Translation: A Multidisciplinary Approach
The cross-linguistic and cross-cultural practice of translation is a field of rapidly growing international importance. World-renowned experts offer new and multidisciplinary insights on this subject, viewing translation as social action and intercultural
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In this introduction I will firstly try to address the basic question of what translation is, look at several crucial concepts and trends in translation studies and the increasingly important role which translation plays today in different domains of practice. Secondly I will provide a brief introduction to the chapters in this volume.
1.1 What is translation? Translation can be defined as the result of a linguistic-textual operation in which a text in one language is re-produced in another language. However, this linguistic-textual operation is subject to, and substantially influenced by, a variety of different extra-linguistic factors and conditions. It is this interaction between ‘inner’ linguistic-textual and ‘outer’ extra-linguistic contextual factors that makes translation such a complex phenomenon. Some of these factors are: • the structural characteristics; • the expressive potential and the constraints of the two languages involved in translation; • the extra-linguistic world which is differentially ‘cut up’ by source and target languages; • the source text with its linguistic-stylistic-aesthetic features that belong to the norms of usage holding in the source lingua-cultural community; • the linguistic-stylistic-aesthetic norms of the target language; • the target language norms internalised by the translator; • intertextuality governing the totality of the text in the target culture; 1
10.1057/9781137025487.0005 - Introduction, Juliane House
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Introduction
Translation: A Multidisciplinary Approach
• traditions, principles, histories, ideologies of translation holding in the target lingua-cultural community; • the translational ‘brief’ given to the translator by the person/institution commissioning the translation; • the translator’s workplace conditions; • human factors: knowledge, expertise, ethical stance and attitudinal profiles of the receptors of the translation as well as knowledge, expertise, ethical stance, attitudinal profiles of the translator as well as his/her subjective theories of translation. So while translation is at its core a linguistic-textual operation, a multitude of other conditioning and constraining factors also impinge on its performance. As the different perspectives and approaches united in this multidisciplinary volume nicely show, the complexity of both translation and the field of translation studies results from the fact that each of the factors listed above – and possibly many more – can be taken singly or in multiple combinations as a starting point for investigating translation. So we find in this volume approaches that focus on literature in translation, discourse and cross-cultural communication, language contact, socio-political, cognitive, narrative and pedagogic perspectives on translation, corpora, media, assessment. It is this enormous breadth, depth and richness of translation which makes it such a fascinating multidisciplinary
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