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TQA in Three Different Schools of Thought

Linguistic Description vs. Social Evaluation in Translation quality assessment (TQA)

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This model is developed from Hallidayan Systemic Functional Linguistics which was rooted in the linguistic intellectual tradition in Europe and grew following the work of Ferdinand de Saussure. According to this model to translate and evaluate a text, an understanding of three layers of meaning, ideational, interpersonal and textual must be gained first and then followed by the next step, that is, the translation process. According to Bell, the three layers of meaning are:

(a) Ideational revealing a cognitive meaning. This meaning is embodied in a transitivity system to create a proposition starting the "user's experience of the external world of the senses and the inner world of the mind" (Bell, 1991:121). In this transitivity system, there are many kinds of processes, such as material, mental, verbal, verbal behavior, mental behavior, attributive and identification relation, etc.

(b) Interpersonal expressing the functional meaning of speech which is realized in a mood system creating sentences containing propositions or proposals and describing the interpersonal relationships between one speaker and another. This mood system realizes the social reality and explores the clauses in the exchange of information of goods and services.

(c) Textual describing a discourse meaning which is realized in a thematic system producing speech in a communicative event. The speeches are arranged in such a cohesive and coherent way.

The macrofunction of language (which Halliday called also it as 'metafunction') is described in the illustrative diagram at the next page. This diagram clearly shows the "network" and "system" of languages. The description of the functions of language by Halliday contributes a lot to the understanding of a text

According to this diagram and by analyzing it in detail, it is evident that the three layers of meaning, that is to say, ideational, interpersonal, and textual construct the foundation of the macro (or Meta) function of the language. First of all, the ideational layer of meaning governs and determines the field of discourse by which the subject matter of the text is known. This case has to do with the genre of the text referring to the category or field domain in which the language is embedded. The ideational layer of language macrofunction is in turn itself divided into logical and experiential subfunctions by which the process, role and circumstance of the speech, under the title of transitivity, are expressed. The process points to all of the challenges and stumbling blocks before the translator as well as the stages s/he should make attempts to remove and traverse, respectively, so as to reach to an ultimate product guaranteed both in quality and reader's acceptance. The significance of this step arises from the fact that the process of the translation and its dilemmas are usually denied to the reader when he thinks of translation as a product, since the reader encounters with only an end product resulting from a decision-making endeavor, ignoring the process of translation. The subsequent sub-branches fallen in this category, viz. role and circumstance, refer to the function or position of a piece of text in different tongues as well as the overall atmosphere surrounding it, respectively.

The second layer of meaning, i.e. the interpersonal, expresses the functional meaning of speech and governs the tenor of discourse by which the degree of emotional charge, social attitudes and mutual relationships between various addressers and addresses (in short, who is communicating with whom) are explained. In addition, the interpersonal meaning expresses the functional meaning of speech which is realized in a sub-system, known as mood, creating sentences containing propositions or proposals in the form of indicative or imperative. The mood system also identifies and realizes the social and communicative realities based on the accepted norms both on the speakers' and hearers' sides.

The third sub-division of language macrofunction shown in the diagram, i.e., the textual, governs the mode of the discourse by which the kind of language one uses, either oral or written, is determined. The notion of theme, known as the subject or main idea in the reciprocal conversation between the interlocutor and audience, is the most important background here, by which the information provided inside the language system can be instrumental to realize the textual layer of meaning in a thematic context. Accordingly, operating all these three sub-divisions of language macrofunctions together, a network of systems is produced, where understanding the layers of meaning totally along with the translation process followed can come to a propitious product.

Bell gives an example; Alfred hit Bill with a hammer. The three layers of meaning contained in the sentence can be reconstructed as follows:

Table OF Illustration Case of Bell's Three Layers of Meaning

The process that happens in the sentence as seen from the ideational level is that a material process hit was carried out by 'an actor' named Alfred against a person named Bill using the means of a hammer. Seen from an interpersonal level, the sentence is indicative and declarative with the purpose of giving information. From a textual level, the thematic structure of the sentence is topically unmarked. After reconstructing the meaning of the sentence, the transfer process takes place. The translation should have the same ideational level, while the interpersonal and textual levels might be different. To sum up, it can be said that Bell's model of TQA is helpful for text analysis at the ideational, interpersonal and textual levels. A good translation still carries the ideational meaning of the source text, while the other meanings, interpersonal and textual might be different.