Topics in Translation Studies

Topics in Translation Studies
Yo-In Song
Dongguk University, Seoul
Preface
This volume on some of the central issues in Translation Studies was

conceived shortly after the publication of my earlier work, Translation:
Theory and Practice (1975). The latter was used in graduate courses and
seminars at a number of institutions and was found, to my surprise, to
be generally useful by instructors and students alike. All the same,
however, it was pointed out to me that it contained more "leaks" than
a book of that nature warranted. Thus my overriding concern has
been to do something about those "leaks" and to rectify the
insufficiencies so far noted. To what extent I have succeeded in this
endeavor is not for me to judge. I leave it up to my colleagues and
critics who will take this work to pieces.
I wish to acknowledge my indebtedness to the Korean Traders
Scholarship Foundation, the Songgok Academic and Cultural Foun-
dation, the Ministry of Education, and Dongguk University for
assistance extended to me in the form of research grants over the
past decade or so. My gratitude also goes to the publishers of
Language(Ene), Translation (renamed The Translator) (Penyek, Penyekka),
KoreaJournal, Dongguk,Journal, and English Teaching for making space available
for earlier versions of the various chapters of this book in one format
or another. I also wish to thank President Tae-Geun Park of Han Shin
Publishing Company for undertaking the publication of this book.
I must confess that I have no way of doing justice to the many
helpful suggestions and encouraging remarks that I have received
from my colleagues and students here and abroad individually or
collectively. I thank them all for their spirit of scholarly camaraderie
and candor. None of these remarks are intended, of course, to gloss
over inadequacies that may be noted in this volume. Needless to
say, I am the only one to be held accountable.
10 Yo-In Song
Seoul
September 1984
Table of Contents
Preface Vil
Chapter 1. Introduction
1.1. Purpose and Scope 1
1.2. Terms Clarified 4
Chapter 2. Weltanschauung and Translation

2.1. Introductory 7
2.2. Linguistic Relativity 8
2.3. Universals, Weltanschauung, and
Translation Theory 20
2.4. Concluding Remarks 38
Chapter 3. Sprachgefühl and Translation

3.1. Sprachgefühl Defined 41
3.2. The Cultivation of Sprachgefühl 43
3.3. Sprachgefühl Dynamics and Translation 50
3.4. A Post-Chomskyan Task 60
Chapter 4. The Translatable Core Structure

4.1. Preliminary Studies 63
4.2. The Core Structure Traced 64
Chapter 5. The Transeme

5.1. Introductory 73
5.2. The Transeme Delineated 74
Chapter 6. Literary Translation

6.1. Computer vs. Human Translation 83
6.2. The Translator's Bilingual Competence 85
6.3. Some Syntactic and Semantic Problems 91

6.4. Paraphrase and Circumlocution 98
6.5. Concluding Remarks • 100
Chapter 7. Linguistics and Literature

7.1. Introductory 103
7.2. The American Scene 104
7.3. The European Scene 109
7.4. The Korean Scene 112
Glossary 116 Bibliography 127 Index 137 The Table of

Romanization 147
Chapter 1
Introduction
1.1. Purpose and Scope
The purpose of this book is twofold: to present an updated version of

my work on some of the central issues in the study of translation and
to augment my earlier work (Song 1975), a modest venture
undertaken to describe the process of cross-lingual transfer on a more
or less rigorous basis. I call it a venture because an element of risk was
a foregone conclusion at a time when writing about as "diffuse" a topic
as translation was felt to be passé in the vortext of the so-called
Chomskyan revolution in linguistics.
Now that there are signs that Chomsky is being trimmed to his
proper size -he has never professed to be a linguistic panacea, after
all-and that one even hears about an impending post-Chomskyan era,
it becomes imperative that the discipline of translation be put in its
proper perspective. There is no doubt that some of the Chomskyan
tenets were a welcome relief to a student of translation who had been
groping in the dark for that unique property which enabled us to
translate across language boundaries. The idea of a finite system of
abstract rules generating an infinite number of surface structures and
that of a universal base underlying all languages were a breakthrough
of no mean significance to the discipline.'
'Chomsky (1965) and Chomsky (1972) contain insights that have lasting implications for the discipline of
translation. More recently, articles like Nunberg (1979). Stump (1981), and Kayne (1981) cover areas of inquiry
that may materially contribute to translation studies.
2 Topics in Translation Studies
Hence I had wasted no time in applying some of those ideas to my

own (Song 1975: Chapter 2). I do not for a moment doubt the value of
Chomsky's contribution to general linguistic theory and, by extension,
to the study of translation. The time I had spent in trying to grasp the
essence of his theory had by no means been wasted. Nevertheless, for
all the debt we owe to Chomsky for providing deeper insights into the
nature of language, it must be frankly admitted that translation has
unresolved fundamental issues that a mere school of linguistics
cannot even begin to unravel. For translation is a discipline propped
up by a broad spectrum of the humanities ranging from ethnography
to literary history.2
Translation is inconceivable without a commonality of world views
and experience across ethno-linguistic borders. Thus any attempt at
in-depth analysis of the process of cross-lingual transfer is bound to
fail if it ignores the implications of Weltanschauung. Regrettably,
however, I had given short shrift to the topic in 1975. Hence the
conception of the second chapter in this volume.
Another elusive phenomenon iii natural language is what can
adequately be conveyed by yet another German word, Sprachgefühl,
an aspect of language that has somehow been overlooked in the vast
literature of modern linguistics. At the time of my earlier publication
(Song 1975) I touched upon the topic in a sporadic manner under such
loose terms as "tone" and "flavor." It is not clear whether the
formulation of a systematic structure of
Sprachgefühl is feasible or practicable. But an attempt is made in
Chapter 3 to look into the matter with some degree of descriptive
rigor. Yet I must confess in all candor that what I have to say in the
chapter stands guilty of somehow failing to see the woods for the
'Works like Catford (1965) may lead one to conclude that translation is a branch
' of applied linguistics, whereas studies like Steiner (1975) point to the need to establish it as a domain of literary
criticism. Neither position seems completely tenable, however.
Introduction 3
trees, innocuous as some of my findings may no doubt appear.'

Until the mid-1970s I had gone no further than positing the
translatable core structure as the basic unit of translation. Working
along Nida's line of reasoning (Nida 1969), I had been content to
merely posit the tertiary structure without explicating its nature and
characteristics in any appreciable detail. This has since been felt to be
no negligible lacuna, one that had to be grappled with sooner or later.
What appear as Chapter 4 and 5 are results of my work to make up for
that great missing link. My argument for the establishment of "the
pragmantactic prime" as the basic unit of translation, subsequently
elaborated and renamed "the transeme," is a challenging one. But I
am confident that at least a configuration of one of the most crucial
issues in the study of translation has been presented in a more
tangible form than has been attempted so far.'
The penultimate chapter is a linguistic overview of literary
translation written with the non-specialist in mind. Thus it makes no
pretense to exhaustiveness of coverage or systematicity of
description. Some essential assumptions and positions are examined
in the light of non-too-rigorous linguistic scholarship. Neverthess, the
chapter raises some stimulating questions for research in addition to
providing some practicable suggestions for solution to some of the
intractable problems of literary translation. There is less theory in this
chapter than elsewhere partly because the writing of the chapter
antedated that of all others by a good number of years even though it
appears comparatively late in this volume.
Finally, Chapter 7 is devoted to surveying the field of linguistics as it
interacts with literature and vice versa. Admittedly a large order for a
book of this scope to tackle, the relationship between linguistics
3
As of this writing, I know of no rigorous formulation of any principles regarding the operation of Sprachgefühl
that has been published in the field of translation.
*The term "transeme" was adopted in response to some of my colleagues' less than enthusiastic endorsement of
its cumbersome predecessor "pragmantactic prime."
and literature is here summarized in such a way that a student of

translation would be able to gain some insights that mal benefit him
in his own exploration. Some of the salient features of the major
schools of linguistico-literary scholarship based in the various regions
of the world are presented in a simplified format. The chapter is
written relatively free of specialized terminology for the benefit of the
lay reader.
Since the book is addressed to the specialist as well as the beginner
in the study of translation, a word of caution is in order. The lay
reader would do well to begin by reading the last chapter first. He
may then proceed to Chapter 6, Chapter 3, and Chapter 2, in that
order. The remaining chapters, Chapters 4 and 5, are more
susceptible of controversy than others and therefore may be delayed
to the last because they presuppose a reasonable grounding in
linguistic and other related disciplines. It is to be noted that Chapter 5
should be read after Chapter 4. Since the terminology used in this
volume carries meanings different from that used in general
linguistics and other related disciplines, it is recommended that the
Glossary at the end of the book be consulted whenever clarification is
needed.'
1.2. Terms Clarified
I have so far deliberately shunned the use of terms like "Translation

Theory," "the Science of Translation," "Translatology," and
"Translatory (or Translational) Linguistics," all of which have been
adopted by various theoreticians.' The discipline of translation as an
art has a long history dating from the sixteenth century (Dolet 1540).
But it is unclear exactly when the term "Translation Theory" was
adopted. It is doubtful that the
'The Glossary is an enlarged version of that in Song (1975).

