Translation

Abstract

The theoretical, empirical, and pedagogic study of translation is the concern of the interdisciplinary and international field of scholarship known, since 1972, as translation studies. The aim of theoretical translation studies is to elaborate principles that explain and predict the linguistic, cognitive, cultural, and ideological phenomena inherent in the process of transferring a written, oral, or multimodal text from the source language to the target language in a specific sociocultural context. Moreover, theory aims to account for the variegated and complex nature of the translated product resulting from that process. The goal of descriptive translation studies is threefold. It undertakes synchronic and diachronic text-focused analyses of translations (product-oriented studies). It investigates the influence of translations in the recipient sociocultural context (function-oriented studies). It examines the mental processes involved in the translation act (process-oriented descriptive studies). Translation description and translation theory constitute the two branches of the discipline that focus on pure research. The third branch, applied translation studies, concerns itself with translator training, translation aids, translation policy, and translation criticism. Translator training includes teaching methods (approach, design, and procedures), testing techniques (the diagnostic, formative, and summative assessment of the various components of translation competence), and curriculum planning. Translation aids comprise translation-specific lexicographical and terminological resources as well as grammars. Translation policy involves giving sound advice on the place and role of translators and translation in society, including language education. Translation criticism subsumes translation interpretation and evaluation. The three main branches of translation studies are interdependent, since each provides data and insights for the other two. Thus, translation scholars elaborate theories and models by combining the observational and experimental results yielded by descriptive and applied studies. Researchers working in descriptive and applied studies draw on the insights provided by translation theory, and they put forward operational hypotheses they test empirically. In each of the three branches of translation studies there are two additional dimensions. The historical dimension deals with the history of translation theory, translation description, and applied translation studies. The methodological dimension discusses issues concerning the definition of the object of study of the discipline together with the choice of the research styles, methods, and tools that are most appropriate in the different subdivisions of the field. Interdisciplinarity in translation studies is now more evident than ever, since scholars are becoming acutely aware of the multitude of practices that are subsumed under the umbrella term “translation.”