Masarykova univerzita Filozofická fakulta Katedra anglistiky a amerikanistiky Magisterská diplomová práce

4.2 Anton Markoš

4.2.1 Stylistic analysis—The Mismeasure of Man

The beginning of the fifth chapter called The Hereditarian Theory of IQ: An American Invention is also divided into sub-chapters; the first one and the first part of the second one were included into the corpus.

Stephen Jay Gould’s text is plain; compared with the previous two extracts it is probably the most unmarked one. The aim is to outline basic information about Binet and his scientific endeavour, to explain the development of his views and attitudes and to draw the readers’ attention to the danger of preconceptions. The text resembles a story/narrative, occasionally. One might argue, features of biographical writing can be recognized: In 1904 Binet was commissioned…, By the end of this effort, he was no longer so sure. The author’s opinion is voiced just twice at the very end of the passage: I doubt… (twice). The reader is not addressed at all. The referential function is the dominant one and, in fact, the only one that comes forth.

Language itself is of no particular interest; only traces of evaluative expressions can be found: the title of the first sub-chapter: Binet flirts with craniometry. A couple of expressive adjectives: e.g. great countryman, sparse idioms and fixed colloquial collocations, such as fueled his own doubts, to make matters worse, snatched a week and dubious victory from the jaws of defeat, a single rhetorical question Why should a great theoretician have acted in such a curious and apparently contradictory way? and one exclamation occur: How much better off we would be if all scientists submitted themselves to self-scrutiny in so forthright a fashion… This aspect should be paid attention to in the translation.

The passage is full of quotations from Binet’s works; the short ones are delimited by a range of reporting verbs: Binet wrote, Binet admits, Binet reminds us, etc., the long ones are printed in smaller font in separate paragraphs. This formatting is preserved in the Czech text; inverted commas are added to the second type, though.

The majority of sentences in the extract are simple or compound; complex sentences (most often including relative clauses) are rare. The passage consists of 116 sentences (2 506 words), the mean sentence length being 21.6 words.

The translation is much more idiomatic than the original. More idioms and expressive words occur, especially in the first part of the passage: dále pšenka nekvetla, měl ještě živě v paměti, aby stály za zmínku, už takovou jistotou neoplýval, poskytlo se sluchu, nejzuřivější odpůrci této teorie, informal verbs and colloquial collocations: dal se do poměřování, povšiml si, rozmetalo, mohla být překroucena, použití není nejvhodnější are made use of. Synonyms are rather frequent: oduševnělí, chytří, více inteligentní vs. méně nadaní, méně inteligentní, špatní žáci.

The translator, unlike the author of the original text, seems to address the reader partially: Když pro nic jiného, tak abychom viděli., To je ostatně klíčové téma z hlediska námětu celé naší knihy. He maintains the exclamation as well as the rhetorical question. Moreover, he adds evaluative attributes and intensifiers to the text sometimes: dokonce, naprosto, opravdu, jen a jen, etc.

The translation is rather idiomatic; however, at several places the reader stops and ponders on what the author tries to say: Nakonec Binet přece jen vyvzdoroval jakési pochybné vítězství. or Předpokládal, že předložený úkol ještě zvládne dítě s normální inteligencí. In these cases, the translator simplified the source text considerably and, unfortunately, the solutions stand out. The infrequent clumsy sentences, such as Jde o houževnatou trvanlivost podvědomých posunů a překvapivou kujnost rádoby „objektivních“ číselných údajů ve smyslu předem utvořeného názoru na věc vitiate the overall impression of the translation. Moreover, an anacoluthon occurs in the text as well: A pak přišlo to nejdůležitější – měření v druhé sérii, provedené v očekávání nižších hodnot ve srovnání s mírami (stejných hlav) z předchozího měření, které bylo nižší hodnoty vskutku poskytlo. The aim of this paragraph is by no means to criticize the translation; it just wants to touch on the subtle inconsistency of the text.

There are 131 sentences (2 197 words) in the extract; the mean sentence length being 16.77 words (cf. 116 sentences, 21.6 words in the original). Syntax simplification is quite frequent: 14 times, the long English sentences are divided into two or more short Czech ones and it seems that this is a feature typical of the translator.

The difference between the styles of Gould’s and Markoš’s texts is not too noticeable. Nevertheless, the language of the target text is more colloquial and informal. As far as the potential translation universals and the instances of them in the present text are concerned, it is rather obvious that interpersonal explicitations should be frequent—the added intensifiers have already been mentioned. On the other hand, the text does not suggest anything about implicitation at first sight. With respect to explicitation, the reference to Dreyfus can be pointed out. Surprisingly, the translator did not explain who Dreyfus was. The Czech audience, however, might not know this French artillery officer and a hint might have been useful.

