Links to pages: 403, 405, 406, 407, 408, 409, 410

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George W. Grace

University of Hawaii

May 28, 1986

(Revised August 20, 1986) *

ETHNOLINGUISTIC NOTES

Series 3, Number 26

PERLOCUTIONARY TRANSLATION

In Grace 1986a and Grace 1986b: 92ff., while discussing the "intertranslatability postulate", i.e., the postulate that it is possible to translate anything (no matter what) into any language (no matter which), I distinguished two idealized interpretations of the postulate. These were called the locutionary and perlocutionary interpretations. In the locutionary interpretation the claim is that, given any linguistic expression in any language, it is possible to find in any other language a linguistic expression with the same content. In the perlocutionary interpretation the claim is that anything (i.e., anything sayable) can be made understandable to anyone by means of that person's own language.

In the locutionary interpretation, then, what we might regard as "the translation" takes the form of a linguistic expression. Note that in this interpretation no claim is made about the understandability of the translation--i.e., about who might be expected to be able to understand it. In the perlocutionary interpretation, on the other hand, "the translation" should probably be thought of, not as a linguistic expression, but rather as the act of explaining--that is, as a performance, mainly verbal, by the translator. Although the performance of the translator (or better, "explainer"?) would involve the uttering of linguistic expressions, and although these linguistic expressions could be recorded, they are likely to lack cohesion. They are likely to include questions, answers to questions, trials and errors, false starts and restatements, etc., and they might have been accompanied by extensive non-verbal clues. It would hardly seem appropriate to think of such recorded explanations as themselves constituting the translation.

I described these above as "idealized" interpretations of the postulate. It is not clear that anyone would actually subscribe to either in the form given them here. However, I believe that the use of such idealized forms is fully defensible, even necessary, because no one has made clear precisely what interpretations of the postulate people would support. One suspects that this is not made clear enough to test because of a perception that any discrediting of the intertranslatability postulate would threaten the foundations of our whole ideological system. Therefore, to state it in any form which might permit it to be exposed to an empirical test would be too risky for our ideological commitments. In any case, since there seems to have been no effort to provide a testable statement of an interpretation that anyone would actually subscribe to, idealized interpretations seem the best available framework for attempting to throw some light on what is actually involved in intertranslatability.

The locutionary interpretation was analyzed in Grace 1986b. The conclusion was that the postulate by that interpretation was clearly false, that is, that there were no reasonable assumptions as to what constituted equivalence in content between different linguistic expressions by which it would be true. The present undertaking will be an attempt to explicate the perlocutionary interpretation in similar fashion.

We may use the term "perlocutionary translation" to refer to a translation whose aim is to produce some kind of understanding (where "understanding" is to be interpreted broadly enough to include effects that might not ordinarily be thought of as understanding) in an audience rather than to produce a text. Let us begin by considering what is involved in perlocutionary translation between a source language and a target language. Such a translation may be conceived of as follows: We commence with the object to be translated. This object is provided by what will be called a "speech" act (although the term is intended to cover writing as well as speaking). Next, the translator, in his/her capacity as a source-language-speaker, determines what a source-language-speaking hearer/reader should be expected to understand from that speech act. Finally (and it is this step which constitutes the translation), by means of the target language the translator leads one or more target-language-speaking hearer/readers to an understanding which is equivalent to the understanding expected of the source-language-speaking hearer/reader of the original.

As is apparent in the above analysis, perlocutionary translation involves two communicative transactions,(1) that by which the translator-as-hearer arrives at an understanding of the original speech act, and that by which the ultimate audience arrives at an understanding of the target-language speech act (in the very loose sense which we are giving that term) produced by the translator. We may say that the translation is to be judged successful (as a perlocutionary translation) just if the target-language audience actually has come to understand what a source-language audience should have understood from the original speech act. But how are we to determine what the target-language audience has understood, and above all, how are we to determine what a source-language audience should have understood? Before considering how this question might be answered, it is necessary to give a moment's thought to what is involved in communicative transactions in general.

COMMUNICATIVE TRANSACTIONS

In order to determine the criteria required for a perlocutionary translation to be judged successful, we need to consider how the successfulness of communicative transactions generally is to be determined. And it seems apparent from the outset that the successfulness of a communicative transaction is to be judged on the basis of the purposes with which the participants entered the transaction. The expresser, to begin with, is likely to have several purposes which he/she is attempting to satisfy by means of the expressive act. However, it is not always recognized that the same is true of the understander. He/she also has his/her own purposes which he/she is trying to satisfy. These ordinarily include understanding something of the purposes which motivated the expresser to speak, but the understander's and expresser's purposes do not necessarily have a great deal in common. In order better to understand the nature of even the simplest of communicative transactions, we need to consider the role of the participants' purposes in more detail.

