SPEECH ACTS AND THEIR IMPLICATIONS TO TRANSLATION
Narrative and normative types of discourses involve some form of speech act. It is, therefore, essential for a translator to be able to understand not just what form a particular utterance takes, but more importantly, what an utterance does. A story is told that an Indian mother-in-law who met her son’s American wife for the first time was shocked and asked, “What kind of woman did my son marry? She wants everything!” The daughter-in-law, just being the American that she was, apparently kept appreciating a lot of stuff in her in-law’s house and telling the mother how pretty her saris were. It so happened that in that particular culture, you offer to give whatever someone compliments you for. As translators, we do not want to create misunderstandings like that. Therefore, translators should have a considerable understanding of the speech acts involved in our source language so as to be able to translate accurately, clearly, naturally, and acceptably into the receptor language.
A speech act is defined as an act that a speaker performs when making an utterance, including the following: 1) A general act (illocutionary act) that a speaker performs, analyzable as including the uttering of words (utterance acts), 2) making reference and predicating (propositional acts), and 3) a particular intention in making the utterance (illocutionary force), 4) An act involved in the illocutionary act, including utterance acts and propositional acts, and 5) the production of a particular effect in the addressee (perlocutionary act) (Brown, 1983).
In this paper, I shall be focusing on just two functions of a speech act: 1) how politeness to God is expressed in the Hebrew (SL), and 2) how humility before other people is encoded in a speech act. I shall also be using a Kalanguya translation as a point of evaluation to show how failure to recognize and understand the functions of such speech acts would result in an inaccurate translation. The examples shall be on illocutionary force and perlocutionary acts.
A. Politeness to YHWH
First, let us look at how Biblical Hebrew expresses politeness to Yahweh in their speech acts. There is the so called passivum divinum and causativum divinum. Passivum divinum means the use of the passive form of a verb in an utterance to avoid directly referring to God as the agent of a negative act (e.g. killing, war, destruction), and causativum divinum is the use of request-cohortatives and request-jussives to “hide” the divine primary agent (Rothlin, 2007).
Some of the examples of this phenomenon are the following:
(1) 1Chronicles 5:20 And they were helped on them, and they were given in their hand.(BART)
The verse above talked about how the Israelites were able to defeat and dispossess the inhabitants of Canaan. The One who helped the Israelites annihilate the inhabitants of the land was Yahweh but politeness forced the author to leave out Yahweh’s name in the sentence due to the negative implication of the act of destruction and to use the Nifal which is the basic passive verb stem of the Biblical Hebrew.
(2) Psa 37:17 The arms of the wicked shall be broken
In the example from Ps. 37:17, the Psalmist used the passive but what he really meant is that God would be the one breaking the arms of the wicked.
(3) Psalm 69:15 May I not sink! May I be saved from those who hate me!
(4) Psalm 69:25 May their camp be a desolation; let no one live in their tents.
In examples (3) and (4) above, the speaker could have very well said, “Lord, don’t let me sink! (You) save me from those who hate me!” But it is noticeable that the speaker avoided using the simple request or command or imperative form of the verb. He used the request-cohortatives, and request-jussives to express his plea all the while avoiding to mention the Person to whom he is addressing his plea.
Before translating these verses into Kalanguya, the translator needed to study how the language expresses these kinds of speech acts. Having been saturated with the traditional rule in English writing that passive constructions are to be avoided for the most part, the translator went ahead and translated all these statements using the appropriate or somewhat equivalent active forms of the verbs. Verses such as 1Chronicles 5:20 are probably not so problematic when it comes to comprehension or accuracy in translation since a lot of times in narratives, it is indeed better to activate passives to lend naturalness and breathe life into the narrative, such that this verse has been translated as:
(5) “Tinolongan idan Diyoh...” (God helped them...)
(6) “Hi Diyoh i timolong ni hi-gada... (It was God who helped them.)
In the first draft, the Kalanguya MTT used (6) which at first glance is really no different from (5). But having realized that the Hebrew used the passive for the purpose of politeness by leaving out the name of the God in an act of war, the MTT revised the translation to (5) because (6) puts the divine agent in the topic position, thus defeating the purpose of the passive in Hebrew. Somehow, using the simple perfective construction in Kalanguya even if the agent was made explicit but relegated into an oblique position does the job.
