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Teoras de traduccin Taller de traduccin II

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Departamento Ingls.
4 ao Materia: Taller de traduccin II. Profesoras: Di Giacinti, Cristina Garrini, Alejandra Alumnas: Bazn, Roco Cicerchia, Valentina Miguel Stoll, Roco Moya, Eleana

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ndice
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Introduccin: El modelo de Eugene Nida El modelo de Peter Newmark El modelo de Christiane Nord El modelo de Mary Snell- Hornby Bibliografa

3 6 13 19 33 39

Teoras de traduccin Taller de traduccin II Introduccin

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La Traductologa (el estudio de la traduccin como disciplina acadmica) comienza a partir del mapa de Traductologa presentado por James S. Holmes (1972, 1988). Hasta entonces, en el medio acadmico, la traduccin era utilizada para ensear lenguas extranjeras (grammar translation method). Este mtodo fue abandonado, as como el uso de la lengua materna del estudiante en el aula de lengua extranjera, a medida que se iba consolidando la utilizacin del mtodo comunicativo como metodologa de la enseanza de lenguas extranjeras en los aos 60 y 70. La palabra Traduccin se refiere tanto a la disciplina, como al producto y al proceso, que involucran texto y lengua fuente, y texto y lengua meta. El tratado de Schleiermacher ber die verschiedenen Methoden des

bersetzens ('Sobre los diferentes modos de traducir') (1813), basado en el mtodo hermenutico, se encuentra al origen de la consolidacin de la Traductologa como disciplina. En los aos 60, Eugene Nida desarroll un enfoque 'cientfico' de la traduccin, lo que llev a que conceptos como significado, equivalencia y traducibilidad, se convirtieran en temas de constante discusin en el campo terico de la traduccin. A pesar de haber recibido fuertes crticas, este enfoque se diferencia del enfoque lingstico tradicional, en la medida en que establece el concepto de equivalencia dinmica, basado en el principio de efecto equivalente (Nida 1964). La introduccin de estos conceptos realza la importancia de la recepcin del texto traducido e influencia autores como Newmark, en Gran Bretaa, Wolfram Wills (bersetzungswissenschaft 1977), Otto Kade y Albert Neubert en Alemania. Otro trabajo importante realizado en Alemania y que sigue el concepto de equivalencia de Nida es el de Katharina Reiss (1970). Reiss categoriza los textos, segn su funcin, en informativos, expresivos, operativos y audiomediales, teniendo en cuenta la intencin comunicativa de los textos a traducir. Desarrolla con Vermeer la teora del Skopos (Reiss and Vermeer 1984), un enfoque funcionalista, que parte del concepto griego de skopos (meta). El libro de Christiane Nord Functionalist Approaches Explained (1997), es una traduccin al ingls de los postulados tericos defendidos por esta escuela. Otra obra de Nord Text Analysis in Translation (1988/91), ha sido utilizada para la formacin de traductores en el medio acadmico. En lo que se refiere al anlisis textual, el libro de Mona Baker In Other Words: A coursebook on Translation (1992), trata la funcin textual en situaciones comunicativas; esta obra tambin ha sido utilizada para la formacin de traductores.

Con el fin de ampliar la comprensin del proceso de traduccin, los enfoques prescriptivos comienzan a ser reemplazados por otros de carcter descriptivo. Itamar

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Even-Zohar (1970), estableci la teora de los polisistemas, de la cual Gideon Toury tom los elementos que fundamentaran sus DTS (Descriptive Translation Studies) (1980). Este enfoque, propone el anlisis de textos literarios, considerando la literatura como un sistema cultural, que tiene en cuenta la situacin histrica, cultural y social del texto. Aparecen entonces nuevas consideraciones sobre la equivalencia uno-auno, la identidad fija del texto original, as como la importancia de los sistemas culturales en la actividad traductiva. Esto permite que se d el 'giro cultural' en la traductologa (Lefevere and Bassnett). Los estudios postcolonialistas lanzan un nuevo debate en traductologa. Centrados en la relacin entre la cultura del colonizado y el poder del colono, han servido como base terica para los trabajos de autores como Tejaswini Niranjana, para quien el traductor debe 'intervenir' el texto traducido; como Haroldo de Campos (enfoque canibalstico), que relaciona colonizacin y traduccin; de Campos ha sido influenciado por Ezra Pound y por Walter Benjamin (Benjamin 'Die Aufgabe des bersetzers' / La tarea del traductor, 1923, traducido al espaol por H.A. Murena en 1967). La preocupacin del trabajo de Venuti, The Translator's invisibility (1995), ha sido la de hacer visible el trabajo del traductor en la cultura receptora. Venuti utiliza el texto de Schleiermacher "ber die verschiedenen Methoden des bersetzens", para definir el concepto de extranjerizacin o minorizacin del texto traducido, con el fin de que la figura del traductor salga a la superficie. Para minimizar los problemas de traduccin debidos a la prueba por la que pasan tanto la cultura receptora como el texto fuente, como lo expone en su 'analtica negativa', Berman propone en su libro L'preuve de l'tranger (1984), una 'analtica positiva', que involucra una tendencia tica del acto traductivo, consistente en 'recibir lo extranjero como extranjero'. La traduccin se convierte entonces en un proceso crtico que desplaza el texto fuente, en la medida en que se da el movimiento entre los sistemas interculturales involucrados. El enfoque bermaniano es de caractersticas filosficas, como es la orientacin de Steiner (1975/98), con su desplazamiento hermenutico, y como lo son los movimientos postestructuralistas y postmodernos, tales como la deconstruccin (Derrida), enfoques que cuestionan el lenguaje y el significado. De esta manera, la investigacin en Traductologa requerir una metodologa interdisciplinaria que buscar conocer los elementos que forman parte del acto traductivo y que se han hecho visibles gracias al pensamiento filosfico y postcolonialista sobre la traduccin y la cultura.

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According to Newmark, a translation theory's main concern is to determine appropriate translation methods for the widest possible range of texts or text-categories. Further, it provides a framework of principles, restricted rules and hints for translating texts and criticizing translations, a background for problem-solving. Thus, an institutional term (MP") or a metaphor (the stone died" (see Levin, 1977)) or synonyms in collocation or metalingual terms may each be translated in many ways, if it is out of context; in these areas, the theory demonstrates the possible translation procedures and the various arguments for and against the use of one translation rather than another in a particular context. Note that translation theory is concerned with choices and decisions, not with the mechanics of either the source language (SL) or the target language (TL). When Catford (1965) gives a list of words that are grammatically singular in one language and plural in another, he may be helping the student to translate, he is illustrating contrastive linguistics, but he is not contributing to translation theory. Lastly, translation theory attempts to give some insight into the relation between thought, meaning and language; and the universal, cultural, and individual aspects of language and behavior, the understanding of cultures; the interpretation of texts that may be clarified and even supplemented by way of translation. Thus translation theory covers a wide range of pursuits, attempts always to be useful, to assist the individual translator both by stimulating him to write better and to suggest points of agreement on common translation problems. Assumptions and propositions about translation normally arise only from practice, and should not be offered without examples of originals and their translations. Further, translation theory alternates between the smallest detail, the significance (translation) of dashes and hyphens, and the most abstract themes, the symbolic power of a metaphor or the interpretation of a multivalent myth.

