Translation's Hatim and Mason

1. Hatim and Mason: The
Semiotic Level of Context
and Discourse
Reported by Bea Patrizia Santos

2. Semiotic Level, Context, & Discourse
Signs and sign processes
The circumstances that form the setting for an
event, statement, or idea, and in terms of which it
can be fully understood and assessed
Conversation

3. Two other works that develop out of the Hallidayan
model of language were especially influential for
translation studies in the 1990s: Basil Hatim and Ian
Mason’s Discourse and the Translator (1990) and
The Translator as Communicator (1997).

4. Basil Hatim & Ian Mason

5. Analysis of functions
Changes in the transitivity structure in the English
translation are seen to cause a shift in the ideational
function of the text.
material process
intention action process
event process
real action process

6. Modality
Classification of logical propositions according to
their asserting or denying the possibility, impossibility,
contingency, or necessity of their content

7. Hatim and Mason’s ‘foundations of a model for
analysing texts’ incorporate and go beyond House’s
register analysis and Baker’s pragmatic analysis.
They combine the bottom-up analysis discussed in
the Camus example with some top-down
consideration of the semiotic level of the text.

8. Language and texts are considered to be realizations
of sociocultural messages and power relations. They
represent discourse in its wider sense, defined as
modes of speaking and writing which involve social
groups in adopting a particular attitude towards areas
of sociocultural activity

9. A semiotic function is also performed by idiolect and
dialect. Hatim and Mason consider idiolect within the
analysis of the tenor and register.
The peculiarities and connotations of the dialect are
unlikely to be replicated easily in any TT culture.

10. Although Hatim and Mason propose ‘foundations’ for
a model of analysing texts, they deal with a large
number of concepts. It is not clear that their
approach constitutes a model that can be ‘applied’ in
the conventional sense of the term.