Also example (2) is one of those clauses with a figure that will most likely have to be expressed dynamically, and since the succeeding clause has an explicit agent (God), the translator will most likely express the politeness of the passive of the preceding statement some other way with an active form. The Ilocano and Ifugao (Keley-i) translations, like the GNT, did exactly that. They did away with the passive and just made the agent explicit and even made the agent the subject of the clause. This is usually justifiable and legitimate, but again, having learned about speech acts and the purposes each one serves, it would seem that this MTT would probably translate this differently. The NLT is a good model for this.
(7) For the strength of the wicked will be shattered, (NLT)
Understandably, it is ultimately God who shall bring to pass the shattering of the strength of the wicked but most of the time, He uses other agents. So aside from the fact that the passivum divinum has the purpose of encoding politeness to the divine agent, retaining the passive in translating clauses like this lends more accuracy, since it is also a fact that other agents—human, natural events, or others may be employed by God to bring about the action.
Examples (3) and (4), on the other hand, can be a challenge. In English, it is possible to retain the form, that is the cohortative and jussives. Most modern English translations though used the regular negative request form—‘Don’t let...’ If a translator really wants to capture the politeness that is implied in the Hebrew by the use of the causativum divinum, a particle such as ‘please’ would not hurt here.
In Kalanguya, retaining the form of the causativum divinum which is possible in English will communicate the wrong meaning:
(8) Anggan nem ag maitolok ni nak olleneng. Anggan nem maihalakanak nontada makaanhimogal ni hi-gak. (May I not be allowed to sink. May I be saved from those who hate me.)
In Kalanguya, using the equivalent passives here will not work, even if the appropriate discourse particle that expresses request or plea is used. Pragmatics in Kalanguya dictate that the use of passives plus the cohortatives and jussives in pleas or requests signals lack of faith and/or selfishness. Thus (8) expresses more of a doubting nature or a feeling of entitlement by the speaker—as if he deserves or he is entitled to receive the good or help that he is asking for. Hence, a natural, accurate and clear translation would be:
(9) Ag to koma itolok ni nak olleneng. Ihalakan towak koma nontada makaanhimogal ni hi-gak. (May he not allow me to sink. May he save me from those who hate me.)
Notice that to be able to capture the full meaning of the causativum divinum, it was necessary to supply the agent and use a discourse particle that, in its primary sense, expresses doubt, but with the active form of the verb plus an explicit agent, now expresses total dependence and humility.
B. Humility through Pronominals
Commonly, languages encodes politeness by using honorifics to address another person such as the English Sir, Madam, and the various honorifics that Tagalogs or Ilocanos use to encode respect or politeness in their speech acts such as the use of kuya, ate, manong, manang to refer to people who are older than a speaker. But there is another speech act that is used to express politeness where the speaker makes an utterance that is pragmatically self-deprecating. In Kalanguya, as in other languages, this can be accomplished by using the appropriate pronoun. Consider 1Samuel 18:23:
(10) They repeated these words to David. But David said, “Do you think it is a small matter to become the king's son-in-law? I'm only a poor man and little known.” (NIV)
(11) Kalanguya Draft: Impidwa day ya ni hi David. Nem hi David, kan to ay, “Hapa nalakan mambeblin ni inapon adi? Nabitegak tan aliwan madamagak ni too.” (They repeated this to David. But David, he said, “Is it easy to become a son-in-law of a king? I am poor and I am not popular.”)
A speech act is defined as an act that a speaker performs when making an utterance, including the following: 1) A general act (illocutionary act) that a speaker performs, analyzable as including the uttering of words (utterance acts), 2) making reference and predicating (propositional acts), and 3) a particular intention in making the utterance (illocutionary force), 4) An act involved in the illocutionary act, including utterance acts and propositional acts, and 5) the production of a particular effect in the addressee (perlocutionary act) (Brown, 1983).
In this paper, I shall be focusing on just two functions of a speech act: 1) how politeness to God is expressed in the Hebrew (SL), and 2) how humility before other people is encoded in a speech act. I shall also be using a Kalanguya translation as a point of evaluation to show how failure to recognize and understand the functions of such speech acts would result in an inaccurate translation. The examples shall be on illocutionary force and perlocutionary acts.
A. Politeness to YHWH
First, let us look at how Biblical Hebrew expresses politeness to Yahweh in their speech acts. There is the so called passivum divinum and causativum divinum. Passivum divinum means the use of the passive form of a verb in an utterance to avoid directly referring to God as the agent of a negative act (e.g. killing, war, destruction), and causativum divinum is the use of request-cohortatives and request-jussives to “hide” the divine primary agent (Rothlin, 2007).