s
One might add Jakobson's intralingual translation, interlingual translation, and intersemiotic translation
(lakobson 1960), but here and elsewhere translation is conceived as interlingual translation unless otherwise
qualified.
Introduction
origin of the term could even be traced. It seems that the term
"Translation Theory" is accepted by more people than in the case of
its competitors. All the other terms are relatively new in that their first
use can be traced with some accuracy. For the purposes of this
volume I have taken the liberty of using Translation Theory,
Translation Studies, and Translatology interchangeably.
The term "Science of Translation" is apt to be confusing in' that the
process of translation per se might be construed as a science. What the
term means is that translation can be subjected to scientific scrutiny
even though it is an artistic process. The term "Translatology" has the
effect of rendering the discipline more systematic and rigorous-
sounding because of the suffix "-ology."' The term "Translatory (or
Translational) Linguistics" in effect subordinates translation to
linguistics much as Mathematical Linguistics does to Mathematics.
Hence the most unassuming, catholic, broad-based term "Translation
Studies" has been chosen for the title of this book.
x
'Curiously enough, no one seems to have proposed the equally scientific-sounding suffix "-ics" to make it
"Translatics."
Chapter 2 '
Weltanschauung and Translation
2.1. Introductory
An explanatorily adequate theory of translation must take into

account the implications of Weltanschauung' as it affects the process
of cross-lingual communication. It appears, however, that only a few
translation theorists thus far have seriously concerned themselves
with this problem. Mounin (1963) and Bassnett-McGuire (1980) are
perhaps the only works that have full chapters devoted to the task.
Nida (1964) contains very useful observations on some essential
aspects of the problem under diverse headings. Nida (1975a, b)
provide additional semantico-ethnographical data bearing on the
problem. Elsewhere it seems that the topic of Weltanschauung is
either given short shrift or shelved completely. This is because a
majority of translation theorists have been more or less preoccupied
with the stylistico-esthetic dimension of translation. But it is obvious
that they owe it to themselves to balance it out by paying due
attention to problems of Weltanschauung as well.
A proper treatment of Weltanschauung necessarily involves a
review and reappraisal of the Linguistic Relativity hypothesis'
ultimately traceable to Johann Georg Hamann (1762) and Johann
Gottfried Herder (1772) and propounded by Wilhelm von Humboldt
'The English equivalent "world view" will also be used interchangeably throughout this study.
2
The alternative designation "the linguistic Weltanschauung hypothesis" and the more popular term "the
Sapir-Whorf hypothesis" will also be used interchangeably hereafter.
•
'8 Topics in Translation Studies
(1836), Edward Sapir (1921, 1924, 1929, 1931), Benjamin Lee Whorf
(1940a, 1940b, 1942), Jost Trier (1932), Johann Leo Weisgerber
(1949), and others.' It must be noted at the outset that translation
has often been cited as empirical evidence for the existence of a
commonality of world views across ethnolinguistic boundaries. The
circularity of this position is only too apparent. We may argue that
translation is possible because there are universals of
Weltanschauung across ethnolinguistic borders.
If we were to subscribe to the extreme form of linguistic relativity,
we would have to negate a priori the possibility of translation in
toto. On the other hand, an espousal of the universalist position
would extricate translation from such ubiquitous pitfalls as
distorting the message of the original and producing effects
unintended by the
original author. It appears that we must somehow settle for the
happy medium if the ubiquity and relative success of the heterotelic
activity of translation are to be accounted for in any convincing
manner.
It will be the aim of this study to examine some implications of
Weltanschauung in translation theory as a whole and especially as it
affects the process of translation between such genetically distant
languages as English and Korean.
2.2. Linguistic Relativity
2.2.1. OVERVIEW. Wilhelm von Humboldt was probably the most

articulate proponent in the nineteenth century of what is now
known as the Linguistic Relativity hypothesis. He held that each
separate language, even the most despised dialect, should be
looked upon as an organic whole, different from all the rest and
expressing the individuality of the people speaking it, something
characteristic
3
See Basilius (1952), Brown (1970), and Penn (1972) for overviews of the Humboldtian conception of linguistic
relativity. We should probably add to the list Charles Bally, Marcel Granet, Claude Levi-Strauss, Jean Piaget, Alf
Sommerfelt, and Ludwig Wittgenstein.
Weltanschauung and Translation ` 9
of each nation's psyche and indicating the peculiar way in which

that nation attempts to realize the ideal of speech (Humboldt
1836:92ff). In the twentieth century Sapir and Whorf have been the
most influential advocates of linguistic Weltanschauung, winning
for it the popular designation "the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis."
Sapir's view of linguistic relativity is three-pronged, covering
conceptualization, Weltanschauung and perception. He stated that
language powerfully conditions all our thinking about social
problems and processes; that the "real world" is to a large extent
unconsciously built up on the language habits of the group; and that
we see and hear and otherwise experience very largely as we do
because the language habits of our community predispose certain
choices of interpretation (Sapir 1929).' Sapir's hypothesis was
further elaborated by Whorf. He wrote that we dissect nature along
lines laid down by our native languages and that the categories and
types that we isolate from the world of phenomena we do not find
there because they stare every observer in the face; on the
contrary, the world is presented in a kaleidoscopic flux of
impressions which has to be organized by our minds-and this means
largely by the linguistic systems in our minds. Whorf then pointed
out that we cut nature up, organize it into concepts, and ascribe
significances as we do, largely because we are parties to an
agreement to organize it in this way-an agreement that holds
throughout our speech community and is codified in the patterns of
our language (Whorf 1940a).
Whorfs linguistic relativity "principle" was an outcome of his
extensive work principally on the grammatical structure of Hopi. He
stated that the principle meant, in informal terms, that users of
markedly different grammars are pointed by their grammars toward
different types of observations and different evaluations of
*An earlier version of the hypothesis is to be found in Sapir (1921:221): "Languages are invisible garments that
drape themselves about our spirit and give a predetermined form to all its symbolic expression."
externally similar acts of observation, and hence are not equivalent

as observers but must arrive at somewhat different views of the world
(Whorf 1940b). The grammar of each language was regarded not merely
as a reproducing instrument for voicing ideas but rather as being itself
"the shaper of ideas" (Whorf 1940a). Calling Hopi a ° timeless
language,' Whorf noted that various grand generalizations ` of the
Western world, such as time, velocity, and matter, are not essential to
the construction of a consistent picture of the universe, adding that
categories derived from other kinds of experience take over the
rulership of the cosmology and seem to function just as well (Whorf
1940a).
By far the strongest claim with regard to linguistic relativity, from
the standpoint of translation theory, is to be found in Whorf s
statement that a change in language can transform our appreciation of the Cosmos
(italics added) (Whorf 1942). Such a view of Whorf s is really an echo
of Sapir's postulation published about two decades earlier. According
to Sapir, to pass from one language to another is psychologically
parallel to passing from one geometrical system of reference to
another. The environing world referred to would be the same for
either language and so would be the world of points. But the formal
method of approach to the expressed item of experience, as to the
given point of space, would be so different that the resulting feeling
of orientation could be the same neither in the two languages nor in
the two frames of reference. Entirely distinct, or at least measurably
distinct, formal adjustments would have to be made and these
differences should have their psychological correlates (Sapir 1924).
,.
The central idea of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is that language
should be regarded not merely as a means of communication but
also, and more significantly in terms of translation theory, as a way
of defining experience for its speakers. Thus meanings are said to
be
5
Whorf took special note of the fact that the Hopi would say, "I left on the fifth day, instead of, "I stayed five
days" (Whorf 1940a).
Weltanschauung and Translation 11
"not so much discovered in experience as imposed upon it, because of

the tyrannical hold that linguistic form has upon our orientation in the
world" (Sapir 1931). This view, in turn, is a latter-day reflection of the
position of Humboldt for whom "the difference between languages
derives less from differences in sounds and signs than from differences
of world view" (Cassirer 1933). The theme is given yet stronger support
by Weisgerber who writes that as an intermediate psychic realm,
language is clearly distinct from the area of "objective meanings,
particularly of the world of objects, but rather embodies the result of an
intellectual remolding of this world" (Weisgerber 1949:13).
It is to be noted that resemblances between the lexically oriented
European and the syntactically based American approaches extend
beyond generalities to specific details, but there is one exception. It has
to do with the sphere of value judgments whereby European writers in
general take a view of primitive mentality similar to that espoused once
but later rejected by Lévy-Bruhl (1912). In other words, the world
perspective stated to be revealed shows the primitive at an early
prelogical stage of development." In the United States, however, an
equality of valuation is maintained, and the scale, if anything, tends to
weigh in favor of the primitive (Greenberg 1954, 1963).
2.2.2. DETRACTORS. As vocal and articulate were the exponents of the

principle of linguistic Weltanschauung, there have been equally vocal
and articulate detractors who took issue with the philosophical or
linguistic basis for such views. L.S. Feuer, a social philosopher, rejected
the Whorfian hypothesis on the grounds that all men in the struggle for
survival have common problems which result in a "common, universal,
scientific mode of thinking which manages to express itself in all
languages," and pointed out that on
"Hill (1952) effectively exploded the myth on "prelogical mentality" attributed to the scarcity of generic terms on the part
of a primitive people.

