Endocentric and Exocentric Languages in Translation

Abstract

Recent research on linguistic typology has revealed fundamental differences between so-called endocentric and exocentric languages. The former are characterised by having a relatively high lexical and informational weight in the verbs, that is in the centre of the proposition (hence the term "endocentric"), whereas the la�er have a higher lexical and informational weight in the nominal arguments, that is outside the centre of the proposition (hence the term "exocentric"). Furthermore, exocentric verbs are characterised by a rich inflectional system that enables them to express text-pragmatic and rhetorical distinctions that generally are not rendered explicit in endocentric languages.The Scandinavian languages, among which Danish, are endocentric, whereas the Romance languages, among which Italian, are exocentric. This article deals with a series of differences between Danish and Italian in terms of their pertinence for translation and translation strategies. On the basis of cognitive, anthropological and psycholinguistic findings, the article argues that the mentioned typological differences have an important bearing on our 'cognitive schema'. This means that translating between language groups such as the Scandinavian and the Romance requires a change of deep-rooted structures of thinking and of categorising experience. It is not merely a ma�er of finding more or less equivalent words. IntroductionIn this article I shall deal with fundamental differences in linguistic typology and their consequences for translation and translation strategies. I shall focus on the Germanic and the Romance languages, exemplified by Danish and Italian respectively, and argue that the phenomena addressed have an impact on our way of thinking, that is on what psycholinguists call our 'cognitive schema'. It means that translating from one language to another may imply a complete restructuring of thoughts and ways of categorising experience rather than being a mere question of finding more or less equivalent words and constructions.My work is based on the findings of the project 'Linguistic Translation', which took place at Copenhagen Business School in the period 1997-2003 and involved seven scholars of French, Italian, Spanish and Russian. 1 We compared these languages with our mother tongue, Danish, and, occasionally, English.Our work was based on the functionalist model in which verbal communication is seen as a microsystem of words and phrases put into a macrosystem of texts with a specific purpose in a given context. Each of these three dimensions -microstructure, macrostructure and context structure -may be subdivided in two levels, resulting in a system of 'Chinese boxes' as shown in figure (1):

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