Some of the examples of this phenomenon are the following:
(1) 1Chronicles 5:20 And they were helped on them, and they were given in their hand.(BART)
The verse above talked about how the Israelites were able to defeat and dispossess the inhabitants of Canaan. The One who helped the Israelites annihilate the inhabitants of the land was Yahweh but politeness forced the author to leave out Yahweh’s name in the sentence due to the negative implication of the act of destruction and to use the Nifal which is the basic passive verb stem of the Biblical Hebrew.
(2) Psa 37:17 The arms of the wicked shall be broken
In the example from Ps. 37:17, the Psalmist used the passive but what he really meant is that God would be the one breaking the arms of the wicked.
(3) Psalm 69:15 May I not sink! May I be saved from those who hate me!
(4) Psalm 69:25 May their camp be a desolation; let no one live in their tents.
In examples (3) and (4) above, the speaker could have very well said, “Lord, don’t let me sink! (You) save me from those who hate me!” But it is noticeable that the speaker avoided using the simple request or command or imperative form of the verb. He used the request-cohortatives, and request-jussives to express his plea all the while avoiding to mention the Person to whom he is addressing his plea.
Before translating these verses into Kalanguya, the translator needed to study how the language expresses these kinds of speech acts. Having been saturated with the traditional rule in English writing that passive constructions are to be avoided for the most part, the translator went ahead and translated all these statements using the appropriate or somewhat equivalent active forms of the verbs. Verses such as 1Chronicles 5:20 are probably not so problematic when it comes to comprehension or accuracy in translation since a lot of times in narratives, it is indeed better to activate passives to lend naturalness and breathe life into the narrative, such that this verse has been translated as:
(5) “Tinolongan idan Diyoh...” (God helped them...)
(6) “Hi Diyoh i timolong ni hi-gada... (It was God who helped them.)
In the first draft, the Kalanguya MTT used (6) which at first glance is really no different from (5). But having realized that the Hebrew used the passive for the purpose of politeness by leaving out the name of the God in an act of war, the MTT revised the translation to (5) because (6) puts the divine agent in the topic position, thus defeating the purpose of the passive in Hebrew. Somehow, using the simple perfective construction in Kalanguya even if the agent was made explicit but relegated into an oblique position does the job.
Also example (2) is one of those clauses with a figure that will most likely have to be expressed dynamically, and since the succeeding clause has an explicit agent (God), the translator will most likely express the politeness of the passive of the preceding statement some other way with an active form. The Ilocano and Ifugao (Keley-i) translations, like the GNT, did exactly that. They did away with the passive and just made the agent explicit and even made the agent the subject of the clause. This is usually justifiable and legitimate, but again, having learned about speech acts and the purposes each one serves, it would seem that this MTT would probably translate this differently. The NLT is a good model for this.
(7) For the strength of the wicked will be shattered, (NLT)
Understandably, it is ultimately God who shall bring to pass the shattering of the strength of the wicked but most of the time, He uses other agents. So aside from the fact that the passivum divinum has the purpose of encoding politeness to the divine agent, retaining the passive in translating clauses like this lends more accuracy, since it is also a fact that other agents—human, natural events, or others may be employed by God to bring about the action.
Examples (3) and (4), on the other hand, can be a challenge. In English, it is possible to retain the form, that is the cohortative and jussives. Most modern English translations though used the regular negative request form—‘Don’t let...’ If a translator really wants to capture the politeness that is implied in the Hebrew by the use of the causativum divinum, a particle such as ‘please’ would not hurt here.
In Kalanguya, retaining the form of the causativum divinum which is possible in English will communicate the wrong meaning:
(8) Anggan nem ag maitolok ni nak olleneng. Anggan nem maihalakanak nontada makaanhimogal ni hi-gak. (May I not be allowed to sink. May I be saved from those who hate me.)
In Kalanguya, using the equivalent passives here will not work, even if the appropriate discourse particle that expresses request or plea is used. Pragmatics in Kalanguya dictate that the use of passives plus the cohortatives and jussives in pleas or requests signals lack of faith and/or selfishness. Thus (8) expresses more of a doubting nature or a feeling of entitlement by the speaker—as if he deserves or he is entitled to receive the good or help that he is asking for. Hence, a natural, accurate and clear translation would be:
(9) Ag to koma itolok ni nak olleneng. Ihalakan towak koma nontada makaanhimogal ni hi-gak. (May he not allow me to sink. May he save me from those who hate me.)
