1. WHAT IS TRANSLATION STUDIES?
ITS – Power Point 5
10 October 2007 E

2. Brief historical overview
TRANSLATION as an academic subject is only about 50 years old.
Before: T was mainly used for language teaching (thus secondary status in academia)
1960s-1970s: communicative approach in TEFL
1960s-1970s: translation workshop (USA); comparative literature; contrastive analysis
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3. Elena Zagar Galvão - ITS 07 - FLUP
1950s and 1960s: more systematic, scientific (mainly linguistic) approach to T:
e.g., Vinay and Darbelnet (1958), George Mounin (1963); Nida (1964); Catford (1965);
EUGENE NIDA
Toward a Science of Translating, 1964
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4. Eugene Nida (with me and Dr. Hirci) Rome, Università La Sapienza, 2004
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5. Elena Zagar Galvão - ITS 07 - FLUP
TRANSLATION STUDIES
“The name and nature of translation studies” by James S. Holmes ( ), paper given at the translation section of the Third International Congress of Applied Linguistics, Copenhagen, 1972,
– “founding statement for the field” (Gentzler:92)
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6. Elena Zagar Galvão - ITS 07 - FLUP
“[Holmes] realized as did few others that the 1950s had heralded a revolution in translation studies” (van den Broeck, 1988,1994:3)
Holmes highlighted the existence of 3 main impediments to the further development of the discipline:
- scholars and researchers scattered in different fields and therefore lack of common channels of communication;
- “the seemingly trivial matter of the name for this field of research”; van den Broeck, 1988,1994:68)
- “lack of any general consensus as to the scope and structure of the discipline” (ibid.:71)
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7. Elena Zagar Galvão - ITS 07 - FLUP
Holmes concludes that :
the most appropriate name for the discipline in English is TRANSLATION STUDIES (TS), for this term would avoid a lot of “confusion and misunderstanding”;
There should be communication channels able to reach all scholars in the field, from whatever background;
TS can be divided into 2 main research areas:
‘PURE’ ‘APPLIED’
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8. Elena Zagar Galvão - ITS 07 - FLUP
Pure TS has 2 main goals (descriptive and theoretical):
“to describe the phenomena of translating and translation(s) as they manifest themselves in the world of experience” (Descriptive Translation Studies, DTS)
“to establish general principles by means of which these phenomena can be explained and predicted.” (Translation Theory, TTh)
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9. Elena Zagar Galvão - ITS 07 - FLUP
Holmes’s map of TS
Figure 1 Holmes’ conception of translation studies (from Toury 1991:181); in Munday’s book on p.10. Also available at:
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10. The Holmes Map of Translation Studies (1)
James S Holmes’ seminal ‘The Name and Nature of Translation Studies’ (1972) set out to orient the scholarly study of translation. It put forward a conceptual scheme that identified and interrelated many of the things that can be done in translation studies, envisaging an entire future discipline and effectively stimulating work aimed at establishing that discipline. Historically, this was a major step forward, none the least because it involved a frontal attack on the hazy but self-assured categories that had long been used to judge translations.
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11. The Holmes Map of Translation Studies (2)
Holmes’ categories were simple, scientifically framed, and
hierarchically arranged: ‘Applied’ was opposed to ‘Pure’, the latter was
broken down into ‘Theoretical’ and ‘Descriptive’, then ‘Descriptive’
divided in turn into ‘Product Oriented’, ‘Process Oriented’ and ‘Function
Oriented’, and so on. Figure 1 (previous slide) shows the apocryphal
graphic form these categories received later from, I believe, Gideon
Toury, who saw it as a legitimate point of departure (it is also in Toury
1995: 10). Many wonderful things found a place in this map; a few more
have benefited from the modifications and variants proposed since
(notably Lambert 1991, Snell-Hornby 1991, Toury 1991, Toury 1995).
Of course, translation studies cannot be reduced to this one map, and
the map itself has been evolving dynamically, along with the lands it
purports to represent.
from: Intercultural Studies Group, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona, Spain
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12. Elena Zagar Galvão - ITS 07 - FLUP
DESCRIPTIVE TS
DTS focuses on 3 areas of research:
PRODUCT (synchronic; diachronic)
FUNCTION (translation sociology or socio-translation studies)
PROCESS (psychology of translation or psycho-translation studies)
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13. The results of DTS research can then be applied to Tth to develop:
a general theory of translation (very ambitious)
partial theories restricted according to:
Medium
Area
Rank
Text type
Time
Problem
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14. Elena Zagar Galvão - ITS 07 - FLUP
APPLIED TS
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15. Elena Zagar Galvão - ITS 07 - FLUP
APPLIED TS
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16. Elena Zagar Galvão - ITS 07 - FLUP
APPLIED TS
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17. Elena Zagar Galvão - ITS 07 - FLUP
APPLIED TS
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18. Gideon Toury points out that :
Theoretical, descriptive and applied areas of TS influence one another,
BUT
Holmes’s divisions represent a flexibile separation of the various areas of TS, which had very often been confused, thus pointing to the great potential of the discipline.
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19. Elena Zagar Galvão - ITS 07 - FLUP
?????????????
What’s missing in Holmes’s map?
Social networks & working practices: who are the players in the T process / the “translatorial activity” (Holz-Mänttäri,1984) (see Robinson, Fig. 7, 216)
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20. Elena Zagar Galvão - ITS 07 - FLUP
TASK 2
Work in pairs, make notes and be prepared to give feedback to the class:
Is translation theory relevant for practising translators?
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21. Munday: Introducing TS
1. Main issues in TS
2. T until mid-20th century
s: some focus on the receiver: Nida, Newmark, Koller
4. Linguistic models: Catford
s-1980s: Text-type models and skopostheorie (Reiss, Vermeer) ; text-linguistic approach (Nord)
s: discourse-oriented approaches (House, Baker, Hatim, Mason)
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22. Elena Zagar Galvão - ITS 07 - FLUP
7. The Manipulation School (Even-Zohar, Toury)
8. Other cultural approaches (gender TS and post-colonials TS)
9. Invisibility and naturalizing (Berman, Venuti)
10. Philosophical issues:lang and T
11. Interdisciplinary approach to TS: Mary Snell-Hornby’s integrated approach
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23. Elena Zagar Galvão - ITS 07 - FLUP
Think about the following points and be prepared to actively discuss them in class.
Is a graduate or a postgraduate qualification a prerequisite for working as a professional translator in your country?
If someone (individual, company, etc.) needs a translation in your country, how do they go about obtaining it? Try to trace the phases of the process.
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24. Homework REMEMBER to READ:
FOR 10 OCT.
Intro+Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 (The User’s View; The Translator’s View) from Robinson’s Becoming a Translator (BAT).
FOR 11 OCT.
Introducing TS (Munday) Chapter 2
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25. Elena Zagar Galvão - ITS 07 - FLUP
BYE BYE
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