pragmatic strategies

1. cultural filtering 2. explicitness change 3. information change 4. interpersonal change 5. illocutionary change 6. coherence change 7. partial translation 8. visibility change 9. transediting 10. other pragmatic changes


Pragmatic translation problems result from the contrast between ST situation and the TT communicative situation. Culture-bound terms, references to place and time, proper names, addressee specifications are examples of this type. Pragmatic strategies tend to involve bigger changes from the ST, and typically incorporate syntactic and/or semantic changes as well. If syntactic strategies manipulate form, and semantic strategies manipulate meaning, pragmatic strategies can be said to manipulate the message itself. These strategies are often the result of a translator's global decisions concerning the appropriate way to translate the text as a whole.

The decision on the most appropriate translation strategy in the case of the pragmatic translation problems depends on the purpose of the TT Is a documentary or an instrumental translation necessary? Is the text to convey an "exotic" flavour of the source culture? the knowledge of the addressees Are the addressees familiar with the source culture or not? situational aspects When and where will the TT be used? Will the addressees receive the TT in the target culture or in the source culture?

cultural filtering
naturalization, domestication or adaptation it describes the way in which SL items, particularly culturespecific items, are translated as TL cultural or functional equivalents, so that they conform to TL norms. exoticization, foreignization or estrangement the opposite procedure, whereby such items are not adapted in this way but e.g. borrowed or transferred directly

explicitness change
explicitation or implicitation explicitation is one of the most common translatorial strategies translators add components explicitly in the TT which are only implicit in the ST implicitation bearing in mind what the readers can be reasonably expected to infer, the translator leaves some elements of the message implicit.

information change
the addition of new (non-inferrable) information which is deemed to be relevant to the TT readership but which is not present in the ST, or the omission of ST information deemed to be irrelevant (this latter might involve summarizing, for instance). Omission is the opposite process. Omitted information in this sense cannot be subsequently inferred: it is this that distinguishes this strategy from that of implicitation.

interpersonal change
This strategy operates at the level of the overall style: it alters the formality level, the degree of emotiveness and involvement, the level of technical lexis and the like: anything that involves a change in the relationship between text/author and reader.

illocutionary change
changes of speech act these changes often include obligatory changes at other levels, such as the mood of the verb the use of rhetorical questions and exclamations in text (to produce a more dialogic text) there can also be changes within particular classes of speech acts. For example, within the class of acts known as representatives (such as stating, telling, reporting), a translator may choose to shift from direct to indirect speech.

coherence change
cohesion change - formal markers of textual cohesion coherence change - logical arrangement of information in the text, at the ideational level rearranging, combining or splitting paragraphs or larger sections of a text relocation or dislocation

partial translation
any kind of non-integral translation summary translation, transcription, translation of the sounds only symbolist translations of literary texts My heart leaps up when I behold A rainbow in the sky (Wordsworth) Mai hart lieb zapfen eibe hold er reen bohr in sees kai (Jandl)

visibility change
a change in the status of the authorial presence overt intrusion or foregrounding of the translatorial presence translator's footnotes bracketed comments (such as explanation of puns) added glosses

transediting
radical re-editing that translators have to do on badly written original texts drastic re-ordering rewriting

other pragmatic changes

changes in the layout choice of dialect