In Peter Schmitt, Eberhard Fleischmann, and Gert Wotjak (eds.), Paradigmenwechsel in der Translation: Festschrift für Albrecht Neubert. Tübingen: Stauffenberg, 2000, 1-14.

The Dialectical Utopia of Theory and Practice in Translation

Robert de Beaugrande

United Arab Emirates University, Al Ain

1. ‘Theory and practice’ in two utopias

All human activities represent some interaction between theory and practice. Humans are quintessential ‘theory-builders’ in developing ideas, plans, and methods to organise their practices. The relation between theory and practice should by nature be dialectical, where the two sides interact and guide each other as they co-evolve in strategic contact. The theory should be ‘practice-driven’, whilst the practices should be ‘theory-driven’.

But this dialectic may not be sustained, due to severe problems. In some domains, practices are not recognised to be ‘theory-driven’ because the theory is not explicitly acknowledged or described. The practices may be devalued, as when the term ‘unskilled labour’ is used to justify hard work getting low respect and low wages.

In other domains, theory is recognised but diverges from practice. Either theory runs ahead of practice when people are so busy planning their future achievements as to keep putting them off. Then the dialectic gets delayed or postponed, and must wait to be reconciled at some later stage. Or else theory runs away from practice when people claim to have already achieved what they have not and don’t intend to. Then the dialectic gets disconnected by a gap between the operational theory the society actually practices such as gross human inequality, versus the official theory the society claims to practice such as full human equality.

These problems can be especially virulent in a society where ‘specialisation’ proliferates theoretical knowledge and restricts access. Then the production of theories increasingly becomes an end in itself, unconstrained by the demands for successful guidance of practice. Quite plausibly, many proud ‘achievements of the modern age’ such as ‘human equality’ are indeed far more theoretical than practical.

Some people might rationalise this imbalance by arguing that a full convergence of theory and practice in human equality would be a state of utopia. Our response should be to point out a key decision between ‘two utopias’. The dialectical utopia urges us to keep on adapting theory and practice in order to reconcile them better than we have so far, inspired by the unlimited space for further progress. The dismissive utopia urges us to abjure the reconciliation as a sentimental dream whose and impossibility is just a ‘real fact of life’ or a ‘law of nature’.

Human equality, together with such closely related conceptions as democracy and socialism, present the most telling examples for the utopian challenges of reconciling theory and practice. But in more subtle ways, human cognition, communication, and interaction all have utopian dimensions in never attaining any finality or completeness. In each of these three domains, our ‘theories’ of what we know, say, or do, are not fully implemented in our ‘practices’; we never know or understand perfectly ourselves, nor bring others to do so. We are content with approximations at widely varying degrees of quality.

Yet our modern theories of knowledge and meaning have routinely discounted or eclipsed these utopias. We prefer to imagine that knowledge and meaning will be definitively explained by breaking them down into ‘theoretical categories’ and converting them into a static ‘formal representation’ wherein the larger dynamic factors such as cultural contexts can be ‘abstracted away’.

In own my view, significant progress in either science or society can be expected only if we can sustain an authentically dialectical view of human cognition, communication, and interaction as modes of theory and practice with utopian dimensions (Beaugrande 1997a). We must profoundly deepen our awareness of the ‘theoreticalness’ of human practices, and, in parallel, of the urgency for developing more ‘practical’ theories. In a rapidly evolving global situation where our conventional practices are no longer ecologically sustainable, we must work out a whole generation of theories that do not merely ‘theorise’ conventional practices after the fact but project and support new practices with a genuinely ecological orientation.

2. ‘Theory and practice’ in early translation

Over the years, the collocation ‘theory and practice’ has become familiar in the titles of volumes on translation. Yet the reconciliation of theory and practice remains a problematic and protracted process, and has by no means been fully achieved even now. This situation reflects the more general problems of sustaining the dialectic outlined in section 1.

During most of recorded history — and perhaps even more of unrecorded history — translation has been an explicitly practical transaction. Since ancient times, its practices have been shaped by influential institutions such as diplomacy and commerce, who faced the co-existence of diverse linguistic and cultural groups. Besides, translating usually measures and tests its practices by their short-term or long-term outcomes.

