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Introducing Translation Studies
'Jeremy Munday's book presents a snapshot of a rapidly developing discip- line in a clear, concise and graphic way. This is a book which raises strong awareness of current issues in the field and will be of interest t o translation trainers and trainees alike.' Basil Hatim, Heriot-Watt University
I n t r o d ~ i c i n ~Translation Studies is an introductory textbook providing an accessible overview of the key contributions to translation studies. Munday explores each theory chapter by chapter and tests the different approaches by applying them to texts. The texts discussed are taken from a broad range of languages - English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Punjahi, Portuguese and Spanish - and English translations are provided.
A wide variety of text types is analyzed, including a tourist brochure, a
children's cookery book, a Harry Potter novel, the Bible, literary reviews and translators' prefaces, film translation, a technical text and a European Parliament speech. Each chapter includes the following features:
a table presenting the key concepts; an introduction outlining the translation theory or theories; illustrative texts with translations; a chapter summary; discussion points and exercises.
Including a general introduction, an extensive bibliography and internet sites for further information, this is a practical, user-friendly textbook that gives a balanced and comprehensive insight into translation studies.
Jeremy Munday is Lecturer in Spanish Studies at the University of Surrey
and is a freelance translator, lexicographer and materials writer. He has a Doctorate in Translation Studies and his publications include a wide range of papers in the field, as well as translations of Latin American fiction.
Introducing
Translation Studies
Theories and applications
Jeremy Munday
London and New York
Contents
List of figures and tables
Acknowledgements
List of abbreviations
Introduction
I Main issues of translation studies
1.1 The concept of translation
1.2 What is translation studies?
1.3 A brief history of the discipline
1.4 The HolmesJToury 'map'
1.5 Developments since the 1970s
1.6 Aim of this book and a guide to chapters
2 Translation theory before the twentieth century
2.0 Introduction
2.1 'Word-for-word' or 'sense-for-sense'?
2.2 Martin Luther
2.3 Faithfulness, spirit and truth
2.4 Early attempts at systematic translation theory: Dryden,
Dolet and Tytler
2.5 Schleiermacher and the valorization of the foreign
2.6 Translation theory of the nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries in Britain
2.7 Towards contemporary translation theory
xi
xiii
XV
3 Equivalence and equivalent effect 3 5
3.0 Introduction 35
3.1 Roman Jakobson: the nature of linguistic meaning and
equivalence 36
3.2 Nida and 'the science of translating' 37
viii CONTENTS CONTENTS^ ix
3.3 Newmark: semantic and communicative
translation
3.4 Koller: Korrespondenz and Aquivalenz
3.5 Later developments in equivalence
4 The translation shift approach
4.0 Introduction
4.1 Vinay and Darbelnet's model
4.2 Catford and translation 'shifts'
4.3 Czech writing on translation shifts
4.4 Van Leuven-Zwart's comparative-descriptive model of
translation shifts
5 Functional theories of translation
5.0 Introduction
5.1 Text type
5.2 Translational action
5.3 Skopos theory
5.4 Translation-oriented text analysis
6 Discourse and register analysis approaches
6.0 Introduction
6.1 The Hallidayan model of language and discourse
6.2 House's model of translation quality assessment
6.3 Baker's text and pragmatic level analysis: a coursebook
for translators
6.4 Hatim and Mason: the semiotic level of context and
discourse
6.5 Criticisms of discourse and register analysis approaches
to translation
7 Systems theories
7.0 Introduction
7.1 Polysystem theory
7.2 Toury^ and descriptive translation studies
7.3 Chrsterman's translation norms
7.4 Other models of descriptive translation studies:
Lambert and van Gorp and the Manipulation School
8 Varieties of cultural studies 126
8.0 Introduction
8.1 Translation as rewriting
8.2 Translation and gender
8.3 Postcolonial translation theory
8.4 The ideologies of the theorists
9 Translating the foreign: the (in)visibility of translation 144
9.0 Introduction 144
9.1 Venuti: the cultural and political agenda of translation^145
9.2 Literary translators' accounts of their work^152
9.3 The power network of the publishing industry 153
9.4 Discussion of Venuti's work 155
9.5 The reception and reviewing of translations 156
10 Philosophical theories of translation
10.0 Introduction
10.1 Steiner's hermeneutic motion
10.2 Ezra Pound and the energy of language
10.3 The task of the translator: Walter Benjamin
10.4 Deconstruction
I I Translation studies as an interdiscipline 18 1
11.0 Introduction 181
11.1 Discipline, interdiscipline or sub-discipline? 182
11.2 Mary Snell-Hornby's 'integrated approach' 183
11.3 Interdisciplinary approaches 187
11.4 The future: co-operation or fragmentation? 190
Appendix: internet links
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the follou~ingcopyright holders for giving permis- sion to reproduce the following: Figure 1.1, reproduced from G. Toury, Descriptive Translation Studies - And Beyond, copyright 1995, Amsterdam and Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins. Figure 3.1, reproduced from E. Nida and C. R. Taber, The Theory and Practice of Translation, copyright 1969, Leiden: E. J. Brill. Figure 5.1, reproduced from A. Chesterman (ed.), Readings in Translation Theory, copyright 1989, Helsinki: Finn Lectura; based on a hand- out ~ r e ~ a r e dby Roland Freihoff; permission kindly granted by the author. Table 5.1, adapted from K. Reiss, Moglichkeiten und Cjrenzen der Ubersetzung- skritik, copyright 1971, Munich: M. Hueber. Figure 6.2, reproduced from J. House, Translation Quality Assessment: A Model Revisited, copyright 1997, Tiibingen: Gunter Narr. Figure 11.1, reproduced from M. Snell-Hornby, Translation Stud~es:A n Integrated Approach, copyright 1995, Amsterdam and Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins. The case study in chapter 8 is a revised and abridged version of an article of mine: 'The Caribbean conquers the world? An analysis of the reception of Garcia Marquez in translation', published in Bulletin of Hispanic Studies,
