The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Pragmatics

The role of the translation dialogue in the translation discourse material

Sigmund Kvam

Introduction

Translation is a specific communicative activity and as such, is governed by both linguistic and social rules: communicative activities can only be successful when they are in line with a multitude of social, cultural, psychological and linguistic constraints. Some of these involve clear-cut rules such as basic syntactic rules; others concern explicit or implicit conventions such as conventions for small talk for example. This calls for an approach to communication that regards language as a means of creating meaning in a variety of socially constrained and conventionalised situations. Consequently, in this chapter communication is regarded as patterned behaviour: communicative activities are purpose-oriented and conventional in the sense that they draw on socially accepted communicative patterns¹ and that meaning is not inherent in the text itself, but “results from the use that is made of language in specific contexts” (Angermueller etal., 2014: 3). This perspective also applies to translation: translation is purpose-oriented and constrained by culturally varying conventions, which distinguishes it from other types of communication. Any translation of a text involves therefore not only a change in language, but implies a series of communicative activities functioning as common points of reference for the participants involved in a translational action.

This chapter focuses on the central communicative activities that contribute to establishing an act of communication as translation: the translation discourse material (TDM) – briefly sketched as the textual material used to elaborate the translation brief and a specific translation strategy (see section 3). The TDM will be presented with special emphasis on translation dialogue, the dialogue between the translator and the commissioner with the purpose of elaborating the details of the translation brief, and a preliminary model of TDM will be proposed.

The translation dialogue will be discussed with regard to how the communication pattern² counselling is applied as a common frame of reference for the communicative activities intended to map out the translation brief. This serves to address two main research questions: how do so-called counselling activities in the translation dialogue contribute to establishing the translation brief, and to what extent are these activities necessary for the drafting of a translation brief?

An analysis of the TDM and the relevance of the translation dialogue for the translation brief requires theoretical fundaments serving as frameworks for the analysis. In the following, these theoretical frameworks will be outlined in more detail: first, a general linguistic framework connected to pragmatics and text linguistics; second, a translatological framework connected to functional translation theory; third, the empirical framework for this chapter, the TDM will be outlined more in detail; fourth, a model from conversation analysis will be presented: the communication pattern counselling. Counselling seems crucial for the analysis of the translation dialogue. On the one hand, the actors in a translation dialogue frequently seem to apply counselling as their preferred pattern of communication, making a model for counselling relevant describing a translation dialogue. On the other hand, counselling seems to be highly relevant for translation teaching, since the model for counselling can serve as a basis for training programmes for students of translation. On the basis of these “frameworks” some authentic examples of translation dialogues will be analysed.

1 Linguistic framework: functional pragmatic text linguistics

Much of post-war German linguistics, as in Europe and America in general, was dominated by structural linguistics. Structural linguistics has its focus on formal systems of syntactic configurations and explicitly disregards the communicative function of language. In addition, the unit of analysis is restricted to the sentence – the text level is not analysed. With these limitations, texts are beyond the scope of analysis, unless text is reduced to a chain of sentences connected by pronominalisations, as shown in e.g. Harweg (1979: 312–316). Opening up this narrow perspective of structural linguistics extended the unit of analysis beyond the sentence level and accepted the communicative situation in which language occurs as topic of analysis. Language is not only a structured entity; it is above all a means for expressing and constructing meaning in social interaction. Pragmatics then became the key for understanding language. The term pragmatic is related to human interaction in which language is seen as a tool of communication. It is closely connected to sociology and is situated in Functional Pragmatics within modern linguistics. In Functional Pragmatics language is analysed as a cultural, situational and functionally constrained entity. Function, briefly defined as communicative goal or intended effect on a target group, is thereby the dominant category, determining the use of linguistic expressions in general (Ehlich, 2011: 35ff.). The unit of analysis is no longer the sentence, but text-in-function, i.e., texts in authentic situations and functions (ibid.). This again requires a reflective-empirical hermeneutic methodology (Redder, 2010: 10). Structural aspects of language are still considered – not as a phenomenon in their own right, but as expressions of specific communicative goals in given situations. Functional Pragmatics can thus be seen as a theory of action for language: language is instrumental with regard to action goals, cf. “Sprache ist eine Form des Handelns; Sprache ist sprachliches Handeln” (ibid.).

A text is therefore more than a structural entity; it is interpreted as an entity of action as well. Such entities are constrained with regard to situation, intention, social roles etc. and represent conventionalised patterns of communication. They are known as Textsorten (“genre”),³ and serve as points of orientation for human interaction: in what genre do we communicate, and what social “rules” are expected in this genre? The Theory of Linguistic Action (“Theorie des sprachlichen Handelns”) and the Textsortenlinguistik have been on the linguistic agenda in Germany since the beginning of the 1970s, and are outlined in detail in the study on a theory of linguistic action by Jochen Rehbein (1977). A good survey of this approach in English is presented in Kameyama (2004: 16ff.). The Theory of Action has been directly connected to translation theory and serves as a foundation for Nord’s model of functional translation theory (Nord, 1997a: 15ff.) as well as in the examples presented in Nord (2010) – as will be shown in the next section.

2 Translatological framework: a functional approach to translation

Translation has traditionally been analysed on a purely normative basis;⁴ it has also been linked to the tradition of structural linguistics and regarded as a specific linguistic operation, such translation defined as the substitution of formal elements (Catford, 1974: 20). There are normative concepts of text correspondence such as equivalence between the source text and the target text (Reiß, 1988: 73; Albrecht, 2005: 33) where translation is defined exclusively on the basis of properties of the source text. Skopos Theory, presented by Katharina Reiß and Hans Josef Vermeer (Reiß & Vermeer, 1991), offered a new approach. In the wake of the so-called “Pragmatic Turn”⁵ in linguistics outlined in the previous section, the function, i.e., the intended effect of the target text on a given target group, is the goal of a translation; translation is not merely a replication of the source text. The intended effect of the target text may therefore, but not necessarily, differ from that of the source text.

The general principles of Skopos Theory were further elaborated by Christiane Nord. She regards translation as a subtype of interlingual text transfer and classifies it into documentary and instrumental translations (Nord, 1997a: 45–52). Nord’s functional approach to translation has been applied and refined in a number of studies since it was first introduced in Germany in the 1980s⁶ and is closely related to Functional Pragmatics and Linguistic Action Theory. Following Watzlawick, Nord regards translation as an action that is “seen or interpreted as intentional by the participants or any observer” (Nord, 1997a: 19). The production of a translational target text thus has its own intentional context, which “may or may not be similar to the intention guiding the original sender or text producer in the production of the source text” (ibid.). With functional translation theory, translation has moved out from the linguistic laboratory into real society: it is no longer simply a matter of how you change structural configurations, but based on the empirical reality of how a text intended to function as a translation of another text for a given purpose is created. The notion of the translation brief (“Translationsauftrag”) as an agreement between the translator and the commissioner is the core of this model and further studies on the characteristics of this “Translationsauftrag” – to which this chapter intends to be a contribution – constitutes a crucial area of research in functional translatology.