In return, the ‘theoreticalness’ of translation aroused only occasional interest during most of that time, whilst its theories either remained largely implicit or else merely ‘theorised’ conventional practices after the fact. The ‘theory’ of literal translating was sustained by a naïve formalism holding that the meaning of a word in one language is a straightforward matter, and therefore so is its transposition to a corresponding word in another language. The translator who adopts more complex and flexible practices is vulnerable to charges of infidelity, especially for sacred texts representing the ‘word of God’. Such was the predicament which elicited the incisive theoretical meditations of St. Jerome and Martin Luther.

In direct contrast, the theory of free translating was sustained by a naïve functionalism adapting to the practical demands of popular culture since the early modern period (roughly from the late 15^th century onward). Whilst the several European idioms were displacing Latin and Greek as the international languages of authority, translating became the practical expediency for contacting the cultures of other nations and especially for ‘rediscovering the ancients’. Moreover, printing presses were dramatically expanding and transforming the audience of a readership eager for exotic novelty and fashionable entertainment.

At this stage, the practising translator was often an aspiring literary artist — poet, playwright, raconteur, essayist, or all of these at once. The artist owed his sources no special fidelity, and may not even have acknowledged them. The audience — and often enough, modern scholars and literary historians too — may not have been aware whether the text they enjoyed was a translation or not. Moreover, they regarded foreign cultures as remotely mythical and made no demands for cultural authenticity.

If ‘literal translating’ vastly overrated the supremacy of the word and word-meaning across all languages, ‘free translating’ vastly overrated the primacy of the translator’s own culture, which was typically a ‘cultivated’ sub-culture inside the community of a single language. Carried to their logical conclusion, both of these theories would radically deconstruct the practices of translation: by producing either a horrendously pedantic and inept ‘literalness’ with ungovernably few options, or else a high-flying and overindulgent ‘freedom’ with ungovernably many options.

3. ‘Theory and practice’ in modern linguistics

On the whole, modern linguistics has indisputably been devoted to theory far more than to practice. Some highly influential theoreticians have embarked on projects for constructing a ‘linguistic theory’ that converts the whole concept of ‘language’ from a practical resource in daily use over into a properly ‘theoretical’ object’ amenable to a staid and formal mode of ‘scientific investigation’. They failed to consider the imminent prospect that this conversion might obliterate some essential features or factors of ‘language’ to the point where the ensuing object exists nowhere else except in ‘linguistic theory’.

In my own analyses of the discourse of linguists (e.g., Beaugrande 1991), I have encountered much evidence of a anti-dialectical striving to envision language as a theory of the potential (called ‘langue’ by Saussure, ‘system’ by Hjelmslev, ‘competence’ by Chomsky, etc.) independent of the practices of the actual (called parole’, ‘process’, ‘performance’, etc.). This striving encouraged a premature exclusion of the actual from scientific investigation, e.g., by brandishing a ‘heterogeneous mass of speech facts’ which ‘cannot be classified among human phenomena’ (Saussure 1966 [1916]:14f); or by castigating ‘actual speech’ for being ‘deficient from the point of view of the theory’ (Chomsky 1965:4, 201). For failing to reflect the ideal order linguistics was seeking in ‘language’, ‘actual speech’ was misrepresented as real disorder.

All too predictably, this austere mode of theorising has been emblematically formalist (Beaugrande 1997b, 1997c). The forms seem to be precisely the resources of language which are most constant and consistent, and hence the most suitable for being ‘theorised’ independently of the actual practices of speakers. In return, formalist linguistics has been compelled to be narrowly selective in addressing only some ‘aspects’ of language that seem amenable to formalisation, and ‘abstracting away’ from the rest.