I am sincerely indebted to Professor Lawrence Venuti for his encourage- ment with this project and for his detailed comments and suggestions on earlier drafts of the book. He has assisted considerably in sharpening and strengthening the focus and in pointing out errors and inaccuracies. Responsibility for the final version is, of course, mine alone. My thanks also go to Dr Rana Nayar (Reader, Department of English at Panjab University, Chandigarh, India) for his assistance with the case study in chapter 9, to my colleagues at the Universities of Bradford and Surrey for their support during the writing of this book, and to my students at Bradford, on whom some of the materials in this book have been 'tested'. I would also like to express my gratitude to Louisa Semlyen and Katharine Jacobson at Routledge, who have been very supportive and professional both in the early stages of the project and throughout the writing and editing process. Finally, warm thanks to my family and friends who have had to put up with me writing away on the computer instead of relaxing with them,
xiv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
especially to my brother Chris in France and everyone in Madrid and Mallorca. Most of all, thanks to Cristina, whose love and help were so List of abbreviations important during the writing of this book. Jeremy Munday London, September 2000
BCE Before Common Era CE Common Era DTS descriptive translation studies SL source language ST source text TL target language TT target text
2 INTRODUCTION INTRODUCTION^3
translation that are relevant both for those engaged in the academic study of translation and for the professional linguist. Each of the chapters surveys a major area of the discipline. They are designed to be self-standing, so that readers with a specific focus can quickly find the descriptions that are of most interest to them. However, conceptual links between chapters are cross-referenced and the book has been struc- tured so that it can function as a coursebook in translation, translation stud- ies and translation theory. There are eleven chapters, each of which might be covered in one or two weeks, depending on the length of the course, to fit into a semesterized system. The discussion and research points additionally provide substantial initial material for students to begin to develop their own research. The progression of ideas is also from the introductory (presenting the main issues of translation studies in chapter 1) to the more complex, as the students become more accustomed to the terminology and concepts. In general, the progression is chronological, from pre-twentieth century theory in chapter 2 to linguistic-oriented theories (chapters 3-6 passim) and to recent developments from cultural studies such as postcolonialism
(chapter 8).
Clarity has been a major consideration, so each chapter follows a similar format of: an introductory table clearly presenting key terms and ideas; the main text, describing in detail the models and issues under discussion; an illustrative case study, which applies and evaluates the main model of the chapter; suggestions for further reading; a brief evaluative summary of the chapter; a series of discussion and research points to stimulate further thought and research. Just like the readers listed above, this volume has had to be selective. The theorists and models covered have been chosen because of their strong influ- ence on translation studies and because they are particularly representative of the approaches in each chapter. Exclusion of much other worthy material has been due to space constraints and the focus of the book, which is to give a clear introduction to a number of theoretical approaches. For this reason, detailed suggestions are given for further reading. These are designed to encourage students to go to the primary texts, to follow up ideas that have been raised in each chapter and to investigate the research that is being carried out in their own countries and languages. In this way, the book should ideally be used in conjunction with the readers mentioned above and be supported by an institution's library resources. An attempt has also been made to refer to many works that are readily available, either in
recent editions or reprinted in one of the anthologies. A comprehensive
bibliography is provided at the end of the book, together with a small list of
useful websites, where up-to-date information on translation studies confer- ences, publications and organizations is to be found. The emphasis is on encouraging reflection, investigation and awareness of the new discipline, and on applying the theory to both practice and research. A major issue has been the choice of languages for the texts used in the illustrative case studies. There are examples or texts from English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish. Some additional examples are
: a P n
0 given from Dutch, Punjabi and Russian. Yet the case studies are written in
such a way as to focus on the theoretical issues and should not exclude those unfamiliar with the specific language pairs. A range of text types is offered,
including the Bible, Beowtllf, the fiction of Garcia Marquez and Proust,
European Union and Unesco documents, a travel brochure, a children's
cookery book and the translations of Harry Potter. Film and dialect transla- tion, in French, German and Punjabi, are also covered. In addition, the inten- tion is for some short supplementary illustrative texts, in other languages, to be available on the Routledge internet site for the use of students studying other languages.
(see http://www.routledge.com/textbooks/its.html). Above all, my hope is
that this book will contribute to the continued development of translation studies by helping and encouraging readers new to the field to pursue their interest in this dynamic discipline.
