Translation and Transformation

Introduction

It is known to us that there are various different kinds of genres in literature and different genres seem to vary from one another more or less. There is no doubt that translation and transformation happen a lot if one would like to make a certain genre become another genre. However, translation and transformation may not always take effect and only successful translation and transformation can make another produced genre work. Therefore this paper would like to translate and transform one post on social media to personal story, during which the process and skills of translation and the analysis of the characteristics of both genres will be elaborated on.

The specific post on social media that is chosen is a picture posted by Salmaan Bhati, on which it reads “People don’t care for you when you are alone. They just care for you when they are alone” (2018). It is hoped that this translation and transformation can give some insightful suggestions as for how to successfully translate and transform one genre into another in the due time.

Translation and Transformation

Firstly, I have to say that the first moment when I encounter the sentence on the post, I directly relate it to my personal story because I have personal experience of this sentence. The more detailed condition is that when I was at home in China, I was accompanied by my parents and there were many friends beside me. Based on this, a fair knowledge can be obtained that I felt alone quite less. However, Amanda, one of my best friends, lived with her grandparents at that time because her parents worked outside in order to support the whole household. Due to her grandparents’ home was a little remote from our school, she didn’t make many friends at school. As a result, she tent to rely on me a lot and she would contact me whenever she was alone. Looking back upon afterwards, I had to say that the frequency that she contacted me at that period was pretty high and we kept in close touch with one another.

At that time, I would offer help to her within my own ability and I often replied to her as soon as possible. And I always tried my best to comfort her that her parents would come back soon and everything would be okay then so she just had to wait for the coming back of her parents. Luckily, she really survived those days and her parents finally came back to work and she became more and more attached to her parents as time went by. Later on, she began to contact me less from before and she didn’t rely on me as much as in the past.

However, the case is completely the opposite when I came to this foreign country to study. In the first beginning, it was really a strange and new place for me and I had to adjust myself in order that I could quickly fit into this country. But I had to admit that even though I had spared no efforts in adjusting myself, I still felt alone quite easily in this new country. Thus I increased the frequency to contact my parents back at home. Apart from that, I as well contacted more frequently with Amanda, hoping that she could provide me more emotional support. Nevertheless, what was out of my expectation is that she didn’t reply to me as timely as I did when she was alone and sometimes she even replied to me several days later. At last, she just didn’t respond to me at all and I could get no support from her for even a little.

Under this condition, I quickly detected the great differences between the reaction of Amanda when she was alone and when I was alone and she seemed to care about me much less than I took after her when she was alone. As a matter of fact, I even felt sort of unworthy for me to devote so much of my past time in comforting her while I quickly brought me back to the track and not continue that kind of negative thoughts anymore. What I have learned from this issue is that people only find you when you are in need and they may not be your side when you are in need, which is right what has been indicated by the sentence in the post that “People don’t care for you when you are alone. They just care for you when they are alone” (Salmaan Bhati. 2018).

With the translated and transformed version of personal story mentioned at length in the above, what follows will be the interpretation of the process and skills of translation and the analysis of the characteristics of both genres. Roman Jakobson states that there are three kinds of translation in his work On Linguistic Works of Translation in 1959 and they are respectively intralingual translation, interlingual translation and intersemiotic translation. Intralingual translation means translation happens by commenting, expanding, paraphrasing, rewording, summarizing within a language. And as to interlingual translation, it refers to the traditional concept of translation from the source text to the target text. When it comes to the intersemiotic translation, it actually means the translation that occurs by changing the written text into a different form, such as art or dance or medium (Roman Jakobson. 1959).

Detailed speaking, the process of translation involved is actually to expand the post on Facebook so as to make it a sentence that has supportive examples. Or maybe it can be put in another way that the post on Facebook can be seen as the main idea of my personal story and my personal story is right based on the post on Facebook. To put Roman Jakobson’s theory into this case, it is apparent that the kind of translation occurs here is the intralingual translation because of the existence of translation is based on expanding. Based on this, it is not hard to find that the skills of translation and transformation required is to firstly understand the connotations of the post on Facebook so that suitable personal story can be produced after understanding the connotations, otherwise appropriate personal story won’t be possible to be created at all.