Two major methods of theoretical formalisation can be readily distinguished. ‘Structural linguistics’ has theorised ‘language’ by breaking it down into a set of levels, each having its own ‘system’ of formally defined units whose names characteristically end in ‘-eme’. In precise terms, these ‘-emes’ are theoretical units corresponding to practical units: phonemes correspond to sounds, graphemes to letters, morphemes to word-pieces, lexemes to words, syntagmemes to phrases or sentences, and so on. But in many analyses and descriptions, I have noticed these ‘-emes’ getting simply equated with the practical units. This equation fosters an equivocation: it papers over the problems inherent in the practices of linguists for providing ‘theoretical descriptions’ of language data which must after all be documented in the practices of a community of speakers. The equivocation was not overly debilitating for phonology and morphology, since most phonemes and morphemes nicely match up to ‘minimal units’ in samples of authentic spoken data. But the same equivocation can have a virulent impact upon syntax and semantics, where the match with data is far less clear.

‘Generative linguistics’, in its turn, has theorised ‘language’ by wholly disconnecting the theoretical side of language and turning it back upon itself in intricate convolutions. Henceforth, a ‘linguistic theory’ would be a free-standing exercise in theorising about ‘language’ as if language itself were a pure theory — indeed, a theory about itself. The object of ‘investigation’ in theoretical linguistics was no longer language in any established sense but the possibility of ‘theories of language’ (see Beaugrande 1998a for discussion). To be more precise, the term ‘theory’ would have to be replaced by ‘meta-theory’ (theory of theory), or ‘meta-meta-theory’, ‘meta-meta-meta-theory’, and so forth. But such terms are cumbersome and highlight the remoteness and obscurity of the enterprise.

At this stage, the relation between theoretical units and practical units became a non-issue. A ‘linguistic description’ is not an account of the units found in a set of practical data. Instead, it is a convoluted interchange among theoretical constructions like ‘deep structure’, ‘logical form’, ‘semantic representation’, or ‘linguistic universals’. Since these constructions were defined in terms of each other and hence conveniently circular, they required no confirmation from practical data. Nor was any practical procedure set down for testing a ‘linguistic theory’ as a whole. The theory just defined ‘language’ in such as way as to make it correspond to the theory. The circularity was strategically completed by declaring ‘linguistic theory’ to be ‘concerned’ with the ‘perfect knowledge’ of the ‘ideal speaker-hearer’ (Chomsky 1965:3), who can never be found, let alone asked for confirmation.

Formalist linguistics has thus excelled as the very paradigm of an anti-dialectical enterprise wherein the production of theories has indeed become an end in itself (cf. section 1). The degrees of specialisation have been steeply increased until most of the ‘theories’ are accessible only to their own advocates, and are thoroughly insulated against demands for practical applications (Beaugrande 1997b, 1998a, 1998b).

4. ‘Translation theory’ in the purview of linguistics

The highly compressed sketch in section 3 of theory and practice within linguistics should at least suffice to indicate why such a science of language might foster some overly theoretical views of translation. In a ‘structural’ view, translation could be theorised as an operation of interchanging ‘linguistic units’. Here, the major problem would be that these units were defined by their respective places within a single system, e.g., the phonemes within the ‘sound system’ of English. How the units might or might not correspond in practice across two quite different systems in two languages was a question this approach was not well-designed to address. We might just conclude that the two are acutely incompatible, so that translation would constitute another realm of real disorder comparable to Saussure’s ‘heterogeneous mass of speech facts’ cited above.

In a ‘generative’ view, translation could be theorised as an operation of ‘generating’ the ‘surface structure’ in two languages from a shared ‘universal deep structure’. Here, the major problem would be that no remotely complete and practical set of procedures or ‘rules’ has even been expounded for actually navigating between ‘deep’ and ‘surface’ just within a single language. We only have episodic demonstrations with mere handfuls of ‘rules’ getting applied to a few sentences, and this limit is no mere accident. Like everything else in the ‘generative’ approach, the rules are purely theoretical, and can only substitute one type of theoretical construction for another, as noted in section 3. Many of the actual operations a real speaker performs are of a more practical nature and are not governed by ‘rules’ in any strict sense.

The same problem would be far more acute for two languages. Because the actual situation of translating is so often special or even unique, translators could afford to ‘abstract away’ from practical matters and depend upon ‘formal rules’ even less than real speakers could. Moreover, what an original text and its translation must share is by no means limited to some theoretical ‘deep structure’ or ‘logical form’. They must share an eminently practical communicative effectiveness and cultural appropriateness.