Human beings may be thought of as incorporating (not to say as being) conative systems. For a human being (if not for animals generally), to be alive is to have purposes and constantly to be striving to satisfy them. Individuals' purposes are of interest to us here because communication, in the last analysis, consists of a satisfying of purposes. That is, an instance of communication may not be said to have taken place at all unless some (perhaps low-level) purposes of the speaker, of the hearer, or of both, have been satisfied.(2)

By "low-level" purposes, I mean purposes which are not among the basic purposes that guide the person's long-range planning, but which rather are designed as part of the strategies by which those plans are to be pursued. There is no need to attempt a definitive account of human conative systems here, and I would certainly not be competent to undertake such a task, but for our purposes the following account should be sufficient.

It seems clear that we may attribute at least the following to humans in general: (1) long-range purposes (some of which are probably at least in part instinctual and some [all?] of which are somewhat subject to change over the course of our lives) with strategies for attempting to satisfy these purposes, and (2) the more immediate purposes of successfully carrying out each of the moves called for by the afore-mentioned strategies. These more immediate purposes are what I am calling "lower-level". However, it also seems clear that there are not just two levels, but that a person's entire conative system involves level after level of purposes. Furthermore, conjoined to each purpose is some sort of strategy for attempting to satisfy it, with each move in each strategy itself constituting a (lower-level) purpose, which in turn must have its own accompanying strategy, and so on. We need not be concerned here with all of this complexity, but we do need to be aware that it is present.(3)

We may refer to the purposes which are actually in play in a particular communicative transaction as the participants' motivating purposes. We may also speak of a motivating strategy, i.e., the strategy which governs the participant's performance in his/her immediate role in the transaction. The motivating strategy must reflect the priorities obtaining among the participant's purposes. The motivating purposes and strategy appear to be all that we need to consider for the present superficial analysis of communicative transactions.

The expresser's purposes will include bringing about some kind of understanding (i.e., an understanding of some "thing" or "things") in an intended audience. The understander's purposes will ordinarily include acquiring some kind of understanding (some kind of information, perhaps) from the expresser's speech act. Since successful completion for the expresser requires that the desired response must be elicited from the understander, the expresser's strategy must be governed by the understander role--i.e., tailored to play upon it. It must attempt to anticipate how the understander will respond to the initial overtures, what motivating purposes and motivating strategy he/she will come up with, and how he/she will respond to other possible moves on the part of the expresser, all with a view to devising a strategy which will produce the desired results in the understander. Therefore, it is perhaps better to begin with the understander's role.

We may very crudely think of the necessary understanding as typically consisting of understanding the linguistic content (the understanding of linguistic content has been discussed at some length in Grace 1986b) and understanding at least something of the purpose which motivated the expresser to say it.

At least since John L. Austin's work (cf. Austin 1965) it has been recognized that some understanding of the expresser's purpose is a necessary part of the understanding of a speech act (at least enough of the purpose to permit an interpretation of the "illocutionary force" of the act).(4) The expresser can normally be expected to take such questions as "Why are you telling me that?" as proper ones, and to provide answers which are at least ostensibly responsive. In fact, expressers typically attempt to anticipate such questions and to provide something in the guise of an answer in the initial speech act.

The extent of agreement between the kinds of understanding that the two participants want to see acquired by the understander may vary considerably. For one thing, the extent to which an understander accepts and accommodates to the expresser's purposes is likely to depend upon the nature of the transaction. Some kinds of communicative transactions confine each participant to the same specialized role throughout the duration of the process. These might be referred to as unilateral communicative transactions. An example would be someone writing a book and another reading it. In others, the participants interchange roles, sometimes at frequent intervals. These might be called interactive communicative transactions.(5) An example would be an ordinary conversation with two participants. In interactive communicative transactions, where the understander and expresser must be prepared to exchange roles, each may find it expedient to cater somewhat to his/her interlocutor's motivating purposes--that is, to manifest understanding of what the interlocutor wants him/her to understand. On the other hand, an understander reading a book whose author (the expresser) he/she never expects to meet will be under less pressure to satisfy the expresser's purposes where they do not accord with his/her own.(6) One can read simply for what one wants to get out of it; consider the example of looking up information in a reference work such as a dictionary. The expresser in such cases can seem to the understander to be almost entirely lacking in recognizable personality characteristics.

The effort required to achieve the desired understanding may also vary greatly. To comprehend the content of the linguistic expression may require an interpretive effort. On the other hand-- for example if the linguistic expression consists of a conventional formula--understanding may be a matter of instantaneous recognition. Likewise, inferring the expresser's purposes may require a considerable effort of observation and reflection. On the other hand, if the speech act consists, for example, of a conventional formula in a conventional situation, a satisfactory (to the understander) understanding of the expresser's purpose may occur instantaneously.

The obvious conclusion seems to be that whether or not a communicative transaction has been successful depends upon the point of view of the person making the judgment. From the expresser's point of view it is successful to the extent that the expresser's purposes have been satisfied, and likewise mutatis mutandis, for the understander's viewpoint. We are therefore left with the conclusion that the degree of success of a communicative transaction is a relative matter, that there is no neutral and objective measure of the success of such a transaction.

