3 - Learning a foreign language versus

Learning translation
Only after having studied one or more foreign languages can one begin to study
translation.

It is in fact necessary to have higher education qualifications or a university degree in

order to be admitted to any translation course at university level. In both cases, when one
sets out to learn the art of translation, one has already studied languages for some years.
It is therefore necessary for the aspiring translator to have a clear idea of certain
fundamental differences between learning a foreign language and learning translation.
When studying a foreign language, one is exposed to the usual techniques used for
teaching the language: translation along with dictation, listening comprehension,
conversation and grammar exercises. It is not up to us to say what we think of this use of
translation nor is it the object of this course. What we want to establish is that translating
in order to learn a foreign language is very different from translating in order to produce a
text, which is what one is supposed to learn when studying translation at university level.
When teaching a language, the text is often created specifically for that purpose or
adapted so that students encounter certain difficulties and not others, and that the
difficulties the student encounters are at the same level as his knowledge of the foreign
language.
The texts used are often the same and correcting becomes mechanical because the
teacher already knows what mistakes to look for. There may be various translating
solutions for one same sentence, but they all have to satisfy one requirement: the teacher
must be sure that the student has acquired certain notions and has understood the
meaning and the syntax of the sentence.
J. Delisle, one of the most eminent scholars in translation studies, has made this
particular point, the transition from the study of a language to the study of translation,
very clear.
[...] Scholastic translation has little in common with professional translation. They do not
have the same finalities; the former is totally integrated with a method for acquiring a
language whilst the latter is a communicative process. Scholastic translation by definition
precedes professional translation. Consequently the methodology of the learning process
must be conceived with professional translation in mind and not scholastic translation. To
link up different concepts, in order to reformulate a message following communication
imperatives is not the same thing as assimilating a foreign language or the culture which
forms its habitat [...]

Delisle, pp. 45-6

The role of translation when teaching a language is that of providing the students with
specific entries in the dictionary and the most common syntactical structures, so that they
can create models applicable to different sentences.
For example this sentence was taken from an English textbook:
We're tired. We've been studying since 2 o'clock.
It is obvious the authors of the book invented that sentence in order to show how to
describe an action, which began in the past and has not finished yet. It is also rather
obvious that this sentence is not really plausible except in a language-learning context . It
is rather improbable for a native speaker to use this kind of sentence.
When teaching translation, first of all it is important to say that the text is in no way
artificial, which is to say that the text has not been invented to cope with a particular
language difficulty, it is a "real" text created spontaneously by a speaker or a writer. This
has various implications.
First of all, the sentence previously given in English does not present any interpretative
difficulties. The various translations can be marked "right" or "wrong", and this is exactly
the role of the teacher, who will then decide the language level reached by the learner.
In statements made spontaneously by mother-tongue speakers and removed from their
context (the situation in which these sentences are pronounced) and from the co-text
(the words immediately before and after the sentence) the interpretation may be difficult
or ambiguous. For example, in the sentence
Is he gonna make it?
Isolated from its context and its co-text, it is very difficult to give just one univocal
interpretation. The real meaning can be inferred only by taking certain fundamental
elements, which are missing in this sentence, into consideration. This kind of sentence
would never occur in a textbook for learning English as a foreign language, but it might
very well occur in a translation.
For this reason, an important part of this course will be devoted to interpretation, and
interpretative possibilities and ambiguities which are intrinsic in a text and the way they
are dealt with.
Another difference between a scholastic text and an authentic one, is in the tools that
can be used for translating.
In a scholastic text, the main tool used is a bilingual dictionary. In fact, very often the
books themselves are complete with a bilingual dictionary in the appendix, with the
additional convenience of it already having been decided exactly what vocabulary the
student needs to know. These same words are then written at the back of the book with
their translation, not the only possible translation but the translation necessary to
complete that exercise the way the author of the book had intended.

In other words, in order to teach a language, a system of exercises and texts is created
first conforming to certain limits (which rules, which vocabulary) and then a dictionary is
created to satisfy the needs of this system.
?????
As you can see from the diagram above, it is a closed system, a self-referential system,
inside which everything tallies, and it is always possible to evaluate the level of language
learned. But, because it is a closed system it doesn't necessarily have anything in
common with a more open and wider linguistic system which is the linguistic universe a
translator has to face.
In the fourth part of this course we will face the problem of the translator's tools, and we
will examine in particular the limits and the unsuitability of a bilingual dictionary.
A third difference between a scholastic text and an authentic text is the reason for the
translation. The students translating for their language teacher must produce a result
which shows the language level. The sentence produced with this function is not usually
evaluated for its linguistic value but as proof of having learned certain rules and
vocabulary. Therefore if the translation of the above sentence into French were
Nous sommes fatigues. Nous tudions depuis deux heures.
I think the teacher could consider himself satisfied with the results of his student. On the
other hand, if the sentence is examined closely, certain characteristics are evident.
- It is a sentence no mother tongue speaker would use out
- A translator has to ask himself who the receiver of the sentence is, its reader, and
model the sentence in order to make it plausible and natural, as if spoken by a
Frenchman (notwithstanding that the original itself was plausible, as if a native speaker
has said it).
- A translator has to worry about the register whilst the student deals only with artificial
language which has an artificial register, anonymous like a textbook.
In other words, a language student produces a sentence to be evaluated, while a
translator produces a text which is then used, either because read or because listened to.
And in order to use this text in the most proper way, and in the most suitable way for the
reader and for the context, it is necessary to examine the standards that regulate
communication, which we will do, in the following parts of the course.
This does not mean that the translator cannot be judged or evaluated by the reader, and
even by critics.
Moreover, the translator is sometimes induced to choose to translate in a more flowing
style rather than stick to the authentic philological structure. And often, because of this,
they can go off route. It would be better if any criticisms made by critics were done so,

only after having read the original other than having read the result. Only the translation
of a flowing text must be flowing. But we will come back to this.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Delisle, J. L'analyse du discours comme mthode de traduction. Initiation la traduction
franaise de textes pragmatiques anglais. Ottawa, ditions de l'Universit d'Ottawa, 1984.