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Eugene Nida (November 11, 1914 August 25, 2011)

Teoras de traduccin Taller de traduccin II Eugene A. Nida was the developer of the

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dynamic-equivalence Bible-

translation theory. He was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma on November 11, 1914. In 1937, Nida undertook studies at the University of Southern California, where he obtained a Masters Degree in New Testament Greek in 1939. In 1943, Nida received his Ph.D. in Linguistics from the University of Michigan and he married Althea Lucille Sprague. In 1997, Nida married Dr. Mara Elena Fernandez-Miranda, a lawyer and diplomatic attach. Nida retired in the early 1980s, although he kept on giving lectures in universities all around the world, and lived in Madrid, Spain and Brussels, Belgium. He died in Madrid on August 25, 2011 aged 96. Nida has been a pioneer in the fields of translation theory and linguistics. His most notable contribution to translation theory is Dynamic Equivalence, also known as Functional Equivalence. Nida also developed the "componential-analysis" technique, which split words into their components to help determine equivalence in translation (e.g. "bachelor" = male + unmarried).

The Theory and Practice of Translation (TAPOT) - (Brill, 1969, with C.R. Taber) Nida himself stresses that the book makes no pretensions to be a definitive volume and emphasises that there will be changes, especially ones that would be brought about by future developments in semantics. And yet the book is full of insights that struck readers as perceptive and innovative. In a discussion of Nidas work for a modern Translation Studies audience, one must include some notes of caution: (a) Some of his terminology differs from modern scholarly usage, (b) There have been major upheavals in Translation Studies (some of them caused by Nidas work itself) that have changed the field, and (c) Many of his observations have been taken too uncritically or too literally by other scholars and have thus been interpreted in contexts beyond their original ones. Directionalities and the core meaning

Nida points out that actual Bible translation comprises four combinations of directions in translation: 1. Translating from ones mother tongue into an acquired language; 2. Translating from an acquired language into ones mother tongue; 3. Translating from one mother tongue to another (complete bilingualism); and 4. Translating from one acquired language into another acquired language.

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Nida explicitly states that the first option is typical of most missionary work; that the second is decidedly preferable; that (with modifications) the third is almost as good as the second; and that the fourth one is the least satisfactory. These combinations are not unheard of in translation work, but hardly in that order. In other words, some of the language combinations discussed are rare outside special fields (such as Bible translation). Nidas conclusions are based on unusual circumstances and will not result in translations that can be easily compared.

The translation process

In this model, Nida divides the translation process into a decoding phase and an encoding phase in between the transfer of the message (M) from the source to the target language (A to B). This model is clear and makes sense in a number of ways. A) In the history of translation, the Bible has very often been translated by a sourcelanguage speaker into the target language (from his mother tongue (A) into his foreign language (B)); this version would often be edited and written in correct target language by a target-language speaker. B) The illustration also breaks down the translation process into a series of components. This makes sense when we envisage a translator who picks up a source text, reads it and then translates it. Conversely, professional translators and advanced translation students usually have automated processes, in that they can plunge into a source text and swiftly render it into the target language, possibly with one or two checks on unfamiliar words. C) It is highly relevant that Nidas book was published at a time when the recruitment of interpreters and translators was undergoing rapid and fundamental change. Professional interpreters debated whether interpreters were born or taught; born mediators required little or no training (which was good), whereas taught ones demanded training (which was not quite as good). Toward a Science of Translating also paved the way for subsequent serious work in Translation Studies, including other genres, new approaches, and other modes of transfer.

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Equivalence and literature Literary translators have always made their own adaptations, often to the horror of scholars and students who happened to check them in detail in thesis work. There is no reason to deny that a literary translators rendition is affected by her personality, her status, and her background knowledge, or to put it in linguistic terms: her idiolect, sociolect and use of the potential of the target-language system.

En tiempos pasados, lo importante en la traduccin era la forma del mensaje, mientras que en la actualidad preocupa la reaccin del receptor, por lo que ser correcta si el lector medio al que va destinada es capaz de entenderlo correctamente lo que implica que debemos estar seguros de que va a captar el mensaje de hecho. De este modo puede haber varias traducciones correctas, pero si se quiere que todos tengan las mismas oportunidades para entenderlo, se necesitan distintos niveles de traduccin en vocabulario y estructuras gramaticales ya que cuando un elevado porcentaje de personas entiende mal el mensaje no se trata de una traduccin legitima.

Cada lengua posee su genio peculiar, sus rasgos distintivos que le dan un carcter peculiar, por lo que utilizar sus posibilidades expresivas con la disposicin de realizar cambios formales de acuerdo con la estructura de la lengua receptora. Todo lo que se dice en una lengua se puede decir en otra, a menos que la forma sea un elemento esencial del mensaje, donde chocamos con una limitacin para trasvasarlo ya que su sentido suele ser irreproducible y debemos sacrificar ciertas finuras formales en favor del contenido. Esta diversidad de las lenguas que provoca que haya que cambiar la forma, depender de la distancia lingstica y cultural, ya que las transiciones ms sencillas son las que tienen lugar entre dos lenguas estrechamente emparentadas, otras que entraen mltiples diferencias en la visin del mundo, obligan a alternar ms las estructuras gramaticales y lxicas, siendo an ms acentuado si las lenguas representan culturas totalmente distintas.

La traduccin consiste en reproducir, mediante una equivalencia natural y exacta, el mensaje de la lengua original a la lengua receptora, primero en cuanto al sentido y despus en cuanto al estilo. Debe intentar ante todo, reproducir el mensaje, lo que suele exigir una serie de operaciones gramaticales y lxicas; el traductor debe buscar una equivalencia, siempre natural, es decir, que no parezca que se trata de una traduccin, aunque teniendo en cuenta el contexto histrico y exacta. Hay que dar prioridad al sentido, aunque implique apartarse de la estructura formal y sin olvidar la

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importancia del estilo, teniendo en cuenta que es imposible reproducir ciertas sutilezas del original como los juegos de palabras, poemas acrsticos o unidades rtmicas y que hay que guardar las equivalencias no funcionales. Lo necesario es conseguir una equivalencia funcional tanto en el plano del contenido como en el estilo.

UN Hay que

SISTEMA tener presente

DE estos

PRIORIDADES fundamentos:

- La conformidad contextual prevalece sobre la verbal. Dado que en las distintas lenguas no son idnticos los mbitos semnticos de palabras correspondientes, la eleccin de la palabra exacta depende ms del contexto. Esta prioridad se funda en que cada lengua abarca la totalidad de la experiencia con smbolos o signos verbales y en que cada una de stas difiere de las dems en la manera de clasificar dichos elementos en un sistema.

- La equivalencia dinmica prevalece sobre la correspondencia formal, ya que el objetivo es que los receptores reaccionen del mismo modo que los que lo recibieron en la lengua original.

- Las formas de la lengua hablada prevalecen sobre las de la escrita - Las formas utilizadas y aceptadas por el auditorio prevalecen sobre las tradicionalmente ms prestigiosas, Esta nueva forma de concebir la traduccin exige, nuevas tcnicas sobre todo en materia de anlisis.

TRADUCCIONES

BUENAS

MALAS

La traduccin correcta, posee equivalencia dinmica en cuanto que se reestructura la forma para mantener el mismo sentido. La comprobacin ltima debe fundarse en la exactitud con que los receptores entienden el mensaje del original, la facilidad de comprensin y la implicacin de experiencias personales como resultado de la propiedad formal.

