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Period: 106 BCE to 43 BCE
Marcus Tullius Cicero
For Cicero translations were necessary because there was a public for them, in addition, they helped nationalism and translation. It was considered as an intermediary of Greek culture. Likewise, the translation status was reconsidered, considering the translation as something new and not as a copy; It was not translated word for word, but rhetorically. -
Period: 342 to 420
Saint Jerome
St. Jerome is considered the "Patron Saint of Translators".
It took him 23 years to translate the Bible from Greek and Hebrew to Latin. -
382
‘Vulgate Latin Bible’
The Vulgate is a translation of the Hebrew and Greek Bible to Latin. It was made at the end of the IV century, by Saint Jerome. -
1221
Toledo’s School of translators
It was a movement of intense and elongate translating activity activated by the confluence, at that moment and in that city, of cultural, social, and political circumstances that favored the job of translators who come from different places of Spain. Scientific documents and Arab philosophy were translated there, Greek science frequently went to this School. -
Period: 1500 to
The ‘Postcolonial translation theory”
If the translator belongs to the colonizer culture, then, what we hear comes also from the colonizer; meanwhile, our interest could be meeting the colonizer’s culture and that dialect process of decolonization. If the translator achieves finding an equivalence, the translator accepts the difference between cultures; meanwhile, the translator achieves finding a similar expression, which could mean that there are inevitable similarities between humans. -
1522
Translation of the Bible into German by Martin Lutero
The lack of standardization of German makes it impossible for people from different regions to understand each other and, otherwise, it difficult to share knowledge. Lutero translated the entire Bible into German. The success of the Luther translation lies in four points: The use of central German as a predominant variable, its translation maturity, its eloquence in the target text, and its capability to make his own words a language standardization authority. -
1540
Manière de bien traduire d’une langue en aultre
Étienne Dolet published “Manière de bien traduire d’une langue en aultre”. In this writing, he considers that there are five principles that must be respected properly in translation. It pins up in the most simple and clear way the paradigms about sense, style, author, receptor, original text and translated text, comprehension, etc. -
John Dryden in translation
John Dryden judges imitation as one of the two equally despicable opposites that can be adopted in front of translation.
Dryden divides the translation process into three types:
1. Metaphrasis, word for word translation
2. The paraphrase, a translation in which the translator has the author present.
3. Imitation -
‘Essay on the principles of translation’
Alexander Fraser Tytler defines a ‘good translation’ as being oriented towards the target language reader.
Tytler has three general ‘laws’ or ‘rules’.
(1) The translation should give a complete transcript of the ideas of the original work.
(2) The style and manner of writing should be of the same character with that of the original.
(3) The translation should have all the ease of the original composition -
"Uber die verschiedenen Methoden des Ubersetzens"
Friedrich Schleiermacher delivered his seminal lectures.
If the translator is to seek to communicate the same impression which he or she received from the ST, this impression will also depend on the level of education and understanding among the TT readership.
A special language of the translation may be necessary. The translator has to make do with a hackneyed expression that cannot convey the impression of the foreign. -
Yán Fù's translation of Thomas Huxley’s "Evolution and Ethics"
Yan Fu states his three translation principles as:
xin (fidelity/ faithfulness/trueness)
da (fluency/expressiveness/intelligibility/comprehensibility)
yaˇ (elegance/gracefulness). -
‘Die Aufgabe des Ubersetzers’
Walter Benjamin states the purpose of translation as ‘the expression of the most intimate relationships among languages’. It reveals inherent relationships that are present but which remain hidden without translation. It does this not by seeking to be the same as the original but by ‘harmonizing’ or bringing together the two different languages. In this expansive and creative way, translation both contributes to the growth of its own language and pursues the goal of a ‘pure’ and higher language. -
Translation procedures
Jean Paul Vinay and Jean Darbelnet proposed seven procedures. These are borrowing, calque, literal, transposition, modulation, equivalence, adaptation. Their view was that if literal translation or direct translation was impossible, then the translator would have to resort to what they termed oblique translation. The oblique translation is another term for free translation where the translator exercises his/her freedom to attain equivalence. -
“Toward a science of translating”
Eugene Nida describes the nature of meaning, the role of the translator, and the different meanings: linguistic, referential, and emotional. The essential theory of the author is exposed, which revolutionized the concept of translation: dynamic equivalence in translation. -
“The theory and practice of translation”
Eugene Nida describes the processes used when translating: analysis of the different meanings, transfer, restructuring, and translation checking. -
"Skopos theory" by Hans J. Vermeer
This theory consists of six rules:
(1) A translational action is determined by its skopos.
(2) It is an offer of information in a target culture and TL concerning an offer of information in a source culture and SL.
(3) A TT does not initiate an offer of information in a clearly reversible way.
(4) A TT must be internally coherent.
(5) A TT must be coherent with the ST.
(6) The five rules above stand in hierarchical order, with the skopos rule predominating. -
The Literary Polysystem theory by Itamar Even-Zohar
He published an essay in which he exposed the Literary Polisystem theory. In this theory, the translated literature produces its own subsystem, which has two elements:
1. Prototexts are chosen by the receiving literature through translation, they can be incorporated into the texts published in said culture;
2. Meta texts adopt specific behaviors. Its life in the host culture system is totally autonomous from the proto text and exerts an influence of its own as a text. -
“After Babel” by George Steiner
There are four phases.
Phase 1: The analysis of the translation is carried out from an empirical perspective, based merely on their own translation experiences.
Phase 2: It is characterized by a theoretical and hermeneutical reflection on the translation.
Phase 3: Professional translators, become increasingly important.
Phase 4: Specific problems are posed depending on the type of translation, and each problem requires a specific answer. -
“The Name and Nature of Translation Studies” by James S. Holmes
The article produces the change of perspective so necessary for the development of the translation discipline. In the article, Holmes states that translation studies are an empirical discipline and therefore with two main goals:
a) to describe the phenomena of translating and translation(s) as they manifest themselves in the word of our experience, and
b) to establish general principles by means of which these phenomena can be explained and predicted. -
Approaches to Translation by Peter Newmark.
Communicative translation attempts to produce on its readers an effect as close as possible to that obtained on the readers of the original. Semantic translation attempts to render, as closely as the semantic and syntactic structures of the second language allow, the exact contextual meaning of the original. Newmark defined the act of translation as the transference of meaning from one language to another one. -
The Hallidayan model of language
Halliday’s model of discourse analysis, based on what he terms systemic functional linguistics, is geared to the study of language as communication. It sees meaning in the writer’s linguistic choices and, through detailed grammar, systematically relates these choices to the text’s function in a wider sociocultural framework. In Halliday’s model, importantly, there is a strong interrelation between the linguistic choices, the aims of the communication, and the sociocultural framework. -
"In Other Words: A Coursebook on Translation" by Mona Baker
Baker looks at equivalence at a series of levels: at the word, above-word, grammar, thematic structure, cohesion, and pragmatic levels. Of particular interest in the present chapter is her application of the systemic approach to thematic structure and cohesion and the incorporation of the pragmatic level, of language in use. -
Deconstruction by Christopher Norris
Allied to the postmodern and poststructuralist movements, deconstruction involves an interrogation of language and the very terms, systems, and concepts which are constructed by that language. Deconstruction rejects the primacy of meaning fixed in the word and instead foregrounds or ‘deconstructs’ the ways in which a text undermines its own assumptions and reveals its internal contradictions. -
The van Doorslaer ‘map’
This model presents that translation is subdivided into:
- lingual mode
- media
- mode
- field
And Translation studies are subdivided into:
- approaches
- theories
- research methods
- applied translation studies