4 - Affectivity and Learning

Learning in general, and learning a foreign language in particular, is tied to the affective
context in which it occurs. A child learns his mother's language or the language of the
people closest, by associating the necessity to satisfy primary needs with certain sounds,
and the concrete satisfaction of these needs by using the corresponding sounds. Learning
the so-called "mother tongue" (or mother tongues in the case of bilingual families) occurs
through unconscious associations and is detached from any rational control. Given that the
needs of an infant are, for the most part, tied to the satisfaction of physiological needs
and that the world is explored "by mouth", the first words learnt are usually associated
with the mother and with the satisfaction of the following needs: din dins, mummy, milky,
dummy, pooh-poohs.
ON THE NET
(english)
Bruno Bettelheim
Franois Truffaut
This does not mean that until he can produce a sound that is functional in a relationship
of emotional significance with an object or with a situation, that a child is not able to think
of that same object or situation. "Thought has a wider extension than verbal language and
can be interpreted from a functional point of view as the coordination of actions with the
anticipated possible achievement of the final result in mind." 1.
Admittedly, in other words, there is a sub-verbal thought, which precedes verbal language
and is also much more elaborate: both for adults and children, the verbal expression of a
thought is always an attempt to synthesize, which necessarily leaves remnants of things
unsaid.
Specific studies on autistic children, who were therefore isolated from the rest of the
world because they hadn't developed their communicative function, have shown the
connection between the absence (physical or psychological) of a permanent figure in
charge of their care in those first vital months and the developing of autism. The ability to
communicate develops primarily, within what we will call, out of convenience, the motherchild relationship, although it is not necessary for the mother to actually take part,
surrogate figures can substitute her. 2.

1
2

Massucco Costa e Fonzi, pp. 13.

Bettelheim 1950, 1967.

It is increasingly feasible that autism is caused by various problems. There is evidence,

for example, that there might be a genetic influence. There is also evidence that there
might be a virus behind the origins of autism. It is also more likely to produce an autistic
child if the future mother were exposed to rubella (commonly known as German measles)
during the first three months of pregnancy. Pollution and the Cytomegalavirus could also
cause autism. See Edeson, S.M. at http://www.autism.org
As the interests of the child evolve and are not just limited to the introduction/expulsion
of food/feces, its ability to communicate and think also evolves. Words can be learnt in
playful situations or in any socializing context, in either case the stimuli coming from the
outside world are of fundamental importance in order to bring about the affective
(emotional) ' situation, to which a particular sound is related, in a first and approximate
correspondence between sound-meaning and significant-signified..
At this point the infant tries to reproduce the sound to which he wants to connect to,
with his body (phonation organ), and when he is successful, he realizes that the emission
of that particular sound produces foreseeable consequences in the outer world: he is
laying the foundations for effective verbal communication..
In this kind of situation, linguistic learning is "spontaneous", not voluntary or through a
rational decision. These facts lead us to the first two conclusions:
learning the mother tongue (or the mother tongues) is an unconscious procedure and
there is no rational control;
what is learnt is tied to an affective (emotional) relationship of significance between the
child and the person or object or action intended by the use of that particular word or
locution.
In the following phases of growth and development of the child, when the ability to
think about abstract concepts develops, these same concepts are acquired in a similar
way, given that the external environment is well-supplied in intellectual and affective
stimuli. Without these stimuli and figures to imitate or with whom the child can establish
a relationship, the linguistic ability does not develop at all. It demonstrated by a real fact
that occurred in 1793 and described by Truffaut in the film Savage boy 3.
This does not mean, as we have already said, that a person who is unable to speak is
also impaired in his ability to elaborate mentally. "The capacity to elaborate ideas
mentally, which a child is unable to express verbally, but which he condenses in
evaluations and imaginative and dynamic schemes recognizable in the future evidence of
adults, is demonstrated by a collection of hundreds of protocols, where adults evoke
infantile syncretic experiences related to good and bad" 4.

3 Truffaut 1969.
4 Massucco Costa e Fonzi, pp. 32.
The memories of an adult, of his life as a child, are extremely personal and vary from
person to person, but in general the further back one goes, the fewer the memories. The

