Popular Translation Theorists

Popular Translation Theorists

• J.C. Cartford’s short study of 1965 tackled the problem of linguistic and cultural untranslatability. He makes a distinction between ‘literal’ and ‘free’ translation. 
• Eugene Nida talks about two types of equivalence in translation – ‘formal’ and ‘dynamic,’ later replacing the word ‘dynamic’ with ‘functional.’ 
• Levy, the Czech translation scholar, insisted that any contracting or omitting of difficult expressions in translating was immoral. 

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• Roman Jakobson discusses several types of translation in his work On Linguistic Aspects of Translation. i) Intralingual translation, or rewording. ii) Interlingual translation, or translation proper. iii) Intersemiotic translation, or transmutation. 
• Anton Popovic published his Dictionary for the Analysis of Literary Translations in 1976. He proposes four types of equivalence: They are i) Linguistic Equivalence ii) Paradigmatic Equivalence iii) Stylistic Equivalence iv) Textual (Syntagmatic) Equivalence. He calls for ‘expressive identity’ between the SL and TL texts. 
•  Albrecht Neubert’s point of view is that the translation equivalence must be considered a semiotic category comprising semantic, syntactic and pragmatic components. 
• French humanist Etienne Dolet (1509-46) was executed for heresy after ‘mistranslating’ one of Plato’s Dialogues in such a way as to imply disbelief in immortality. 
• Abraham Cowley asserts that in his Pindaric Odes “he has taken, left out and added what I please”- a manifesto for libertine translation or transcreation. 
• John Dryden talks about three categories in translation: i) Metaphrase – turning an author word by word or line by line ii) Paraphrase – translation with latitude; sense for sense – Ciceronian iii) Imitation – the translator can abandon the original as he sees fit.   
• George Chapman (1559-1634) attempts to reach the ‘spirit’ or ‘tone’ of the original to be recreated in another context which he calls ‘transmigration’ of the original text. 

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• A translation that is full of archaisms of form and language was condemned by Matthew Arnold who coined the verb to newmanize after F.W.Newman, a leading exponent of this type of translation. 
• There are two branches of pure translation studies: (a) Descriptive Translation Studies (DTS) or Translation Description (TD) ( b) Theoretical Translation Studies (ThTS) or Translation Theory (TTh).
• Hans Vermeer claims that skopos or aim is a decisive factor in a translation project. A purposive action leads to a result. Translational action leads to a translatum (that is the resultant translated text), a particular variety of a target text. 

• George Steiner says that translation is ‘inflationist’ as every translation tends to be longer than the original.  

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 Some of the Popular Translation Theorists

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