Presentation of the book

The Translation Studies Reader

by

Lawrence Venuti (2000)

London: Routledge, 524 pp.

Chronological sections

1900s-1930s 1940s-1950s 1960s-1970s 1980s 1990s

1900s-1930s Main trends

“The main trends in translation theory during this period are rooted in German literary and philosophical traditions, in Romanticism, hermeneutics, and existential phenomenology. The assume that language is not so much communicative as constitutive in its representation of thought and reality, and so translation is seen as an interpretation which necessarily reconstitutes and transform the foreign text.”

1900s-1930s

Walter Benjamin: The Task of the Translator Ezra Pound: Guido’s relations Jorge Luis Borges: The Translators of The

Thousand and one Nights José Ortega y Gasset: The Misery and

Splendor of Translation

1940s-1950s Main trends

“Translation theory during these decades is dominated by the fundamental issue of translatability. Influential figures in philosophy, literary criticism, and linguistics all consider whether translation can reconcile the differences that separate languages and cultures…”

“…Translation methods are formulated with precision…”

“…Trends vary widely between the extremes of philosophical skepticism and practical optimism…”

1940s-1950s

Vladimir Nabokov: Problems of translation: “Onegin” in English

Jean-Paul Vinay and Jean Darbelnet: A methodology for translation

Willard V.O. Quine: Meaning and Translation Roman Jakobson: On Linguistic Aspects of

Translation

1960s-1970s Main trends

“The controlling concept for most translation theory during these decades is equivalence. Translating is generally seen as a process of communicating the foreign text by establishing a relationship of identity or analogy with it…”

“… The literature on equivalence is fundamentally normative, aiming to provide not only analytical tools to describe translations, but also standards to evaluate them. The universal is then shaped to a local situation…”

1960s-1970s Eugene Nida: Principles of Correspondence J.C. Catford: Translation Shifts Jiri Levy: Translation as a Decision Process Katharina Reiss: Type, Kind and Individuality of Text:

Decision Making in Translation James S. Holmes: The Name and Nature of Translation

Studies George Steiner: The Hermeneutic Motion Itamar Even-Zohar: The position of Translated Literature

within the Literary Polysystem Gideon Toury: The Nature and Role of Norms in Translation

1980s Main Trends

“…Emergence of Translation Studies as a separate discipline, overlapping with linguistics, literary criticism, and philosophy, but exploring unique problems of cross-cultural communication…”

“… The most common theoretical assumption during this period: the relative autonomy of the translated text…”

1980s

Hans J. Vermeer: Skopos and Comission in Translational Action

André Lefevere: Mother Courage’s Cucumbers: Text, System and Refraction in a Theory of Literature

William Frawley: Prolegomenon to a Theory of Translation Philip E. Lewis: The Measure of Translation Effects Antoine Berman: Translation and the Trials of the Foreign Shoshana Blum-Kulka: Shifts of Cohesion and Coherence in

Translation Lori Chamberlain: Gender and the Metaphorics of Translation

1990s Main Trends

“In this decade, translation studies achieves a certain institutional authority, manifested most tangibly by a worldwide proliferation of translator training programs and a flood of scholarly publishing…”

“At virtually the same time, another interdiscipline emerges, cultural studies,… and this brings a renewed functionalism to translation theory, a concern with the social effects of translation and their ethical and political consequences…”

1990s

Annie Brisset: The Search for a Native Language: Translation and Cultural Identity

Ernst-August Gutt: Translation as Interlingual Interpretive use

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak: The Politics of Translation Kwame Anthony Appiah: Thick Translation Basil Hatim and Ian Mason: Politeness in Screen

Translating Keith Harvey: Translating Camp Talk: Gay Identities

and Cultural Transfer Lawrence Venuti: Translation, Community, Utopia

Benjamin: Die Aufgabe des Übersetzers (1926) “No poem is intended for the reader, no picture

for the beholder, no symphony for the listener.” “Is a translation meant for readers who do not

understand the original?” “The relationship between content and language

is quite different in the original and the translation. While content and language form a certain unity in the original, like a fruit and its skin, the language of the translation envelops its content like a royal robe with ample folds.”

The Task of the Translator

“The task of the translator consists in finding that intended effect [Intention] upon the language into which he is translating which produces in it the echo of the original.”

“The intention of the poet is spontaneous, primary, graphic; that of the translator is derivative, ultimate, ideational. For the great motif of integrating many tongues into one true language is at work.”

