Chapter 16-18: Translation studies

Torop distinguishes various kinds of translations:

- The textual translation or, interlingual translation: It’s the core of the studies of a translator. It consists in transforming a text in a source language into a similar text in another language.

It’s a very old human activity (example: translation of the Bible from the Arameic into Greek, than into Latin and finally to modern languages)

Is translation an art or a science? The different languages answer differently:

- For the English speak of “translation studies”

- The French “Traductologie” sounds scientific, but it is not widely used.

- For the German, “Übersetzungwissenschaft” means translation science.

- For the Russian, translation is a “perevodovedenie”, which means something between competence and awareness.

In this course, we use translation science and translation studies.

- The metatextual translation: It deals with what helps the text to be received in a culture: Preface, introduction, critique…”overall image a text creates of itself in a given culture”

- The intertextual translation: “. In our world, no text rises in autonomy, outside a context. This is increasingly true when we face the faster and capillary circulation of information that, on one hand, tends to globalize culture but, on the other hand, makes easier the interchange between cultures and promotes development beyond differences.  

This aspect emphasizes the context, the world in which a text is born from an author. If we translate a text, comprehension of this context, social and historical conditions must be understood to be made understandable in new conditions.

- The extratextual translation: In Torop’s terminology, it’s the equivalent of the intersemiotic translation: When a picture is translated into a text, or a script into a movie, switching from a verbal system into a non-verbal one.