Toward a Science of Translating (Brill, 1964)

Different types of translations Differences in translations can generally be accounted for by three basic factors in translating: (1) the nature of the message, (2) the purpose or purposes of the author and, by proxy, of the translator, and (3) the type of audience. Messages differ primarily in the degree to which content or form is the dominant consideration. But even the contents of a message may differ widely in applicability to

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the receptor language audience. The particular purposes of the translator are also important factors in dictating the type of translation. Of course, it is assumed that the translator has purposes generally similar to, or at least compatible with, those of the original author, but this is not necessarily so. In addition to the different types of messages and the diverse purposes of translators, one must also consider the extent to which prospective audiences differ both in decoding ability and in potential interest. Decoding ability in any language involves at least four principal levels: (1) the capacity of children, whose vocabulary and cultural experience are limited; (2) the doublestandard capacity of new literates, who can decode oral messages with facility but whose ability to decode written messages is limited; (3) the capacity of the average literate adult, who can handle both oral and written messages with relative ease; and (4) the unusually high capacity of specialists (doctors, theologians, philosophers, scientists, etc.), when they are decoding messages within their own area of specialization. Prospective audiences differ not only in decoding ability, but perhaps even more in their interests. Two basic orientations in translating Since there are, properly speaking, no such things as identical equivalents, one must in translating seek to find the closest possible equivalent. However, there are fundamentally two different types of equivalence: one which may be called formal and another which is primarily dynamic. Formal equivalence focuses attention on the message itself, in both form and content. Viewed from this formal orientation, one is concerned that the message in the receptor language should match as closely as possible the different elements in the source language. Such a translation would require numerous footnotes in order to make the text fully comprehensible. In contrast, a translation which attempts to produce a dynamic rather than a formal equivalence is based upon the principle of equivalent effect. A translation of dynamic equivalence aims at complete naturalness of expression, and tries to relate the receptor to modes of behavior relevant within the context of his own culture; it does not insist that he understand the cultural patterns of the source-language context in order to comprehend the message. Between the two poles of translating there are a number of intervening grades, representing various acceptable standards of literary translating. During the past fifty years, however, there has been a marked shift of emphasis from the formal to the dynamic dimension. A recent summary of opinion on translating by literary artists, publishers, educators, and professional translators indicates clearly that the present direction is toward increasing emphasis on dynamic equivalences (Cary 1959).

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Traduccin bblica El concepto de equivalencia dinmica, aplicado en traduccin bblica, fue desarrollado especialmente por Nida. Traductores de la Biblia han usado diferentes tcnicas para rendirla al ingls, variando de un uso de equivalencia formal extrema, al uso extremo de equivalencia dinmica.

Principles governing translations oriented toward dynamic equivalence

In contrast with formal-equivalence translations others are oriented toward dynamic equivalence. In such a translation the focus of attention is directed, not so much toward the source message, as toward the receptor response. A dynamic-equivalence (or D-E) translation may be described as one concerning which a bilingual and bicultural person can justifiably say, That is just the way we would say it. It is important to realize, however, that a D-E translation is not merely another message which is more or less similar to that of the source. It is a translation, and as such must clearly reflect the meaning and intent of the source. One way of defining a D-E translation is to describe it as the closest natural equivalent to the source-language message. This type of definition contains three essential terms: (1) equivalent, which points toward the source-language message, (2) natural, which points toward the receptor language, and (3) closest, which binds the orientations together on the basis of the highest degree of approximation. two

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Peter Newmark (19162011)

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Peter Newmark was an English professor of translation at the University of Surrey. He was one of the main figures in the founding of Translation Studies in the Englishspeaking world from the 1980s. He is widely read through a series of accessible and occasionally polemical works: A Textbook of Translation (1988), Paragraphs on Translation (1989), About Translation (1991), More Paragraphs on Translation (1998). He was associated with the founding and development of the Centre for Translation Studies at Surrey. He was chair of the editorial board of the Journal of Specialized Translation. He also wrote "Translation Now" bimonthly for The Linguist and was an Editorial Board Member of the Institute of Linguists. Peter Newmark developed translation theory in striking and sometimes controversial ways, describing the conversion of a text from one language to another as both a science and an art He developed translation theory in striking and sometimes controversial ways, describing the conversion of a text from one language to another as both a science and an art. He defines translation as a way of rendering the meaning of a text into another language in the way that the author intended the text. Translation is an instrument of education as well as of truth precisely because it has to reach readers whose cultural and educational level is different from, and often 'lower' or earlier, than that of the readers of the original. He says that translation theory is concerned with the translation method

appropriately used for a certain type of text, and it is therefore dependent on a functional theory of language. However, in a wider sense, translation theory is the body of knowledge that we have about translating, extending from general principles to guidelines, suggestions and hints. It is concerned with minutiae (the meanings of semicolons, italics, misprints) as well as generalities (presentation, the thread of thought underlying a piece), and both may be equally important in the context. Translation theory is pointless and sterile if it does not arise from the problems of translation practice, from the need to stand back and reflect, to consider all the factors, within the text and outside it, before coming to a decision. It is important to know: THE INTENTION OF THE TEXT THE INTENTION OF THE TRANSLATOR TEXT STYLES: Following Nida, we distinguish four types of (literary or non-literary) text: Narrative: a dynamic sequence of events Description: which is static, with emphasis on linking verbs, adjectives, adjectival nouns. Dialogue, with emphasis on colloquialisms and phaticisms.

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SETTING :You have to make several assumptions about the SL Leadership. . The three typical reader types are perhaps the expert, the educated layman, and the uninformed. THE QUALITY OF THE WRITING: If the text is well written, i, e. the manner is as important as the matter, the right words arc in the right places, with a minimum of redundancy, you have to regard every nuance of the author's meaning (particularly if it is subtle and difficult) as having precedence over the reader's response assuming they are not required to act or react promptly; on the contrary, assuming hopefully that they will read your translation at least twice. CONNOTATIONS AND DENOTATIONS: in a non-literary text the denotations of a word normally come before its connotations. But in a literary text, you have to give precedence to its connotations, since, if it is any good, it is an allegory, a comment on society, at the time and now, as well as on its strict setting. THE LAST READING: Finally, you should note the cultural aspect of the SL text; you should underline all neologisms, metaphors, cultural words and institutional terms peculiar to the SI. or third language, proper names, technical terms and Untranslatable' words. As regards the process of translating, Newmark says: It is operational. It begins with choosing a method of approach. Secondly, when we are translating, we translate with four levels more or less consciously in mind: (1) The textual level, the level of language, where we begin and which we continually (but not continuously) go back to. (2) The referential level, the level of objects and events, real or imaginary, which we progressively have to visualise and build up, and which is an essential part, first of the comprehension, then of the reproduction process. (3) This level encompasses both comprehension and reproduction: it presents an overall picture, to which we may have to adjust the language level. (4) the level of naturalness, of common language appropriate to the writer or the speaker in a certain situation. This level of naturalness is concerned only with reproduction. (5) The revision procedure, which may be concentrated or staggered according to the situation. This procedure constitutes at least half of the complete process.

Newmark suggests that all translations are based implicitly on a theory of language. According to Buhler, the three main functions of language are the expressive, the informative - he called it 'representation' - and the vocative ('appeal') functions:

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THE EXPRESSIVE FUNCTION: The core of the expressive function is the mind of the speaker, the writer, the originator of the utterance. He uses the utterance to express his feelings irrespective of any response. INFORMATIVE FUNCTION: The core of the informative function of language is external situation, the facts of a topic, reality outside language, including reported ideas or theories. THE VOCATIVE FUNCTION: The core of the vocative function of language is the readership, the addressee. The first factor in all vocative texts is the relationship between the writer and the readership, which is realised in various types of socially or personally determined grammatical relations or forms of address. The second factor is that these texts must be written in a language that is immediately comprehensible to the readership. THE AESTHETIC FUNCTION: This is language designed to please the senses, firstly through its actual or imagined sound, and secondly through its metaphors. THE PHATIC FUNCTION: The phatic function of language is used for maintaining friendly contact with the addressee rather than for imparting foreign information. THE METALINGUAL FUNCTION: Lastly, the metalingual function of language indicates a language's ability to explain, name, and criticise its own features.