“…it is not the highest praise of a translation, particularly in the age of its origin, to say that it reads as if it had originally been written in that language.”

“The basic error of the translator is that he preserves the state in which his own language happens to be instead of allowing his language to be powerfully affected by the foreign tongue.”

Ezra Pound (1885-1972): Translating the poet Guido Cavalcanti [1250 – 1300]

“In the long run the translator is in all probability impotent to do all of the work for the linguistically lazy reader. He can show where the treasure lies, he can guide the reader in choice of what tongue is to be studied, and he can very materially assist the hurried student who has a smattering of a language and the energy to read the original text alongside the metrical gloze.”

From Cavalcanti’s Donna mi Prega Onde si move e donde nasce Amore Qual è suo proprio luogo, ov’ei dimora Sustanza, o accidente, o ei memora? E cagion d’occhi, o è voler di cuore? Say what is Love? Whence doth he start Through what be his courses bent Memory, substance, accident A chance of eye or will of heart

Borges: The translators of The Thousand and one Nights (1989) The thousand and one Nights (XIII century) Lane translated against Galland

Galland: good manners Lane: Puritan qualms

Burton translated against Lane Galland (trans. 1704) Lane (trans. 1839) Burton (trans. 1872) Mardrus (trans. 1899): the most truthful

Vinay and Darbelnet: a methodology for translation (1958)

Translators can choose from two methods of translating: Direct or literal translation Oblique translation

Direct and Oblique Procedures

Direct translation: 1.Borrowing: chic (in French); déjà vu (in English) 2.Calque: Science fiction 3. Literal translation: Where are you? Où êtes-vous?

Oblique translation: 4. Transposition: Dès son lever / As son as he gets

up 5. Modulation: It is not difficult to show / il est facile

de démontrer 6. Equivalence: il pleut des cords / It is raining cats

and dogs 7. Adaptation: Le grand Meaulnes / The Wanderer

Quine: radical translation (1960)

“Quine acknowledges that translating does in fact occur on the basis of “regulative maxims” and “analytical hypothesis”. And linguistics rely on them to produce effective dictionaries, grammars and manuals. Still, he argues that none of these translating tools can guarantee a correlation between stimulus and meaning.”

….meaning is seen as conventionally, socially circumscribed, and the foreign text is rewritten according to the terms and values of the receiving culture…

Jakobson: On Linguistic Aspects of Translation (1969) Intralingual translation or rewording Interlingual translation or translation proper Intersemiotic translation or transmutation

Traduttore, traditore: The translator is a betrayer

Translator of what messages? Betrayer of what values?

Nida: Principles of Correspondence (1964) Differences in translations can generally, be

accounted for by three basic factors in translating: 1. The nature of the message 2. The purpose or purposes of the author 3. The type of audience

Two different types of equivalence: Formal: focuses on the message itself Dynamic: based on the principle of “equivalent

effect”

Catford: Translation Shifts (1965)

Departures from formal correspondence in the process of going from the SL (Source Language) to the TL (Target Language) Level Shifts: from grammar to lexis and

viceversa Category Shifts: between sentences, clauses,

groups, words and morphemes

Jiri Levy: translation as a decision process (1965)

“From the teleological point of view, translation is a process of communication”.

“From the point of view of the working situation (that is from the pragmatic point of view) translating is a DECISION PROCESS”

“Translation involves a gradual ‘semantic shifting’ as translators choose from a number of possible solutions”

Reiss: Type, Kind and Individuality of Text. Decision Makind in translation (1971) “Interlingual translation may be defined as a

bilingual mediated process of communication, which ordinarily aims at the production of a TL text that is functionally equivalent to an ST text.”

Changes affecting the translation: Intentional Unintentional

Basic Communicative form realized in the concrete text (text type) The communication of content: informative

type The communication of artistically organized

content: expressive type The communication of content with a

persuasive character: operative type

Holmes: The Name and Nature of Translation Studies (1972)

Steiner: The Hermeneutic Motion (1975) The hermeneutic motion, the act of elicitation

and appropriative transfer of meaning is fourfold: Initiative Trust Agression: incursive and extractive Import of meaning and form: incorporative Reciprocity: in order to restore balance

Itamar Even-Zohar :The Position of Translated Literature within Literary polysystem (1975)

Even Zohar and Gideon Toury:

Literary translations are facts of the target system…

Literature is a “polysystem” of interrelated forms and canons that constitute “norms” constraining the translator’s choices and strategies

