Lingua inglese III - Translation Studies

Translation studies

The concept of translation

In the first chapter, it is clear the concept of translation. The writer has decided to focus the approach on written translation rather than oral translation (interpreting or interpretation). The term translation can refer to the general field, the product, or the process. The product is the text that has been translated, and the process is the act of producing the translation otherwise known as translating.

There are three categories of translation described by Jakobson Roman, the Russian-American structuralist. They are:

• Intralingual translation, or rewording: an interpretation of verbal signs by means of other signs of the same language. It occurs, for example, when we rephrase an expression or text in the same language to explain or clarify something we might have said or written.
• Interlingual translation or translation proper: an interpretation of verbal signs by means of some other language. It is the process of translation between two different written languages, involving the translator changing an original written text (the source text or ST, in the original verbal language, the source language or SL) into a written text (the target text or TT) in a different verbal language (the target language or TL).
• Intersemiotic translation or transmutation: an interpretation of verbal signs by means of signs of non-verbal sign systems. It occurs if a written text is translated, for example, into music, film, or painting.

What is translation studies?

Written and spoken translations have played a crucial role in interhuman communication, but the study of translation as an academic subject has only really begun in the past fifty years. In the English-speaking world, this discipline is now generally known as translation studies, thanks to the Dutch-based US scholar James S. Holmes, 1972, but translation studies didn't exist as an independent discipline yet.

Now, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, the discipline of translation studies continues to develop from strength to strength across the globe. Translation studies have become more prominent, especially as there has been a proliferation of specialized translating and interpreting courses at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. In the UK, the first specialized university postgraduate courses in interpreting and translating were set up in the 1960s.

In Europe, there is now a network where the British Centre for Literary Translation is studied, practiced, and promoted. Apart from Norwich, these include Amsterdam (the Netherlands), Arles (France), Bratislava (Slovakia), Dublin (Ireland), Rhodes (Greece), Sineffe (Belgium), Strälen (Germany), Tarazona (Spain), and Visby (Sweden). The 1990s saw a proliferation of conferences, books, and journals on translation in many languages.

There are various professional publications dedicated to the practice of translation, as in the UK The Linguist, and other smaller periodicals such as TRANSST (Israel) and BET (Spain), now disseminated through the internet, give details of forthcoming events, conferences, and translation prizes.

A brief history of the discipline

The practice of translation was discussed by Cicero and Horace (first century BCE) and St. Jerome (fourth century CE), and their writings exerted an important influence up until the twentieth century. The translation of the Bibles of St. Jerome from Greek into Latin was, for over a thousand years and especially during the Reformation in the sixteenth century, the battleground of conflicting ideologies in Western Europe. However, although the practice of translating is long established...