Inglese III - Appunti

Translation studies

Main issues of translation studies

Translation studies is a new academic research that has expanded in recent years, especially the last fifty. Roman Jakobson in his opera “On linguistic aspects of translation” divided translation in 3 categories:

• Intralingual (an interpretation of verbal signs by other signs in the same language)
• Interlingual (classic translation)
• Intersemiotic (or transmutation because it translates in non-verbal signs like music and paint)

There are two very important ways in which this area has become:

• Proliferation of specialized translating
• Interpreting courses at both undergraduate and postgraduate level

New subjects during these years! In the USA, the concept of the translation workshop was promoted in the 1960s about literary translation. They were intended as a platform for the introduction of new translation into the target culture.

In a parallel plane, we have also comparative literature, where literature is studied and compared transnationally and transculturally, necessitating the reading of some literature in translation.

James Holmes

One of the first people that studied this area was James Holmes with his map of translation studies. Holmes drew attention to the limitations of the old studies about translation studies, and he created a sort of “other communication channel.”

It describes the area of translation studies and divides it in 2 different ways: Pure and Applied.

He describes the objectives of this framework (PURE) that are:

• Description of the phenomena of translation (descriptive translation theory), general and descriptive.
• The establishment of general principles to explain and predict such phenomena (translation theory), product-oriented, process-oriented, and function-oriented.

...and APPLIED in translation:

• Translator training
• Translation aids
• Translation criticism

Mr. Holmes’ theory gives the chance to all studies to increase this particular and important linguistic area, the translation.

Translation theory before the twentieth century

This is the pre-linguistic period of translation (about Newmark). In this period, we have an important debate about the translation between:

• Word for word (literal translation)
• Sense for sense (free translation)

This distinction between literal and free goes back to Cicero and St. Jerome.