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what_is_translation_studies_2008

1. What is Translation Studies?

Translation-language-culture

2. Translation/Translating/ A Translation

A translation must give the words of the original.
A translation must give the ideas of the original
A translation should read like a translation
A translation should read like an original work
A translation may add to, or omit from the original
A translation may never add to, or omit from the original
(T. Savory, The Art of Translation

3.

When we read a work in translation we normally
assume that it is much the same thing as reading the
original, only more convenient. If anyone then challenged us to
explain how a work in one language could still be ‘the same’ in
another, with a different vocabulary, history and spirit, we might go
on to concede that of course it could not be – that translations are
necessarily inferior to original works, as translators are inferior to
original writers; but until all of us can read all languages, translation
will be a necessary evil. This note of resignation in talking about
translations is so common now that it may come as a surprise to
learn that there was a time when translation was regarded as a
creative art, not a feebly parasitic one, and translators and original
writers were not clearly distinguished.
Rosslyn, F (1985), Pope’s Iliad. Bristol: Bristol Classical Press,
p. IX

4. Translation

• What is translation? • What are we studying?
• Art
• Process? ST>TT
• Craft
• Product?
• Science
• Relationship? ST<>TT
TT

5.

6.

L.Tolstoy, Anna Karenin(a) 1877
All happy families are alike but an unhappy family is
unhappy after its own fashion. (Rosemary Edmonds, 1954)
All happy families resemble one another, but each unhappy family is
unhappy in its own way. ( Louise and Aylmer Maude, 1918)
Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is
unhappy in
its own way. (Constance Garnett,
Все счастливые семьи похожи друг на друга, каждая
несчастливая семья несчастлива по-своему.

7. Definitions and Aims 1

• ‘A translation is a valid representative of
the original in the communicative act’
R. De Beaugrande (1978), Factors in a Theory of Poetic
Translation. Assen: Van Gorcum.

8. Definitions and Aims 2

• Übersetzungswissenschaft
‘Translation Studies is to be understood as a collective
and inclusive designation for all research activities
taking the phenomena of translating and translation
as their basis or focus’
(W. Koller, in Holmes)

9. Definitions and Aims 3

To describe the phenomena of translating and
translation(s) as they manifest themselves in the
world of our experience, and
To establish general principles by means of which
these phenomena can be explained and predicted.
(James Holmes)

10. Descriptive Translation Studies

• Product oriented
• Function oriented
• Process oriented
Translation Theory
Partial > hypothsis > axiom > postulate

11. Translation and context

• On 5th September 1607 Hamlet was performed on
board the Dragon, anchored off the coast of Sierra
Leone in West Africa. Among the audience were
African dignitaries following a running paraphrase in
Portuguese. The players did Richard II, too, further
down the coast, before sailing on to India;
unfortunately, there is no record of these Jacobean
precursors of this ‘Shakespeare Wallah’ performing
before the Great Moghul on his marble throne.
(Wood, M (2005), In Search of Shakespeare.
London: BBC Books, p. 330.

12. The purpose of theory

• Can one translate without theory?
• Does theory help to translate?
• What is translation theory?
• How does theory relate to practice?
• Do translators reflect on what they do?

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