a priori grounds one would not expect cultures speaking different
languages to have different ways of perceiving space, time,
causation, and other fundamental elements of the physical world,
because a correct perception of these elements is necessary to
survival (Feuer 1953).
The anti-relativistic view of Marcel Mauss, a psychologist, even
antedates Whorf. He wrote that on the one hand, the categories of
collective thought are not necessarily expressed in the categories of
language and, on the other hand, those which are expressed by
language are not necessarily those which are the most conscious or
most important. Mauss cited the case of Chinese or Polynesian 1
where the division of labor and other forms of discrimination between
the sexes are the severest and yet no distinctions are made in the
linguistic structure. He concluded that language is but one of the
means of expression of collective thought and not the adequate
expression of that thought itself (Mauss 1923).
The idea that linguistic structures or categories can influence our
modes of thinking in some significant way is an attractive one, but
it could easily represent too much of an extrapolation from
available data as in the case of Whorf. As Carroll (1955:46) noted,
two lines of analysis must be followed in putting the linguistic
Weltanschauung problem to the test. First, more information must
be secured on a variety of linguistic structures, especially regarding
the manner in which various languages express different kinds of
abstract relations, i.e., causality, quantity, quality, space and time.
Second, experiments on the Weltanschauung problem must be
designed in such a way as to control the effect of individual
differences and of cultural differences which must be incidentally
correlated with linguistic differences.
An extremely relativistic view could lead to the hypothesis that
linguistic categories actually influence what the user of a language
can perceive-to the extent that he can perceive some things and
cannot perceive others. This would be tantamount to declaring that
the native speaker of English is incapable of perceiving the
difference, say, between "hot soup (ttukewun soup-well heated soup)" and
"hot soup (maywun soup - peppery hot soup)" because he uses the same
adjective for two different perceptual categories. But the truth of the
matter is that his actual sensations differ very little from those of a
Korean who does not apply the term "ttukewun (hot)" to pepper.' It is
possible that the native speaker of English may perceive more readily
a relation between the sensation of heat and that of peppery taste.
But this does not prove that his general perceptual capacities are
significantly different from those of a Korean.
2.2.3. WEAK RELATIVITY. It would be more appropriate to entertain a

more conservative or weakened view of linguistic relativity. Thus
linguistic structure may predispose the individual to pay attention to
some things more than others or to perceive things in one mode
rather than in others (Carroll 1955:46). This is another way of saying
that languages differ from each other in the way they assign or
section semantic spaces or domains. As a result, we are confronted
with the problem of cross-linguistic as well as crosscultural opacities
(Song 1975:55-66). But this does not alter the fact that different world
views and logics can be expressed in the same language, as was
demonstrated by Whorf himself when he used English to describe the
varying ways in which Hopi, Nootka, and other language systems
describe experience.
As Carroll (1955:47) pointed out, aside from the differences arising
from culture and technology, contrary to the popularly held
misconception, anything that can be said in one language can be said
in any other language, and there is no guarantee that our thought
habits would be improved by the use of an "advanced" or "different"
language. If it were otherwise, a Korean might be
'In one of my experiments in which a bowl of chilled Korean soup containing the usual amount of pepper was offered
to a native speaker of English, his immediate response was, "It's too hot for me." The Yale Romanization is used for
the Korean data throughout this study.
branded an illogical thinker because his language forces him to be one

what with its "multiple subjects" and with its optional device of subject
deletion. The native speaker of English would fare no better in view of
the blatant pattern holes or systematic gaps it exhibits in its syntactic
structure (Song 1975:24-25)s.
Declaring that there had been as yet no convincing demonstrations
that languages impose different philosophical orientations, Carroll
wrote that his best guess was that the effects of language structure on
thinking would be found to be limited and localized, and that it was
unlikely that speakers of different languages have, by virtue of the
languages they speak, different world views or different degrees of
capacity to solve certain problems (Carroll 1964). The lack of
grammatical gender in Korean, for instance, proves not that the
Koreans share a different world view but that they are not required by
their language to pay attention to the trichotomy of sex (i.e., "he,"
"she," "it"). Other things being equal, there is no reason to believe that
a Korean experiences any greater difficulty than an American or Briton
does in proving the Pythagorean theorem, for example.
The superabundance of concrete and particular terms in a number of
less well-known languages is often cited to "prove" that the speakers
of those languages are suffering from faulty powers of generalization.
9
Here again, no reliable evidence has yet -been presented to support
the thesis that lexical categorization ipso facto has anything to do with
mental capacity and Weltanschauung. Whether a language is deficient
in generic terms or abundant in
81t is a commonplace that two bilingual participants in a conversation seldom experience radical changes in
their logics or thinking processes as they continually switch from one language to the other or even respond
in one language to questions framed in the other.
9
The case of "rice" can be cited. Korean has "mo" ("rice seedling"), "pye" ("rice plant"; "oryza sativa"), "pye"
("unhulled rice"), "ssal" ("hulled rice"), "chapssal" ("glutinous rice"), "moypssal" ("non-glutinous rice"), "mikok"
("rice grains"), "pap" ("steamed rice"), etc., but no superordinate term for "rice."
specific ones may be dictated by dire necessity, by the influence of

climate and environment (Ullmann 1964:214). The Hopi call "insect,"
"airplane," and "aviator" all by the same word and feel no difficulty
about it just as the Koreans can get along perfectly well with only one
word ("nwun") for "snow" -something that would be impossible for an
American in the former case and for an Eskimo in
the latter. 10
As Ullmann (1964:241) noted, it is probably an exaggeration to say
that certain things cannot be expressed at all in a given idiom. Hockett
was probably nearer the truth when he said that "languages differ not
so much as to what can be said in them, but rather as to what it is
relatively easy to say" (Hockett 1954:122). Warning us against the
danger of exaggerating the positive side of the Linguistic Relativity
hypothesis, Ullmann wrote that "it is probably more correct to say that
our words predispose us in favor of certain lines of thought than they
actually predetermine our thinking," though he conceded that "the
suggestive power of language is so strong or so insidious that few
speakers, if any, will be able to resis it" (Ullmann 1964:241).
Ullmann's interpretation coincides with what Slobin (1971:122) calls
the weak form of the Linguistic Relativity hypothesis. Whereas the
strong form, i.e., the unadulterated Whorfian version, holds that
language predetermines thought and behavior patterns and that
language is a sort of mold for thought and philosophy, the weak form
postulates that certain aspects of language can predispose people to
think or act in one way rather than another, but that there is no rigid
determinism, and one is not fully a prisoner of one's language; hence it
is just a guide to thought and other sorts of behavior (Slobin
1971:122). Needless to say, translation could hardly justify itself if we
were confronted with nothing but the
""Necessity dictates, however, that Koreans resort to a variety of compounds to denote various kinds of snow
such as "huyn-nwun" ("white snow"), "hampaknwun" ("fluffy snow"), "ssalak•nwun" ("granular snow"), and
"kalu-nwun" ("powdery snow").

strong form of linguistic Weltanschauung. Slobin favors the weak form
in regard to the lexical level based on his belief that any concept can
somehow be encoded in any language, though with ease in some,
and by complex circumlocutions in others. (Slobin 1971:125)".
Conceding that the problems of studying global relationships
between a linguistic system and an entire world view are obviously
beyond our grasp, Slobin points out that the fate of the Sapir-Whorf
hypothesis at the present time is an interesting one in view of the fact
that people are at present more concerned with linguistic and cultural
universals than with linguistic and cultural relativity (Slobin 1971:130-
33).
The relationship between a language and the real world needs to be
properly assessed. The categories language provides for us are
arbitrary in that "the conceptual boundaries often vary from language
to language in a way that defies principled explanation" (Leech
1981:26). This in turn presupposes the arbitrariness of . language with
respect to experienced reality. Thus languages have a tendency to
"impose structure upon the real world by treating some distinctions as
crucial, and ignoring others" (Leech 1981:26). Furthermore, the way a
language classifies experience is clearly man-centered. A "weed" may
be called a "flower" or vice versa, depending on whether it is found
inside or outside the garden, the motivation being supplied by cultural
norms than by external
reality. 12
The relativistic view of the cognitive structure of languages implies
that differences will be striking between the world view of a native
speaker of English and that of a native speaker of Korean in
"See Jakobson (1953:234-35) for an even stronger view.

