Prof. Asif-TRN 1

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TRANSLATION STUDIES

Prepared by:M ASIF IKRAM ANJUM

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Diff b/w General Linguistics &

Applied Linguistics General Linguistics is, primarily, a theory about how

languages work. To put it as simply as possible,whenever another discipline (psychology, sociology,anthropology, business, etc.) is used to solve alanguage question or problem, it can be referred to asapplied linguistics. Fields of study in appliedlinguistics include, but not limited to, secondlanguage acquisition, language testing, languageprogram evaluation, forensic linguistics, discourseanalysis & sociolinguistics. Pure linguistics is moretheoretical, and appied linguistcs is more practical and

testing of the theories.3


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TRANSLATION? The process of translating words or text from one

language into another: "Constantine's translation ofArabic texts into Latin". Translation is an operationperformed on languages: a process of substituting atext in one language for a text in another.

A written or spoken rendering of the meaning of aword, speech, book, or other text, in another language.

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Translation studies is the new academic disciplinerelated to the study of the theory and phenomena oftranslation. By its nature, it is multilingual and alsointerdisciplinary, encompassing languages, linguistics,communication studies, philosophy and a range oftypes of cultural studies.

The practice of translating is long established, but thediscipline of translation studies is new.

In academic circles, translation was previouslyrelegated to just a language-learning activity.

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A split has persisted between translation practice andtheory.

The study of literary translation began throughcomparative literature, translation 'workshops' andcontrastive analysis.

James S. Holmes's 'The name and nature of translation

studies' is considered to be the 'founding statement' ofa new discipline.

The present rapid expansion of the discipline isimportant.


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The term translation itself has several meanings: it canrefer to the general subject field, the product (the text

that has been translated) or the process.

The process of translation between two different

written languages involves the translator changing anoriginal written text (the source text or ST) in theoriginal 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).

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This type corresponds to 'interlingual translation' andis one of the three categories of translation describedby the Czech structuralist Roman Jakobson(1959,2000) in his seminal paper 'On linguistic aspectsoftranslation.

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CATEGORIES OF TRANSLATIONJakobson (1959)'s categories are as follours:

1 Intralingual translation, or 'rewording': 'an

interpretation of verbal signs by means of other signsof 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 ofverbal signs by means of signs of non-verbal sign systems').

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Intralingual translation would occur, for example,when we rephrase an expression or text in the same

language to explain or clarify something we might havesaid or written.

Interlingual translation is the chief concern oftranslation studies.

Intersemiotic translation would occur if a written textwere translated, for example, into music, film orpainting.

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WHAT IS TRANSLATION STUDIES? Throughout history, written and spoken translations

have played a crucial role in interhumancommunication. Yet the study of translation as anacademic subject has only really begun in the past fiftyyears. In the English-speaking world, this discipline isnow generally known as 'translation studies', all theregard goes to the Dutch-based US scholar James S.Holmes (1972).

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By 1988, Mary Snell-Hornby, in the first edition of herTranslation Studies: An Integrated Approach,waswriting that

'the demand that translation studies should be viewedas an independent discipline . . . has come from severalquarters in recent years' (Snell-Hornby 1988).

By 1995, Snell-Hornby is able to talk in the

preface of 'the breathtaking development oftranslation studies as an independent discipline.

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CONFERENCES ON TRANSLATION in

1999-2000

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The rapid proliferation of specialized translating and

interpreting courses at both undergraduate andpostgraduate level was the main cause of the growth oftranslation studies. In the UK, the first specializeduniversity postgraduate courses in interpreting and

translating were set up in the 1960s. In the academicyear 1999-2000, there were at least twentypostgraduate translation courses in the UK and severaldesignated 'Centres of Translation'. Writings on the

subject of translating go far back in recorded history.

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However, although the practice of translating is long

established, the study of the field developed into anacademic discipline only in the second half of thetwentieth century. Before that, translation hadnormally been merely an element of language learning

in modern language courses. In fact, from the lateeighteenth century to the 1960s, language learning insecondary schools in many countries had come to bedominated by what was known as the grammar-translation method. This method, which was appliedto classical Latin and Greek and then to modernforeign languages, centred on the rote study of thegrammatical rules and structures of the foreignlanguage.

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These rules were both practised and tested by thetranslation of a series of usually unconnected and

artificially constructed sentences exemplifying thestructure(s) being studied, an approach that persistseven now-a-days in certain countries and contexts. Thegearing of translation to language teaching and

learning may partly explain why academia consideredit to be of secondary status. Translation exercises wereregarded as a means of learning a new language or ofreading a foreign language text until one had the

linguistic ability to read the original. Study of a work intranslation was generally frowned upon, once thestudent had acquired the necessary skills to read theoriginal.

