IN THIS ISSUE...
Editorial
Translation Studies:
The Next Generation
Ali Darwish
Central Queensland
University
The realization among translation writers
in the past 30 years that translation is a complex system has been
gaining momentum with the globalizing effect of mass communication
technologies and the convergence of cultures in one global media
culture. Characteristically, translation theories have tagged along the
various intellectual changes and human developments elsewhere and
translation theories have reflected the dominant trends of thought of
the day—depending on the prevalent trend of thought at every juncture of
development of human thinking; be it hermeneutics, structuralism,
semiotics, post-structuralism, psychoanalysis, postmodernism, and so on,
a translation model or theory is developed within the limits of these
frames of thought.
Despite the recent shifts in the
theoretical perspectives on translation, Translation Studies continues
to be largely entrenched in abstract theory and embroiled in pointless
argumentation about the validity and legitimacy of approaches and
models. Starting from the assumption that the source language text is
perfect and that it is written by a superior writer who has managed to
utilize all the linguistic skills available to him or her and
communicate his or her intentions clearly and effectively to an assumed
reader, Translation Studies continues to be preoccupied with the notion
of translatability and whether translation is at all possible. This
assumption, which has been reinforced by the notions of fidelity and
adherence to the original and definitions of equivalence, has forced
translation theorists and educators to look for the ideal or perfect
translation for a presumed ideal or perfect original. In the process,
various theoretical frameworks have centered on the dichotomy of debate
about the status of translation as art or science, product or process,
formal or dynamic, source-bound or target-bound, author-centered or
reader-centered and so on. These dichotomies have produced a
double-harness mindset, an eitherorism, which has plagued the
translation debate, and as Bell observes, has been responsible for much
of the stagnation in translation studies.
This issue of Translation Watch
examines these legacy approaches and traces the development of the
discipline by the next generation of translation researchers...
Original Text versus
Translation: A Historical Love-Hate Relationship
Rosa Agost
Universitat Jaume I
Throughout the history of translation the
dichotomy between what is equivalent and what is not, between good
translation and poor translation, and between what is faithful and what is
not, has also been discussed in relation to the considerations regarding
methods of translation. This paper considers different points of view that
range across a scale in both the so-called pre-theoretical period and the
contemporary approaches. These include: faithful belief in equivalence as
absolute identity; considering equivalence as a relationship of similarity
between two texts; considering equivalence to be a relationship of
communicative and functional equivalence; replacing the concept of
equivalence with that of norms and, finally, rejection of the concept of
equivalence in favour of that of difference.
Translation Studies:
Autonomous Discipline versus Interdisciplinary
Mine Yazıcı
Istanbul University
This paper deals with sociological account
of interdisciplinary relations in Turkey. It aims to prove the
contribution of interdisciplinary relations in the development of a
fully-fledged discipline within the framework of Turkey. Accordingly, it
first explains primary relations with literature, linguistics, and
sociology. Next, it discusses the notion of secondary relations in terms
of Translation Studies. In the last section, the findings of a case study
on dissertations between the years 1986 and 2006 are submitted and
evaluated not only to disclose the evolution of Translation Studies from
an interdisciplinary to an autonomous field, but to verify the information
given in previous sections.
On the Dichotomy in
Translation Theories
Shi Aiwei
Xinzhou Teachers University, Shanxi, China
Dichotomy, in its most technical sense,
refers to a division into mutually exclusive or contradictory groups or
entities. It is evident that human beings think in dichotomically, which
seems to be our inherent capacity to do so. If we think this way, then our
language inevitably reflects our thinking by employing binary or
dichotomic concepts. This may well explain the reason why so many pairs of
terms are adopted to discuss and study the world around us as well as all
the fields of our intellectual endeavor. In terms of culture, the same is
true in that binary concepts are introduced in the like manner to discuss
cultural exchanges and how the exchanges take place in the translation
process. Translation studies, one branch of the human pursuit, naturally
cannot do without dichotomy in treating various domains of research.
Score-plus binary terms are employed in this paper to illustrate various
kinds of translation theories, and thanks to them many problems in
translation studies are clarified and explained and translation phenomena
described. In conclusion the paper points out that dichotomy may well
continue to serve us as an indispensable tool in thinking (reasoning and
classifying) and academic (theoretic) studying.
A Cognitive Approach to
Translating Metaphor
Ali R. Al-Hasnawi
Ibri College/ Sultanate of Oman
Translation of ‘metaphor’ has been treated
as part of the more general problem of 'untranslatability'. This trend
builds on the notion that metaphors in general are associated with
'indirectness', which in turn contributes to the difficulty of
translation. Different theories and approaches have been proposed with
regard to metaphor translation, each of which has tackled this problem
from a different point of view.
This paper favors a cognitive framework for
metaphor translation which builds on Cognitive Translation Hypothesis
proposed by Mandelblit (1995). Using authentic examples from English and
Arabic along with their translation, this paper discusses translation of
metaphor with reference to two cognitive schemes of the real world and
cultural experience mapping, namely. The core of this framework builds on
the hypothesis that the more two cultures conceptualize experience in a
similar way, the more the first strategy of 'similar mapping conditions',
applies and then the easier the task of translation.