As mentioned above, functional translation theory opens up translation to be far more than just a copy of the source text. But this does not mean that any target text produced on the basis of a source text will be interpreted as a translation. In this chapter, the term translation will be restricted to target texts identified as such by the target text sender,⁷ following Gideon Toury who regards “all utterances in a [target] culture which are presented or regarded as translations, on any grounds whatever, as well as all phenomena within them and the processes that gave rise to them” (Toury, 2012: 27) as translations. This means, however, that the production of the target text is a communicative action in its own right: it cannot be adequately analysed according to the properties of the source text alone.⁸ In order to analyse translation scientifically as well as to develop a translation strategy we need to know as much as possible about these specific requirements for the production of a target text. This is a consequence of the fact that translation is seen as a socially constrained action with the use of language as an instrument for achieving social goals.

3 Empirical framework: the translation discourse material (TDM)

The fact that translation is a socially constrained activity involving language means that the status of a text as a translational source text is a result of a social agreement. Any text can be translated, but no text can be a source text in its own right: it is established as a translational source text by somebody as part of a given social action. This also goes for the target text: it is never a translational target text as such, but is interpreted as a translational target text in a given discourse community. Establishing a text as a translational source text thus implies the intention to translate it for a more or less specific purpose. The crucial information on the prerequisites for the production of the target text is therefore not found in the source text as such, but in the communication contained in and related to a commission to produce a target text with a specific purpose – as pointed out in functional translation theory and indicated in the discussion on the translation brief (“Translationsauftrag”) in the previous section.

But in spite of the theoretical emphasis on the translation brief in e.g. Reiß and Vermeer (1991) and Nord (2005), empirical studies on this crucial issue of functional translation theory are extremely rare. The translation brief is frequently thematised as important in translation theory and above all for the translation process, but to my knowledge the translation brief has not been analysed empirically as an act of communication in its own right. This does not mean that the translation brief is only a theoretical entity. Authentic cases of translation studies with an equally authentic translation brief are frequently found in studies based on functional translation theory. But characteristic of these studies is an analysis of the target text and a translation strategy following an already set translation brief,⁹ not an analysis of how a translation brief is elaborated or “constructed”. In addition, purely normative guidelines for setting up a translation brief are easily found.¹⁰ As mentioned earlier, empirical research has been conducted on counselling interviews, but analysis of translation as one possible counselling context is a neglected topic; even the most recent research on counselling, the anthology edited by Ina Pick (Pick, 2017a), contains no studies on translation, and translation is not thematised as a topic for research on counselling interviews in the literature referred to in this anthology. This lack of empirical research on the elaboration of the translation brief itself is understandable: it is extremely difficult to gain access to such authentic cases, as I discuss later. Nevertheless, such research is important since the translation brief in all its forms and manifestations constitutes the core of functional translation theory and should therefore be studied empirically. In addition, such empirical analysis opens up new and interesting perspectives for teaching and training translation students, as I outline in the concluding remarks.

A closer look at translation briefs shows that they differ widely. They may contain just an “order” to translate into a given language. They may, however, also be very comprehensive, with detailed information and written and oral communication between the translator and the commissioner to specify the translation brief. I term this communication cluster surrounding the translation brief the translation discourse material (TDM).

The TDM thus consists of all available communication included as relevant for realising specific intertextual relations between a source text and its translational target text. In addition, it may contain comments on particular translational choices as well as explanations and justifications of general translation strategies. Whereas the source text-target text pair constitutes the beginning and the result of an intertextual process, the TDM contains discourses on why a text B is or is intended to be interpreted as a translation of a text A – before, during and after the production of the target text. In order to develop a comprehensive model for the description of this TDM, a substantial corpus of such discourses would have to be analysed, which would clearly be beyond the scope of the present chapter. I therefore limit the discussion here to a preliminary model, consisting of the source text and the target text as well as the paratexts created before and after the production of the target text. A central feature of the TDM is the translation dialogue in which specific requirements for the target text are elaborated or negotiated between the translator and the commissioner. The translation dialogue can be seen as the centre of the translation brief, framed by source text and target text on the on hand and the paratexts of the translation on the other, as shown in Figure 16.1.

Pretranslational paratexts¹¹ are obligatory for initiating the translation process as such. They contain a request to translate a given text and may also specify certain requirements for the translation. The necessary components of a translation are of course the source text and the target text,¹² whereas the translation dialogue and post-translational paratexts are optional. A translation can take place simply on the basis of a general commission, resulting in an uncommented target text.¹³ In addition, the TDM could contain a dialogue between the translator and the commissioner as well as paratexts created during the translation process. The main purpose of the translation dialogue is to work out important aspects of the translation brief, whereas the main purpose of the post-translational paratexts is to highlight important aspects of the translation brief and the translation strategy applied, and often takes the form of justifying specific translation choices.

The translation brief, defined as the special requirements for the production of a functional and addressee-oriented target text, is developed gradually – sometimes through one very short interaction (like just a general description on how a publishing house translates), sometimes through a series of interactions between the commissioner and the translator, often combined with paratexts¹⁴ on how the translation should be. Information on the translation brief can basically be found in all the above-mentioned stages: the brief may start with some general information from the commissioner on the target text, such as selected target language and intended recipients. It may be further elaborated and agreed upon in the translation dialogue, and possibly adjusted in follow-up dialogues. Finally, the selected translation strategy as well as specific translation choices may be accounted for and justified in the post-translational paratexts. The translation brief may also be a simple request by e-mail, for example for the translation of a book, e.g. a biography, into a given language. In this case the translation brief is restricted to a general commission to translate in pre-translational paratexts, and the translator is given more or less free rein in translating the text. The translation brief thus includes, but is certainly not limited to, the translation dialogue. Two examples from authentic cases further illustrate this.

In Phillips (1996) German song texts (Lieder) are translated literally (“word-for-word”) or sentence by sentence (“line-by-line” or “grammar translation”). The target texts are impossible to sing to the melody or melodies composed to accompany the source texts. The word-for-word translation frequently contains lexico-grammatical errors, whereas the grammar translations are grammatically correct, but tend to be stylistically awkward.

