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Developments in Translation Studies and Its Scope

Translation Studies has evolved significantly over time. It began with early translations of religious texts from Hebrew to Greek in the 5th century BC by Torah, who followed a literal word-for-word translation approach. In the 1st century BC, Cicero translated Classical Greek works to Latin using a freer sense-for-sense approach focused on reproducing the same effect in the target language rather than strict adherence to structure. Major developments also occurred during the Renaissance with the translation of literary and religious texts from Greek to English. Today, Translation Studies encompasses fields like machine translation, audiovisual translation for films, and interdisciplinary applications in technology companies and universities. It has become an emerging field that draws from linguistics, literature

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48 views

Developments in Translation Studies and Its Scope

Translation Studies has evolved significantly over time. It began with early translations of religious texts from Hebrew to Greek in the 5th century BC by Torah, who followed a literal word-for-word translation approach. In the 1st century BC, Cicero translated Classical Greek works to Latin using a freer sense-for-sense approach focused on reproducing the same effect in the target language rather than strict adherence to structure. Major developments also occurred during the Renaissance with the translation of literary and religious texts from Greek to English. Today, Translation Studies encompasses fields like machine translation, audiovisual translation for films, and interdisciplinary applications in technology companies and universities. It has become an emerging field that draws from linguistics, literature

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Mr. IMRAN
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Assignment submitted to: Dr.

Priya Avais
Submitted by Imran
ID: S2018084011
Course: Translation Studies (ENG 731)

Developments in Translation Studies


. and its scope
Translation is a practice of converting a text from one language, the source language, to another
language, the target language. Translation Studies deals with the theories and models
explaining how the process of translation is carried out. Many developments have taken place in
this field.

The history of Translation Studies goes back to 5th Century BC when Torah put forward some
rules for the process of translation. In fact, it can not be said that he was the first practitioner in
the field of Translation Studies as when it comes to the origin of a field or discipline, there exist
many contrasting views. Torah translated texts from Hebrew, the primary language, to Greek,
the target language. He followed the literal translation. That is, he translated the text word by
word, not sense by sense or effect by effect. There was no known theory at that time to be
followed because a theory comes into existence when a detailed description of certain
processes is presented; at that time, no such attempts had been made. Torah himself followed
the practice of free translation, but it was not a developed or recognised theory or model then.

Next comes the name Cicero of in Ist Century BC, who translated Classical Works from Greek
into Latin. Cicero’s translation of the text, which was in Greek originally, into Latin was free.
What is meant by free is that it was not a word by word. Rather, it was a sense-by-sense
translation. Sense-by-sense translation does not follow the practice of translating a text word by
word and observing a strict adherence of not only semantic equivalence but also syntactic
equivalence. It focuses exclusively on the former. It aims to create the same effect on the new
reader through the newly translated texts as the original reader had on the original text. This is,
therefore, also called effect-by-effect translation. Cicero’s concern was to reproduce the same
effect via Latin; he was not in any kind of constriction, religious or other, to remain fidel since he
had been translating literary texts, not religious. While translating religious texts, the translators
usually follow word-by-word translation to keep the structures as well as the content of the
original text intact and confirm their fidelity to the religion.

Another name that merits mention in the history of the developments in Translation Studies is
Plinius Yunior, Ist Century, who, like Cicero, translated Classical Works from Greek into Latin.
However, unlike Cicero, he followed the practice of Literal Translation.

The name that stands out the most prominent in the history of Translation Studies today is
St.Jerome, 4th Century. He translated The Bible, and he translated it sense-for-sense. That is to
say, he did not show adherence to the structures of the text of the original text. As a result, he
was declared to be infidel, and he had to pay for it. It is not uncontroversial whether a translator
remains faithful to the original through Literal Translation or Free Translation.

During the renaissance, there were a lot of developments in Translation Studies because not
only texts related to literature from the ancient Greek were translated into English but religious
texts were translated as well.

This stage is very vital in the evolution of translation since during this stage along with
translating literary texts from Greek into English, they were also adopted to be staged. This is
what has enhanced the scope of Translation Studies. Many products of the legendary Greek
writers are performed on the stage, which has led to further development in the wake of the
modification in the technology used in cinema and theater.

This brings me to the contemporary developments in Translation Studies. Machine Translation


has evolved as a sub-field of Translation Studies. It uses softwares for the conversion; it is a
branch of Computational Linguistics. Today, many companies are using this to translate text,
particularly technical texts.

Apart from Machine Translation, there has been a lot of modification in the technology used for
the translation in film industries. Subtitling and dubbing are a few of them. Many Hollywood
movies are translated into Urdu, Hindi and some other languages. Likewise, movies are
translated into English from other languages of the world.
All these have made Translation Studies an emerging field. There are many multinational
companies who seek graduates who have backgrounds in Translation Studies. The reason
behind this is that these companies have numerous tasks related to translation, converting ads
from one language into another, promoting courses about translation, changing visuals
according to the need (intersemiotic translation), to mention but a few.

What is worth mentioning here is that it is somewhat due to Translation Studies and
Computational Linguistics that the universities of engineering and technology are now hiring
those who have degrees in linguistics. Of course, some areas of phonetics and phonology have
also contributed to this, speech therapy and articulatory and auditory phonetics, for instance.

Thus, Translation Studies is regarded as an emerging interdisciplinary field. It deals with many
other fields along with linguistics, film industry, Computational Linguistics and literature, both
written and visual, for example.

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