The emergence of ‘translation theory’ as a field within the purview of linguistics has accordingly carried some flavour of paradox. The latter might be detected in two early standard works in the field, those contributed by John C. Catford (1965) and Georges Mounin (1963). Catford loyally accepted the ‘structural’ definition of a language being a set of levels. He worked through each ‘level’ to the extremes where translation in the ordinary sense breaks down, as it must for phonemes and graphemes. Ironically, Catford’s Linguistic Theory of Translation reads like a treatise with the involuntary lesson that practical translation is not compatible with ‘linguistic theory’.

That lesson is more deliberate, if not trenchant, in Mounin’s treatise. Far from magisterially announcing a ‘linguistic theory of translation’, his title announced the ‘theoretical problems’. He frankly recognised the paradox of taking a ‘translation theory’ centred upon forms to the extent that ‘structural linguistics’ was, and trying to apply it to translation practice centred on communicative functions. But he did not follow through by working out the fundamental reorganisation of ‘linguistic theory’ needed to resolve the ‘theoretical problems’ he perceived.

In hindsight, we may find it somewhat facile to regard these two treatises as indicators of a ‘scientific crisis’ when ‘structural linguistics’ attempted to bring translation into the purview of its ‘theory’. As I have pointed out, the problematic relation between theoretical units (e.g. morphemes) and practical units (e.g. words) had been papered over by equating them in the practices of analysis and description. You break down a practical data sample into steadily smaller ‘immediate constituents’ until you reach the smallest units, and these are equated with the theoretical units. But the question of how these two types units actually correspond has been resolved really effectively only in the structural description of language sounds, where the theoretical science of phonics or phonology is strategically co-ordinated with the practical science of phonetics.

A different and even more virulent ‘scientific crisis’ would be expected if ‘generative linguistics’ attempted to bring translation into the purview of its ‘theory’. The reason should be plain by now: this mode of ‘theory’ was programmatically dissociated from practice, including the manipulation of practical units. So we should not be at all surprised to be told that ‘there is little reason to suppose that reasonable procedures for translating between languages are in general possible’ (Chomsky 1965: 30, 202), where ‘reasonable’ must mean: within the purview of generative linguistics.

By insisting so heavily upon theory over practice, linguistics had been entrained in the self-conscious notion that it could address issues and concepts only when these had been situated and stated within an officially recognised theory. Everything else could be at best ‘pre-theoretical’ (cf. Carnap 1956; Bar-Hillel 1964), and translation would strongly course tend to fall into this uneasy category. We might be more astute to assess how far linguistic theory in general and linguistic theory of translation in particular suffer from being acutely ‘pre-practical’.

5. The advent of text and discourse

In my own view, the crucial impulse for change in both ‘linguistic theory’ and ‘translation theory’ came with the admission of text and discourse as objects of analysis and description. The sentence had long been almost universally proclaimed the most important and longest unit of investigation. To occupy so grand a role, the sentence was treated as both a theoretical and a practical unit far more strenuously than were the phoneme or the morpheme (Beaugrande 1999). However, this very role would eventually deconstruct itself when the continuing study of the sentence led to the recognition of issues and problems reaching well beyond the sentence boundary, such as the ‘co-reference’ of pronouns and the organisation of ‘topics’ or ‘themes’.

Not surprisingly, this impulse was slow and gradual at the beginning. Many linguists planned to retain the theoretical apparatus devised for the description of sentences with only minor additions and modifications. Either the text would be simply a ‘larger unit above the sentence’; or it would be a ‘sequence of sentences’.

But this plan was destined to miscarry, and for a reason which seems plain enough in retrospect. The text is not a theoretical unit reflecting the ideal order of ‘langue’ or ‘competence’ and constituted by the established theoretical units of linguistics, such as phonemes and sentences. Yet neither is the text a merely practical unit of ‘parole’ or ‘performance’, which were implied to reflect massive disorder, as noted in section 3. Instead, the text is a dialectical unit constituted by the interaction of theory and practice — of ‘langue’ and ‘parole’, or of ‘competence’ and ‘performance’, or however this division might be named. So the text was destined to disrupt the convenient equivocal practice of treating the same entity, especially the ‘sentence’, now as a theoretical unit and now as a practical unit, as if the distinction were of no interest or significance.

