The cognitive basis of translation universals
Sandra L. Halverson | University of Bergen, Norway
At present, there are few attempts to provide external explanations for the patterns subsumed under the heading of “translation universal”. In this paper, I discuss the possible cognitive basis for the patterns/processes that have been variously referred to as simplification/generalization, normalization, standardization, sanitization, and exaggeration of target language features. The framework that I adopt is that of cognitive grammar, and my claim is that all of the above arise from the existence of asymmetries in the cognitive organization of semantic information. I also propose that the converse case is true: cases involving a lack of conspicuous cognitive asymmetries will demonstrate the opposite effect in translated text. In closing, I place the argument in a larger perspective by adopting Croft’s (1990) scalar notion of generalization in a discussion of explanation in translation studies.
Keywords: translation universals, translation and cognition, translation and semantic networks, explanation in translation studies
Published online: 12 May 2004
https://doi.org/10.1075/target.15.2.02hal
https://doi.org/10.1075/target.15.2.02hal
References
References
Baker, Mona
1992 In other words. London: Routledge. 
1993 “Corpus Linguistics and Translation Studies: Implications and applications”. Mona Baker, Gill Francis and Elena Tognini-Bonelli, eds. Text and technology: In honour of John Sinclair. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins 1993 233–250.
1995 “Corpora in Translation Studies: An overview and suggestions for future research”. Target 7:2. 223–243.
Barsalou, Lawrence
[ p. 238 ]
1987 “The instability of graded structure: Implications for the nature of concepts”. Ulric Neisser, ed. Concepts and conceptual development: Ecological and intellectual factors in categorization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1987 101–140.
1992 Cognitive psychology: An overview for cognitive scientists. Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Bechtel, William
1988 Philosophy of science: An overview for cognitive science. Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Berlin, Brent and Paul Kay
1969 Basic color terms: Their universality and evolution. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Blum-Kulka, Shoshana
1986 “Shifts of cohesion and coherence in translation”. Juliane House and Shoshana Blum-Kulka, eds. Interlingual and intercultural comunication. Tübingen: Gunter Narr 1986 17–35.
Blum-Kulka Shoshana and Eddie A. Levenston
1983 “Universals of lexical simplification”. Claus Færch and Gabriele Kasper, eds. Strategies in interlanguage communication. London: Longman 1983 119–139.
De Bot, Kees and Robert Schreuder
Bybee, Joan
1988 “The diachronic dimension in explanation”. John A. Hawkins, ed. Explaining language universals. Oxford: Basil Blackwell 1988 350–379.
Chesterman, Andrew
ed. 1989 Readings in translation theory. Finland: Oy Finn Lectura Ab.
2001 “Hypotheses about translation universals”. Paper presented at the Third International EST Congress, Copenhagen, Denmark, 30 August–1 September 2001.
Croft, William
1990 Typology and universals. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Englund-Dimitrova, Birgitta
1997 “Translation of dialect in fictional prose—Vilhem Moberg in Russian and English as a case in point”. Norm, variation and change in language: Proceedings of the centenary meeting of the Nyfilologiska sälskapet, Nedre Manilla, 22–23 March 1996. Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell 1997 49–65.
2001 “Explicitation—universal or umbrella?” Paper presented at the Third International EST Congress, Copenhagen, Denmark, 30 August– 1 September 2001.
Geeraerts, Dirk
1989 “Introduction: Prospects and problems of prototype theory”. Linguistics 27. 587–612.
2000 “Salience phenomena in the lexicon”. Liliana Albertazzi, ed. Meaning and cognition: A multidisciplinary approach. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins 2000 79–101.
Gibbs, Raymond W. Jr. and Herbert L. Colston
1995 “The cognitive psychological reality of image schemas and their transformations”. Cognitive linguistics 6:4. 347–378.
Goldberg, Adele
1998 “Patterns of experience in patterns of language”. Michael Tomasello, ed. The new psychology of language: Cognitive and functional approaches to langauge structure. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum 1998 203–219.
