Can Theory Help Translators?

by Andrew Chesterman, Emma Wagner, Anthony Pym (Series Editor)

This book is a dialogue between a theoretical scholar and a professional translator, about the usefulness (if any) of translation theory. Andrew Chesterman and Emma Wagner argue about the problem of the translator's identity, the history of the translator's role, the translator's visibility, translation types and strategies, translation quality, ethics, and translation aids.



For readers already working at the translation 'wordface', especially those who are sceptical of all theorizing, the book aims to challenge their view of theory. For those in the 'ivory tower', such as students, teachers and scholars, the book will strengthen the connections between theory and practice. For both groups, the book is an invitation to join the discussion.



Emma Wagner is a translator and translation manager at the European Commission in Luxembourg.



Andrew Chesterman is professor of translation theory at the University of Helsinki in Finland.

Genres: Nonfiction

156 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2002

Reviews

[Gileblit · Rating 3 out of 5]

I would recommend it to students or people interested in translation, as it gives a wide overview of the main issues and theories about translation.

[Melvyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

This dialogue between a translation scholar and a translator concludes unsurprisingly: "Yes, scholars do talk too much to each other rather than to a wider audience. Yes, we should spend more time studying real translators in real action."

However, it does quite a good job of condensing some of the useful ideas to emerge from the vacuous abstractions of translation studies.

Occasionally we get some thought-provoking practical advice, e.g. on distancing:
"Have a creative chair for translating and a critic's chair for reading it through." :-)

Elsewhere we have an interesting discussion on translation-adjacent activities:
"An obvious example of the visible translator is the translator-scholar dealing with texts that are culturally or historically remote, needing detailed commentaries, introductions and footnotes to get the message of the original across to the reader."

"It seems that the typical translator's habitus is actually rather depressing. Daniel Simeoni describes it as a habitus of 'voluntary servitude'"

But a lot of the discussion on the translator's habitus and prospects is now rather dated.

Some brief notes on the useful terms that have been neatly summarized:

Buhler and Reiss and skopos theory ----> purpose of document
Newmark: semantic translation v communicative translation =
Christiane Nord: documentary translation v. instrumental translation
Juliane House - overt translation v. covert translation
e.g. Défense de marcher sur le gazon
Keep off the grass

Ernst August Gutt - relevance theory, which comes under general communication theory, which comes under mainstream pragmatics:
Optimum relevance for hearers/readers ---> maximum contextual effect (benefit) for readers with minimum processing effort (cost)

Translation for information ---> inbound translation

Types of translation (after Gouadec 1990)
Keyword translation
Selective translation
Abstract translation - summary
Diagrammatic translation - text to image
Translation with reconstructions - all content in free form
Absolute translation - warts and all, no corrections - AKA straight translation
Sight translation - written to spoken

(After Shuttleworth and Cowie 1997)
Thick translation - AKA ethnographic or exegetic translation - with explanations
Cultural translation - adapted to target culture
Horizontal translation - between cultures of roughly equal status
Vertical translation - between e.g. vernacular and high-prestige language - local colour treated differently if you are translating 'up' or 'down'
Integral translation - with no omissions
Interlinear translation - with source text present alongside

ALSO
tidied translation - author's mistakes corrected. Standard default translation.
naturalized translation - author's mistakes corrected, form and style of translation adapted so that it feels like an original text in the target culture.

Double presentation
Including both source-language and target-language terms in the translation, so that one acts as a gloss of the other (Duma, the Russian Parliament)

Antonymy
Selecting an antonym plus a negation element (good - pas mal)

Abstraction change
Abstract to concrete or vice versa

Domestication - naturalization or adaptation
Foreignization - exoticization or estrangement

Illocutionary change - changes of speech act

Transediting - radical re-editing of the source text

Think-aloud protocols (TAPs) began to be used in translation research back in the 1980s

"Eclipse of the original - where the translations take over from the original... and then the original has to be changed to match the translation."