What it is
Cause and effect covers a family of exchanges along a single chain: the cause named where the source names the effect, the effect named where the source names the cause, the means named for the result it produces, and the substance named for the object made of it. The state of affairs is identical in both texts; what differs is which link each language habitually picks out.
Vinay and Darbelnet grouped these moves under modulation, in the subtype usually rendered in English as explicative modulation. Their claim was descriptive rather than prescriptive: languages have settled preferences about which link they name, and a translator who reproduces the source link produces a sentence that is true and still reads as imported. The exact inventory of modulation subtypes should be treated with some care. Published accounts count between ten and eleven of them and the English labels vary from one source to another, so any enumeration is partly editorial; the substance of the categories is Vinay and Darbelnet's, the numbering is not always theirs.
Many of these exchanges are lexicalized rather than chosen, which places them in the fixed rather than the free half of the distinction set out on the modulation record. The boundary against part and whole is contiguity of a different kind: part and whole relies on one thing being a component of another, while this technique relies on one thing producing, enabling or constituting another.
When it applies
- Target convention names the other end of the chain, as it regularly does in warning notices, safety signs, labels and instructions.
- The source names a material where the target names the object, or the instrument where the target names the activity.
- The source uses a fixed expression built on an effect for which the target language has no counterpart, but has a settled way of naming the cause.
Examples
FR>EN
- Source: Il s'est regardé dans la glace.
- Target: He looked at himself in the mirror.
- Comment: Substance for object, and long since fixed: French names the material and English the article. No decision is left to the translator here, which is exactly what makes it a useful demonstration of how these exchanges settle into the lexicon.
DE>EN
- Source: Rutschgefahr
- Target: Wet floor
- Comment: The German notice names the effect, the risk of slipping; the English notice names the cause. Both conventions are fully standard in their own language, and a sign reading "Danger of slipping" would be understood while sounding translated. Note the condition that makes this safe: the cause is visible to the reader on the spot.
TR>EN
- Source: Yolda kaldık.
- Target: We broke down.
- Comment: The Turkish states the outcome, being stranded on the road; the English states the cause. "We were left on the road" is comprehensible and reports something the source does not quite say, since the Turkish expression is idiomatic for a vehicle failure rather than a description of a location.
Watch out for
The professional risk is asserting a causal relation the source did not assert. Replacing an effect by its cause commits the text to an explanation, and where that explanation is the disputed matter the translation has taken a position. In incident reports, medical records, insurance correspondence and judicial text, causation is precisely what the parties are arguing about.
- Apply it where the link is inferable from the situation rather than from your own reconstruction. A notice works because the cause is in front of the reader; a report has no such guarantee.
- Where the source leaves the chain vague, keep it vague. Naming a cause that the source leaves unnamed adds content and belongs with amplification rather than with modulation.
- Registers differ in how much freedom they allow. Instructions and public notices often have a fixed target convention; narrative and evidential text has none, and there the source link is the safer choice.
References
- Vinay, J.-P. & Darbelnet, J. (1958). Stylistique comparée du français et de l'anglais: méthode de traduction. Paris: Didier. English translation by J. C. Sager & M.-J. Hamel (1995), Comparative Stylistics of French and English: A Methodology for Translation, Benjamins Translation Library 11. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 30–39.