (Pym 1992 1995a1995b 1997 Koller 1995) The emphasis in several of these articles has beenon the inability of current translation concepts to do the necessary work in

providing means of categorizing instances of translation ie in delineatingthe object territory This job too is vital to the interests of an academic

discipline as agreement on this issue is paramount to the coherence of theenterprise2

Partly in response to the basic philosophical problem and partly inresponse to a growing body of empirical research mostly in the field of

psychology a number of scholars in what has come to be called cognitivescience have converged on new means of accounting for the complex relationship of the world and the human subject through a focus on the role of experience in structuring and forming human cognition The emphasis is noton an objective independent discretely structured world but on the world as

construed or enacted3 by the cognizing subject and on the role of human andconsequently shared experience in our structuring of the world In my viewthe philosophical foundations of some parts of cognitive science and certainof the theoretical and empirical programs which build on these foundations

provide us with the means of dealing with our current situationThe aim of this paper is not to provide a detailed study of the basic tenets

of modern cognitive science4 The aim is to demonstrate how several of themost fundamental philosophical theoretical and empirical components of current cognitive science are able to resolve the most pressing conceptualdifficulties of the field of Translation Studies More specifically I shall argue



CONCEPTUAL WORK AND THE TRANSLATION CONCEPT 3

that the problem of delineating the object category ie distinguishingtranslation from non-translation is more fruitfully addressed by restatingthe issue The move entails giving up both the notion of a completely objectivedelineation one true delineation and that of a completely socially or culturally relative one It involves looking for an experientially based(shared) cognitive structure which when applied to empirical reality willyield a pattern of prototype effects The move will provide the means of deriving the pattern of gradience in category judgments (the pattern of more or less agreement on an exemplars status) it will provide us with the means of

explaining the gradience pattern (the source of the effects) and finally anexperientially based cognitive approach will allow us to position the translation category relative to other similar and related ones (eg communicationin general paraphrase or even metaphor and analogy)

Thus is the argument to be presented in what follows the thesis is thattranslation is a prototype concept5 I shall argue that only this type of concept will do the work that we want our translation concept to do Inarguing this case it may be helpful to demonstrate by means of an analogySo for the purposes of this paper let us assume that a concept is like any other

tool in that it helps us do a piece of work6

In what follows let us assume thata concept is like a car and that the job we want done is getting from A to BThus our work guaranteeing the validity of generalizations and providing ameans of categorization is analogous to getting from A to B And the meansof doing so is in the first case a concept and in the second a car

I hope to have shown in my earlier paper (Halverson 1997) that current philosophical positions in the field are responsible for our concepts inadequate performance on the generalizability road test To my mind the arguments presented by Koller (1995) and Pym (1995 1997) successfully

demonstrate a low rating on the category delineation factor In another paperI have also presented arguments that point towards a similar conclusion(Halverson 1998) My concern in that paper was not as much with thedelineation of the category boundaries as with the internal structuring of thecategory which is a related issue involving questions such as the position offor example natural translation professional and non-professional translations as non-equal members of the translation category The conclusionreached by Koller Pym and myself is the same in short it seems that our car (our concept of translation) has stalled It is not doing the work that needs to

be done we are not getting from A to B7



4 SANDRA HALVERSON

11Concepts and Categories

Let us assume then that we are in the market for a new car Careful shoppersare probably well advised to begin their project by gathering as much information as possible about the car market after all buying a car is a major investment and merits a certain amount of research before making a commitment So let us first refresh our memories on what we want our car (concept)to do (its work or functions) and then we will see what our investigations intothe field can tell us

To begin then it has been suggested that concepts fulfill four basicfunctions

1 Simple categorization the means by which people decide whether or not something belongs to a simple class (eg deciding that a

particular object is an instance of the concept boy)2 Complex categorization the means by which people decide

whether or not something belongs to a complex class (eg decidingthat a particular object is an instance of the concept rich boy)

3 Linguistic meaning that part of the meaning of a term explainingrelations of synonymy antonymy and semantic implication (egthat part of the meaning of boy that explains why it is roughlysynonymous to lad and implies being male and young)

4 Components of cognitive states the critical components of beliefs preferences and other cognitive states in this role concepts arewhat provide a cognitive explanation of complex thought and

behavior (eg the roles played by the concepts rich boys andspoiled in someones belief that rich boys are spoiled) (Smith andMedin 1984 114 from Rey 1983)

Following Smith and Medin we shall focus on the first of these four simplecategorization as it has been the major focus in the literature that explicitlyconcerns itself with concepts (1984 114) This corresponds basically to thedelineation issue mentioned in the introductory comments that is it is themeans by which we can determine whether an exemplar belongs to thecategory or not (distinguishing translation from non-translation) It will

become clear that the third function is also crucial to our discussion as it pertains to the generalizability issue reference will be made to that function

where relevant A concept then for the purposes of this discussion will be




some sort of mental construct used to structure knowledge of a class of objects8 Structuring knowledge (a combination of functions one and three) isthus for us the same as getting from A to B

So what kind of car will do that for us What is on the market and howdo the various models compare In fact human categorization and the concepts used for this purpose have been the subject of a vast amount of researchover the past twenty odd years particularly in the fields of psychology andlinguistics most notably Rosch and associates (Brown 1958 1965 Berlin1968 Berlin and Kay 1969 Ekman et al 1972 Rosch 1973 1975a 1975b

1977 1978 1981 Berlin et al 1974) The subject has also been a topic of renewed philosophical interest since Wittgensteins discussion of family resemblance categories (Wittgenstein f953)9 Most commonly newer theoriesof categorization are contrasted with the so-called classical theory morespecifically the theory of Aristotelian categories Classical categories areassociated with two basic ideas first categories are linked directly with anobserver-independent objective reality second the link is provided by thelisting of necessary and sufficient conditions which match directly with theessential features of the object in question The locus of the contrast between

classical theory and what has come to be called prototype theory lies in a set of issues related to certain implications of classical theory As presented byLakoff (1987 7) these are

First if categories are defined only by properties that all members share thenno members should be better examples of the category than any other mem

bers

Second if categories are defined only by properties inherent in the membersthen categories should be independent of the peculiarities of any beings doingthe categorizing that is they should not involve such matters as human

neurophysiology human body movement and specific human capacities to perceive to form mental images to learn and remember to organize thethings learned and to communicate efficiently

The first of these issues is an empirical question it relates to category judgments made by human subjects The second is a philosophical issue pertaining to the link between language language users and reality It isconcerned with the separability of the three and the directness of the link

between the world and language

The findings of Rosch and her associates and the body of work which has

followed in their tradition are in direct conflict with classical theory With



6 SANDRA HALVERSON

reference to the first of the two issues above the conclusion following anenormous research effort is that it appears that graded structure is a universal property of categories (Barsalou 1987 102) In other words members are

graded according to their goodness of example ratings they are not equalWith respect to the second of the two issues all of the human factors mentioned above have been found to be significant Membership gradience in

categories has been proven to be a predictor in such tasks as identification of

category members the frequency with which members are generated ease of

category learning and decision making (Barsalou 1987 103)10 Theacute evidence

put forward seems to point towards one conclusion categorization is not based on objective qualities inherent in real-world objects but is dependent on

and determined by properties of the human cognizerIt is also important to note that the philosophical arguments for the

indeterminacy of the link between language or any formal symbolic systemand the world were provided at about the same time Putnam (1981) presents a

forceful argument against meaning as direct reference to real-world entities by

showing that reference cannot in any way be fixed11

From there the task is to develop a theory of categorization which takes

into account the relevant properties of human cognition Such a theory has been elaborated within cognitive science on the basis of the original work by

Rosch et al (eg Rosch 1973 1975a 1975b 1976 1977 1978 1981) The

most relevant work in cognitive linguistics for our purposes has involved the

merging of prototype theory with theory of metaphor asarticulated by amongothers Lakoff (1987 1988 1993) Sweetser (1990) Turner (1991 1996)Gibbs (1994) In Lakoff s (1987) version categories are seen as the result of a

subjects comparison of an exemplar with a cognitive structure which underlies and motivates hisher judgments The pattern of intragroup variation on

judgment tasks is referred to as prototype effects and these effects must beaccounted for by features of the underlying cognitive structure It is importantto note that the pattern of effects is not the same as the category structureAccounting for conceptual structure involves describing the sources of prototype effects which is not the same as simply deriving the pattern itself (For

Lakoff s response to the effects = structure and the effects = representation interpretations of prototype theory see Lakoff 1987 Chapter 9) In brief

in line with Lakoff s version of prototype theory description of a prototypeconcept will involve two stages testing for effects and describing the cognitive model which accounts for those effects