1 Main issues of translation studies
Key concepts The practice of translating is long established, but the discipline of translation studies is new. In academic circles, translation was previously relegated t o just a language-learning activity. A split has persisted between translation practice and theory. The study of (usually literary) translation began through comparative literature, translation 'workshops' and contrastive analysis. James S. Holmes's 'The name and nature of translation studies' is considered t o be the 'founding statement' of a new discipline. The present rapid expansion of the discipline is important.
Key texts Holmes, J. S. ( 1 988b12000) 'The name and nature of translation studies', in L.Venuti (ed.) (2000), pp. 172-85. Jakobson, R. (195912000) 'On linguistic aspects of translation', in L. Venuti (ed.) (2000), pp. 1 1 3-1 8. Leuven-Zwart, K. van and T. Naaijkens (eds) (1 99 1 ) Translation Studies: State of the Art. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Toury, G. (1991) 'What are descriptive studies in translation likely t o yield apart from isolated descriptions!', in K.van Leuven-Zwart and T. Naaijkens (eds) ( 199 I),pp. 179-92.
1. I The concept of translation
The main aim of this book is to introduce the reader to major concepts and
models of translation studies. Because of the rapid growth in the area,
particularly over the last decade, difficult decisions have had to be taken
regarding the selection of material. It has been decided, for reasons of
space and consistency of approach, to focus on written translation rather
than oral translation (the latter is commonly known as interpreting or
interpretation).
The term translation itself has several meanings: it can refer to the general
subject field, the product (the text that has been translated) or the process
WHAT IS TRANSLATION STUDIES?
(the act of producing the translation, otherwise known as translating). The
process of translation between two different written languages involves the
translator changing an original written text (the source text or ST) in the original verbal language (the source language or SL) into a written text (the target text or TT) in a different verbal language (the target language or TL). This type corresponds to 'interlingual translation' and is one of the
three categories of translation described by the Czech structuralist Roman
Jakobson in his seminal paper 'On linguistic aspects of translation' Uakobson
195912000: 114).Jakobson's categories are as follours:
1 intralingual translation, or 'rewording': 'an interpretation of verbal
signs by means of other signs of the same language';
2 interlingual^ translation, or 'translation proper':^ 'an interpretation of
verbal signs by means of some other language';
3 intersemiotic translation, or 'transmutation': 'an interpretation of
verbal signs by means of signs of non-verbal sign systems').
Intralingual translation would occur, for example, when we rephrase an
expression or text in the same language to explain or clarify something we
might have said or written. Intersemiotic translation would occur if a written
text were translated, for example, into music, film or painting. It is interlin-
gual translation which is the traditional, although by no means exclusive,
focus of translation studies.
1.2 What is translation studies?
Throughout history, written and spoken translations have played a crucial
role in interhuman communication, not least in providing access to import-
ant texts for scholarship and religious purposes. Yet the study of translation
as an academic subject has only really begun in the past fifty years. In the
English-speaking world, this discipline is now generally known as 'transla-
tion studies', thanks to the Dutch-based US scholar James S. Holmes. In his
key defining paper delivered in 1972, but not widely available until 1988
(Holmes 1988b/2000), Holmes describes the then nascent discipline as being
concerned with 'the complex of problems clustered round the phenomenon
of translating and translations' (Holmes 1988bl2000: 173). By 1988, Mary
%ell-Hornby, in the first edition of her Translation Studies: An Integrated
Aphoach, was writing that 'the demand that translation studies should be
viewed as an independent discipline... has come from several quarters in
recent years' (Snell-Hornby 1988). By 1995, the time of the second, revised,
edition of her work, Snell-Hornby is able to talk in the preface of 'the
breathtaking development of translation studies as an independent discip-
line' and the 'prolific international discussion' on the subject. Mona Baker,
in her introduction to The Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation (1997a), talks
effusively of the richness of the 'exciting new discipline, perhaps the discip-
line of the 1990s', bringing together scholars from a wide variety of often
MAIN ISSUES OF TRANSLATION STUDIES
classical Latin and Greek and then to modern foreign languages, centred on the rote study of the grammatical rules and structures of the foreign language. These rules were both practised and tested by the translation of a series of usually unconnected and artificially constructed sentences exemplifying the structure(s) being studied, an approach that persists even nowadays in certain countries and contexts. Typical of this is the following rather bizarre and decontextualized collection of sentences to translate into Spanish, for the practice of Spanish tense use. They appear in K. Mason's Advanced Spanish Course, still to be found on some secondary school courses in the UK: 1 The castle stood out against the cloudless sky.
