Foreign Translation: The Hermeneutics of Foreignness in Translation Theory (original) (raw)

Exploring Translation Theories

If we set out to describe a translation or an act of translating, the simple description might seem to require no grand theory. In fact, it could be considered too simple to be taken seriously by scholars. Some of the most significant concepts in European translation theory have nevertheless come from what we shall call a broad " descriptive paradigm, " and this chapter describes the ways that paradigm developed in the twentieth century. This background should help connect translation theory to some of the main anti-humanist currents of the day. It is also intended to correct some common misunderstandings, particularly with respect to the many ways the various schools and centers were interconnected. We place some emphasis on the Russian Formalists, even though they did not produce any major works on translation. This is because the key ideas of the Formalists can be traced through various paths throughout the century, reaching several points at which major translation theories did develop. The first connection is with the work done in Prague, Bratislava and, more loosely connected, Leipzig. The second link is with the " Tel Aviv school " (Even-Zohar, Toury and the development of Descriptive Translation Studies). And the third link is through Holland and Flanders. When literary scholars from those three areas met and discussed their projects at a series of conferences, Translation Studies started to take shape as an academic discipline. That is why the history is important—this particular paradigm does not come from the same roots as the others mentioned in this book. The second half of the chapter describes the main concepts used within descriptive studies: translation shifts, systems and polysystems, " assumed translations, " and a focus on the target side. In the next chapter we look more closely at some of the findings that have come from the general descriptive approach. Special thanks to Itamar Even-Zohar, Gideon Toury, Zuzana Jettmarová, Jana Králová and Christina Schäffner for their help and advice with this chapter. The main points covered in this chapter are:-Descriptive Translation Studies developed from a tradition in which objective scientific methods were applied to cultural products.-Those methods were often applied to translation by literary scholars working in smaller cultures.-Rather than prescribe what a good translation should be like, descriptive approaches try to say what translations are like or could be like.

Issues in Translation, Introduction

Renæssanceforum 14, 2018

The present volume brings together several contributions to the question of establishing a dialogue between scholars of premodern translation and some current proponents of translation theory. It is hoped that this will mark an important step in what we believe is a badly needed yet mutually beneficial and enriching exchange between these two groups of specialists.

Theoretical Foundations of Translation Studies

International Journal of English Linguistics, 2016

Epistemologies of translation are a complicated subject that is beyond the scope of this article. As such, only the critical points have been addressed in this paper. One key epistemological issue is the analysis of discourse in any science. In this article, four scenarios of translation studies have been discussed. An underlying concept in translation studies is the issue of fidelity in translation. In this paper, the trajectory of this concept is analyzed in brief. It is followed by a reflection on two fundamental concepts of source oriented (Sources) and target oriented translation approaches, as they occupy a particular position in the translation. The last section of the article investigates dichotomies in the field of translation studies, including the theory of the action, the untranslatability versus translatability, art versus science, and etc. In this paper, we try to study theoretical principles of translatology. So we consider four important speeches of Jean Rene Ladmiral: Prescriptive translatology, Descriptive translatology, Productive translatology, scientific translatology and then we consider faithfulness in translation. Ladmiral suggests two concepts for fidelity in translation: The source oriented (sources) and target oriented. These two concepts are the fundamental concepts in translatology. In the next step the translation science is investigated in various languages such as English, German and at last in French. Finally, we take a look at binary concepts: Theory vs. action, Translatability vs. untranslatability, Art vs. Science. This paper is in epistemology scope of translation and does not have pedagogical aspect, in other words, it is a function-oriented translation.

Rethinking Translation in the 21th Century

2009

In the latest decades the concept of translation has dramatically changed: we have gone from absolute equivalence to a widening of the definition of this field which sometimes reaches unforeseen limits. Translation certainly reflects the kind of society which produces it and, thus, it is hardly surprising that a culture like the western one -contradictory, hybrid and enriched thanks to migration but at the same time burdened with problems arising from cross-cultural clashes -offers a definition of translation as a never-neutral and ethically-complex process. The different current theories provide much help when pondering over these issues and reflect the choices which we, translators, constantly make, our negotiations and the margins of (in)fidelity between which we move, always around a core meaning which is no longer universal.

