Where to stay in the UK and in Italy: a comparative study of the language of holiday accommodation advertisements

The term "translation" is usually referred to the process of replacement of an original text (source text) with a substitute one (target text). It gives access to new ideas and experiences, as it aims to overcome the limitations that a certain language imposes on its speakers. In this perspective, it can be said that translation mediate between languages, societies and literatures, allowing to overcome linguistic and cultural barriers and making a certain communicative event easy accessible to people who were originally prevented from participating in it (House, 2009: 3).
Translation is usually an interlingual process, as the message is rendered as a target text in a different language. However, sometimes it can also refer to an intralingual process, when a text in one variety of the language is reworded into another one, or to an intersemiotic process, when the substitution involves another non-linguistic means of expression.
It could be argued that, in translation we have something like a double-bind relationship, as there is both an orientation backwards - to the message of the source text - and an orientation forward - towards how similar texts are written in the target language. The former orientation is based on the requirement of semantic equivalence, which wants the content of a translation to match the content of the original text. The latter orientation involves the equivalence between styles, kinds of formality register and so on.
Translation can have a written form (known as translation) or an oral form (known as interpreting) and involves two phases: firstly, the original text has to be understood and interpreted, secondly, this interpretation has to be rendered. So, according to this position, equivalence is mediated through interpretation.
Translating is a form of intercultural communication, as it can be considered as both a linguistic as well as a cultural act of communication across different cultures. In this context, culture refers to a group's shared values and conventions, which play the role of mental guidelines, orienting people's thoughts and behaviour. Social bonding and cultural identity are highly influenced by language use and convention and this is one of the most important aspects which a translator has to be aware of, because he/she has to take into account similarities and differences of the source and target cultures. Therefore, a good translator has to acquire an awareness and knowledge of the cultural implications of the source text and a familiarity with the culture into which the translation is to be fitted. Moreover, translators have to pay great attention to the context of a certain situation, that is to say who wrote the text, when and why, who is the text addressed to and for what purpose. In this approach, "the more the source and target cultural frameworks differ, the more important is the cultural work translators have to do". (House, 2009: 12)
As I have previously mentioned, the complexity of the process of translation comes from the problems of transferring the same meaning of an original text and the need to restate this meaning in another one. For this reason, particular attention has to be paid to the source text, as it represent an example of a certain language work, noting, at the same time, how it contrasts with the language of the target text.
More promising for translation are functional theories of language, which take into consideration how language is used in a given social communicative situation and examine the existing link between language, situation and culture. Instances include the systemic-functional grammar, which highlights a systematic connection between linguistic forms and their functions. According to this theory, sentences are not mere objects but they should be considered as messages, exchanges and representations; texts have to be located in context, in order to analyse their conventions of use and register. This kind of text-oriented approach to translation aims to make the source and target texts' meanings as closely equivalent as possible.
As J.C. Catford (1965 in House, 2009: 17) observed, "meaning is not assumed to be ‘transferred' from an original to its translation; rather it can only be replaced, so that it functions in a comparable way in its new contextual and textual environment." According to this approach, the process of translation is possible as both original and translation text can be relatable to relevant features of the sociocultural situation of the texts themselves.
In addition to this, Catford makes an important distinction between formal correspondence and textual equivalence in translation. The former is a matter of the language system (langue), while the latter is a matter of the realization of that particular system (parole). Formal correspondence between elements belonging to the original and its translation exists when a category in the target language has the same position in its system of langue. However, in other cases the translator may has to engage in using translation shifts from grammar to lexis and vice versa.
A second attempt to develop a different linguistic approach to translation is Eugene Nida's (1964 in House, 2009: 18) sociolinguistic theory of translation. From his point of view, "translation is first and foremost directed towards its recipients." Therefore, he suggests paying great attention to the differences between the recipients of the source and target text, their expectation norms and their knowledge in general. In other words, Nida considers translation as an always-necessary adaptation of an original text to different linguistic-cultural conventions. In addition to this, he identifies two different yardsticks for translation: the formal equivalence, which implies a formal orientation, as the message in the receptor language has to match the corresponding linguistic forms in the source language, and the dynamic equivalence, which refers to the naturalness of the target language. According to this approach, the process of translation is composed by three phases: analysis of sentences, transfer of these sentences into similar target language structures and reconstruction into a target text.
Focusing on interpretation, great attention is paid to a process involving the reader and his/her cognitive and emotive activity, so that there is a shift from the semantics to the pragmatics of the text. The fundamental idea here is that the text has not a life of its own, but it can only be brought to life by interpretation. In this perspective, a good translator has to understand the original text and its meaning, build up his/her own mental representation of the meaning itself, which is then reformulated and rendered into a new text. It is also possible to focus on variable interpretations of a text, which are influenced by cultural factors and presuppositions. Therefore, there is no reality independent of how human beings perceive it through their own culture and there is no text independent on its translation. This kind of emphasis on interpretations as externally conditioned processes, sees the translator as a social being depending on his/her community, rather than a free individual. (House, 2009: 20-21)
From here the question arises: does a translator have the right to rewrite such creative texts? Has not he a kind of ethical responsibility? And if the source text is irrelevant, why doesn't he write his/her own text? The answer consists in the fact that although a translation aims to hide the presence of an original text, the translator creates a new target text by giving to the source one a new cultural relevance.
On the one hand, when a translation reads fluently, it does not appear to have been translated at all. On the other hand, fluency annihilates differences between original and target cultures and thus the translator is visible. Therefore, if translators want to render their work recognizable, they have to make their translations ‘visible' because of linguistic and cultural differences and re-constitute new texts, which differ from their originals.
According to House (2009: 29), "two texts are said to be equivalent, when the derived version stands in for the original text." These texts are not identical but they present some common features. In the same way, a translated text is obviously hardly similar to the original one in terms of linguistic features, but they can be equal in value, that is to say that they can communicate a similar message and have a similar function. However, this kind of equivalence cannot be intended as identity or reversibility because there cannot be a one-to-one relationship between a source and a target text. A given text can, in theory, have many different translations which can be equivalent to it in different ways, depending on how similarity its contents are interpreted. Moreover, whether and to what degree equivalence can be achieved depends on many different factors. According to Werner Koller (1995 in House, 2009: 31-32), they can be systematized in the form of five equivalence frameworks, which cannot always be fulfilled simultaneously:

1. denotative equivalence: which refers to the extralinguistic, the referents of the real-world to which the text relates;
2. connotative equivalence: which has to do with the connotations given by the text, i.e. feelings and associations evoked by an expression or a particular term;
3. text-normative equivalence: which copes with the linguistic and textual norms characterizing the text;
4. pragmatic equivalence: which focuses on the recipients for whom the translation is written, so that it can fulfils its communicative function;
5. formal-aesthetic equivalence: which deal with the formal characteristics of the source text.

Translators have to choose among several alternative ways of create a certain meaning in a certain context and they often decide to opt for some compromises. For this reason it can be useful to set up a hierarchy of demands on equivalence, depending on what kind of text is being dealt with, and the purpose and type of translation aimed at.
"Given the differences between the way language encode reality, and the varying contextual factors that affect the interpretation of texts, we can conclude that equivalence can only be relative." (House, 2009:31) However, this relativity has to be mediated by the recognition of "invariance", that is referred to features of the original text which the target text must convey. These features capture the tertium comparationis, the third factor which consists in the common ground between two compared elements.
It could be argued that, although text and context are separate, they interact with each other through a connection between the social environment and the organization of language. When we compare a source text and its translation, they both have to be referred to their particular situation. In order to do that, the notion of context (or situation) has to be divided into analytic units.
As House (2009: 34) observed, one possible way of doing this is using the concepts of field, tenor and mode - i.e. three sociolinguistic dimensions of the context, which characterize a particular register:

1. equivalence of field implies that the two texts are equivalent in their content, that is to say what the author is talking about.
2. equivalence of tenor means that the two texts represent the same interpersonal interaction between participants.
3. equivalence of mode relates to the means whereby the communication is enacted.

The result of this kind of analysis is a textual profile which characterizes the register of a text, that is the way in which it relates to particular contextual factors. However, this analysis does not show how the text functions pragmatically as discourse and what it is intended to mean or how it is to be interpreted. In order to do this, we need to take into account the notion of genre.
"Genres […] culturally determined communicative events which are textually realized by specific configurations of lexical and grammatical units. Genres link texts to culture in such a way that an individual textual exemplar is related to the shared knowledge about the nature of other similar texts with which this text shares a communicative purpose." (House, 2009:35)
By using this method for determining the equivalence between original and translated texts, it becomes clear that the nature of equivalence highly depends on the type of the translation. For this reason, House (2009: 36-37) made a distinction between overt and covert translation:

1. in overt translation, the sociocultural frame of the original text is left as intact as possible. This kind of translation can show the equivalence of text, register and genre, but not of individual text's functional profile, that is what the text can mean for a target reader. In other words, readers will know that the text was not meant for them, but for other addresses, so the equivalence can only be partial and second-hand and the work of translator is visible;
2. in covert translation, the translator aims to recreate an equivalent sociocultural event and so to hide the text's real origin. Therefore, he/she remains invisible, too. Covert translation and its original do not need to be equivalent in terms of text and register, but they have to show equivalence of genre and individual text's functional profile. Moreover, the translator has to take into account the differences between the source and target cultures and apply the so called cultural filter.

A cultural filter is a means which allows translator to capture differences in behavioural and communicative conventions, preferred rhetorical styles and expectation norms in the source and target communities. In order to achieve functional equivalence in covert translation, assumptions of cultural differences should be analysed before operating in the meaning and these cultural differences should be identified at all levels, for example through a cross-cultural research.
However, the concept of equivalence has also some limits. According to the Whorfian hypothesis (Whorf, 1952 in House, 2009: 39), our mother tongue constantly shapes and constrains our thoughts and behaviours. This implies that the appropriate meanings in the target language cannot be reproduced because words never correspond as lexical items, as they involve different semantic features and enter into different sense relations with other words. In addition to this, as a grammatical form has to be changed when translating, the meaning encoded in that form will be lost in translation. In other words, there can never be correspondence across languages and thus, a perfect translation is impossible.
On the other hand, empirical studies have shown that language is flexible and has the creative force to go far beyond its own category distinctions. In addition to this, as House explained (2009: 40), the potential of all languages systems is not so different because they all have the resources to express any event in an equivalent manner and the creativity of a certain language user ensures that language cannot have such a powerful influence on people's thoughts. In other words, we are able to create and manipulate concepts which do not have a corresponding word in our language and this universal principle of expressibility implies a universal principle of translability.
To sum up, we could argued that speakers are not imprisoned or limited by their language because there is not direct correlation between language, thoughts and reality. These three elements are in constant dynamic interaction with each other, which and this makes communication possible. It is up to the translator to determine how this interaction can be achieved in a particular context.