adult at this point, has acquired a mother tongue (more rarely two), and he both speaks
and writes it automatically. In the same way he uses other forms of automatism, such as
walking, eating pedaling, or driving. The fact that he does these activities does not imply
that the subject must recognize inside himself the actual moment or situation in which he
learnt how to do these things; on the contrary, in many cases these memories have been
cancelled by time, and the action is completed without knowing when, where, with whom
or how the action was learnt.
This "forgetfulness" has to do with the way the brain works orientated on a principle of
economy: think how tiring it would be if we had to concentrate every time we ate
something, on all the single movements necessary to actually chew and then send it
down. If whilst pedaling we ask ourselves what we are precisely doing to keep in balance,
and we try to be conscious of each action, the breakage of this automatism caused by its
unveiling could have damaging effects, determining the loss of balance which had been
reached "automatically"
Similarly, when we speak or write, we do it automatically, spontaneously, until the
moment in which a specific experience forces us to ask ourselves what we know, how we
know it and if it is correct for us to speak and write in a certain way.
The influence between verbal language and sub-verbal language is not univocal but
reciprocal. "Verbal language, interprets and integrates sub-verbal language, and at the
same time uses a more mediated and articulated interpretation of reality and a more
precise and powerful regulation of knowledge and of voluntary actions. 5. In other words,
verbal language serves as a logic structure within which thoughts, images, and non-verbal
emotions can be organized.
Given that this degree of evolution in a child is usually reached within the first two years,
and that memories of when we were two are very scarce o even nonexistent, it is fairly
obvious that an adult who does not work in an environment where the use of a language
is necessary (and therefore metalinguistic thought) is and will be totally unaware of all
these mechanisms.
As children grow up, they use sub-verbal language less and less and they tend to count
more on words. To prove the intelligibility of sub-verbal language there are some families
where the elder brother is able to translate the noises and movements of the younger
brother: "In the group relationship between children belonging to the same family, the
rapid interpretation and translation into intelligible verbal terms, of a sub-verbal way of
communicating of younger brothers, and of their often difficult to understand way of
verbalizing, shows the slowness and the gradualness of the transition from one type of
communication to another[_] infantile jargon [_] can be translated" 6

5 Massucco Costa e Fonzi, pp. 36.

6 Massucco Costa e Fonzi, pp. 39.
This last sentence introduces the topic of interpretation and translation and will acquire
different meanings in the following parts of the course. For now we have dealt with the
unconscious roots of the awareness of the mother tongue. In the following lessons we will
deal with the question of linguistic self-awareness and of the languages learnt.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bettelheim, B. Love Is Not Enough; The Treatment Of Emotionally Disturbed Children.
Glencoe, Ill., Free Press, 1950.
Bettelheim, B. The Empty Fortress; Infantile Autism And The Birth Of The Self. New York,
Free Press, 1967.
Massucco Costa, A. - Fonzi, A. Psicologia del linguaggio,
Torino, Boringhieri, 1967.
Truffaut, F. Savage Boy [L'enfant sauvage], France, 1969.

5 - Foreign Languages and Linguistic

Awareness
We saw in the previous unit how the process of learning one's mother tongue develops
from the sub-verbal language to verbal language in a mostly unconscious way. The first
experience of linguistic awareness - awareness of one's own linguistic proficiency - is at
school, when one starts studying the grammar of one's own language (until then taken
for granted and considered a natural phenomenon that did not require questioning in any
way) and one faces the learning of one or more foreign languages.
ON THE NET (italian)
Andrea Camilleri
ON THE NET (english)
T. S. Eliot (1888-1965)
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (T. S. Eliot - 1917)
Subjects used to speaking one language during childhood and facing foreign languages
at school age experience "multilingualism". Subjects who have learnt more than one
language from birth on the other hand experience "plurilingualism"1.
The Self - i.e. the individual conscious of his identity and of his relationship with the
environment - and personality are greatly influenced by language. Even if "it is often the
Unconscious rather than the conscious Ego which depends on linguistic experience"2 ,
there is a very strong and univocal relationship between the Ego and language. It would
be, therefore, plausible to argue that, when a plurilingual experience occurs, there are
two Egos (and then a split personality, schizoid tendencies).
Researchers have investigated the possibility of psychic disorders tied to plurilingualism,
but the resultspoint in a completely different direction
['] even if there is a double personality in a coordinated (i.e. a perfect) bilingual person,
such duplicity does not imply a pathological split personality, but, on the contrary, it
implies that that person will have a certain depth and understanding of different worlds
and has acquired a strong defense mechanism too3.

The need that often plurilingual individuals have (and in certain cases multilingual
people, as well) to switch from one code (language) to another, the so-called code
switching, is a positive and fruitful mechanism, and "it is significant of a fundamental
unity of the internal structure and dynamics of the personality of an individual"4.
There is therefore no dangerous presence of more than one Ego, but, on the contrary, a
sort of meta-Ego, "that controls and synthesizes the various verbal and communication
behaviors corresponding to different linguistic codes"5. The plurilingual individual has a
more complex and receptive psychic structure.
Studies carried out on plurilingual children have shown that code switching implies an
early knowledge - although it may be incomplete - of the varieties of the languages. From
the moment in which a language is no longer a spontaneously used instrument, but
becomes an object of meditation, i.e. when language is used to describe a language, we
are talking about "metalanguage". In the case of plurilingual children, we can, therefore,
talk about "metalinguistic conscience"6.
The subject plurilingual since childhood generally reaches a higher degree of metacognitive and meta-linguistic development than monolingual subjects7.
The main difference between learning one's mother tongue during childhood and the
scholastic learning of foreign languages (or the detailed and rational study of one's
mother tongue) is only determined by the degree of awareness.
During the cognitive stage, a person learning a foreign language is engaged in a conscious
mental activity with the objective of finding a meaning in language [']. The inner
processes that go on during these stages may be the explanation of the conscious effort
experienced during learning in different linguistic contexts8.
If, before, the infant had learnt to connect sounds and concepts, sounds and affects, the
subject learning a foreign language is provided with linguistic awareness:
The human speaker/listener is conscious of his Self as a communicating agent. Linguistic
competence is nothing else but total self-perception and total self-control ['] it should be
clearly stressed that linguistic awareness has nothing to do with self-centeredness or
narcissism9,
and this is because, being an instrument for communicating with the rest of the world, it
is at the same time an awareness centered on one's self and on others.
When a multilingual individual learns a language at school, he is in fact living a
metalinguistic experience: nothing is any longer spontaneous or automatic, nearly
everything is subject to rules explicitly explained and to be learnt in a rational way. Even
in this case, the affective component is very important: the relationship with the teacher,
the environment in which the language is taught can determine in a substantial way the
student's attitude towards the learning of a foreign language. The best results are
obtained when there is a strong and positive relationship with the teacher (a sort of
didactic transference) or with whoever one is learning the language from, or when there
is a strong tie (aesthetic, ideological, affective) with the culture or the countries in which
the language is spoken.
The personal, socio-cultural, linguistic, attitudes - as cognitive-affective sets - can be
related ['] to the position or reaction of the receiver. A message is first of all a stimulus,
and a response, conditioned by the affective tones and by its content ['] Feeling and
emotions are rarely absent from verbal forms, even if at times that may seem entirely
untrue ['] the sounds of a language can carry symbolic values or emotional memories [']10.
According to the most recent studies in cognitive psychology, we store information in a
short-term memory (also called operative memory) or in a long-term memory. For

