A new solution of the translation unit problem based on translation studies methodological principles and the speech act theory.

1. TRANSLATION UNIT
as
GENERAL TRANSLATION THEORY
MAJOR NOTIONS OF GENERAL
TRANSLATION THEORY

2. BEFORE WE BEGIN
TWO QUESTION TO ALL STUDENTS:
1 What do you know about translation units from
your previous courses in Introduction to Translation
Studies and Translation Theory?
2 Are you familiar with a theory of speech acts or
its elements from your course in English Grammar
or, perhaps, some other courses?

3. LECTURE I
THE UNIT OF TRANSLATION AS A CENTRAL NOTION
OF TRANSLATION STUDIES
A theory of translation, if it really claims to be an
independent scientific discipline, can not shy away from
or sidestep the issue of a unit which it could operate by
establishing patterns of translation – the unit of
translation as one of the central concepts in Translation
Studies alongside with such concepts as translatability,
adequacy, equivalence, strategy etc.

4. LECTURE PLAN
1 Why study translation units?
2 Introduction – the problem of a translation unit definition
3 Disagreements about translation units
4 The translator’s view of translation units
5 Translation as activity
6 Speech acts as units of translation
7 A sentence and a speech act
8 The analysis of translation examples in terms of speech
acts as translation units

5. WHY STUDY TRANSLATION UNITS?
• 1 The Unit of Translation is one of the central notions in the theory of
translation
• 2 Master’s degree holders should know how to rely on translation units
in TS and teach translation theory and practice
• 3 Translators must know what important units they deal with while
translating
• 4 Knowledge about units of translation helps perform better in translating
because translation units are objects of various transformations (e.g.,
splitting composite translation units and combining simple translation
units into composite ones, etc)
• 5 Translation units are objects of orientation in source and target texts
• 6 The Translation Unit is often used in translation research for analyzing
adequacy of translation, finding translation equivalents, etc.

6. EARLIER ATTEMPTS AT SOLVING THE PROBLEM OF
TRANSLATION UNITS
Views of translation scholars and
translators

7. J.- P. Vinay and J. Darbelnet
"Comparative stylistics of French and English: A
Methodology for Translation"
They hold that the unit of translation is "the smallest
segment of the message, which marks it as one that can not
be translated separately“.

8. L.S Barkhudarov "Language and
Translation"
• The unit of translation "is the lowest (minimum) language unit in
the text in the SL which has a correspondence in the TL“. It can
be a unit of any language level.
• V.N.Komissarov “A Word on Translation"
• Translation unit is:
• 1) a minimum unit of the text;
• 2) a minimal language unit;
• 3) a minimum set of tokens or grams of the SL;
• 4) a minimum unit of only the content of the SL.

9. Harbovskyi N.К. «A THEORY OF TRANSLATION»
The unit of translation is a complex subsystem in the
whole system of the translation process, which is based in its
external manifestation, founded on the orientation unit, but
includes one or more units of equivalence, correlating the
concepts of the original text with the appropriate forms of the
translated text.

10. DEFINITIONS FROM TS DICTIONARIES
• Translation unit is a unit of speech, requires decisions on the
transfer. The permanent (ready) translation units are stamps,
situational clichés, terms, proverbs and figurative expressions ...
Concise Dictionary of Translation Terms
• Translation unit is a linguistic fragment of a written text or
spoken language, sufficient for the transmission of its semantic
content by means of language translation without distortion of
the general meaning of a text or utterance. Sentence is the most
universal unit of translation... Universal Dictionary by Mościcki
•

11. Translatological Explanatory Dictionary
• Translation units -
• 1. Text units with relation to a linguistic system
• 2. The smallest linguistic unit in the text in the SL which
has a correspondence in the text in the TL.
• 3. Such unit is in the original text for which a
correspondence can be found in the text in the TL …

12. UT DEFINITION - Wikipedia
In the field of translation, a translation unit is a segment of a
text which the translator treats as a single cognitive unit for the
purpose of establishing an equivalence.
The translation unit may be a single word, a phrase, one or
more sentences, or even a larger unit.

