Steiner, Erich

English

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Macro- and Micro-level Approaches to Translated Texts -  
Methodological Contradictions or Mutually Enriching Perspectives? 1 
 
Erich Steiner (Saarbrücken) 
 
The journal Target recently hosted a methodological debate on “essentialist vs. non-
essentialist approaches to translation” (cf. Target. International Journal of Translation 
Studies. 12:1-13:2), in the course of which several basic methodological orientations in 
translation studies and related areas were discussed. I shall set out by reminding us that the 
debate between “essentialism” and “non-essentialism” can be understood as yet another 
instantiation of a wider debate between “macro-level/top down” and “micro-level/bottom up” 
methodologies in many disciplines concerned with socio-cultural and socio-semiotic 
phenomena. I wish to argue that the continuing existence of these different methodological 
orientations is partly due to the fact that the socio-cultural and socio-semiotic phenomena in 
question are themselves structured into layers of abstraction, instantiation and specification, 
related in complex ways by both top-down and bottom-up processes. There is thus nothing 
wrong or intrinsically worrying about the existence of different methodological orientations, 
provided that research communities working on these different layers still have enough of a 
shared concept of discourse, and are thus able to transmit their discourses across layers. I shall 
argue that a cornerstone of this shared concept of discourse has to be a general concern with 
how (translated and otherwise interlingual) texts work, this concern being logically and 
methodologically prior to a concern with the further questions why and with what effects texts 
function. The question of what translation is can be very differently answered from different 
perspectives, but here as well, the question of how should be at the centre of a shared concern 
in studies of translation. I shall then go on to identify what I believe to be helpful, and what I 
believe to be less helpful contributions to methodological debates between macro- and micro-
level approaches to translated texts. I shall generally warn against the extremes of top-down 
abstract discourses which are not checked against any empirical data on the one hand, and 
against excessive bottom-up empiricism which disregards the fact that after all we are 
concerned with a meaningful object (text) on the other. I shall thus argue that at its very heart, 
the (translated and otherwise interlingual) text is a linguistic, or otherwise multimodally-
semiotic, object, and that our methodologies have to maintain contact with their linguistic, and 
more broadly semiotic, base. Recent work by Juliane House will be discussed as an example of 
a positive integration of macro- and micro-level approaches.  
 The debate between “essentialism” and “non-essentialism” is but yet another instantiation 
of a wider debate between “bottom-up” and “top-down” methodologies in many disciplines 
concerned with socio-cultural2 and socio-semiotic3 phenomena. Andrew Chesterman and 
Rosemary Arrojo (2000) have characterised what much of this debate means for translation 
studies, in attempting to outline some shared ground inside the discipline. The debate referred 
to revolves around oppositions such as: 
 
- empirical and descriptive approaches vs. postmodern cultural studies and textual theories, 
- essentialism vs. non-essentialism, 
- inductive methodologies vs. deductive methodologies, 
- non-visibility vs. visibility of the translator.  
 
