Something very interesting I found in “Critical Thinking” by William Hughes.
It’s actually a book on philosophy, but I found these paragraphs to be of interest to people interested in language – amongst which are we translators.
2.2.3
Meaning As UseA new approach to meaning was developed in this century by Ludwig Wittgenstein (18891951) and John Austin (19111960). They recognized that many words do refer to things, and that many words have a mental image or idea associated with them, but they held that the primary bearers of meaning are not words but sentences. Words have meaning only when they are used in sentences: without such a context they have no meaning. When we ask what some particular word means, we seem to be asking for the meaning of the word itself, as if it had a meaning apart from the way it is used in sentences. In fact, the only meaning a word can have is the meaning it gains from the meanings of the sentences in which the word is typically used. Notice how the different meanings of a word are expressed by using that word in different sentences:
I gave him a hand with his baggage. (i.e., help)
The crowd gave him a hand. (i.., applause)
Please hand me the scissors. (i.e., give)She is a green lawyer. (i.e., inexperienced)
He is looking green. (i.e., nauseous)
We had a green Christmas last year. (i.e., without snow)Don’t strike that child. (i.e., hit)
The strike was over wages. (i.e., refusal to work)
Strike three! (i.e., the batter is “out”)But if the meaning of sentences is primary and the meaning of words is derivative if we cannot derive the meaning of a sentence from the meanings of the words it contains how are we to account for the meaning of sentences? Wittgenstein and Austin held that the meaning of sentences is to be found in their use. Language is a tool, and just as we don’t really know what a hammer is until we know what its use is, so we don’t know what language means until we know what it is being used to do. In order to know what a particular sentence means we need to ask, What is this speaker, in this particular context, using this sentence to do? If someone says Hold it, we cannot know what the sentence means until we know what the speaker means, and we cannot know what the speaker means until we know what he or she is using the sentence to do. Did the speaker say Hold it to get someone to stop doing something, or to instruct someone to grasp hold of an object? Only when we have answered this question will we know what the sentence means.
It is important to pay attention to the context, for the context typically gives us the clues we need to determine what the speaker is using a sentence to do, and thus what the sentence means. There are various contextual features we can make use of, such as the social setting, the speaker’s personal goals, the nature and expectations of the audience, and what has just been said by other speakers. Changing the context of a sentence can sometimes dramatically affect its meaning. For example:
The queen is in a vulnerable position: (a) when said by a spectator at a chess match and (b) when said by a teacher in a lecture on the role of the monarchy in Britain.
The President has been shot and died a few minutes ago: (a) when said by a character in a film and (b) when said by a radio announcer in a news broadcast.
Let me go: (a) when said by a person whose arm has been grabbed by someone and (b) when said by a child whose teacher has asked for a volunteer to run an errand.
More commonly, however, context affects meaning in less dramatic but equally important ways. Usually, there are only a few possible uses of a sentence in any particular context, and we can make a reasonable judgement of its primary or intended use. It is important, therefore, to understand the various uses or functions of language.
So, why do I think it is interesting?
Mainly because it reinforces my personal belief that a translation must be based on meaning, not on words alone. As such, it is in some cases better not to cling to the words as they are provided (if they make little sense when translated directly, for example), but to ask yourself, “what is the speaker meaning to say?” and base your translation on that.
Actually, I believe that meaning is transcendental – the problem is embellishment (or the lack thereof) and cultural peculiarities. While the meaning of a sentence can be extracted from any sentence from any language without much problem, it is the way of expressing it that is placing barriers which translators have to overcome. As such, we basically have to strip the sentences of their culture and language-specific oddities to lay bare the core, the very meaning itself. Only then can we translate something without having it sound goofy – which is more ideal than reality, but you can always shoot for the stars.
