GIDEON TOURY
The Notion of 'Assumed Translation'
An Invitation to a New Discussion1
For Raymond, on his sixtieth birthday:
and the wing of friendship never moults a feather!
Charles Dickens
Anyone wishing to approach translations descriptively is faced with the
delimitation of the object of study: what would be taken up and what
would be
left out? The current state of translation studies makes this question
impossible
to answer in any straightforward way. Not only is today's discipline
a remarkably
heterogeneous series of paradigms which are, at best, loosely connected,
but
there still reigns an overriding tendency to regard the different paradigms
as
mere alternative ways of dealing with 'the same thing'. Which they
are not, nor
should they be expected to be.
Far from being a neutral procedure, establishing an object of study
is
perforce a function of the theory in whose terms it is constituted,
which is
always geared to cater for a particular set of needs. Its establishment
and
justification are therefore intimately connected with the questions
one wishes
to pose, the possible methods of dealing with the objects of study
with an eye
to those questions - and, indeed, the kind of answers which would count
as
admissible. The question is not really what the object is, then, but
rather what
would be taken to constitute a proper object, in pursuit of
a certain goal, such
that any change of approach would entail a change of object. This is
so even if
all objects superficially fall under the same heading; be it even 'translation'
and
'translating' themselves. It is not the label that counts, but
the concept it applies
to; and concepts can only be established within conceptual networks.
Unfortunately, the fallacious rejection of somebody else's concepts
on the
grounds that they are untenable within one's own frame of reference,
which
was designed to serve a completely different purpose, is still very
much with us.
The mainspring of my own scholarly endeavour has long been the conviction
that the position and function of translations (as entities), and of
translating
(as a kind of text-generating activity), in a prospective target culture,
the form
a translated text would have (and hence the relationships which would
tie it to
its original), and the strategies resorted to during its generation,
should not be
approached as distinct facts. Rather, it is first and foremost the
interdependencies
of them all which should be tackled, the intention being to uncover
the
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regularities which mark the relationships assumed to obtain between
function,
product and process; not only for individual cases, but also towards
ever
higher generalizations.
In an attempt to pursue this particular goal, it has been suggested
that
translations be regarded as facts of the culture which hosts them,
with the concomitant
assumption that whatever their function and identity, these are determined
within that same culture and reflect its own constellation. It was
by virtue of
this methodological starting point that this theoretical framework
earned the
nickname of 'target-oriented'.
When it was first formulated, back in the seventies, this approach to
the
study of translations and translating in their immediate contexts was
considered
outrageous, and its initiator a sworn enfant terrible. At that
time, translation
studies was indeed marked by extreme source-orientedness. Most of its
paradigms were application-ridden too: Whether concerned with teaching
or
quality assessment, their preoccupation was mainly with the source
text and
with the proclaimed protection of its 'legitimate rights'. Target constraints,
while never totally ignored, often counted as subsidiary; especially
those which
would not fall within any kind of linguistics. Many factors which govern
real-
life translational behaviour, and the fact that these factors have
indeed resulted
in a variety of very different translation practices, were resented,
or, at best,
relegated to the realm of 'mere' history.2
Meanwhile, most translation scholars, while not abandoning the seemingly
safe base of the source text, have at least come to integrate many
more target-
bound considerations into their reasoning. In addition, a second paradigm
which was heavily target-oriented, so-called Skopostheorie,
gradually emerged
as an alternative. It even managed to gain considerable ground, albeit
mainly
in German-speaking circles. Thus, target-orientedness as such no longer
arouses the same antagonism it used to less than twenty years ago.
Interestingly, the first formulations of Skopostheorie (e.g.
Vermeer 1978)
almost coincided with the beginnings of my own target-orientedness
(Toury
1978 [11976]) - which sheds interesting light
on how changes of scholarly
climate occur, especially considering that for quite a while, proponents
of the
two approaches remained practically unaware of each other's work.3
To be
sure, even now, there is at least one major difference between the
interests of
the two respective paradigms, which also accounts for the different
assumptions
each of them proceeds from: whereas mainstream Skopos-theorists
see the
ultimate justification of their frame of reference in the more 'realistic'
way it
can deal with problems of an applied nature, the main object
being to 'improve'
(i.e. change!) the world of our experience, my own endeavours have
been
geared primarily towards the description and explanation
of whatever has been
regarded as translational within particular target cultures, the ultimate
object
being to formulate a series of interconnected laws of a probabilistic
nature,
along with their conditioning factors.