12Market Investigations

The review presented in Section 11 has provided us with a little backgroundon the development of the car market What it apparently boils down to is thatthere used to be only one dealership and they sold only one kind of car All thecars were the same as required by the model specifications It seems that thosespecifications have been handed down over the generations (over 2000 yearsin fact) and the dealers claim that their model specifications are true in thatthey have been able to determine just what the essence of car-dom is But at a

recent point in the development of the traffic scene people started realizingthat they werent getting from A to B The odd thing was that the actual breakdowns people were suffering happened at the same time as engineerswere starting to talk about the faults they were finding in the model specifications Some engineers even began to question whether there was such a thingas an essence of car-dom

As a result of that development a new dealership has opened up Thatdealership also offers one car but it is based on a different set of specifications which allows for slightly different models As a result each car deliv

ered is a personalized model which is more or less the same as each other model sold Upon request the dealership will provide information on whichmodels people seem to be choosing and their own analyses of why they seemto choose the ones they do Apparently the range of different models is notvery broad as people being people tend to choose quite similar cars Thedealers claim that the secret lies in the model specifications which unlikethose of the original dealership are based on how drivers drive rather than onan assumed objective essence of car-dom

Let us stop for a moment to consider the situation For different reasons a

number of scholars have expressed dissatisfaction with the ability of currentconceptualizations of the translation concept to do its job It may be claimedthat that dissatisfaction is limited to an admittedly vocal minority to my mindhowever the arguments are compelling Current approaches all of whichutilize classical categories12 necessitate a clear boundary between translation and non-translation and the equality of all category members (ie alltranslations are equally theoretically relevant) The two best known means of

boundary drawing have suffered empirical and philosophical defeat that is a priori approaches (eg based on an equivalence criterion) do not account for much of translational reality and are based on a philosophy which has been



8 SANDRA HALVERSON

in its death throes ever since being dealt a mortal blow by Charles Darwin 13 A posteriori relative approaches on the other hand while more successful atdrawing a boundary (it is done by simple extension plus control procedures)are not successful in accounting for empirical evidence of membershipgradience (see Chesterman 1993b Halverson 1997 1998) Nor is this ap

proach philosophically satisfying as it does not allow for grounded generalizations What this means is that no matter which way you look at it currentconcepts are not doing the work they are supposed to do they are notsatisfactorily allowing for or accounting for actual category judgments (con

cept functions one and three) Furthermore our current concepts are also builton the basis of model specifications (theories of concepts) whose philosophical bases are arguably erroneous (essentialism) or unsatisfactory for the

purpose at hand (relativism) It seems to me that it might be time to visit thenew dealership and see if we can arrange for a test drive

2 Prototype Concepts

Good sales people ie those who sell the most will rarely let the buyers takea close look at the merchandise without giving them the sales pitch first Andarguably a bit of detailed information may be in order again in the interest of enlightened investment Thus before we can take a close look at what exactlya prototype concept of translation might be it behooves us to consider exactly what driving a prototype concept involves

21 Prototype Effects

As mentioned in the introductory remarks the first generation of prototyperesearch revealed a wealth of what have come to be called prototype effectsThe term effects refers to the pattern of responses shown by any group of subjects who are asked to give category judgments on a concept This patterndemonstrates the features mentioned in Section 11 ie membershipgradience and a lack of clear boundaries ie a lack of necessary and sufficientconditions The pattern is considered to be the result of intragroup variation inthe task of comparing a given exemplar to an underlying cognitive structure of some sort (to be discussed in more detail in Section 22) Thus in line with

Barsalou (1987 102) the graded pattern of responses including the central




member is not assumed to serve any representational function in cognitionAs Rosch (1978) pointed out prototype effects are surface phenomena 14

The methodology employed in testing for prototype effects has developed from the earlier stages of testing for the effects themselves ie askingsubjects to rate various potential members or non-members of categories tostudying the role of category judgments in predicting performance on a rangeof related categorization tasks (see Barsalou 1987 Gibbs 1994) One of the

best known of the early generation studies and perhaps the most relevant for the discussion to follow is the Coleman and Kay (1981) study of the Tie

concept This investigation was one of the earliest empirical investigations of prototype effects in a non-physical non-object category In this study sub jects were asked to read through a number of stories describing situationswhich displayed various combinations of the following elements falsityintent to speak falsely and intent to deceive In addition the subjects wereasked to indicate how certain they were of their own judgments The resultsindicated prototype effects a lack of necessary and sufficient conditions for membership and degrees of membership This particular design has been thesubject of some criticism (see eg Cruse 1990 388 Wierzbicka 1990 351)

However the methodology has survived further testing and though it may not be sufficiently refined to capture all aspects of prototypicality (Myers 1994274) it seems to be recognized as a viable starting point in the search for

prototype effects in a category

22 Sources of Prototype Effects

According to current cognitive theories of categorization the gradienceshown in membership judgments is the aggregate-level result of individual

acts of comparing a given instance with a more or less shared cognitivestructure (see Rosch 1978 28) The structures posited by the various scholarsare intended to capture a range of different characteristics for example actionsand participants as in frames and scripts or so-called image-schematic structure (see Johnson 1987 Lakoff 1987) The basic idea is that there must be a

principled relationship between the pattern of effects and the underlyingcognitive structure In what is arguably the most well-developed theory thisunderlying cognitive structure is referred to as an idealized cognitive model(ICM) whose explanatory power lies in its ability to characterize the overallcategory structure indicate what the central members are and characterize the



10 SANDRA HALVERSON

links in the internal chains (Lakoff 1987 114) It is my claim that a Lakoffianaccount of the translate concept provides considerable insight into the problems outlined in the introductory remarks How it does so is addressed insomewhat more detail in Section 32 though readers are referred to Halverson(1999) for the full analysis

The purpose of this brief outline of prototype theory was to point out whatit involves to interpret a pattern of prototype effects and how the individualcategorization event fits into the overall picture In sum each persons individual version of a concept is based on an idealized cognitive model of which

there are many different types These models are what are shared and in theapproach outlined here the most basic among them spring from human bodily interaction with the environment Studying a particular concept involves looking at actual category judgment evidence and subsequently accounting for the patterns found through a cognitive model

Now that we know a little more about what the new dealership (theoretical approach) has to offer a little test drive may help us to get a better feel for how the car (concept) drives and also put us in a better position to ask intelligent questions of the sales representative In other words it is time to see

what this new kind of car will do for us

3 Prototypical Translation

The aim of this section is to go for a test drive to see what it means to say thattranslation is a prototype concept From the preceding discussion it should

be clear that there are two quite immediate tasks at hand determining the pattern of surface effects that result from category judgments and proposing

an ICM or something similar to account for that pattern There are of coursenumerous more far-reaching implications of opting for this kind of car Thoseimplications will be addressed in Section 4 In what follows the two mainstages of our test drive will be dealt with separately


In most of the studies on prototype categories mentioned above simplecategory judgments were used Such a study must of course be done for thetranslation category as well However arriving at suitable candidates for




such judgments is a bit more complicated when dealing with an abstractcategory rather than a physical object category For the latter type of conceptthere is often an available array of physical objects to choose from which isnot to say that the selection is unambiguous or given in any sense In our casehowever the candidates are less immediately available In order to arrive at areasonable set of candidates it is necessary to consult various sources the firstof which will be theoretical discourse Our survey of various theoretical issueswill also serve as an indicator of how deeply rooted the category membershipquestion actually is

311 Theoretical Discourse and Prototype EffectsFrom a metatheoretical perspective it may be argued that evidence of prototype effects in the translation category may be found at the crux of variousdisagreements in theoretical discourse In other words what theoreticians areshowing in their disagreement is that at this level too membership in thetranslation category is graded and that various candidates for boundarydrawing conditions are unsatisfactory To begin then one of the most recentand clearest discussions of category membership issues and one in which the

current argument is prefigured was Kollers 1995 article In his article Koller neatly demonstrates the glide from translation to non-translation ie thenon-discrete nature of the category boundary with respect to degrees of equivalence In his examples Koller shows that within an equivalence-baseddescriptive framework the transition [from translation through translationwith elements of text revision] to a case of revision with translated elements is smooth (1995 210) I believe that what Koller demonstrates for theequivalence dimension is also true of any other dimension we might choose tofocus on (see Section 32)