The dialectical nature of the text was gradually acknowledged, and the pressure to do so was nowhere more compelling than in studies of the theory and practice of translation (e.g. Beaugrande 1978; Neubert 1982, 1985). Indeed, Neubert’s work suggests translation studies have given a reciprocally dialectical impulse to text linguistics, notably by insisting upon the centrality of text and discourse (see also Hartmann 1980; Nord 1988; Hatim/Mason 1990; Hatim 1997, 1999: Beaugrande/Abu Ghazaleh 1999).

Predictably, however, some linguists felt disquieted as long as the ‘text’ itself had not been strictly defined in a ‘linguistic theory’, and would thus count as ‘pre-theoretical’ in the sense cited above. But I would counter that the text is not just a ‘theoretical unit’ and would thus be necessarily reduced or rarified if we defined it as such. Besides, fixating the text inside a theory could well be counter-productive in prematurely formalising the text before the wider issues had been adequately explained (e.g. Ballmer 1975). Moreover, translation is a domain where the particular value of formalising is not readily evident in any case. Many modes of formalisation I have seen might be aptly described as a particularly obscure and sparse practices of translating language data into some alternative data; the natural and integrative complexity of real language gets replaced by the artificial and disintegrative complexity of ideal language (Beaugrande 1997a, 1998a).

A more productive procedure might be to explore what modes or degrees of formality deserve consideration for theory and practice. We can seek to restore the natural dialectic wherein the theory is ‘practice-driven’, whilst the practice is ‘theory-driven’ (section 1). In translation, one promising candidate would be the formal intermediary level known as ‘morphological’ or ‘piece-by-piece’ translation. This mode of translation assists theory by showing how the organisation of theoretical units like morphemes is similar or different in the source language and the target language; and assists practice by indicating which categories are routinely expressed or marked in the one or the other.

We can readily appreciate this dual assistance when the languages are as distinct as Arabic and English. A few samples should easily clarify this point:1

[1] mumkin titkallim shuwyya shuwyya min fadlak?

possible you-speak little little out-of friendliness-yours-masculine

‘Could you speak more slowly, please?’

[2] law samaHt, ya rayyis, feen al-funduq bitaaʔak?

if permit-you oh president where the-hotel possession-yours-masculine

‘If you please, my good man, where is your hotel?’

[3] ana mafahimsh ʕashan mabatkallimsh ʕarabi!

I neg-I-understanding-neg because neg-I-speak-neg Arabic

‘I don’t understand because I don’t speak Arabic!’

[4] ana mesh saayiHa yaʕni maʕandiish filuus ketiir!

I neg tourist-female it-means neg-with-me-neg fils many

‘I am not a tourist, which means I don’t have much money!’

Whereas the grammar of English uses Modal Verbs like ‘can’ and ‘could’ plus Infinitive, the grammar of Egyptian Arabic uses the general Modifier ‘mumkin’ (‘possible’) plus the Finite Verb (e.g. ‘titkallim’, ‘you speak’). Whereas English ‘please’ originated from shortening the Conditional Clause ‘if you please’, Arabic ‘min fadlak’ comes from a Prepositional Phrase in which the Noun requires an Ending to mark Person and Gender. Or, Arabic can express ‘please’ more politely with its own Conditional Clause ‘law samaHt’ (‘if you permit’).

Whereas English grammar relies on Possessive Pronouns like ‘yours’, Arabic has a category of Pronoun Endings placed on the end of the word for the thing possessed, as in ‘fadlak’. This can even be placed on the end of the Noun ‘bitaʔ’ meaning ‘possession’, as bitaaʔak’, which then goes after the Noun for the thing possessed, as in ‘al-funduq bitaaʔak’ (‘hotel your’).

