Translation activity has a long-standing tradition and has been widely practiced throughout history, but currently, its role has become greatly important. Nowadays, knowledge in cultural exchanges has been increasingly expanding, making international communication more intensive, and making the translation phenomenon has become fundamental.
Translation Studies and Linguistics Perspectives
The present study, from Translation Studies and Linguistics perspectives, has one primary goal: to show the interrelationships between linguistics and translation, and how they benefit from each other. Moreover, the focus of translation studies has shifted away from linguistics to forms of cultural studies. Therefore, the present study attempts to shed some light on the nature and development of the translation studies discipline, to give some indication of the kind of work that has been done so far.
Behind the field of translation lies the names and theories emerging at diverse periods. There are changes in translation history; however, such changes differ from one place to another. For example, those flourishments in the western world are far removed from the eastern part.
Evolution of Translation Theory: Ancient to Modern
Two of the pioneers of the field are Horace and Cicero (first century B.C) whose discussions of translation practice pertain to word-for-word and sense-for-sense translation. Subsequently, such basic trends affect later progressions and advances in the field, exerting a crucial influence up until the twentieth century.
The nineteenth century also knew as the birth of many theories and translations in the domain of literature, especially poetic translation. An example of these translations is the one used by Edward Fitzgerald for Rubalyat Omar Al- Khayyam. In the second half of the 20th century, studies on translation became an important course in language teaching and learning at schools. The period is also characterized by a pragmatic and systematic approach to the study of translation.
The twentieth century signified some remarkable evolution in the development of translation theory, most of which occurred in the period after 1950, but several important contributions were made in the first half of the century. These can be broadly described as “philosophical theories of translation” with Ezra Pound and Walter Benjamin representing the most important thinkers. They had a particular influence on later postmodern and deconstructionist translators and their views were influential upon subsequent theorists such as Lawrence Venuti.
In the mid-twentieth century, a discernible shift in translation theory occurred, with the period which is called a golden age for linguistic equivalence in translation theory. Most notable was Eugene Nida, whose thoughts proved influential to secular theorists as well as biblical scholars. Others working from a linguistic perspective included Roman Jakobson, Jiří Levý, and J. C. Catford. Though initially popular, enthusiasm for linguistic equivalence would diminish later in the twentieth century.
Then, Beginning in the 1970s, translation theorists began to move away from linguistic approaches and develop wider practices that viewed translation from social and political perspectives. These developments coincided with the “cultural turn” associated with the rise of interdisciplinary developments in the humanities and social sciences.
Pioneers of Translation Theory
Some of the most influential linguists of the twentieth century, including Ezra Pound, Walter Benjamin, as well as Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig at the beginning of the century; Roman Jakobson, Jiří Levý, Eugene Nida, and J. C. Catford in the era before the 1970s; as well as George Steiner and Hans Vermeer in the era after the 1970s.
- Ezra Pound varied between domesticating and archaizing strategies, but a consistent theme throughout was his insistence that translation seeks first to absorb and transform the ideas of the source text rather than reproduce a set of words
- Walter Benjamin concluded that a good translation allowed the original voice to shine through achieved not by attempting to emulate the original but by harmonizing with the message of the source text.
- Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig collaborated on a German Bible translation in the 1920s, published in parts from 1933 to 1939, which is never finished. Although sometimes thought to represent a landmark in Bible translation, their views appear to have had little subsequent practical impact on Bible translators, even among German translators.
- Roman Jakobson wrote an essay titled On Linguistic Aspects of Translation in 1959, where he introduced three notions called intralingual translation, interlingual translation, and intersemiotic translation.
- Jiří Levý made theorists begin to recognize that many subsequent ideas such as functionalism, relevance theory, and speakability in drama translation could be found in embryonic form in his studies from the 1960s.
- Eugene Nida was recognized as the most influential theorist of twentieth-century Bible Translation and is best known for the concept of dynamic equivalence.
- J. C. Catford published A Linguistic Theory of Translation, where he attempted to use a Hallidayan and Firthian linguistic model as the basis for a general translation theory.
- George Steiner developed his model of translation with a four-part hermeneutic motion, acknowledged as his best-known contribution and as a paradigm he developed in After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation.
- Hans Vermeer developed Skopos theory, which is known as the best-known of the functionalist approaches
Decades of Development in Translation Theory
The development of translation theory has also continued to develop throughout the twentieth century and is divided into several decades.
A. 1900 – 1930s
During the 1900s to 1930s, the crucial trends were rooted in German literary, philosophical traditions, and hermeneutics, in translation theory. It was considered that language should not be communicative, but constitutive in its representations of thought and reality.
The translation was viewed as an interpretation that necessarily could reconstitute and transforms the foreign text. For scholars such as Schleiermacher and Bolt, translation was considered as a creative force, in which specific translation strategies served a variety of cultural and social functions, paving the way for the construction of nations, literature, and languages.