example, linguistic information is elaborated in four phases: selection, acquisition,

construction of new inner connections and integration of the new information with the old
information in the long-term memory.
This is why language courses advertising the rapid learning of a foreign language with a
large number of vocabulary and linguistic structures puzzle us. Often when memorization
is very rapid, but occurs in an emotionally sterile environment, the relationship with what
has been learnt is so weak, that it is confusing and just does not have time to be
deposited in the long-term memory. As T. S. Eliot says in The Love Song of J. Alfred
Prufrock:
In a minute there is time For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse11.
With all due exceptions, the faster the learning process occurs and the less the situation
in which it occurs has any emotional or affective significance (or it is an emotionally
negative experience), and therefore the less the learning process is stable.
The linguistic-communicative competence in two languages/cultures becomes an
invaluable asset only if the whole human personality is complete in its performative,
cognitive and in-depth conscious dimensions, and is therefore involved in controlling the
two communication systems12.
WWhen a language becomes part of one's identity, code switching can become both an
adaptive and expressive modality. Switching code becomes a psychological choice that
comes from the deepest Ego of the speaker. This has been demonstrated, in studies
conducted on mother-tongue Spanish populations implanted in English-speaking
countries13.
It is possible to find this kind of code switching also in prose fiction. There are poets
who switch codes in one poem, as in this case:
Quienes Somos
it's so strange in here
todo lo que pasa
is so strange
y nadie puede entender
que lo que pas aqu
isn't any different
de lo que pasa all
where everybody is trying
to get out
move into a better place
al lugar where he can hide
where we don't have to know
quienes somos
strange people of the sun
lost in our awareness

of where we are
and where we want to be
and wondering why
it's so strange in here

14

To take possession of a foreign language is, as we have seen, a deep and involving
experience, and at the same time, for those who are not born plurilingual, it can be an
opportunity to become aware of one's own language proficiency. In the following units
we will deal with the mental processes related to reading, writing and, finally, to
translation.

Bibliographical references:
ELIOT T.S. Collected Poems 1909-1962, London Faber and Faber, 1975. 1st ed. 1963.
ISBN 0-571-10548-3
ORTIZ VSQUEZ P. Quienes Somos, in The Bilingual Review/La Revista Bilinge, n. 2,
1975, p. 293-294.
POPLACK S. Sometimes I'll start a sentence in Spanish y termino in Espaol: toward a
typology of code-switching, in Linguistics, n. 18, 1980, p. 581-618.
TITONE R. On the Bilingual Person, Ottawa-New York, Legas Publications, 1995.

6 - Reading - Part one

When a person reads, his brain deals with many tasks in such rapid sequences that all
seems to happen simultaneously. The eye examines (from left to right as far as many
Western languages are concerned, but also from right to left or from top to bottom) a
series of graphic signs (graphemes) in succession, which give life to syllables, words,
sentences, paragraphs, sections, chapters, and texts.
ON THE NET (english)
BELL, R. T.
Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies.
VYGOTSKIJ L. S.
ON THE NET(french)
DELISLE J.
In the first phase, in which a person reads the first letter, he immediately compares it
with a whole repertoire of letters (the Latin alphabet, in the case of the English
language), until he recognizes it and then goes on to decipher the next grapheme. All this
happens without the reader being aware of the process.
The same goes for listening, where the sounds are first transformed into phonemes
(minimum phonetic units with no meaning of their own but which take part in the
signification), then into syllables and so on, until the deciphering of a sensible message is
completed. Unlike reading, in which the words are separated by a graphic distance (a

non-written space), when listening it is necessary to be able to distinguish where a word

finishes and where the next word begins, considering that, when speaking, words are not
always separated by distinct silent pauses.
Once the reader has completed the decoding of the first word, he mentally reconstructs
the pronunciation of the whole word, which is not always the sum of all the single
graphemes in succession. (For example the let's take the letter 's' in the word 'pleasure',
in the word "silent" and in the word "shut"). Therefore it is necessary to assess the
options and dismiss the inappropriate ones. Vice versa, the listener often mentally
reconstructs the way a word is written, which does not always have a one-to-one
correspondence with the way it is pronounced.
At this point the reader and listener have decoded the visual and auditory form of the
first word. This is compared to a whole repertoire of visual and/or auditory forms which
are present in the brain, until one or more correspondences are found (when there is
more than one sound correspondence it is called "homophony", when there is more than
one graphic correspondence it is called "homography"; it is also necessary to take into
consideration all the imperfect but possible correspondences due to mistakes in
pronunciation, unclear writing, sound disturbances, miswritten words or typographical
errors).
This repertoire of auditory and visual structures is what differentiates one language
from another, one code from another. And it is this very difference that explains why it is
said that the relationship between significant (sound or sign) and signified is arbitrary.
If that weren't the case, all natural codes would be identical in their relationship of
signification. To locate the matching means to refer to a precise linguistic system.
['] decoding the source-text linguistic signs with reference to the language system (i.e. determining the
semantic relationships between the words and utterances of the text) 1.