As a matter of fact, the word “presuppositions” can effectively deliver this point in that presuppositions mean the common language assumed in the source text, which should be known by the audience before they would like to translate and transform the source text. At the same time, personal experience matters a lot as for whether one can really translate or transform the post on Facebook to a personal story. It can be understood in this way that what one has experienced can help provide necessary material for one to compose his or her personal story, or one may have nothing to write in the due time. Implicature suggests that the source text may be elliptical in a variety of ways that assume the audience knows how to supply the implied meaning (course reading).

Moreover, what will be explained is the different forms of these two genres. For one part, the post on Facebook is simply a picture with words on it and it can be read quite soon. But for another, the translated and transformed personal story is in the textual form and it has to take some time in order to finish reading. According to this, it is not hard to find that the translated and transformed genre can really vary a lot from the original genre even if they are related in their main idea. In this sense, it is not hard to find that the translation type happens here is the intersemiotic translation from the perspective of Roman Jakobson because the form of the genre has changed from a picture to a written text.

Similarly, the post on Facebook can as well be translated and transformed to many other different genres at the same time as long as they are suitable, which can well indicate the variation of genres to some degree. Furthermore, it can be readily detected that more personal stories can be translated and transformed by others if they see the same post on Facebook. That is to say, different people may have different life experiences so that their personal story will be different as well. Another aspect that has to be pointed out is that this personal story can be translated and transformed to the post on Facebook in turn as long as one can get the main idea of the personal story.

In addition, the discourse communities of these two genres will be illustrated. On the one hand, the discourse communities of the post on Facebook are all the users on Facebook so that they can have the access to this post. There is no doubt that this post can help enlighten the users if they can have a view at this post. And on the other hand, the discourse communities of my personal story may be somewhat limited and only those that have contacted with me can have a look at it after getting my verification.

Last but not the least, the appropriateness of this translation and transformation will be analyzed. Simply speaking, the appropriateness of translation and transformation will be evaluated by concentrating on the question of equivalence and fidelity. To put it more specially, the criteria of equivalence and fidelity can be further divided into the below few aspects: identity vs. similarity; level of analysis (word, clause, sentence, paragraph, work, and so on); structural vs. functional; overt vs. covert; as well as the question of power (course reading). The criterion of identity vs. similarity shows that exact identity should be attempted by calque, direct borrowing or transliteration. And then the criterion of level of analysis involve three types and they are respectively transeme, denotative equivalence and text-normative equivalence. As to the criterion structural vs.

functional, what is a must to mention is that what matters is whether the translation lays emphasis on linguistic and semantic features of a work or its function and total expressive and intended effect. And as for overt vs. covert, it also be understood as documentary vs. instrumental, for which what concerns is whether the audience knows it is a translation or not. Concerning the question of power, what has to be mentioned is that whether the audience has to face the cultural difference or not. Based on all these criteria, it is obvious that this translation is transliteration, its level of analysis is sentence, it focuses on the total expressive and intended effect and its function as a communicative act. Also, the reader knows that it is a translation and the audience does not have to face the cultural difference in this translation because the source text and the target text are both in English. In this sense, this translation and transformation can be considered as a success.

Conclusion

To sum up, a reasonable conclusion can be drawn that different genres can really be translated and transformed to another genre and vice versa as long as it is suitable. Though different genres can be translated and transformed, what cannot be neglected is that those genres are similar in a certain aspect, which is right the precondition for the translation and transformation to take place. Thus it is obvious that people have to broaden their own horizon if they would like to deal flexibly with the translation and transformation between genres in the due time. Only in this way can the translated and transformation of genres in the end take effect and make sense. There is no doubt that much has to be explored concerning the translation and transformation between two different genres as have not been mentioned in the above, which calls for further discoveries in the future.