Greenberg, Joseph H.
1968 Anthropological linguistics. New York: Random House.
1979 “Rethinking linguistics diachronically”. Language 55. 275–290.
De Groot, Anette M. B.
[ p. 239 ]
1992a “Bilingual lexical representation: A closer look at conceptual representations”. Ram Frost and Leonard Katz, eds. Orthography, phonology, morphology, and meaning. Amsterdam: North Holland 1992 389–412.
De Groot, Anette M.B.
1992b “Determinants of word translation”. Journal of experimental psychology: Learning, memory, and cognition 18:5. 1001–1018.
1993 “Word-type effects in bilingual processing tasks: Support for a mixed representational system”. Schreuder and Weltens 1993. 27–51.
De Groot, Anette M. B.
1997 “The cognitive study of translation and interpretation: Three approaches”. Joseph H. Danks, Gregory M. Shreve, Stephen B. Fountain and Michael McBeath, eds. Cognitive processes in translation and interpreting. Thousand Oaks/ London/New Delhi: Sage 1997 25–56.
Halverson, Sandra
1996 “Norwegian–English translation and the role of certain connectors”. Thelen and Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk 1996. 129–139.
2000 “The fault line in our common ground”. Target 12:2. 356–362.
2001 “An outline of a cognitive theory of translation”. Paper presented at the Third International EST Congress, Copenhagen, Denmark, 30 August–1 September 2001.
Hasselgren, Sandra
In preparation. “Investigating gravitational pull in translation: The case of the English progressive construction”.
Hasselgren, Angela
1993 Right words, wrong words and different words: An investigation into the lexical coping of Norwegian advanced learners of English. Department of English, University of Bergen. [Unpublished master’s thesis.]
Heine, Bernd
1997 Cognitive foundations of grammar. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Ijaz, I. Helene
1986 “Linguistic and cognitive determinants of lexical acquisition in a second language”. Language learning 36:4. 401–451.
Jääskeläinen, Riitta and Sonja Tirkonnen-Condit
1991 “Automised processes in professional vs. non-professional translation: A think-aloud protocol study”. Sonja Tirkonnen-Condit, ed. Empirical research in translation and intercultural studies. Tübingen: Gunter Narr 1991 89–109.
Johnson, Mark
1987 The body in the mind. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
Kellerman, Eric
1978 “Giving learners a break: Native language intuitions as a source of predictions about transferability”. Working papers on bilingualism 15. 60–92.
1979 “The problem with difficulty”. Interlanguage studies bulletin 4. 27–48.
Kenny, Dorothy
Klaudy, Kinga
1996 “Concretization and generalization of meaning in translation”. Thelen and Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk 1996. 141–163.
Kroll, Judith F.
1993 “Accessing conceptual representations for words in a second language”. Schreuder and Weltens 1993. 53–81.
Lakoff, George
1987 Women, fire, and dangerous things. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Langacker, Ronald
1987 Foundations of cognitive grammar 1. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press.
1991 Concept, image, and symbol. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
1999 Grammar and conceptualization. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
Laviosa, Sara
[ p. 240 ]
1998 “Core patterns of lexical use in a comparable corpus of English narrative prose”. Meta 43:4. 557–570.
2001 “Simplification before and after the advent of corpora”. Paper presented at the Third International EST Congress, Copenhagen, Denmark, 30 August–1 September 2001.
Laviosa-Braithwaite, Sara
1996 The English Comparable Corpus (ECC): A resource and a methodology for the empirical study of translation. Manchester: UMIST. [Ph.D. thesis.]
Levenston, Eddie and Shoshana Blum
1977 “Aspects of lexical simplification in the speech and writing of advanced adult learners”. S. Pit Corder and Eddie Roulet, eds. The notions of simplification, interlanguages, and pidgins and their relation to second language pedagogy. Genève: Droz and Neuchâtel: Faculté des Lettres 1977 51–71.