Recent attempts to conduct historical studies within Skopostheorie
(most
notably Vermeer 1992), on the one hand, and to apply some of the basic
assumptions of the other target-oriented paradigm to translation didactics
(e.g. Toury 1980b, 1984, and especially 1992), on the other, indicate
that the
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gap may be narrowing. This tendency is also manifest in the recent work
of
some second-generation Skopos-theorists, most notably Nord (1991),
who has
made a bold attempt to integrate a version of the notion of 'translational
norms', so central to the evolution of my own way of reasoning, into
an
account which is basically Vermeerian.4
This narrowing of gaps notwithstanding, I will be the first to admit
that my
research program has not fared all that well. The main obstacle, as
I see it, was
the prevailing tendency to read it through the (often rather dark)
glasses of
other approaches to translation rather than as a self-contained
paradigm. Even
the terms I used were often interpreted as if they were still part
of (an)other
theoretical paradigm(s), in spite of their having been introduced in
a completely
different conceptual framework and hence assigned a very different
sense. The
inevitable result was gross misconception of many of the claims, including
the
very target-orientedness of my approach. In view of the misunderstandings
which have cropped up, it seems advisable to put some of the basic
assumptions
of my approach to the test again, thus opening the door to a fresh
discussion.
Strange as it may sound to the uninitiated, there is nothing too perverse
in
claiming that a text's position (and function), including the position
and
function which go with a text being regarded as a translation, are
determined
first and foremost by considerations originating in the culture which
hosts
them. In fact, this is the most normal practice of the 'persons-in-the-culture'
themselves. Thus, when a text is offered as a translation, it is quite
readily
accepted bona fide as one, no further questions asked. Among other
things:
this is the reason why it has often been that easy for fictitious
translations - i.e.
texts which are presented as translations with no corresponding source
texts in
other languages ever having existed - to pass as genuine ones. By contrast,
when a text is offered as having been originally composed in a language,
reasons will often manifest themselves to suspect, correctly or not,
that the
given text has in fact been translated into it; among other things,
through
certain features of textual make-up and verbal formulation, which persons-in-
the-culture have come to associate with translations and translating.
Adopting
culture-internal distinctions as a starting point for the descriptive
study of
translation as it is conceived of, and executed, within the conditioning
framework
of a culture, has the big advantage of not imposing on its object-level
any
distinctions which may prove alien to that culture. It thus allows
one to
proceed with as few assumptions as possible which could be difficult
to
maintain, in the face of real-world evidence.
There is no way a translation could share the same systemic space with
its
original, thus belonging to two cultures at the same time; not even
when the
two are physically present side by side. This is not to say that, having
been
severed from it, a translation would never be in a position to bear
on the source
culture again, on occasion even on the source text itself. Texts, and
hence the
cultural systems which host them, have been known to have been affected
by
translations of theirs. It is nonetheless significant that any such
practice
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involves a reversal of roles, in full accordance with our starting
point: while
genentically a translation, the affecting entity ceases to function
as one. When
observed from the point of view of the new target culture, that is.
To be sure, it
is not just any translation that would exert an influence on the original,
for the
simple reason that it is its translation. Rather, what is picked up
is picked up
because it has become a fact of a particular (target!) culture,
which is, more-
over, regarded as privileged for that precise reason.
The fact that translations often serve as a basis for further acts of
translation
is no refutation of our target-oriented assumption either: while a
translation
does function as a source text in such instances, it is still a fact
of a former
target culture now turned into a mediating one; and it is picked up
and
assigned the role of a source text not because of anything it may inherently
possess, but because it concurs with the concerns of a new prospective
recipient
system.