2 The peasants enjoyed their weekly visits to the market.
3 She usually dusted the bedrooms after breakfast.
4 Mrs Evans taught French at the local grammar school.
(Mason 1969174: 92)
The gearing of translation to language teaching and learning may partly explain why academia considered it to be of secondary status. Translation exercises were regarded as a means of learning a new language or of reading a foreign language text until one had the linguistic ability to read the original. Study of a work in translation was generally frowned upon once the student had acquired the necessary skills to read the original. However, the grammar- translation method fell into increasing disrepute, particularly in many English-language countries, with the rise of the direct method or communi- cative approach to English language teaching in the 1960s and 1970s. This approach places stress on students' natural capacity to learn language and attempts to replicate 'authentic' language learning conditions in the class- room. It often privileges spoken over written forms, at least initially, and tends to shun the use of the students' mother tongue. This focus led to the abandoning of translation in language learning. As far as teaching was con- cerned, translation then tended to become restricted to higher-level and uni- versity language courses and professional translator training, to the extent that present first-year undergraduates in the UK are unlikely to have had any real practice in the skill. In the USA, translation - specifically literary translation - was promoted in universities in the 1960s by the translation workshop concept. Based on I. A. Richards's reading workshops and practical criticism approach that began in the 1920s and in other later creative writing workshops, these translation workshops were first established in the universities of Iowa and Princeton. They were intended as a platform for the introduction of new translations into the target culture and for the discussion of the finer prin- ciples of the translation process and of understanding a text (for further discussion of this background, see Gentzler 1993: 7-18). Running parallel to this approach was that of comparative literature, where literature is studied and compared transnationally and transculturally, necessitating the reading
A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE DISCIPLINE 9
Jean-Paul Vinay and Jean Darbelnet produced their Stylistiqztr comparie du franFaiset de l'anglais (1958), a contrastive approach that categorized what they saw happening in the practice of translation between French and English; Alfred Malblanc (1963) did the same for translation between French and German; Georges Mounin's Les problimes thioriques de la tradz~ction (1963) examined linguistic issues of translation; Eugene Nida (1964a) incorporated elements of Chomsky's then fashion- able generative grammar as a theoretical underpinning of his books, which were initially designed to be practical manuals for Bible translators.
of some literature in translation. This would later link into the growth of
This more systematic and 'scientific' approach in many ways began to mark out the territory of the academic investigation of translation. The word 'science' was used by Nida in the title of his 1964 book (7'ou:arda Science of Translating, 1964a); the German equivalent, '~bersetzungswissenschaft',was taken up by Wolfram Wilss in his teaching and research at the Universitiit des Saarlandes at Saarbriicken, by Koller in Heidelberg and by the Leipzig
courses of the cultural studies type (these are described below). Another area in which translation became the subject of research was contrastive analysis. This is the study of two languages in contrast in an attempt to identify general and specific differences between them. It developed into a systematic area of research in the USA from the 1930s
n s 9, R ( 1
onwards and came to the fore in the 1960s and 1970s. Translations and translated examples provided much of the data in these studies (e.g. Di Pietro 1971, James 1980). The contrastive approach heavily influenced other studies, such as Vinay and Darbelnet's (1958) and Catford's (1965), which overtly stated their aim of assisting translation research. Although useful, contrastive analysis does not, however, incorporate sociocultural and prag- matic factors, nor the role of translation as a communicative act. Neverthe- less, the continued application of a linguistic approach in general, and specific linguistic models such as generative grammar or functional grammar (see chapters 3 , 5 and 6), has demonstrated an inherent and gut link with translation. While, in some universities, translation continues to be studied
as a module on applied linguistics courses, the evolving field of translation
studies can point to its own systematic models that have incorporated other linguistic models and developed them for its own purposes. At the same time, the construction of the new7 discipline has involved moving away from considering translation as primarily connected to language teaching and learning. Instead, the new focus is the specific study of what happens in and around translating and translation. The more systematic, and mostly linguistic-oriented, approach to the study of translation began to emerge in the 1950s and 1960s. There are a number of now classic examples:
10 MAIN ISSUES OF TRANSLATION STUDIES THE^ HOLMESTTOURY 'MAP'^ I^ I
school, where scholars such as Kade and Neubert became active. At that time, even the name of the emerging discipline remained to be determined, with candidates such as 'translatology' in English - and its counterparts 'translatologie' in French and 'traductologia' in Spanish - staking their claim.