4.2.2 Stylistic analysis—The Ages of Gaia

The last extract included in the corpus is the beginning of the fourth chapter called The Archean of James Lovelock’s The Ages of Gaia.

The extract deals with concepts that are extremely difficult to conceive. Large numbers—typically used for setting individual events in time—are anaesthetic and outrageous and need to be tamed as they paralyze the imagination. And this is exactly what the author wants to avoid. Imagination is important for the readers so that they understand: Just imagine how large a signal… The fact that the readers are able to follow the presented thoughts is essential for Lovelock and similes and comparisons that facilitate this are extremely frequent in his text: stars are compared to power plants, a supernova to a star-sized nuclear bomb, with respect to the ancient times our ignorance is an ocean and the territory of knowledge is limited to small islands, when we are trying to find out what the Earth was like before the origin of life, we are hanging up a neutral back cloth before which can be clearly seen the colorful changes made by life; looking back in time is like using a telescope to view the limits of the Universe; powering a star by fusing iron to make uranium is like trying to burn ice in a furnace; radioactivity is a marvelously accurate clock that has ticked away the time since the beginning of the Earth and our planet shines like a dappled sapphire. The “as + adjective + as” pattern is rather common.

Comparisons and similes are not the only devices used. The author often reformulates the seemingly difficult definitions provided: In simpler words: as the distance or the time lengthens… and strives to explain everything carefully: What we must do, therefore, is make a best guess about… The reader is a partner in investigation, similarly like in Wilson’s and Wright’s texts: You can see, we cannot make such a comparison, we know so little, he reminds us, etc. The pronoun of the first person singular I is used for outlining the contents of the chapter: I shall use a scale of eons. Nevertheless, the author expresses his own ideas very often: it will be interesting to watch…, etc.

The language of the passage could be compared to the language of Wilson’s text, expressive words are numerous: nouns: oddities, adjectives: clever way to gather information, miraculous property, spurious sense of certainty, unimaginable violence, faint rumble, adverbs: enigmatically, marvelously accurate clock and occasionally also verbs: speculations blossom. Repetition and gradation are made use of: fortunately for us, fortunately also and the lengthening distance to which shouting—loud-speaker—H-bomb explosion can be heard.

At the beginning, the author plays with the language more as if trying to catch the reader’s attention and to make them read further; in the second part of the text, scientific facts prevail and a couple of natural phenomena are explained. Terms are not too frequent, though: eon, chemistry, stellar evolution. Imperative clauses and a rhetorical question supplemented with the answer occur. The referential as well as the poetic function play an important role in the present text. There are 119 sentences in the text (2 503 words), the mean sentence length being 21.03 words.

The Czech translation respects the original to a great extent, even though the language is slightly more formal: chceme-li, řekneme-li, podíváme-li se, informační teorie praví and some normalizations can be traced: Díky zázračně přesné časomíře radioaktivního rozpadu dnes víme… However, most of the comparisons as well as the majority of idiosyncrasies in the choice of vocabulary are preserved: Tak obrovská čísla nejsou estetická a paralyzují představivost; věda obvykle krotí nepohodlná čísla; the back cloth becomes drapérie, the specific adjectives are made use of: zázračná schopnost, zázračně přesná časomíra. Natural and idiomatic translation solutions, such as dostane třeba na sám kraj světa and má na svědomí pohyby zemské kůry occur.

Nevertheless, it seems as if the translator preferred the “scientific” passages to the “figurative” ones. The translation stumbles a little when the scientific phenomena are compared to the everyday life, even mistranslations can be found: …a tak se dá zpětný pohled v čase přirovnat k hledání okrajů vesmíru teleskopem (dalekohled might have been more appropriate), nejhlubší vrstvy hvězdy jsou vystaveny fantastickým tlakům veškeré hmotnosti hvězdy (the adjective fantastickým does not fit the context), nutit hvězdu vyrábět uran fúzí atomů železa se dá přirovnat k topení ledem v kamnech (in this case the translator opted for the incorrect meaning of the verb to burn), etc. In a couple of places, incorrect FSP can be recognized: e.g. Podobné srovnání pro archean udělat nemůžeme, víme toho příliš málo o tehdejších podmínkách na Zemi. or Vidíte tedy, že jsou značné potíže s vytvářením onoho neutrálního pozadí… In both cases the rheme stands in the middle of the sentence instead of at the end.