The second aspect of the category membership issue outlined by Lakoff is internal structure (see Section 11) This particular question has also been atissue in Translation Studies though less clearly so The most obvious examples are the debate on the status of professional translations and of naturaltranslation The first discussion of the incompatibility of a classical categorywith privileged professional translations was in Chesterman (1993b) In thearticle Chesterman quite rightly points out that neither a priori (eg equivalence-based) nor a posteriori (extensional) definitions allows the granting of special status to professional translations as they both make use of a classical

category Chestermans solution to the problem is however not to change the



12 SANDRA HALVERSON

type of category His proposal is a sociological one in which translational behaviors and their products may be described in terms of the degree towhich they conform to norms of various types What Chestermans proposalallows us to do is to address the gradience issue In other words conformity toa norm or set of norms is gradable and as a consequence membership may

be described in terms of degree Chestermans move also allows for the central position of professionals as they are by definition those who best conform toand indeed form the norm system The proposal being argued in this paper isthe cognitive counter to that sociological maneuver

Another debate which focuses on the relationship andor status of various types of translation data is the one concerning so-called natural translation (see Krings 1986 Harris 1977 1992) That debate raged (rages) over the issue of what status these translations done by bilinguals in everydaycircumstances and without special training for it (Harris 1977 99) shouldhave in the field Harris originally claimed that natural translation was centralto the category and hence should be studied first (1977 99) which Krings inturn found utterly absurd (Krings in Harris 1992 99) This is a question of membership centrality which as Harris points out is undecidable as it all

depends on what one means by the term translation (1992 99)Harriss relativist position should by now be quite familiar (see Sec

tion 1 and Halverson 1998) We should recall that as long as there is noreasonable means of grounding various definitions of the term then Harris isquite right All meanings of translation are equally good and my study of natural translations is just as significant and relevant as yours of third-year translator trainees or a colleagues of professionals with ten years experience The problem is of course that we have no means of positioning theserelative to each other or to our overall translation concept in a reasonable

way which is the situation we are trying to alleviate As this brief exchangedemonstrates discussions of membership centrality quite immediately bring

philosophical issues to the surface And as the natural translation issue illustrates relativism while a sympathetic attitude does not resolve the meta-theoretical tension

The final theoretical discussion which also seems to be an indicator that prototype effects might be in existence is that surrounding the well knowntypology put forward by Jakobson (1959) This discussion is reflective of bothmembership gradience issues and category delineation ones In what followsthe latter shall be addressed first As we know Jakobson put forward three




types of translation intersemiotic interlingual and intralingual This typology has subsequently been criticized on several accounts First of all Tourycommented on its bias for linguistic translation (an effect of gradience) andlack of applicability to anything beyond texts (1986 1113) As for the foundation for the three-way distinction (the relationship between the codes involved) it was made even more general in Tourys discussion through theintroduction of a higher level distinction between inter- and intrasemiotictranslation with the latter subdivided into intra- and intersystemic and finallyinter- and intralingual translation Even with such an elaboration however

Toury expressed more general reservations regarding the utility of suchtypologies (those based on the relationships between the codes involved) Inhis view the role of the relations between various semiotic systems (19861113) in affecting actual translation activity and thus those relationshipsability to serve as a delimiting criterion was far from clear In addition Touryexpressed desire for a typology of translating processes based on the semioticentities which serve as their initial or resultant quantities or on the nature of the systems and codes underlying those entities (1986 1113 original emphasis) Thus for Toury the question of (sub)categorization was problematic due

to the lack of foundations on which to base the requisite criteria (necessary andsufficient conditions) He posed various candidates but quite rightly to mymind indicated that none of these have been proven qualified Though notintended as a criticism of a classical category approach Tourys criticism cutsto the quick he illustrates the problems involved in various contenders for therole of necessary and sufficient condition

Another quite well known criticism of Jakobsons thesis was presented inDerridas Des Tours de Babel (1985 173f) also discussed in Hermans(1997) For our purposes the most salient aspect of Derridas analysis is his

point that while attempting to put interlingual translation in a broader semiotic framework Jakobson undermined his own argument through hisinability to translate interlingual translation other than through a tautological reference to translation proper In Derridas analysis though not in histerminology Jakobson argued for equal members while at the same time

privileging one Thus two angles of criticism of Jakobsons translation typology reflect problems with the underlying framework of classical categoriesthat it assumed Tourys criticism illustrated the inadequacy of various alternative necessary and sufficient conditions in the attempt to draw a category

boundary or to categorize within a superordinate category and Derridas



14 SANDRA HALVERSON

criticism illustrated the inability to come to terms with the gradience of category membership Thus it seems that here too is evidence of prototypeeffects which must be accounted for

In our brief survey of theoretical discourse it seems that what may betermed prototype effects are visible in many of the most fundamental debatesThe debate on the status of professional non-professional and natural translations as data reflects different centrality judgments The discussion of categorizations of translation types reflects an inability to draw a boundary either externally at the most general level or internally within a broader category In

sum at the metatheoretical level prototype effects are clearly visible

312 Testing for Prototype Effects

The next logical step would be to take a look to see how subjects do on asimple category test similar to those mentioned in Section 21 The design of such a test must necessarily build on elements of theoretical discourse (theissues discussed in Section 311) as well as the more obvious extensionalcriterion ie what do people refer to as translation

In what follows I shall provide brief comments on a study I carried out to

test for prototype effects15

The test I used to elicit category judgments for thetranslation category utilizes the Coleman and Kay methodology (Colemanand Kay 1981) Accordingly a set of seven translation pairs was submitted tothe informants who were asked to indicate whether they considered the Bmember to be a translation of the A member16 At the same time informantswere asked to indicate their level of certainty in responding

The dimensions tested were derived from Tourys (1986) discussionreferred to in Section 311 Thus I was interested in considering the significance of the relationships between semiotic systems which was teased apart

into an intra- versus inter- dimension and in the case of the intersemioticexemplars a dimension to capture whether the two semiotic systems were of the same basic kind (eg linguistic iconic numeric etc) Finally I wished toinvestigate the significance of language as at least one of the systems In sumthe test was designed to shed light on the role of system boundary crossing therelationship between the two systems and the role of language (see alsoTirkkonen-Condit 1997 90f on the related question of the role of interlinguality and other dimensions) In the test I was not interested in therelationship between the actual texts (the AB pairs) that test is at a different

level and must be done separately




The results of the investigation were in some respects surprising and inothers quite what would be expected The status of the concept as a prototypeone was clearly confirmed there was a definite pattern of graded membershipand there was no necessary and sufficient condition for membership (clear

boundary) Furthermore it was hardly surprising to find that the most centralmember of the category was interlingual translation (English-Norwegian) andthat other exemplars involving a linguistic system seemed to cluster aroundthe center A less obvious result involved the role of intersystematicity it wasfound not to constitute a necessary and sufficient condition though among

linguistic exemplars in particular it seemed to play a role In other wordsamong the linguistic exemplars the clearer the intersystematicity the higher the rating even though for linguistic pairs intrasystemic exemplars were alsoincluded in the category On the other hand the non-linguistic intersystemicexemplar received the lowest rating and indeed was the only exemplar to beexcluded from the category The salience of the dimensions tested (lingualityand systematicity) is thus related and the two dimensions seem to work together in a complex way to motivate the internal structuring of the category

32 The Source of These Effects

In accordance with a cognitive theory of meaning the next phase of our venture is to attempt to account for the effects that we have found which asoutlined in Section 22 will involve positing a cognitive structure It is beyondthe scope of this paper to provide such an account in detail In what follows Ishall present the contours of my proposal for such a structure while readersare referred to Halverson (1999) for a complete account Oddly enough heretoo my arguments will follow at least part of the way in Andrew

Chestermans footsteps In his article Theory in Translation TheoryChesterman states that

Many of the traditional ideas about translation had to do with the question of what kind of animal translation (or translating) actually is The answers (iethe tentative theories) were often proposed in the form of metaphors or similes (see eg Koller 1979 49f) (The very word translation goes backafter all through Latin transferre to Greek metepherein to carry over thesame root that gives us metaphor ie the idea that something is somethingelse which it literally is not) (1993a 73)

In Chestermans view however in spite of the fact that These metaphoricaltheories may provide enlightenment insight understanding they are ulti-



16 SANDRA HALVERSON

mately not theoretically useful as they are not empirical (1993a 74)Chestermans claim is that metaphorical definitions are not empirical becausethey are not falsifiable This claim rests on the assumption that meaning isfundamentally literal and that metaphor is some form of embellishment onthat basis (see eg Gibbs 1994 60-63) In line with this view literal meaning(propositional meaning truth conditional meaning) or more specificallythe literal meaning of a sentence is the set of conditions that are bothnecessary and sufficient to establish the truth of that sentence (Gibbs 199461) Accordingly only literal meanings (theories) can be falsified as they are

the only ones which refer in some way to an empirical world It is thisassumption that Chesterman and I do not share17 As a consequence whatChesterman considers a dead-end ie the metaphorical nature of many previous attempts at defining translation (and Chesterman gives an interesting list)is to me highly significant Furthermore the etymology of the word translation also mentioned by Chesterman is not a trivial matter In fact etymological evidence in addition to patterns of polysemy provides key evidencefor the kind of meaning structure posited here

