work in the field of translation done in 1980s by different scholars

1. History of Translation

2. ERA 1980s
1. WILLIAM FRAWLEY BEENISH ASGHAR
2. ANTONIE BERMAN 15011517-006
3. LORI CHAMBERLAIN SEEMAB ASIF
4. Shoshana BLUM-KULKA 15011517-032
5. HANS J. VERMEER SUMIYA AFZAL
6. ANDRE LAFEVERE 15011517-003

3. Introduction to ERA 1980s
THIS DECADE OPENS with the publication of Susan Bassnett’s
Translation Studies, a widely circulated book that consolidates various
strands of translation research and, especially in English-speaking
countries, fills the need for an introductory text in the translation
classroom. It is a timely intervention that heralds the emergence of
translation studies as a separate discipline, overlapping with linguistics,
literary criticism, and philosophy, but exploring unique problems of
cross-cultural communication.

4. Bassnett takes a historical approach to theoretical
concepts and understands practical strategies in relation
to specific cultural and social situations. Even though
she emphasizes literary translation, her book rests on
what becomes the most common theoretical assumption
during this period: the relative autonomy of the
translated text.

5. 1-William Frawley
PROLEGOMENON TO A THEORY OF
TRANSLATION

6. For translation theory, banal messages are breath of life. This
remarks Quine in Word and Object.
Since then there’s discussion on this comment that there
seems no such thing as “banal messages”. Every message is
complex. Even a simple translation needs the transfer of
culture . So the “breath of life” for a theory of translation
remains a phantasm.

7. According to William,
Translation theory also remains a phantasm.
a) Quine in Word and Object, discuss about “identity across linguistic systems”, he
treats the possibility of translation and not about a theory of translation.
b) Jerrold Katz’s argument is a defence of the possibility of absolute synonymy
across languages. That is surely not a theory of translation.
c) Keenan’s paper on logical translation is directed towards countering the identity
thesis and can never be an evidence for the existence of a theory of translation.

8. Continue..
He suggested that we begin on solid footing
by settling first on, what is meant by
“Translation”.

9. Translation means “recodification”.
A theory of translation is a set of propositions about how, why,
when and where coded elements are rendered into other
codes. So translation is a problem of transfer of codes.

10. Why is translation recodification and not
only codification?
A translation is a secondary semiotic process.
According to a theory of semiotics, there are three types of semiotic transfer.
1. Copying
2. Transcribing
3. Translating

11. Translation model
He developed a modal of translation process.
It is not just recodify the elements of matrix code into target code. There’s a shuffling
back and fourth between matrix and target in act of translation.
Matrix provide information to accommodate the target code and target code provide
parameters to accommodate the information.
Matrix code Target Code

12. AntoineBerman
TRANSLATIONANDTHETRIALSOFTHEFOREIGN
“Trial of the foreign” is the expression that Heidegger uses to define one
pole of poetic experience.

13. In a double sense
1. Translation is the “trial of the foreign.” In the first place, it establishes a relationship
between the Self-Same and the Foreign by aiming to open up the foreign work to us
in its utter foreignness.
2. In the second place, translation is a trial for the Foreign as well, since the foreign
work is uprooted from its own language-ground. And this trial, often an exile, can also
exhibit the most singular power of the translating act: to reveal the foreign work’s
most original kernel, its most deeply buried and most self-same.

14. Conti…
He examines the system of textual deformation. He call this the “analytic
of translation.” According to him, the system is largely unconscious,
present as a series of tendencies or forces that cause translation to
deviate from its essential aim.

15. Deforming tendencies:
Berman locate twelve deforming tendencies. There may be more:
1. Rationalization
Rationalization recomposes sentences and the sequence of sentences
and rearranging them.
Rationalization destroys the shape of the text.
Rationalization means abstraction. Rationalization makes the original
pass from concrete to abstract, not only by reordering the sentence
structure, but also by translating verbs into substantives.

16. Conti..
To sum up: rationalization deforms the original by reversing its
basic tendency. It is content to reverse the relations which
prevail in the original between formal and informal, ordered and
disorderly, abstract and concrete. This conversion is typical of
ethnocentric translation: it causes the work to undergo a change
of sign, of status, and seemingly without changing meaning.

