This document discusses key concepts in translation studies including polysystem, pragmatics, semiotics, and sociological approaches. It provides definitions and explanations of these terms: 1. A polysystem is a system of interacting subsystems that bring about literary evolution, with primary and secondary forms competing for dominance. Translated literature can occupy central positions within a polysystem. 2. Pragmatics is concerned with the purposes of language use and how utterances relate to context. It examines speech acts, implicature, and how meaning depends on position within sequences or a text's global organization. 3. Semiotics studies how meaning is produced through signs and includes both structural and interpretive traditions. Translation compares semi

1. The Routledge
Encyclopaedia of
Translation Studies
P, Q, R, S
Usuf Hussain
http://www.extranslation.com/

2. Polysystem
MARK SHUTTLEWORTH

3.  A polysystem is a system of systems
which interact to bring about a process
of evolution (Even-Zohar’s model).
 In the literary polysystem, different
literary genres vie for the domination of
the center.
 “Genre” includes not only masterpieces,
but also children’s literature, popular
fiction and translated works.

4.  Literary evolution is caused by “the
unavoidable competition generated by
the state of heterogeneity” (Even-Zohar,
1990:91).
o Primary (innovative) against secondary
(conservative) literary models.
 A primary form is accepted into the
center, and becomes conservative.

5.  Then a newer model evicts it from the
center of the polysystem.
 Discussion covers:
o Role of translated literature in a literary
polysystem.
o Theoretical implications for translation
studies.
 “Translation is an activity that is dependent
on the relations within a certain cultural
system” (Even-Zohar, 1990).

6.  Translated literature can occupy a central
position when:
1. a “young” literature looks for ready-made
models.
2. original literature is “peripheral”.
3. At time of crisis (New ideas via translation).
 Translated literature:
 conforms to already existing models or
 introduces original elements.

7.  A new target-oriented approach associated with
Gideon Toury, with three insights:
1) translation is a specific instance of the inter-
systemic transfer.
2) Focus is shifted from equivalence to the
translated text as an entity in a polysystem.
3) The target text is:
 not the product of linguistic selections.
 shaped by systemic constrains (genre and
literary taste).

8.  A number of scholars have questioned
the necessity of the primary/secondary
distinction (Lefevere 1983b:194;
Gentzler 1993:122).
 Gentzler suggests that the influence of
Russian Formalism is too strong.
 The most significant extension is found
in Toury (1980a), with translation
norms.

9. Pragmatics
BASIL HATIM

10.  “The study of the purposes for which
sentences are used, of the real world
conditions under which a sentence may
be appropriately used as an utterance”
(Stalnaker 1972:380).
 Speech acts: acts we perform when we
complain, request, or apologize.
 An utterance has a “sense”, a “force”
and an “effect”.

11.  e.g. “Shut the door” is in a sense an imperative that
carries the force of a request, which could be used
to annoy the hearer.
 Austin (1962) labeled them: locution,
illocution and perlocution, respectively.
 Communication breakdown is caused more
often by speech act misperception than by
linguistic expression miscomprehension.

12.  e.g. Journalist: what were the contents of the letter
you handed to King Fahad?
Tunisian minister’s response (Arabic): “this is a
matter solely for the Saudis to consider.”
Interpreter’s Arabic literal rendering: “This matter
concerns the Saudis.”
This inviting answer misled the English journalist
into more questioning, only to be rebuked by the
minister. (Hatim 1986; Hatim and Mason 1997).
 Speech acts are not necessarily the same in
all languages and cultures.

13.  Speech act interpretation depends on
their position within sequences.
 This led to the notion of the
“illocutionary structure” of a text,
determining its progression and its
coherence (Ferrara 1980).
 Overall effect has to be relayed and not
a series of unstructured sequences (i.e.
speech act by speech act).

14.  In Text Act, speech act is assessed in terms
of its contribution to the “global” coherence
of the entire text (Horner 1975).
 Entire text formats began to be considered
from the viewpoint of pragmatics.
 For example, argumentative texts display a
global problem-solving structure, with the
“problem” section being “assertive”, and
the “solution” section “directive”
(illocutionary value).

15.  Speech act indeterminacy resolved by
reference to text’s global organization
(Hatim and Mason 1990a).
 e.g. describing a given peace plan as
slightly better than the previous ones
could pragmatically mean “only slightly
and therefore negligibly better” or
“appreciably better”.
This can be settled only when we read but there are reasons for hope.

16. Implied Meaning
 In communication, being sincere is a
social obligation (Austin 1962; Searle
1969; among others).
 Grice concentrated on when interaction
may be intentionally thwarted, leading
to implicature (Grice 1975).
 Within “the Cooperative Principle”, he
identified Maxims, that should be
adhered to, if no “good reason” not to.

17. Maxims
1. Quantity
Make your contribution as informative as is required;
2. Quality
Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence;
3. Relevance
Be relevant;
4. Manner
Be communicatively orderly.

18. Maxims obeyed, or disturbed by:
 “flouting” (deliberate non-compliance
with the rules).
 Implicature from “flouting” determines
translator intervention extent.
 Implying is possible even when a given
maxim is adhered to where non-
adherence would be the norm.