In this case, I only have access to a post-translational paratext in the Preface, including a letter to the author. In the Preface, the translator retells the story of how the commissioner (Sir Anthony Lewis at the Royal Academy of Music) and the translator (Lois Phillips at the Royal Academy of Music) agreed to translate German Lieder in these specific ways: in order to perform these German Lieder in German, young singers need “a word-for-word-translation, with the equivalent English word printed under each German word” (Phillips, 1996, Preface). In addition, it states such translations should be “printed together with a version in good, clear prose which would be essential to disentangle the often unintelligible series of words resulting from a literal word-for-word translation” (ibid.). In a letter to the translator, the singer Janet Baker is enthusiastic about these translations: a word-for-word understanding is “exactly what the students desperately need . . . without which a Lied cannot be coloured vocally” (Janet Baker, in ibid.).

This paratext is not the translation brief itself, but it refers to a translation brief and outlines the translation strategy applied. The letter from a world-famous singer like Janet Baker justifies the relevance of the chosen strategy for the envisaged target group. This post-translational paratext thus gives us information on the reception of the specific translation and serves as a justification of the chosen translation strategy: stylistically awkward expressions, including language errors, can thus be explained as the result of a specific strategy for the purpose of studying and practising German songs.

In Zandjani (2018), three translations of Golestân (“The Rose Garden”) by the Persian author Sa’di, written in 1258, are analysed. Three translations, two from Persian into German by Karl Heinrich Graf (1846) and Dieter Bellmann (1992/1998), as well as one indirect translation from English into German by Kathleen Göpel (1997) all contain post-translational paratexts justifying the translation strategy and explaining cultural phenomena in the source text for the readers (further bibliographic details in Zandjani, 2018: 323–324). As for the indirect translation, Zandjani conducted interviews with the translator Kathleen Göpel in which the translator goes more into depth about her translation strategy. As in Phillips (1996), the paratexts mostly justify the text production strategy already “defined” in a translation brief. But the interviews and follow-up e-mails with Kathleen Göpel also shed light on specific aspects of the translation brief, such as the intention of using the translation for political purposes as “bridge builder” (“Brückenbauerin zwischen dem islamischen und christlichen Kulturkreis”) (cf. Zandjani, 2018: 305).¹⁵

In both Phillips (1996) and in Zandjani (2018) post-translational paratexts outline a translation strategy based on an already established translation brief. Typically, paratexts like these seem to justify translational choices – with reference to a more or less detailed translation brief. Zandjani’s interviews and e-mail correspondence with the translator demonstrate that at least some aspects of the translation brief can be found in post-translational paratexts, where the translator retrospectively reflects on the translation brief.

With regard to the elaboration of the translation brief, the translation dialogue is particularly interesting. In many translation commissions, no specific dialogue between the translator and the commissioner takes place. In some cases, the translation dialogue may contain crucial and detailed information on the contents of the translation brief and how it is established. It is therefore methodologically necessary to access authentic translation dialogues to analyse possible conventions and regularities for such dialogues as well as how they influence the making of the translation brief.

4 Conversational analysis framework: the communication pattern counselling¹⁶

4.1 Communication pattern counselling: a brief survey

The initial, but still basic research on counselling interviews (“Beratungsgespräche”) took place at the Institut für Deutsche Sprache in Mannheim in the 1980s and 1990s in a project called Beratungsgespräche – Analyse asymmetrischer Dialoge. This project covered a wide range of authentic communicative situations, such as counselling in banks, in students’ advisory services at a university and medical counselling on the genetics of Down’s syndrome. It did not cover translation dialogues, but the results of this project, especially the communication pattern Beraten (“counselling”), appear to be highly relevant to translation studies – both in general as well as in particular for the description of the translation brief. The desire to explore this potential more closely has prompted the focus here. The connection between the Mannheim research on counselling and translation will be discussed in more detail later.

As part of the Mannheim project, comprehensive studies were undertaken which helped to establish the overall patterned structures of this communication format and insight into the way in which these patterns are signalled at different points in authentic counselling interviews (e.g. Kallmeyer, 1985). Furthermore, nine transcribed counselling interviews are presented together with a survey of the project in Schröder (1985). The most important contribution of this research project is the empirical analysis of authentic counselling interviews through comprehensive articles on various aspects of counselling (cf. Nothdurft etal., 1994a).

The empirical approach of this Mannheim project provides a solid basis for further research on specific cases of counselling, as Habscheid (2003) observes in his study on institutional counselling.¹⁷ Recent research on counselling like Pick (2017a) also confirms the basic results of the Mannheim project. In addition, general research on linguistic pragmatics and spoken language at the Institut für Deutsche Sprache has further developed important aspects already presented in the project on counselling interviews.¹⁸

A full-scale analysis of this communication pattern¹⁹ is not possible within the framework of this chapter. I shall limit myself to a brief outline of this communication pattern, further details can be found in Nothdurft and colleagues (1994b: 9ff) and in Pick (2017b: 437 ff). In communication patterns, a specific “action pattern” (“Handlungsschema”, cf. Nothdurft etal., 1994b: 9) constitutes a logical structure of actions that serves as a common point of orientation for the participants in the interaction. But the order of sequence in a given case may differ considerably from this common logical pattern of the participants. One and the same contribution may represent different logical phases and the contributions may differ in length: they are normally relatively complex. But the common denominator of the participants, the logical structure or “Handlungsschema” constitutes a guideline of conversational conventions that can make a seemingly totally unstructured counselling interview successful.

The logical pattern for counselling (“Handlungsschema Beraten”) consists of the following four basic phases: initiating counselling with distribution of roles (counsellor, client), presentation of the counselling question or problem, developing and defining the problem, developing a solution of the problem supported by justifications, accepting or rejecting the solution (with justifications), dissolving the situation and exiting the roles as counsellor and client. There is far more to be said on this topic, more detailed descriptions as well as the empirical analysis from which this pattern was derived can be found in Nothdurft and colleagues (1994b), in all the articles in Nothdurft and colleagues (1994a) as well as in Kallmeyer (1985) and the articles presented in Pick (2017a).

