l.The system of transfer operations
1.6. A case study of selection criteria
The first sentence of Graham Greene’s short story The Innocent was translated by Gabriella Prekop in the following way (the first sentence has been selected here to minimise the amount of contextual information needed):
English ST: It was a mistake to take Lola here. (Greene 451)
Hungarian TT: Hiba volt, hogy magammal vittem Lolát. (Prekop 278) (lit.: It was a mistake to take Lola with me.)
Let us make an inventory of all of the operations the translator had to perform to come up with the translation above. Had she merely replaced the English lexical units with Hungarian ones, she would have produced a grammatically ill-formed sentence (cf. Az volt egy hiba vinni Lola ide.). To get a grammatically well- formed Hungarian sentence, she had to perform a series of operations:
(1) she left out the English personal pronoun it,
(2) the past tense of the English existential verb (ivas) was replaced by the past form of the Hungarian existential verb (volt),
(3) she left out the English article a,
(4) the English noun mistakewas replaced by the Hungarian noun hiba, (5) the English verb-noun word order was changed to the Hungarian noun
verb word order,
(6) the conjunction hogy {'that0 was inserted in the Hungarian sentence, (7) the declined personal pronoun magammal (‘with me9) was inserted in
the Hungarian sentence,
(8) the English verb takewas replaced by the Hungarian verb vinni,
(9) the English infinitive {to take) was replaced by the Hungarian conjugat
ed verb form {vittem, I took), (10) she left out to,
(11) she added the past tense, first person singular inflection to the Hungarian verb vinni,
(12) she added the transitive inflection to the proper name Lola {Lolát), (13) she left out the adverb here.
Here we can see that even in the case of this simple eight-word English sentence the translator had to perform at least 13 operations: four omissions {it, a, to, here), two additions {hogy, magammal),one change of word order {was mistake-»
Hiba volt), three lexical substitutions {was -» volt, mistake -» hiba, take -»
vinni),one grammatical replacement (to take-» vittem),two structural changes {mistake to take -» hogy vittem, Lola -» Lolát).
This list of operations was described as if the translator worked like a machine which senses the words of the original sentence one by one and performs an oper
ation with each and every one of them, on the basis of an in-built English-Hun- garian dictionary and an English-Hungarian contrastive grammar.
In reality, however, the translator does not work in such a linearly fashion, even with a simple sentence like this; he/she does not process the words in a linear way and the various operations are also weighted differently. In translating this sentence, the most complicated operation is making a complex Hungarian sentence out of a simple English sentence. The rest of the operations listed all serve this major trans
fer operation, so we can claim that the most important transfer operation triggers the rest, some of which are performed by the translator consciously and others automatically.
Obligatory transfer operations, without which we do not get a grammatically well-formed Hungarian sentence, are generally performed automatically by trans
lators. In the English sentence above, the omission of itor the addition of the tran
sitive inflection to the proper name Lola are automatic transfer operations. The transfer operation affecting the whole sentence was not obligatory, i.e., changing the English infinitival structure into a hogy-clause { that-clause), because the noun hibacould have been followed by an infinitive in Hungarian as well (cf. Hiba volt magammal vinni Lolát. 'It was a mistake to take Lola with me.9). Lexical substi
tutions can not be considered obligatory transfer operations either, since the English noun mistakecan also be translated as tévedésas well as hiba,and the English verb take can also mean hozni {'bring9) as well as vinniin Hungarian.
After performing the automatic and obligatory transfer operations, the translator is still faced with a number of choices even in the case of this simple English sen
tence. Let us list just a few out of these:
l.The system of transfer operations
(1) Hiba volt, hogy magammal vittem Lolát.
(lit. It was a mistake that with me I took Lola.) (This was the translation provided by the translator.)
(2) Hiba volt, hogy magammal hoztam Lolát.
(lit. It was a mistake that with me I brought Lola.) (3) Hiba volt, hogy elvittem magammal Lolát.
(lit. It was a mistake that I took Lola with me.) (4) Hiba volt, hogy elhoztam magammal Lolát.
(lit. It was a mistake that I brought Lola with me.) (5) Hiba volt, hogy elhoztam ide Lolát.
(lit. It was a mistake that I brought Lola here.) (6) Hiba volt, hogy Lolával jöttem ide.
(lit. It was a mistake that I came here with Lola.) (7) Hiba volt, hogy Lolát vittem magammal.
(lit. It was a mistake that it was Lola whom I took with me.) (8) Hiba volt, hogy Lolát hoztam magammal.
(lit. It was a mistake that it was Lola whom I brought with me.) (9) Hiba volt, hogy Lolát magammal vittem.
(lit. It was a mistake that Lola with me I took.) (10) Hiba volt, hogy Lolát magammal hoztam.
(lit. It was a mistake that Lola with me I brought.) (11) Hiba volt, hogy Lolát hoztam el ide.
(lit. It was a mistake that it was Lola whom I brought here.) (12) Hiba volt, hogy Lolát elhoztam ide.
(lit. It was a mistake that Lola was brought here by me.) (13) Hiba volt magammal vinni Lolát.
(lit. It was a mistake to take Lola with me.) (14) Hiba volt magammal hozni Lolát.
(lit. It was a mistake with me to bring Lola.) (15) Hiba volt elvinni magammal Lolát.
(lit. It was a mistake to take with me Lola.) (16) Hiba volt elhozni magammal Lolát.
(lit. It was a mistake to bring with me Lola.) (17) Hiba volt elhozni ide Lolát.
(lit. It was a mistake to bring here Lola.) (18) Hiba volt Lolával jönni ide.