""Rain" may be an unpleasant phenomenon for people in an urban area, but a most welcome event for those in
a farming community. See Sanches and Blount (1975) and Hymes (1964:167-70) for discussions of the
relationship between ethnographical and cultural categories and language. Park (1979) contains a large
number of data manifesting Korean and American cultural norms.

which not only classifications of natural phenomena, but abstract
relations such as those of space and time are represented in a very
different manner. Leech notes that an extreme version of the view that
each language forces us into its peculiar mental straitjacket cannot be
sustained in view of the fact that it is possible to translate from one
language to another (Leech 1981:27). Besides, a language may have
alternative conceptualizations of the same phenomenon. In Korean, for
instance, a "fifteen-day stretch of time" may be called "polum,"
"pantal" ("half month"), or "yeltassay" ("fifteen days"), plus the
Chinese derivative "sip-o-il" ("fifteen days"). As Jespersen (1924:54)
noted, the outside world, as reflected in the human mind, is extremely
complex so that men cannot always be expected to settle for the
simplest or the most precise way of denoting the myriads of
phenomena and the manifold relations between them that call for
communication.
2.2.4. A PSYCHOLINGUISTIC VIEW. One of the most penetrating

criticisms aimed at Whorf comes from Osgood (1963:317-18). First of
all, Osgood notes, Whorfs approach is anecdotal, lacking the
customary controls of scientific experimentation, and his examples
must stand as hypothesis-setting rather than hypothesistesting
demonstrations. Second, the anecdotes usually hinge on literal
translation from an Indian language into English, i.e., Standard Average
European, with comments then being made upon the strangeness of
the world view apparently expressed. This would be tantamount to
concluding, by a reverse logic, that contemporary English speakers
must think of each night's sleep as a religious ,-xperience, because
each morning's meal serves to "break a fast."" Third, the Sapir-Whorf
hypothesis is clearly psycholinguistic in nature, yet Whorf used a
mainly linguistic approach to the
The same logic would conclude that Koreans must be always hungry, for they greet each other by asking
whether the other party has eaten a meal. See Song (1976) for a discussion in an East West cultural frame.
problem, rarely making any independent observations on the

cognitive processes of language users. To claim that Apache speakers
must perceive "rain" differently from the way English speakers do
because their way of talking about it is different ("water, or springs,
whiteness moves downward"), and that they infer how they perceive
solely from how they talk is completely tautological (Osgood
1963:318).
2.2.5. A BIOLOGICAL VIEW. The study of the biological foundations of

language conducted by Lenneberg (1967) is particularly revealing in
its appraisal of linguistic relativity. Lenneberg (1967:365-370) reports
that cognitive processes studied so far are largely independent of
peculiarities of any natural language and, in fact, that cognition can
develop to a certain extent even in the absence of knowledge of any
language. He notes that until rigorous proof is submitted to the
contrary, it is more reasonable to assume that all natural languages
are of equal complexity and versatility and the choice of this
assumption detracts much from the relativity theory.
Asserting that man's cognition functions within biologically given
limits, Lenneberg points out that differences in semantics are not
necessarily signs of obligatory differences in thought processes as
assumed by relativists. He states that the modes of conceptualization
that happen to be tagged by a given language need not, and
apparently do not, exert restrictions upon an individual's freedom of
conceptualizing. Thus Lenneberg appears to allow only the weak
form of the relativity hypothesis when he says that the semantic
structure of a given language only has "a mildly biasing effect" upon
cognition under special circumstances and that limitations of
vocabulary may be largely overcome by the creative use of
descriptive words (Lenneberg 1967:329-372).
Relativists often cite the case of a wide variety of terms for "snow"
that the Eskimos use. But the fact that English speakers do not have
different names for several kinds of snow does not prove that they
are unable to see the differences. A man may be perfectly able to

distinguish two situations and still not care to do anything about it.
The Eskimos and the Americans may or may not see the world
differently. It would appear that the fact that American skiers can
identify a wide variety of snow proves that they can see the
differences. The world view in this regard can be said to differ little
between the two. As Brown and Lenneberg (1954) pointed out, it is
possible that in the history of a culture the peculiar features of the
language and thought of a people probably develop together.
2.2.6. LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT. An interesting sidelight is thrown

on the relationship between language and thought by Vygotsky
(1962). According to Vygotsky, thought is a simultaneous bundle of
conceptualizations and the transition from it to speech is no easy
matter, for speech has to be lineally ordered. Comparing thought to
"a cloud shedding a shower of words" (1962:150), Vygotsky points
out that speech is not a mirror-like reflection of thought. Thought
undergoes numerous changes on its way to becoming speech.
Thought does not coincide either with words or with the meanings of
words in which it is expressed, yet the way from "thought to words
leads through meaning" (1962:150). If we follow Vygotsky's line of
reasoning, the linguistic Weltanschauung hypothesis must have a
hard time justifying itself. As Furth (1961) remarked, language
experience may increase the efficiency of concept formation in a
certain situation, but it is not a prerequisite for the development of
the basic capacity to abstract and generalize
(cf. Henle 1965:18). All in all, it must be admitted that linguistic
relativity in its radical form remains, by its own axioms, not only
incapable of proof but incapable of being described (Wallace 1961)".
14 Another favorite source of anti-relativistic ammunition is the case of peoples sharing essentially the same cultural
background but speaking genetically unrelated languages such as the Danes and the Finns.

2.2.7. PRO-RELATIVISTIC STUDIES. All these detractors
notwithstanding, a number of studies have also been made to
support certain aspects of the Whorfian hypothesis. Cawte and Kiloh
(1967) is an attempt to test the influence of language (or lexicon, to
be exact) on concept formation. Fisher (1966) is a more or less
impressionistic study on the influence of syntax on personality.
Brown (1958) ascribes semantic property to parts of speech which
purportedly affect our thought processes. Carroll and Casagrande
(1958) touch upon the influence of language on perception.
Niyekawa-Howard (1968) is a report on how a certain grammatical
device affects perception and nonverbal behavior." Lantz and
Stefflre (1964) is a study on the influence of language (or
communication accuracy, to be specific) on cognition. Finally, Cheun
(1971), the only study of its kind ever undertaken in Korea, reports
how language affects perception and memory. It must be noted,
however, that none of these studies has produced conclusive
evidence to support the basic tenet of the linguistic Weltanschauung
hypothesis in toto.
2.3. Universals, Weltanschauung and Translation Theory
2.3.1. UNIVERSALS AND TRANSLATION. As noted in Section 2 above,

neither the radical version nor the complete denial of linguistic
relativity can be sustained with valid and reliable evidence. If
anything, we might have to admit that linguistic relativity is itself a
relative phenomenon, discernible in certain cross-lingual channels
but partially or totally missing in others. If it were otherwise, the
heterotelic activity of translation would be rendered either
completely inoperative or totally problem-free. Wherever translation
proceeds smoothly and efficiently we may infer that the effects of
relativity in that particular cross-lingual
15
It reports that using the Japanese passive voice tends to make the Japanese negatively oriented.
channel are, other things being equal, relatively negligible. On the

-other hand, wherever intractabilities obstruct the cross-lingual
channel we may assume that the principle of linguistic
Weltanschauung is more or less active. 16 Translation is a thriving human
activity because there are far
more features which are similar across ethnolinguistic boundaries

than those that are different. 71 he fact that tue 150-odd-member
United Nations can effectively stage debates and vote-castings on
some crucial international issues by means of translation into and
from its six official languages bespeaks the existence of cultural
and linguistic universals and the remarkable similarity of
Weltanschauung that all participants share. Also, despite the
seemingly insurmountable difficulties attributable to cultural and
linguistic opacities, works of literary art are often rendered into
other languages by competent hands, winning not only
sympathetic readerships worldwide but also the coveted Nobel
prize. Thus we may assume, albeit tautologically, that translation
is possible, no matter how genetically distant the languages
involved may be, fundamentally because people everywhere draw
on a common core of experience and Weltanschauung.
As transformational linguists would have it, language is basically
an innate or genetically inherited capability, which all human
beings are "programmed" from birth to develop (Chomsky 1972;
Lenneberg 1967; Leech 1981:27). This entails adoption of the
universal base hypothesis that languages share the same basic
conceptual framework (Ross 1970:260-61). As Nida (1975b:
150ff.) has postulated, there is a universal set of semantic classes,
i.e., entities, events, abstracts and relationals which underlie all
conceptualizations." On a less deep level, another universal set of
16
A distinction is made here between intractabilities due to cross-linguistic or crosscultural opacities and
those attributable to effects of linguistic relativity.
17
Cf. Katz (1966:10-11). It must be noted that Nida worked out and employed these basic classes before
the development of generative-transformational grammar and, especially generative semantics which
recognizes certain deep-level transformations.
semantic categories may be postulated such as animate/inanimate,

human/nonhuman, and concrete/abstract, from which each
language draws its own subset of categories (Leech 1981:27).
Languages differ because the choice from this subset and the
obligatory combinations in which they are expressed differ.
One of the most noteworthy studies ever made in favor of the

universalist position has to do with the color terminology. Working in
an area regarded as a happy hunting-ground for relativist
semántics,18 B. Berlin and P. Kay studied almost a hundred different
languages and reported that the primary color terminology is
explicable in terms of a set of exactly eleven universal color
categories, which may or may not be all present in a given
language (Berlin and Kay 1969). The eleven color terms and their
Korean equivalents are shown in Figure 1.
'purple' ca-sayk'
pink,
p
'white' `green' saykun'hong
'huyn' < 'red' < `nok-sayk' < 'blue' < `brown'
`black' :red' 'phulun' `kal-sayk' `orange'
' yellow' 'oleynci
`kemun' 'nolan' sayk'
'gray' 'hoy-sayk'
Figure 1. The Berlin-Kay Universal Color Categories
The arrows between the blocks indicate "conditional universality":