For people who know more than one language, or at least recognize the graphic signs
or sounds of more than one language, it's necessary to operate a code selection before
choosing the possible right matches. This also occurs when in the same sentence there is
a word from a different code, which necessarily has different spelling and pronunciation
rules (for example: "She's examining the curricula").
In a first phase, locating words doesn't mean locating their possible meanings, but only
the mental reproduction of the word itself.

A word can be substituted by its representation or mnestic image, as it happens with any other object 2.

Some scholars have confused this stage with the internal thought phase, which, as we'll
see, is completely different.

In authors from the past we always find the sign "equal to" between the reproduction of words from the
memory and internal language. But in fact they are two different processes that should be differentiated 3.

That is to say, one thing is thinking of a word, and another thing is thinking of its
meanings. When reading takes place without internal or external disturbances,
nonetheless, the passage from the process of mental reproduction to the research for
possible meanings is very fast.
The speed of this process (or, more appropriate, of the succession of these processes)
does not depend just on the familiarity acquired of each single letter and word (which is
more relevant when someone learns a foreign language) but, above all, on the familiarity
with the most frequent graphic/phonetic structures. In fact, an expert reader will not be
reading all the letters of all the words of all the sentences, but will pick up a tiny portion
that is necessary to make sense of the unit in his mind, on the basis of his encyclopedic
competence.

The perception and selection of the auditory or graphic matches, in its turn, is based on
the co-text and on the context in which the word occurs: in this case corrections based
on the encyclopedic experience of the reader may occur too. If, for example, in a cookery
book the word 'astronomy' is encountered, the experience of the reader will mentally
tend to correct the word into 'gastronomy', whose occurrence being much more probable
in that context.
This operation can also be called: 'defining the conceptual content of an utterance by
drawing on the referential context in which it is embedded [']' 4.
Reading is an active mental process, in which the reader is engaged in reconstructing
the author's intent. The signs drawn on paper (and the sounds that make up oral
messages) induce an active mind to think about possible alternatives in order to reconstruct the contents of the message.
While reading, at one end we have an original text (as in inter-linguistic translation,
main subject of this course) but, at the other end of the process, there's no text, just a
set of hypotheses and guesses about the possible meanings and intentions of the author.
During the analysis stage, the translator reads/listens to the source text, drawing on background,
encyclopedic knowledge ' including specialist domain knowledge and knowledge of text convention ' to
comprehend features contained in the text 5.

The words from the source text enter our mind and produce a global effect which is not
a set of words, i.e. it's not a metatext, as it happens in inter-linguistic translation, but a
set of entities, that, however hardly specifiable, are mental and not verbal. This means
that in our mind there must be a sort of internal code, (or sub-verbal code, as we have
said in the previous units) which, on the basis of our perceptive experience, subdivides
and classifies possible perceptions.

We have a process here ['] that goes from the outside to the inside, a process in which language [rech]
volatilizes into thought [mysl]. Hence the structure of this language and all its manifold differences with the
structure of external language 6.

Vygotskij has conducted research on children, who in certain stages of their

development tend to use an 'egocentric' language (according to Piaget), meaning that it
is a language the child uses essentially addressing to himself. According to Vygotskij, to
study the egocentric language of children is important because it is the embryo of the
adults' inner language. And he writes:

['] the language addressed to oneself cannot find at all its true expression in the structure of external
language, which is, by its own nature, completely different; the form of this language, which is extremely
peculiar because of its structure ['], must necessarily have its own particular form of expression, since its
phasic aspect ceases to coincide with the phasic aspect of external language 7.

In the following unit we will have a closer look at what this means exactly.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES:
BELL R. T. Psycholinguistic/cognitive approaches. In Routledge Encyclopedia of
Translation Studies. London-New York, Routledge, 1998, p. 185-190. ISBN 0-415-09380-5
DELISLE J. Translation. An Interpretive Approach. Ottawa, Ottawa University Press, 1988.
VYGOTSKIJ L. S. Myshlenie i rech. Psihologicheskie issledovanija. Moskv-Leningrad,
Gosudarstvennoe socialno-konomicheskoe izdatelstvo, 1934.

6 - Reading - Part two

In the previous unit, we said that, in our mind, there has to be a sort of inner code, or
subverbal code that, based on our perceptive experience, classifies possible perceptions
(including perceptions of words) and subdivides them into cognitive types (CT) that are
not words, but not entirely defined mental entities. Eco (1997) uses as an example the
Aztecs and the horse: this animal, before the Spanish landing, was unknown to them,
therefore alien to any cognitive types of their cultural heritage.
Nevertheless, where was, to an Aztec, the concept of horse, since he did not have it
before the Spanish landing? Of course, after seeing some horses, the Aztecs must have
created a morphological pattern not so different from a 3D model, and it is on this basis
that we should infer the consistency of their perceptive acts. When I talk about CT,
however, I do not mean just a sort of image, a set of morphological tracts or motorial
features [...] That is to say, we can state that the CT of the horse from the beginning
possessed a multimedia character 1.
At first, the cognitive type is something absolutely independent from the name of the
object, or even the possibility to name it; it is something that only the person who has
perceived the object in question can cause himself to recognize what he has perceived;
therefore it is catalogued in a sort of inner subjective, idiomorphical code.
It was not necessary to name the object-horse to recognize it, in the same way as I can
eventually feel a sensation inside me that is unpleasant, though indefinable, and
understand just that it is the same I felt the day before 2.
In other words that we need to name something just if (and when) we behave as social
animals and want, or have to, communicate with others. In contrast, in the autistic
relation between my ego and itself, in order to reason about concepts or objects, I do not
need any external language: neither the natural code made of words, nor other, artificial,
codes. I nonetheless do need what Eco calls "cognitive type" (and Vygotskij "inner
language") in order to identify a sensation or an object and classify them mentally so as
to make more and more complex and differentiated the structure of my perceptivecognitive apparatus.
ON THE NET - (english)
BELL, R. T.
Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies.
VYGOTSKIJ L. S.
ON THE NET - (italian)
C. SEGRE.
Riferimenti letterari 1
Riferimenti Letterari 2
U.ECO
When we read a text or listen to a speech, as we held before, "we compare tokens to a
type"3 and this process occurs at two levels, twice in a row.
In a first phase, we put side by side the graphic/auditory token to a graphic/auditory
type that is part of our repertoire of signs, of phonemes, or, more often, of recurring
graphemic or phonemic patterns. This first phase allows us to make out the letter or
word or locution or phrase ' or, whenever the given token doesn't match exactly any