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However, the grammar translation method fell into

increasing disrepute, particularly in many English-language countries, with the rise of the direct methodor communicative approach to English languageteaching in the 1960s and 1970s. This approach places

stress on students' natural capacity to learn languageand attempts to replicate 'authentic' language learningconditions in the classroom. In the USA, translation -specifically literary translation - was promoted in

universities in the 1960s by the translation workshopconcept. Running parallel to this approach was that ofcomparative literature.

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Another area in which translationbecame the subject of research

was contrastive analysis. This is

the study of two languages incontrast in an attempt to identifygeneral and specific differencesbetween them.

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THE HOLMES-TOURY MAP The name and nature of translation studies by

Holmes is regarded as the basic one in the field oftranslation studies. Gentzler (1993), in hisContemporary Translation Theories, describesHolmes's paper as 'generally accepted as the foundingstatement for the field.

Holmes puts forward an overall framework, describingwhat translation studies covers. This framework hassubsequently been presented by the leading Israelitranslation scholar Gideon Toury as in figure on nextslide.

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According to Holmes (2000), the objectives of the'pure' areas of research are:

(i) the description of the phenomena of translation(descriptive translation theory).

(ii) the establishment of general principles to explainand predict such phenomena (translation theory).

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The 'theoretical' branch is divided into

general and partial theories.

According to Holmes, general is referring to thosewritings that seek to describe or account for every typeof translation and to make generalizations that will berelevant for translation as a whole.

'Partial' theoretical studies are restricted

according to the parameters discussed below.

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The other branch of 'pure' research in Holmes's map isdescriptive.

Descriptive translation studies (DTS) has threepossible foci:

Examination of

(1) the product

(2) the function

(3) the process:

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PRODUCT-ORIENTED DTS It examines existing translations. This can

involve the description or analysis of a single

ST-TT pair or a comparative analysis ofseveral TTs of the same ST (into one or moreTLs). These smaller-scale studies can build

up into a larger body of translation analysislooking at a specific period, language ortext/discourse type.

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Larger-scale studies can be either

diachronic (following development overtime) or synchronic (at a single point orperiod in time).

Holmes foresees that 'one of theeventual goals of product-oriented DTS

might possibly be a general history oftranslations.

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FUNCTION-ORIENTED DTS It means the description of the 'function [of

translations] in the recipient sociocultural situation. Itis a study of contexts rather than texts'. Issues that may

be researched include which books were translatedwhen and where, and what influences they exerted.This area, which Holmes terms 'socio-translationstudies' - but which would now-a-days probably be

called cultural studies- oriented translation - was lessresearched at the time of Holmes's paper but is morepopular in current work on translation studies.

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PROCESS-ORIENTED DTS It is concerned with the psychology of

translation, i.e. it is concerned with trying to

find out what happens in the mind of atranslator. Despite some later work onthink-aloud protocols (where recordings are

made of translators' verbalization of thetranslation process as they translate), this isan area of research which has still not yetbeen systematically analyzed.

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MEDIUM-RESTRICTED THEORIESThese are subdivided according to

translation by machine and humans, with

further subdivisions according to whetherthe machine or computer is working aloneor as an aid to the human translator, to

whether the human translation is written orspoken and to whether spoken translation(interpreting) is consecutive orsimultaneous.

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AREA-RESTRICTED THEORIESThese are restricted to specific

languages or groups of languages

and/or cultures. Holmes notes thatlanguage-restricted theories areclosely related to work in contrastivelinguistics and stylistics.

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RANK-RESTRICTED THEORIESThese are linguistic theories that have

been restricted to a specific level of

(normally) the word or sentence. At thetime Holmes was writing, there wasalready a trend towards text linguistics.

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TEXT-TYPE RESTRICTED THEORIES

Text-type restricted theories look atspecific discourse types or genres; e.g.

literary, business and technicaltranslation. Text-type approaches came toprominence with the work of Reiss and

Vermeer, amongst others, in the 1970s.

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TIME-RESTRICTED THEORIESThe term time-restricted is self-

explanatory, referring to theories and

translations limited according to specifictime frames and periods. The history oftranslation falls into this category.

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PROBLEM-RESTRICTED THEORIES

Problem-restricted theories can referto specific problems such as

equivalence - a key issue of the 1960sand 1970s - or to a wider question of

whether universals of translatedlanguage exist.

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The 'applied' branch of Holmes's framework concerns:

Translator training:

It contains teaching methods, testing techniques,curriculum design;

Translation aids:

Itcontains dictionaries, grammars and informationtechnology;

Translation criticism:

It contains the evaluation of translations, including

the marking of student translations and the reviews ofpublished translations.

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Translation policy

According to Holmes, its also the area of majorconcentration. Here the concern is the place of

translation in society, including what place, if any, itshould occupy in the language teaching and learningcurriculum.

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