In fact the framework I make use of involving the metaphorical motiva

tion of both polysemy relationships and etymological development is one of the fundamental insights provided by cognitive linguistics (see Lakoff 1987Sweetser 1990) and indeed recent research in historical semantics has also

provided significant perspectives on the cognitive processes involved inmeaning change As outlined by Sweetser

In general it seems clear that more abstract domains of meaning tend toderive their vocabulary from more concrete domains (rather than vice versa)and furthermore that in some cases there is a deep cognitive predisposition todraw from certain particular concrete domains in deriving vocabulary for a

given abstract domain (1990 18)In Sweetsers account it is metaphorical mappings between three basic domains from real-world content through epistemic premises and conclusionsto speech acts which account for both etymological development and

polysemy relationships in a variety of cases Consequently her claim is thathistorical and synchronic data point to one and the same cognitively basedanalysis of the relevant semantic domain (1990 23) Thus the step fromChestermans discussion on the basis of Sweetsers claim is to take a closer look at the metaphorical relationships through historical and synchronic dataand to use such data in the elaboration of the cognitive model for the transla-




tion concept In Halverson (1999) I elaborate a model for the Old and MiddleEnglish translate concepts in addition to the Latin derivative translate Thismodel is able to account for the relationship between translate transferrender paraphrase and indeed communication in a principled way Furthermore the model is able to account for the various current senses of translate inEnglish the most recent of which is to result in to be converted into tomanifest itself as (Oxford English Dictionary 1993 409)

4 A Cost-Benefit Analysis

As we neared the end of the test drive in Section 3 it became increasinglyclear that my position as objective co-shopper is becoming more and moretroublesome In fact at times it may have been hard to tell me from the salesrepresentative For that reason in this and the final sections I will give up thatfallacy altogether Lets just say that on my first visit I was so hooked that theynow let me try to sell to my friends

The objective in this section is to take a closer look at what the cost of

buying one of these new cars actually is The analysis will be somewhatgeneral as the detailed arguments and analyses are beyond the scope of thismore programmatic paper However as I hope to show in Section 41 the upfront cost of this new type of concept is pretty straightforward

41 Costs

The costs involved in a switch to a prototype concept of our object of studymay be grouped into two basic types (without implying a clearly distinct

boundary between the two) The first cost category comprises the philosophical expense while the second comprises theoretical and methodological onesActually these various types of assumptions statements and rules may not beas easily separable as this tack might suggest In fact it has been argued boththat these types of components to scientific theories constitute holistic gestalts(see Kuhn 1970) and that they are isolable components of larger complexes(for a comparison of the two views see Laudan 1990 Chapter 3) I do notwish to take a stand on that particular issue which to my mind seems to be anempirical question awaiting resolution and will consequently discuss philo

sophical assumptions and theoretical and methodological issues in turn in theinterest of convenience



18 SANDRA HALVERSON

It should be quite obvious that a major cost of opting for a prototypeconcept is a philosophical shift away from any remaining vestiges of essential-ist philosophies or any extreme versions of relativism As the weaknesses of

both of these positions for the discipline have been addressed in an earlier paper (Halverson 1997) and alluded to in the introductory comments to thisdiscussion they shall not be dwelt on any further at this point What should benoted however is that having made a commitment at this level brings with itconsiderable responsibility in terms of the kinds of theories methods andstatements that can be countenanced in the next instance The type of commit

ment involved is perhaps best summarized by Lakoff who describes abandoning essentialism (objectivism) as renouncing any claim to a Gods eye viewof reality Thus as Lakoff points out quoting Putnam (1981 49) therecannot be such a thing as exactly one true and complete description of theway the world is (1987 260) But as Lakoff continues

that does not mean that knowledge is impossible We can know realityfrom the inside on the basis of our being part of it It is not the absolute

perfect knowledge of the Gods eye variety but that kind of knowledge islogically impossible anyway What is possible is knowledge of another kindknowledge from a particular point of view knowledge which includes theawareness that it is from a particular point of view and knowledge whichgrants that other points of view can be legitimate (1987 261)

A natural reaction to this commitment is often however extreme in the other direction In other words an acceptance that there is no one absolute true

point of view leads to the logical consequence and the most sympathetic belief that all points of view are equally valid However epistemologicalrelativism as has been pointed out so many times before is unable to accountfor theory selection and ultimately scientific progress18 To me this argu

ment is convincing The middle ground seems to be presented by a pragmaticepistemology which has been sketched in non-technical terms as follows

we find ourselves in a situation where our only contact with the world ismediated by our concepts We posit certain beliefs or theories to make senseof that mediated world If those beliefs or theories were entirely free-floating(as [the relativist] believes them to be) and reflected nothing whatever aboutthe world itself then it would be unthinkable that they would enable us tomanipulate the world as effectively as we can the explanation of thesuccess of science is going to have to be told in terms of the ways in which our interaction with nature puts strong constraints on our systems of belief

(Laudan 1990 166)




A philosophy of this type is entirely necessary for the view of concepts putforward by Lakoff and other cognitive linguists It constitutes the underpinning of the theoretical enterprise

Thus the philosophical cost of the new dealerships models should beclear The theoretical implications are less so As I see it the main and mostimmediate effects are at the metatheoretical level (see Sections 42 and 5)However there is one important theory-level implication which must bementioned If a conception of our object of study is provided by currenttheories of categorization and metaphor then one logical consequence would

be to allow those theories more room at the level of translation theory anddescriptive research as well It is interesting to note that empirical researchinto translation already provides scattered examples of studies in which trans-lational phenomena are accounted for in terms of for instance metaphor theory (eg Dobrovolskij 1996 Paulussen 1997) Furthermore at least onescholar has pointed out the significance of metaphoric conceptualization and

processes in the translation process ie Mandelblit in her 1996 article TheCognitive View of Metaphor and Its Implications for Translation Theory Inher conclusion Mandelblit states

preliminary investigations suggest that translation of conventional everyday language is highly affected by a pervasive system of metaphors Thedegree of similarity between the metaphorical mappings that structure thesource and target language determines the nature of the translation process(1996 493)

Mandelblits claim in short represents a theory-level consequence of accounting for the object of study in the manner put forward in Section 3 If theobject of study is to be accounted for by a given account of philosophy andmeaning then it is only reasonable that that same account be introduced at the

level of theory and empirical analysis or vice versaThese final comments are illustrative of the difficult distinction between

assumptions theory and data What is demonstrated is the far-reaching implications of initial commitments with respect to ontological and epistemologicalcategories in other words claims regarding an object of study always presup

pose commitments as to what kinds of things there are and how we can knowabout them In closing this cost analysis then it seems fair to point out that the

philosophical costs are perhaps the greatest Our discipline has shown considerable tolerance of theoretical diversity (see Koller 1995 Hermans 1997)including cognitive perspectives and the incorporation of metaphor theory at



20 SANDRA HALVERSON

the level of empirical study has not seemed to be problematic However acommitment to the philosophical assumptions on which cognitive theories of meaning are based whether it is forced by the empirical findings or bymetatheoretical concerns requires a more profound cognitive shift on the partof the individual scholar The onus lies on the seller to persuade buyers tomake that shift With this in mind the next step in the cost-benefit analysis isto factor direct savings into the equation

42 Benefits (Savings)

It should be fairly clear from the discussion in Sections 2 and 3 that the major thrust of my argument (as deputy seller) lies in the savings that I believe wewill accrue by investing in a prototype object concept In this section I shall

briefly review the areas in which I believe there are savings to be hadTo my mind a prototype object concept with all that it entails will relieve

our discipline of a great deal of unnecessary discourse and dissension on issuesthat can never be resolved given the philosophical programs in which thoseissues are framed In a previous paper (Halverson 1997) I discuss how these

frameworks have fueled the debate on equivalence In the introductory sectionsof this paper I attempt to show how the issue of our object of study remainsunresolved due to the same differences In Section 31 I discuss the debates onnatural translation and professional versus non-professional translation asindicative of varying perspectives on the question of what is meant bytranslation (Harris 1992 99) In another paper (Halverson 1998) I discusshow a prototype object concept may provide the theoretical grounding necessary in the design of representative corpora Thus even at this early stage itseems that a number of recurrent struggles might be laid to rest