for any color categories (X) and (Y), (X) (Y) means that if a
language contains Y it must also contain X. The first, third,
"Cf. Conklin (1955), "... the structure of a lexical set may affect color perception."
and the last blocks contain alternative categories. Thus in the purely
native color terminology of Korean, the equivalents are found for each
category up to "blue" ("huyn-white," "kemun-black," "ppalkan-red,"
"nolan-yellow," and "phulun-blue") except for "green" which must be
expressed by the Chinese derivative "noksayk." None of the four
categories in the final block has its native Korean equivalent, even
though all of them can be expressed adequately by using the Chinese
derivatives as shown. The term "orange" (the fruit) has become a
loanword all by itself in Korean: "orange(oleynci) -sayk- orange- color."
Berlin and Kay claim not only the precise number and order of
universal color categories but also a fixed sequence of historical stages
through which a language must pass as its basic vocabulary increases.
All this claim, as far as the Korean language is concerned, proves
startlingly true. The fact that Koreans do not distinguish between
"blue" and "green" in some instances ("phulun san-blue mountain" vs.
"phulun hanul-blue sky") does not prove that they cannot perceive the
difference between them, but that they do not feel it necessary to
distinguish them in this case. Accordingly, the native word for "green"
had not existed until the Chinese derivative "nok-sayk" came to be
adopted. Even after that, however, the cooccurrence relation of the
two elements, such as in the combination "phulun san," has been so
strong as to resist new combinations like "nok-sayk san" or "nok-san."
In other instances where new terms have had to be coined such as
"green belt," the combination "nok citay" was adopted quite
unobtrusively.
Another area often exploited in support of the relativity hypothesis is
the kinship terminology. Cross-cultural opacities in kinship semantics
have been documented by Goodenough (1956, 1965, 1970),
Lounsbury (1964, 1969) and others. But no matter how complex it
may be to match equivalences between the kinship terminologies of
different languages, the data for each language can be expressed in
terms of the basic family relationships of the nuclear family, namely
"father," "mother," "brother," "sister," "daughter,"
"son," "husband," and "wife." For instance, the term "komopu" in

Korean can be rendered as "father's sister's husband" in English if the
context requires something more precise than "uncle." A favorite word
game in Korea involving the kinship terminology begins with such
questions as, "This is my mother's husband's father's tomb. Whose
tomb is it?"
The fact that a core of terminology can be used to account for most
kinship relationships suggests a universal or language-neutral
conceptualization of basic kinship relations even though anthropologists
may disagree as to the precise significance of these universal
categories,19 and even though the exact cultural interpretation of the
categories may vary from language to language (Leech 1981:236).
Granted that there is such a fundamental question as to whether the
term "kinship" itself refers to anything that can be characterized in a
culturally neutral way .20 An assumption of weak universals, however,
will enable us to see a common basis in obviously similar
conceptualizations of kinships that occur in diverse environments
geographically as well as linguistically.
2.3.2. WEAK UNIVERSALS. The weak universalist position recognizes

characteristics belonging to a universal set from which each language
takes a subset. Hence there is an overlap between the weak
universalist position and weak relativist position. Unless this gray area
is recognized and taken into consideration, it will be difficult to justify
the basis upon which translation theory can be formulated. The fact
that no rigorous formulation of translation theory was attempted during
the period more or less dominated by
19
Also to be noted are the two philosophical interpretations of the very nature of universals. One is the
conceptualist belief that universals are mental entities and the other the in re form of realism which maintains that
they inhere in objects and are apprehended by the mind. See Holloway (1951:16-43) for elaborations.
EoGoodenough (1970:4-38) reports a number of exceptional cultures in South India in which the nuclear family of
parents and children has no place.
Weltanschauung and Translation S5

relativistically oriented linguists attests to this.
Translation theory has become a particularly engaging topic after the
age of generative transformational grammar set in, making it fashionable
to look for universal features underlying a multiplicity of surface
phenomena not only in linguistic structures but also in a variety of other
cultural areas. Characteristics that are common to every language,
needless to say, constitute the strong variety of substantive universals
(Chomsky 1965:27-30). For translation theory, however, their existence is
significant only to the extent that they coexist with the weak variety of
substantive universals and, by extension, the weak form of linguistic
relativity. For simplicity's sake, the weak substantive universals may be
called "the emic elements" and the strong substantive universals "the
etic elements."
2.3.3. CROSS-LINGUAL COMMUNICABILITY. Neither the etic

nor the emic elements occur in any predictable or ordered pattern. Their
existence or absence may make a significant difference in some cases
while none in others. The emic elements can be exaggerated as a limiting
factor in cross-lingual communication. If we were to accept this view, we
might just as well conclude that absolute communication is impossible
not only cross-lingually but also monolingually or interpersonally. For no
two persons have precisely the same background and hence all differ in
their use of even the same language code, and no two persons employ
the same symbols in exactly the same type of arrangements. But the
truth is that a relatively high degree of mutual intelligibility characterizes
human communication not only within a single language, but also
between members of different speech communities.
Nida (1964:53ff.) cites four factors that are responsible for monolingual
as well as cross-lingual intelligibility. First, he cites the similarity of mental
processes of all peoples. The myth of prelogical mentality of primitive
peoples having been exploded, it is reasonable to believe that there are
no significant ways in which the mental processes of different
peoples are appreciably distinct. Of
course, the world views of peoples, as reflected in certain aspects

of hierarchical structuring, may differ; but fundamentally the
thought
processes must be essentially the same, regardless of race or
culture. Even the capacity for generalization appears to be very
similar between peoples of widely different cultural backgrounds."
The second factor cited by Nida is the similarity of somatic
reactions of all peoples. Certain automatic responses are held to
be universal such as blushing and high blood pressure in response
to anger. The reasons for blushing and anger may differ from
culture to culture, but the form of the somatic response is
remarkably similar. Certain other semi-automatic somatic
responses such as laughing, smiling, and grimacing (in anger or
pain) are almost universal, but they may also undergo certain
cultural conditioning. Thus a smile in Korean culture may signify
hostility while a laughter may reveal sadness in some Central
American culture. Nida (1964:55) stresses the point that even
though a people may not have exactly the same types of somatic
experiences as occur in other languages, they can nevertheless
readily conceive of the underlying types of somatic expressions
which make such expressions
meaningful.
The third factor listed by Nida is the similarity of the range of
cultural experience. He states that even though specific behavior
within any one area of life may differ, the range of common
human experience is sufficiently similar to provide a basis for
mutual understanding. The similarities that unite mankind as a
cultural "species" are much greater than the differences that
separate. The fourth and last factor cited by Nida is man's
capacity for adjustment to the behavioral patterns of others. He
writes that it would seem that we possess a kind of grid which we
can employ to reinterpret experience in terms of some other
conceptual framework, provided,
21
Nida is uniquely qualified to make this statement in view of the scale and magnitude of the research on Bible
translation problems involving over a thousand languages that he has been conducting over the past decades.
of course, that there is a measure of willingness to do so and a degree

of good will inherent in the activity.
The emic elements, i.e., the differences in the way in which
experience is categorized, show up mainly in the semantic structure of
a language. For one thing, lexical abundance or complexity reveals
either the focus of the culture as a whole or the concentration of
attention by people of a distinctive subculture (e.g., specialists such as
electronic engineers, physicians, or existential philosophers).
Languages differ most from one another as one ascends the lexical
hierarchical structure (Nida 1964:79). In the lower levels terms tend to
match more closely the perceptually distinguishable objects of the
culture, whereas in the higher levels distinctions reflect conceptually
based classifications of phenomena, so that interlingual differences
tend to be greater in the latter. 22
2.3.4 WELTANSCHAUUNG AND LEXICAL HIERARCHY. What particularly

concerns us here is the relationship between a people's
Weltanschauung and the hierarchical structuring of their lexicon. Nida
(1964:81ff.) declares that the hierarchical structuring of related
symbols is an extremely important index to a people's world view, for
it is by language that people indicate their classifications of
experience. The classifications reflected in the hierarchical
substitution of words are even more revealing of a people's world view
than are the categories embedded in the morphological structures.
Categories like mode, tense, person, aspect, number, and gender
often reflect "ossified" structures which, though actually reflecting
meaningful distinctions at an earlier stage in the language, are no
longer responsive to change or indicative of living contrasts. He goes
on to say that there is no doubt that the hierarchical structure of
superordinate and subordinate
==For instance, one of the most commonplace but conceptually based terms in English, "idea," has to go through
contextual determination in Korean to be rendered as "uykyen," "saang," "kaynyem," and so on.
28 Topics in Translation Studies ,
relationships is a far more active and precise picture of some of the