In this chapter, I limit the focus to the way in which the translation brief – or important parts of it – is developed in the translation dialogue, i.e., how and by whom the brief is elaborated and established. It will be shown that key parts of this particular text pattern can be reconstructed in translation dialogues and that the communication pattern counselling serves as a frame of orientation for the participants – the translator as the counsellor and the commissioner as the client. The analysis of the examples presented in this chapter widely supports the approach elaborated by the Mannheim project – as does the analysis of Habscheid (2003) on institutional counselling. In addition, the recent study by Pick (2017b) supports the main structure or “Handlungsschema” elaborated in the Mannheim project, even if it was extended by several, predominantly psychological aspects, cf. Pick (2017b).²⁰

4.2 The role of counselling for the analysis of the translation dialogue

By its very nature, the translation dialogue is asymmetric: the commissioner wants to have a text translated, and commissions an expert on translation, the translator, to carry out this task. As an expert, the translator possesses more knowledge as well as specific professional skills with regard to translating.²¹ Such asymmetric relations can be found in a number of other cases than translations, as in the hearing of witnesses, oral exams and appraisal interviews, for example. By contrast, the success of such a dialogue in translation depends on cooperation and a common agreement between both parties on a specific problem that needs to be solved. It is similar to negotiations. Unlike a negotiation, however, the translation dialogue is always asymmetric, whereas negotiations may be both.

In this chapter, the communication pattern counselling has been selected as a model for analysis since it is both asymmetric and requires an agreement between the parties with regard to the counselling problem in order to be successful.²² The role of the counsellor is taken by the translator or translation project manager, whereas the commissioner occupies the role of the client.

4.3 Interaction and meaning in counselling

A counselling interview does not begin until both parties – the client and the counsellor – mutually accept their roles: on the one hand, the counsellor has to be considered competent by both parties in order to contribute to solving the envisaged problem. On the other, the client has to accept that he or she has a problem that needs to be solved with the aid of an expert on this problem. In translation, there is a similar situation: the commissioner has to accept that he or she needs counselling by the translator in order to receive a target text that best suits his or her goals, thereby initiating a counselling situation with the commissioner in the role of the client and the translator in the role of the counsellor.²³

In line with the pragmatic foundation of ethnomethodology, the task of establishing meaning is a common activity among the participants in the interaction: meaning construction is interactive, as accounted for, e.g. in Milligan (1998). As for the object of counselling, known as the counselling problem,²⁴ this is never prescribed or defined by one party only. It may be initiated by the client, but it is negotiated, justified, adjusted and developed in the dialogue itself by both the client and the counsellor. This also applies to translation: in a translation dialogue, a draft of the translation brief is first presented by one of the parties – in most cases the commissioner – but it is elaborated on by both parties, not only the translator, and finally agreed upon by both. As will be demonstrated in section 5, establishing the translation brief interactively is one of the most important aspects of a translation dialogue. A translation brief that is based on the source text only or merely on the basis of an “order” from the commissioner may (but does not have to) lack vital information with regard to an adequate translation strategy.

In counselling interviews in general, the solution to a problem is also the result of an interactive activity: it is not developed by the counsellor alone, even though the counsellor normally presents most of the arguments for a given solution. Both parties develop a solution by applying a variety of justifications, arguments and counterarguments. Finally, it is up to the client to decide whether the solution should be accepted or not. The fact that the problem of counselling as well as its solution are both developed interactively and not presented as the result of communicative activities by just one party, is one of the cornerstones of this research on counselling – as well as on a general basis in the present project on interactive meaning in Mannheim (Deppermann, 2017).

In the case of translation, it is the translator’s responsibility to produce the target text, but the specific intertexual relation(s) between the source text and the target text well as practical matters regarding the production of the target text have to be elaborated interactively between translator and commissioner. Establishing the roles as client (commissioner) and counsellor (translator) as well as developing both the problem and its solution interactively are based on the underlying counselling paradox, known as the divergence of perspectives between the participants.²⁵ This counselling paradox, showing the possibility of both a success or a total breakdown of the counselling interview, is also found in the asymmetry of a translation dialogue. The divergence of perspectives may contribute to a successful translation brief agreed upon by both parties on the one hand, but it may also result in a failure to establish a translation brief: an offer to enter a translation dialogue can be rejected so that the translator has to work out or assume a translation brief without any or minimal input from the commissioner.²⁶ This risk of communicative failure, as well as the prospect of communicative success, is closely related to what are known as the communicative resources used to initiate a counselling interview.

Resources are described as actional conditions inherent in a situation with the potential to be used for initiating a counselling dialogue (Nothdurft, 1994a: 34). Werner Nothdurft presents three such resources,²⁷ grouped according to which party initiates a counselling interview and how this is done. The arrangement is the expected way of opening up a counselling interview: the client asks the counsellor for advice and both parties accept their respective roles as client or counsellor. In the decree a third party “orders” a counselling discussion to take place. Such compulsory counselling normally takes place in institutional contexts such as hospitals, social security offices or schools as part of specific administrative procedures. The offer is the unexpected approach: the counsellor initiates the counselling, convincing the client that he or she has a problem that needs to be solved. Telling other people they have problems that you can help them solve may have a solid potential for communicative failure.

With regard to translation, many commissioners consider the translator to be an expert who knows or should know how to translate just by seeing the source text. To realise that the translation brief “translate this text into language X” is inadequate for an optimal translation and that further interaction is needed, may even endanger the role of the translator as expert: in the eyes of some commissioners, the translator does not seem fully competent for the job if he or she needs “help” in translating the text. Establishing a translation counselling interview through the subtype offer may thus require comprehensive communicative activities in the form of justifying the need for a more detailed translation brief. (At least) two of these resources – the arrangement and the offer²⁸ – are also found in translation situations, as shown in the examples in section 5.

The application of the communication pattern counselling to the empirical analysis of translation dialogues can facilitate exploration of the dynamics of the translation process in more depth. Furthermore, it has the potential to shed light on the importance of the translation dialogue itself, leading to different ways of gaining access to it. In the following section, the relevance of specific subtypes of the communication pattern counselling for the analysis of translation dialogues will demonstrated through authentic translation dialogues. Two examples of translation from Norwegian into German will be analysed.²⁹ The focus will be on two of the above-mentioned resources: the arrangement and the offer.

5 Counselling in translation: some authentic cases

5.1 Methodology

Accessing authentic translation commissions with recordings of the translation dialogue is extremely difficult. Nevertheless, even with a small sample some light can be shed on how at least parts of the translation brief are “created” in detail.³⁰ In this way, functional translation theory, with its emphasis on the skopos of the target text, i.e., its intended effect on a given target group can be connected to the empirical research on spoken language. First, establishing meaning in dialogues is interactive. This process may start before entering a translation dialogue, but the main contribution to this (social) meaning is made during the interaction between the participants.

