Fundamentals of Translation

INTRODUCTION

Language and language use are influenced by social factors, such as socioeconomic background, education, register, participants and power relations, etc. Sociolinguistics is an area of linguistics that studies how social factors are reflected in language. All of these elements are responsible for a significant amount of variation in language, which is in turn closely related to language change. This chapter goes over notions of sociolinguistics, language variation and language change in order to understand how they affect translation and what their implications for translation practice are. Some the topics to be addressed are: the nature of language change and variation, dialectal variation, social variation, prestigious varieties vs. stigmatized ones, registers and translating in multilingual societies.

Language variation and change

In this section we brie fly examine the nature of variation and change, and the connection between the two. We also highlight their relevance to translation practice.

Most of us are aware that there is variation in how we use language. The English spoken in India is different from that of the United Kingdom and that of Ireland. Moreover, one person's English will differ from one context to another and from one day to the next. All languages are affected by variation, and all languages are affected by change. Change is an unavoidable aspect of life. People, places, nature, etc., are all subject to change over time, and human language is no different. Variation and change are essential to language, which, like any human activity, is in constant flux.

Unlike variation, language change, however, is very difficult to observe, especially for an individual, because it is very slow, to the point that generally it is only noticeable across generations. Furthermore, change takes place on a continuum in time, so there is no clear line separating the language before and after the changes.