Translational Shifts in Iqbal’s Poetic Adaptation of English Poetry: A Cognitive Linguistic Study of Selected Poems

Abstract

In translation studies, sorting out the source-target relationship has been a complicated contentious issue among the translation and linguistics scholars. Various concepts such as equivalence, translation shifts, and translation norms have been introduced to define the nature of such relationship. Translation shift is a post hoc product emerged after when the entire practice of equivalence was disfavored for its longstanding inability of addressing the ambiguities concerning the appropriate unit of translation (Snell-Hornby, 1988). Although the concept equivalence has been much proliferated in its typological nature but still it has been empirically proved incapable of capturing the variability of translation as argued by Koller in 1995. By nature equivalence and its various classifications have the only aim which is established in relation to the invariant underlined in the source text. This aim in its very essence seeks to establish objective relationship between source and target texts. However, achieving such aim as looking for exact equivalent is constrained by social, cultural and cognitive factors and thus results in various related formal deviations from the invariants. From this idea Pym (2010) argues that the equivalence concept is no more perceived from the essentialist paradigm neither it should be practiced to establish source-target equivalent. Rather sorting out the source-target relationship is a subjective activity in which the units and constituents of both the languages interact with each other in the mind of a translator. Translation is thought of no more a mechanical enterprise which involved the searching for exact equivalent rather it is a dynamic cognitive activity constrained by a translator or conceptualizer’s construal operations. In this cognitive view, the concept of equivalence becomes out of practice in translation and its post hoc product i.e. translation shift is due considered in the source-target relationship.

Shifts in translation are in fact the changes reflected in the target text as said by Van Leuven-Zwart, Baker and Koster in 2009. It is obvious that changes in the target occur in response to the existing invariants in the source text. It is also pointed out by Popovic (1970) that things which are new and do not seem to be reflected in the original are known as shifts. Shifts have been formally and linguistically defined and characterized by various scholars such as Catford (1965), Vinay and Darbelnet (1958), and Klaudy (1996). But the characterization of shifts is either procedural or it is based on the product, however both approaches are prescriptive in nature as both focus on language internal units. The procedural approach to shifts prescribes a set of procedures which are employed during the translating process and thus cause shifts while the changes underlined in the translation product are classified and typified on the basis of linguistic structure. The frameworks of Vinay and Darbelnet as well as of Klaudy are understood as the best example of procedural way of causing shifts. As they suggest processes such as adaptation, transposition, modulation and like other which cause changes at various structural levels during the translating act.  Similarly, Catford’s framework (1965) is based on the identification of shifts types in translation product. His definition of shifts is based exclusively on linguistic matters as he identified shifts as the deviation from the formal invariants of the source text. His categorization of shifts is related to various linguistic levels such as category shifts, rank shifts, class shifts and structure shifts.

It is observed in the preceding account that shifts are either considered procedural or product-based but both have the shared interest of describing the source-target relationship. Such description of the relationship is prescriptive as the translator or researcher has to strictly follow a set of suggested procedures, strategies or techniques and thus the analysis of the translation phenomena is not permitted to go beyond the linguistic matters. Moreover, the product-based changes are evaluated against the invariants while changes that happen due to following a particular set of procedures without the assumption of invariants as previously took into account then the notion of shifts may be considered in a cognitive construal framework (Halverson, 2007). Cognitive construals are cognitive abilities possessed by every speaker or translator that perceive or conceptualize a situation in multiple dimensions. Halverson in 2007 argues that construals are implemented in three different dimensions in cognitive translation studies. First of all, the context in which the translator interprets the STs is an excellent source. Second, a set of conventions of the language and the knowledge about it known to translator is another place where construals’ implications can be found. Finally, the translator own creativity as may be observed in translation that reflects his/her unique experiences is found an effective source through which construals are implemented in translating. In view of the implantation of construals, translation is understood as a dynamic meaning-making activity. However, this activity is constrained by the construals which act in the form of contextual, cultural, and convention constraints. Therefore, the authors and translators who are engaged in producing any original literary or translating texts must have the influences of construals. Due to differences in construals, an author and translator would not construe the same situation in identical fashion. In this respect, the study attempts to venture the cognitive construal investigation of the translation shifts in Iqbal’s adaptation of Henry Wordsworth Longfellow’s poem “Daybreak”.