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Teoras de traduccin Taller de traduccin II Finally, Newmark enumerates the different translation methods. They are:

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Word-for-word translation: The SL word-order is preserved and the words translated singly by their most common meanings, out of context. Cultural words are translated literally. Literal translation: The SL grammatical constructions are converted to their nearest TL equivalents but the lexical words are again translated singly, out of context. Faithful translation: A faithful Translation attempts to reproduce the precise contextual meaning of the original within the constraints of the TL grammatical structures. Semantic translation: Semantic translation differs from 'faithful translation' only in as far as it must take more account of the aesthetic value. Adaptation: This is the 'freest' form of translation. Free translation: It reproduces the matter without the manner, or the content without the form of the original. Idiomatic translation: Idiomatic translation reproduces the 'message' of the

original but tends to distort nuances of meaning by preferring colloquialisms and idioms where these do not exist in the original. Communicative translation: It attempts to render the exact contextual meaning of the original in such a wav that both content and language are readily acceptable and comprehensible to the Leadership. Newmark considers that only semantic and communicative translation fulfil the two main aims of translation, which are first, accuracy, and second economy. Semantic translation is used for 'expressive' texts, communicative for 'informative' and 'vocative' texts. But semantic and communicative translation must also be seen as wholes. Semantic translation is personal and individual, follows the thought processes of the author, tends to over-translate, pursues nuances of meaning, yet aims at concision in order to reproduce pragmatic impact. At a pinch, a semantic translation has to interpret, a communicative translation to explain, theoretically, communicative translation. Newmark points out that there is an equivalent effect which is the desirable result, rather than the aim of any translation, bearing in mind that it is an unlikely result in two cases: (a) if the purpose of the SL text is to affect and the TL translation is to inform (or vice versa); (b) if there is a pronounced cultural gap between the SL and the TL text. However, in the communicative translation of vocative texts, equivalent effect is not only desirable, it is essential; it is the criterion by which the effectiveness, and therefore the value, of the translation of notices, instructions, publicity . propaganda,

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persuasive or eristic writing, and perhaps popular fiction, is to be assessed. In semantic translation, the first problem is that for serious imaginative literature, there are individual readers rather than a readership. Secondly, whilst the reader is not entirely neglected, the Translator is essentially trying to render the effect the SL text has on himself not on any putative readership. However, the more cultural a text, the less is equivalent effect even conceivable unless The reader is imaginative, sensitive and steeped in the SL culture.

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Mary Snell-Hornby (2 April 1940-actualidad)

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Mary Snell-Hornby was a british-Austrian translator and scholar. She was awarded a State Scholarship to study at Saint Felix School, Southwold, Suffolk, where she attained G.C.E. Advanced and Scholarship Level in English, French and German in 1958. She studied English, French, German, and Moral Philosophy at the University of St. Andrews, where she obtained her MA with First Class Honours in German Language and Literature in 1962. The Austrian Ministry of Education granted her a post-graduate research scholarship for research on Austrian drama, which she followed at the University of Vienna, Austria. In 1966 she became Bachelor of Philosophy at the University of St. Andrews. In 1981 she went to the University of Zurich, Switzerland, where she got a habilitation with venia legendi for "Englische Linguistik und Sprachdidaktik". In 1987 the University of Zurich granted her a Ph.D. for her thesis Translation Studies - An Integrated Approach. In 1993 Mary Snell-Hornby was appointed President of the then newly-formed European Society for Translation Studies (EST). Mary Snell-Hornby, translation theorist, is professor of translation studies at the University of Vienna. She is the author of Translation and Text (1996); she collaborated with Franz Pochhacker and Klaus Kaindl on Translation Studies: An Interdiscipline (1994), and with a number of scholars in asssembling Handbuch Translation (1999). Snell-Hornby writes alternately in English and German and her work often mediates valuably between the German and English-language dimensions of the field. Her approach to translation studies is broad based and interdisciplinary. Snell-Hornby is among those who wish to develop the discipline holistically, avoiding the kind of specialization which would compartmentalize different genres of translation; hence she treats literary translation as inherently and culturally linked to practical translation. She was married 6 April 1973 to Anthony Hornby, lecturer in English at the Language Centre, University of Augsburg, Germany. They have a daughter, Astrid, born 26 March 1976 in Munich. Since 1989 Mary Snell-Hornby holds dual nationality: British and Austrian. Introduction: Translation Studies is a revised edition of a highly-informative book which appeared seven years ago as an academic thesis by Mary Snell-Hornby at the University of Vienna, The original book's success was overwhelming and prompted the revised edition. The author has added to the original by translating or paraphrasing the German quotations in the text so as to make them more transparent for an English-speaking audience. She also revised her Future perspectives section on Translation Studies,

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from a 1995 perspective, added some new selections to the bibliography and included an index of names and key terms for easier reference (compiled by Gudrun Huemer). The author comments in the preface and in the introduction to Translation Studies that it is not a book about literary translation, but it is rather an attempt to bridge the gap between translatology and literary language. She explains that literary language has been 'excluded as being 'deviant,' inaccessible to scientific analysis.' (p. 1) The book is divided into five sections in which the author presents various approaches, methods and concepts from translation theory and linguistics so as to provide more insight into the theory, practice and analysis of literary translation. The first section, 'Translation as an independent discipline,' discusses the position of translation departments in universities, how they are situated somewhere between linguistics and literature and how it is used merely as a vehicle for language teaching. This prompts an interesting discussion on the concepts and the attitudes towards translation over the years. The author notes various translation theorists and their ideas and comments on those which apply to her integrated approach towards translation studies. One of the interesting aspects discussed in this section is that of equivalence, the term that came to replace the dichotomy of faithful or free. The following section is entitled 'Translation as a cross-cultural Event,' and discusses in great detail how translation is not a mere process of transcoding words from one language to another, but that it is a cultural transfer from one culture to another. The authors stresses the importance of being bi-cultural, not just bilingual. She cites different theorists such as Honig and Kussmaul who view texts as "a verbalized part of a socioculture" (p. 44), One of the translator's task is to decide whether to keep the cultural function of the source text or whether to adapt the text to the needs of the target text. She gives various explicit examples to illustrate her ideas. In the third section, 'Translation, text and language,' the author discusses the importance of text analysis in the translation process. A text, she says, should not be analyzed in parts, but as a whole, from the 'macro-lever to the 'micro-level.' A text is more than a 'linguistic phenomena,' it has a 'communicative function,' reflecting the culture and society in which it was written. The analysis begins on the macro level with "identifying the text in terms of culture and situation," (p. 69) then it is reduced to the micro level, where the structure of the text (the title, etc.) are analyzed. Afterwards, the translator will have a deeper understanding of the make-up and structure of the text and this has a great influence on the translation process. The author illustrates this analysis with a text by W. Somerset Maugham entitled 'The Pacific' which characterizes the Pacific as 'inconstant' and compares this to the 'soul of man.' SnellHornby then compares her textual analysis to the German translation to illustrate a

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translation's shortcomings if a text is viewed as a string of words and not as a whole. The author continues to explain in greater detail the process of textual analysis with the aid of examples which are very insightful. The fourth section of the book, 'From special language to literary translation,' examines the relation between situation and status of the source text and the function of the target text with reference to four texts in the appendix, three of a specialized nature and one literary. The author uses these examples to illustrate how translations may need to be altered for the target culture, depending on the information in question and the audience. As Snell-Hornby states, "a text has its own situational relationship to reality" (p 112). She then goes on to discuss style (syntax, semantics and lexis as well as formal text presentation) and the appropriate translation strategies and methods, again with reference to the four above-mentioned texts.