17. Clarification
It concerns the level of “clarity” in words and their meanings.
The American poet Galway Kinnell writes: “The translation should be a
little clearer than the original” (cited by Gresset 1983:519).
Every translation comprises some degree of explicitation.
This leads us towards the third tendency.

18. Expansion
Rationalizing and clarifying require expansion, an unfolding of
what, in the original, is “folded.”
The expansion is, moreover, a stretching, a slackening, which
impairs the rhythmic flow of the work. It is often called
“overtranslation.”

19. Ennoblement
It involves in producing “elegant” sentences, while utilizing the source text, so to
speak, as raw material. Thus the ennoblement is only a rewriting, a “stylistic exercise”
based on—and at the expense of—the original.
This procedure is active in the literary field, but also in the human sciences, where it
produces texts that are “readable,” “brilliant,” rid of their original clumsiness and
complexity so as to enhance the “meaning.”

20. Qualitative impoverishment
This refers to the replacement of terms, expressions and
figures in the original with terms, expressions and figures
that lack their sonorous richness or their signifying or
iconic richness.

21. Quantitative impoverishment
This refers to a lexical loss. Every work in prose presents a certain proliferation of
signifiers and signifying chains. These signifiers can be described as unfixed,
especially as a signified may have a multiplicity of signifiers.
The translation that does not respect this multiplicity of an unrecognizable work.
There is a loss, then, since the translation contains fewer signifiers than the
original.
The translation that attends to the lexical texture of the work, to its mode of
lexicality—enlarges it. This loss perfectly coexists with an increase of the gross
quantity or mass of the text with expansion
The translating results in a text that is at once poorer and longer.

22. The destruction of rhythms
The novel is not less rhythmic than poetry. It even comprises a multiplicity of
rhythms. Since the entire bulk of the novel is thus in movement, it is fortunately
difficult for translation to destroy this rhythmic movement. This explains why even
a great but badly translated novel continues to transport us.
Poetry and theatre are more fragile. Yet the deforming translation can
considerably affect the rhythm—for example, through an arbitrary revision of the
punctuation.
Michel Gresset (1983) shows how a translation of Faulkner destroys his distinctive
rhythm: where the original included only four marks of punctuation, the
translation uses twenty-two, eighteen of which are commas!

23. The destruction of underlying networks
of signification
The literary work contains a hidden dimension, an “underlying” text, where certain
signifiers correspond and link up.
It is this subtext that carries the network of word-obsessions. These underlying
chains constitute one aspect of the rhythm and signifying process of the text.
The word of the original may form a network of signifiers and if such networks are not
transmitted, the signifying process in the text is destroyed.

24. The destruction of linguistic patterning
The systematic nature of the text goes beyond the level of signifiers, metaphors, etc.
It extends to the type of sentences, the sentence constructions employed.
Hence, when the translated text is more “homogeneous” than the original, it is
equally more incoherent and, more heterogeneous, more inconsistent.

25. The destruction of vernacular networks
or their exoticization
The traditional method of preserving vernaculars is to exoticize them. Exoticization
can take two forms. First, a typographical procedure (italics) is used to isolate what
does not exist in the original. Second, emphasizing the vernacular according to a
certain stereotype e.g. Song of Songs.
Unfortunately, a vernacular clings tightly to its soil and completely resists any direct
translating into another vernacular. Translation can occur only between “cultivated”
languages. An exoticization that turns the foreign from abroad into the foreign at
home winds up merely ridiculing the original.

26. The effacement of the superimposition
of languages
The superimposition of languages is threatened by translation.
The relation of tension and integration that exists in the original
between the vernacular language and the shared, between the
underlying language and the surface language, etc. tends to be
effaced.