On the other hand, translation activities and their products not only
can,
but do cause changes in the target culture. By definition, that
is. After all,
cultures resort to translating as a major way of filling in gaps, whenever
and
wherever such gaps manifest themselves; either as such, or (very often)
from a
comparative perspective, i.e. in view of a corresponding non-gap in
another
culture that the prospective recipient culture has reasons to look
up to and try
to exploit. Semiotically, then, translation is as good as initiated
by the target
culture. In other words, the starting point is always one of a certain
deficiency
in
the latter, even if sometimes - e.g. in a 'colonial' situation - an
alleged gap may
be factually pointed out for it by a patron of sorts who also purports
to 'know
better' how that gap may best be filled. Even here, the more persuasive
rationale is not the existence of something in another culture/language
as such,
but rather the observation that something is 'missing' in the target
culture
which should have been there and which, luckily, already exists elsewhere
and
can be taken advantage of.
In the simplest of cases, both deficiency and fill-in consist in mere
textual
entities: a text which hasn't been there before is now introduced
into the target
culture. Being an instance of performance, every individual text is
of course
unique; it may be more or less in tune with prevailing norms and models,
but
in itself it is a novelty. As such, its introduction into the receiving
culture
always entails some change, however slight, of the latter. To be sure,
the
novelty claim still holds for the nth translation
of a text into a language: it is the
resulting entity, the one which would actually be incorporated
into the target
culture, which is decisive here; and this entity will always have never
existed
before. Even alternative translations of the same text are not likely
to occupy
the exact same position in the culture which hosts them, not even if
they all
came into being at the same point in time.
In more complex cases, models may be imported into the recipient
culture
as well (that is, sets of rules for the generation of texts pertaining
to a
recognizable type). Such a migration normally involves groups of texts
which
embody a recurring pattern or else are translated in a similar fashion,
even
though high-prestige translations of individual texts are known to
have had a
similar effect.
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The likelihood of causing changes in the target system beyond the mere
introduction of the new text itself stems from the fact that, while
translations
are indeed intended to cater for the needs of a target culture, they
also tend to
deviate from its sanctioned patterns, not least because of the
postulate of
retaining invariant at least some features of the source text, which
seems to be
inherent in any culture-internal notion of translation. This tendency
often
renders translations quite distinct from non-translational texts, and
not
necessarily as a mere production mishap either; it is not unusual for
a certain
amount of deviance to be regarded not only as justifiable, or
even acceptable, but
as actually preferable to complete normality, on all levels
at once. Moreover,
even if they are not culturally favoured, deviations - even when they
manifest
themselves in the very make-up of the texts - do not necessarily disturb
the
persons-in-the-culture. Thus, more than one writer has observed that
the
(tentative) identification of a text as a translation "'protects' the
reader, as it
were, from misinterpreting the writer's intentions... [It] implies
that deviations
from cultural norms are not judged as intentional, and therefore are
not
assigned any 'hidden' meaning" (Weizman and Blum-Kulka 1987: 72).
In fact, as has been suggested time and again, there are often good
reasons
to regard translations as constituting a special system, or 'genre'
of their own
within a culture. What is totally unthinkable is that a translation
may hover in
between cultures, so to speak: As long as a (hypothetical) interculture
has not
crystallized into an autonomous (target!) systemic entity, e.g. in
processes
analogous to pidginization and creolization, it is necessarily part
of an existing
(target!) system.
Bringing all this to bear on our basic assumption, the latter could
be reformulated
to read as follows:
translations should be regarded as facts of target cultures;
on occasion facts of a
special status, sometimes even constituting identifiable (sub)systems
of their own,
but of the target culture in any event.
This formulation implies that, while certainly indispensable, establishing
the
culture-internal status of a text as a translation does not in itself
provide a
sufficient basis for studying it as one. Any attempt to offer exhaustive
descriptions
and viable explanations would necessitate a proper contextualization,
which is
far from given. Rather, its establishment forms part of the study itself
which is
applied to a text assumed to be a translation. In an almost tautological
way it
could be said that, in the final analysis, a translation is a fact
of whatever target
sector it is found to be a fact of, i.e. that (sub)system which is
found to be best
equipped to account for it: function, product and underlying process.
