Mona Baker. In Other Words. A coursebook on translation.

(Second
edition.) London: Routledge, 2011. xvii +332 pp. ISBN 978-0-415-46754-
4 (pbk). £20.99.
Reviewed by Andrew Chesterman (Helsinki)

This is the revised edition of Mona Baker’s successful coursebook, first published
under the same title in 1992. The basic format has been kept, but there are some
additional examples, a wider range of exercises and suggestions for further read-
ing, and a new chapter on translation ethics. References have also been updated,
and there is a companion website with some further material (http://cw.routledge.
com/textbooks/baker/).
Like the first edition, In Other Words is firmly and unapologetically anchored
in linguistics. This may seem curious at a time when Translation Studies has ex-
tended far beyond its linguistic roots. Baker explicitly states (p. 4) that the book “at-
tempts to explore some areas in which modern linguistic theory can provide a basis
for training translators and can inform and guide the decisions they have to make”.
The general approach taken is bottom-up, not top-down (5). One result of
this is that most of the chapters revolve around some kind of equivalence (lexi-
cal, grammatical, textual, pragmatic). In practice, this in fact means various kinds
of “non-equivalence”, which is roughly understood as contrastive difference. Yet
there is no theoretical discussion of the problematic concept of equivalence itself,
or of the debates on its interpretation and relevance within Translation Studies;
rather, the concept is assumed to be central, and not challenged or explicitly de-
fined. “Most translators are used to it” (5), Baker writes in justification. True, it
is immediately acknowledged that equivalence is always relative, and often influ-
enced by all kinds of factors, not only linguistic ones, such as cultural and political
conditions and the purpose of the translation. (However, skopos theory itself is not
mentioned in the text.)
A second key concept, which is also presented without much theoretical or
terminological discussion, is that of a translation strategy. The term is taken loose-
ly to mean a kind of solution to a translation problem, a solution that is found in
translations done by professionals. “These strategies are not preconceived, nor are
they suggested as ideal solutions; they are identified by analysing authentic ex-
amples […]” (6). So the perspective is descriptive and problem-based: at different
linguistic levels, various typical contrastive problems are analysed, and possible
translation solutions are illustrated. The range of genres and languages covered

Target 24:1 (2012), 191–193. doi 10.1075/target.24.1.19che

is impressive; English is the source language in most cases, for convenience, and
back-translations are always given.
This focus on problems and strategies for solving them is most consistently
followed in the earlier chapters, on how to reach a reasonable equivalence at the
levels of lexis, the phrase (collocations and idioms), and later at the textual level.
From the translation-theoretical viewpoint, the strategies mentioned are fairly
traditional and include the following. To achieve acceptable equivalence at word
level: generalization, neutralization, cultural substitution, loanword, paraphrase,
omission, non-verbal illustration. To translate idioms: idiom with similar form,
idiom with different form, borrowing, paraphrase, omission. To preserve thematic
structure: voice change, verb change (converse verbs, like buy/sell), nominaliza-
tion, extraposition (cleft and pseudo-cleft structures). — These are all useful and
basic, but one could have wished for more along these lines.
The discourse pattern “problem type > possible translation” serves excellently
to show how problem analysis and the exploration of solutions arrived at by pro-
fessionals can lead to useful insights and generalizations. Yet it is rather lost sight
of in chapters four (on grammatical equivalence), six (on cohesion) and seven (on
pragmatic equivalence), where more attention is given to the linguistic analysis of
the problems themselves than to possible translation solutions. The discussion of
pragmatics leans heavily on Grice and scarcely mentions Gutt or relevance theory,
for instance. One has to infer strategic solutions from the many contrastive and
translation examples given.
At times, the book thus reads more like an introduction to linguistics for trans-
lators. Indeed, the contrast between the occasional depth of linguistic-theoretical
discussion and the relative lack of discussion of translation-theoretical concepts
is sometimes striking. I wondered occasionally how much linguistic knowledge
Baker assumes her readers to have: many basic linguistic concepts (gender, person,
voice, subject and so on) are carefully explained as if they were unfamiliar; but at
the same time space is given to fairly specialized details, such as the attenuation
theory of definiteness marking, or the pros and cons of Halliday’s analysis of the-
matic structure vs. that of the Prague School.
This occasional shift of focus towards linguistic analysis is also evident in the
contrastive data that are explored between quite a few language pairs. The infor-
mation is interesting to a contrastivist, and often to anyone investigating contras-
tive rhetoric, but may seem less relevant to translators not working with the lan-
guages analysed. The contrastive analyses are illustrative rather than systematic.
Some of the examples are delightful: my favourite was the two verbs for going out
into the rain in Indonesian, whose usage depends on whether or not you know it
is raining (19). The examples will certainly sensitize readers to the endless varieties
of the expression of meaning in different languages.
 Book reviews 193

The exercises themselves are well chosen to stimulate thought and encourage
exploration, often raising questions rather than offering answers. This is also a
feature of the welcome new chapter on ethics, which sketches some of the main
theories of ethics and aims to illustrate their relevance to translation. Some of the
examples, however, may seem some distance from the everyday world of most
professional translators (referring for instance to torture or child abduction). Most
of the specifically translational examples come from interpreting: are matters of
ethics more acute there than in written translation, I wonder? The references to
the literature in this chapter are rather selective: no mention is made of important
work on translation ethics by Antoine Berman or Anthony Pym, for instance, or
to the fact that there has been a special issue of The Translator on translation eth-
ics (7:2, 2001), which could surely have been mentioned in the extra reading list.
The book closes with a glossary of linguistic and some ethical-theoretical
terms. Looking back, I feel that the greatest strength of the work lies perhaps in
its examples and exercises, which provide wonderful material for discussion and
analysis.

Reviewer’s address
Andrew Chesterman
Department of Modern Languages,
Unioninkatu 40,
JP 24,
00014 University of Helsinki,
Finland.
[email protected]