Second, functional translation theory does not define translation as the “transfer” of a fixed “meaning” preserved in the source text. The new intended meaning of the target text is developed and established in the TDM. This also implies that the same source text can be translated for different purposes, resulting in different target texts, all representing adequate target texts in accordance with their specific purpose. Translation is thus open to a variety of text production constraints, all depending on the specific requirements of the translation brief.

The methodological framework, pragmatic conversation analysis as outlined in section 1 for the interactive establishing of meaning and functional translation theory outlined in section 2 with its emphasis on the translation brief within the concept of the TDM outlined in section 3, as well as the communication pattern counselling outlined in section 4 present a reasonable foundation and frame for the analysis of the translation dialogue.

5.2 Cases

Arrangement: in spring 1988, the tourist office of the Norwegian town Moss asked language and translation students of German at the Østfold University College to translate a tourist leaflet about the city and its surroundings. The commissioner invited the students to discuss the translation commission as such since the students might have some questions. This discussion soon turned into a counselling interview where first the general commission (“translate this text into German”) was positioned (problem allocation or “Problemverortung”) and preliminary defined by the commissioner (preliminary problem definition or “Problemdefinition”³¹) as “translate this text for German tourists using the text format in the Norwegian edition of the tourist leaflet”. The students then suggested that one paragraph should be replaced with information that was more relevant for the target group (“specifying the definition of the problem”). The students considered the content of this paragraph – information on the motorway café “Magnus gjestegård” outside Moss – to be relevant for Norwegian tourists visiting Moss, but not for intended the target group of the translation, German tourists. The students justified this by stating that motorway cafes (“Autobahnraststätten”) are very common in Germany and they are not normally considered a tourist attraction (“justifying their contribution to the problem definition”). The commissioner agreed, and suggested alternative content: Thorbjørnsrød skanse, an old fortress outside Moss, where there is a beautiful view over the town and the Oslo fjord. As a justification for this proposal, the commissioner maintained that fjord views would be interesting for German tourists (“specifying the problem definition and justifying this”). The students agreed to this. However, the commissioner reminded the students that this new paragraph should not be longer than the original paragraph on the motorway café: there would be no specific German tourist leaflet, but just one leaflet in three languages (Norwegian, English and German). The student translator group agreed to this (“final definition of the counselling problem”).

Both the content and the length of the text were agreed upon by both parties as a common, interactive communicative effort of the students (translator) and the tourist office (commissioner). The translation brief was thus elaborated interactively, predominantly in the translation dialogue and not directly derived from the source text and not just defined as an order from the commissioner. This was all done with the aim of meeting the anticipated interests of German tourists, the intended target group for the translation.

This summary of the translation dialogue clearly demonstrates that the translation brief is not a “meaning” prefabricated by the commissioner and “transferred” to the translator. It is interactively constructed and agreed upon by the commissioner and the translator, and it forms the guidelines for and the basis of the chosen translation strategy. Furthermore, it shows the relevance of counselling since the translation brief was a result of an interactive process between commissioner and translator: without the agreement on the solution of the counselling problem achieved in the translation dialogue a text-to-text translation would probably have resulted in a translation of the rather ridiculous motorway tourist attraction.

Offer:³² on first sight, the counselling subtype offer seems very problematic. Justifying the need for a translation dialogue may – as mentioned above – endanger the entire act of communication. In the next case, the commissioner first contacted the translator with a commission to translate a text “as quickly as possible”: he presented a sales agency agreement and needed a translation of this (problem allocation with justification). The translator argued that a translation of such a legal document required some more information in order to be translated according to the needs of the commissioner: there were various possible ways of translating such a document, depending on the specific status of the text and the specific needs of the commissioner (justified problem definition as counterproposal and invitation to counselling interview). The commissioner then agreed to enter a counselling session in order to obtain such a target text (roles as counsellor and client accepted). The translator invited the commissioner to enter the role as client by just arguing for the need for a counselling interview. By doing so – and justifying this action by referring to various possible ways of translating such a document – the counselling interview was established and the roles – client and counsellor – occupied by the commissioner and the translator.

During the following dialogue, it became clear that only the German source text was legally valid; a Norwegian translation would be legally irrelevant. The commissioner said he was able to understand parts of the agreement, but found the highly nominalised syntactic style typical of such German legal texts inaccessible. He therefore needed a translation that would enable him to understand the contents of the German agreement – in order to sign it or to reject it (developing the problem definition). The translator then suggested a word-for-word translation of the German text; since the commissioner had some knowledge of German, this would enable the commissioner to understand the German text by reading it via a word-for-word Norwegian translation. This would result in an awkward target language style and possibly lead to some grammatical errors in the Norwegian target text. Consequently, the translator suggested two target text alternatives in the most problematic cases: a word-for-word translation to be able to “read” the German text and in addition a grammatically correct and stylistically easily understandable Norwegian text rendering the content in order to help the commissioner understand the word-for-word translation (solution proposal by the translator). See, for example, the following example of sententialisation of a nominal phrase (gloss translation in English below):

. . . bei korrekt erfolgter Lieferung (source text)

. . . by correctly exercised delivery

. . . ved korrekt avviklede leveranser (target text word-for-word translation)

. . . by correctly exercised deliveries

. . . når en leveranse er korrekt gjennomført (target text grammar translation)

. . . when a delivery is correctly exercised

The commissioner agreed to this strategy for the translation itself. He also agreed to read the source text and both target texts together with the translator for the purpose of understanding the source text well enough to decide whether he would sign the contract (client accepted solution to the counselling problem).

This is a prime example of the relevance of a pragmatic and functional approach to translation as well as the relevance of the text pattern counselling for elaborating the translation brief: only on the basis of an interactionally developed agreement in line with the purpose of the translation could an adequate target text be constructed. The counselling problem was interactively elaborated through information and arguments by both parties: understanding the source text for the purpose of signing or rejecting it. The solution of the problem was elaborated predominantly by the translator, agreed upon by both and finally accepted by the client. The commissioner and the translator were then able to elaborate crucial details of the translation brief, including a final check to ensure that the translation served its intended purpose. This is in line with the concept of “Lösungskompetenz” (the competence to solve the problem) as well as with the “Entscheidungskompetenz” (the competence or right of the client to accept or reject the proposed solution).³³ The suggestion of the translator to produce two specific target texts for the given purpose of the translation was accepted by the client. It also depicts the “Lösungsradius” (scope of the solution – e.g. to what extent the commissioner freely can accept the solution and to what extent the translator is committed to execute the envisaged solution) in Pick (2017b: 462). By only translating from text to text without involving and considering the situation and its interactants just a simple grammar translation could be made, which would have been of no or little use for the commissioner. Only a translation strategy derived from the elaboration of a specific translation brief makes an addressee- and purpose-oriented target text possible, in line with the essentials of functional translation theory.

