A quick review of the history of translation

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A quick review of the history of translation

Translation theory is much sparse in antiquity, this mainly situated in the discipline of rhetoric.

The very pioneers of the field are luminary Roman commentators, such as Cicero, Quintillian

These pioneers consider translation as a pedagogical exercise whose debate on translation practice pertains to word-for-word and sense-for-sense translation.

Two of the pioneers of the field are Horace and Cicero (first century B.C).

Refers to word-for-word and sense-by-sense translation.

Currently, within the history of translation there are 5 important periods.

A) 1900 - 1930 B) 1940 - 1950 C) 1960 - 1970s D) 1980s E) 1990s and Beyond

A) It is considered that language is not communicative, but constitutive in its representations of thought and reality.

For Walter Benjamin, the hallmark of a good translation is that it should 'express the central reciprocal between languages'. He believes that the translator, through the decade barriers of his language releases the "pure language."

For scholars as Schleiermacher and Bolt, translation is a creative force. Here, translation strategies serve a variety of cultural and social functions.

Modernist movement conssit in the "autonomy" of the translation, its "status" as a text in its own right, derivative but independent as a work of signification.

B) In thise periods, from 1940s to 1950s, the prevalent concept is "translatability". Ideas are formed by disciplinary trends and change to a great extent, ranging between the extremes of philosophical skepticism and practical optimism.

Roman Jakobson's study of translatability gives a new impetus to the theoretical analysis of translation. he suggests three kinds of translation: • Intralingual (within one language, i.e. rewording or paraphrase) • Interlingual (between two languages) • Intersemiotic (between sign systems)

Jakobson states that in the case of interlingual translation, the translator uses synonyms to convey the ST message. This means that in interlingual translation there is no complete equivalence between code units.

C) In the 1960s to 1970s, the main prevailing concept in translation studies is "equivalence." There are some scholars who theorize about this concept as Werner Koller and Eugene Nida. Koller, in answering what this concept means, enunciates five types of equivalence.

1. "Denotative equivalence" or equivalence of the extralinguistic content of a text. It is called "content invariance." 2. "Connotative equivalence," depending on the similarities of register and style. Koller refers to this as "Stylistic equivalence." 3. "Text-normative equivalence," relating to text types, with different kinds of texts behaving in different ways. 4. "Pragmatic equivalence," or "communicative equivalence," oriented towards the receiver of the text or message. 5. " Formal equivalence," relating to the aesthetics and the form of the text.

Formal correspondence 'focuses attention on the message itself, in both form and content', unlike dynamic equivalence which is based upon 'the principle of equivalent effect'. Dynamic equivalence is defined as a translation principle according to which a translator seeks to translate the meaning of the original in such a way that the TL wording will trigger the same impact on the TL audience as the original wording did upon the ST audience.

In 1813, the German translator Friedrich Schleiermacher writes a seminal paper on "The Different Methods of Translating." He moves beyond word-for-word, literal, sense-for-sense or free translation.

St. Jerome (fourth century B.C) translated the Septugint Bible into Latin and his tranlation would affect later translations of the Scriptures.

He negates the word-for-word approach, for by closely following the form of the original, the sense of the original is masked and an absurd translation is created.

In the seventeenth century emerge the theory of John Dryden about the trichotomy on translation types.

The trichotomy consst in: - Metaphrase - Paraphrase - Imitation

From 1950s, each decade was marked by a dominant concept such as translatability, equivalence etc. Whilst before the twentieth century translation was an element of language learning, the study of the field developed into an academic discipline only in the second half of the twentieth century, when this field achieved a certain institutional authority and developed as a distinct discipline.

E) The 1990s sees the incorporation of new schools and concepts. Translation studies in the last decade of the twentieth century establishes itself as a purely separate discipline.

As the domain of "cultural studies" gains ground, the concept of "ideology" becomes a crucial area of study. They make a distinction between the ideology of translating and the translation of ideology.

By Domestication, the Anglo-American culture imposes its own "hegemonic" power upon other minor cultures.

D) In the decade of 1980 Susan Bassnett's Translation Studies is published. William Frawly negates the concept of equivalence and argues that translation is a form of communication

The aspect of functionality bears great impact on Hans Vermeer's work. Skopos theory concist in translation methods and strategies that are to be employed in order to produce a functionally adequate result.

Andre Lefevere is another figure who follows Zohar and Toury's concept of literary system. Lefevere views translation as "refraction" or "rewriting." He sees translation as an act carried out under the influence of particular categories and norms constituent to systems in a society.