1.4 The HolmeslToury 'map' A seminal paper in the development of the field as a distinct discipline was James S. Holmes's 'The name and nature of translation studies' (Holmes 1988b12000). In his Contemporary Translation Theories, Gentzler (1993: 92) describes Holmes's paper as 'generally accepted as the founding statement for the field'. Interestingly, in view of our discussion above of hour the field evolved from other disciplines, the published version was an expanded form of a paper Holmes originally gave in 1972 in the translation section of the Third International Congress of Applied Linguistics in Copenhagen. Holmes draws attention to the limitations imposed at the time by the fact that transla- tion research was dispersed across older disciplines. He also stresses the need to forge 'other communication channels, cutting across the traditional discip- lines to reach all scholars working in the field, from whatever background' (1988bl2000: 173). Crucially, Holmes puts forward an overall framework, describing what translation studies covers. This frameurork has subsequently been presented by the leading Israeli translation scholar Gideon Toury as in figure 1.1. In
Figure I.I Holmes's 'map' of translation studies (from Toury 1995: 10)
Translation studies
c
'Pure' 'Applied'
A
theoretical descriptive
general partial orientedproduct orientedprocess orientedfunction translatortraining A translationaids translationcriticism
medium area rank text-type time problem restricted restricted restricted restricted restricted restricted
Holmes's explanations of this framework (Holmes 1988bl2000: 176-81), the objectives of the 'pure' areas of research are:
1 the description of the phenomena of translation (descriptive translation theory); 2 the establishment of general principles to explain and predict^ such phenomena (translation theory). The 'theoretical' branch is divided into general and partial theories. By 'general', Holmes is referring to those writings that seek to describe or account for every type of translation and to make generalizations that will be relevant for translation as a whole. 'Partial' theoretical studies are restricted according to the parameters discussed below. The other branch of 'pure' research in Holmes's map is descriptive. Descriptive translation studies (DTS) has three possible foci: examination of (1) the product, (2) the function and ( 3 ) the process:
1 Product-oriented^ DTS^ examines existing translations. This can involve the description or analysis of a single ST-TT pair or a comparative analysis of several TTs of the same ST (into one or more TLs). These smaller-scale studies can build up into a larger body of translation analysis looking at a specific period, language or textldiscourse type. Larger-scale studies can be either diachronic (following development over time) or synchronic (at a single point or period in time) and, as Holmes (p. 177) foresees, 'one of the eventual goals of product-oriented DTS might possibly be a general history of translations - however ambitious such a goal might sound at this time'. 2 By function-oriented DTS, Holmes means the description of the 'func- tion [of translations] in the recipient sociocultural situation: it is a study of contexts rather than texts' (p. 177). Issues that may be researched include which books were translated when and where, and what influ- ences they exerted. This area, which Holmes terms 'socio-translation studies' - but which would nowadays probably be called cultural- studies-oriented translation - was less researched at the time of Holmes's paper but is more popular in current work on translation studies (see chapters 8 and 9). (^3) Process-oriented DTS in Holmes's framework is concerned with the psychology of translation, i.e. it is concerned with trying to find out what happens in the mind of a translator. Despite some later work on think-aloud protocols (where recordings are made of translators' verbal- ization of the translation process as they translate), this is an area of research which has still not yet been systematically analyzed. The results of DTS research can be fed into the theoretical branch to evolve either a general theory of translation or, more likely, partial theories of translation 'restricted' according to the subdivisions in figure 1. above.
MAIN ISSUES OF TRANSLATION STUDIES
under the title of 'interpreting studies'. Additionally, as Pym points out
(1998: 4), Holmes's map omits any mention of the individuality of the style,
decision-making processes and working practices of human translators involved in the translation process.
1.5 Developments since the 1970s The surge in translation studies since the 1970s has seen different areas of Holmes's map come t o the fore. Contrastive analysis has fallen by the way- side. The linguistic-oriented 'science' of translation has continued strongly in Germany, but the concept of equivalence associated with it has declined. Germany has seen the rise of theories centred around text types (Reiss; see chapter 5) and text purpose (the skopos theory of Reiss and Vermeer; see chapter 5), while the Hallidayan influence of discourse analysis and systemic functional grammar, which views language as a communicative act in a socio- cultural context, has been prominent over the past decades, especially in Australia and the UK, and has been applied t o translation in a series of works by scholars such as Be11 (1991), Baker (1992) and Hatim and Mason (1990, 1997). The late 1970s and the 1980s also saw7 the rise of a descriptive approach that had its origins in comparative literature and Russian Formal- ism. A pioneering centre has been Tel Aviv, where Itamar Even-Zohar and Gideon Toury have pursued the idea of the literary polysystem in which, amongst other things, different literatures and genres, including translated and non-translated works, compete for dominance. The polysystemists have worked with a Belgium-based group including Jose Lambert and the late Andri. Lefevere (who subsequently moved to the University of Austin, Texas), and with the UK-based scholars Susan Bassnett and Theo Hermans. A key volume was the collection of essays edited by Hermans, The Manipula- tion of Literature: Studies in Literary Translation (Hermans 1985a), which gave
rise to the name of the 'Manipulation School'. This dynamic, culturally
oriented approach held sway for much of the following decade, and linguistics looked very staid. The 1990s saw the incorporation of new schools and concepts, with Canadian-based translation and gender research led by Sherry Simon, the Brazilian cannibalist school promoted by Else Vieira, postcolonial transla- tion theory, with the prominent figures of the Bengali scholars Tejaswini Niranjana and Gayatri Spivak and, in the USA, the cultural-studies-oriented analysis of Lawrence Venuti, who champions the cause of the translator. For years, the practice of translation was considered to be derivative and secondary, an attitude that inevitably devalued any academic study of the activity. Now, after much neglect and repression, translation studies has become well established. It is making swift advances worldwide, although not without a hint of trepidation. Translation and translation studies often con- tinue to take place within the context of modern language departments, and the practice of translation is still often denied parity with other academic
AIM OF THIS BOOK AND A GUIDE TO CHAPTERS
1.6 Aim of this book and a guide to chapters Translation studies covers an extremely wide field, in which a considerable number of scholars and practitioners are active. Many translators have entered the area from the starting point of more traditional disciplines. This book covers major areas of the now established discipline of translation studies, with particular reference to systematic translation theories and models of contemporary importance. It aims to bring together and clearly Summarize the major strands of translation studies that have previously been dispersed, in order to help readers acquire an understanding of the discipline and the necessary background and tools to begin to carry out their own research on translation. It also aims to a theoretical framework into which professional translators and trainee translators can place their own practical experience. The book is organized as follows. Chapter 2 describes some of the major issues that are discussed in writings about translation up to the middle of the twentieth century. This huge range over two thousand years, beginning with Cicero in the first century BCE, focuses on the 'literal vs. free' translation debate, an imprecise and circular debate from which theorists have emerged only in the last fifty years. The describes some of the classic writings on translation over the years, making a selection of the most well-known and readily available sources. It aims t o initiate discussion on some of the key issues.