The need for persuasive communicative strategies makes offers a difficult way of initiating a counselling. In many cases, however, this may turn out to be the only way to initiate a translation dialogue since commissioners may be reluctant to discuss a specific translation brief: in such cases they would need to be convinced that a discussion on the translation, its intended meaning, its target groups etc. may be useful for obtaining a target text well suited to their needs. Such convincing strategies may be difficult, but they are certainly not uncommon. Offers are frequently used in companies’ sales strategies, using all sorts of persuasive measures to convince the target group that they have a problem that can be solved by accepting a counselling session regarding a product promoted by the company. Strategies used in sales promotion training may thus prove useful in translation teaching and worthwhile studying with regard to translation strategy.

Concluding remarks

The authentic examples of translation dialogues referred to above clearly demonstrate the fundamental importance of counselling as a highly relevant communication pattern in the process of creating the translation brief: even if a counselling interview does constitute a necessary precondition for the translation brief, such dialogues enable the translator to access important, and in some cases crucial, information about the translation brief. Furthermore, the translator cannot access this information solely on the basis of his or her own reflection, on the source text only, nor on a formal translation brief, but is dependent on establishing a common understanding of the prerequisites of the translation with the commissioner.

Interaction is a precondition for this communicative activity and indeed the key to how a counselling interview can be initiated, the counselling problem defined and its solution created. Building this interaction by establishing the roles of the client and the counsellor is therefore crucial in all counselling, including translational counselling. All this depends on a solid knowledge of communication strategies that goes far beyond the translating of a text itself. A prerequisite for acquiring insight in counselling as a communication pattern in translation is an empirical reconstruction of counselling actions in order to discover patterned structures on different levels in the dialogue.

However, as mentioned earlier, a translation dialogue does not always take place and it certainly does not constitute a necessary condition for producing a translation. A necessary and, in my view, sufficient empirical condition for how a text is made a translational source text would be the entire TDM, not only a possible translation dialogue. There are many cases in which a translation dialogue – for obvious reasons – is undesirable. As mentioned in section 3, we find cases in which the translation brief is intended to be very general; the translator is given relatively free rein in translating the source text and no further interaction with the commissioner is even wanted. The translation brief is “open” and gives the translator a wide scope of translational decisions. Such cases can be found, for example, in Scandinavia where many publishing houses present general contracts (“normalkontrakt”) for the translation brief.³⁴ This may again lead to post-translational paratexts explaining in depth how this general translation brief has been interpreted and why a specific translation strategy has been chosen, as in the latest translation of the Odyssey into Norwegian by Kjell Arild Pollestad.³⁵

In other cases, the translation brief has been elaborated in detail and is passed on to the translator as a straightforward order. The translation brief is pre-determined in the form of specific and clear-cut prerequisites and controlled by the commissioner. This is frequently the case in many technical translations or in instruction manuals, as shown in the following example: the German company Braun ordered a translation of an instruction manual for a coffee machine into 17 languages according to strict requirements of textual invariance on certain text levels and a target culture-oriented translation on others. There was no time or need for further discussion with the translators since the translation brief was clearly defined.³⁶

In both cases – the “open” translation brief for The Odyssey in Pollestad (2013) and the predefined and detailed translation brief for the instruction manual in Kvam (2009) – a specific translation dialogue does not take place since the translation brief is pre-negotiated and decided upon; the communicative task of establishing a translation brief is completed before initiating a particular translation commission. In addition, experienced translators may refrain from a translation dialogue when the translation brief is implicit, due to their particular experience.³⁷

In other cases, however, the translation brief needs to be established during the commission itself. In such cases, the communication pattern counselling seems to be an appropriate methodological gateway for analysing the translation dialogue as part of the TDM. As shown in the presented examples, seemingly straight-forward translation cases often prove to have a more complicated translation brief than the translator first expected.

The relevance of analysing the TDM and in particular establishing the translation dialogue as a strategic measure may also have consequences for study programmes in translation. On a theoretical level, analytical skills regarding the TDM have to be developed. Pragmatic text analysis of translational paratexts as well as skills in conversational analysis³⁸ of translation dialogues constitute an empirically based foundation for understanding translation as a pragmatic phenomenon. Listening to authentic counselling cases – not only within the field of translation³⁹ – reading and analysing transcripts of these dialogues and finally writing a thesis on a topic connected to the translation discourse material should give students a fairly good basis for elaborating functionally adequate translation strategies. On a practical level, future translators should have programmes in which strategies for establishing a translational counselling dialogue are part of the training, especially in the case of the above-mentioned subcategory offer. The student’s skill in functioning as a professional counsellor in a translation context could ultimately be tested in a role-play situation.

The main obstacle to further research on translational counselling dialogues is the limited access to authentic data. With an empirical reconstruction of communicative activities as its core methodological approach, this research simply depends on access to authentic communication. The fact that authentic data for this specific research are difficult to acquire as well as the limited research on the translation brief in general,⁴⁰ are probably the main reasons there is a “research gap” on this specific topic. To a certain extent, this also applies to empirical research on counselling dialogues in general: empirical studies on counselling situations including a detailed transcription of the actual conversation are not very common.⁴¹ The relevance of the communication pattern counselling for an analysis of the translation brief has, to my knowledge, only been thematised in Kvam (2014). In this chapter the communication pattern counselling is discussed within the framework of a specific text linguistic approach to translation theory.⁴² In order to build a more solid empirical basis, experimental translation dialogues could be carried out where translation cases could be simulated with a professional translator in the role of the translator and an experienced commissioner playing the role of the commissioner. Such dialogues would not be authentic; they would constitute constructed data and should be treated as such. However, such experimental dialogues deserve the label “realistic” since “actors” with relevant communicative experience are used. Furthermore, as non-authentic communication, access to both video and sound recordings would be easier, thereby enabling researchers, translation students as well as translators to examine various, above all new semiotic aspects of the translation brief more in depth than would normally have been possible with authentic dialogues. This type of access to communicative details would prove promising for further research: realistic translation counselling dialogues may create a foundation for the elaboration of working hypotheses that can be tested in authentic translation counselling dialogues.