13. UT DEFINITION – Wikipedia 2
• When a translator segments a text into translation units, the
larger these units are, the better chance there is of obtaining an
idiomatic translation.
• This is true not only of human translation, but also in cases
where human translators use computer-assisted translation
This is true not only of human translation, but also in cases
where human translators use computer-assisted translation,
such as translation memories This is true not only of human

14. THE TRANSLATOR’S VIEW OF THE UT
• Individual translators, with different foci of attention, may
prefer different units as their basic working UTs: a) prime unit
is the (full) text, b) the most satisfactory unit is a rather long
sentence or short paragraph, c) the unit tends to be the
clause, and d) the sentence is the core unit in translation.
• Others prefer to adopt a more flexible notion of the UT.
The perception of the UT is as "a sliding scale; some argue
the "text act" as the level on which adequacy may also be
judged, transcending the physical boundaries of the UT in
the traditional sense.

15. DIFFERENT DEFINITIONS – WHAT DOES THIS
TESTIFY TO?
• A multitude of views on the definition of translation units may
indicate that at least some of them, if not all, are wrong.
• The fallacy of all previous definitions:
• A wrong view (definition) of the unit as such,
• Different lengths of TUs,
• Sense is not always implied in definitions,
• Some definitions (e.g., TUs as texts) are not manageable and
operative.
• Some definitions are not based of the functions of TUs/,
• The TU linguistic content is not clearly defined.

16. WHAT IS THEN WRONG WITH SOLVING THE
PROBLEM OF THE TU BY PREVIOUS RESEARCHERS?
• First of all, the failure to adequately identify and define the notion of
the translation unit lies in the fact that translation scholars have
ignored methodological principles of research in Translation
Studies. The most important principle here is the Principle of
Determinism.
• Translation is a process of transferring sense rather than meanings
of individual linguistic elements or their combinations.
• Sense (not meaning) can be found only in speech because only
speech is sense-bearing, contextual and has purpose (intention).

17. UNITS AND ELEMENTS
• A unit is an individual element regarded as single and
complete but which can also form an individual
component of a larger and more complex whole.
• Units are components of dynamic entities (activities)
only.
• Elements are components of static objects.

18. OBJECTS, ACTIONS AND THEIR
PROPERTIES
• To solve the problem of the TU, here comes into play the methodology of Translation
Studies.
• What is translation? – It is an object and a process (activity).
• Which is primary – the process of translation or its result (the TT)?
• According to the principle of determinism (any phenomenon has its cause), the
cause (human activity) is the root cause of the object (the TT).
• Objects and activities differ in their structures and properties.
• Objects consist of (permanent) elements which are not identical to one another.

19. CRITERIA FOR DEFINING THE UT
IN A METHODOLOGICALLY CORRECT WAY
• It must be a unit of speech activity of the ST author.
• It must be sense-bearing and include a proposition.
• It must be linguistically and situationally contextualized.
• It must be identical in its major characteristics to other speech
units.
• It must be subject to rules (preconditions) of use.
• It must be present in speech produced in any human language.
• It must be easily identifiable in form, content and intention
(proposition, illocution and perlocution).

20. DIFFERENCE BETWEEN OBJECTS AND
ACTIVITIES
• Acts (or actions) are components of activities. They
have the same major properties as activities – goals,
meaning, contextual embedment.
• So, objects and activities are different entities and
should not be confused with each other. All humans are
engaged in activities with objects.
• Only activities consist of units.

21. THE SYSTEM OF LANGUAGE AND ITS ELEMENTS
WHY LINGUISTIC ELEMENTS CANNOT BE TRANSLATION UNITS?
The system of language as an object (and not activity) consists
only of elements rather than units.
The system of language
phonemes morphemes words word groups sentences
Here, each element of the higher level has different essential
characteristics.
Also, texts cannot be translation units because of their size
(unmanageable in research).

22. THEORY OF ACTIVITY IN RELATION TO TRANSLATION
Activity consists of a series of acts.
All activities and acts have their purpose.
Activity = Act ← Act ← Act ← Act ← Act ← Act ← Act

23. ONLY ACTIVITIES CONSIST OF UNITS
Speech is a mental linguistic activity, not an object
Speech characteristics are:
social conditionality, purposefulness, meaningfulness, objectivity,
subjectivity, awareness
Speech unit (speech act) characteristics are identical:
social conditionality, purposefulness, meaningfulness, objectivity,
subjectivity, awareness
SPEECH consists of a series of SPEECH ACTS
SA SA SA SA SA SA SA

24. Writing a Source Text and Writing (Doing) Its Translation
• Author Translator
• SA + SA + SA = SMA (ST) SA + SA + SA = TMA (TT)
Jack Kerouac was born in 1922. → Джек Керуак народився у 1922 р.
+ +
He was an interesting writer. → Він був цікавим письменником.
+ +
He became a progenitor of hippies.→ Він став предтечою хіпі.

