AN INTRODUCTION TO TRANSLATION STUDIES rationale for translation studies

CHAPTER 2: TRANSLATION THEORIES I Rationale for Translation studies The study of translation as an academic subject began in the second half of the twentieth century In the English-speaking world, this discipline is now generally known as “translation studies”, thanks to the Dutch-based scholar James S Holmes (1924–1986) There are four reasons explaining why translation studies has become more prominent First, there has been a vast expansion in specialized translating and interpreting programs at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels These programs are mainly oriented towards training future professional commercial translators and interpreters and serve as highly valued entry-level qualifications for the professions Take the example of 2010, the keyword search “translation” revealed over twenty institutions offering a combined total of 143 MA programs These may include MAs in applied translation studies, scientific and technical translation, conference and bilateral interpreting, audiovisual translation, sign interpretation, etc Second, there have been various conferences, books and journals on translation in many languages Longer-standing international translation studies journals such as Babel (the Netherlands) and Meta (Canada), The Translator (UK) in 1995, etc can be accessed online freely There are also various professional publications dedicated to the practice of translation Third, the number of international publications has increased, so has the demand for general and analytical instruments such as anthologies, databases, encyclopedias, and handbooks Their number is ever-growing Among these are Translation Studies (Bassnett 1980), Contemporary Translation Theories (Gentzler, 2001), Introducing Translation Studies (Munday, 2008), etc Fourth, international organizations have also prospered In more recent years, translation studies scholars have banded together nationally and internationally in bodies such as the Canadian Association for Translation Studies (CATS, founded in Ottawa in 1987), the European Association for Studies in Screen Translation (ESIST, Cardiff, 1995), the American Translation and Interpreting Studies Association (ATISA, Kent, OH, 2002) and the International Association of Translation and Intercultural Studies As a result, international conferences on a wide variety of themes are held in an increasing number of countries, leading to the development of translation studies To sum up, from being a relatively quiet backwater in the early 1980s, translation studies has now become one of the most active and dynamic new areas of research encompassing an exciting mix of approaches (Adapted from www.routledgetranslationstudiesportal.com) 15 II Descriptive translation studies (DTS) of Holmes Holmes draws attention to the limitations imposed at the time for this translation studies, and puts forward an overall framework describing what translation studies covers This framework was subsequently presented by the leading Israeli scholar Gideon Toury as in the Figure below Figure 2-1: Holme’s map of Translation studies The descriptive branch of “Pure” research in Holmes‘s map is known as Descriptive translation studies (DTS) It examines: (1) the product; (2) the function; and (3) the process - Product-oriented DTS involves the description or analysis of a single ST–TT pair or a comparative analysis of several TTs of the same ST These smaller-scale studies can build up into a larger body of translation analysis looking at a specific period, language or text/discourse type Examples would be translation in the twenty-first century, in the English-Vietnamese language pair, or of scientific reports - Function-oriented DTS means the description of the function of translations in the recipient sociocultural situations For example, the study of the translation and reception of Shakespeare into European languages, or the subtitling of contemporary cartoon films into Arabic Nowadays it would probably be called the sociology and historiography of translation - Process-oriented DTS is concerned with the psychology of translation, i.e what happens in the mind of a translator Work from a cognitive perspective includes think-aloud protocols (where recordings are made of translators‘verbalization of the translation process as they translate) More recent research using new technologies such as eye-tracking shows how this area is now being more systematically analyzed 16 As regards Partial theories of translation, there are some basic terms: - Medium-restricted DTS subdivide according to translation by medium E.g.: automatic machine translation, computer-assisted translation, consecutive or simultaneous interpretation - Area-restricted DTS are restricted to specific languages, groups of languages, or cultures Language-restricted theories (e.g for the Japanese-English pair) are closely related to work in contrastive linguistics and stylistics - Rank-restricted DTS have been restricted to a level of the words or sentences - Text-type restricted DTS look at discourse types and genres E.g.: literary, business and technical translation - Time-restricted DTS refer to theories and translations limited according to specific time frames and periods E.g.: The history of translation in Vietnam - Problem-restricted DTS refer to certain problems E.g.: Non-equivalence between Vietnamese and English language The ”Applied‘ branch of Holmes‘s framework concerns applications to the practice of translation: - Translator training: teaching methods, testing techniques, curriculum design - Translation aids: dictionaries, grammars, IT applications - Translation criticism: the evaluation of translations, including the marking of student translations and the reviews of published translations (Adapted from “The Name and Nature of Translation Studies” of James S Holmes) 17 ... Descriptive translation studies (DTS) of Holmes Holmes draws attention to the limitations imposed at the time for this translation studies, and puts forward an overall framework describing what translation. .. types and genres E.g.: literary, business and technical translation - Time-restricted DTS refer to theories and translations limited according to specific time frames and periods E.g.: The history... criticism: the evaluation of translations, including the marking of student translations and the reviews of published translations (Adapted from “The Name and Nature of Translation Studies? ?? of James S