Among the most curious specialties of the grammar of Egyptian Arabic are the uses of the Negative Particle (indicated as neg) ‘mesh’. It can stand alone in a denial where no Verb is needed for ‘be’ in the Present Tense, as in ‘ana mesh saayiHa’ (‘I not tourist’) [4]. Or, its initial and final Consonants can go at the start and the end of a word that may be a Verb Participle like ‘fahim’ (‘understanding’) [3], a Finite Verb like ‘batkallim’ [3] (‘I speak’, Present Tense), or even a Preposition plus Object like ‘aʔandi’ (‘with-me’) [4]. Or again, it can stay whole and go before, as in ‘ana mesh fahim’.

All this information is made explicit only if we assign some meaning to every morpheme. We are not implying that these meanings represent the understanding of some ‘ideal speaker-hearer’ or even some ordinary speaker of Egyptian Arabic. But these meanings do assist translators in keeping records for the purposes of our own theory and practice. The use of uninflected Verb Participles where English would require a Finite Verb is also found for other highly common Verbs besides ‘fahim’, such as ‘gay’ (‘coming’), ‘ʔaayil’ (‘saying’), and ‘saakin’ (‘residing’). The same Pronoun Endings which can show Possession at the end of a Noun can supply the role of Object Pronoun at the end of a Verb, both as Direct Object as in ‘ashuuftak’ (‘I see you’) and as Indirect Object as in ‘aktibak gawaab’ (‘I write you a letter’). In all these and similar cases, the morphological translation helps us to recognise some formal consistencies in Arabic grammar that are not at all evident or expected from introspection based on English grammar.

A different mode of information relates to the respective cultures. The respectful use of ‘rayyis’ for men who are certainly not ‘president’ of anything (such as a hotel porter) might well amaze a speaker of English. Easier to grasp would be expressing ‘money’ by means of ‘filuus’, which comes from the Plural of ‘fils’, a small coin used in a number of Arab countries. Purists have condemned it as slang or vulgar, but it has spread and gained currency, with some changes in its Vowels (e.g., ‘fuluus’, ‘fluus’), far beyond the borders of Egypt.

On the other hand, the translation of formal units may be quite uninformative in respect to some modes of cultural knowledge. In ordinary life, the routine Arabic greeting ‘SabaaH al-cheir’ (‘morning the-goodness’) is briskly answered by ‘SabaaH al-nuur’ (‘morning the-radiance’). More flowery greetings are not uncommon either, such as ‘SabaaH al-ward’ (‘morning the-rose’) and ‘SabaaH al-full’ (‘morning the-jasmine’). When I decided to test the pattern with parallel variations, my choice of ‘SabaaH al-mishmish’ (‘morning the-apricot’) to greet an officer of Secretary General of my university proved most unfortunate. The apricot tree, I later learned, is a cultural symbol of slowness and lateness, ostensibly because it grows so gradually. Hence, my greeting implied that the person I met was tardy, which was painfully apt for an official who had delayed my residence visa for so many weeks I lost count.

A local greeting with a brighter turn would be [5]; you can use it for friends you have not seen for a long time, presumably because rainfall comes so seldom to this part of Arabia and is so welcome. Should I be in a bad mood, I was recommended to greet with [6].2

[5] halla bil tash wal rash!

hello with-the fragrance and-the rainfall

[6] SabaaH al-zift!

morning the-pitch/the-tar

Sample [6] would correspond to ‘bad morning!’ in English, but such would be culturally vacuous. Tone of voice would have to be enlisted for a comparably grouchy effect.

Recent work on translation has provided welcome acknowledgements of the crucial role of culture (e.g. Nida/Reyburn 1981; House/Blum-Kulka 1986; Santoyo 1989; Bassnett/Lefevere 1990; Beaugrande/Shunnaq/Heliel 1994; Hatim 1997). But we shall continue to encounter issues to be accounted for in order to sustain a natural dialectic along the lines I have described.