In the Introduction we isolated two basic functions of concepts morespecifically the two functions which our translation concept seems unable to

perform serving as a basis for category judgments and generalizations InSection 3 we saw that debates on the issues mentioned above demonstrate

prototype effects at the metatheoretical level In closing this section let us pullthose two threads together and see how a prototype conception would allowfor the resolution of these debates by performing the two necessary functions

The first of the two category delineation is the issue at stake on debatesover the utility of the translation concept Koller (1995 193-196) provides aconcise summary of this particular discussion and the various viewpoints




presented His conclusion however is that

For the subject of translation research the question of how the object is to bedetermined is put most succinctly by asking what preconditions must besatisfied for a text to be classified as a translation and to qualify as the objectof translation studies (1995 195)

In response to that question his comment is that

Considering the multiplicity of theoretical approaches and objectives a singleclear answer can hardly be expected and the legitimate field of concern will

be marked out in different ways depending on which factors and conditions

are taken as the basis of abstraction (ibid)It seems clear that this qualifier is necessary however without an integratedframework by which to relate the various different demarcations we are nofurther towards solving our initial problem

Tourys approach to determining category membership is diametricallyopposed to that put forward by Koller above Rather than specifying thepreconditions that a text must satisfy Toury outlines a set of procedures to

be performed on text(s) that are for whatever reasons assumed to betranslations (1995 31ff) Such texts are then submitted to a set of discovery

procedures which lead to the formulation of a concept of translation in agiven time and place This approach seems to me to be the most reasonablealternative As put forward by Toury this is indeed a most serviceableworking hypothesis (1995 33) However the relativism inherent in such aframework must be constrained (see Halverson 1997) and my proposal is anattempt at doing exactly that

A different problem arises in the one existing attempt to resolve thecategory judgment issue to date ie Chestermans (1993b) norm-based solution As outlined in Section 31 Chesterman puts forward a proposal involving the central placement of professional translations on the basis of the

professionals status as norm masters As I see it however this takes us only part of the way After all any sociologicalbehavioral theory assumes a set of cognitive structures which correspond to the internalization of norms of various sorts (eg correctness notions or expectations see Bartsch (19874 173)) These internalized structures are posited as causal factors in for instance translational behavior Thus Chesterman states for example A

professional translator in other words seeks to design a target text in such a

way that it will meet the expectancy norms pertaining to it (1993 10)Similarly Hermans (1991 166 in Chesterman 1993b 10) maintains that



22 SANDRA HALVERSON

the correct translation is the one that fits the correctness notions prevailing in a particular system ie that adopts the solutions regarded as correct for a given communicative situation as a result of which it is accepted as correctIn other words when translators do what is expected of them they will beseen to have done well

It seems to me that the internalized correctness notions or expectancynorms actually constitute a concept of translation which professionals (bydefinition) are best able to emulate In other words it seems that professionalsacquire their status by virtue of their ability to produce texts which fit theconcept of translation which is current in their time and place at least

The same may be said of Tourys norm-based theory Within his framework it is claimed that translators adopt an orientation in a so-called initialnorm (1995 56f) This orientation involves a position relative to two sets of

potentially competing cultural norms ie source and target Thus this logically superordinate norm is given

a value [which] may be described as consisting of two major elements(1) being a text in a certain language and hence occupying a position

or filling in a slot in the appropriate culture or in a certain sectionthereof

(2) constituting a representation in that languageculture of another pre-existing text in some other language belonging to some other culture and occupying a definite position within it (1995 56)

Toury continues in his discussion of this particular norm and states that

Its initiality derives from its superordinance over particular norms which pertain to lower and therefore more specific levels The kind of priority postulated here is basically logical and need not coincide with any real iechronological order of application (1995 57)

To my mind both the content and the particular status of this initial normindicate that it in fact is the same thing as an underlying concept of translationadopted by the translator In this respect it seems to correspond to correctnessnotions and expectancy notions in Chestermans and Hermanss accountsFurthermore Tourys need to distinguish between a logical and a chronological priority may be seen as a result of the cognitive nature of that particular norm Perhaps the former actually corresponds to a more deep-seated long-termknowledge structure while the latter might be a short-term situation-specificinstantiation of the concept or a situation-specific more conscious (re)-

orientation These thoughts are mere speculation at this stage The point is that




Tourys need for distinctions of this type is decisive evidence of the need for distinctions at the cognitive level Given this interpretation it seems obviousthat a discipline which only considers the visible behavioral outcome (norm-

based behavior) is assigning much of importance to the level of assumptions(internalized norms of various types)

In terms of the first function then category delineation a prototypeconcept would resolve the problem of where to draw the boundary by eliminating the question Both philosophical argument and empirical research pointin the same direction there is no means of drawing a clear boundary For those

who feel in need of some comfort at the loss of an absolute resolution it may be found in looking at the gains in the related issue of internal categorystructure ie membership gradience Prototype tests and other forms of empirical analysis will allow us to determine which members are central andwhich are not This in turn will allow for a coherent resolution of the naturaltranslation issue for example as well as any other gradience questions whichmight arise The philosophy underlying this approach also provides a grounding for the sociologically motivated step taken by Chesterman (1993b) at thesame time as it opens for study of the cognitive issues and assumptions which

have not as yet been brought to the fore in our field19

With regard to the second function ie serving as a basis for generalizations this is much more a philosophical issue What I hope to have shown isthat neither of the philosophies currently prevailing in the field allow for acoherent resolution of that issue I believe that an experientially based idealized cognitive model of the type mentioned in Section 32 (see Halverson1999) will provide that basis A model of this type based on a shared humanimage-schema allows for a philosophically coherent means of linking concepts of translation across languages and over time Thus the basis for the

derivation of this model ie etymological evidence and polysemy patternsallows for cross-linguistic comparison as well Given the shared etymologyand the significance granted this type of evidence in cognitive theoriesgeneralizations will be firmly grounded

To sum up it seems that our main up front cost is a rather major philosophical shift The disadvantages of current positions and some of theadvantages of the new one have been outlined in this and other papers(Halverson 1997 1998 1999 forthcoming) In addition to this initial cost it isimportant that we factor in the immediate savings that our investment willallow As outlined above these savings primarily take the form of conserva-



24 SANDRA HALVERSON

tion of intellectual energy currently expended on unfruitful and irreconcilabledifferences In what follows however I shall outline the additional benefits of investing in the new type of car Thus far I have focused on showing how itwill get us from A to B The closing comments will suggest a couple of additional gains that car may do more than we currently need

5 Conclusions

In discussing the savings to be had by laying to rest the issue of internalcategory structure (natural professional non-professional translation) I leftuntouched one of the issues dealt with in Section 311 ie the taxonomictypological categorization of various types of translation Obviously thisdiscussion would also be resolved through the type of object concept that I am

proposing It is important to note however that the issue of taxonomicrelationships while related to internal category structure is also linked to thequestion of how one category relates to others The means used to structuresystems of related categories must be related in a principled way to those used

to structure a category internallyWithin classical theories of categorization necessarily equal members are

assigned to categories which are structured hierarchically through the additionof further specifying features This has been schematically illustrated for thetranslation category by Nord (1997 15f) However given the evidenceagainst classical categories and given the evidence of prototype effects in thetranslation category it seems that the structure which links translation tofor example transfer paraphrase etc must also be re-examined (seeSection 32) In short given a system of prototype categories it is not immedi

ately meaningful to say translation is a communicative process or translation is a semiotic process Within the classical system statements of this natureinvolving claims that X is a kind of Y implied that every member of Y shares(a set of) features and that if X is a subcategory then all of its members shareall features of Y plus one more Within a prototype system however statementsof category membership acquire a different status First of all categoryrelationships may be structured in a different way And secondly the type of relationship posited between members including subcategories must be accounted for by the underlying cognitive model




For the translation category I posit that the same cognitive modelencompasses a number of concepts (see Halverson 1999) This means that thevarious concepts which make use of or are derived from the same model arethus related in a very fundamental way which implies that the scope of our field may be considerably broadened At the same time however I believethat the status of interlingual translation within such a system of relatedconcepts remains central One indication of that centrality lies in the particular relationship of interlingual translation to the underlying cognitive modelAnother is the pervasive use of the translation concept as a source domain in

metaphors of understandingThus a prototype approach to category delineation also provides themeans by which the translation category may be related to numerous other conceptual categories It provides a fruitful means by which to tackle oneattempt at such a project ie Even-Zohars (1990) proposal that we consider translation and transfer as part of one and the same overall complex AsEven-Zohar points out translation theory has already transcended the boundaries of what Jakobson termed translation proper However as indicated bythe results of my prototype test the roles of a linguistic code and inter-

systematicity are not as straightforward as a system of classical categorieswould have it Indeed these results are in direct conflict with a classicaltaxonomic classification system Therefore if Even-Zohars project is to beaddressed which I believe it should be it will have to be done through a

prototype analysis20

In the Introduction as well as in previous papers I outlined what Iconsider to be serious problems in current attempts to deal with the concept of translation I suggested that our concept was not doing the work that wewant it to do In Section 2 we took a closer look at an alternative approach

and in Section 3 we tried that approach out In Section 4 we added up theimmediate costs and savings and finally we looked at some of the potential for additional performance For my money the new dealerships car wins handsdown Their model did well on the test drive we got from A to B with notrouble Furthermore the cost particularly considering the savings end of itseems quite reasonable And if in fact the model turns out to be able to doeven more than get us from A to B so much the better What remains then isfor the rest of the shoppers to make up their minds (Not that I am on acommission of course)



