Norms of Translation

THEO HERMANS
If we assume that translation serves a communicative purpose, some degree of coordina-
tion between the participants in the processsender and receiver, ego and alterwill be
necessary. The concept of norms has been deployed in the study of translation in an attempt
to gain a better understanding of the factors governing the communicative behavior of
translators and the interaction between translators and their audiences. There has been a
good deal of theoretical reection on the role of norms in the context of translation and
translation studies (Toury, 1980, 1995; Frank & Schultze, 1988; Hermans, 1991, 1996, 1999;
Nord, 1991: Chesterman, 1993, 1997; Schffner, 1997) and the issue has gained renewed
attention with the recent interest in the sociology of translation (Wolf & Fukari, 2007; Pym,
Shlesinger, & Simeoni, 2008). In what follows I will rst set out the concept of norms in
general terms before explaining how it has been used in the study of translation. I will
then consider some of the applications and implications of the norms concept in translation
studies.
The Concept of Norms
The concept of norms has proved useful in a range of social sciences, from law and ethics
to social psychology and international relations (Hjort, 1992), but there is no unanimity as
regards terminology or the exact distinctions between norms, conventions, rules, constraints,
and other similar terms.
The term norm may refer both to a regularity in behavior and to the mechanism which
accounts for this regularity. The mechanism has a socially regulatory function and com-
prises a psychological as well as a social dimension. It mediates between the individual
and the collective, between the individuals intentions, choices, and expectations, and
collectively held beliefs, values, and preferences. Norms bear on the interaction between
people, more especially on the degree of coordination required for the continued, more or
less harmonious coexistence with others in a group. Norms con tribute to the stability of
interpersonal relations by reducing uncertainty about how others will act. By generalizing
from past experience and allowing projections concerning similar types of situation in the
future, norms help to make behavior more predictable.
Translation in a social environment involves transactions between several parties who
have an interest in these transactions taking place. The translator, as one of the decision-
making parties in the transaction, is an agent whose actions are neither wholly free nor
predetermined, especially as the entire process is played out in the context of existing social
structures. The more the parties can coordinate their actions, the greater the likelihood
that they will consider their interaction successful.
To appreciate the role of norms and conventions in solving interpersonal coordination
problems, we may start from the denition of convention provided by the American
philosopher David Lewis (1969). Lewis describes conventions as regularities in behavior
which emerge as contingent solutions to recurrent problems of interpersonal coordination.
The solutions are contingent in that they are neither necessary nor impossible: they could
The Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics, Edited by Carol A. Chapelle.
2013 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Published 2013 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/9781405198431.wbeal0873
2 norms of translation
have been different. If they prove effective, these solutions become the preferred course
of action for individuals in a given type of situation. Conventions grow from precedent
into social habit. They do not have to be explicitly agreed, but they presuppose a degree
of common knowledge and acceptance. They imply reciprocal expect ations and the expecta-
tion of expectations: the expectation of others that, in a given situation, I will adopt a
certain course of action, and my expectation that others expect me to adopt that course of
action.
Conventions are not norms, although the distinction is not always made and conventions
are sometimes regarded as implicit norms or quasi-norms (Lewis, 1969, p. 97; Hjort,
1990, p. 43). They can, however, become norms by falling victim to their own success. If
a convention has served its purpose sufciently well for long enough, the mutually shared
expectation about what course of action to adopt in certain types of situation may grow
beyond a mere preference and acquire a binding character. At that point the modality of
the expectation changes from cognitive to normative (Galtung, 1959). Cognitive expecta-
tions are willing to adjust to changing events; when something unexpected happens,
the expectation accommodates the new information and changes accordingly. Normative
expectations, by contrast, are unwilling to learn or adjust; when things happen which do
not accord with the expectation, the latter is kept intact and correct behavior continues
to be expected at the next occurrence. Niklas Luhmann speaks of norms as counterfactually
stabilised behavioral expectations (1995, p. 321; 2008, p. 39). Whereas cognitive expecta-
tions respond to what is, normative expectations stipulate what ought to be the case.
