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The document discusses the historical development of translation and the emergence of translation studies as a distinct discipline, highlighting key figures and their contributions from ancient times to the late 20th century. It emphasizes the need for communication among scholars and outlines the framework proposed by James S. Holmes, which categorizes translation studies into pure and applied research areas. The document concludes by noting the ongoing growth and international discourse surrounding translation studies in the 21st century.

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3 views

Chapter1..Module2

The document discusses the historical development of translation and the emergence of translation studies as a distinct discipline, highlighting key figures and their contributions from ancient times to the late 20th century. It emphasizes the need for communication among scholars and outlines the framework proposed by James S. Holmes, which categorizes translation studies into pure and applied research areas. The document concludes by noting the ongoing growth and international discourse surrounding translation studies in the 21st century.

Uploaded by

tamcao276
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© © All Rights Reserved
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Nguyễn Duy Bình

Foreign Languages Department


Vinh University
Tel: 0947 492 309
Email: [email protected]
Atthe beginning

Writings on the subject of translating go far back in


recorded history. The practice of translation was
discussed by, for example, Cicero and Horace
(first century BCE) and St Jerome (fourth century
CE); their writings were to exert an important
influence up until the twentieth century.

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Atthe beginning

In St Jerome’s case, his


approach to translating
the Greek Septuagint
Bible into Latin would
affect later translations
of the Scriptures.
Indeed, the translation
of the Bible was to be
the battleground of
conflicting ideologies in
western Europe.

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From the late eighteenth century
to the 1960s
From the late eighteenth
century to the 1960s, language
learning in secondary schools
in many countries had come to
be dominated by what was
known as the grammar-
translation method. This
method, which was applied to
classical Latin and Greek and
then to modern foreign
languages, centered on the
study of the grammatical rules
and structures of the foreign
language.

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From the late eighteenth century
to the 1960s
These rules were both practised and tested by the
translation of a series of usually unconnected and
artificially constructed sentences exemplifying the
structure(s) being studied, an approach that
persists even nowadays in certain countries and
contexts.

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From the late eighteenth century
to the 1960s
The more systematic, and mostly linguistic-
oriented approach to the study of translation began
to emerge in the 1950s and 1960s. There are a
number of classic examples:

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From the late eighteenth century
to the 1960s
Jean-Paul Vinay and
Jean Darbelnet produced
their Stylistique comparée
du francais et de l’anglais
(1958), a contrastive
approach that categorized
what they saw happening
in the practice of
translation between
French and English.

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From the late eighteenth century
to the 1960s

 Georges Mounin’s Les problèmes théoriques de


la traduction (1963) examined linguistic issues
of translation;

 Eugene Nida (1964a) incorporated elements of


Chomsky’s then fashionable generative
grammar as a theoretical underpinning of his
books, which were initially designed to be
practical manuals for Bible translators.

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O rigin oftranslation studies?

In the English-speaking
world, this discipline is
now generally known as
‘translation studies’,
thanks to the Dutch-
based US scholar
James Stratton
Holmes (James S.
Holmes).

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The H olm es /Toury m ap

A seminal paper in the development of the field as


a distinct discipline was James S. Holmes’s “The
name and nature of translation studies” (Holmes
1988b/2000). In his Contemporary Translation
Theories, Gentzler (1993: 92) describes Holmes’s
paper as ‘generally accepted as the founding
statement for the field’.

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O rigin oftranslation studies?

In this key defining paper,


Holmes describes the then
nascent discipline as
being concerned with “the
complex of problems
clustered round the
phenomenon of translating
and translations” (Holmes
1988b/2000: 173).

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The H olm es /Toury m ap

Holmes draws attention to the limitations imposed at


the time by the fact that translation research was
dispersed across older disciplines. He also stresses
the need to forge ‘other communication channels,
cutting across the traditional disciplines to reach all
scholars working in the field, from whatever
background’ (1988b/2000: 173).

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The H olm es /Toury 'm ap

“[Holmes] realized as did few others that the 1950s had


heralded a revolution in translation studies” (van den
Broeck, 1988,1994:3)
Holmes highlighted the existence of 3 main impediments to
the further development of the discipline:
 scholars and researchers scattered in different fields and
therefore lack of common channels of communication;
 “the seemingly trivial matter of the name for this field of
research”; van den Broeck, 1988,1994:68)
 “lack of any general consensus as to the scope and
structure of the discipline” (ibid.:71)

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The H olm es /Toury 'm ap

Holmes concludes that :


“the most appropriate name for the discipline in English is
TRANSLATION STUDIES (TS), for this term would avoid a
lot of “confusion and misunderstanding”;
There should be communication channels able to reach all
scholars in the field, from whatever background.

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O rigin oftranslation studies?

By 1995, the time of the second, revised, edition of


her work, Snell-Hornby is able to talk in the
preface of ‘the breathtaking development of
translation studies as an independent discipline’
and the ‘prolific international discussion’ on the
subject.

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Cl ick to edit M aster title
Origin of translation studies?style

Mona Baker, in her


introduction to The
Routledge Encyclopedia of
Translation (1997a), talks
effusively of the richness of
the ‘exciting new discipline,
perhaps the discipline of the
1990s’, bringing together
scholars from a wide variety
of often more traditional
disciplines.

RZ
O rigin oftranslation studies?

By 1988, Mary Snell-Hornby, in the first edition of


her Translation Studies: An Integrated Approach,
was writing that ‘the demand that translation
studies should be viewed as an independent
discipline . . . has come from several quarters in
recent years’ (Snell-Hornby 1988).

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O rigin oftranslation studies?

Now, at the beginning of the twenty-first century,


the discipline of translation studies continues to
develop from strength to strength across the globe.

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The H olm es /Toury 'm ap

Holmes puts forward an overall framework, describing


what translation studies covers. This framework has
subsequently been presented by the leading Israeli
translation scholar Gideon Toury.

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The H olm es /Toury 'm ap

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The H olm es /Toury 'm ap

TS can be divided into 2 main research areas:

PURE APPLIED

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The H olm es /Toury 'm ap

Pure TS has 2 main goals (theoretical and descriptive):


1. “to establish general principles by means of which these
phenomena can be explained and predicted.” (Translation
Theory, TTh)
2. “to describe the phenomena of translating and translation(s) as
they manifest themselves in the world of experience” (Descriptive
Translation Studies, DTS)

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The product

Product-oriented DTS examines existing translations. This


can involve the description or analysis of a single ST-TT
pair or a comparative analysis of several TTs of the same
ST (into one or more TLs). These smaller-scale studies can
build up into a larger body of translation analysis looking at
a specific period, language or text/discourse type. Larger-
scale studies can be either diachronic (following
development over time) or synchronic (at a single point or
period in time)

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The function

By function-oriented DTS, Holmes means the


description of the ‘function [of translations] in the
recipient sociocultural situation: it is a study of contexts
rather than texts’ (p. 177).
Issues that may be researched include which books
were translated when and where, and what influences
they exerted.

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The process

Process-oriented DTS in Holmes’s


framework is concerned with the
psychology of translation, i.e. it is
concerned with trying to find out what
happens in the mind of a translator.

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QUIZ

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Quiz
Click the Quiz button to edit this object

Figure 1 Holmes’ conception of translation studies (from Munday p.10.)


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T hank you!

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