As mentioned in section 3, the translation brief is just one part of the entire TDM. Other parts, such as the different types of paratexts are far more easily accessible than the translation dialogue. Analysing the entire, authentic translation discourse material of a given translation, including the translation dialogue, would be highly relevant for understanding what makes a text a translation and how this process is constituted. This would on the one hand surely overcome the specific limitation of this chapter, but on the other be restricted by the methodological weakness of limited access to authentic translation situations. A possible perspective for further research could be to have one authentic case of the translation dialogue in the context of its entire TDM as an empirical centre, supported by a corpus of experimental translation dialogues compared with authentic translation cases with as much of their TDM as possible. This would, to a certain extent, help to overcome the substantial problems involved in gaining access to many authentic translation dialogues as well as benefit from experimental situations on the one hand and available authentic TDM on the other. Such an approach would constitute both a realistic and authentic empirical foundation for how a translation brief is established.

Notes

1 Cf. Heinemann (2001), Sager (2001), Redder (2010), Ehlich (2011) and articles in Nothdurft and colleagues (1994).

2 The notion of conversation pattern will be outlined in section 3.

3 A good survey of some fundamentals of genre analysis is presented by Ulla Fix. She argues for genres as a culturally based phenomenon of communicative routines (Fix, 1998: 17). Based on concepts like the Ethnography of Language, such communicative routines must be analysed bottom-up, i.e., empirically reconstructed on the basis of authentic communication and not top-down on the basis of a prescribed model, like the text models of Isenberg and de Beaugrande and Dressler (ibid.).

4 An example would be the analysis of translated song texts by Peter Low where song translations are characterised as “texts where there is extensive transfer of material from the ST, with a reasonably high degree of semantic fidelity, particularly with respect to its main features” (Low, 2013: 231). The author does not pursue further discussion of either conceptual definitional criteria for semantic fidelity or for “extensive and significant departures from semantic fidelity” (ibid.). However, he reflects on the concept as well as the wider concepts of version and replacement texts through an interpretation of different text renderings of the song texts of a musical.

5 A comprehensive study of the “Pragmatic Turn” in linguistics is also presented in Feilke (2000).

6 Cf. Kaindl (2013), Kussmaul (2009), Nord (2010), Schopp (2006).

7 A definition of the role of the text sender – as opposed to the text producer – can be found in Nord (2005: 6).

8 In spite of the recent developments in discourse analysis, as elaborated in e.g., Munday and Zhang (2015), which clearly bring discourse analysis out of the restricted area of sentence linguistics into socio-cultural contexts, most translation studies are still based on a concept of translation as a reproduction of the source text. Specific requirements for the target text, as mentioned by Nord above, are not considered in many modern works on translation, as e.g., in the anthology edited by Juliane House (2014) or in Jeremy Munday’s article on conversation analysis and translation (2012).

9 In an article dedicated to the translation brief, Christiane Nord discusses the strategic consequences of an already defined translation brief (cf. Nord, 1997b: 50–53).

10 An example would be Davidova (2011).

11 Pretranslational paratext is to my knowledge a new term and is directly connected to functional translation theory as well as intertextuality as a main characteristic of text in pragmatic text linguistics: every text is related to pretexts in some way other (cf. e.g. the concept of Textsortennetze in Klein [2000] as well as Ehlich [2011]). In the case of translation, certain texts – oral and/or written – have to be produced before the translation itself can take place. Such texts serve the purpose of establishing a request to translate a text and specify possible requirements for its translation. Such texts will be called pretranslational paratexts since they constitute a necessary precondition for a translation.

12 It may be worth mentioning that some approaches in recent translation studies based on narrative theory question the source text-target text binary, cf. Baker (2014).

13 This translational practice seems characteristic of particular genres, such as tourist leaflets. They are frequently translated as a structurally close grammar translation and do not contain comments on translation choices. One example would be the tourist information on Follo southeast of Oslo: www.visitnorway.no/listings/follo-museum/12961/. Other genres, such as the translation of ancient literature in Pollestad (2013) as well as the translations discussed in Zandjani (2018) are characterised by an extensive use of translational paratexts.

14 A comprehensive study of paratexts in translation is found in the volume edited by Valerie Pellatt (Pellatt, 2013).

15 Göpel’s translations of Oriental literature, not only of the Persian Golestân, are meant to open up the culture and literature of the Muslim world to a Western readership. In an interview with the website Der Muslimmarkt Göpel states that Persian literature is only known to a limited number of “insiders” with special knowledge of Oriental culture. Her task is to present this magnificent literature to the German speaking public by translating it into a modern, more readable German (cf. Zandjani, 2018: 305–306). For the analysis of Göpel’s indirect translation in comparison with the two earlier German translations from Persian mentioned above cf. ibid.: 297–312.

16 Participants in a counselling interview are able to initiate such a dialogue due to their (implicit) knowledge of how a counselling interview is structured, which communicative roles have to be occupied and how communicative tasks could be solved. Any conversation pattern thus depends on knowledge patterns as well as specific interactional patterns. Conversation patterns thus serve as a means of interpreting and planning communication for performing specific social tasks and/or to pursue a strategy for obtaining social goals. Communication is seen as conventionalised human interaction with patterns serving as points of orientation for the participants in certain acts of communication. The concept of text pattern (“Textmuster”) is further elaborated in Heinemann (2001: 1515–1518) and conversation pattern in Sager (2001: 1464ff.). As for the basic communication pattern counselling, this is outlined in detail in Nothdurft (1994a: lff.).

17 cf. Habscheid (2003: 20, 46).

18 cf. the project Interaktive Bedeutungskonstitution at the department of pragmatics at The Institut für Deutsche Sprache (Deppermann, 2017).

19 As mentioned earlier, the basic and general research on the communication pattern counselling was done in Mannheim, cf. Kallmeyer (1985), Nothdurft and colleagues (1994). Further research on counselling can be found with regard to medical communication (e.g. Heath, 2006). A comprehensive analysis of counselling in various social settings can be found in the anthology edited by Ina Pick (Pick, 2017a) which covers a wide range of counselling interviews, predominantly in the field of coaching and psychology, but does not address translation as a specific field for counselling interview analysis.

20 One interesting detail in Pick’s “Handlungsschema” would be worth mentioning: In connection with positioning the topic of counselling Pick distinguishes between allocation of the counselling problem (“Problemverortung”) and the definition of the counselling problem (“Problemdefinition”) (Pick, 2017b: 462). The positioning of the problem may be the first hurdle to pass in translation counselling: If the commissioner is presented with the need for further counselling, he or she may easily withdraw from the dialogue (“no need for further discussion”) even before the translation brief, i.e., the counselling problem, is defined. This constitutes an immanent danger in the case of offers, cf. the case discussed in 5.2.

