Meaning Retrieval and Transfer in the Translation of Hedges in Presidential Political Speeches

Abstract

Notwithstanding their diverse and convoluted definitions and understandings, pragmatic studies in political discourse(s) have always animated debates in pragmatics thus becoming a major area of scholarly inquiry. Analyzing the pragmatic underpinnings of political speeches has been a dominant area of academic investigations which have sought to explore and uncover the “unsaid”. This study, which is domiciled in pragmatics, is an attempt which sought to examine and unravel the intricacies associated with hedging in political speeches and its translatability from English into Kiswahili. This study, as such, investigated the use of hedges and hedging devices in political speeches on the hand and the translation of these hedging devices on the other; it also investigated the semantic and pragmatic roles which these devices play in political texts and what challenges they pose in translation. The analyses of the translated political texts revealed considerable degree of digression, omission, accommodation and varied modifications of hedging devices. On the other hand, the analyses of target texts showed that several factors such as, inadequate pragmatic competence, poor translation competence, lack of critical understanding of discourse orientation as well as the decoding of the form, type and category of hedging devices, accounted for both intentional and unintentional interventions underpinning hedging modifications in Kiswahili translation. Consequently, this study sought to understand the dynamics of hedging in meaning making, political coding and message transfer of political speeches. It also sought to explore apt strategies deployed in translating hedges from English into Kiswahili, drawing data from presidential political speeches made in Kenya during the general elections of 2013 and 2017. The study was premised on Grice’s theory of communicative implicature (1975) and Hans Vermeer’s (1999) Skopos Theory of Communicative Translation, notably, the critical centrality of Gricean maxims in informing the analyses of identified hedges and the assessment of their communicative impact in both the source text (English) and the target language (Kiswahili). The juxtaposition of these maxims of communications was critical in uncovering various hedging strategies, especially given that hedges are characteristically implicit both in manner and function, such that any flouting of these maxims was potentially an instance of hedging in the sampled political speeches. In order to complement the Gricean maxims of communication, the Skopos theory as proposed by Vermeer (1999) was incorporated to account for the analyses of the translatability of hedges and the realization of purposeful and functional translations of political texts, in this study, presidential speeches in Kenya. The inclusion of the Skopos theory was predicated on the fact that it outlines xv critical tenets which enable the realization of optimal and functional translation. The skopos of the translation of the speeches determined the selection of the appropriate and effective translation strategies of the hedging devices. The use of different approaches and strategies for the translation of hedges and hedging devices was necessary since no single approach appeared to have capacity and capability of resolving routine and emerging problems associated with hedging strategies in political messaging, particularly so in their translation context. Data analyses consisting mainly of transcribed political speeches, necessitated the juxtaposition of the tenets of the Skopos theory with Grice’s maxims of communication so as to understand how the fidelity of hedges is upheld, reconfigured or violated in the translation processes. Indeed, the deployment of these approaches in an eclectic manner was profoundly productive in unmasking additional categories of hedges in the sampled speeches as well as marking appropriate translation of hedging devices in the speeches sampled. Overall, this study was a time and context bound case study which utilized data predicated on sampled political speeches and as such regarded as primary data. Data analysis was qualitative and the study conclusions were explanatory in nature where the lexical and non-lexical hedging devices were identified and their translatability discussed and conclusions made. The findings of this study overall offer important insights into the challenges which pragmatic elements present in deciphering political texts and more so in the rendition of hedges in translation.