Notice that to be able to capture the full meaning of the causativum divinum, it was necessary to supply the agent and use a discourse particle that, in its primary sense, expresses doubt, but with the active form of the verb plus an explicit agent, now expresses total dependence and humility.
B. Humility through Pronominals
Commonly, languages encodes politeness by using honorifics to address another person such as the English Sir, Madam, and the various honorifics that Tagalogs or Ilocanos use to encode respect or politeness in their speech acts such as the use of kuya, ate, manong, manang to refer to people who are older than a speaker. But there is another speech act that is used to express politeness where the speaker makes an utterance that is pragmatically self-deprecating. In Kalanguya, as in other languages, this can be accomplished by using the appropriate pronoun. Consider 1Samuel 18:23:
(10) They repeated these words to David. But David said, “Do you think it is a small matter to become the king's son-in-law? I'm only a poor man and little known.” (NIV)
(11) Kalanguya Draft: Impidwa day ya ni hi David. Nem hi David, kan to ay, “Hapa nalakan mambeblin ni inapon adi? Nabitegak tan aliwan madamagak ni too.” (They repeated this to David. But David, he said, “Is it easy to become a son-in-law of a king? I am poor and I am not popular.”)
(12) Revised Kalanguya: “Kelay amon angkayon nalalaka yon makiinapod adi? Itibtibew yo ngon nababa tan nabibiteg i too êy!” (Why is it that it is as if it is very easy for you to become a son-in-law of a king? You know (lit. see) very well that the person is lowly and poor!)
At a glance, it would seem that both the draft and the revised translations are quite accurate. But if one truly looks deeper at this perlocutionary act in a Kalanguya context, one would realize that the old translation (11) communicates a totally opposite meaning. The desired meaning is that David does not think he deserves to marry a princess and so become a son-in-law of a king. This is clearly stated in the English. But to a Kalanguya reader, this sentence construction may be understood as if David is trying to gather support from his audience that it is indeed acceptable for him to become the son-in-law of a king even though he is poor and unpopular. Usually, when a Kalanguya uses the first person in utterances such as the above example, he means to be contradicted by the hearer. So if we retain nababa–ak “lowly-1s” and nabiteg–ak “poor-1s” then it would imply that deep inside, David wanted and expects his hearers to think the opposite of what he is saying about himself. In context, the old translation may stand; but without context, I am relatively sure that it will communicate the wrong meaning.
With that in mind, a necessary change is in order such that in (12) the MTT replaced the first person pronoun with a third person pronoun. This removes an incorrect implication of pride, and implies humility. It is very natural in Kalanguya to refer to oneself in the third person to imply humility or even inferiority.
During the exegetical process, a translator needs to first realize what form a speech act took and why , and what that form does to the whole utterance. Only then can he be on the right track to potentially translating the statement naturally, clearly and accurately. It is often too easy for an MTT to just read a LWC translation and translate as is, or throw in a discourse particle or two without much awareness of whether the verb form used and the discourse particle added does indeed express the impact or illocutionary force that was expressed in the original.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Warren-Rothlin, Andy. Politeness Strategies in Biblical Hebrew and West African Languages. Journal of Translation, Volume 3, Number 1 (2007) 55
Loos, Eugene E. (general editor), Susan Anderson (editor), Dwight H., Day, Jr. (editor), Paul C. Jordan (editor), and J. Douglas Wingate (editor). Glossary of linguistic terms, Linguistics. LinguaLinks Library, Version 5.0 published on CD-ROM by SIL International, 2003
Longacre, Robert E. The Grammar of Discourse. Plenum Press, New York, NY. 1983
Brown, Gillian, George Yule. Discourse Analysis. Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics. Cambridge University Press, 1983.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Warren-Rothlin, Andy. Politeness Strategies in Biblical Hebrew and West African Languages. Journal of Translation, Volume 3, Number 1 (2007) 55
Loos, Eugene E. (general editor), Susan Anderson (editor), Dwight H., Day, Jr. (editor), Paul C. Jordan (editor), and J. Douglas Wingate (editor). Glossary of linguistic terms, Linguistics. LinguaLinks Library, Version 5.0 published on CD-ROM by SIL International, 2003
Longacre, Robert E. The Grammar of Discourse. Plenum Press, New York, NY. 1983
Brown, Gillian, George Yule. Discourse Analysis. Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics. Cambridge University Press, 1983.
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