Chapter 3 deals with the concepts of meaning, equivalence and 'equivalent
effect'. Translation theory in the 1960s under Eugene Nida shifted the emphasis to the receiver of the message. This chapter encompasses Nida's
research. For example, the research assessment exercise in the UK (a formal (^) fi external audit and evaluation of individuals' and departments' research out- put) still values academic articles higher than translations, even translations of whole books, notwithstanding the fact that the practice of translation must be an essential experience for the translation theorist and trainer.
'
(D 1 It was precisely this split between theory and practice that Holmes, him- I self both a literary translator and a researcher, sought to overcome. The early manifestations and effects of such a split are clearly expressed by Kitty van Leuven- wart (1991: 6). She describes translation teachers' fear that theory would take over from practical training, and literary translators' views that translation was an art that could not be theorized. O n the other hand, aca- demic researchers were 'very sceptical' about translation research or felt that translation already had its place in the modern languages curriculum. Van Leuven- wart's paper is contained in the proceedings of the First James S. Holmes Symposium on Translation Studies, held at the Department of Translation Studies of the University of Amsterdam in December 1990 in memory of Holrnes's contribution to the subject. The breadth of contribu- tions to the emphasizes the richness of linguistic, literary and historical approaches encompassed by the field.
16 MAIN^ ISSUES^ OF TRANSLATION STUDIES^ DISCUSSION AND RESEARCH POINTS^17
generative-influenced model of translation transfer and his concepts of for- mal equivalence and dynamic equivalence. Newmark's similarly influential categories of semantic translation and communicative translation are also discussed, as is Koller's analysis of equivalence.
Chapter 4 details attempts that have been made to provide a taxonomy of
the linguistic changes or 'shifts' which occur in translation. The main model described here is Vinay and Darbelnet's classic taxonomy, but reference is also made to Catford's linguistic model and van Leuven-Zwart's translation shift approach from the 1980s. Chapter 5 covers Reiss and Vermeer's text-type and skopos theory of the 1970s and 1980s and Nord's text-linguistic approach. In this chapter, translation is analyzed according to text type and function in the TL culture, and prevailing concepts of text analysis - such as word order, information structure and thematic progression - are employed. Linked closely to the previous chapter, chapter 6 moves on to consider House's register analysis model and the development of discourse-oriented approaches in the 1990s by Baker and Hatim and Mason, who make use of Hallidayan linguistics to examine translation as communication within a sociocultural context. Chapter 7 investigates systems theories and the field of target-oriented 'descriptive' translation studies, following Even-Zohar, Toury and the work of the Manipulation School. Chapter 8 examines varieties of cultural studies approaches in translation studies. These start with Lefevere's work of the 1980s and early 1990s - which itself arose out of a comparative literature and Manipulation School background - and move on to more recent developments in gender studies and translation (in Canada) and to postcolonial translation theories (in India, Brazil and Ireland). The chapter then focuses on a case study of translation from Asia. Chapter 9 follows Berman and Venuti in examining the foreign element in translation and the 'invisibility' of the translator. The idea is explored that the practice of translation, especially in the English-speaking world, is con-
sidered to be a derivative and second-rate activity, and that the reva ailing
method of translation is 'naturalizing'. The role of literary translators and publishers is also described. Chapter 10 investigates a selection of philosophical issues of language and translation, ranging from Steiner's 'hermeneutic motion', Pound's use of archaisms, Walter Benjamin's 'pure' language, and Derrida and the deconstruction movement. Chapter 11 sets out an interdisciplinary approach to translation studies. It discusses Snell-Hornby's 'integrated approach' and looks at recent studies that have combined linguistic and cultural analysis. The future of translation studies and the role of modern technologies, including the internet, are also discussed.
Discussion and research points
Summary of the present chapter
Translation studies is a relatively new academic research area that has expanded explosively in recent years. While translation was formerly studied as a language-learning methodology or as part of comparative literature, translation 'workshops' and contrastive linguistics courses, the new discip-
I H o w is the practice of translation (and interpreting) structured in your own country? H o w many universities offer first degrees in the subject? H o w many postgraduate courses are there? H o w do they differ? Is a postgraduate qualification a prerequisite for working as a professional translator? 2 Find out how research-based translation studies fits into the university system in your country. H o w many universities offer 'translation studies' (or similar) courses? In what ways do they differ from o r resemble each other? In which university departments are they housed?What do you conclude is the status of translation studies in your country?