types found in our repertoire ' to find near matches of the tokens with the types present
in the repertoire, and to choose among them the most plausible in the given context and
co-text.
Moreover, simultaneously, our mind analyzes the quality and the quantity of the
discrepancy between token and type, and conjecture what sense we can attribute to such
discrepancy: we therefore create also a (meta-) typology of variances from the type.
If, for example, I find on paper the word "tonite" [sic] and in my repertoire I can't find
this graphical pattern, but I find a near match with the word "tonight", I can infer that
"tonite" may be a peculiar or local form of that word. Moreover, basing myself on
previously registered deviations from the standard pattern (i.e. on my encyclopedic
knowledge), I can infer that it is a word often found on signs outside restaurants and
inns of a given area (because, let's suppose, I had previously met the graphical pattern
"lite" and I had realized it was a local way of writing "light". From that experience, I had
got to the standard deviance that, in my mind, matches the way of writing in a given
geographical area).
During the second phase, when we already have hold of the relation graphic tokengraphic type, we have to enact a second token-type comparison in order to identify,
based on the graphic type, the cognitive type evoked by the given graphic type. In other
words, we have to pass from the phase when we "think of a word"4 to the phase in which
we think about every meaning evoked by that word.
The images evoked in one's mind by a given word do not match perfectly the ones
evoked by that same word in the mind of any other speaker of that same natural code.
The first limitation of inter-subjective communication lies therefore just in this rough
match between the mental images corresponding to "horse" in the writer/speaker and
the mental images linked to "horse" in the reader/listener. This happens because the
subjective experiences (and the subjective images) linked to "horse" for the transmitter
and for the receiver are not the same.
The first loss produced in the act of verbal communication ' in the case of reading ' is
caused by the subjectivity of the sign-sense match, due to the different individual
experiences, to the idiomorphic nature of the relation of affective signification
characterizing every speaker even within one natural code.
This requires processing at the syntactic, semantic and pragmatic levels [...] 5.
The mental processing of the read verbal material is of a syntactical nature when we try
to reconstruct the possible structure of the sentence, i.e. the relations among its
elements. In contrast, it is of a semantic nature when it identifies the relevant areas
within the semantic field of any single word or sentence; and it is of a pragmatic nature
when it deals with the logical match of the possible meanings to the general context and
to the verbal co-text.
Moreover, the text is analyzed in two ways:
[...] micro- and macro-analysis of the actual text: monitoring for cohesion and coherence,
and checking for coherence between the actual text and the potential text-type of which it
is a token realization [...] 6.
Microanalysis has the purpose of verifying text cohesion and inner cohesion of the single
units of text among them. Macro-analysis is aimed at controlling coherence and cohesion
between the created text and the category, the model to which the text refers. For
example, if the text is an instruction booklet for a household appliance, or a story for a

newspaper, often there are models for such types of text to which we frequently '
consciously or unconsciously ' adhere.
The decoding of a message in the mind of the reader is a sort of compromise between
these two kinds of analysis, because the bottom-up analysis, one semantic unit at a time,
doesn't ever turn out the same results as the top-down analysis of the text as an entity
that has its own coherent structure.
There is, in other words, a trade-off between the micro-/bottom-up analysis of the text at
clause level and the macro-/top-down analysis of text as an entity 7.
As we can see, the reading of a natural code is not an aseptical or passive process of
assimilation of universally definite concepts as it happens in a mathematical equation.
Reading involves in itself cognitive differences and, consequently, interpretive differences.
Even while we are reading, and the object of our perception are words and not things,
we are led by cognitive types that help us catalogue the experience of possible writings,
both in graphic and in semantic terms, in order to increase our perceptive-cognitive
apparatus as readers, to speed up our decoding processes, to sharpen our critical
capacity. The reader
may try to understand the meanings emanating from the text, or abandon himself to
bizarre associations and free developments. I speak in terms of polarities, because no
reading can prevent imagination to run free [...] 8.
The difference between a reader and a critic is negligible: the reader trying to understand
has the same attitude as the critic, who is a systematic, methodical, self-aware reader.
While reading
it is inescapable to compare two systems, the text system and the reader system; the
critic action is substantially made up of such comparisons. 9
In the next unit, we will deal with mental processes linked to writing.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES:
BELL R. T. Psycholinguistic/cognitive approaches. In Routledge Encyclopedia of
Translation Studies. London, Routledge, 1998, p. 185-190. ISBN 0-415-09380-5.
ECO U. Kant e l'ornitorinco. Milano, Bompiani, 1997. ISBN 88-452-2868-1. English
translation: Kant and the Platypus: Essays on Language and Cognition; translated from
the Italian by Alastair McEwen, New York, Harcourt Brace, 2000.
SEGRE C. Avviamento all'analisi del testo letterario. Torino, Einaudi, 1985. ISBN
88-06-58735-8. English translation: Introduction to the Analysis of the Literary Text, with
the collaboration of Tomaso Kemeny; translated from the Italian by John Meddemmen,
Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1988. ISBN 0253331064.
VYGOTSKY L. S. Myshlenie i rech. Psihologicheskie issledovanija. Moskv-Leningrad,
Gosudarstvennoe socialno-konomicheskoe izdatelstvo, 1934. English translation:
Thought and Language; translated from the Russian and edited by Alex Kozulin,
Cambridge (Massachusetts), MIT Press, 1986.

