What it is
A genre runs through stages, each doing one thing: establishing the ground, giving reasons, laying down what is required, closing the record. A move is one of those stages, recognized by what it does rather than by the words that do it, so two texts can perform the same move in wordings that share nothing.
An inventory of moves belongs to a genre rather than to a language. Some stages are obligatory, in that a text lacking them is not read as an instance of the genre; others appear when the occasion calls for them. A move has no size, and ends where the work changes rather than where a paragraph does.
Both link fields are empty, and that is a claim rather than a gap. A move is a position in the structure of a text, not a stretch of running text, so no operation on wording carries one out. The wordings sit with the neighbours: a stage's opening line with the routine and court records, a preamble's openers with the record on recitals, the sentence announcing a new stage with metadiscourse. What is left here is the slot and its order.
Where the fixity comes from
Nothing lays the order down. It is established by analysis rather than by counting, and an assignment of text to functions is arguable in a way a frequency is not.
- Rasmussen and Engberg analyse one directive at the macro level and find three moves, enactment, justification and the establishing of rules, each closing before the next opens. Their material is one instrument in one genre, and on its own the finding goes no further.
- Run again on a second language version of that instrument, it returns the same structure and the same kinds of move. That is the only direct evidence here about what translation does to the stages, and it says they are not what changes.
- Where an instrument requires a stage the warrant changes: the same authors note that an act of this kind must state its reasons because the Treaty requires it. The place is then codified and the wording filling it is not.
- What none of it establishes is a proportion: an inventory says which stages exist, not how much text each takes or how often each recurs, and nothing consulted here measured that against a source.
Consequences for translation
A text arrives with its stages already assigned, and everything the translator decides happens inside them.
- Merging two stages is not an economy. Where the same content appears once as a reason and once as a requirement, the repetition is the structure working, and one statement in place of two deletes a stage together with the register that marked it.
- A reviser can flag a passage that has drifted out of its stage and say why in structural terms: a reason drafted as an instruction claims force its stage does not carry.
- Rearranging the stages is a different service, agreed before the work starts rather than during it. A target text shaped as the source was not has stopped being a rendering of it.
- Numbered headings, paragraph numbers and the white space setting a stage off are notation, a conventions matter cited here because it is what makes the stages visible. A reviser logging the numbering as a structural finding claims the wrong warrant.
Examples
FR>DE
- Source: les systèmes de traitement de données ... doivent ... respecter les libertés et droits fondamentaux de ces personnes, notamment la vie privée
- Target: Die Datenverarbeitungssysteme ... haben ... deren Grundrechte und -freiheiten und insbesondere deren Privatsphäre zu achten
- Comment: Directive 95/46/EC, second recital, the instrument Rasmussen and Engberg analysed. The stage is justification and both versions keep it where it is. Its opener belongs to the neighbouring record; what belongs here is that the same content returns below as a requirement, because a reason and a rule are separate stages.
FR>NL
- Source: Les États membres assurent, conformément à la présente directive, la protection des libertés et droits fondamentaux des personnes physiques
- Target: De Lid-Staten waarborgen ... overeenkomstig de bepalingen van deze richtlijn, de bescherming van de fundamentele rechten en vrijheden van natuurlijke personen
- Comment: Same instrument, Article 1(1). This is the stage the recital prepared, and the shift is audible: there the systems must respect those rights, here the Member States guarantee their protection. Nothing in either sentence marks its stage; the position does, which is why a translator who noticed the repetition and harmonized the two would have removed one.
References
- Swales, J. M. (1990). Genre Analysis: English in Academic and Research Settings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. xi, 260.
- Bhatia, V. K. (1993). Analysing Genre: Language Use in Professional Settings. Applied Linguistics and Language Study. London: Routledge.
- Rasmussen, K. W. and Engberg, J. (1999). "Genre analysis of legal discourse." Hermes 22, 113 to 132, at pp. 113, 116, 117 and 118.
- Directive 95/46/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 24 October 1995 on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data, second recital and Article 1(1), French, German and Dutch language versions.