Consequently, the initial positioning of an assumed translation, which
is a sine
qua non for launching a meaningful analysis (see e.g. Lambert and Van
Gorp
1985), may be no more than tentative, it may often have to undergo
revision as
the study proceeds, namely, on the basis of its interim findings.
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Above all, it shouldn't be assumed that the identity of the (sub-)culture
which hosts an assumed translation is known just because one sees what
language it is formulated in. Seemingly an easy way out, the
assumption of a
one-to-one relationship between culture and language often proves misleading,
the more so as the exact identity of the target language itself may
have to be
reconsidered in the course of the study. To take an extreme example:
The following text, one of the versions of the note which warns passengers
on
German trains against improper use of the emergency brake, seems to
have
been intended as an English utterance:
Emergency brake
Full brake only in
case of emergency
Any misuse will
be punished
In spite of the fact that it is only presented as parallel to
three other versions of
the same note, in German, French and Italian, there are sufficient
indications
for tentatively regarding it as a (rather literal) translation,
and of one particular
version, at that: the German one. At the same time, this note does
not pertain
to any of the institutionalized cultures which have English as a 'national'
language; and not just because each one of these cultures already has
a codified
version of the warning in its repertoire, all different from the present
one.
Ignoring the ridiculous possibility that it is not attributable to
any culture,
there is no escape from regarding the English version of the note as
situated in
the German culture, albeit in a very specific section of it
which does take the
intended language into account.
Thus, the system which may be said to host this translation - and to
have
governed its generation - is the artificial sub-culture shared by the
speakers of
various languages who also have English, for as long as they are in
Germany
(or at least on board a German train). This is the only contextualization
which
would ensure a satisfactory explanation of the linguistic make-up of
the text
and the (reconstructed) practice resorted to by its translator (which
are dealt
with in detail in Toury in press: Chapter 4).
Proper contextualization also involves a heightened differentiation
be-
tween translational items pertaining to one and the same culture; namely,
in
terms of their respective positions within it. As already indicated,
not even two
translations of a single text are likely to occupy exactly the same
position, least
of all as a mere reflection of the position of the original in the
source culture. If
differences of textual-linguistic make-up, or of relationship to the
shared
source text, are to receive a viable explanation, the position appropriate
to each
translation will have to be established - and taken into account in
all seriousness.5
The position most relevant to the kind of questions we wish to pursue
is of
course the one a translation was designed to occupy when it
first came into being.
After all, this is the only position which may be claimed to have actually
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governed its generation and the decisions made in its course. However,
it is
only towards the end of a study that an intended position can be established
with reasonable certainty. This would be achieved by weighting the
position
the text initially had against the findings concerning its make-up
and formulation,
and the way it represents its original, while taking into account what
is already
known about the translational tradition in which it came into being.
Consequently, the intended position - which cannot be pointed to in
any real
sense - would always have the status of an explanatory hypothesis
rather than a
'fact'; not even a reconstructed one.
Also significant is the possibility that translations which have retained
their
identity as cultural facts, even as translations, may nevertheless
have changed
their exact position within the target culture over time. Of course,
changes of
this kind can have no bearing on either the intended position of a
translation,
or even the one it initially had. On the other hand, they may often
shed
considerable light on preferences of later periods of time, at least
some of them
pertinent to translation as performed in those periods.
In most paradigms, some kind of a definition of translation
would have been
expected by now - a list of (more or less) fixed features which, if
accepted as a
starting point and framework for research, would entail a purely deductive
mode of reasoning. However, the obsession with restrictive definitions
proves
counter-productive precisely when the aspiration is to account for
real-life
phenomena in the circumstances which gave rise to them; they tend to
hinder
rather than advance descriptive-explanatory work.
Thus, any a priori definition, especially if couched in essenrialistic
terms,
allegedly specifying what is 'inherently' translarional, would involve
an untenable
pretense of fixing once and for all the boundaries of an object which
-
culturally speaking - is characterized by its very variability:
difference across
cultures, variation within a culture and change over time. Not only
would the
field of study be considerably shrunk that way, in relation to what
cultures
have been, and are willing to accept as translarional, but research
limited to
these boundaries may also breed circular reasoning: to the extent that
the
definition is indeed adhered to, whatever is studied - selected for
study
because it is known to fall within it, in the first place - is bound
to reaffirm the
definition. Unless one is willing to transcend the arbitrarily set
boundaries,
that is; which is what any research practice applied to existing
translations
seems to have involved, even if performed within an essentialistic,
and hence
classificatory frame of reference.