3 What specific research in translation studies is being carried out in your country? H o w
do you find out? Is the work being carried out by isolated researchers o r by larger and CO-ordinatedgroups? How, if at all, would it fit in with Holmes's 'map' of translation studies? (^4) Trace the history of translation and translation studies in your own country. Has the focus been mainly on the theory o r on the practice of translation? W h y do you think this is so?
n s
4 tD T I line owes much to the work of James S. Holmes, whose 'The name and nature of translation studies' proposed both a name and a structure for the field. The interrelated branches of theoretical, descriptive and applied trans- lation studies have structured much recent research and have assisted in bridging the gulf that had grown between the theory and practice of translation.
PRE-TWENTIETHCENTURY TRANSLATION THEORY
Horace, who, in a short but famous passage from his Ars Poetica (20 BCE?),' underlines the goal of producing an aesthetically pleasing and creative text in the TL, had great influence on the succeeding centuries. Thus, St Jerome, the most famous of all translators, cites the authority of Cicero's approach to justify his own Latin translation of the Greek Septuagint Old Testament. Jerome's translation strategy is formulated in De opt~mogenere interpretandi, a letter addressed to the senator Pammachius in 395 CE.' In perhaps the most famous statement ever on the translation process, St Jerome, defending him- self against criticisms of 'incorrect' translation, describes his strategy in the following terms:
Now I not oply admit but freely announce that in translating from the Greek -
exceut of course in the case of the Holy Scripture, where even the syntax contains a mystery - I render not word-for-word,but sense-for-sense.
(St Jerome 395 CEi1997: 25)
Although some scholars (e.g. Lambert 1991: 7) argue that these terms have
been m i ~ i n t e r ~ r e t e d , ~Jerome's statement is now usually taken to refer to what came t o be known as 'literal' (word-for-word') and 'free' (sense-for- sense) translation. Jerome disparaged the word-for-word approach because, by following so closely the form of the ST, it produced an absurd transla- tion, cloaking the sense of the original. The sense-for-sense approach, on the other hand, allowed the sense or content of the ST t o be translated. In these poles can be seen the origin of both the 'literal vs. free' and 'form vs. content' debate that has continued until modern times. To illustrate the concept of the TL taking over the sense of the ST, Jerome uses the military image of the original text being marched into the TL like a prisoner by its conqueror (Robinson 1997b: 26). Interestingly, however, as part of his defence St Jerome stresses the special mystery of both the meaning and syntax of the Bible, for t o be seen to be altering the sense was liable t o bring a charge of heresy. Although St Jerome's statement is usually taken t o be the clearest expres- sion of the 'literal' and 'free' poles in translation, the same type of concern seems t o have occurred in other rich and ancient translation traditions such as in China and the Arab world. For instance, Hung and Pollard use similar terms when discussing the history of Chinese translation of Buddhist sutras from Sanskrit (see box 2.1). Although the vocabulary of this description (such as the gloss on 'yiyi') shows the influence of modern western transla- tion terminology, the general thrust of the argument is still similar t o the CiceroISt Jerome poles described above. Aesthetic and stylistic consider- ations are again noted, and there appear to be the first steps towards a rudi- mentary differentiation of text types, with non-literary STs being treated differently from literary TTs. The 'literal' and 'free' poles surface once again in the rich translation tradition of the Arab world, which created the great centre of translation in Baghdad. There was intense translation activity in the Abbasid period
'WORD-FOR-WORD'OR 'SENSE-FOR-SENSE'? 21
Box 2.
Sutra translation provided a fertile ground for the practice and discussion of differ- ent translation approaches. Generally speaking, translations produced in the first phase [eastern Han Dynasty and the Three Kingdoms Period (c. 14&265)] were word-for-word renderings adhering closely t o source-language syntax. This was probably due not only t o the lack of bilingual ability amongst the [translation] forum participants, but also t o a belief that the sacred words of the enlightened should n o t be tampered with. In addition t o contorted target-language syntax, transliteration was used very liberally, with the result that the translations were fairly incompre- hensible t o anyone without a theological grounding.The second phase [Jin Dynasty and the Northern and Southern Dynasties (c.265-589)] saw an obvious swing towards what many contemporary Chinese scholars call yiyi (free translation, for lack of a better term). Syntactic inversions were smoothed out according t o target language usage, and the drafts were polished t o give them a high literary quality. Kumarajiva was credited as a pioneer of this approach. In extreme cases, the polish- ing might have gone t o o far,and there are extant discussions of how this affected the original message. During the third phase [Sui Dynasty,Tang Dynasty and Northern Song Dynasty (c.589-1 loo)], the approach t o translation was t o a great extent dominated by Xuan Zang, who had an excellent command of both Sanskrit and Chinese,and who advocated that attention should be paid t o the style of the original text: literary polishing was not t o be applied t o simple and plain source texts. H e also set down rules governing the use of transliteration, and these were adopted by many of his successors. (Hung and Pollard 1997: 368)
(750-1250), centred on the translation into Arabic of Greek scientific and philosophical material, often with Syriac as an intermediary language (Delisle and Woodsworth 1995: 112). The Egyptian-born translation scholar Baker (1997a: 320-1)' following Rosentha1(1965/94), describes the two trans- lation methods that were adopted during that period: The first [method], associated with Yuhanna Ibn al-Batriq and Ibn NaLimaal-Himsi, was highly literal and consisted of translating each Greek word with an equivalent Arabic word and, where none existed, borrowing the Greek word into Arabic. (Baker 1997a: 320-1) This word-for-word method proved to be unsuccessful and had to be revised using the second, sense-for-sense method: The second method, associated with Ihn IshBq and al-Jawahari,consisted of trans- lating sense-for-sense, creating fluent target texts which conveyed the meaning of the original without distorting the target language. (Baker 199ia: 121) Once again, the terminology of this description is strongly influenced by the classical western European discourse o n translation; vet, this does not negate the visibility in the Arab culture of the two poles of translation which
22 PRE-TWENTIETHCENTURY TRANSLATION THEORY FAITHFULNESS.^ SPIRIT^ AND TRUTH^23
were identified by Cicero and St Jerome. O f course, there are also other ways of considering the question. Salama-Carr (Delisle and Woodsworth 1995: 112-15) concentrates more on the way translation approaches 'helped estab- lish a new system of thought that was to become the foundation of Arabic- Islamic culture - both on the conceptual and terminological levels' with, over the years, the increased use of Arab neologisms rather than translitera- tion. Arab translators also became very creative in supplying instructive and explanatory commentaries and notes.