19.  Flouted here is politeness, which sanctions
flouting Quality as a norm (Leech 1983).
 e.g. Dentist: … Why didn’t you let me give you
gas?
o Young Lady: Because you said it would be five
shillings extra.
o Dentist: [shocked] Oh, don’t say that. It makes me
feel as if I had hurt you for the sake of five
shillings.
o Young Lady: Well, so you have (Shaw’s You Never
Can Tell).

20. Relevance in Translation
 Gutt (1991/2000) describes translation in terms
of a general theory of human cognition.
 Relevance: To achieve maximum benefit at
minimum processing cost.
 There are two ways of using language:
“descriptive” and “interpretive”.
 An utterance is “descriptive” if it is true of a
state of affairs, and “interpretive” if it
represents someone else’s thought or utterance.

21.  Translation is said to be an instance of
“inter-lingual interpretive use” (Gutt 1991).
 Relevance deals with not only the content
but also the style.
 The notion of “communicative clues” is
proposed as a possible solution to inter-
linguistic disparity.
 e.g., focal effects (such as emphasis) may be
achieved by prosodic stress in some languages;
Stress can be replaced by syntactic means (clefting
as in “it is X which..”).

22.  e.g Arabic news reports tend to vary ‘verbs of
saying’ (‘declare’ when no ‘declaration’ exists,
‘announce’ when no ‘announcement’ exists, and so
on). or noteworthy for something that is not ‘worth
noting’ at all.
 Gutt further distinguishes between direct
and indirect translation.
 Direct: the translator is free to elaborate or
summarize.
 Indirect: He has to stick to the original
contents.

23. Semiotics
UBALDO STECCONI

24.  A theory of how we produce, interpret
and negotiate meaning through signs.
 Structural semiotics initiated by
Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913), and
interpretive semiotics elaborated by C.
S. Peirce (1839-1914).
 According to the first, “a language is a
set of inter-related systems whose
elements have no validity independently
of the relations of equivalence and

25.  In practice, translators compare semiotic
structures on lexical items, sense levels,
narrative structures. etc.
 Interpretive semiotics is centred on
Semiosis.
 Semiosis is “an action, an influence which
involves a sign, its object and its
interpretant” (Peirce 1931).
 Interpretant is an effect of the sign which
says something more about the object.

26.  Major contributions in the structuralist
tradition include Toury (1986), with the
semiotic nature of translating.
 Roman Jackobson extended translation
beyond inter-linguistic translation to
include intra-linguistic and intersemiotic
translation.
 “translating has to be conceived as an
irreversible process, and the equivalence
relationships as unidirectional” (Toury

27. Conditions that set translation apart from non-
translation.
 Similarity: a new text similar to existing
semiotic material in the source environment.
 Difference: No T-semiosis without reference to
difference between the source and target
environments.
 Mediation: A text that doesn’t mediate
between source and target environments can’t
be labeled as translation.

28.  Two additional concepts are required for T-
semiosis: events and norms.
 Translation events include translated texts
in the target environment.
 These events are regulated by translation
norms.
 One has to examine the category of events
and the norms for a complete answer
regarding what translation is.

29. Sociological
Approaches
MOIRA INGHILLERI

30.  Sociological perspectives introduced
approaches for investigating translation
activity as a social phenomenon.
 Bourdieu’s view of the social
foregrounds social practices, not
individual actions.
 Social theory needs to recognize the
actor-networks and examine the
associations made by actors (Latour).

31.  Luhmann (1985) presents a view of
society composed of functional systems
(e.g. laws, fine arts, sciences).
 Translation scholars have explored the
relevance of these theories to translation.
 This includes the relationship between
translator agency, social structure,
historical, social and cognitive
processes.

32.  This also informs the conceptualization of
empirical research to examine translation
activity, including training within contexts.
 Latour’s theory: to theorize the translation
process from the perspectives of the actors
involved (Buzelin 2005).
 Luhmann’s theory: to conceptualize
translation and to examine the relationship
between training and practice (Hermans,
2007).

33.  Sociological perspectives:
 expanded the focus of analysis beyond
literary texts to include non-literary.
 identified translators’ positionings as
crucial to translation process and
products.

34. Strategies
JOHN KEARNS

35.  Strategy is a course of action undertaken
to achieve a particular goal in an optimal
way.
 In translation studies, other terms
(procedures, techniques,..) means the
same thing (Chesterman, 2005).
 Two different senses of “translation
strategy” (Molina and Hurtado Albir,
2002)

36. A) procedural sense
 a translation strategy: “a potentially
conscious procedure for the solution of a
problem which an individual is faced with
when translating a text segment” (Lorscher,
1991:76).
B) textual sense
 description of the results of procedures not
procedures.

37.  “local” and “global” strategies
(Jaaskelainen 1993)
Local strategies relate to the language
structures and lexical items, while “global
strategies” pertain to textual style.
 “comprehension strategies” and
“production strategies”.
Production strategies: syntactic/grammatical,
semantic, and pragmatic (Chesterman, 1997) .

38. Global Strategies
 literal/free”; formal/dynamic (Nida), semantic
/communicative” (Newmark); documentary”
/instrumental (Nord), overt/covert (House), etc.
 “foreignizing” and “domesticating” translation
strategies (Venuti 1995a).
 A move from equivalence-based to norm-based
theoretical models with the rise of DTS.
Strategies are “ways in which translators seek to
conform to norms … not to achieve
equivalence, …” (Chesterman,1997: 88).

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