26 SANDRA HALVERSON

Authors addressSandra Halverson bull Department of English bull University of Bergen bull Sydnes-

plass 7 N-5007 BERGEN bull Norway bull e-mail sandrahalversonenguibno

Notes

1 The following is a much revised and expanded version of a paper presented under the titleConceptual Categories in Translation Studies Moving from Classical to Prototype atTransferre Necesse Est the Second International Conference on Current Trends inStudies of Translation and Interpreting Budapest 5-7 September 1996 Many thanks toProfessor Sonja Tirkkonen-Condit for positive comments The paper has also beenreworked to strengthen ties between it and a previous paper (Halverson 1997)

2 On the role of agreement on this issue in a research program see Lakatos (1970 132f)on positive and negative heuristics or as part of the disciplinary matrix of a scientificcommunity (Kuhn 1977 Chapter 12)

3 The term construal is perhaps the most widely used while enactment has thus far more limited use (see Varela et al 1991)

4 For a concise overview of the basic historical development and alternative approaches

see Varela et al (1991 part II) For a brief overview of the basic issues see Lakoff (1988) For an in-depth analysis of the philosophical issues see Lakoff (1987) Theapproach to be advocated here is built on newer Anglo-American philosophies thoughas pointed out by Varela et al (1991) on the vital issues these philosophies have much incommon with the Continental philosophies of Heidegger and Gadamer in particular

5 To my knowledge the first suggestion of this type was put forward by Toury as early as1980 His proposal was that we think of translation as a class of phenomena therelations between the members of which are those of family resemblance (1980 18original emphasis) Toury continues with the recognition that obviously such a discussion can hardly be said to conclude by a mere declaration that the relationships betweenthe members of the translation class be regarded as those of family resemblance (1980

18 original emphasis) It is at this point that my discussion in Section 3 begins A similar proposal was put forward by Tirkkonen-Condit (1997) with a rather different focus

6 The obviously instrumentalist appearance of this analogy is not meant to imply thatconcepts are mere theoretical tools As I hope to make clear in what follows conceptsare viewed as experientially grounded cognitive tools which is to say that they areassumed to bear a specific relationship to reality The distinction lies in the issue of thelink with reality Epistemological instrumentalism claims that concepts are tools whichhelp to describe reality without having any specific link to it The claim here is thatconcepts are experientially grounded ie they are linked to reality through the mediationof human experience in bodily interaction with the world As such concepts are based onembodied construals of repeated interactive patterns They are cognitive tools which

allow humans to manipulate and control their environment



CONCEP TUAL WORK AND THE TRAN SLATI ON CONCEP T 27

7 It may be argued that certain theoreticians seeming abandonment of the categorization

issue provides further evidence that current conceptualizations are not getting the jobdone Thus Pym (1997 77) reports of Vermeers wanting to drop the terms of translation and equivalence altogether As I have not had access to Vermeers manuscript itwould be presumptuous to suggest any motivation for such a proposal But from thisvantage point it looks an awful lot like a stranded traveler to me

8 For the purposes of this argument I do not intend to take a position on the ontologicalstatus of that mental construct There are various views on this issue As outlined byVarela et al (1991) these views may be roughly grouped as either cognitivist (computationalsymbolic) emergent (connectionist) or enactive To my mind Varela et alsarguments for an enactive account seem to be most compelling and these are in closestalignment with the account of categorization to follow Also Hofstadters (1985) argu

ments for an emergent (bottom-up) approach and against a top-down (symbolic) one aremost persuasive And Bechtel (1990) presents a convincing case for the integration of a

prototype approach to categorization with connectionist models of cognition

9 For those unfamiliar with the discussion a family resemblance category is one in whichmembership is not granted by possession of a set of necessary and sufficient conditionsand for which consequently no fixed boundaries may be drawn In such a categorymembers may be linked to each other through various chains of similarity or resem

blance In addition certain members of such a category may be viewed as better examples or more central members than others Wittgensteins example was the gamecategory in which members may be included on the basis of the people or artifactsinvolved the entertainment value the competitive nature of the game etc No one feature

is shared by all Dice were given as an example of a non-central member of the gamecategory (Wittgenstein 1953 66f)

10 Barsalou (1987) also provides references to specific studies For an additional review seeLakoff (1987 Part I)

11 For a helpful discussion of the argument and its application to formal semantics seeLakoff (1987 Chapter 15)

12 This point was first made by Chesterman (1993b) I elaborated on this problem in theoriginal presentation of this paper and in Halverson (1998)

13 For a discussion of objectivismessentialism and natural kinds and the implications of

Darwinism see Lakoff (1987 Chapter 12) and Dennett (1995 Chapter One)

14 For an overview of the research see eg Lakoff (1987) Aitchison (1994 Chapter 4)Gibbs (1994)

15 The investigation is described in a paper entitled Prototype Effects in the TranslationCategory presented at the Second International EST Congress Granada 23-26 Septem

ber 1998 forthcoming in the volume of proceedings

16 Actually the survey was conducted using Norwegian informants and as such the test wasnot of the translation concept but of the Norwegian concept of oversettelse This is of course irrelevant to the general argument as prototype structure is claimed to hold for alllanguages The relationship between the various languages concepts is a relevant issue

for the elaboration of the ICM in the next instance (see Halverson 1999)



28 SANDRA HALVERSON

17 Actually we do not share a philosophy of science either Chesterman argues for a realist(Popperian) philosophy while to me a pragmatic approach (eg Laudan 1981 1990) ismore compelling This is not the time or the place for (more of) that discussion however

18 Furthermore there is the issue of whether or not relativism is self-refuting To my mindin its most extreme forms it is (see Putnam 1981 Chapter 5 Laudan 1990 Chapter 6)

19 This is certainly not to imply that psychological factors have not been investigated Onthe contrary there is a considerable body of research into the psychological aspects of thetranslation process (see eg Kussmaul and Tirkkonen-Condit 1995 Fraser 1996 for surveys of the area) However the focus in the study of translation processes has beenvery different from my own Nevertheless a cognitive approach to translation willaddress some of the same issues as current translation processes research For example

Tirkkonen-Condit reports that professional translators demonstrate an awareness of theoverall gestalt of the emerging target text (personal communication) Such an awarenessmight be targeted for further study in a cognitive perspective

20 The same goes naturally for Pyms (1992 1995a) similar proposal regarding therelationship between translation and transfer ie that they must be addressed as part of the same overall enterprise However we come to the same conclusion for very differentreasons Pym is most definitely not concerned with cognitive arguments his is a muchmore materialist interest Thus while I would argue that transfer and translation are bestconsidered as part of the same complex on the basis of their cognitive status Pym argueson the basis of material concerns

References

Aitchison Jean 1994 Words in the Mind An Introduction to the Mental Lexicon OxfordBlackwell

Barsalou Lawrence 1987 The Instability of Graded Structure Implications for the Nature of Concepts Ulric Neisser ed Concepts and Conceptual Development Ecological and Intellectual Factors in Categorization Cambridge Cambridge UniversityPress 1987 101-140

Bartsch Renate 1987 Norms of Language London Longman

Bechtel William 1990 Connectionism and the Philosophy of Mind An OverviewWilliam Lycan ed Mind and Cognition A Reader Oxford Blackwell 1990 252-273

Berlin Brent 1968 Tzeltal Numeral Classifiers The Hague MoutonBerlin Brent and Paul Kay 1969 Basic Color Terms Their Universality and Evolution

Berkeley University of California PressBerlin Brent Dennis E Breedlove and Peter H Raven 1974 Principles of Tzeltal Plant

Classification New York AcademicBrown Roger 1958 How Shall a Thing Be Called Psychological Review 65 14-21Brown Roger 1965 Social Psychology New York Free PressChesterman Andrew 1993a Theory in Translation Theory The New Courant 1 69-79Chesterman Andrew 1993b From Is to Ought Laws Norms and Strategies in