contemporary ways in which people view their world. He adds that
hierarchical structuring does not, however, cover all types of
vocabulary. For most relationals, a high percentage of abstracts, and a
number of entity words (e.g., kinship terms), hierarchical analysis is
relatively useless.
All this does not mean that the semantic structure is a perfect mirror
of a people's Weltanschauung or that we can discover the entirety of a
people's world view by merely examining the semantic structure of
their language. Nevertheless, as Nida (1975b:178) noted, since the
structural relationships of semantic units reflect a classification of
experience and are subject to change as beliefs and attitudes toward
the symbols and the corresponding referents change, we should rely
on the semantic structure as providing significant clues to a people's
orientation toward life. It is in the semantic structure that we find the
manner in which experience tends to be classified by successive orders
of increasingly more generic terms. For example, the Korean term "ca-
ta" ("to sleep") appears to be more generic than its English equivalent:
in Korean not only animate beings but also inanimate beings "sleep,"
e.g., "the wind is sleeping, " "the watch is sleeping, " "the playing card is
sleeping," and so on.
The more penetrating discussion of Weltanschauung in the context
of different cultures, however, should be based on the notion of
universals of language and of the anthropological as well as cultural
universals which underlie the semantic structure of each language.
Although the interest in universals has been appreciably heightened in
recent years following the more fashionable generative view of
language, the actual work of searching for the universal data, i.e., the
etic elements, has not been so productive. From the standpoint of
translation theory, if there are universals their existence should be
established by a purely empirical inquiry without preconception of any
sort save that of verifying their existence. The confirmation of
universals would appear to be a
marginal task for linguistic theory, but it could be a central one for
translation theory which tries to investigate why and how people
communicate from one language to another in spite of all that has
been said on the radical heterogeneity of diverse linguistic systems
(Mounin 1963:96).
2.3.5. IMPLICATIONS FOR TRANSLATION THEORY. The relationship

between universals and Weltanschauung and their implications for
translation theory can be explored by examining the following four
dimensions: the C osmogonic -ecological Dimension, the Bio-
physiological Dimension, the Psycho-physical Dimension, and the
Socio-cultural Dimension. 23
2.3.5.1. The Cosmogonic-ecological Dimension. Since all humans

inhabit the same planet, the notions of cosmogony and ecology
should be common to all languages. Thus we may include roughly
the following elements under the category of cosmogonic-ecological
universals: cold, heat, rain, wind, earth, sun, moon, star, sky, flora
and fauna, minerals, planetary divisions of time such as day and
night, time or parts of day, month, solar and lunar years, cycle of
vegetation, and meteorological or climatic change. Different cultures
may entertain different mythological, superstitious or folkloristic
notions about some or all of these elements. Some of them may be
identified with supernatural deities. But this does not invalidate the
existence of these universals wherever humans inhabit. In both
English and Korean the sun is a fertile source of myths, superstitions,
and folk tales. The Koreans even personify and accord an honorific
status to it by calling it "hay-nim" ("the sun, the honorable person").
Yet they are no different from English speakers in perceiving that
"the sun rises and sets."
"The quadripartite dimensions are an expansion cum elaboration of the tripartite dimensions of Aginsky and
Aginaky (1948), namely cosmogonic, biological, and physiological dimensions.
2.3.5.2. The Bio-physiological Dimension. The bio-physiological

dimension is a necessary corollary of the fundamental similarity in
the biological evolution of mankind and in the conditions of life on
our planet. It covers six bio-physiological functions: nourishment,
drinking, respiration, sleep, excretion, and procreation." Certain
semantic fields are directly related to the perception of the world,
independently of any conceptual organization. The sensory
perceptions, which may be visual, auditory, olfactory, gustatory and
tactile, belong to this category. Anatomical characteristics,
physiological cycles, and diagnostic terms or terms describing
physical symptoms may constitute a substratum of the set. Likewise,
somatic responses to temperature changes, sexual stimuli, hunger,
thirst, and so on constitute an additional substratum.
In English as well as in Korean "love" is a sentiment associated
with the "heart, ''2 but its equivalent in Karre, a language of French
5
Equatorial Africa, is the "liver"; that in Conob, a Mayan language of

Guatemala, is the "abdomen"; and that in Marshallese, spoken in the
South Pacific, is the "throat" (Nida 1975b: 176). These are culturally
conditioned features that diverge from the substrata. Similarly, the
relatively abundant diagnostic and gustatory terms in Korean vis-à-
vis English may be regarded as culturally conditioned divergences.
But, again, this does not invalidate the fundamental similarity of
somatic responses across racial, ethnic or national borders. An
American who tastes kimchi for the first time, for example, can
usually convey his gustatory experience in one fashion or another,
such as, "It tastes like sauerkraut." Finally, the biophysiological
process of birth, aging and death constitute another important
substratum. Here English and Korean are remarkably alike in cutting
up the human's aging process into infancy, boyhood,
24 The function of procreation encompasses principally sexual acts and subordinately conception and
parturition.
25Thus a jilted lover suffers from "heartache" ("kasum aphu-ta") whether he is a native speaker of Korean or
English. See Lyons (1981:220-242) for a discussion of
"worlds within worlds."
youth, adulthood, and old age.
2.3.5.3. The Psycho-physical Dimension. The psycho-physical

dimension is more complex than the foregoing because a marked
degree of conceptualization comes into the picture. It includes
spatio-temporal designations, numerals, color terms, metaphors
and other figures of speech, and other concepts related primarily to
psychology and the physical world. The fact that the Korean people
use one set of spatio-temporal measures and the Americans
another does not prove that the former cannot understand the
spatiotemporal units used by the latter or vice versa. The Korean
unit of distance "li" can be rendered metrically as "four kilometers"
while the American "mile" can be conceived of as "1.6 kilometers."
That this presents no serious problem was well demonstrated
during the Korean War in which the Korean and American troops
staged countless successful joint operations, using the metric
system. Whereas the English language may have the special term
"fortnight" for "two weeks," the Koreans have the separate term
"polum" for "fifteen days." But no serious problem arises in
rendering "fortnight" as "icwu-il" ("two weeks") or in translating
"polum" as "half month" or "fifteen days."
The case of the numerals needs some further comment. Boas
(1911:59-73) declared that there is no proof that the lack of the use
of numerals is in any way connected with the inability to form the
concept of higher numbers. 26 The culturally conditioned
divergences in the use of numerals normally involve sets of
numbers like "dozen," "score," and "teen" (as in "teenager"). Here
again, no serious difficulty arises in ordinary circumstances by
rendering "teenager" as "sip-tay" in Korean. The Korean term, to be
sure, covers all ages from "ten" to "nineteen." If there is a context in
"The figure "ninety-nine" is the highest that the modern native Korean language can handle, but the use of
Chinese derivatives enables its speakers to cope with astronomical figures like "trillion" ("có') quite
effortlessly. See Greenberg (1978:249-295) for universals in numeral systems.
which the addition of three years makes a crucial difference, the

translation can be rendered as something like "sipsam-se isang-uy
sip-tay" ("youth in the thirteen to nineteen year age group").
Likewise, a quarter of an hour rendered as "sip-o-pun" ("fifteen
minutes") and "three quarters of an hour" as "sa-sip-o-pun" can
hardly inconvenience any native speaker of Korean. The Korean term
"han phaswu" given as "a five-day period" and the English term "four
score and seven years" rendered as "phalsipchil-nyen" can be
considered the closest natural equivalents.
The case of color terms has been well presented by Berlin and Kay
(1969) above. There is no need for futher elaboration here. Suffice it
to say that the problem of the color category is not an intractable one
even though its gradations may range from 7.5 million to 10 million
(Conklin 1955).
Metaphor is perhaps a more vivid reflection of the world view
expressed in the discourse, the way a given work of literary art in
general reflects reality (cf. Uitti 1969:161). Of particular interest to
the translation theorist are anthropomorphic metaphors, parallel
metaphors and metonymies. These are of outstanding value since the
associations on which they are based seem to be deeply rooted in
human experience and largely independent of culture and
environment. Giambattista Vico, the eighteenth century Italian
philosopher, gave the following account of anthropocentrism: "In all
languages the majority of expressions referring to inanimate objects
are formed by transfers from the human body and its parts, from
human senses and human passion.... Ignorant man makes himself the
yardstick of the universe" (Ullmann 1963:241).
Both English and Korean rely on anthropomorphic metaphors to a
great extent. Table 1 is a preliminary survey of anthropomorphic
metaphors in both languages utilizing the names of twelve human
body parts .2' The figures, which have been rounded off to the
27 This survery is by no means exhaustive as it is based primarily on desk dictionaries. Tentative as the results may be,
they nevertheless reveal useful data for translation theory.
nearest five or ten to facilitate comparison, represent the number of

metaphorical idioms in actual use today.
Body Parts English Korean

heart-kasum 100 10
head-meli 50 10
face-elkwul 40 10
eye-nwun 30 50
nose-kho 20 40
ear-kwuy 20 40
mouth-ip 20 40
arm-phal 20 5
leg-tali 50 5
hand-son 50 40
foot-pal 20 30
shoulder-ekkay 20 5
Totals 440 285
Table 1. Anthropomorphic Metaphors
English relies heavily on "heart," "head," "leg," "hand," and "face"

while Korean utilizes "eye," "nose," "ear," "mouth," "hand," and "foot"
very frequently. "Hand" is the only body part that figures prominently
in both languages. It is tempting to characterize the English
anthropomorphic metaphors as reflecting something of a dynamic
and conceptually oriented world view on the part of the Anglo-
American peoples, and to describe Koreans as entertaining a more or
less static and perceptually oriented world view. Such
characterizations, however, run the risk of being branded
"impressionistic generalizations." The fact that the AngloAmericans
have almost ten times as many "heart" metaphors as the Koreans do
does not prove that they care about or are preoccupied with the
"heart" as much. What is noteworthy is that the salient

features of most anthropomorphic metaphors are nearly always
transparent cross -lingually. For instance, "the eye of a needle"
28
rendered as "panul nwun" rather than the idiomatic "panul kwuy"