(lit. It was a mistake to come here particularly with Lola.) (19) Hiba volt Lolát vinni magammal.
(lit. It was a mistake to take particularly Lola with me.) (20) Hiba volt Lolát hozni magammal.
(lit. It was a mistake to bring particularly Lola with me.) (21) Hiba volt Lolát magammal hozni.
(lit. It was a mistake to bring Lola with me.) (22) Hiba volt Lolát magammal vinni.
(lit. It was a mistake to take Lola with me.) (23) Hiba volt Lolát hozni ide.
(lit. It was a mistake to bring particularly Lola here.)
(24) Hiba volt Lolát elhozni ide. (lit. It was a mistake to bring Lola here.)
(25) Tévedés volt... (lit. It was faulty to ... ) (26) Nem volt helyes ... (lit. It wasn’t right to ... ) (27) Nem kellett volna ... (lit. I needn’t have ... ) (28) Helytelen volt... (lit. It was wrong to ... )
(29) Nem lett volna szabad ... (lit. I shouldn’t have ... ) (30) Nem tettem jól, hogy ... (lit. I didn’t do it right that... )
We shall not continue listing the unrealised solutions, since we are far from having compiled a complete list. After starting the sentence by Tévedés volt ... (‘It was faulty to ...'), Nem volt helyes ... (‘It wasn't right ...'), Helytelen volt... (‘It was wrong to ...') all the 24 different continuations are possible; after starting the sen
tence by Nem kellett volna... (7 needn't have ...’) and Nem lett volna szabad...
(7shouldn't have ...’) only the 12 clausal variants can follow, but still the number of possible choices exceeds one hundred. These are grammatically well-formed sen
tences and all display the transfer operations triggered by the differences between the systems of the two languages. Taken out of the text, all of them can be transla
tions of the English sentence It was a mistake to take Lola here.
Was the one the translator finally chose from the possibilities listed above the result of the translator’s subjective decision alone? Not quite. We have said that the above variants may all be possible translations of the sentence under study taken out of the text. But only when taken out of the text.
Considering the full text, the number of options is substantially lower. Empha
sising the proper name Lola, for example, by placing it into focus position does not make sense, because it would have been just as bad for the main hero to have taken anyone else to the scene where he spent his young days. As a result, all the Hungarian variants where the proper name Lola is in focus (cf. versions 6, 7, 8, 11, 18, 19, 20, 23) may be disregarded.
The choice between the infinitival phrase and the clause is also not the result of a subjective decision either. Although theoretically both solutions produce a grammatically well-formed Hungarian sentence, the Hungarian translator has to change Indo-European nominal structures into clauses in Hungarian so often that she found the clausal version more “Hungarian sounding”. This is probably why the translator disregarded versions 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24.
Now we have only the lexical choices (hiba or tévedés, hoznior vinnieetc.) left. Here it is only the general characteristics of the genre (short story), the indi
vidual style of the author (Graham Greene), and the characteristic features of the short story itself (The Innocent) that influence selection.
The choice between hoztamlvittem (‘brought'/'took*) is determined by the storyteller’s spatial and temporal position. Although the Hungarian equivalent of take herewould be hozni, elhozni, idehozni (‘bring', ‘bring here0 outside of the text, the storyteller relates his visit to his native town only afterwards, when he has already left the town. The forms hoztam, elhoztam, idehoztamwould only be appropriate if the protagonist were still in the town at the time of speaking and if he were not only looking back but he would still be an active participant in the events. This is why the translator could not choose variants 2, 4, 5, 8, 10, 11, 14, 16, 17, 20, 21, 23, 24. Version 6 also has to be excluded because of the position of the speaker: Hiba volt, hogy Lolával jöttem ide. (Tt was a mistake, that /
came here with Lola.').
l.The system of transfer operations
As we can see, the number of possible solutions is gradually decreasing. If we exclude from the 24 Hiba volt... versions those in which the emphasis is wrong, the ones which are not clausal, and the ones which contain an incorrect word regarding the position of the speaker, there remain only two more versions: ver
sion 1, chosen by the translator (Hiba volt, hogy magammal vittem Lolát.),
and version 9, which is very close to version 1 (Hiba volt, hogy Lolát magam- mal vittem.).
As for the beginning of the sentence it is hard to choose from the various trans
lations of It was a mistake: Tévedés volt... (‘ It was faulty to ...'), Nem volt he
lyes ... (‘It wasn't right ...') Helytelen volt... (‘It was wrong to...') Nem kellett volna ... (7 needn't have ...') and Nem lett volna szabad ... (‘Ishouldn't have ...’), because all of them can be naturally aligned with the next sentence in the narra
tion: I knew it the moment we alighted from the train at the small country station. The translator chose the translation Hiba volt... probably because this was the sim
plest solution. Her choice may be explained by a widely held and followed maxim among translators, which says: "Always choose the simplest solution, don’t depart from the original unnecessarily, beware of overtranslation!” In the light of this statement, the most obvious translation of It was a mistakeis Hiba volt..., and the translator had no reason to opt for a more complicated solution.
One might raise the question here whether we are not overcomplicating the process of translation. It is most unlikely that the translator considered several dozens of solutions before translating this simple English sentence. It is more prob
able that she wrote down the version that we selected after a lengthy process of analysis without giving it too much thought. One cannot tell whether the choice between hoztamlvittem, or the one between the infinitival structure and the clausal variant was conscious or not. The identification, description and explanation of transfer operations, however, may shed light upon the objective regularities behind the seemingly subjective decisions of the translator. The fact that translators do not always consciously do what they do does not mean that it is not interesting to describe from the point of view of translation studies what they actually do.
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