Translation Studies Target 51 1-20




Coleman Linda and Paul Kay 1981 Prototype Semantics The English Word lie Language 571 26-44

Cruse DA 1990 Prototype Theory and Lexical Semantics Savas L Tsohatzidis ed Meanings and Prototypes Studies in Linguistic Categorization London and NewYork Routledge 1990 382-402

Dennett Daniel 1995 Darwins Dangerous Idea London PenguinDerrida Jacques 1985 Des Tour de Babel Joseph F Graham ed Difference in Transla

tion Ithaca-London Cornell University Press 1985 165-207Dobrovolskij Dimitri 1996 Idioms of Fear A Cognitive Approach Thelen and

Lewandowska-Tomaszcyk 1996 13-26Ekman Paul Wallace V Friesen and P Ellsworth 1972 Emotion in the Human Face

Elmsford NY Pergamon PressEven-Zohar Itamar 1990 Translation and Transfer Poetics Today 111 73-78 01981)Fraser Janet 1996 The Translator Investigated The Translator 21 65-79 Gibbs Raymond W Jr 1994 The Poetics of Mind Cambridge Cambridge University

PressHacking Ian ed 1981 Scientific Revolutions Oxford Oxford University PressHalverson Sandra 1997 The Concept of Equivalence in Translation Studies Much Ado

About Something Target 91 207-233Halverson Sandra 1998 Translation Studies and Representative Corpora Establishing

Links between Translation Corpora TheoreticalDescriptive Categories and a Conception of the Object Meta 434 494-514

Halverson Sandra 1999 Image Schemas Metaphoric Processes and the TranslateConcept Metaphor and Symbol 143 199-219

Halverson Sandra forthcoming Prototype Effects in the Translation Category Paper presented at the Second International Congress of the European Society for TranslationStudies Granada Spain 23-26 September 1998

Harris Brian 1977 The Importance of Natural Translation Working Papers on Bilin-gualism 12

Harris Brian 1992 Natural Translation A Reply to Hans P Krings Target 41 97-103 Hermans Theo 1991 Translational Norms and Correct Translations Kitty M van

Leuven-Zwart and Ton Naaijkens eds 1991 Translation Studies The State of the ArtProceedings of the First James S Holmes Symposium on Translation Studies

Amsterdam-Atlanta GA Rodopi 1991 155-169Hermans Theo 1997 Translation as Institution Mary Snell-Hornby Zusanna

Jettmarovaacute and Klaus Kindl eds Translation as Intercultural Communication Selected Papers from the EST Conference mdash Prague 1995 Amsterdam-Philadelphia JohnBenjamins 1997 3-20

Hofstadter Douglas 1985 Waking Up from the Boolean Dream or Subcognition asComputation Metamagical Themas New York Basic Books 1985 631-665

Jakobson Roman 1959 On Linguistic Aspects of Translation Reuben A Brower edOn Translation Cambridge Mass Harvard University Press 1959 232-239

Johnson Mark 1987 The Body in the Mind The Bodily Basis of Meaning Imagination

and Reason Chicago University of Chicago PressKoller Werner 1995 The Concept of Equivalence and the Object of Translation StudiesTarget 72 191-222



30 SANDRA HALVERSON

Krings Hans P 1986 Was in den Koumlpfen von Uumlbersetzern vorgeht Eine empirischeUntersuchung zur Struktur des Uumlbersetzungsprozesses an fortgeschrittenenFranzoumlzischlernern Tuumlbingen Narr

Kuhn Thomas 1970 The Structure of Scientific Revolutions Chicago Chicago UniversityPress

Kuhn Thomas 1977 The Essential Tension Chicago Chicago University PressKussmaul Paul and Sonja Tirkkonen-Condit 1995 Think-Aloud Protocol Analysis in

Translation Studies TTR VIII2 177-199Lakatos Imre 1970 Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programs

Lakatos and Musgrave 1970 91-196Lakatos Imre and Alan Musgrave 1970 Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge Cam

bridge Cambridge University PressLakoff George 1987 Women Fire and Dangerous Things Chicago University of Chicago Press

Lakoff George 1988 Cognitive Semantics Umberto Eco Marco Santambroglio andPatrizia Violi eds Meaning and Mental Representations Bloomington and Indianapolis Indiana University Press 1988 119-154

Lakoff George 1993 Modern Theory of Metaphor Andrew Ortony ed Metaphor and Thought Cambridge Cambridge University Press 1993 202-251

Laudan Larry 1981 A Problem-Solving Approach to Scientific Progress Hacking1981 144-155

Laudan Larry 1990 Science and Relativism Chicago University of Chicago Press

Mandelblit Nili 1996 The Cognitive View of Metaphor and Its Implications for Translation Theory Thelen and Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk 1996 483-495

Myers Dan 1994 The Chinese Morpheme gong Cognitive Linguistics 53 261-280 Nord Christiane 1997 Translating as a Purposeful Activity Manchester St JeromeThe Oxford English Dictionary 1989 Second Edition Oxford Clarendon PressPaulussen Hans 1997 Parallel Corpora for Cognitive Contrastive Analysis Thelen and

Lewandowska-Tomaszcayk 1997 501-509Putnam Hilary 1981 Reason Truth and History Cambridge Cambridge University

PressPym Anthony 1992 The Relations Between Translation and Material Text Transfer

Target 42 171-189

Pym Anthony 1995a Material Text Transfer as a Key to the Purposes of TranslationAlbrecht Neubert Gregory Shreve and Klaus Gommlich eds Basic Issues in Translation Studies Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference Kent Forum on Translation Studies Ohio The Institute for Applied Linguistics 1995 337-345

Pym Anthony 1995b European Translation Studies Une Science qui deacuterange and WhyEquivalence Neednt Be a Dirty Word TTR VIII 1 153-176

Pym Anthony 1997 Kollers Aumlquivalenz Revisited Review of Werner RollersEinfuumlhring in die Uumlbersetzungswissenschaft The Translator 31 71-79

Rey Georges 1983 Concepts and Stereotypes Cognition 15 237-262Rosch Eleanor 1973 Natural Categories Cognitive Psychology 4 328-350

Rosch Eleanor 1975aCognitive Reference Points Cognitive Psychology 7 532-547Rosch Eleanor 1975b Cognitive Representations of Semantic Categories Journal of




Experimental Psychology General 104 192-233Rosch Eleanor 1977 Human Categorization Studies in Cross-Cultural Psychology

London AcademicRosch Eleanor 1978 Principles of Categorization Eleanor Rosch and Barbara B Lloyd

eds Cognition and Categorization Hillsdale NJ Lawrence Erlbaum Associates1978 27-48

Rosch Eleanor 1981 Prototype Classification and Logical Classification The TwoSystems E Scholnick ed New Trends in Cognitive Representation Challenges toPiagets Theory Hillsdale NJ Lawrence Erlbaum Associates 1981 73-86

Shapere Dudley 1981 Meaning and Scientific Change Hacking 1981 28-59Sweetser Eve 1990 From Etymology to Pragmatics Cambridge Cambridge University

PressThelen Marcel and Barbara Lewandowska-Tomaszcyk eds 1996 Translation and Meaning Part 3 Maastricht Hogeschool Maastricht School of Translation and InterpretingMaastricht

Thelen Marcel and Barbara Lewandowska-Tomaszcayk eds 1997 Translation and Meaning Part 4 Maastricht Hogeschool Maastricht School of Translation and Inter preting

Tirkkonen-Condit Sonja 1997 Towards a Prototypical Definition of TranslationThelen and Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk 1997 89-96

Toury Gideon 1980 In Search of a Theory of Translation Tel Aviv The Porter Institutefor Poetics and Semiotics

Toury Gideon 1986 Translation A Cultural-Semiotic Perspective Thomas Sebeok edEnyclopedic Dictionary of Semiotics Berlin Mouton de Gruyter 2 1986 1111-1124

Toury Gideon 1995 Descriptive Translation Studies and Beyond Amsterdam-Philadel phia John Benjamins

Turner M 1991 Reading Minds The Study of English in the Age of Cognitive SciencePrinceton NJ Princeton University Press

Turner M 1996 The Literary Mind Oxford Oxford University PressVarela Francisco J Evan Thompson and Eleanor Rosch 1991 The Embodied Mind

Cambridge Mass MIT PressWierzbicka Anna 1990 Prototypes Save On the Uses and Abuses of Prototype in

Linguistics and Related Fields Savas L Tsohatzidis ed Meanings and Prototypes

Studies in Linguistic Categorization London Routledge 1990 347-367Wittgenstein Ludwig 1953 Philosophical Investigations Oxford Basil Blackwell