A striking example was recently presented by Basil Hatim (1999) from two tourist guides for ‘Arabia’s Wildlife Centre’ just opened in the Emirate of Sharjah. Version [7a] is from the English guide handed to visitor, whereas version [7b] is from the same zoo’s Arabic guide, accompanied here by a morphological translation. Finally, Version [7c] is my idiomatic back-translation from the Arabic [7b].3

[7a] The reptile house has exhibits of many of the Arabian snakes and lizards. […] A huge aviary, with a waterfall cascading down rocks into a small lake and river shows several species of local songbirds. […] A long corridor leads back to the entrance past enclosures containing baboons.

[7a] yabdaʔu az-Zaaʔir jawlatahu bi-iktishaafi qism

he-begin the-visitor tour-his by-discovering department

az-zawaaHifi alladhi yaHtawii ʕala al-ʕadiid min al-afaaʕi

the-reptiles which it-contain upon the-variety of the-snakes

al-ʕarabiyya was-saHaali. thumma yutabiʕu ar-riHla

the-Arabian and-the-lizards then he-continue the-journey

li-yajida nafsahu Dimna qafaSin haaʔil tanHadiru fiihi

to-he-find self-his within aviary huge. they-cascade in-it

shallaalaat al-maaʔ ʕala al-Sukhuur wa yaHtawi haadha

falls the-water on the-rocks. and it-contains this

al-makaan al-fasiiH ʕalaa anwaaʕa mukhtalifa min al-Tuyuur

the-place the-spacious on varieties different of the-birds

al-mugharrida wa yutaabiʕu az-Zaaʔir riHlatahu ʕibra

the-singing. and he-continue the-visitor journey-his through

mamarin Tawiil yaSilu bihi ilaa Haythu tuujadu al-quruud.

corridor long it-take him to where exist-they the-baboons

[7c] ‘The visitor begins his tour by discovering the reptile department, which contains a variety of Arabian snakes and lizards. Then he continues the journey to find himself within a huge aviary, where waterfalls cascade on the rocks. This spacious place contains different varieties of songbirds. The visitor continues his journey through a long corridor, which takes him to where there are baboons.’

As Hatim emphasised, the English guide objectifies the zoo’s contents as if these existed quite independently of any visitor, who is not even mentioned. Instead, the displays and rooms are expressed as Actors of Actions like ‘having exhibits’, ‘containing species’, and ‘leading back’; the last of these is most obstinate in ignoring the visitor, who deserves to be at least the Object of the Verb. In direct contrast, the Arabic guide allots great prominence to ‘the visitor’ (‘az-Zaaʔir’), who performs Actions like ‘beginning his tour’, ‘discovering the reptile department’, and ‘continuing his journey’. The overall effect of the two guides differs dramatically. In English, the objects remain static and fixed; in Arabic the visitor is dynamic and keeps moving around.

This cultural contrast in spatial orientation, as adduced by Hatim, may be one issue pointing us toward a much richer assessment of culture within the theory and practice of translation. The translator hired by the Sharjah Zoo was happily sensitive to cultural differences relating to discourse genres like tour guides and made an appropriate rather than a ‘literal’ translation. But this mode and degree of sensitivity is just beginning to attain the importance it merits both in the theories of how translation is achieved and in the practices of training future translators.

6. Back to utopia

That translation is a utopian enterprise was eloquently shown long ago by Ortega y Gasset (1937). I have greatly expanded upon his conceptions to argue that the utopian dimensions of human communication have been unproductively excluded in our established conceptions of language. For this very reason, no foundations were readily available in the theories of language and linguistics for developing the utopian dimensions that get vastly amplified and multiplied by translation. If communication with one language never achieves finality or perfection, how much less so does communication across languages. Yet in a dialectical utopia, this factor projects a grand opportunity for progress in reconciling theory with practice in translation, which may well be the most complex domain in all of human cognition, communication, and interaction.

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1 In the transcription, the aspirated consonants can be safely written in upper case, since capitalisation is not used in Arabic writing. The hamza (unvoiced glottal stop) and the ayn (voiced glottal stop) are represented as ʔ and ʕ, respectively.

2 My students at the United Arab Emirates University were most informative about these and similar greetings.

3 I am deeply grateful to Prof. Hatim, currently at the American University of Sharjah, for the data, as well as to Hassan Rachidi and Sami Anwar, both of the United Arab Emirates University, for further help in transcribing and translating.