Translated literature is a system in its own right

Gideon Toury: Norms in translation (1977)

“The target orientation transforms the concept of equivalence. The “adequacy” of a translation to the source text becomes an unproductive line of enquiry, not only because shifts alwys occur, but because any determination of adequacy… involves the application of a target norm…”

Toury seeks to describe and explain the “acceptability” of the translation in the receiving culture…

It is norms that determine the equivalence manifested by actual translations…

Translation Norms: an overview

Preliminary Norms: Translation policy Operational Norms: Textual segmentation,

text type Translational Norms:

Textual: the translated texts themselves Extra-textual: semi-theoretical or critical

formulations, such as prescriptive “theories” of translation, statements made by translators, editors, publishers, and other persons involved in or connected with the activity…

Vermeer: Skopos and Commission in Translational Action (1978 /1983 ) Target orientation associated with polysystem

theory. The aim of any translational action, and the

mode in which it is to be realized, are negotiated with the client who commissions the action.

The translator is “the” expert in translational action. He is responsible for the performance of th commissioned task, for the final translatum…

One practical consequence of the skopos theory:

“a new concept of the status of the source text for a translation

It is up to the translator to decide, for instance, what role a source text plays in his translational action.

The decisive factor here is the purpose, the skopos, of the communication in a given situation” (Nord 1988:9)

André Lefevere: Text, system and refraction in a theory of literature “Lefevere takes up the seminal work of Even-

Zohar and Toury and redefines their concepts of literary system and norm.

He treates translation, criticism, editing, and historiography as forms of “refraction” or “rewriting”.

Refractions… carry a work of literature over from one system into another and they are determined by such factors as “patronage,” “poetics,” and ”ideology”… [manipulation]”

Frawley: Prolegomenon to a Theory of Translation (1984) “He questions the notion of equivalence as an

“identity” between foreign text and translation If translating is a form of communication,

there is information only in difference, so that a translation is actually a “code in its own right, setting its own standards and structural presuppostions and entailments

Translation means “recodification””

Lewis: The measure of translation effects (1980) Use in translation:1. “To concentrate evaluative attention on moments

of density, and intensity where the play of concepts and expression is affected by the disruptive, disseminatory power of language…

2. to insist on the transformations that the translation carries out, not just on the semantic, but also on syntactic and discursive levels…

3. To ask whether the translation articulates on its own textual effects that are consequentially and tellingly abusive with respect to the original “

Vers la traduction abusive

“The translation will be essayistic, in the strong sense of the word.

Commentary supplies the translation by doing other than translation. In the wake of translation the mission of commentary is to translate in difference.”

Berman: Translation and the Trials of the Foreign “He questions “ethnocentric” translating that

“deforms” the foreign text by assimilating it to the target language and culture

He describes the “deforming tendencies” … in translation… which are largely unconscious:

The textual analysis of translations can be enriched through a psychoanalytical approach…”

Deforming tendencies

1. Rationalization

2. Clarification

3. Expansion

4. Ennoblement and popularization

5. Qualitative impoverishement

6. Quantitative impoverishement

7. The destruction of rhythms

8. The destruction of underlying networks of signification

9. The destruction of linguistic patternings

10. The destruction of vernacular networks or their exotization

11. The destruction of expressions and idioms

12.The effacement of the superimposition of languages

Blum-Kulka: shifts of cohesion and coherence in translation (1986) Discourse specific to translation: explicitation “Translating always increases the semantic

relations among the parts of the translated text, establighing a greater cohesion through explicitness, repetition, redundancy, explanation and other discursive strategies.

She recommends empirical research in reading patterns, psycholinguistic studies of text processing”.

Chamberlain: Gender and metaphorics of translation (1988) “She focuses on gender metaphors that have recurred

in leading translation theorists since the seventeenth century, demonstrating the enormous extent to which a patriarchal model of authority has underwritten the subordinate status of translation…

She suggests her study might be productive for translation studies… in historical research that recovers forgotten translating women, but also in translation projects that are sensitive to ideologically coded foreign writing, wether feminist or masculinist”.

Brisset: Translation and cultural identity (1996) “Translation does not fill a linguistic void. Translation can, however, change the relation

of linguistic forces, at the institutional adn symbolic levels, by making it possible for the vernacular language to take the place of the referential language….”