We shall add another frequently-used opposition here, that between macro-level vs. micro-
level approaches.  
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 The continuing existence of these different orientations is partly - and justifiably - due to 
the fact that the socio-cultural and socio-semiotic phenomena in question are themselves 
structured. Linguistic (and other socio-semiotic?) systems, as well as descriptions of them, can 
be structured according to levels and scales of abstraction, specification, and instantiation (cf. 
Matthiessen 2001; Teich 2001; following Halliday 2001). Abstraction yields levels such as 
context, semantics, lexicogrammar, phonology, the scale of specification yields classification 
and subclassification of phenomena, and the scale of instantiation yields at its extreme ends 
semiotic systems. Thus the phenomenon language is realised in situated texts. Now, for each 
of these levels and scales it seems to be the case that the “higher up” a piece of research 
moves, the more it will lean towards “top-down” characteristics, and the lower down it is 
situated, the more it will embrace “bottom-up” features methodologically. And there seems to 
be nothing wrong with a state of affairs in which some researchers in translation studies are 
concerned with, say, very general socio-cultural-semiotic characteristics of their object of 
study, while at the same time others focus on very fine-grained linguistic details of the 
lexicogrammatic and phonetic realization of one text. Indeed, such diversity seems welcome, 
provided the research communities working on these different levels and scales of abstraction 
still have enough of a shared discourse culture, such they can communicate with each other 
across levels. Furthermore, there has to be a shared concern with how texts function, and with 
why and to what effect this functioning is actually realised. The first question is clearly 
primary. The interest in the why and to what effect of translation is something that we 
necessarily and appropriately share with other research communities. And it is an area within 
which recent translation studies have sometimes annoyed through verbose trivialities, rather 
than impressed through insightful research. The interest in the how (and in that sense in the 
what) can usefully be seen as the province of translation studies, partly shared with its close 
sisters linguistics and literary studies (to the extent that these latter have a textual orientation, 
which cannot always be taken for granted). 
 The question of what translation is can be answered in very different ways from many 
different perspectives, as is well documented in Chesterman and Arrojo’s discussion (2000: 
152pp.), and also in a search of the Lancaster-Oslo/Bergen Corpus of British English reported 
and analysed in Matthiessen (2001: 43pp.). In the latter, 64 relevant instances of usage were 
found, inside a corpus of one million running words spread very unevenly across different 
genres. The instances fall into a whole range of different meanings, ranging from a material 
goal-directed activity (e.g. Fred translated it into English and French) to an abstract relation 
(e.g. The word translated ‘madness’ means ‘mad revelry and wickedness’), and many more 
different usages. In other words, in everyday usage just as in academic discourse, people talk 
(and significantly also avoid talking) about translation in very different genres, and with a 
whole range of different meanings. In view of this, I would like to re-emphasize that an 
interest which may serve to unify translation studies is the how as in how the translated text 
works, rather than a generalized and over-used what as in what is translation?. It seems to me 
that we have a usefully constrained discourse for talking about the former, but much less so 
for talking about the latter.  
 Let me briefly try to identify what I believe to be helpful, and what I believe to be less 
helpful contributions to methodological debates between macro- and micro-level approaches 
to translated texts. Positive examples of a constrained discourse about the how of translated 
texts - from very different theoretical backgrounds - appear to me to be traditions of study 
such as those of Doherty (1999), Koller (1992), or Toury (1995), or the one that I myself 
share most with methodologically exemplified in House (1977/1997), Hatim and Mason 
(1990), Steiner and Yallop (2001), Steiner (2002). Significantly, although these approaches 
are very different in their theoretical background, what they do share is their openness to 
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considerations on macro- and micro levels, and a detailed interest in how the translated text 
works. What I would warn against would be top-down abstract discourses about texts - 
whose content cannot be tested against empirical data - such as in some variants of post-
modernist, and non-essentialist discourse. If, however, we engage in a discourse whose terms 
and statements are not interpretable in terms of lower-level textual features, we may find 
ourselves in the lofty no-man’s land of discourses-about-discourses-about-discourses-... which 
makes translation studies not a success story, but a narrative of subjectivist despair and 
dogmatic decadence. But what seems to me equally harmful is an excessive bottom-up 
empiricism which disregards the fact that after all, we are concerned with a meaningful object 
(text). This object is not “given” to us in a naively empirical objectivist, and essentialist, form, 
but rather, is already and necessarily an interpreted network of relations, thus requiring models 
of meaning in order to be “understood”. In other words, our object of study is not knowable in 
the form of atheoretical “raw” data, such as numbers of letters or phonological units in a text 
or discourse, but rather always requires some form of interpretation, preferably one based on a 
rich model of what language is and what texts are - rich in terms of levels of description and 
scales of abstraction (cf. Teich 2001; Hansen 2002). 
 The work of Juliane House on translated, and in a wider sense, multilingual texts appears 
to me to be a particularly good example of how the consideration of macro- and micro-level 
phenomena can be integrated, rather than separated and opposed to each other, in analysis. In 
recent comparative analyses of texts in English and German (cf. House 2002), she tests 
hypotheses about whether German textual norms are adapted to Anglophone ones, either in 
parallel texts, or in translations. The corpus covers the genres computer instructions, popular 
science texts, and external business communication. The hypotheses relate to: 
 
- a possible shift to a typically English interpersonal, from a typically German ideational 
orientation, 
- a shift to a typically English inference-inducing implicitness from a German informational 
explicitness, 
- a shift towards less informational density as in English, from an assumed higher informational 
density typical of German, 
- a shift away from the German Satzklammer to greater syntactic fluency among the parts of a 
sentence, as in English. 
 
Now, the phenomena in terms of which these hypotheses can be operationalised ultimately 
have to be lexicogrammatical, that is to say “micro-level”, but the factors which allow the 
investigation of how lexicogrammatical features fall into relevant configurations have to be 
“macro-level”, i.e. notions such as “register” and “genre”. This is particularly well documented 
in the careful discussion (House 2002: 204pp.) of how and possibly why the initial hypotheses 
have to be at least investigated on a wider empirical basis, and quite possibly modified in the 
light of anticipated results.  
 What appears to be particularly promising in the work of House is the fact that the 
opposition between “macro- and micro-” does not arise methodologically, or to the extent that 
it does, it can be reconciled in insightful ways. Macro-level categories, such as genre or 
register, are not neglected, but serve an important function both in the generation of 
hypotheses, and in the interpretation of results. On the other hand, the entire investigation is 
made empirical by operationalising the hypotheses in terms of lexicogrammatical features, in 
terms of which hypotheses can be evaluated, further developed and changed.  
 We have in our own work in Saarbrücken attempted something similar - and in some 
respects complementary - to House’s work, with a somewhat shifted emphasis towards 
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lexicogrammatical realization and thus micro-level (cf. Steiner 2001, 2002; Teich 2001; 
Hansen 2002), and towards developing and adapting electronic tools (cf. Teich, Hansen and 
Fankhauser 2001). And like House, we have found the macro-level work of Halliday and 
Hasan (1989) and of Martin (1992) particularly useful (cf. also Steiner 1991), as well as 
micro-level work by Halliday (1994), Halliday and Matthiessen (1999), Doherty (1996, 1999), 
Fabricius-Hansen (1996). Finally, we are placing a high value on relating cross-cultural studies 
to language comparison (cf. Steiner & Teich, in press). 
 Let us finally return to the overriding question of this paper on whether macro- and micro-
level approaches to translated texts are methodological contradictions or mutually enriching 
perspectives. Maybe controversially for some in the field of translation studies, I am arguing 
that at its very heart, the (translated and otherwise interlingual) text is a linguistic, and also 
very often a multimodally semiotic object4. Accordingly, our methodologies, however widely 
we may wish to cast our net, have to maintain contact with their linguistic, and more generally 
semiotic, base. What is therefore urgently needed is a model of language and text/discourse, 
within which the different levels of organisation of language, the different degrees of 
abstraction, and certainly the breadth and depth of empirical phenomena can be situated. The 
interest in the why and to what effect of translation is something that we do, and must, share 
with other research communities. It is the interest in the how (and in that sense in what) that 
may helpfully serve as the identifying methodological and thematic core of systematic studies 
of translation and other forms of multilingual text production. 
 