Lie, Helene
1998 Much ado about ( ): Explicitation in translation. Department of English, University of Bergen. [Unpublished master’s thesis.]
Malmkjær, Kirsten
1998 “Love thy neighbor: Will parallel corpora endear linguists to translators?”43:4. 534–541.
Marmaridou, A. Sophie S.
1996 “Directionality in translation processes and practices”. Target 8:1. 49–73.
Mauranen, Anna
2001 “Issues of data in the search for translation universals”. Paper presented at the Third International EST Congress, Copenhagen, Denmark, 30 August– 1 September 2001.
Olahan, Maeve
Pokorn, Nike
2001 “Changing the myth of the native speaker’s competence in translation theory”. Paper presented at the Third International EST Congress, Copenhagen, Denmark, 30 August–1 September 2001.
Rosch, Eleanor
1975 “Universals and cultural specifics in human categorization”. Richard W. Brislin et al., Cross-cultural perspectives on learning. New York: John Wiley & Sons 1975 177–206.
1978 “Principles of categorization”. Eleanor Rosch and B. B. Lloyd, eds. Cognition and categorization. Hillsdale, N. J.: Lawrence Erlbaum 1978 27–48.
Schreuder, Robert and Bert Weltens
Taylor, John
1989 Linguistic categorization: Prototypes in linguistic theory. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Thelen, Marcel and Barbara Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk
Tirkonnen-Condit, Sonja
2001 “Unique items—over-or underrepresented in translated language?” Paper presented at the Third International EST Congress, Copenhagen, Denmark, 30 August–1 September 2001.
Tomasello, Michael
1999 The cultural origins of human cognition. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Toury, Gideon
[ p. 241 ]
1995 Descriptive Translation Studies and beyond. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
1997 “What lies beyond descriptive translation studies, or: Where do we go from where we assumedly are?” Miguel Ángel Vega and Rafael Matín-Gaitero, eds. La palabra vertida: Investigaciones en torno a la traducción. Madrid: Instituto Universitario de Lenguas Modernas Y Traductores. Universidad Complutense de Madrid 1997 69–80.
Vanderauwera, Ria
1985 Dutch novels translated into English: The transformation of a minority literature. Amsterdam: Rodopi.
Øverås, Linn
1996 In search of the third code: An investigation of norms in literary translation. Department of British and American Studies, University of Oslo. [Unpublished master’s thesis.]
Cited by
Cited by 58 other publications
No author info given
2017.
In Aspects of Cohesion and Coherence in Translation [Benjamins Translation Library, 134],
No author info given
2017.
In Aspects of Cohesion and Coherence in Translation [Benjamins Translation Library, 134],
► pp. 206 ff.
No author info given
2017.
In Reflections on Translation Theory [Benjamins Translation Library, 132],
No author info given
2019.
In A World Atlas of Translation [Benjamins Translation Library, 145],
► pp. 1 ff.
No author info given
2021.
In Corpora in Translation and Contrastive Research in the Digital Age [Benjamins Translation Library, 158],
Almeida, Sandra
2017. Ji, Meng, Oakes, Michael, Defeng, Li and Hareide, Lidun, eds. (2016): Corpus methodologies explained: an empirical approach to translation studies. London/New York: Routledge, 244 p. .
Meta: Journal des traducteurs 62:3 ► pp. 666 ff.
Bernardini, Silvia & Adriano Ferraresi
2011. Practice, Description and Theory Come Together – Normalization or Interference in Italian Technical Translation?.
Meta 56:2 ► pp. 226 ff.
Biel, Łucja
2014. The textual fit of translated EU law: a corpus-based study of deontic modality.
The Translator 20:3 ► pp. 332 ff.
Borodo, Michał
2020.
In English Translations of Korczak’s Children’s Fiction,
► pp. 11 ff.
Carl, Michael, Srinivas Bangalore & Moritz Schaeffer
2016.