("the ear of a needle") may strike the Korean reader as being
"outlandish" but by no means is it opaque .29
Parallel metaphors in both English and Korean have nearly the

same characteristics as the anthropomorphic metaphors. Parallelism
may obtain in some cases but may be missing in others. Thus in
English one can "grasp" a door knob as well as "grasp" the meaning
of a passage, whereas in Korean one can "grasp" ("puth cap-ta") the
door knob but must "comprehend" (kkaytas-ta") the meaning of the
passage. But to say "kul-uy ttus-ul puth-chap-ta" ("grasp the meaning
of a passage") is none too opaque, either. It merely sounds awkward
or exotic or both. Similarly, in the case of metonymic associations,
lack of parallelism may be encountered from time to time, such as
"tongue" signifying "language" but "hye" ("tongue") having no such
metonymic counterpart. On the other hand, for phrases like "to run
short of hands" a perfect parallelism exists: "son-i mocila-ta."
Both English and Korean share concrete-to-abstract metaphors
like "to throw light on" ("palkhye-cwu-ta"), sense impression-to-
abstract experiences like "warm reception" ("ttattushan yengcep"),
and synesthesia like "cold voice" ("chakewun moksoli") (touch-to-
sound) and "loud color" ("yolan-han pichkal") (sound-to-sight). All of
these are transparent metaphors which pose relatively minor
problems in translation. Their existence, however, should never be
slighted in the formulation of a translation theory.
"Some exceptions, of course, do crop up, such as "to foot the bill" and "pal neluta" ("broad-footed, i.e.,
"well-connected socially)."
E9Transparency will not be affected whether the Kekchi Indians of Guatemala call it "the face of the needle,"
the Lahu of Southeast Asia and the Piros of Peru speak of "the nostril of the needle," the Haka Chins of
Burma call it "the mouth of the
needle," or the Amuzgos of Mexico refer to it as "the hole of the needle." (Nida b: 124)
2.3.5.4. The Socio-cultural Dimension. The final element of the series,

the socio-cultural dimension, is undoubtedly the most susceptible of
cultural conditioning. Included in this category are kinships, familial
systems, taboos, customs, manners, mores, value systems, social
structures and institutions, and all other phenomena that are related to
the self-other orientation of a people. Most of the so-called cultural
opacities belong to this dimension as do most of the intractabilities
which are traceable to institutional idiosyncrasies involving technology,
religion, education, government and so on. Much could be made of the
apparent gaps that exist between the ways Koreans and Anglo-
Americans classify their experience related to all these phenomena.
Fundamentally, however, they contain so many universal features
which outweigh the thin layer of emic elements that it is impracticable
to adopt the approach whereby translatability is seriously questioned in
toto.
No matter how complex the manner in which the Koreans may
classify their kinships may be, it bears a fundamental similarity to the
way the Anglo-Americans categorize their kinships in that both use the
identical nuclear family structure to begin with. The Koreans may be
particular about the relative age of family members," e.g., among
siblings, while the Americans may be conscious of their sex. Both
nations have essentially patrilineal family structures, even though the
status of men in the Korean family may not be identical with that in the
American counterpart. Although ancestor worship may be practiced by
the Koreans to a degree hardly known in the Anglo-American culture, it
is not a negligible element in the latter, either. Thus "sengmyo" may
connote something more than just "visiting one's ancestral tombs," but
it does not invalidate the translatability of the Korean ritual.
Verbal taboos in both English and Korean-speaking cultures are
"This is no doubt due to the Koreans' vertical social stratification which extends beyond their family structure.
See Halliday (1978:211-235) and Hymes (1972:55•7l ; 1974:3-66) for excellent treatments of these and other
related issues.
essentially alike in that they fall under three categories, namely fear-
inspired taboos concerning God or Heaven, the dead, the evil spirits,
and certain animals; delicacy-inspired taboos related to illness, death,
physical and mental deficiency, stealing and killing; and decency or
propriety-inspired taboos regarding sex, certain body parts and
functions, and swear-words (cf. Ullmann 1963:245). Among the emic
elements are scatological terms which are not taboos in all but the
most elegant contexts in Korean and the expletive "hell" ("ciok")
which is not a taboo in any Korean context. But in both languages
"hell" is identified with heat. In the case of scatology in English the
non-four-letter terms are, of course, free of offensive connotations.
The non-monosyllabic terms denoting the human sexual organs or
functions in English are, like most of their counterparts in Korean, no
taboos.
In other areas, the unmentionability of the personal names of
certain kins on the part of younger, lower-generation, or female
relatives in Korean culture is perhaps one of the more noteworthy
emic elements. Likewise, the facility with which most American
adults go about first-naming their business colleagues,
acquaintances, relatives and others is unmatched by the Koreans. In
most of the corresponding situations the Korean context would
require either the addressee's last name or his title. For most Korean
adults, first-naming outside the circle of their boyhood friends or
classmates seldom occurs even where a remarkable degree of
intimacy exists."
The misogynous element in the folklore and superstition of Korea
presents an interesting case to the translator. Instances in which 11
woman" is identified with bad luck outnumber those in which she is

taken for a good luck symbol at least five to one (e.g., "If you see a
woman in your dream, you're out of luck." vs. "If a woman has big
feet, she will be dearly loved by her husband."). But misogyny is not
Roughly the same thing can also be said about the use of "panmal" ("plain speech").
g1
something that is monopolized by the Koreans, either. We come across

it from time to time in Anglo-American literature, too (e.g., Bernard
Shaw). Certain behavioral characteristics need to be noted at this time,
such as Koreans' belching at the dinner table to indicate gustatory
gratification, Americans' display of affection in public, Koreans'
"inscrutable smile" concealing anguish or enmity, and Americans'
shrugging of their shoulders to indicate a variety of responses. The list
can be expanded almost ad infinitum. But none of these emic features
present any insurmountable problem to the translator so long as they
are moderately well cushioned contextually. It has been almost
fashionable for translation theorists up to now to make much of their
intractability. But in point of fact their place in any explanatorily
adequate theory of translation assumes only a marginal significance.
The status of cultural conditioning in both English and Korean can be
glimpsed by an examination of the types of subjects used in the
proverbial expressions of both. The ten most frequently featured
subjects in English and Korean are shown in Table 2.' P Accidental as it
may be, the fact that "dog" is the most frequently featured item in the
proverbial expressions of both languages nevertheless point to a
remarkable similarity in a certain area of the self-other orientation of
both Koreans and Anglo-Americans. Likewise, "money" occupies the
seventh most frequent place in both languages, further corroborating
such a similarity. In addition to revealing something of the way in which
a nation prefers to mobilize its metaphorical materials, such an
inventory often serves to confirm the relative similarity of world views
across ethnolinguistic borders.
"The source for English data is Smith and Heseltine (1948) and that for the Korean data is the Korean Folklore Society
(1972).
Frequency
Ranking English Korean
1 dog dog-kay
devil thief-totuk
fool offspring-casik
4 God excrement-ttong
friend mountain-san
woman tiger-holangi
money money-ton
8 wind crow-kkamakwuy
9 cat man-salam
10 head water-mwul
Table 2. Proverbial Themes 2.4.
Concluding Remarks
It has been shown that the strong form of the Linguistic