 
References 
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Martin, J. R. 1992. English Text. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 
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Matthiessen, C. M. I. M. 2001. The Environments of Translation. In E. Steiner & C. Yallop. (eds), 
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de Gruyter, 41-126. 
Steiner. E. 1991. A Functional Perspective on Language, Action, and Interpretation . Berlin et al.: 
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Translation? In E. Steiner & C. Yallop. (eds), Exploring Translation and Multilingual Text 
Production: Beyond Content. Berlin et al.: Mouton de Gruyter, 161-190. 
Steiner, E. 2002. Grammatical Metaphor in Translation - Some Methods for Corpus-based 
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Information Structure in a Cross-linguistic Perspective. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 213-228. 
Steiner, E. (in press). How (Translated and otherwise Interlingual) Texts Work is our Way into what, 
why and to what Effects. Target. International Journal of Translation Studies  13 (2), 343-348. 
Steiner E. & Teich, E. (in press). German: a Metafunctional Profile. In A. Caffarel, J. Martin & C. M. 
I. M. Matthiessen. (eds), Language Typology: a Functional Perspective. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 
Steiner, E. & Yallop, C. (eds). 2001. Exploring Translation and Multilingual Text Production: 
Beyond Content. Berlin et al.: Mouton de Gruyter. 
Taylor, C. & Baldry, A. 2001. Computer Assisted Text Analysis and Translation: a Functional 
Approach in the Analysis and Translation of Advertising Texts. In E. Steiner & C. Yallop. (eds), 
Exploring Translation and Multilingual Text Production: Beyond Content. Berlin et al.: Mouton 
de Gruyter, 277-306. 
Teich, E. 2001. Towards a Model for the Description of Cross-linguistic Divergence and Commonality 
in Translation. In E. Steiner & C. Yallop. (eds), Exploring Translation and Multilingual Text 
Production: Beyond Content. Berlin et al.: Mouton de Gruyter, 191-228. 
Teich, E., Hansen, S. & Fankhauser, P. 2001. Representing and Querying Multilayer annotated 
Corpora. In Proceedings of the IRCS Workshop on Linguistic Databases . University of 
Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, December 2001. 
Teich, E. 2001. Contrasts and Commonality between English and German in System and Text. A 
Methodology for Investigating the Contrastive-linguistic Properties of Translations and 
Multilingual Texts. Saarbrücken: Universität des Saarlandes, Habilitationsschrift.  
Toury, G. 1995. Descriptive Translation Studies and Beyond. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 
                                                
1 The following is an extended and revised version of Steiner (in press).  
2 For example social formations in sociology and anthropology, or the individual  in psychology. 
3 Relationships between and within different texts in different modalities, including language in particular.  
4 For an insightful multimodal tool for translation didactics cf. Taylor and Baldry (2001).  
 
 
Steiner, Erich. (2003). Macro- and Micro-level Approaches to Translated Texts - Methodological Contradictions or Mutually Enriching 
Perspectives?. Baumgarten, Nicole/Böttger, Claudia/Motz, Markus/Probst, Julia (eds.), Übersetzen, Interkulturelle Kommunikation, 
Spracherwerb und Sprachvermittlung - das Leben mit mehreren Sprachen. Festschrift für Juliane House zum 60. Geburtstag. Zeitschrift für 
Interkulturellen Fremdsprachenunterricht [Online], 8(2/3), 15-19.  
Verfügbar: http://www.ualberta.ca/~german/ejournal/Steiner.pdf. 
 
 
 


Macro- and Micro-level Approaches to Translated Texts -Methodological Contradictions or Mutually Enriching Perspectives?

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Macro- and Micro-level Approaches to Translated Texts -Methodological Contradictions or Mutually Enriching Perspectives?

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