27. Presenter:
Seemab Asif
15011517-032

28. Shoshana Blum-Kulka
SHIFTS OF COHESION AND COHERENCE IN
TRANSLATION

29. She addresses the issue of possible shifts of cohesion and
coherence in the translation of written texts. The main argument
postulated is that the process of translation necessarily entails
shifts both in textual and discoursal relationships.
1:Shift of cohesion
2:Shift of coherence

30. 1. Shifts of cohesion
Cohesion will be considered as an overt relationship holding between
parts of the text, expressed by language specific markers.
On the level of cohesion, shifts in types of cohesive markers used in
translation seem to affect translations in one or both of the following
directions:
1. Shifts in levels of explicitness
2. Shifts in text meaning

31. 1: Shifts in levels of explicitness
Shifts in levels of explicitness; i.e. the general level of the target
texts’ textual explicitness is higher or lower than that of the source
text.
The overt cohesive relationships between parts of the texts are
necessarily linked to a language’s grammatical system (Halliday
and Hasan 1976).
Thus, grammatical differences between languages will be
expressed by changes in the types of ties used to mark cohesion
in source and target texts. Such transformations might carry with
them a shift in the text’s overall level of explicitness.

32. 2: Meaning and cohesion
Shifts in text meanings (i.e.) the explicit and implicit meaning
potential of the source text changes through translations.
The choice involved in the types of cohesive markers used in a
particular text can affect the texture (as being “loose” or
“dense”) as well as the style and meaning of that text.

33. 2. Shift of coherence
Coherence can be viewed as a covert potential meaning
relationship among parts of a text, made overt by the reader or
listener through processes of interpretation.
In considering “shifts in coherence” through translation, is
concerned, on the most general level, with examining the
possibility that texts may change or lose their meaning potential
through translation.

34. There is a need to distinguish between:
1. Reader-focused shift of coherence
2. Text-focused shift of coherence.

35. 1: Reader-focused shift of coherence
Reader-focused shifts are linked to a change in reader audiences
through translation.
For the reader, the text becomes a coherent discourse if he can apply relevant
schemas (e.g. based on world knowledge, subject matter knowledge,
familiarity with genre conventions) to draw the necessary inferences for
understanding both the letter and the spirit of the text. If bridging across
cultures and languages, as is always the case in translation, is indeed different
from switching primarily between audiences (even if a language shift is
involved), then we should see evidence for reader-based shifts in texts
originally aimed at two audiences and written in two languages.

36. Conti..
The clearest examples of shifts of coherence that result from
the change in audience and not language come from the area of
reference. Whether real world or literary, allusions to persons,
places or other texts may play a central role in building up the
coherence of a given story.
Writers themselves may be aware of the fact that their
reference network is not shared by their readers and take pains
to explain it in footnotes or otherwise. In translation the
translator becomes the judge as to the extent to which he or
she finds it necessary to explain the source text’s reference
network to the target-language audience.

37. Reader-focused shifts of coherence in translation
are to some extent unavoidable, unless the
translator is normatively free to “transplant” the
text from one cultural environment to another.

38. 2:Text-focused shift of coherence
Text-based shifts of coherence are linked to well-known
differences between linguistic systems.
According to Kulka, the most serious shifts occur not
due to the differences as such, but because the
translator failed to realize the functions a particular
linguistic system, or a particular form, plays in conveying
indirect meanings in a given text.

39. Lori Chamberlain
Gender and Metaphoric of Translation

40. Lori Chamberlain
•Is a visiting lecturer in the Department of Literature at the
University of California, San Diego.
•Her articles Published on contemporary poetry and fiction
•One of the most important theorist in the field of gender
research.
•Lori Chamberlain, “Gender and the Metaphoric of Translation,”
Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, (1988)

41. overview
Full account of the sexist tropes used persistently through the ages to describe
the binary relations author/translator, original/translation where the first term is
said to be the most powerful.
The parallel between women's oppression in language and culture and the
devaluation of translation.
How the basic concepts of translation theory seem to have a gender bias and
the different metaphors used to represent it..

42. conti..
This opposition specifically as it is used to mark the
distinction between writing and translating—marking,
that is, the one to be original and “masculine,” the other
to be derivative and “feminine.”

43. Translation vs. Original text
The act of translating is viewed as something qualitatively
different from the original act of writing.
Translations can be, for example, echoes (in musical terms),
copies or portraits (in painterly terms), or borrowed or ill-fitting
clothing (in sartorial terms).

44. conti....
The original is considered the strong generative male,
the translation the weaker and derivative female”.