'Translation as an independent discipline,' The illusion of equivalence: Snell-Hornby (1988): rejects identity assumption; equivalence is an illusion. The translation process cannot simply be reduced to a linguistic exercise, since there are also other factors: textual, cultural and situational aspects, which should be taken into consideration when translating. Linguistics is NOT the only discipline which enables people to carry out a translation, since translating involves different cultures and

different situations at the same time and they do not always match from one language to another. Almost ten years after Kollers Einfhrung, Mary Snell-Hornbys integrated approach of 1988 sought to bring together and systematize the work that had been done to that date. The underlying assumption was that a certain compatibility was there; it just needed to be integrated. The package was once again made to look faintly scientific, this time privileging American panaceas like prototypes and scenesand-frames, along with a potpourri of common sense, gratuitous critique, and a disarming propensity to self-contradiction (notably with respect to the status of linguistic approaches). One of the most remarkable aspects of this integrative exercise was the list of effectively excluded approaches. Dismissed two thousand years of translation theory as an inconclusive heated discussion opposing word to sense (one finds the same inconclusiveness in theories of God, or love, and yet we keep talking). Dispatched historico-descriptivism because it had avoided evaluation (but hadnt it discovered anything?). Not surprisingly, she also forcefully discarded equivalence as being unsuitable as a basic concept in translation theory. None of these excluded approaches have provided any substantial help in furthering translation studies However, unlike Toury or Vermeer, Snell-Hornby tried to indicate precisely where the

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equivalence paradigm had gone wrong. This is where translation studies could have become truly upsetting, finds that in the course of the 1970s the English term equivalence became increasingly approximative and vague to the point of complete insignificance, and its German counterpart was increasingly static and onedimensional there was in fact no radical rupture between those who talked about equivalence and those who preferred not to (Toury accepted the English-language trend; Vermeer fell in with the German-language usage of the term). Snell-Hornby concludes that the term equivalence, apart from being imprecise and ill-defined (even after a heated debate of over twenty years) presents an illusion of symmetry between languages which hardly exists beyond the level of vague approximations and which distorts the basic problems of translation. Some kind of equivalence could be integrated into its appropriate corner (technical terminology), but the equivalence paradigm should otherwise get out of the way But, if the term equivalence were really so polysemous - Snell-Hornby elsewhere claims to have located fifty-eight different types in German uses of the term (1986: 15) -, how could she be so sure it presents an illusion of symmetry between languages? The term apparently means nothing except this illusion. And yet none of the numerous linguists cited in Koller ever presupposed any symmetry between languages. had she looked a little further, Snell-Hornby might have found that concepts like Nidas dynamic equivalence presuppose substantial linguistic asymmetry. More important, Kollers actual proposal was based on studying equivalence on the level of parole, leaving to contrastive linguistics the entire question of symmetries or dissymmetries between language systems The narrow and hence mistaken interpretation of translational equivalence in terms of linguistic correspondence is in our opinion one of the main reasons that the very concept of equivalence has fallen into disrepute among many translation scholars. (1994: 414). (A. Neubert) One can only suppose there was more than logic at stake in Snell-Hornbys critique of equivalence. An element of power, perhaps? Snell-Hornbys Integrated Approach has indeed had influence, and may yet find more. It was the right title at the right time, lying in wait for the massive growth of translatortraining institutions that took off at the end of the decade.

An integrated approach The ideas discussed so far will now be presented in concrete form as a basis for an integrated concept of translation studies. In the diagram [below] a system of relationships is established between basic text-typesas prototypesand the crucial aspects of translation. On the horizontal plane the diagram represents a spectrum or cline, where sharp

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divisions have been replaced by the notion of gradual transition, hence no demarcation lines have been drawn in. At the same time, on the vertical plane, the diagram represents a stratificational model which, in accordance with the gestalt-principle, proceeds from the most general level (A) at the top, downwards to the most particular level (F) at the bottomor, in other words, from the macro- to the micro-level.

Level A presents the conventional areas of translation which up to now have been kept all too separate: on the left literary translation, traditionally the province of poets and scholars and once the only area thought worthy of the theorist, and on the right special language translation, traditionally inferior and the main concern of the translation schools. General language translation is still a vague concept which up to now has only been negatively defined as not literary and not technical, but which is nonetheless implicitly the concern of the linguistically oriented U

bersetzungswissenschaft. In this concept the historical dichotomy has been replaced by a fluid spectrum, whereby, for example, prototypically literary devices such as wordplay and alliteration can be accommodated both in general newspaper texts and in the language of advertising, and conversely prototypically technical terms from the language of science or culture bound items from the general area of politics or everyday living can be explained and interpreted as literary devices. Level B presents a prototypology of the basic text-types, from the Bible to the language of modern technology, which are the main concern of the translator. While traditional theory concentrated on the items situated at the extreme left of the spectrum, the Bible,

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the monuments of Classical Antiquity and the great works of the European tradition, particularly At the other end of the scale are the special language text-types, the main fare of the modern professional translator; in the training institutes the major areas are law, economics, medicine, science and technology, and these are now being dealt with intensively in academic studies (cf.Schmitt 1986; Stellbrink 1984a and 1985; Gerzymisch-Arbogast 1986 and 1987). Level C shows the non-linguistic disciplinesor areas of so-called extralinguistic realitywhich are inseparably bound up with translation. The terms are placed at the point of the cline where they are thought to apply most, but again, we are concerned here with the dynamic concept of focus and not with grid-like compartments involving rigid classification; the arrows indicate the range of application or, where they overlap, interaction. Essential for special language translation, for example, is specialized factual knowledge of the subject concerned, while literary translation presupposes a background in literary studies and cultural history. A necessary precondition for all translation is knowledge of the sociocultural background, both of the source culture and the target culture concerned. Level D names important aspects and criteria governing the translation process itself, an extremely complex area which at this point is dealt with only briefly, as most of them form the main topic of chapters to follow. D(i) focusses on the source text: crucial here is the understanding of the text, which does not simply involve familiarity with words and structures, but presupposes the ability to penetrate the sense of the text, both as a complex multidimensional whole and at the same time in its relationship to the cultural background. With certain special language texts involving standardized concepts (particularly in science and technology) the scope of interpretation is narrowed down considerably. D (ii) names focal criteria for the envisaged translation: the notion of invariance can only apply in cases of conceptual identity (standardized terminology), while the concept of equivalence is here still considered to be of some relevance for certain types of special language translation where the focus is on isolatable lexical items. With texts involving the creative extension of the language normthis applies mainly but not exclusively to literary textstranslation involves recreating language dimensions and results in a shift of perspective in the target text. Level E names those areas of linguistics which are relevant for translation. Of basic importance is text-linguistics in all its aspects, from the analysis of the macrostructure, thematic progression and sentence perspective (cf. Gerzymisch-Arbogast 1986) to coherence and cohesion. Older literature requires knowledge of Historical Linguistics,

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while special language translation presupposes familiarity with work in terminology and access to data-banks. Contrastive Linguistics, both in syntax and lexicology, has great potential for translation theory, although up to now its results in this respect have been meagre. And finally, the lowest level F names phonological aspects of specific relevance for certain areas of translation, as for example, speakability in stage translation, alliteration and rhythm in advertising language. With this prototypological framework the foundations have been laid for our conception of translation studies as an integrated and independent discipline that covers all kind of translation, from literary to technical. In this view, translation draws on many disciplines, but is not equal to the sum total of their overlapping areas and is not dependent on any one of them. As a discipline in its own right, translation studies needs to develop its own methods based, on the complexities of translation.

