The traps of formal correspondence

Abstract

Abstract The author questions the immediate relevance of much translation theory to specific and authentic translationproblems. He argues that theory must take into account the specificity of the task and the translator as important factors, and that, in so far as ‘equivalence ‘ is concerned, it is not to be attained at some optimum level, but by connections made between given points in the source and target texts. Yet, for such connections to be sound, the translator does need an overall conception or strategy for the act of translation. This leads to a critique of passages from an American novel and its translations in French, German, and Hungarian. It is demonstrated that translations can be very good and adequate in the target‐language, but that in many cases, formal features in terms of content, allusion and culture‐specific reference present translators with problems which they solve with varying degrees of success. It is cautiously concluded that in translation work, translators begin with formal c...