Eco 1997, p. 109.

Eco 1997, p. 111.
3
Eco 1997, p. 113.
4
We think of its sound, its shape on the paper, but we stop there, we don't go on
decoding; it's something we all have experienced trying to read while our mind was busy
with other thoughts: so we read the words as sounds, as graphic patterns, without getting
any sense from them. "[...] the inner language has to be considered not as a language
without sound, but as a very peculiar verbal function with an original structure and
particular functioning modes which, just because it works in a totally different way from
external language, in passing from one plane to the other one is connected with it in a
dynamic, indissoluble way" (Vygotsky 1934).
5
Bell 1990, p. 187.
6
Bell 1990, p. 187.
7
Bell 1990, p. 187.
8
Segre 1985, p. 10-11.
9
Segre 1985, p. 11.
1
2

8 - Writing as a mental process

We said in the previous units that reading is a sort of translation from verbal language
into mental material or, if we prefer, from outer verbal language into inner nonverbal
language. The individual reads, and perceives what he reads, drawing interpretations and
inferences about the possible intentions of the author of the message. (In a different part
of the course, we will define our concept of "author".) We talked about cognitive types as
entities helping the individual to categorize past experiences in order to organize present
and future perception.
ON THE NET - (english)
BELL, R. T. - Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies.
VYGOTSKIJ L. S.
American Psychoanalytic Association
LAING, R. D.
ON THE NET - (italian)
MARCHESE A.
FREUD S.
CELATI G.
If what is perceived is not made of words, the perception need not necessarily pass
through the verbalization process: the individual is able to perceive and to categorize his
sensations even without translating them into words. This fact does not preclude his
recognizing the perceived object in case of reoccurrence.
The first and most important feature of inner language is its very peculiar syntax. [...] This peculiarity is
shown in the apparent fragmentation, discontinuity, and contraction of the inner language as compared to
the outer one 1.
[There is] a definitely peculiar tendency to reduce sentences and phrases; the predicate and the parts of the
sentence linked to it are preserved, while the subject and the words linked to it are omitted. Such prevalence
of predicates in the inner language syntax becomes apparent [...] with strict consistency [...] so that in the
end, resorting to the interpolation method, we should suppose that the main syntactic form of the inner
language is pure and absolute prevalence of predicates 2.

"Putting into words" ' translation into an outer code, common to other speakers ' is
uniquely crucial to the social life of the individual, in order to share the content of one's
cognitive and perceptive acts.
We said also that the signifier/signified relation is an arbitrary one. This fact is proved
by the differences among natural languages: between the perception of an object-horse
and the production of either the sound "horse" or the graphic characters h o r s e there is
no necessary relation. For a Frenchman the same object is "cheval", for an Italian
"cavallo" and so on.
We also stressed that a signifier's semantic field is not the same for two individuals,
because everyone links 'consciously or unconsciously 'definite subjective experiences to
each signifier. For this reason, a signifier evokes different memories, feelings, and images
in every individual. It is therefore all the more unlikely that the semantic field of "horse"
completely matches the semantic field of "cheval", "cavallo" etc.
In other words, every natural language (and every idiolect, i.e. the use of language
peculiar to every "individual, his language or personal 'style', disregarding the group or
community where the individual belongs3) categorizes human knowledge in a different
way. Language is, therefore, not only a means to communicate with other members of
our species; it is also a system to categorize perceptions, ideas, images, and emotions.
In our minds, two parallel, overlapping categorizing systems seem to be at work, one
independent from the other. The cognitive type system, acting only at a personal and
inner level; and the verbal categorizing system, also useful for outer communication,
although in a partial and imperfect way.
Let us take dreams as an example. Freud, in The Interpretation of Dreams, has
analyzed the main features of the mechanisms leading to the formation of dreams 4.
Dreams are not made of words; they emerge from a nonverbal space within us.
Thought processes and affects are represented in dreams in a visual and (less frequently) auditory form.
Other modes of sensory experience ' touch, smell, taste, and kinesthetic sensation ' also appear in dreams.
[...] Two other elements of the dream work are plastic and symbolic representation, that is, the
transformation of thoughts into sensory symbols and images; andsecondary elaboration, the linking together
of the separate images and elements of the dream into a relatively coherent story or action. Sometimes
secondary elaboration or revision does not occur and the dream is recalled as a disjointed, incoherent, or
bizarre series of images or phrases. 5

