Abstract
In the bilingual context of translation, the translated text, as the result and the stake of mediation, is pivotal to the mediation process. The textual analysis of mediation provides linguistic evidence for the interactive relationship between mediation and social structures. Without a close examination of the text, in Fairclough’s (2003, p. 3) words, there will be ‘no real understanding of the social effects of discourse’ or of mediation in discourse. I will first revisit the notion of the translation process to distinguish the different stages at which mediation operates. On this basis, I will develop a linguistic approach to the investigation of Clinton discursive mediation in operation by drawing on concepts from Beaugrande’s typology of network links and Halliday’s functional grammar.
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Notes
- 1.
The translation process, in a narrow sense, refers to the translators’ text processing, that is, their understanding of the source text and their production of the target text; whilst in a broader sense, it may extend from the initial translation commissioning to the translation publication. More specifically, it involves translation commission, translator selection, source text understanding, target text generation, editing and translation publication. However, the primary concern of this research is to explicate what is involved in the production of the target text. To put it differently, I assume that translation is first of all concerned with the production of the target text.
- 2.
Much has been discussed about the freedom of the author (see Boase-Beier and Holman 1999). Admittedly, the writer is subject to a variety of constraints imposed by the norm of the source cultural system and the broad context of his/her writing activity. However, apart from the linguistic norm of the target cultural system and the social context of his/her translating activity, the translator is also subject to the ever present model of the source text. In this regard, the writer is much freer.
- 3.
After defining the notion of primary concepts, De Beaugrande (1984, p. 111) adds in the end notes, ‘it can easily be seen that situations subsume objects, and events subsume actions; we therefore usually speak of situations and events as a cover-all designation of primary concepts and their organization’. However, in my view, events are results of actions, and can thus stand as a designation; yet regarding the relationship between objects and situation, I prefer to take them as separate in the light of the significance of objects in network connection. A good example is the author’s analysis of a text of rocket, where the object, rocket, is the key in connecting with the other objects scientists and generals, flares and flames to form a textual world.
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Wang, H. (2022). The Micro-Model: A Linguistic Approach to Textual Mediation in Translation. In: Discursive Mediation in Translation. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-4097-2_4
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