At this stage I should like to summarize, in four briefly worded hypotheses, the results of what has been established so far: (1) Translation studies should not be considered a mere offshoot of another discipline or sub-discipline (whether Applied Linguistics or Comparative Literature): both the translator and the translation theorist are rather concerned with a world between disciplines, languages and cultures. (2) Whereas linguistics has gradually widened its field of interest from the micro- to the macro-level, translation studies, which is concerned essentially with texts against their situational and cultural background, should adopt the reverse perspective: as maintained by the gestalt psychologists, an analysis of parts cannot provide an understanding of the whole, which must be analyzed from the top down. (3) Translation studies has been hampered by classical modes of categorization, which operate with rigid dividing-lines, binary opposites, antitheses and dichotomies. Frequently these are mere academic constructs which paralyze the inner differentiation required in all aspects of translation studies. In our approach the typology is replaced by the prototypology, admitting blends and blurred edges, and the dichotomy gives way to the concept of a spectrum or cline against which phenomena are situated and focussed. (4) While the classic approach to the study of language and translation has been to isolate phenomena (mainly words) and study them in depth, translation studies is essentially concerned with a web of relationships, the importance of individual items being decided by their relevance in the larger context of text, situation and culture.

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The reason for this lies firstly, in the frequent discrepancy between lexemes viewed in isolation and their usage as words in contexts, and secondly, in a misguided but deepseated view of interlingual equivalence, in the conviction that a word in one language must not necessarily beexicalized to fulfill the same function in another language. Such a simplistic belief is refuted continually by the experience of anyone who works.

Mary Snell-Hornby (1988: 42) maintains that "if language is an integral part of culture, the translator needs not only proficiency in two languages; he must also be at home in two cultures". This "at homes"-ness would refer to a thorough knowledge of the culture and its nuances. If the source culture differs vastly from the target culture, it becomes more difficult to recreate a linguistic expression totally in the target language. This statement is supported by Mary Snell-Hornby (1988: 41) who says that the "extent to which a text is translatable varies with the degree to which it is embedded in its own specific culture, also with the distance that separates the cultural background of source text and target audience in terms of time and place". The reason for this is that the structure of an expression in the source text creates a meaning that is contextualised; this meaning will then have to be translated and recontextualised in the target language to ensure that a similar response is elicited from the receivers in the case of advertisements. In an advertisement connotations and denotations are created by means of the text (words) and the visual material which places the advertisement within a certain cultural setting. Context is thus created, as is a frame of reference that the receiver uses to create the meaning of the message. The translator has to recreate connotations, denotations and meaning so that the TL receiver can create her/his own frame of reference within a re-organised context pertaining to her/his own culture. When translating from one language into another, the translator acts as a facilitator between two languages and, to a lesser or greater extent, two cultures. This act involves the transcending of two sets of norms as personified by the source language and the target language. The act of translating involves interpreting the source language, and rewriting and recreating the text in the target language. One could say that a translation is a balancing act where the translator has to balance two cultures and languages in the translation process. Inevitably, this situation is unbalanced. Subtle nuances and references get lost in the translation process, but by the same

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token the target language receivers could gain more from a dynamically equivalent translation than from a literal translation. Interpretative diversity. The bilingual and bicultural competence of the translator would play a role in the interpretation of the ST and the consequent translation into the TT.

As Mary Snell-Hornby (1988:1-2) puts it: The text cannot be considered as a static specimen of language (an idea still dominant in practical translation classes), but essentially as the verbalized expression of an authors intention as understood by the translator as reader, who then recreates this whole for another readership in another culture. This dynamic process explains why the perfect translation does not exist. Culture is embodied as much in what people do and what they know as in how they do it and how they talk about what they know (cf. Snell-Hornby 1988:39f). Snell-Hornby: Translation Studies and The Cultural Turn The Translation Studies field is characterised by its interdisciplinary approach. It reduces the importance of famous dichotomies such as right/wrong, formal/dynamic, literal/free, art/science, and theory/practice. It investigates translation problems from a new viewpoint: the nature of the translation process, how mediation occurs, and how the process affects both the ST and the TT. The objects of study are the translations themselves. These are subject to theoretical manipulation and prevailing artistic norms. The Translation Studies approach perceives the text as both produced and producing. The move from translation as text to translation as culture and politics is what Mary Snell-Hornby (1988; 1995) calls the cultural turn. She attempts to integrate a wide variety of linguistic and literary concepts in an Integrated Approach to translation. According to the handled text, she incorporates the appropriate background; cultural history, literary studies, and sociocultural studies and, for legal, economic, medical and scientific translation, the study of the relevant specialised subject. Snell-Hornby focuses on the importance of developing particular models and conventions for translation studies. She also considers that the classic linguistic approach of the isolated words proved to be useless. Consequently, she urges to approach the text taking into account the network of relationships in the context of the text, situation, and culture. Snell-Hornby (1995) takes part in the debate over culture and urges to deal with culture in its broader sense referring to all socially conditioned aspects of human life. Culture is also defined by hring as the forms of things people have in mind, their models for perceiving, relating, and otherwise interpreting them. As such, the things

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people say and do their social arrangements are products and by-products of their culture. (hring in Ghazala, 2004c, p.170). According to this definition, culture is a totality of knowledge, proficiency and perception; it is immediately connected with behaviour and events; and depends on norms ofsocial behaviour or language usage.

'Translation, text and language,' Text analysis The complex relationship between translation and language-in text, a kind of dialectic tension which to borrow from Steiner might be described as Word against Text. With the development of text-liguistics and the gradual emergence of translation studies asn an independent discipline in its own right, there has been an increasing awareness of the text, not as a chain of separate sentences, theses themselves a string of grammatical and lexical item, but as a complex, multi-dimensional structure consisting of more than the mere sum of its parts a gestalt, whereby an analysis of its parts cannot provide an understanding of the whole. Thus textual analysis, which is an essential preliminary to translation, should proceed from the top down, from the macro to the micro level from text to sign. For the translator the text is not purely a linguistic prhenomenon, but must also be seen in terms of its comunicative function, as a unit embedded in a given situation, and as part of broader sociocultural background. Taking that as a point of departure, the translator`s text analysis should begin by identifying the text in terms of culture and situation, as part of a world-continuum (Vermeer 1983). The next step is the analysis of the structure ot the text, and finally strategies should be developed for translating the text, based on conclusions reached from the analysis. It is important to stress again that the analysis is not concerned with isolating phenomena or items tu study them in depth, but with tracing a web of relationships, the importance of individual items being determined by their relevance and function in the text. The text chosen to illustrate this type of analysis is The Pacific bye W. Somerset Maugham (1874 1965), an evocative sketch of the varying moods and atmosphere of the Pacific Ocean which introduces the collection of short stories The Trembling of a Leaf, published in 1921. This text has been chosen firstly because it is a short, maneageable and complete text in itself, and can at the same time be placed in relationship to the stories in the book. Secondly, if not an outstanding work of art, it is of a literary nature and illustrates how this method of analysis extends beyond tecnical and general language. At this point it is necessary to clarify what is meant by literary text. We have establishes above that literary language cannot be dismissed as merely deviant language, but on

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the contrary, as Coseriu (1971) maintained, it rather represents the creative exploitation of the language potential against which ordinary language represents a reduction. This applies of course in varying degrees to the abundance of texts described as literary, and it cannot suffice as a definition of a literary text. As a texttype, the literary text is often, though not quite accurately, equated with fiction; here we adopt the broad definition suggested by Beaugrande and Dressler: a text that presents a systematic alternative to the accepted version of the real world (1981:191). Between the real world and the systematic alternative there is of course no clear dividing-line, and Beaugrande and Dressler refer to the varying degrees of discrepancy between the textual world and the real world. Seen in that light, The Pacific is on the fringes of the category literary text with considerable agreement and overlapping between the real world and the world of the text. It is far from being merely a travel report or geographical account however, as clearly emerges from the analysis, though the perspective is that of the writer who knows that part of the world from personal experience and describes it for the European (or even British) reader with an implicit appeal for empathy. At the time of publication Maugham was 47 and had been travelling widely all over the world. The theme of the European in alien surroundings and his emotional disintegration in the heady world of the tropics is a familiar one in Maugham`s works. In the 1920s, when the British Empire was still flourishing, such faroff tropical zones had a meaning for the educated English reader even outside his personal experience. Hence the title is not merely a geographical name, but is used to evoke associations in the reader`s mind.