Relativity hypothesis" can hardly be sustained with empirical
evidence. It has been argued that neither language nor thought
can claim primacy over the other. The two apparently develop and
intermesh simultaneously, even though conceptualization without
any knowledge of language has been proved to be possible. Thus
it is reasonable to conclude that linguistic relativity is itself a
relative phenomenon, appearing in its weak form in some contexts
but missing in others.
Translation theory is predicated on the existence of a broad
range of substantive universals. The search for them may be of
marginal interest to linguistic theory proper but of vital interest to
translation
'-'Cf. One of the strongest popularized versions: "(Language) has as much to do with the philosophical and
political conditioning of a society as geography or climate." (Cousins 1967).
theory. A people's Weltanschauung is reflected etically as well as

emically in their language behavior. The fundamental commonality
of the mental processes of mankind notwithstanding, certain
elements inevitably occur to demonstrate that a particular way of
dissecting experience is preferred by a particular people. But this
does not invalidate the existence of substantive universals which
underlie the cosmogonic-ecological, bio-physiological, psycho-
physical, and socio-cultural dimensions of Weltanschauung across
ethnolinguistic borders.
The emic features are essentially due to the divergence of
cultural foci. A basically universal element may undergo cultural
conditioning, consciously or unconsciously, as a necessary feature
of the survival and adaptation processes on the part of mankind. It
has been shown that no crucial difference exists between the
cultural foci of the Koreans and those of the Anglo-Americans. The
various dimensions of Weltanschauung that the former share with
the latter far outnumber the apparent emic features which are
opaque or intractable. But, as a matter of principle, nothing in
Korean is so opaque or intractable as to defy translation into
English or vice versa
in toto.
These implications of Weltanschauung need to be properly
assessed in formulating a translation theory. A failure to
acknowledge the relationship between language and thought or
conceptualization, language and perception, cultural foci of
different language communities, and between all of these and the
Weltanschauung across ethnolinguistic borders would result in
producing a theory that could not stand the test of explanatory
adequacy. It is gratifying to note that the newest trend of
transformational linguistics is in some ways conducive to fulfilling
that criterion vis-à-vis translation theory.
Chapter 3
Sprachgefühl and Translation
8.1. Sprachgefühl Defined
This chapter examines some implications of Sprachgefühl as a

dynamic entity, especially as it relates to translation. It is admittedly a
preliminary treatment, a modest one at that, of an area not
adequately charted, let alone described.' The term Sprachgefühl is a
loanword from German literally transferable as "language feeling." The
Webster's International Dictionary (Second Edition-1939) defines it as
"instinctive or habitual feeling for usage in language." The Webster's
Third Edition (1961) has two definitions: 1. sensibility to conformance
with or divergence from the established usage (as in form or idiom) of
a language, as in "the dependable Sprachgefühl of a skilled linguist."
2. a feeling for what is linguistically effective or appropriate, as in "the
Sprachgefühl of the accomplished translator." The second definition of
the 1961 edition is to be preferred, but an integration of all three
would be even better.
The term appears in the professional literature in Corder (1973:
280-282; 346-348), in a discussion of "mistakes of performance."
Corder uses the term in the following contexts:
"The detection of stylistically inappropriate language in the case
'It appears that neither literary nor linguistic studies undertaken in an AngloAmerican milieu have seriously
tackled this problem. The Prague School has done somewhat better, albeit under other labels. Nida (1978) has
some valuable insights bearing on the problem.
41
of a foreign learner is still a matter of the hearer's Sprachgefühl or

`personal judgment' (p. 282)."
"... the `speaking rules' of language cannot yet be described. What
we cannot describe we cannot teach systematically. Thus the learning
of the speaking rules is still a wholly inductive process. A native
speaker can tell whether an utterance is appropriate or not; this was
what we called `Sprachgefühl,' (p.348)."
It seems as though no native English word could carry the full range
of the referential meaning of Sprachgefühl. To be sure, there have been
innumerable instances where phrases like "a feel for the language,"
"stylistic sensitivity," "conversational implicature," "the ethnography of
speaking," "the tone and flavor of language material," and "native
speaker's intuition" have been used to denote one or more
significations of Sprachgefühl.' But the term has been conspicuously sparse in
the great masses of literature produced in the past decade or so
despite its obvious felicity and usefulness. Fortunately, however, a
nearly indentical term exists in the Korean language in the form of ekam
(The Yale Romanization). Koreans use the term in a variety of situations
where Sprachgefühl might be involved. Thus a correction would be
made simply because the hearer's or reader's ekam rendered an item
unacceptable. And yet no Korean would be able to define or describe
what constituted his ekam toward any specific utterance or utterances.
Corder (1973: 348) refers roughly to the same phenomenon by saying
that a native speaker cannot say much about why a particular
utterance is or is not appropriate.'
So much for the terminological preliminaries. The recent upsurge
'The hybrid discipline of pragmantax as espoused by neo-Chomskyans holds the best promise insofar as the study
of Sprachgefühl is concerned.
sThe most frequent reaction of a native speaker toward an item that violates his Sprachgefühl is: "It just doesn't
sound right to me." See Godard (1977) for a study of phone call beginnings in France and the United States
bearing on cross-cultural Sprachgefühl. Song (1981) takes up the topic as an element of telephonic phatic
communion.
Sprachgefühl and translation 43
of interest in communicative competence as distinct from the

Chomskyan tenet of competence vs. performance is significant.4
Insofar as translation is concerned, the achievement of communicative
competence by a non-native speaker may be said to be predicated on
his acquisition of Sprachgefühl. A translator may be armed to the
teeth with a working knowledge of the syntactic and lexical features of
the target language, but woefully ill-prepared to choose the most
appropriate utterance in a given situation. Why does this happen? Is
internalizing a large body of language data not sufficient? What
facilitates or hinders the cultivation of Sprachgefühl? What are the
implications of these and other problems for the theory and practice of
translation? Not all these questions can be readily answered in a
treatment of this scope. Attempts, however, will be made to answer as
many of them as possible.
3.2. The Cultivation of Sprachgefühl
A Korean who has studied English for, say, more than ten years may
be said to have acquired a sizable vocabulary and a repertoire of
structural patterns plus some useful idioms. With rare exceptions,
however, he may not be able to produce an utterance, either verbally
or in writing, in a way that sounds sufficiently "smooth and
appropriate" to the native speaker.' This would be true even if his
utterances were immaculately grammatical and accurate. As Steiner
(1975: 470) put it, in reference to some Japanese colleagues and
students "whose technical proficiency in English humbles one, so
much that is being said is correct, so little is right." It is intriguing to
try to answer why this happens. Steiner (1975: 470) points out that
4
See Hymes (1971) for a discussion of communicative competence, and Taylor and Wolfson (1978) for a
pedagogical approach thereof. 5Nida and Taber (1969: 137ff.) tackles the problem as having to do with
semotactic appropriateness. Sprachgefühl, however, goes beyond semotactic appropriateness, as will be shown
below.

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Topics in Translation Studies

This volume on some of the central issues in Translation Studies was

Chapter 2. Weltanschauung and Translation

Chapter 3. Sprachgefühl and Translation

Chapter 4. The Translatable Core Structure

Chapter 5. The Transeme

Chapter 6. Literary Translation

6.3. Some Syntactic and Semantic Problems 91

6.5. Concluding Remarks • 100

Chapter 7. Linguistics and Literature

Glossary 116 Bibliography 127 Index 137 The Table of

1.1. Purpose and Scope

The purpose of this book is twofold: to present an updated version of

2 Topics in Translation Studies

Hence I had wasted no time in applying some of those ideas to my

trees, innocuous as some of my findings may no doubt appear.'

4 Topics in Translation Studies

and literature is here summarized in such a way that a student of

1.2. Terms Clarified

I have so far deliberately shunned the use of terms like "Translation

'The Glossary is an enlarged version of that in Song (1975).

Weltanschauung and Translation

An explanatorily adequate theory of translation must take into

2.2. Linguistic Relativity

2.2.1. OVERVIEW. Wilhelm von Humboldt was probably the most

Weltanschauung and Translation ` 9

of each nation's psyche and indicating the peculiar way in which

10 Topics in Translation Studies

externally similar acts of observation, and hence are not equivalent

Weltanschauung and Translation 11

"not so much discovered in experience as imposed upon it, because of

2.2.2. DETRACTORS. As vocal and articulate were the exponents of the

12 Topics in Translation Studies

Weltanschauung and Translation 13

2.2.3. WEAK RELATIVITY. It would be more appropriate to entertain a

14 Topics in Translation Studies

branded an illogical thinker because his language forces him to be one

Weltanschauung and Translation 15

specific ones may be dictated by dire necessity, by the influence of

16 Topics in Translation Studies

"See Jakobson (1953:234-35) for an even stronger view.

Weltanschauung and Translation 17

2.2.4. A PSYCHOLINGUISTIC VIEW. One of the most penetrating

18 Topics in Translation Studies

problem, rarely making any independent observations on the

2.2.5. A BIOLOGICAL VIEW. The study of the biological foundations of

Weltanschauung and Translation 19

are unable to see the differences. A man may be perfectly able to

2.2.6. LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT. An interesting sidelight is thrown

20 Topics in Translation Studies

2.3. Universals, Weltanschauung and Translation Theory

2.3.1. UNIVERSALS AND TRANSLATION. As noted in Section 2 above,

Weltanschauung and Translation 21

channel are, other things being equal, relatively negligible. On the

more features which are similar across ethnolinguistic boundaries

22 Topics in Translation Studies

semantic categories may be postulated such as animate/inanimate,

One of the most noteworthy studies ever made in favor of the

`kemun' 'nolan' sayk'

Figure 1. The Berlin-Kay Universal Color Categories

The arrows between the blocks indicate "conditional universality":

Weltanschauung and Translation 23

24 Topics in Translation Studies