Thus, the unpleasant truth of the matter is that even those who have
sworn
by the need to proceed deductively, on a well-formulated initial definition,
never hesitated to pick texts (or other phenomena) for study on the
grounds
that they had been presented, or otherwise regarded as translational.
Within a
particular culture, that is. It appears that they too were adopting
the pre-
systematic attitude of the persons-in-the-culture, but as no more than
a
necessary evil: they were never willing to follow it, or the procedures
it may
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have suggested, in any consequential way. What they did instead was
to
tamper with their data; e.g. by imposing on it distinctions between
'fuller' and
less full' realizations of the framing definition, which was thus elevated
to a
kind of maximum, or else by introducing additional (a priori, and hence
non-
cultural and ahistorical) distinctions, e.g. between 'translation'
and 'adaptation'.
Of course, the number of these distinctions could be multiplied almost
indefinitely, and, at any rate, they do not offer very much by way
of explanatory
power, when it comes to culturally contextualized phenomena. Not for
a
moment did the possibility cross their minds of giving this forced
target-
orientedness of theirs a systematic status, which would have entailed
an
inductive attempt to derive general principles from the facts
themselves rather
than speculation within a more or less rigid frame of reference.6
To be sure, the principles we formulated ourselves have never been put
forward as an alternative definition of the 'Gegenstand der Übersetzungs-
wissenschaft' as such, as wrongly posited by some critics, most notably
Koller
(e.g. 1990). Rather, what they have always constituted was a working
hypothesis,
designed to provide guidelines for the establishment of corpuses for
studies of
one particular kind, sharing one particular set of goals. Within our
frame of
reference, the assumption is applied to all utterances which are presented
or
regarded as translations within the target culture, on no matter what
grounds,
which I have now referred to as assumed translations. Under
such observation,
there is no pretense that the nature of translation is given, or fixed
in any way.
What is addressed, even in the longest run, is not even what translation
can
be,
in principle, but what it proves to be in reality, and hence
what it may be
expected to be under various specifiable conditions.
There may of course be any number of reasons for regarding a target-
language utterance as a translation. On the other hand, there is also
the
possibility of encountering phenomena, which could have plausibly been
regarded as translations but which were not - whether they were regarded
as
something else or whether the distinction between translations and
non-
translations was simply non-functional, and hence a non-fact, in the
culture in
question. Items of this kind can of course be studied too, but an account
will
have to be given precisely of the fact that they were not presented/regarded
as
translational within the culture which hosts them; and as part of the
study
itself, not just as some kind of 'background information'.
The whole point here is precisely to tackle questions such as why something
was, or was not, presented/regarded as translational, and not why it
should
have been (much less why it should not have been) presented in that
way.
Whatever the justification for this hypothesis, and for the heuristics
deriving
from it, it is thus intimately connected with particular interests
and no others.
Adopting our assumption as a working hypothesis thus involves two important
benefits: a considerable extension of the range of objects of
study, in full
agreement with those real-life situations that we set out to account
for, and
functional operarivity even in cases where the basic principle
might have seemed
factually inapplicable.
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Proceeding from culture-internal notions often involves local, pre-systematic
nomenclature as well: It stands to reason that many of the distinctions
recognized
as functional within a culture would also find expression in language,
labelling
being one important indication of cultural institutionalizarion. This
possibility
notwithstanding, our principles have not been put forward with respect
to the
English word 'translation', as strangely posited by Gutt (1991:
7), so that there
is hardly room for his doubt an to their applicability to German Übersetzung,
Amharic tïrgum, or any other 'ethnic' label. It is the
notion
of (assumed)
translation that is at stake here; and no matter what name it goes
under, this
notion can be accounted for as a cluster of (at least three interconnected)
postulates:
(1) A Source-Text Postulate;
(2) A Transfer Postulate;
(3) A Relationship Postulate.