Norms can be understood as stronger, prescriptive versions of conventions. Like conven-
tions, norms derive their legitimacy from shared knowledge and mutual expectations;
on the individual level, they are largely internalized. Unlike conventions, norms have a
directive character: They tell individuals not just how others expect them to behave but
how others prefer them to behave. Norms imply that there is a course of action which is
more or less strongly preferred because it is accepted as proper or correct or appropriate.
The directive force of a norm is a matter of social pressure, backed up with inducements
and rewards or the threat of sanctions. Hence norms may act as constraints on the indi-
viduals decision making by foreclosing certain options, even though these remain available
in principle. At the same time norms suggest, more or less emphatically, a particular selection
from among the range of possibilities, working as a problem-solving device by offering
ready-made templates for action. They cover the entire range of preferences and permis-
sions, stretching as far as prescriptions at one end and proscriptions at the other. In all
these manifestations they help to increase predictability by reducing the risk of commu-
nication misring.
Norms may be strong or weak, more or less durable, and narrow or broad in scope.
They can and will be breached, but they are able to cope with a relatively large amount
of discrepant behavior. In this sense norms do not preclude conscious agency or erratic
conduct. To the extent, however, that norms are inculcated as part of an individuals
socialization, they become internalized as dispositions, propensities to act in certain ways.
Because they form part of the fabric of social expectations, norms provide relative stability
and hence security; while they change in response to changing values and persistent or
conspicuous transgressions, they do so more slowly than individual behavior. In this
respect the relation between behavior and norms is similar to that between parole and
langue, or event and structure.
As the prescriptive force of norms increases from the permissive to the mandatory, they
move away from con ventions toward rules, which may be understood as institutionalized,
usually explicit obligations and prohibitions issued by an identiable authority with the
power to impose specic sanctions for transgressions.
norms of translation 3
Norms in Translation Studies
With respect to translation, norms are relevant only to the extent that translators or other
participants in the transaction make decisions. In an inuential essay from 1967, the Czech
theorist Ji Levn invoked game theory to describe translating as a decision-making process:
Between the two extremes of total predictability (decisions necessitated, for example, by
grammatical categories) and total unpredictability (wholly idiosyncratic one-off choices),
each move represents a choice from among a given set of alternatives and in turn conditions
the next move. Elsewhere Levn, and shortly afterwards Anton Popovig, saw two norms
governing the translators decision making: one that was reproductive and concerned with
how to represent the original, and one that was productive and concerned with the well-
formedness of the new text. Different historical periods, they suggested, put the emphasis
now on one and then on the other norm and valued translations accordingly. The norms
in each case were those factors that constrained the translators freedom of choice (Levn,
1969; Popovig, 1976). Both Levn and Popovig drew on the Czech structuralist Jan Mukaovskn,
who in the 1930s and 1940s had described the individual work of art as a complex tangle
of norms and a confrontation of heterogeneous norms (1978, p. 52), adding that audi-
ences might well project different norms on a work of art than those initially observed by
its creator.
Much the same approach was taken by Gideon Toury (1995), who made the norms
concept a central plank in his descriptivist program for the study of translation. Toury
saw norms as performance instructions for translators and distinguished different kinds
of norms operating at different stages of the translation process. Preliminary norms govern
the choice of what to translate in the rst place; the initial norm steers the translator either
toward preserving as much as possible of the original or toward producing a well-formed
new text. Various operational norms guide decision making during the actual business of
translating, with matricial norms regulating the macrostructure of the text and textual-
linguistic norms affecting microstructures. The relevance of norms in this outlook is that
the sum of the choices made by the translator determines the shape of the end product
and hence not just the nature of the relation between the translation and its proto-text but
also the way the translation is likely to be perceived by the audience for which it is intended.
