Translation Universals: Do They Exist? (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Translation universals: Do they exist? ed. by Anna Mauranen and Pekka Kujamäki Lea Cyrus Translation universals: Do they exist? Ed. by Anna Mauranen and Pekka Kujamäki. (Benjamins translation library 48.) Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2004. Pp. vi, 224. ISBN 1588114686. $114 (Hb). This collection contains a selection of twelve papers that were presented at a conference of the same title in Savonlinna in 2001. There is an introductory chapter by the editors, an author index, and, conveniently, a subject index. The majority of the studies presented are empirical and mostly corpus-based. As for the languages under investigation, there is a clear focus on Finnish. The first three articles approach the subject from a theoretical perspective. Gideon Toury (15–32) propagates a probability-based approach to translation universals (he prefers to call them ‘laws’) which takes into account the heterogenous factors that influence the outcome of each translation process. Andrew Chesterman (33–49) describes the pros and cons of three approaches to translation studies: prescriptive, pejorative, and descriptive. He also makes a valuable terminological distinction between s(ource)- and t(arget)-universals, the first focusing on differences between source and target, the second between translated and original texts. Silvia Bernardini and Federico Zanettin (51–62) critically point out some methodological problems of corpusbased translation studies. Five of the empirical studies are based on the Corpus of Translated Finnish, a comparable corpus containing Finnish originals as well as texts translated into Finnish from a variety of languages. Anna Mauranen (65–82) investigates interference by comparing frequency-based wordlists drawn from three subcorpora. Sari Eskola (83–99) shows that the over- or underrepresentation of specific Finnish constructions depends on whether there exist equivalent constructions in the source languages. This is supported by Sonja Tirkkonen-Condit (177–84), who looks into items that lack a straightforward equivalent in other languages and finds that they are underrepresented in translated language. She attributes this to the missing stimulus in the source languages. Neither Jarmo Harri Jantunen’s study on the atypical patterning of three synonymous degree modifiers (101–26), nor Tiina Puurtinen’s work on clause connectives as explicit markers of clausal relations (165–76) reveals clear indications of translation universals. Here, too, the impact of the source language is seen as one of the most likely explanations for the differences encountered. The two studies that deal with languages other than Finnish both rely on corpora that are parallel as well as comparable, that is, the actual source texts (English in both cases) are also taken into account. Perola Nilsson (129–41) looks into the collocational patterns involving the Swedish function word av (‘of/by’), which is overrepresented in translations, and Vilma Pápai (142–64), who examines explicitation strategies in Hungarian original and translated texts, confirms the hypothesis according to which translations tend to be more explicit. The last two papers stand out from the rest in that they take a more applied perspective: both Pekka Kujamäki (187–204) and Riita Jääskeläinen (205–14) report on experiments that show how students can profit from a sound background in translation theory. There is no straightforward answer to the question posed in the volume’s title. While it is undisputed that differences between original and translated texts do exist, opinions diverge on whether these are a sign of or the result of translation universals. This difference of opinion may be due to terminological uncertainty—in fact, many of the authors seem to [End Page 688] feel somewhat uneasy with the term translation universal and suggest less exclusive alternatives, such as ‘law’, ‘regularity’, or ‘tendency’. This in no way diminishes the value of this collection, which offers an interesting and rewarding insight into this young discipline. Lea Cyrus Münster University Copyright © 2006 Linguistic Society of America