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The Pacific The Pacific is inconstant and uncertain like the soul of man. Sometimes it is grey like the English Channel off Beachy Head, with a heavy swell, and sometimes it is rough, capped with white crests, and boisterous. It is not so often that it is calm and blue. Then, indeed, the blue is arrogant. The sun shines fiercely from an unclouded sky. The trade wind gets into your blood and you are filled with an impatience for the unknown. The billows, magnificently rolling, stretch widely on all sides of you, and you forget your vanished youth, with its memories, cruel and sweet, in a restless, intolerable desire for life. On such a sea as this Ulysses sailed when he sought the Happy Isles. But there are days also when the Pacific is like a lake. The sea is flat and shining. The flying fish, a gleam of shadow on the brightness of a mirror, make little fountains of sparkling drops when they dip. There are fleecy clouds on the horizon, and at sunset they take strange shapes so that it is impossible not to believe that you see a range of lofty mountains. They are the mountains of the country of your dreams. You sail through an unimaginable silence upon a magic sea. Now and then a few gulls suggest that land is not far off, a forgotten island hidden in a wilderness of waters; but the gulls, the melancholy gulls, are the only sign you have of it. You see never a tramp, with its friendly smoke, no stately bark or trim schooner, not a fishing boat even: it is an empty desert; and presently the emptiness fills you with a vague foreboding. William Somerset Maugham 'From special language to literary translation,'

Situation of the source text and the function Common to the work of all recent translation theorists from Paepcke to Newmark and Holz-Mnttri is the emphasis on the situation of the source text and the function of the translation: Language as text-in-situation, as part of a culture with a definite function of its own is how Snell-Hornby formulated it. We shall now examine the relation between situation and source-text type on the one hand, and function and target-text type on the other. This stands in direct contrast to the conclusion drawn by Roland Barthes (1966:54) that literary language, as against ordinary language, has no situation. Barthes creates a clear distinction a dichotomy between the literary work (l`eouvre) with its prophetic openness, its pure ambiguity on the one hand, and practical language, which is always embedded in a situation as recent translation theory understands it, on the other. In this discussion of the reading process, Iser (1976: 89ff.) proceeds from similar starting point: that the reale Situation (which form part of the speech act theory) is not present in a literary text. Iser however takes the argument a good deal further. In a section entitled Die Situationsbildung fiktionaler Texte (1976: 101 -114), he describes the process of interaction between reader and text: these are involved in a dynamic situation produced during the reading process which creates the illusion that the fictional action is really taking place. This complements Beaugrande

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and Dressler`s definition of the literary text does not exist as a vacuum; while it is not bound to a single, specific situation as is a road sign or a legal contract, it has its own situational relationship to reality. This is created on the one hand through the dynamics of the individual act of reading, as described by Iser, and on the other by virtue of the literary work of art being absorbed into its cultural heritage. Thus a text which is accepted as part of a literary canon assumes a degree of independence and stability as an artist`s documentation of perceived or imagined events in a certain time, place and culture, as constantly recreated through interaction in the minds of the readers. Mary Snell-Hornby I dont think translation changes in essence at all. There are three or four what I call dualities, rather than dualisms; dualism suggests a certain opposition, duality simply two subjects which I want to mention, to bring out: on the one hand, a simplified message, and on the other hand the full meaning, and there is always this choice. Then, translation is partly a science and partly an art, I would say also a craft and a matter of taste. I think science is the search for truth this is an oldfashioned word in Translation Studies. To me the scientific aspect is, above all, nonliterary, its about things, its about reality, its about facts, its impersonal, and its about objects. The other is the aesthetic, or, if you like, translation as an art and this is imagination, which is so important. This is beauty, this is literary translation, this centres on people, as literature does.

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Christiane Nord (1943-actualidad)

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Christiane Nord was born 1943, she is married to Klaus Berger, professor of New Testament Studies at Heidelberg University, she has two children: Britta Nord (1969) Oliver Nord (1972). She graduated from Heidelberg University in 1967. Degree: Diplom-bersetzerin fr Spanisch und Englisch (University Diploma equivalent to an Honours Degree in Translation Studies - Spanish, English), Ph.D. in Romance Studies: University of Heidelberg, 1983; doctoral thesis on neologisms in modern Spanish: "Neueste Entwicklungen im spanischen Wortschatz. Untersuchungen auf der Grundlage eines pressesprachlichen Korpus" ( Publications). Habilitation and Venia legendi for Applied Translation Studies and Translation Pedagogy (University of Vienna, 1993) with a thesis on the translation of titles and headings ("Einfhrung in das funktionale bersetzen. Am Beispiel von Titeln und berschriften", Publications). She has been teaching translation theory and practice at various universities. University of Heidelberg/Germany (1967-1996), University of Vienna/Austria (visiting professor, 1991-1992), University of Hildesheim (1994-1996), University of Innsbruck (visiting professor, 1996). Since 1996 Chair of Translation Studies and Specialized Communication at the University of Applied Sciences of Magdeburg/Germany, 19982000 Vice Rector of the University. She has spent several short-time teaching appointments funded by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) in India, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam; Argentina, Brazil, Cuba, Chile, Mexico, Venezuela, South Africa, Jordania; seminars and lectures in Spain, Denmark, Finland, Belgium, Italy, France, Portugal, Sweden. CETRA professor (Misano Adriatico, Italia) in 2000. More than 80 publications on translation theory, methodology, pedagogy, among them Text Analysis in Translation (publications), Translating as a Purposeful Activity ( Publications). Several translations, among them, together with her husband, Klaus Berger, a new German translation of the New Testament and Early Christian literature (Das Neue Testament und frhchristliche Schriften, Publications). Member of the Board of Advisors of several scholarly journals, such as The Translator (Manchester, St. Jerome), Sendebar (University of Granada, Spain), Cuaderns (Universitat Autnoma de Barcelona), ACROSS LANGUAGES AND CULTURES (Budapest, Hungary), Cadernos de Traduo (Florianopolis/Brasil). Member of the German Federal Association of Translators and Interpreters (BD), the European Society of Translation Studies (EST), where she was a member of the Board from 1998 to 2001.

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La teora del escopo (en alemn: Skopostheorie) es un concepto del campo de la traductologa, formulado por el lingista Hans Vermeer, que supone la idea de que la traduccin y la interpretacin deben tener en cuenta la funcin de los textos de origen y de destino. El trmino proviene del griego (skops, propsito, finalidad). Paul Kussmaul escribi sobre esta teora que el enfoque funcional tiene una gran afinidad con la teora del escopo. La funcin de una traduccin depende del conocimiento, expectativas, valores y normas de los lectores del texto traducido, quienes a su vez estn influidos por la situacin en que se encuentran inmersos y por la cultura. Estos factores determinan si la funcin del texto de origen o de algunos pasajes en ese texto de origen se puede preservar, o si se debe modificar o cambiar al traducir. Como lo seala Christiane Nord, el principio primordial que condiciona cualquier proceso de traduccin es la finalidad a la que est dirigida la accin traslativa. Esta se caracteriza por su intencionalidad, que es una caracterstica definitoria de cualquier accin.