While all three may look familiar, their status within a target-oriented
frame of
reference such as ours is very different from the one they may have
had in any
other paradigm of translation studies: regarded as postulates, they
are all
posited rather than factual; at least not of necessity. Therefore,
rather than
constituting ready-made answers, they give rise to a series
of questions to be
addressed by anyone wishing to study translation in context.
Let us look briefly into these lower-level assumptions in an attempt
to
clarify their posited status and the way they combine to form the overall
culture-internal notion of assumed translation.
(1) The Source-Text Postulate
Regarding a target-language text as a translation entails the obvious
assumption
that there is another text, in another culture/language, which has
both
chronological and logical priority over it: not only has such an assumed
text
assumedly preceded the one taken to be its translation in time, but
it is also
presumed to have served as a departure point and basis for the latter.
The crucial thing is that it is not the source text as such, nor even
the
possibility of actually pointing to it, that is at stake here, but
the assumption
that one must have existed. Therefore concrete texts in languages other
than
the target's are not part of the necessary equipment for launching
research
either: even if none is used, the study can still pertain to translation
studies,
namely, as long as the assumptions of their temporal preexistence and
logical
priority are taken to bear on the issues.
To be sure, a target fact which was tentatively marked as a translation,
with
the Source-Text Postulate implied, may then turn out to lack a corresponding
text in any other language/culture, and not only when one has
simply failed to
locate it. A concrete source text may never have existed, to begin
with. This is
why fictitious translations form legitimate objects of study within
our paradigm:
until the mystification has been dispelled, the way they function within
a
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culture is no different from the way 'genuine' translations do.
On the other hand, an assumed translation may later on be found to
have
had more than one source text, being a case of compilative translation,
or a single
source text which, however, differs from the one it was initially
assumed to have (as
in the case of indirect translation).
(2) The Transfer Postulate
The Source-Text Postulate also entails the assumption that the process
whereby
the assumed translation came into being involved the transference from
the
assumed source text of certain features that the two now share. This
assumption
is a clear result of bringing two different kinds of knowledge to bear
on one
another: knowledge about products, on the one hand, and about (cross-
linguistic and cross-cultural) processes, on the other.
When regarded from a target-oriented point of view, transfer operations
-
their very existence as well as their exact nature (and that of the
transferred
features) - first manifest themselves as posited too. Both aspects
can be
submitted to examination, but they would remain distinct in their very
es-
sence: even if recourse to transfer operations would have been confirmed,
these will not necessarily be found to match the posited one. Needless
to say,
either one can be submitted to real examination only after the appropriate
source text has been secured, which may well involve an element of
confrontation
with the assumed translation in question. (See Toury in press: Chapter
3.)
(3) The Relationship Postulate
Finally, adopting the assumption that a text is a translation also
implies that
there are accountable relationships which tie it to its assumed original,
an
obvious function of that which the two texts allegedly share and which
is taken
to have been transferred across the cultural-semiotic (and linguistic)
border.
A target-internal Relationship Postulate can be highly intricate, down
to
very specific hypotheses as to the level(s) where intertextual relationships
may
be expected to occur. Some of these relationships may even be postulated
as
necessary and/or sufficient, within the normative structure of the
culture in
question, as are many of the notions of 'equivalence' in source-oriented
approaches to translation. However, all this needn't be reflected in
reality
either: upon examination, relationships actually tying together pairs
of texts, or
parts thereof, may well be found to differ from the postulated ones.
Since there
is no inherent need for intertextual relationships to always be of
the same kind
or intensity, the nature and extent of these relationships, as well
as their
correspondence to the culture's attitudes, constitute just another
set of questions,
to be settled through concrete research work.
Another indication of the posited nature of translation relationships,
under
the present observation, is the fact that they can often be (tentatively)
accounted
for even in the absence of a source text, namely, on the basis of certain
features
of the assumed translation itself, and on the concomitant assumption
that it
was indeed translated. Again, fictitious translations often manage
to pass for
genuine ones without arousing too much suspicion by making manipulative
use of this fact: not only do their producers present them as translations,
but
[Page 145]
they actually disguise them as ones, e.g. by embedding in the texts
features
which have come to be associated with genuine translations in the culture
in
question. On the other hand, this possibility often serves as a sound
basis for
establishing the immediate source(s) of an assumed translation, those
which
would then be taken as a basis for comparative study, e.g. when it
is suspected
of being compilative, or indirect.