Whereas Toury approached norms very much from the point of view of the translators
decision making, Andrew Chesterman took the interaction between translators, audiences,
and fellow translators into account, and drew on theoretical discussions in other disciplines.
Apart from the social and ethical norms which govern communication in general,
Chesterman (1997, pp. 17586) distinguished translation-specic technical norms, which
he subdivided into product or expectancy norms on the one hand, and process or produc-
tion norms on the other. Product or expectancy norms reect the expectation of what a
translation should look like. They largely determine what will be accepted as proper or
legitimate translation by a particular community and thus stake out the perimeter of the
concept of translation for that community. They correspond to what Christiane Nord (1991)
had previously called the constitutive conventions of translation, which distinguish between
translation and other kinds of rewriting such as parody or adaptation.
Chestermans process or production norms are broken up into three kinds: an account-
ability norm, which is ethical in nature and regulates personal relations between translators
and other stakeholders such as authors, commissioners, clients, readers, and fellow trans-
lators; a communication norm, which stipulates that translators should optimize commu-
nication in accordance with Gricean maxims; and nally, and most importantly, a relation
norm, which ensures that an appropriate relation of relevant similarity is established and
maintained between the source text and the target text (1997, p. 69). What constitutes
4 norms of translation
relevant similarity, what type of similarity is considered appropriate, and how it is to be
achieved will depend on the circumstances; these may include the translation brief or a
particular translation tradition, the supposed needs of a prospective audience, or the type
of original to be translated. All the process or production norms operate at a level below
that of product or expectancy norms. Christiane Nord speaks here of regulative conven-
tions, in that they regulate the kind of translation that will result.
Only the third of Chestermans process or production norms is properly a translation
norm; the others are not exclusive to translation. In other words, translation seems to be
affected by a multiplicity of norms, but many of these apply to all manner of communica-
tion and indeed all manner of behavior. Nevertheless the importance of the norms concept
for translation is that it allows a revision of the traditional notion of what constitutes a
correct translation. Considered from a norm-theoretical point of view, correctness in trans-
lation cannot be predetermined but is a matter of compliance with prevailing norms of
translation. Toury argued that norms give substance to equivalence. In his view, if a text
is accepted as a translation, it follows axiomatically that the relation of equivalence between
the translation and its original obtains; norms determine the concrete shape of that equiva-
lence relation in specic instances. Adherents of functionalist approaches to translation,
such as skopos theorists Hans Vermeer and Christiane Nord (see Nord, 1997), have sug-
gested that equivalence is an inappropriate term in this context and that translations can
be measured in terms of their adequacy to the context in which they are deployed; this
adequacy involves respect for or violation of norms.
Applications and Implications
The introduction of the concept of norms into translation studies enabled the contextual-
ization of translation and offered a tool for historical research at a time when cultural
rather than linguistic factors came to be seen as relevant to understanding translation
in its social manifestations. Whereas early theorists like Levn and Toury treated norms
primarily as constraints which simplied the translators decision making by foreclosing
undesirable options, subsequent approaches stressed the interaction between various stake-
holders as well as the importance of ideological values underpinning social norms. Others
shifted the emphasis from observance, stability, and the conrmation of the status quo to
norm breaking and its potential to challenge the social order.
Whatever the emphasis, researchers have faced the problem of identifying translation
norms. Many decisions translators make can be ascribed to norms governing the accept-
ability of texts as such, without necessarily involving translation-specic norms. Separating
out the demands stemming from the kinds of texts for which translation caters from
normative expectations specic to translation is problematic because translations are never
just translations. They are translated novels or contracts or speeches or recipes, and they
are likely to defer to the rules governing textual well-formedness in these genres. In this
sense, but taking a broader view, Tejaswini Niranjana suggests that translation is over-
determined by religious, racial, sexual, and economic discourses (1992, p. 21). An additional
difculty is that norms are not directly observable. They must be inferred, either from
statements about them or from behavior. In neither case is the inference without risk.
