Presents the most important theories in Translation Studies that have emerged over the last 50 years. Particularly innovative is the inclusion of theories from outside North America and Europe, theoretical perspectives on recent technological developments and a consideration of the nature of theory in the field.
Presents the most important theories in Translation Studies that have emerged over the last 50 years. Particularly innovative is the inclusion of theories from outside North America and Europe, theoretical perspectives on recent technological developments and a consideration of the nature of theory in the field.
"Early Theories of Translation" by Flora Ross Amos. Published by Good Press. Good Press publishes a wide range of titles that encompasses every genre. From well-known classics & literary fiction and non-fiction to forgotten−or yet undiscovered gems−of world literature, we issue the books that need to be read. Each Good Press edition has been meticulously edited and formatted to boost readability for all e-readers and devices. Our goal is to produce eBooks that are user-friendly and accessible to everyone in a high-quality digital format.
This volume outlines a theory of translation, set within the framework of Peircean semiotics, which challenges the linguistic bias in translation studies by proposing a semiotic theory that accounts for all instances of translation, not only interlinguistic translation. In particular, the volume explores cases of translation which does not include language at all. The book begins by examining different conceptualizations of translation to highlight how linguistic bias in translation studies and semiotics has informed these fields and their development. The volume then outlines a complexity theory of translation based on semiotics which incorporates process philosophy, semiotics, and translation theory. It posits that translation is the complex systemic process underlying semiosis, the result of which produces semiotic forms. The book concludes by looking at the implications of this conceptualization of translation on social-cultural emergence theory through an interdisciplinary lens, integrating perspectives from semiotics, social semiotics, and development studies. Paving the way for scholars to analyze translational aspects of all semiotic phenomena, this volume is essential reading for graduate students and researchers in translation studies, semiotics, multimodal studies, cultural studies, and development studies.
Exploring Translation Theories presents a comprehensive analysis of the core contemporary paradigms of Western translation theory. The book covers theories of equivalence, purpose, description, uncertainty, localization, and cultural translation. This second edition adds coverage on new translation technologies, volunteer translators, non-lineal logic, mediation, Asian languages, and research on translators’ cognitive processes. Readers are encouraged to explore the various theories and consider their strengths, weaknesses, and implications for translation practice. The book concludes with a survey of the way translation is used as a model in postmodern cultural studies and sociologies, extending its scope beyond traditional Western notions. Features in each chapter include: An introduction outlining the main points, key concepts and illustrative examples. Examples drawn from a range of languages, although knowledge of no language other than English is assumed. Discussion points and suggested classroom activities. A chapter summary. This comprehensive and engaging book is ideal both for self-study and as a textbook for Translation theory courses within Translation Studies, Comparative Literature and Applied Linguistics.
Past attempts at writing a history of Chinese translation theory have been bedeviled by a chronological approach, which often forces the writer to provide no more than a list of important theories and theorists over the centuries. Or they have stretched out to almost every aspect related to translation in China, so that the historical/political backdrop that had an influence on translation theorizing turns out to be more important than the theories themselves. In the present book, the author hopes to devote exclusive attention to the ideas themselves. The approach adopted centers around eight key issues that engaged the attention of theorists through the course of the twentieth century, in the hope that a historical account will be presented that is not time-bound. On the basis of 38 articles translated into English by teachers and scholars of translation, the author has written four essays discussing the Chinese characteristics of this body of theory. Separately they focus on the impressionistic, the modern, the postcolonial, and the poststructuralist approaches deployed by leading Chinese theorists from 1901 to 1998. It is hoped that publication of this book will make possible cross-cultural dialogue with translation academics in the West, although the general reader will find much firsthand information on Chinese thinking about translation.
During the last thirty years, the field of translation has exploded with multiple new theories. Contemporary Translation Theories examines five of new approaches – the translation workshop, the science of translation, translation studies, polysystem theory, and deconstruction – all of which began in the mid -1960s and continue to be influential today.
