Chapter 4
Implicit meaning Kinds of meaning: people usually think of meaning as something that a word or sentence refers to for example the word apple refers to a fruit. This kind of meaning is called referential meaning because the word refers to a certain things, events, attribution, or relation which a person can perceive or imagine. A sentence has meaning because it refers to something that happened, or may happen, or is imagined as happening. Referential meaning is what the communication is about. As referential meaning packaged into larger and larger units there is organizational meaning in the discourse, which must also be taken into account in the translation. Certain information may be old information, some new; certain information may be the topic of the discourse, other information commenting on the topic, and some information may be more central to the message; that is more important. It is the organizational meaning that puts the referential information together into a coherent text. Organizational meaning signaled by deictics, respetition, grouping .The message is produced in a given communication situation. The relationship between the writer or speaker and the addressee will affect the communication. Where the communication takes place.The message is produced in a given communication situation. The relationship between the writer or speaker and the addressee will affect the communication. Where the communication takes place. For example, the very same person may be referred to as John, Mr.Smith, Profferssor Smith, etc., depending on the situation. This choice carries situational meaning. It may indicate whether the situation is formal or informal. Implicit and explicit information: when people write or speak the amount of information included in the text will depend on the amount of shared information that already exists between the speaker and the addressee. When we talk about something we leave out some of the information because the addressee already knows these facts. In every text that one may translate there will be information which is implicit, it is not stated in an explicit form in the text itself. Some information or meaning is left implicit because of the structure of the source language; some because it has already been included elsewhere in the text, and some because of shared information in the communication situation. Explicit information is the information which is overtly stated by lexical items and grammatical forms. It is part of the surface structure. All three kinds of meaning may be either explicit or implicit. Implicit referential meaning: For example, if someone asks “How many people come?” the person asked may answer, “Ten”. In this context it is clear that “ten” means “Ten people came”. The reference to “people” and “came” is left implicit in the answer. Number must be made explicit in English, but in many languages it can be left implicit. The sentence “Help will come” has no subject or object (the agent and affected are implicit). But it can be “some one will come and he will help us” implicit information causes ambiguities. For example, “the shooting of the hunters” is ambiguous in English. Implicit information and organizational meaning. A text is a unit. It is organized in some logical way. It is characterized by cohesion, continuity, grouping and patterns of prominence.There is flow of old and new information, redundancy which helps signal the unity. For example, in the Hebrew the description of creation in Genesis I uses the explicit name of God thirty-two times in this rather short text. But in other languages God, would need to be left implicit after one introduction in the text.Pronouns would be used in some languages to retain a part of the meaning, but in some languages only verb affixes indicating third person would occur.No information is lost, it is simply mode implicit some languages use passive constructions to indicate focus. By using a possive construction some of the meaning is left implicit. Since the agent need not be indicated. For example, “the school was founded in 1902” might be used to put the shool in focus but to do this, the information of who founded the school has to be left implicit. The information left implicit is referential but it is left implicit to signal organizational meaning.In Aguaruna the organizational meaning of focus would need to be indicated by special suffix on word “school” marking focus. Less explicit forms are often used to signal organizational meaning.For example, pronouns, proverbs, and other substitute words are less explicit than the nouns and verbs which they refer to. Implicit situational meaning: information which is left implicit when talking to another. A woman might say to her husband “Peter is sick”. In reporting the same information to the doctor, she would say, “My son Peter is sick” Or “my son is sick”. Often in normal conversation there is much which is going on in the situation which makes it possible to understand exactly what is meant without using many words. For example mother, seeing her child about to put his hand in the fire cries out, “No”! The child understand the message “Don’t put your hand in fire”. In a different situation “No” might mean something very different. It is quite possible for a person from one culture to read story written about a happening in another culture and not understand the story at all because so much information is left implicit. The translator does not want to add information which is not part of the text he is translating. There is a difference between implicit information and one which is simply absent and never intended to be part of communication.For instance, in the example “my son peter is sick”; mother did not say, “Peter has brow hair and is ten years old”. This is not implicid. It is absent
