Roman Jacobson

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Roman Jacobson

• The model of translation
• by Haydée Sollberger

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Who was Roman Jacobson?

• Roman Osipovich Jakobson (October 11, 1896 July
  18, 1982) was a born in Russia from a wealthy
  family from Jewish descent.

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Why is he important?

• He was ahead of his time in developing the
  synchronic (syn "together" and chronos time)
  approach to language.
• In 1959, Jacobson wrote his essay On Linguistic
  Aspects of Translation. He solves translation
  problems by dealing with translation as a
  concept and not an action.

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Jacobsons Model of a Communication Act
Context
Message
Sender.Receiver Sender.Receiver Sender.Receiver
Contact
Code
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What about translation?

• No one can understand the word cheese unless
  he has a nonlinguistic acquaintance with cheese.
• 
  Bertrand Russell
• Words mean nothing if we dont have a reference
  to compare them with.

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A literary text as a
communicative act
Context
Text
Writer.Reader Writer.Reader Writer.Reader
Contact (medium or delivery system) Contact (medium or delivery system) Contact (medium or delivery system)
Code
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Controversy for the Translator

• How can one translate a word that we cant refer
  to?
• Solution Make an intralingual translation.
• explain that cheese means food made of
  pressed curds.

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Controversy for the Translator

• No sense to assign a meaning (signatum) to the
  object and not the sign (signum).
• What if there is no cheese in my culture
  (inexistent equivalence ). The obstacle consists
  in the cultural - rather than linguistic
  difference.

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Translating the Code

• Roman Jakobson's typology of the relations
  between the basic types of the two codes, in
  which the respective entities are encoded, are

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Taxonomy of Translation Type 1

• Intralingual translation or rewording is an
  interpretation of verbal signs by means of other
  signs of the same language.
• The Bible (its oldest versions contain words in
  Aramaic, parts in Hebrew and, in what is often
  called the "New Testament", parts in Greek.).

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Taxonomy of Translation Type 2

• Interlingual translation or translation proper is
  an interpretation of verbal signs by means of
  some other language.
• The translator recodes and transmits a message
  received from another code.
• Camembert, Brie, Bonchester, Pencarreg, Chaource
  Requeson (vaca), roncal (oveja), aceuche
  (cabra).

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Taxonomy of Translation Type 3

• Intersemiotic translation or transmutation is an
  interpretation of verbal signs by means of signs
  of nonverbal sign systems.
• The two codes being two different sign systems,
  whether one of them is verbal or not. This type
  of translation arise between systems such as
  fiction and cinema, language and advertising,
  language and picture-book illustrations, music
  and dance, music and painting and so on.

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Translation problem Grammatical categories

• Reflexive
• This house was built in three months.
• sta casa fue contruida en tres meses.
• Tomo tres meses remodelar esta casa.
• Simple Present
• In Chile we have dinner at six oclock in the
  evening
• En Chile, nosotros tenemos cena a las 6 de la
  tarde.
• En Chile, cenamos a las 6 de la tarde.
• present progressive
• The road is being repaired
• Estan arreglando la calle
• La calle esta siendo reparada.