2 SANDRA HALVERSON

1997) I also argued that what evidence there is of a rapprochement hassuggested that scholars are falling down on the side of relativity which I believe to be the lesser of two evils though still problematic in the long runAs has been pointed out so many times before a complete surrender to thestrongest form of relativity leaves us quite unsatisfied in our efforts to accountfor or motivate the comparability of concepts and theories and the ultimateselection of one over the other (see Lakatos and Musgrave 1970 Putnam1981 Shapere 1981 Laudan 1990) In short concepts whose validity iscompletely relative to a particular constellation mdash either a real-world time-

space one or a theoretical one mdash do not provide an adequate basis for scientific generalizations one of the major pieces of work that we need our concepts to do is not getting done

The problem of the relativity of certain basic concepts in TranslationStudies has also been emphasized in earlier publications (Pym 1992 1995a1995b 1997 Koller 1995) The emphasis in several of these articles has beenon the inability of current translation concepts to do the necessary work in

providing means of categorizing instances of translation ie in delineatingthe object territory This job too is vital to the interests of an academic

discipline as agreement on this issue is paramount to the coherence of theenterprise2

Partly in response to the basic philosophical problem and partly inresponse to a growing body of empirical research mostly in the field of

psychology a number of scholars in what has come to be called cognitivescience have converged on new means of accounting for the complex relationship of the world and the human subject through a focus on the role of experience in structuring and forming human cognition The emphasis is noton an objective independent discretely structured world but on the world as

construed or enacted3 by the cognizing subject and on the role of human andconsequently shared experience in our structuring of the world In my viewthe philosophical foundations of some parts of cognitive science and certainof the theoretical and empirical programs which build on these foundations

provide us with the means of dealing with our current situationThe aim of this paper is not to provide a detailed study of the basic tenets

of modern cognitive science4 The aim is to demonstrate how several of themost fundamental philosophical theoretical and empirical components of current cognitive science are able to resolve the most pressing conceptualdifficulties of the field of Translation Studies More specifically I shall argue














4 SANDRA HALVERSON





















bers









6 SANDRA HALVERSON

































8 SANDRA HALVERSON

























10 SANDRA HALVERSON






















12 SANDRA HALVERSON





















14 SANDRA HALVERSON

























16 SANDRA HALVERSON

















41 Costs






18 SANDRA HALVERSON










(Laudan 1990 166)
















20 SANDRA HALVERSON





























22 SANDRA HALVERSON

























24 SANDRA HALVERSON


5 Conclusions

















26 SANDRA HALVERSON



Notes

































28 SANDRA HALVERSON






References


































30 SANDRA HALVERSON















Target 42 171-189






































4 SANDRA HALVERSON





















bers









6 SANDRA HALVERSON

































8 SANDRA HALVERSON

























10 SANDRA HALVERSON






















12 SANDRA HALVERSON





















14 SANDRA HALVERSON

























16 SANDRA HALVERSON

















41 Costs






18 SANDRA HALVERSON










(Laudan 1990 166)
















20 SANDRA HALVERSON





























22 SANDRA HALVERSON

























24 SANDRA HALVERSON


5 Conclusions

















26 SANDRA HALVERSON



Notes

































28 SANDRA HALVERSON






References


































30 SANDRA HALVERSON















Target 42 171-189

































bers









6 SANDRA HALVERSON

































8 SANDRA HALVERSON

























10 SANDRA HALVERSON






















12 SANDRA HALVERSON





















14 SANDRA HALVERSON

























16 SANDRA HALVERSON

















41 Costs






18 SANDRA HALVERSON










(Laudan 1990 166)
















20 SANDRA HALVERSON





























22 SANDRA HALVERSON

























24 SANDRA HALVERSON


5 Conclusions

















26 SANDRA HALVERSON



Notes

































28 SANDRA HALVERSON






References


































30 SANDRA HALVERSON















Target 42 171-189



























6 SANDRA HALVERSON

































8 SANDRA HALVERSON

























10 SANDRA HALVERSON






















12 SANDRA HALVERSON





















14 SANDRA HALVERSON

























16 SANDRA HALVERSON

















41 Costs






18 SANDRA HALVERSON










(Laudan 1990 166)
















20 SANDRA HALVERSON





























22 SANDRA HALVERSON

























24 SANDRA HALVERSON


5 Conclusions

















26 SANDRA HALVERSON



Notes

































28 SANDRA HALVERSON






References


































30 SANDRA HALVERSON















Target 42 171-189






































8 SANDRA HALVERSON

























10 SANDRA HALVERSON






















12 SANDRA HALVERSON





















14 SANDRA HALVERSON

























16 SANDRA HALVERSON

















41 Costs






18 SANDRA HALVERSON










(Laudan 1990 166)
















20 SANDRA HALVERSON





























22 SANDRA HALVERSON

























24 SANDRA HALVERSON


5 Conclusions

















26 SANDRA HALVERSON



Notes

































28 SANDRA HALVERSON






References


































30 SANDRA HALVERSON















Target 42 171-189








































10 SANDRA HALVERSON






















12 SANDRA HALVERSON





















14 SANDRA HALVERSON

























16 SANDRA HALVERSON

















41 Costs






18 SANDRA HALVERSON










(Laudan 1990 166)
















20 SANDRA HALVERSON





























22 SANDRA HALVERSON

























24 SANDRA HALVERSON


5 Conclusions

















26 SANDRA HALVERSON



Notes

































28 SANDRA HALVERSON






References


































30 SANDRA HALVERSON















Target 42 171-189



































12 SANDRA HALVERSON





















14 SANDRA HALVERSON

























16 SANDRA HALVERSON

















41 Costs






18 SANDRA HALVERSON










(Laudan 1990 166)
















20 SANDRA HALVERSON





























22 SANDRA HALVERSON

























24 SANDRA HALVERSON


5 Conclusions

















26 SANDRA HALVERSON



Notes

































28 SANDRA HALVERSON






References


































30 SANDRA HALVERSON















Target 42 171-189





































14 SANDRA HALVERSON

























16 SANDRA HALVERSON

















41 Costs






18 SANDRA HALVERSON










(Laudan 1990 166)
















20 SANDRA HALVERSON





























22 SANDRA HALVERSON

























24 SANDRA HALVERSON


5 Conclusions

















26 SANDRA HALVERSON



Notes

































28 SANDRA HALVERSON






References


































30 SANDRA HALVERSON















Target 42 171-189






































16 SANDRA HALVERSON

















41 Costs






18 SANDRA HALVERSON










(Laudan 1990 166)
















20 SANDRA HALVERSON





























22 SANDRA HALVERSON

























24 SANDRA HALVERSON


5 Conclusions

















26 SANDRA HALVERSON



Notes

































28 SANDRA HALVERSON






References


































30 SANDRA HALVERSON















Target 42 171-189

































41 Costs






18 SANDRA HALVERSON










(Laudan 1990 166)
















20 SANDRA HALVERSON





























22 SANDRA HALVERSON

























24 SANDRA HALVERSON


5 Conclusions

















26 SANDRA HALVERSON



Notes

































28 SANDRA HALVERSON






References


































30 SANDRA HALVERSON















Target 42 171-189



























18 SANDRA HALVERSON










(Laudan 1990 166)
















20 SANDRA HALVERSON





























22 SANDRA HALVERSON

























24 SANDRA HALVERSON


5 Conclusions

















26 SANDRA HALVERSON



Notes

































28 SANDRA HALVERSON






References


































30 SANDRA HALVERSON















Target 42 171-189








































20 SANDRA HALVERSON





























22 SANDRA HALVERSON

























24 SANDRA HALVERSON


5 Conclusions

















26 SANDRA HALVERSON



Notes

































28 SANDRA HALVERSON






References


































30 SANDRA HALVERSON















Target 42 171-189











































22 SANDRA HALVERSON

























24 SANDRA HALVERSON


5 Conclusions

















26 SANDRA HALVERSON



Notes

































28 SANDRA HALVERSON






References


































30 SANDRA HALVERSON















Target 42 171-189






































24 SANDRA HALVERSON


5 Conclusions

















26 SANDRA HALVERSON



Notes

































28 SANDRA HALVERSON






References


































30 SANDRA HALVERSON















Target 42 171-189




































26 SANDRA HALVERSON



Notes

































28 SANDRA HALVERSON






References


































30 SANDRA HALVERSON















Target 42 171-189
















































28 SANDRA HALVERSON






References


































30 SANDRA HALVERSON















Target 42 171-189


















































30 SANDRA HALVERSON















Target 42 171-189

























conceptual work and the `translation' concept

Documents