Aspectos bsicos de la teora del Escopo La teora de accin esbozada en el apartado anterior sirve de base para la teora general de la traslacin (en alemn Translation) presentada por Hans J. Vermeer, que l denomina teora del Skopos, o Escopo. Skopos es una palabra griega que significa propsito. La teora se explica con ms detalle en el libro de 1984, que Vermeer public junto con Katharina Reiss (Reiss y Vermeer [1984]1996) y que est estructurado en dos partes. En la primera parte, Vermeer formula su teora general o bsica (obra citada, 13-104), mientras que en la segunda parte Reiss trata de hacerla compatible con varias tradiciones traductolgicas, que ella denomina teoras especficas (obra citada, 105-188). No obstante, se observa cierta discrepancia entre las dos partes del libro, debido en gran medida al hecho de que Reiss intent ajustar su enfoque ligado al texto, que en un principio estaba basado en la teora de la equivalencia, al enfoque de Vermeer orientado a la accin. Segn la teora del Escopo, el principio primordial que condiciona cualquier proceso de traduccin es la finalidad a la que est dirigida la accin traslativa. Esta se caracteriza por su intencionalidad, que es una caracterstica definitoria de cualquier accin, como acabamos de ver en el apartado precedente. Intencin y funcin

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Al constatar que una accin es dirigida por una intencin suponemos que existe una libre voluntad y la posibilidad de elegir entre dos o ms formas de comportamiento, una de las cuales se considera ms idnea que la otra con vistas a la finalidad o el propsito pretendido (escopo). Adems del trmino escopo, Vermeer usa las palabras afines finalidad, objetivo, intencin y funcin ms o menos como sinnimos. Para evitar que se confundan los conceptos, he propuesto una distincin fundamental al menos entre intencin y funcin (Nord [1988]2005, 53s). Intencin se define desde el punto de vista del emisor, el cual quiere alcanzar una finalidad determinada con su texto. Sin embargo, la mejor intencin no garantiza un resultado perfecto, sobre todo cuando existe una gran distancia (temporal, local, cultural etctera) entre las situaciones de emisor y receptor, respectivamente. De acuerdo con el modelo de interaccin textual presentado arriba, el receptor usa el texto para una determinada funcin, segn sus propias expectativas, necesidades, bagaje general y condiciones situacionales. En un caso ideal, la intencin del emisor encuentra su fin, por lo cual intencin y funcin seran entonces anlogas o incluso idnticas. Pero, como sabemos, la realidad a veces dista mucho del ideal.

Texto y coherencia Otro aspecto importante de la teora del Escopo y los enfoques derivados de ella es el concepto del texto como oferta de informacin, de la cual un receptor selecciona los elementos que considera importantes o relevantes para s en la situacin receptiva. Aplicando este concepto a la traduccin se podra decir que un translatum (es decir, un texto traducido o texto meta, en mi terminologa) es una oferta informativa formulada por un traductor en una cultura meta, sobre otra oferta de informacin formulada por otra persona en la cultura y lengua de partida o base, en la terminologa que yo empleo en espaol (vase Reiss y Vermeer [1984]1996, 54ss). Basndose en el encargo recibido del cliente, el traductor selecciona de la oferta informativa en lengua base aquellos elementos que puedan ser significativos y funcionales para un pblico de la cultura meta. En las palabras de Vermeer, el texto meta debe cumplir la exigencia de coherencia intratextual (Reiss y Vermeer [1984]1996, 94ss), lo que implica que sea comprensible para el receptor meta y que ste lo encuentre significativo para la situacin y cultura en que lo recibe. Una interaccin comunicativa slo puede considerarse como efectiva si los receptores la interpretan como suficientemente coherente con su propia situacin. Por lo tanto, una regla importante de la teora del Escopo, la regla de la coherencia, exige que una traduccin sea aceptable en el sentido de ser coherente con la situacin receptiva

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(Reiss y Vermeer [1984]1996, 97s). Ser coherente con es sinnimo a formar parte de (vase Vermeer [1978]1983, 54). Adecuacin y equivalencia Al presentar su oferta informativa, el autor del texto base tiene en cuenta los presuntos intereses, expectativas, conocimientos y limitaciones situacionales de los destinatarios localizados en la cultura base. En un encargo de traduccin, el traductor es un receptor real del texto base, que tiene la intencin de comunicar a otro pblico, situado en la cultura meta, la informacin (en el sentido ms amplio de la palabra) ofrecida por el texto base. En esta funcin de productor textual, ofrece al nuevo pblico un texto meta cuya composicin es guiada, por cierto, por lo que el traductor supone saber sobre las necesidades, expectativas, bagaje general, etctera. del mismo.

Obviamente, estas suposiciones sern distintas de las hechas por el autor original, porque los dos pblicos de la cultura base y meta, respectivamente, pertenecen a linguoculturas diferentes. Por consiguiente, el traductor no puede ofrecerle al pblico meta la misma cantidad y cualidad de informacin que el autor original ofreci a sus destinatarios. Lo que hace, en cambio, es ofrecer otro tipo de informacin en otra forma (vase Reiss y Vermeer [1984]1996, 122s). En el contexto de la teora del Escopo, adecuacin se refiere a las cualidades de un texto con respecto al encargo de traduccin: el texto meta debera ser adecuado a las exigencias del encargo. Es un concepto dinmico relacionado con el proceso de accin traslativa, que presupone la seleccin teleolgica de signos que se consideran idneos para el propsito comunicativo definido en el encargo de traduccin (Reiss [1983]1989, 163, trad. C.N.). Equivalencia, en cambio, es un concepto esttico, que describe, refirindose al resultado del proceso traslativo, la relacin entre dos textos (o, en rangos inferiores, dos palabras, frases, estructuras sintcticas, etctera) que tienen el mismo valor comunicativo (basndose en el significado etimolgico del trmino: equi-valente, es decir. de igual valor). En este contexto, valor se refiere a significado, connotaciones o efecto comunicativo. Reiss ([1983] 1989, 163) hace una distincin entre el concepto de equivalencia empleado en la Lingstica Contrastiva (que estudia los sistemas lingsticos, o langues, en trminos saussurianos) y la nocin de equivalencia textual usada en la Traductologa (que se centra en los actos de habla o parole, como dira Saussure). Una orientacin hacia la realidad comunicativa o parole supone que el traductor tome en consideracin la forma en la que los agentes utilizan los signos comunicativos en situaciones culturales. En la teora del escopo, EQUIVALENCIA significa ADECUACIN a un escopo especfico que exige que el texto meta cumpla las mismas funciones comunicativas

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que el texto base, es decir que la funcin entre el texto de partida y el final se mantiene constante (Reiss y Vermeer [1984]1996, 125)). Es decir, el concepto de equivalencia queda reducido a equivalencia funcional a nivel textual en lo que Reiss llama traduccin comunicativa (Reiss y Vermeer [1984]1996, 121). Funcionalismo y Lealtad El principio fundamental de la teora del Escopo puede formularse de la manera siguiente: El objetivo comunicativo determina los mtodos traslativos. Ahora bien, hay quien dice que esta frmula equivale a El fin justifica los medios. Entonces, en una aplicacin radical del concepto funcionalista se justificara cualquier objetivo para la traduccin de un determinado texto base. Teniendo en cuenta los divergentes conceptos de traduccin que existen en las culturas de este mundo, tal generalizacin no me parece aceptable.

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Bibliografa
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Scribd: es.scribd.com/inggyyuliani/d/33402917-Translation-Studies-as-an-Interdicipline SCHJOLDAGER, Anne. Understanding Translation, 1st edition, 1st print run 2008. Denmark, Authors and Academica, Aarhus 2008. SNELL-HORNBY, Mary. Translation studies - An integrated approach, Revised Edition. Amsterdam, John Benjamins, 1995. WIKIPEDIA: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Nida WISSBORT, Daniel; Eyssteinsson, Astradur. Translation, theory and practice A historical reader, United States, Oxford University Press Inc., New York, 2006.

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