Studia Islandica - 01.06.1994, Page 205
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Pálsson simplify language and then rely on the readers’
own ability to avail themselves of aids to comprehension
they provide as options.1
These three translations offer support for certain state-
ments by Newmark referred to earlier with regard to trans-
lation which emphasises dynamic equivalence, i.e. equiva-
lence of response to a translated text from an alternative
readership. He maintains that the end product may even
improve upon the original in some respects if it manages to
gain in communicative effect and clarity of expression
what it loses in literal meaning. On the other hand, as he
points out, as communication it can be expected to be
effective on a far more limited basis: it has been, in effect,
custom tailored to fit a particular function or to serve the
needs of a certain predefined audience.
Translation which seeks formal equivalence with the
source text wherever possible, as Press’s does, will
unavoidably be inferior to the original, since such structur-
al correspondence will lose communicative force. Yet such
an emphasis may make the translation accessible to a wider
audience: although it cannot avoid being conditioned by
the grammatical conventions of the target language, these
effects have been kept to a minimum. Such a translation is
first and foremost an unmarked response to the original
author, his language, and intent, and thus hardly more
1 To the discussion of ambiguity undertaken in the fourth chapter I
should like to add a final comment from Rifaterre (1983:10) on the impor-
tance of this for reception. He maintains, following the basic principle of
obedience to the text and thus to its essential literariness, that even in critical
analysis any attempt to reduce ambiguity or explain away obscurity must be
rejected:
The ambiguity, which the explanation rnust keep from destroying, is not
the result of a faulty reading or a lack of understanding that can vary with
the reader. It is in the text: it simultaneously encodes the evidence that
several interpretations are possible and that making a choice between
them is impossible.
If this be true for analysis, then how much more so for translation!