In Border Crossings [Benjamins Translation Library, 126],
► pp. 225 ff.
Carl, Michael & Moritz J. Schaeffer
2017.
In The Handbook of Translation and Cognition,
► pp. 50 ff.
Carl, Michael, Andrew Tonge & Isabel Lacruz
2019. A systems theory perspective on the translation
process.
Translation, Cognition & Behavior 2:2 ► pp. 211 ff.
Casado Valenzuela, Alicia
2019. Los universales de localización.
Babel. Revue internationale de la traduction / International Journal of Translation 65:5 ► pp. 678 ff.
Chesterman, Andrew
2011.
In Handbook of Translation Studies [Handbook of Translation Studies, 2],
► pp. 175 ff.
Chesterman, Andrew
2013. The Significance of Hypotheses.
TTR 24:2 ► pp. 65 ff.
Chesterman, Andrew
2014. Translation StudiesForum: Universalism in translation studies.
Translation Studies 7:1 ► pp. 82 ff.
Chlumská, Lucie
2018.
In Taming the Corpus [Quantitative Methods in the Humanities and Social Sciences, ],
► pp. 99 ff.
Cohen, Imogen
2018. On randomness.
Target. International Journal of Translation Studies 30:1 ► pp. 3 ff.
Darriba, Patricia Gonzalez
2019. Self-directed Motion in Spontaneous and Translated English: A Comparable Corpora Study.
Across Languages and Cultures 20:2 ► pp. 213 ff.
Davier, Lucile
2014. The paradoxical invisibility of translation in the highly multilingual context of news agencies.
Global Media and Communication 10:1 ► pp. 53 ff.
Davier, Lucile
2017.
In Les enjeux de la traduction dans les agences de presse,
► pp. 303 ff.
Egan, Thomas
2015. Manner and Path: evidence from a multilingual corpus.
CogniTextes :12
Feng, Haoda & Feng Shi
2019. Corpus methodologies explained: an empirical approach to translation studies,.
International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism ► pp. 1 ff.
Garrido-Possauner, Luis Miguel & Jorge Maya
2019.
In Cross-Cultural Design. Methods, Tools and User Experience [Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 11576],
► pp. 487 ff.
Gonzálvez-García, Francisco
2018. Taming iconicity in the Spanish and Italian translations of Shakespeare’s Sonnets
.
English Text Construction 11:1 ► pp. 105 ff.
Halverson, Sandra L.
2015. Cognitive Translation Studies and the merging of empirical paradigms.
Translation Spaces 4:2 ► pp. 310 ff.
Halverson, Sandra L.
2017.
In The Handbook of Translation and Cognition,
► pp. 193 ff.
Halverson, Sandra L.
2019. ‘Default’ translation.
Translation, Cognition & Behavior 2:2 ► pp. 187 ff.
Hansen‐Schirra, Silvia
2017.
In The Handbook of Translation and Cognition,
► pp. 232 ff.
Hareide, Lidun
2019.
In Parallel Corpora for Contrastive and Translation Studies [Studies in Corpus Linguistics, 90],
► pp. 19 ff.
Heilmann, Arndt, Tatiana Serbina, Jonas Freiwald & Stella Neumann
2020. Animacy and agentivity of Subject Themes in English-German translation.
Lingua ► pp. 102813 ff.
Kajzer-Wietrzny, Marta
2018.
In Making Way in Corpus-based Interpreting Studies [New Frontiers in Translation Studies, ],
► pp. 97 ff.
Kajzer-Wietrzny, Marta
2021. An intermodal approach to cohesion in constrained and unconstrained language.
Target. International Journal of Translation Studies
Kajzer-Wietrzny, Marta, Bogusława Whyatt & Katarzyna Stachowiak
2016. Simplification in inter- and intralingual translation – combining corpus linguistics, key logging and eye-tracking.
Poznan Studies in Contemporary Linguistics 52:2
Kenny, Dorothy
2012.