On the other hand, the facts are presented in a clear and comprehensible way, precise terms are used, important explanations provided and even a note is added, so that the readers understand the issue of isotopes correctly. The readers’ participation in the research is reduced a little; the imperative is replaced with the indicative form, etc. The translator uses complex sentences from time to time but also simplifies the long English ones and divides them into several Czech shorter ones. Compared to the 119 sentences of the original, there are 129 sentences in the translation (1 980 words, mean sentence length: 15.35, cf. 2 503 words in English, mean sentence length: 21.03). Based on these numbers, an assumption can be made: omission, simplification and implicitation should be rather frequent in the translation, the interpersonal implicitation in particular as the Czech translation is more formal than the original.

It is interesting to observe the inverse tendencies in Markoš’s translation. In the translation of Gould he created a more inventive target text than the source text, whereas the translation of Lovelock seems to be more unmarked and neutral compared to the original. Based on the shape of the extracts given it could be argued that in Markoš’s view, a popular science literature text should be readable and not devoid of peculiarities of the original; figures of speech and figurative language in general do no harm. Markoš’s style is closer to the style of Lovelock than to the one of Gould.

4.3 General conclusion

As far as the stylistic qualities of the four (eight) texts are concerned, considerable variation can be traced within the corpus: the corpus combines texts very similar to fiction—full of metaphors and figures of speech as well as essay-like pieces that resemble serious scientific articles and studies. The language varies significantly, the extremes being Wilson and Gould.

Each of the source texts could be assigned a typical feature: Wilson—colourful language, Wright—questions, Gould—quotations and Lovelock—comparison. Apart from the first text, these characteristics were preserved in the translations. As far as the punctuation is concerned, dashes and inverted commas (as well as the use of italics) are typical of Wright’s text; font changes of Gould’s text.

In Wilson’s, Wright’s and Lovelock’s texts, cooperation between the author and the reader (the phatic function) plays a significant role. In Gould’s text, neither the author, nor the readers are paid particular attention to. In the translation, though, the reader is addressed several times.

Neither of the translators seems to be a translator of fiction at the same time: Hradilek eliminates as much figurative language as possible; Markoš tries to preserve it but seems to prefer plain explaining of scientific data. Unlike in Wilson’s text, poetic function is not pursued in the translation. On the other hand, this function comes into play in the translation of Gould. From this perspective, Markoš is more inventive than Hradilek who, in extreme cases, sticks closely to the original (Wright). The inverse tendency can be identified at this point: whereas Hradilek avoids the marked expressive words, expressions and collocations, Markoš uses them even when the author of the original text does not. Moreover, Markoš seems to shorten the texts as far as the overall number of running words is concerned, the translation of Wilson, on the other hand, seems to be the most simplified one as far as the number of words in a sentence is concerned. These features suggest that neither of the translators strives to maintain the style of the originals, their own stylistic preferences come forth.

It can be inferred that based on the style of individual texts, normalization, omission, simplification and implicitation as well as experiential and textual explicitations should be common in the first translation by Hradilek, in his second translation, normalization, simplification, interpersonal implicitation and experiential and textual explicitation can be expected. In the first translation by Markoš, simplification and interpersonal explicitation could be frequent. In his second translation, omission, simplification and implicitation, interpersonal implicitation in particular, should occur quite often.

The question of norms governing Czech popular science literature should be mentioned at this point as well. With respect to the texts of the corpus it could be said that figurative language and rather short sentences are common and accepted. It seems that Hradilek’s preference of plain language is just a feature of his individual translator’s style. There are no external pressures that would prevent him from maintaining the style of the original and urged him to eliminate the idiosyncrasies of Wilson’s text. It is just his stylistic preference. Based on the data from the corpus, it can be said that the average sentence length of the English texts is approximately 20-21 words, whereas in Czech it is about 15-16 words.

Title of the chapter in English	# of words	# of sentences	mean sentence length	Title of the chapter in Czech	# of words	# of sentences	mean sentence length
The Fundamental Unit	2 525	111	22.75	Základní jednotka	2 215	127	11.44
The Invisible Brain	2 527	131	19.29	Neviditelný mozek	2 463	134	18.38
The Hereditarian Theory of IQ	2 506	116	21.6	Teorie dědičného IQ	2 197	131	16.77
The Archean	2 503	119	21.03	Věk prvý – archean	1 980	129	15.35

Table 3: Number of words and sentences, mean sentence length

Apart from the referential function, the phatic as well as conative functions are of great importance. The author often intrudes into the texts and highlights his attitude and stance.