When we recall a dream soon after awaking, such memories, regardless of their
vividness, are made of nonverbal material. If such material is stored as it is (in nonverbal
form), it follows the same fate as every other memory: it is eroded with time more or less
rapidly, depending on the circumstances.
We get a completely different result if we try to write down the content of the dream or
to describe it to somebody: a genuine translation is required. Images, sounds, and other
feelings have to be translated into words. When we put a dream into words, we are
frequently unsatisfied with our translation. The text we can produce omits some feelings
and images that are not describable in words and mental facts that, if verbalized, lose
expressiveness.
A dream can sometimes leave us such strong feelings, that for many hours we cannot
shake its influence, even if with our rational mind we are aware that what we dreamed
has not happened in the outer world, just inside us, in our mental imaginary world. Very
seldom we can share the strength of such feelings. It is easier for individuals who can
express themselves through nonverbal languages, such as representational arts, music,

body expression, or even through poetry, in which words and sounds are equally
expressive.
What is more, our diurnal, rational mind cannot understand the logic of some passages
in dreams. If I was on a mountaintop, how is it possible that, without any journey, I
eventually found myself lying on my carpet at home? For this reason, when we use
"secondary elaboration", our role as chroniclers forces us ' unconsciously sometimes ' to
adjust, modify, and/or review our verbal version of the dream so as to give the story
cohesion, a plot, which can be completely remote from the original dream material.
[[...] inner language, due to its psychological nature, is a particular formation, a particular kind of verbal
activity, with extremely specific features; it has a very complex relationship with other kinds of verbal
activity. [...] Inner language is a process or transformation of thought [mysl] into words; it is their
materialization and objectification 6.

If, on one hand, such materialization is incomplete and produces a loss, on the other
hand it can be a precious tool to increase control over our mind. From Freud on, many
therapies for the treatment of different kinds of neuroses are based on the use of words:
the patient tries to translate into words feelings, anxieties, dreams, mental associations,
and the therapist encourages such objectifying process, such materializing process for its
liberating values. Before verbalization, many inner links among different thoughts,
images, and feelings appear to be inexistent ' like temporarily inactivated hypertextual
links. After verbalization they become apparent, and, in some cases, their
acknowledgment can untie inner knots, release tensions, resolve mental short circuits
that can be the basis of neurotic symptoms, giving the patient a sense of release and
providing him, at the same time, an increased insight.
Writing ' translation of inner nonverbal language into outer verbal language ' is an
activity that, being a phase of the same translation process involved in professional
interlingual transfer, has moreover much in common with intersemiotic translation. The
presence, as a replacement for an original text, of what Vygotsky calls "inner language"
and Eco calls "cognitive types", and the fact that outer verbal language is not only a
means of expression but also a tool to categorize experience has many implications. Such
implications relate to the writer's mind, the reason behind the writing, and the projective
receiver of the written text which may be a real person (in the case of correspondence)
or a hypothetic, implied receiver, a model of reader (as in the case of books).
We can also take into consideration the case of writing as an attempt at self-therapy, of
solitary meditation, without any postulated receiver. For some, this, only, is authentic
writing. Anna Maria Ortese wrote:

Writing is looking for tranquility, and sometimes to find it. It is to go back home. The same goes for reading.
People that truly write or read ' i.e. just for themselves ' go back home; they feel good. People who never
write or read, or do so just to obey an order, for practical reasons, are always out of their home, even if they
have many a home. They are poor, and they make life poorer 7.

Gianni Celati, referring to a short story by Marco Belpoliti, La linea evapora nel piano [The
line evaporates into the plane], admires the geometric metaphor of writing as a linear
activity whose product can proliferate acquiring a further dimension.

['] the idea of the line that evaporates sublimating into the plane, letting people think at geometry in a more
creative way, moreover makes people think that writing is exactly a line producing a plane. Here we see the
daydreaming of the intellect expand (their master being Italo Calvino) 8.

In the following units, we will examine the repercussions on the translation process of all
these ways of intending "writing".

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES:
AMERICAN PSYCHOANALYTIC ASSOCIATION Psychoanalytic Terms and Concepts, ed. B.
E. Moore and B. D. Fine, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1990, ISBN 0-300-04701-0.
CELATI G., ed., Narratori delle riserve. Milano, Feltrinelli, 1992. ISBN 88-07-01439-4.
FREUD S. Die Traumdeutung. Leipzig, Franz Deuticke, 1900.
FREUD S. The Interpretation of Dreams, in Standard Edition of the Complete
Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, ed. J. Strachey, London, Hogarth Press and the
Institute of Psycho-Analysis, 1953-1974, vol. 4 and 5.
LAING R. D. Knots. New York, Pantheon Books, 1970. ISBN 0-394-43211-8.
MARCHESE, A. Dizionario di retorica e di stilistica. Milano, Mondadori, 1991. ISBN
88-04-14664-8.
VYGOTSKY L. S. Myshlenie i rech. Psihologicheskie issledovanija. Moskv-Leningrad,
Gosudarstvennoe socialno-konomicheskoe izdatelstvo, 1934. English translation:
Thought and Language; translated from the Russian and edited by Alex Kozulin,
Cambridge (Massachusetts), MIT Press, 1986.

Vygotsky 1990, p. 363.

Vygotsky 1990, p. 365.
3
Marchese 1991, p. 140.
4
Freud 1900.
5
American Psychoanalytic Association 1990, p. 57.
6
Vygotsky 1990, p. 346-347.
7
"Scrivere cercare la calma, e qualche volta trovarla. tornare a casa. Lo stesso che
leggere. Chi scrive e legge realmente, cio solo per s, rientra a casa; sta bene. Chi non
scrive o non legge mai, o solo su comando ' per ragioni pratiche ' sempre fuori casa,
anche se ne ha molte. un povero, e rende la vita pi povera". Celati1992, p. 11.
8
"Ma questa idea della linea che evapora sublimandosi nel piano, mentre fa pensare alla
geometria in modo pi immaginativo del solito, fa anche venire in mente che la scrittura
appunto una linea che produce un piano. Ecco come si espandono i trasognamenti
dell'intelletto (maestro Italo Calvino)". Celati 1992, p. 22.
1
2