If we now proceed to take the three postulates together, an assumed
translation
would be regarded as
any target-culture text for which there are reasons to tentatively
posit the existence
of another text, in another culture and language, from which it was
presumedly
derived by transfer operations and to which it is now tied by certain
relationships,
some of which may he regarded - within that culture - as neceisary
and/or
sufficient.
As should have become clear by now, neither source text nor transfer operations
and transferred features, nor even translation relationships, would
have been
excluded within such an approach. They are just given a different status.
This
is also to say that 'orientedness' is far from tantamount to 'exclusiveness',
as
wrongly interpreted by many:7 the present paradigm
can be characterized as
target-oriented because this is where its observations start.
By no means should it
be taken to mean that this is where these observations would also be
exhausted.8
Looking at it from another angle, it is only reasonable to posit that
a study
in translation activities which have already yielded their products
would start
with the observables, first and foremost, the translated utterances
themselves,
along with their constituents, as situated within their immediate contexts.
From there on, the study could proceed to facts which are observational
'in the
second order' (i.e. facts which need (re)construction before they can
be
submitted to scrutiny), most notably the relationships which tie together
the
output and input of individual acts, the ultimate intention being to
end up
reconstructing the non-observables at their root, particularly
the exact processes
whereby they came into being.
Notes
1. A slightly different version of this article forms part
of my forthcoming book, Descriptive
Translation Studies - and Beyond (Toury in press).
2. And see Delabastita's recent argument (1991) that the
opposition between theoretical
and historical approaches to translation is a false one through and
through.
3. An interesting attempt to associate target-oriented thinking
on translation, especially of
my brand, and some of the basic ideas of Deconstruction, was made a
few yean ago by
Van den Broeck (1988). While I wouldn't endorse all his claims, it
is certainly an
intriguing article for anybody interested in the way scholarly paradigms
change.
[Page 146]
4. Unfortunately, while doing so, Nord (re)introduced the
concept of 'loyalty', and as an
a priori moral principle at that, which may well be opening
a new gap between the two
approaches as the old one seems to have been closing.
5. To my mind, failure to do precisely this is a major flaw in
much of the otherwise
impressive work emanating from the Göttingen group researching
literary translation,
especially as they purport to arrive at a cultural history of
translation into German, and
hence claim to carry out their research within a strict cultural-historical
framework. All
too often, all translations are treated on a par, and there is no way
of knowing whether
a particular case is representative, or significant in any other way.
In fact, in spite of
their proclaimed intention, the textually interesting has often
been given precedence over
the historically significant.
6. Menachem Dagut was probably the first to have put
his finger on the basic differences
between various scholarly treatments of translation in terms of whether
their orientation
was deductive or inductive. In fact, he made this distinction a main
line of argumentation
in a lengthy review of my 1980 book (Dagut 1981). He himself was all
in favour of
deductive work, but even he could not but involve bits and pieces of
inductive
reasoning in the descriptive part of his work (Dagut 1978).
7. Thus, the line of reasoning which I have been following
is a far cry from a mere
variation of good old 'literary reception', the only difference being
that we wish to "deal
with translations rather than original works", as claimed, e.g. by
Mary Snell-Hornby
(1988: 24, 25). Even when it is literary texts which are involved (which
is not
necessarily the case anyway), the locus of study is not the texts themselves,
much less so
their actual reception in the target culture, but rather what the texts
reinstated in the
positions they had initially occupied can reveal as concerns the constraints
under which
they came into being,
8. In fact, I cannot see why such an approach would concern
itself with transfer any less
than, say, the position the Göttingen group claims to have adopted
(e.g. Frank 1990:
Section II), to a great extent as an (over)reaction to my own program.
It is my firm
conviction that, even though transfer can be addressed in other frameworks
too, it
remains at best only partly explainable unless all target constraints
are taken into
consideration, which can only be done within a target-oriented frame
of reference.
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