THE PERLOCUTIONARY INTERTRANSLATABILITY POSTULATE

But we have said that there is no objective measure of the successfulness of a communicative transaction. It seems, from what we have seen, that transactions in which all of the motivating purposes of either expresser or understander are satisfied must be quite rare. It therefore would be unrealistic to require a perlocutionary translation to satisfy all of the motivating purposes of the participants. But if we do not require all of these purposes to be satisfied, which ones do we sacrifice? Should we judge on the basis of the motivating purposes of the original expresser? That seems to impose an unrealistic demand on the translator, because he/she cannot fairly even be held responsible for knowing what they are. If the typical understander cannot gain access to all of the expresser's motivating purposes, the translator cannot do so either.

But, in any case, should the expresser's purposes constitute the criterion even if they were easily identifiable? We have recognized that the understander has the right to seek to satisfy his/her own purposes, without regard for what the expresser may want. Is there not some similar right that should be granted in the case of translation? But granted to whom? Are we to judge that a satisfactory translation has occurred just because the ultimate audience tell us they have understood as much as they care to of what is being explained to them? That hardly seems satisfactory. Perhaps they did not care to understand any of it.

In actual practice, what purposes does a translation attempt to satisfy? Presumably, the answer is that they are the purposes which the translator brings to the task with him/her. To a considerable extent they will presumably depend upon who is paying his/her salary. Is it someone associated with the original expresser, who wants to see that their message reaches the ultimate audience? Or is it the audience, who want to find out what the expresser and his/her lot are up to? Such considerations are apt to loom large in a practical determination of the success of a particular attempt at translation.

Nothing that has been said here is intended to suggest that what we are calling perlocutionary translation does not occur, nor is any of it intended to question the very impressive linguistic resourcefulness that some individuals undoubtedly display at times-- both in the roles of expresser and understander. Furthermore, none of it is intended to suggest that there is ever a situation calling for translation in which we are totally helpless--in which there is nothing at all of utility that can be done.

Nevertheless, the intertranslatability postulate holds that such translation can always be carried out successfully, even when favorable conditions do not exist. Our investigation has revealed no grounds for this claim. In fact, there seems to be no possibility of a non-arbitrary basis for determining when an attempt at translation has been successful. This conclusion appears to preclude any possibility of interpreting the perlocutionary version of the intertranslatability postulate as an empirical claim.

NOTES

1. Except, of course, in the limiting case where the original speaker subsequently doubles as translator. Back up

2. In some cases, relatively high-level purposes may also be involved. For example, where the participants have a long-term ongoing relationship, it is likely that one or both will have high-level purposes concerned with maintaining and shaping the relationship. These may assume considerable prominence in their motivating strategies. Back up

3. Actually, matters are more complicated than even this suggests. This description suggests that the individual has a single system of purposes which is independent of the situations in which the individual finds him/herself, and that this system of purposes governs his/her behavior. An opposing view would represent cultures as possessing systems of rules, and the behavior of the members of each society as being governed by the rules of their culture. In this view, the explanation for the behavior of individuals would be sought in cultural rules governing the particular situations in which the behavior occurred.

In fact, of course, an individual is neither an automaton who must blindly obey the dictates of pre-existing cultural imperatives nor a completely autonomous system with his/her own independently-arrived-at system of purposes. It is certainly true that individuals do not possess the kind of integrated personalities and constancy of purpose that some descriptions (including that here) seem to imply. The explanation of behavior can, of course, be considered from the point of view of the individual or from that of the cultural system. From the point of view of the individual, the best approach might be one in which the individual was seen as going into different "modes" depending upon various situational factors--each such mode having its own somewhat particular system of purposes and strategies. Back up

4. There is a great deal of recent literature, under a variety of names (pragmatics, discourse analysis, conversational analysis, etc.) employing a variety of different approaches, on the means used by understanders to determine something of the expresser's purposes. Back up

5. Of course, the question of unilaterality versus interactivity is often a matter of scale. For example, when two people engage in a continuing correspondence, the entire correspondence constitutes an interactive transaction, but each individual letter can be seen as a unilateral transaction within the larger interactive one. Back up

6. Again, the possibilities are somewhat more complicated than this description suggests. There may be other factors in the transaction such as one's reading being governed by a friend who recommended it, a teacher who assigned it, an examination which will be based on it, etc. Back up

REFERENCES

Goffman, Erving. 1981. Forms of talk. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Back up

Grace, George W. 1986a. The intertranslatability postulate and its consequences. Ethnolinguistic Notes, Series 3, Number 25. Printout. 13 pp. Back up

Grace, George W. 1986b. The linguistic construction of reality. Printout. 224 pp. Back up

Last updated 24 January 1996, Typographical errors corrected 28 August 2003