Statements about norms may reect individual intentions or attitudes rather than shared
expectations, and behavior, even recurrent behavior or patterns of behavior, may be
explained in multiple ways. From a methodological point of view it seems obvious that
studying translation through the prism of norm theory requires a substantial number of
translations, so that repeated recourse to certain options can gain relief against the backdrop
norms of translation 5
of available alternatives. Even then the choices made need to be further contextualized
with reference to such things as commercial success or failure, critical approval or rebuke,
prevailing models and explicit normative statements. Certainty as to the impact of norms
on the translators choices is not to be had, and in any case the lines separating individual
preferences, conventions, norms, and rules remain blurred. Retranslations as well as
translations which have caused controversy tend to be particularly rewarding objects for
study, as revisions and critical debate bring the players assumptions and expectations to
the surface.
The idea that translation is overdetermined by other discourses has implications for
translator training. Learning to translate means acquiring the knowledge and skill neces-
sary to produce adequate translations, which in turn means the ability to negotiate the
demands of the relevant discourses. The process amounts, in Pierre Bourdieus terminology,
to the acquisition of an appropriate habitus enabling the novice translator to become a
player in the eld. Training, however, does more than merely inculcate routines. Through
examples of good practice and analysis of errors it fosters conscious awareness of the rules
of the game. The competent translator should therefore be able not just to translate in
accordance with relevant expectations but to decide when it is right or appropriate either
to follow suit or to transgresstogether with a realistic assessment of the consequences
of these decisions.
Viewed in a broader cultural and historical context, translation norms in their totality
can be said to inform the translation poetics of particular periods and cultures. A poetics
may be understood as made up of a body of mostly normative textual expectations together
with a set of canonical models and practices. A translation poetics in this broad sense
largely determines what a culture, or a relevant subsection of it, selects for translation from
outside its own sphere, how it will process the data, and how the resulting translations
are likely to be received. The inclusions and exclusions, the modes of translation that are
chosen or rejected, and the public response to the end products are indicative of how that
culture sees itself. Cultures may adopt welcoming or defensive stances, they may translate
out of a sense of need or curiosity, or because the choice whether or not to translate is
denied them. Whatever the conguration in particular instances, a translation poetics
provides an index of cultural self-perception and self-denition, since such denitions
involve positioning oneself in relation to otherness.
The study of norms is not itself a normative activity. But if we study norm complexes
in their historical setting, we need to nd a way to translate them into our contemporary
disciplinary idiom and, more often than not, across natural languages. The study of
translation and translations must translate, in one way or another. If translation is a norm-
governed activity, it follows that the scholarly translation of translation which takes place
in translation studies cannot entirely avoid being contaminated by its object. This calls into
doubt the neat separation between object-level and meta-level. It is a predicament students
of translation share with ethnographers and historians, and there is no easy solution to it.
Like ethnography and historiography, translation studies have devised ways of living with
the paradox. They have done so primarily, in the last decade or so, by becoming increas-
ingly self-reexive and by drawing on the ethical norms regulating professional translat-
ing as well as those governing academic scholarship and research. The concept of norms
has thus gained an unexpected relevance, not just as a tool to unlock translation but as an
instrument of disciplinary reection.
SEE ALSO: Cultural Identity; Pragmatics and Culture; Sociological Approaches to
Translation; Strategies of Translation
6 norms of translation
References
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norms of translation 7
Suggested Readings
Mukaovskn, J. (1970). Aesthetic function, norm and value as social facts (M. Suino, Trans.). Ann
Arbor: Uni versity of Michigan Press. (Original work published 1936)
Poltermann, A. (1992). Normen des literarischen bersetzens im System der Literatur. In
H. Kittel (Ed.), Geschichte, System, Literarische bersetzung: Histories, systems, literary trans-
lations (pp. 531). Berlin: Erich Schmidt.
Sela-Sheffy, R. (2005). How to be a (recognized) translator: Rethinking habitus, norms and the
eld of translation. Target, 17, 126.