INTRODUCING TRANSALTION STUDIES, Jeremy Munday
I.
Translation ← translatio, transferre “to transport”.
Source text ST/source language SL → target text TT/target language TL.
Roman Jakobson describes three categories of translation:
1. Intralingual t., or “rewording” in the same language
2. Interlingual t., ST→TT
3. Intersemiotic t., or “transmutation”, when a written text is translated into a different mode
(music, film…).
Interlingual t. is the traditional focus of t. studies; translation can be better considered as a
prototype classification (Halverson) → adaptation, version, transcreation, localization. The word
chosen for t. in different cultures differs depending on its goal → conceptual orientation and cross-
cultural concept (Tymoczko).
Translation studies began in the second half of the twentieth century ← James S. Holmes (1924-
1986). The practice of t. was crucial for cultural exchange, spreading texts and ideas; it also
became relevant as a part of some academic fields like comparative literature and contrastive
linguistics (the study of two languges in contrast).
Holmes, The name and nature of translation studies: “the founding statement for the field”.
Holmes acknowledged that t. study was dispersed across older disciplines and needed a home of
its own, so identified two pure areas of research:
1. The description of the phenomena of translation → descriptive t. studies DTS
2. The establishment of a t. theory, with its general principle that can be applied and used to
predict such phenomena.
The DTS can be:
1. Product-oriented,
examining existing
translations
2. Function-oriented,
examining the
contexts where
the t. is received
3. Process-oriented,
concerning the
psychology of
translation from a
cognitive
perspective.