At the outset of the twentieth century, these ideas were reproduced from the viewpoint of the modernist movement. The significance of this movement was the autonomy of the translation, marking its status as a text in its own right which could be derivative but independent as a work of signification.
Walter Benjamin in his 1923 essay, The Task of the Translator, argued that the aim of a translation should not be to confer to the readers an understanding of the meaning or information content of the original, which was the hallmark of bad translations. Translation should be separably but in conjunction with the original, giving the original ‘continued life’.
Another theorist who is more in line with the German interest is Ezra Pound. In Pound’s view, the autonomy of translation takes two forms. A translated text might be interpretive, written next to the foreign poem and composed of linguistic peculiarities that direct the reader across the page to foreign textual features, or a translation can be original writing in which the target text’s literary standards are an impetus for rewriting the source text poem to seem a new poem.
B. 1940 – 1950s
In the 1940s to 1950s, the prevalent concept is translatability. During this decade, the main issue to be tackled by linguists and literary critics is whether the differences that separate languages and cultures can be brought back to friendship through translation or not.
To achieve this, the impediments to translation are jotted down, to see whether they are surmountable or not, and translation methods are formulated. Ideas are formed by disciplinary trends and change to a great extent, ranging between the extremes of philosophical skepticism and practical optimism.
C. 1960 – 1970s
From the 1960s to 1970s, the main prevailing concept in translation studies was equivalence. When this concept was applied to translation, translation was viewed as a process of communicating with the source text through the creation of an identity relationship. ST. George Mounin (1963) negated the concept of relativity that made translation not feasible and instead draws on the concept of equivalence, arguing that it hinged upon the universals of language and culture.
In this period, it was believed that there were identifiable units in a text which are stable and invariant, with defined units and categories of language which could be broken down. Some scholars who theorize this concept include Werner Koller and Eugene Nida.
D. 1980s
In this decade, Susan Bassnett’s Translation Studies was published. In her book, diverse branches of translation research were combined, marking the resurgence of translation studies as a separate field overlapping with linguistics, literary criticism, and philosophy.
At the same time, problems of cross-cultural communication were in focus. The approach she took to theoretical concepts was historical and understood practical strategies concerning specific cultural and social situations. However, what she accentuated most was the relative autonomy of the translated text.
In this period, translation was viewed as an independent form of writing, distinct from the source text, and texts were originally written in the translating language. The issue of equivalence, as it was prevalent in the previous decade, lost its significance. William Frawly negated the concept of equivalence and argued that translation was a form of communication.
There was information only in difference that made the translation became a code in its own right, with its own rules and standards, though they were derivative of the matrix information and target parameters.
The autonomy of translation as functional is viewed by other scholars as a consequence of the social factors involved in directing the translator’s activity. Justa Holz-Mäntärri (1984), used the term translational action instead of translation, to encompass diverse forms of cross-cultural communication, including translating, paraphrasing, adapting, as well as editing and consulting.
In such cases, the target texts are produced in consultation with the client’s needs to serve a particular purpose in the receiving culture. Here, the question of equivalence is out of the question, and it is the translator who should decide how to produce the text to fulfill the client’s needs.
E. 1990s – Beyond
The 1990s viewed the incorporation of new schools and concepts, with Canadian-based translation and gender research, and postcolonial translation theory, with prominent figures, such as Spivak and Lawrence Venuti, who championed the cause of the translator.
Translation studies in the last decade of the twentieth century established itself as a purely separate discipline, thanks to scholarly publications and worldwide dissemination of translator training programs. A new kind of textbook appeared as well: a book of theories presenting research methodologies to students.
In this decade, translation research progressed with theories and methodologies being prevalent in the previous decade, pursuing trends in such disciplines including polysystem, skopos, and poststructuralism; developments in linguistics, such as pragmatics, critical discourse analysis, and computerized corpora; as well as literary and cultural theory such as postcolonialism, sexuality, and globalization.
Varieties of linguistics remained part of the field, for it was considered that in training translators of commercial, technical, and other sorts of nonfiction text.
In conclusion, translation was an element of language learning before the twentieth century. The studies of the field developed into an academic discipline in the second half of the twentieth century, when this field achieved a certain institutional authority and developed as a distinct discipline.
The theory of translation also developed rapidly in the twentieth century, when a number of linguistic experts emerged and later gave rise to various theories that have influenced translation development. And as this discipline moved towards the present, the level of sophistication and inventiveness did soar and new concepts, methods, and research projects were developed which interacted with this discipline.
Sources:
- Ghanooni, A. R. (2012). A Review of the History of Translation Studies. Theory and Practice in Language Studies, 2(1), 77-85.
- Cheung, A. (2013). A History of Twentieth Century Translation Theory and Its Application for Bible Translation. Journal of Translation, 9(1), 1-15.
- El-dali, H. M. (2011). Towards an understanding of the distinctive nature of translation studies. Journal of King Saud University – Languages and Translation, 23, 29-45.