In The Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics,
Kruger, Haidee
2012. A corpus-based study of the mediation effect in translated and edited language.
Target. International Journal of Translation Studies 24:2 ► pp. 355 ff.
Kruger, Haidee & Gert De Sutter
2018. Alternations in contact and non-contact varieties.
Translation, Cognition & Behavior 1:2 ► pp. 251 ff.
Kruger, Haidee & Bertus Rooy
2012. Register and the features of translated language.
Across Languages and Cultures 13:1 ► pp. 33 ff.
Kukkonen, Karin
2020. Does Cognition Translate?.
Poetics Today 41:2 ► pp. 243 ff.
León, Celia Martín
2017.
In The Handbook of Translation and Cognition,
► pp. 106 ff.
Marco, Josep
2010. Normalisation and the Translation of Phraseology in the COVALT Corpus1.
Meta 54:4 ► pp. 842 ff.
Marshall, Sally
2015. Evidential stance in translation: patterns of complementation in mediated memories.
The Translator 21:1 ► pp. 50 ff.
Molés-Cases, Teresa
2018. Some advances in the study of the translation of manner of motion events.
Review of Cognitive Linguistics 16:1 ► pp. 152 ff.
Molés-Cases, Teresa
2019. Why typology matters: a corpus-based study of explicitation and implicitation of Manner-of-motion in narrative texts.
Perspectives 27:6 ► pp. 890 ff.
Pan, Feng
2019. Translation: the basics.
Perspectives 27:5 ► pp. 778 ff.
Robin, Edina
2017. Translation universals revisited.
FORUM. Revue internationale d’interprétation et de traduction / International Journal of Interpretation and Translation 15:1 ► pp. 51 ff.
Soler Gallego, Silvia
2018. Audio descriptive guides in art museums.
Translation and Interpreting Studies 13:2 ► pp. 230 ff.
Su, Wenchao
2020.
In Eye-Tracking Processes and Styles in Sight Translation [New Frontiers in Translation Studies, ],
► pp. 9 ff.
Su, Wenchao & Defeng Li
2016. Corpus-Based Studies of Translational Chinese in English–Chinese Translation (2015). Richard Xiao and Xianyao Hu..
Digital Scholarship in the Humanities 31:3 ► pp. 516 ff.
Szymor, Nina
2018. Translation: universals or cognition?.
Target. International Journal of Translation Studies 30:1 ► pp. 53 ff.
Vandepitte, Sonia
2017.
In The Handbook of Translation and Cognition,
► pp. 165 ff.
Vilinsky, BÁrbara
2012. On the lower frequency of occurrence of Spanish verbal periphrases in translated texts as evidence for the unique items hypothesis.
Across Languages and Cultures 13:2 ► pp. 197 ff.
Volansky, V., N. Ordan & S. Wintner
2015. On the features of translationese.
Digital Scholarship in the Humanities 30:1 ► pp. 98 ff.
Wang, Feng & Philippe Humblé
2019. Review of Ji, Oakes, Defeng & Hareide (2016) Corpus Methodologies Explained: An Empirical Approach to Translation Studies
.
Target 31:1 ► pp. 154 ff.
Wang, Feng (Robin) & Philippe Humblé
2019. Corpus-Informed Translation Studies– Looking Backward and Forward: A Chinese Perspective.
Studia Neophilologica 91:1 ► pp. 119 ff.
Whyatt, Bogusława, Marta Kajzer-Wietrzny & Katarzyna Stachowiak
2017.
In Translation in Transition [Benjamins Translation Library, 133],
► pp. 136 ff.
Wintner, Shuly
2017.
In Business Intelligence [Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, 280],
► pp. 38 ff.
Álvarez de la Fuente, Esther & Raquel Fernández Fuertes
2015. Translation universals in the oral production of bilingual children.
Translation and Translanguaging in Multilingual Contexts 1:1 ► pp. 49 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 21 april 2021. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.