25. TRANSLATION IS A KIND OF ACTIVITY
• Then, what do we do when we translate? –
We (translators) perform acts – speech acts (in
linguistic and situational contexts) which are
speech units.
• Hence, both authors of originals and translators
of target texts are essentially engaged in
communicative-cognitive-intellectual activities
using speech acts in context.

26. SPEECH ACTS ARE UNITS OF TRANSLATION
• There are two major structural-pragmatic types of SAs - simple
and composite ones, therefore, they are real units of translation.
• A substantial proof of this can be found, if the number of
sentences as ectypes of SAs is compared in the source and target
texts .
• Usually, the difference proves to be around 100 % (96 to 102
per cent), depending on the text length.

27. The universal features of the UT
• it is the smallest independent unit of comprehensible and
retellable thought,
• it is the TT building block of meaning,
• unless it is poetry or informal written language, usually it has
a subject-verb component,
• it ends in a period or another end mark or with some other
indication,
• the meaning of the UT is assessable against the ST equivalent,
• the UT comprises the standard entity of TQA and may be
assessed through a formula approach in a defined scope.

28. NOTIONS NOT TO BE CONFUSED WITH THE NORION OF
THE TU
• SENTENCE – A sentence is a group of words which,
when they are written down, begin with a capital
letter and end with a full stop, question mark, or exclamation
mark. Most sentences contain predicative parts - a subject
and a verb. Sentences are ectypes of speech acts.
• A TRANSLATOR’S ORIENTATION UNIT – A source text
fragment whose sense perception allows the translator to
begin a search and/or choice of another translator’s decision
• A TRANSLATOR’S FOCUS OF ATTENTION – A difficulty
of translation that demands greater translator’s attention.

29. A SENTENCE AND A SPEECH ACT
• A sentence is an ectype of a speech act in written or oral
speech.
• A linguistic-mental act and its ectype in the text – a
sentence – as a unit of speech activity (a speech act) is a
typical object of translation and may be the unit of orientation
of the translator in the source text, therefore only speech
acts can be regarded as units of translation.
• Speech acts are specially marked by separation signs –
e.g., a full stop in writing and a break pause in oral speech -
in order to be immediately recognized by their recipients.

30. A SENTENCE AND A SPEECH ACT 2
• Our calculations of the number of sentences in the
collection Best Stories of O’Henry and their translations
showed that in most translation of the stories the number
of sentences differs from that of their source texts differs
by only plus/minus 3 to 5 per cent while in some of them
this number is identical.
• This is additional proof of the fact that speech acts
really are translation units, for sentences in texts are
immediate ectypes of speech acts.

31. A SENTENCE AND A SPEECH ACT 3
The situation that the number of sentences may be slightly
different in source texts and their translations can be accounted
for by individual translator’s decisions, the use of such
translation techniques as combining or dividing sentences in the
ST, and certain differences in English and Ukrainian grammar
or different speech norms (customary language usage) of these
languages.

32. A SENTENCE AND A SPEECH ACT 4
• It should be noted that some translation scholars
argue that a source language sentence is a
translation unit.
• Significantly, in translation memories developers
view a sentence (as an ectype of a speech act) as a
unit of translation.
• But since a sentence is an ectype of a speech act,
it is more reasonable to speak about a speech act,
rather than a sentence, as a translation unit.

33. TYPES OF SPEECH ACTS
1 Constatives (representatives, assertives): She lives nearby.
2 Directives: Will you shut the door, please?
3 Promissives: I will help you, be sure.
4 Expressives: I’m sorry that I lied to you.
5 Declaratives (declarations): You are fired!
6 Metaspeech acts: Let us drop this subject.
Speech acts can be direct (Help me, please!)
and indirect: I’d like you to come to me today.