2.2 Martin Luther Within Western society, issues of free and literal translation were for over a thousand years after St Jerome bound up with the translation of the Bible and other religious and philosophical texts. The preoccupation of the Roman Catholic Church was for the 'correct' established meaning of the Bible to be transmitted. Any translation diverging from the accepted inter- pretation was likely to be deemed heretical and to be censured or banned. An even worse fate lay in store for some of the translators. The most famous example is that of the French humanist Etienne Dolet. He was burned at the stake having been condemned by the theological faculty of Sorbonne University in 1546, apparently for adding, in his translation of one of Plato's dialogues, the phrase rlen du tout ('nothing at all') in a passage about what existed after death. The addition led to the charge of blasphemy, the asser- tion being that Dolet did not believe in immortality. For such a translation 'error' he was executed. Non-literal or non-accepted translation came to be seen and used as a weapon against the Church. The most famous example of this is Martin Luther's crucially influential translation into East Middle German of the New Testament (1522) and later the Old Testament (1534). Luther p l a ~ e da pivotal role in the Reformation while, linguistically, his use of a regional yet socially broad dialect went a long way to reinforcing that form of the Ger- man language as standard. In response to accusations that he had altered the Holy Scriptures in his translations, Luther defended himself in his famous Sendbrief vorn Dolrnetschen ('Circular Letter on Translation') of 1530 (Luther 153011963).' One particularly famous criticism levelled at Luther echoes that of Dolet. It centres around Luther's translation of Paul's words in Romans 3:28: Arbitramus hominem iustiticari ex fide absque operibus. Wir halten, dall der Mensch gerecht werde ohne des Gesetzes Werk, allein durch den ~3lauben.' [We hold, that man becomes rectified without the work of the Ian; only through belief.] Luther had been heavily criticized by the Church for the addition of the word ullein ('alonelonly'), because there was no equivalent Latin word
(e.g. sola) in the ST. The charge was that the German implies that the individual's belief is sufficient for a good life, making 'the work of the law' (i.e. religious law) redundant. Luther counters by saying that he was translating
into 'pure, clear German',' where allein would be used for emphasis.
Luther follows St Jerome in rejecting a word-for-word translation strategy since it would be unable to convey the same meaning as the ST and would sometimes be incomprehensible. An example he gives is from Matthew
Ex abundantia cordis os loquitur.
The English King James version translates this literally as: O u t of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh. Luther translates this with a common German proverb: Wes der Herz voll ist, des geht der mund ubec This idiom means 'to speak straight from the heart'. While Luther's treatment of the free and literal debate does not show any real advance on what St Jerome had written eleven hundred years before, his infusion of the Bible with the language of ordinary people and his con- sideration of translation in terms focusing on the TL and the TT reader were crucial. Typical of this is his famous quote extolling the language of the people: You must ask the mother at home, the children in the street, the ordinary man in the market [sic] and look at their mouths, how they speak, and translate that way; then they'll understand and see that you're speaking to them in German.'' From that time onwards, the language of the ordinary German speaks clear and strong, thanks to Luther's translation.
2.3 Faithfulness, spirit and truth Flora Amos, in her Early Theones of Translat~on,sees the history of the theory of translation as 'by no means a record of easily distinguishable,
orderly progression' (Amos 1920173: x). Theory was generally unconnected;
it amounted to an albeit broad series of prefaces and comments by practi- tioners who often ignored, or were ignorant of, most of what had been written before. One explanation for this is the following: This lack of consecutiveness in criticism is probably partially accountable for the slou~nesswith which translators attained the power t o put into u~ords,clearly and unmistakably, their aims and methods. (Amos, 192017 1: x) For instance, Amos notes (p. xi) that early translators often differed con- siderably in the meaning they gave to terms such as 'faithfulness', 'accuracy' and even the word 'translation' itself.