45. Sexualisation of Translation
Les bells infideles (unfaithful beauties) is a centuries old
metaphor which sees translation as unfaithful beauty.
This metaphor which stressed the feminine and potentially
untrustworthy nature of translation(the woman) compared to the
masculine originality and trustworthiness of source.

46. conti..
Sometimes fidelity means the female text’s relation to the male original /
author or the translator who is also male.
In some other cases, fidelity is defined as the male translator’s relation
with his female mother-tongue. Here the mother-tongue has to be
protected by the knight-translator. This chivalrous masculine desire to
protect the mother-tongue, however, does condone the act of violation of
another language in the act of translation.

47. The translation project
An approach to literary translation in which feminist translators
openly advocate and implement strategies to foreground the
feminist in the translated text.
The linguistic strategies they employed to make female visible
include the use of puns.

48. Presenter:
Sumiya Afzal
15011517-003

49. Hans J.Vermeer
Skopos and translation

50. At this point it should be emphasized that the following considerations are not only
intended to be valid for complete actions, such as whole texts, but also apply as far as
possible to segments of actions, parts of a text. The skopos concept can also be used
with respect to segments of
a translatum, where this appears reasonable or necessary. This allows us to state that
an action, and hence a text, need not be considered an indivisible whole.

51. Conti..
It goes without saying that a translatum may also have the same function (skopos) as
its source text. Yet even in this case the translation process is not merely a “trans-
coding” (unless this translation variety is actually intended), since according to a
uniform theory of translation a translatum of this kind is also primarily oriented,
methodologically, towards a target culture situation or situations. Trans-coding, as a
procedure which is retrospectively oriented towards the source text, not prospectively
towards the target culture, is diametrically opposed to the theory of translational
action.

52. The translation commission
Someone who translates undertakes to do so as a matter of deliberate choice (I exclude the
possibility of translating under hypnosis), or because he is required to do so. One translates as
a result of either one’s own initiative or someone else’s: in both cases, that is, one acts in
accordance with a “commission”. A commission comprises (or should comprise) as much
detailed information as possible on the following: (1) the goal, i.e. a specification of the aim
of the commission; (2) the
conditions under which the intended goal should be attained (naturally including practical
matters such as deadline and fee).

53. Conti…
The statement of goal and the conditions should be explicitly negotiated between the
client (commissioner) and the translator, for the client may occasionally have an
imprecise or even false picture of the way a text might be received in the target
culture. Here the translator should be able to make argumentative suggestions. A
commission can (and should) only be binding and conclusive, and accepted as such
by the translator, if the conditions are clear enough.

54. André Lefevere
Text, system and refraction in a theory of
literature.

55. TRANSLATION STUDIES CAN hardly be said to have occupied a central position
in much theoretical thinking about literature. Indeed, the very possibility of their
relevance to literary theory has often been denied since the heyday of the first
generation of German Romantic theorists and translators. This article will try to show
how a certain approach to translation studies can make a significant contribution to
literary theory as a whole and how translations or, to use a more general term,
refractions, play a very important part in the evolution of literatures. A systemic
approach to literature, on the other hand, tends not to suffer from
such assumptions. Translations, texts produced on the borderline between two
systems, provide an ideal introduction to a systems approach to literature.

56. Conti..
The literary system also possesses a kind of code of behavior, a poetics. This poetics
consists of both an inventory component (genre, certain symbols, characters,
prototypical situations) and a “functional” component, an idea of how literature has
to, or may be allowed to, function in society. . In systems with undifferentiated
patronage the critical establishment will be able to enforce the poetics. In systems
with differentiated patronage various poetics will compete, each trying to dominate
the system as a whole, and each will have its own critical establishment, applauding
work that has been produced on the basis of its own poetics and decrying what the
competition has to offer, relegating it to the limbo of “low” literature, while claiming
the high ground for itself

57. Conti…
The gap between “high” and “low” widens as commercialization increases. Literature
produced for obviously commercial reasons(the Harlequin series) will tend to be as
conservative, in terms of poetics, as literature produced for obviously ideological
reasons (propaganda). Yet economic success does not necessarily bring status in its
wake: one can be highly successful as a commercial writer (Harold Robbins) and be
held in contempt by the highbrows at the same time.