Paradoxes of Translation: On the Exceedance of the Unspoken

Target: International Journal of Translation Studies, 2021

In this paper I intend to consider what is assumed to be the speculative paradox of translation: that translation is theoretically impossible but actually practicable. My thesis is that this aporia is nothing but a consequence of the limited way in which translation is often conceptualised. In this paper the term translation is to be understood as interlingual translation, unless otherwise indicated; more precisely, as literary translation. In order to present my argument, I will examine three examples of translation, namely: (1) the fictionalisation of the translation process in Nicole Brossard’s novel Le désert mauve; (2) Jean-François Billeter’s translation of a poem by the medieval Chinese poet Su Dongpo; (3) the translation of the words ‘tragedy’ and ‘comedy’ by the fictional character Averroes in a short story written by Jorge Louis Borges. The analysis of these real or fictitious examples of translation will help to introduce the notion of the unspoken as that which cannot be transmuted or recognised as a sign. This ever-present dimension of the translation process will allow us to show that the thesis of fundamental untranslatability is a false aporia, which derives from a reductive understanding of the phenomenon of translation.

The concept of ‘Translation’: history and theory

Logičeskie issledovaniâ, 2013

This article deals with the problem of translations. It covers the history of translation in linguistics and analyzes peculiarities and role of translation in logic. Moreover, the article contains typical examples of embedding operations in terms of different logical theories.

Introduction: A Linguistic 'Re-Turn' in Translation Studies?

Belgian Journal of Linguistics, 2007

In its early, pre-theoretic stage, Western Translation Studies took most of its inspiration from Bible translation study and the study of literature and philosophy. Heated debates concerned the balance between source and target text orientation, matters of loyalty and treason, freedom and literalness. The writings on translation were speculative, or prescriptive, or both. Only the second half of the twentieth century witnessed the advent of Translation Studies (TS) as a descriptive discipline. However, the complexity and multi-facetedness of translation as a research object does not allow descriptive Translation Studies to rely on just one research design or paradigm of general application. The hybrid and in some sense still emerging (inter)discipline of Translation Studies is characterized by trends and changes, giving rise to the "turn" metaphor which is so popular in precisely this research area (cf. Snell-Hornby 2006), as it fits in so well with the concept of a discovery journey with travellers following different and unpredictable paths. When Translation Studies finally set out its project as a descriptive science-the term "Translation Studies" was coined by Holmes in the seventies-many authors defined it as a branch of linguistics. As in the earlier days, it was still the relation between the source text and the target text which was at the forefront, and notions like "procedure" (Vinay-Darbelenet 1958) and "shift" (Catford 1965) became pack and parcel of the discourse on translation, both of them intimately tied up with the muchdebated notion of "equivalence". The early linguistic approaches had a tendency to view the translation operation as primarily a transcoding operation, a narrowing down of the scope which explains much of the criticism levelled against this approach in subsequent years. These years, then, saw a widening of the research scope to functional, cultural, sociological, political and ideological matters, a process reflecting an inside-out movement from the centre to the periphery, much like the recording of an onion peeling being projected backwards. The functional and the cultural moves constituted acts of contextualizing, not only of the translation phenomena in themselves, but also of the whole translation enterprise. The perspective was rightly broadened up by those writers who were pointing at ideology and oppression, and bringing to the fore the translators themselves with the social, professional, ethical, ideological conditions within which they perform their mediating role. Every new layer to be explored in the translation

The Theory of the Imaginaries of Translation

The Imaginaries of Translation, 2019

How can one describe and identify all the characteristics of a translation? How can scholars probe all that exists beyond the translated text? This study proposes new theoretical tools in order to define the “imaginaries of translation” that allow us to understand, on the one hand, the translator’s subjectivity (the imaginaries of translators), and on the other hand, the various conceptions and representations of translation (the imaginaries of translating) involved in the circulation and transmission of texts from one linguistic reality to another. The articles in this volume examine the notion of the imaginary in different European languages and through the prism of the most important translation theories.