Contextualizing Translation Theories: Aspects of Arabic–English Interlingual Communication provides critical readings of available strategies of translating, ranging from the familiar concept of equivalence, to strategies of modulation, domestication, foreignization and mores of translation. As such, this volume demonstrates to the reader the pros and cons of each of these strategies within a theoretical context that is augmented by translational tasks and examples, most derived from actual textual data.
This exciting new book explores the present relevance of translation theory to practice. A range of perspectives provides both current theoretical insights into the relevance of theory to translation and also offers first-hand experiences of applying appropriate strategies and methods to the practice and description of translation. The individual chapters in the book explore theoretical pronouncements and practical observations grouped in topics that include theory and creativity, translation and its relation with linguistics, gender issues and more. The book features four parts: it firstly deals with how theories from both within translation studies and from other disciplines can contribute to our understanding of the practice of translation; secondly, how theory can be reconceptualized from examining translation in practice; thirdly reconceptualizing practice from theory; and finally Eastern European and Asian perspectives of how translation theory and practice inform one another. The chapters all show examples from theoretical and practical as well as pedagogical issues ensuring appeal for a wide readership. This book will appeal to advanced level students, researchers and academics in translation studies.
Filling a gap in the study of early modern literature, Massimiliano Morini here exhaustively examines the aims, strategies, practice and theoretical ideas of the sixteenth-century translator. Morini analyzes early modern English translations of works by French and Italian essayists and poets, including Montaigne, Castiglione, Ariosto and Tasso, and of works by classical writers such as Virgil and Petrarch. In the process, he demonstrates how connected translation is with other cultural and literary issues: women as writers, literary relations between Italy and England, the nature of the author, and changes in the English language. Since English Tudor writers, unlike their Italian contemporaries, did not write theoretical treatises, the author works empirically to extrapolate the theory that informs the practice of Tudor translation - he deduces several cogent theoretical principles from the metaphors and figures of speech used by translators to describe translation. Employing a good blend of theory and practice, the author presents the Tudor period as a crucial transitional moment in the history of translation, from the medieval tradition (which in secular literature often entailed radical departure from the original) to the more subtle modern tradition (which prizes the invisibility of the translator and fluency of the translated text). Morini points out that this is also a period during which ideas about language and about the position of England on the political and cultural map of Europe undergo dramatic change, and he convincingly argues that the practice of translation changes as new humanistic methods are adapted to the needs of a country that is expanding its empire.
Translation strategies are the procedures employed by the translator to attempt a solution to the multifarious baffling problems with which translation is indubitably replete. Malone (1988, p.78) defines translation The steps, selected from a consciously known range of potential procedures, taken to solve a translation problem, which has been consciously detected and resulting in a consciously applied solution. While some strategies are helpful, others turn out to be of little avail. It follows, then, that the translator has to sort out the wheat from the chaff in pursuit of a good translation. Here, the translator may utilize particular strategies in accordance with the method anticipated in the course of translation, i.e. target- orientedness or source- orientedness., Faced with differences in the extralinguistic reality of the two cultures or ist lexical mapping, the translator tries to reconcile them by relying on the following procedures: borrowing, definition, literal translation, substitution, lexical creation, omission, and addition. Three comments that need to be made by the researcher in connection with this list: First, not all of the procedures achieve cultural transfer in the sense of filling the gap, but they all serve the purpose of achieving communicative equivalence in translation. For instance, substitution and omission certainly do not help to make members of the target culture aware of anything that their culture does not already possess, and lexical creation is no more enlightening than the use of the sources – language expression unless accompanied by some other procedure that will make the particular extra-linguistic feature part of their experiences. Second, combinations of procedures rather than single procedures are required for optimum transmission of cultural information (e.g., borrowing –and- definition, borrowing-and- substitution, lexical creation-and- definition,) Third, in planning his/her translation strategy, the translator does not make a one-time decision on how he/she will treat unmatched elements of culture; rather, even if the translator has established an overall order of preferences, he/she usually makes a new decision for each element and for ist each use in an act of communication, rather, even if he has established an overall order of preferences, he usually makes a new decision for each such element and for each use in an act of communication .(Cohen,1990,p.78)