21 Cf. Prunč (2007: 160ff.) as well as the programmatic statement on the expert status of the translator by Justa Holz-Mänttäri: “[Der Translator] ist ein Experte, der sich auf die Herstellung von Texten als Botschaftsträgern im Verbund für transkulturellen Botschaftstransfer spezialisiert und damit ein gesellschaftliches Kooperationsmuster ausfüllt” (Justa Holz-Mänttäri, in Prunč (2007: 161).

22 Counselling as an asymmetric communication is discussed in detail in Nothrudft (1994), but also accounted for in Schröder (1994) and Habscheid (2003). Cf. also the contributions in Pick (2017a).

23 Establishing a counselling situation is a specific way of creating (social) meaning in and through human interaction. Such “interactionist understanding of meaning creation” (Milligan, 1998: 5) is based on ethnomethodological sociology – e.g. the works of Erwin Goffman. This approach has served as a general pragmatic foundation for some branches of conversation analysis, such as most of the Gesprächsanalyse in Germany, above all in the ongoing project Interaktive Bedeutungskonstitution (“Constitution of meaning in social interaction”) at the Institut für Deutsche Sprache. This project examines “the practices interactants use to constitute the local meaning of expressions and actions in interaction” (Deppermann, 2017). A survey of the enthomethodological approach applied in both of the previously mentioned Mannheim projects can be found in Milligan (1998).

24 Cf. Nothdurft (1994a: 30).

25 Cf. Schröder (1994: 91–114) where the divergence of perspectives (“Perspektivendivergenz”) between the participants with regard to the counselling problem and its content is accounted for. This is analysed as the counselling paradox (“Beratungsparadox”) since these different perspectives may contribute to both the success or failure of the counselling (“beratungskonstitutive Funktion” and “konfliktverursachende Funktion”) (ibid.: 90). Cf. also Habscheid (2003: 291) as well as Pick (2017b: 434ff.).

26 In some cases, there may be little or no room, and above all time for negotiations. Such translation cases may turn out to be difficult and require insight in the specific situation of the commissioner for the translator to interpret the (lacking) translation brief in an adequate way.

27 Werner Nothdurft proposes the categories arrangement (“Arrangement”), decree (“Verordnung”) and offer (“Offerte”). He does not claim these are representative of counselling dialogues, but for a functional analysis of resource representativeness does not seem relevant (Nothdurft, 1994a: 37).

28 The decree implies that the client by law has to take part in a counselling dialogue. In German the term “Zwangsberatung” (“forced counselling”) (cf. Nothdurft, 1994a: 42) is used. It is very unlikely that cases exist in the translation industry where the commissioner by law is obliged to enter a counselling dialogue.

29 The two commissions were given to the German department at the Østfold University College in 1988 and 2005. The analysed dialogues are based on a log of the conversation between the translator and the commissioner. These conversations are authentic dialogues in which major parts of the translation brief were developed.

30 Two other dialogues with recordings of telephone conversations from 2000 and 2001 are analysed in Kvam (2014) as examples used to support a text linguistic approach to translation theory, cf. Kvam (2014: 31ff.).

31 I refer to the terminology used by Pick (2017b: 462).

32 Translation commission between the Norwegian sales agent and the translator, in Halden/Norway in September 2005 and part of the author’s translation archive.

33 Both these concepts – Entscheidungskompetenz and Lösungskompetenz – are elaborated and described in depth in Nothdurft (1994b).

34 Cf. the Norwegian contract demanding e.g. “good language” (including an appropriate style), cf. Axelsson (2016: 27).

35 Cf. Pollestad’s comprehensive introduction to his translation of the Odyssey in Pollestad (2013).

36 Telephone interview with Braun Norge (Braun Norway) in March 2006. The English source text as well as the translations into German and Norwegian are analysed in Kvam (2009).

37 In many professional settings, translators sometimes do not feel any need for a detailed specification of the translation function(s) because

their experience tells them that a particular kind of source text provided by a particular kind of client . . . is usually . . . expected to be translated for a particular kind of purpose, including a particular kind (or even specimen) of addressee, medium, format etc.

(Nord, 1997b: 47)

38 To my knowledge, only the present article and Kvam (2014) have presented an analysis of authentic translation dialogues on the basis of the conversational analysis approach (Gesprächsanalyse) developed at the Institut für Deutsche Sprache in Mannheim. But the method itself has been applied in other fields of communication: the basic research and analysis of authentic communication took place in Mannheim where a variety of counselling interviews have been analysed (e.g. Kallmeyer, 1985; Nothdurft etal., 1994). The method was applied to institutional communication in Habscheid (2003) and the typology of counselling presented in the anthology edited by Ina Pick (Pick, 2017b) opens up more detailed perspectives for the analysis of counselling interviews. These studies on “non-translational counselling” are all relevant to translation studies since the analytical approach they represent can contribute to new insight into both translation science and teaching.

39 Since the access to authentic translation dialogues is difficult, analysis of counselling interviews in general would be useful for acquiring insight in this text pattern also relevant for translation.

40 Examples are Pietro Ramos’ analysis of the quality assessment of legal translation (Ramos, 2015) as well as Nord (1997b). In both cases, the translation brief is given and used to assess translations. However, there is no discussion on how the translation brief has been developed. This also applies to the very interesting guidelines for developing a proper translation brief in Hablamos Juntos (2009). Mostly based on Nord (1991), these guidelines present procedures for rendering the contents of the source text, adapted to target language genre conventions. In addition, the author recommends a “meeting or discussion between the requester and translator”. Such guidelines may be very useful for translators, but unfortunately there is no reference to research results with regard to this recommended communicative activity.

41 Empirical studies on counselling in institutional settings are found in e.g., Heath (2006) (conversational analysis in medical institutions) as well as in industrial institutional settings (Habscheid, 2003), the latter making extensive use of the basic empirical research at the Institut für Deutsche Sprache in Mannheim. The articles presented in Pick (2017a) are all based on the empirical reconstruction of counselling interviews, making this anthology a very interesting platform for further research – even if translation cases are not analysed.

42 In Kvam (2014), the research question and main topic is the “elaboration of a pragmatic text linguistic approach to translation” (Kvam, 2014: 21). With reference to this linguistic approach the role of counselling is discussed as the communicative event where the translation brief is defined. In the present article, the focus is on the TDM and the role of the translation dialogue as part of the TDM. Contrary to Kvam (2014), the present article does not regard the translation dialogue as a necessary precondition for establishing the translation brief. This depends on the entire TDM – in which the translation dialogue may play an important, sometimes a crucial role, but it certainly does not constitute a necessary condition for establishing the translation brief as such.