BOOK REVIEW: BASIL HATIM & IAN MASON.“DISCOURSE AND THE TRANSLATOR”. LONDON AND NEW YORK: LONGMAN, 1990. XIV + 258 PP. ISBN 0-582-02190-1 (PPR) / 0-582-05925-9 (CSD) (LANGUAGE IN SOCIAL LIFE SERIES)

Abstract

Discourse and the Translator consolidate and extend beyond previous studies of translation even today. Their rational and educational approach to translation issues guarantees that everyone working with "in contact" languages will find it indispensable. Drawing upon research from the fields of sociolinguistics, discourse studies, pragmatics, and semiotics, the professors examine the act and outcome of translation within their own social environments. The book highlights the value of the translator as a cultural mediator through this analysis. Ian Mason and Basil Hatim's book Discourse and the Translator is a work in need of a subtitle. Over the past few years, both discourse and translation books have seemed to proliferate.Suggests incorporating a socio-cultural component into the understanding of some fundamental concepts in pragmatics, such as felicity conditions, speech actions, and Grice's maxims and principles. It also suggests connecting them to the examination of real translation issues. Cultural standards frequently influence the equivalency of illocutionary force when translating official discourse. In terms of denotative meaning, a translation might be accurate, yet it might not capture the conviction of the original work. As Widdowson notes, equivalency is pragmatic in addition to linguistic and semantic. A speech act is made up of the elocutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary acts taken collectively. The concept that sincerity in communication is a societal duty underpins the criteria of felicity. The science that examines signs in society is known as semiotics, or semiology. The discourse theory presented here is comparable to the cultural codes that Barthes (1970) mentioned.