34. A SOURCE TEXT: Identify SAs in A DIALOG
•A: Jesus, you startled me. I wasn’t expecting you here.
•B: It’s been a real day for expectations. Where were you?
––- I’ve been waiting here for an hour. You didn’t leave a
note or—
•A: I wasn’t planning on going anywhere—
•B: I can see that. Could you stay for a while?

35. IDENTIFY SPEECH ACTS IN TRANSLATIONS
• -Who the hell are you? – А хто до дідька ти такий?
• -Tough call, Kay. – Важко сказати, Кей.
• -Excellent question. The answer you're looking for lies right here. – Чудове
питання. Відповідь, яку ви шукаєте, прямо ось тут.
• -Damn, what a gullible breed. – Дідько, які ж Ви легковірні.
• -Freeze! NYPD! Freeze! – Стояти! Поліція Нью-Йорку! Аніруш!
• It just be raining black people in New York. - У Нью-Йорку чорні чуваки так і
падають з неба!
• He spots the Perp, sailing east on Forty-first Street. – Він помічає злочинця,
який завернув на 41-у вулицю.
• Do you see this? N-Y-P-D! – Ти ось це бачиш? Поліція Нью-Йорку!
• Means I will knock your punk-ass down! You trying to catch a beat-down? –
Що означає: «Не сіпайся, заробиш!». Хочеш отримати у пику?

36. BLOWIN'in
the
Wind
SAs in a ST
Blowin‘ in the Wind
How many roads must a man walk down
Before you call him a man?
How many seas must a white dove sail
Before she sleeps in the sand?
How many times must the cannonballs fly
Before they are forever banned?
The answer, my friend, is blowing in the
wind,
The answer is blowing in the wind.
How many years can a mountain exist
Before it is washed to the sea?
How many years can some people exist
Before the're allowed to be free?
How many times can a man turn his head,
SAs in a TT
Вітер десь носить
Скільки доріг потрібно пройти
Перш ніж людиною стати?
Скільки потрібно летіти морів
Пташці, щоб у теплі спати?
Скільки снарядів підніметься ввись
Перш ніж їх заборонять назовсім.
Відповідь, друже, вітер десь поніс
Відповідь вітер десь носить.
Скільки повинна стояти гора
Перш ніж її змиє море?
Скільки житимуть люди у кайданах
Перш ніж отримають волю?
Скільки будемо погляд відводити вниз
Мов нічого не бачимо й досі?

37. Translators’ responses to “How do you translate?”

38. Translations rendered sentence by sentence by published
translators (in %)

39. How translators and editors evaluate and edit a translation

40. GENERAL CONCLUSION
• UNITS CAN BE DISCERNED ONLY IN HUMAN ACTIVITIES
(INCLUDING TRANSLATING) BUT NOT IN STATIC OBJECTS
CONSISTING OF ELEMENTS.
• NEITHER A TEXT NOR LINGUISTIC ELEMENTS CAN BE
UNITS OF TRANSLATION BECAUSE THEY ARE STATIC
OBJECTS.
• ONLY SPEECH ACTS IN CONTEXT ARE TRUE
TRANSLATION UNITS BECAUSE THEY ARE USED IN
TRANSLATING AS LINGUISTIC-INTELLECTUAL ACTIVITY.

41. CONTROL QUESTIONS
• 1 What are the major mistakes in defining the notion of the TU
by translation scholars.
• 2 On what methodological basis is it correct to approach the
solution of the issue of TUs?
• 3 What are true translation units in the translation process?
• 4 Do you think that the number of SAs (or sentences as their
ectypes) differs greatly in STs and TTs?
• 5 What notions can be confused with the notion of the TU?
• 6 Can you find arguments against the assertion that speech acts
are translation units?

42. RECOMMENDED LITERATURE
• Karaban Viacheslav. A Theory and Practice of Translation from
Ukrainian into English. – Vіnnytsia: Nova Knyha. (Sections 1 and
4B)
• Michel Ballard. Unit of translation // Handbook of Translation
Studies. - Vol. 1 - Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 2013. - Pp. 437-
441
• Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies. - New York:
Routledge, 2009. - Pp. 276-298
• Harry J. Huang, Canzhong Wu. The Unit of Translation: Statistics
Speak // Meta. - Volume 54, # 1, 2009. - Pp. 110–130