Of worlds and languages
32
For example: how can we ascertain whether
table in English means
‘Tisch’ in German? How can we find out
under which circumstances
table means ‘Tisch’? The English word
table can refer to other objects
as well: the food served at a meal, the people sitting at a
table, a printed
or written collection of figures, facts, or information arranged in orderly
rows across and down a page (e.g. a
timetable), a multiplication
table,
a diagram or chart (cf. Springer 1969: 144849).
The same questions hold for texts: how can we determine the meaning of ‘Are
all your booklets in French’? The answer is simple: we must look at how the
words or the texts are used.
How means ‘in which situations’. From individual
examples, we can deduce the ‘typical’ meaning of a word or text, etc., i.e. its
meaning in particular types of situation.
Thus, type
1
is based on type
2
, from which it has been derived by a process
of abstraction. If this is true, then type
1
is, in fact, not the result of a simple
twophase process of communication including transcoding but of a much
more complicated process, a specific variant of the process that leads to type
2
.
This is not immediately obvious because the process of abstraction leading to
type
1
is not carried out in each case. Type
1
is reached by a shortcut which is
well known and quite common in translation practice.