Four types of language or subcode

1. “A vernacular language: local, spoken spontaneously, less appropriate for communicating than for communing, and the only language that can be considered to be the mother tongue (or native language)

2. A vehicular language: national, regional, learned out of necessity, to be used for communication in the city”

3. “A referential language: tied to cultural, oral, and written traditions, ensures continuity in values by systematic reference to classic works of the past

4. A mythical language: ultimate recourse, verbal magic, whose incomprehensibility is considered to be irrefutable proof of the sacred…”

The task of the translation

“The task of the translation is thus to replace the language of the Other by a native language. Not surprisingly, the native language chosen is usually vernacular…

Translation becomes an act of reclaiming of recentering the identity, a reterritorialization operation”

Gutt: Translation as Interlingual Interpretive use “He models translation on relevance theory:“Faithfulness” in translation is a matter of

communicating an “intended interpretation” of the foreign text through “adequate contextual effects” that avoid “unnecessary processing effort.”

The degree to which the interpretation resembles the foreign text and the means of expressing that interpretation are determined by their relevance to a target readership, their accessibility and ease of processing”.

When you want to inform someone about eg. the contents of a lecture you might: “Try to summarize in a couple of sentences what

I consider to be the main points of the lecture Try to give brief summaries of the main points fo

the lecture Just say: It was about (the topic) Pick out some particular topics of the talk, and

represent in some detail what he said about that, possibly adding some explanations as well

Offer to let him read the full written version of the paper that was handed out”.

Spivak: The Politics of Translation (1992) “The task of the translator is to surrender

herself to the linguistic rhetoricity of theoriginal text.

RAT: reader-as-translator Spivak outlines a poststructuralist conception

of language use… where “rhetoric” continually subverts meanings constructed by “logic” and “grammar””

“Spivak argues that translators of the Third World literatures need this linguistic model because without a sense of rhetoricity of language a species of neocolonialist construction of the non-western scene is afoot.

She criticises western translation strategies that render Third World literatures into a sort of with-it translatese, immediate accesible, enacting a realistic representation of those literatures, but devoid of the linguistic, cultural and geopolitical differences that mark them”.

Appiah: Thick Translation (1993)

“He gives literary translation a political role A literary translation doesn’t communicate the

foreign author’s intentions, but tries to create a relationship to the linguistic and literary conventions of the translating culture that matches the relationship between the foreign text and its own culture”.

A proverb in Twi-language (Ghana) translated into English “Kaka ne éka ne ayafunka fanyinam éka Touthache and indebtedness and stomach

ache, debt is preferable (The most obvious thought suggested by this

proverb is that if one has to choose among evils one should choose the least of them. The proverb is typical of a whole class of proverbs that depend on playing with the similar-sounding names of dissimilar objects)”

Hatim and Mason: politeness in screen translating (1990) Difficulties for the subtitling translator:

1. The shift in mode from speech to writing

2. Factors that govern the medium or channel

3. The reduction of the source text

4. The requirement of matching the visual image

Politeness Theory

“They analyze translated dialogue with politeness theory:a formalization of speech acts by which a speaker maintains or threatens an addressee’s “face,” where “face” is defined as “the want to be inimpeded and the want to be approved of in certain respects.

They explore the impact of translation patterns on an audience’s perception of characterization in film”.

Harvey: Translating Camp Talk (1998)

“He analyzes Camp talk and its homosexual coding in French and English-language texts

A French translator, for instance, omitted the camp in an American novel

An American translator, in contrast, not only reproduced the camp assigned to a character in a French novel, but also recast a seduction scene in homosexual terms”.

“Translation is not just about texts: nor is it only about cultures and power. It is about the relation of the one to the other.

In this respect, translation is not unlike critical linguistics, the branch of contemporary language study that has grown out of the fusion of functional-systemic linguistics and critical theory: relation of textual analysis to the interactional, social and political contexts that produce language forms”.

Venuti: Translation, Community, Utopia (2000) He theorizes translation according to

poststructuralist concepts of language, discourse and subjectivity so as to articulate their relations to cultural difference, ideological contradiction, and social change.

The point of departure is the current situation of English-language translating:

-marginality and exploitation -”prevalence of fluent strategies that make for

easy readability and produce the illusion of transparency, enabling a translated text to pass for the original and thereby rendering the translator invisible”.

“Fluency masks a domestication of the foreign text that is appropriative and potentially imperialistic, putting the foreign to domestic uses which, in British and American cultures, extend the global hegemony of English”