The Translation Studies Reader The Translation Studies Reader is the definitive reader for the study of this dynamic interdisciplinary field. Providing an introduction to translation studies, this book places a wide range of readings within their thematic, cultural and historical contexts. The selections included are from the twentieth century, with a particular focus on the last thirty years of the century. Features include: • organization into five chronological sections, divided by decade • an introductory essay prefacing each section • a detailed bibliography and suggestions for further reading Contributors: Kwame Anthony Appiah, Walter Benjamin, Antoine Berman, Shoshana Blum-Kulka, Jorge Luis Borges, Annie Brisset, J.C.Catford, Lori Chamberlain, Itamar Even-Zohar, William Frawley, Ernst-August Gutt, Keith Harvey, Basil Hatim and Ian Mason, James S.Holmes, Roman Jakobson, André Lefevere, ∨ Jirí Levý, Philip E.Lewis, Vladimir Nabokov, Eugene Nida, José Ortega y Gasset, Ezra Pound, Willard V.O.Quine, Katharina Reiss, Steven Rendall, Gayatri Spivak, George Steiner, Gideon Toury, Hans J.Vermeer, Jean-Paul Vinay and Jean Darbelnet. A new piece by Lawrence Venuti suggests future directions for translation studies. Lawrence Venuti is Professor of English at Temple University, Philadelphia. He is the editor of Rethinking Translation: Discourse, Subjectivity, Ideology (1992), and the author of The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of Translation (1995), The Scandals of Translation: Towards an Ethics of Difference (1998), all published by Routledge. “This is a remarkable selection of the most important twentieth century contributions to the principles and procedures of translation, but what makes this volume so valuable are Venuti’s insightful notes that bring these contributions into proper focus for both students and teachers of translation.” Eugene Nida, American Bible Society, USA “Venuti’s Translation Studies Reader reflects all ‘the Misery and the Splendor’ (Ortega y Gasset) of almost a hundred years of translation studies. This book, and the supplementary readings suggested by Venuti provide (almost) a complete course of translation studies.” Hans J.Vermeer, Leopold-Franzens-University, Austria “This book offers a challenging and stimulating perspective on translation theory in the twentieth century. Many of the essays included in the collection are seminal ones, others are exciting, innovative pieces that invite us to reflect again on our understanding and knowledge of the translation process.” Susan Bassnett, The University of Warwick, UK The Translation Studies Reader Edited by Lawrence Venuti Advisory Editor: Mona Baker London and New York First published 2000 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simulataneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2004. © 2000 This collection and editorial matter © Lawrence Venuti; individual essays © individual contributors All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data The Translation studies reader/edited by Lawrence Venuti. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Translating and interpreting. I. Venuti, Lawrence. P306.T7436 2000 418'.02–dc21 99–36161 CIP ISBN 0-203-44662-3 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-75486-7 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0-415-18746-X (Hbk) ISBN 0-415-18747-8 (Pbk) For Julius David Venuti ma tu ci hai trovate e hai scelto nel gatto quei miagolii che non lo fanno apposta! Contents Acknowledgements xi INTRODUCTION 1 1900s–1930s 9 1 Walter Benjamin 15 THE TASK OF THE TRANSLATOR Translated by Harry Zohn Steven Rendall, A note on Harry Zohn’s translation 23 2 Ezra Pound 26 GUIDO’S RELATIONS 3 Jorge Luis Borges 34 THE TRANSLATORS OF THE THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS Translated by Esther Allen 4 José Ortega y Gasset 49 THE MISERY AND THE SPLENDOR OF TRANSLATION Translated by Elizabeth Gamble Miller viii CONTENTS 1940s–1950s 65 5 Vladimir Nabokov 71 PROBLEMS OF TRANSLATION: “ONEGIN” IN ENGLISH 6 Jean-Paul Vinay and Jean Darbelnet 84 A METHODOLOGY FOR TRANSLATION Translated by Juan C.Sager and M.-J.Hamel 7 Willard V.O.Quine 94 MEANING AND TRANSLATION 8 Roman Jakobson 113 ON LINGUISTIC ASPECTS OF TRANSLATION 1960s–1970s 119 9 Eugene Nida 126 PRINCIPLES OF CORRESPONDENCE 10 J.C.Catford 141 TRANSLATION SHIFTS ∨ 11 Jirí Levý 148 TRANSLATION AS A DECISION PROCESS 12 Katharina Reiss 160 TYPE, KIND AND INDIVIDUALITY OF TEXT: DECISION MAKING IN TRANSLATION Translated by Susan Kitron 13 James S.Holmes 172 THE NAME AND NATURE OF TRANSLATION STUDIES 14 George Steiner 186 THE HERMENEUTIC MOTION 15 Itamar Even-Zohar 192 THE POSITION OF TRANSLATED LITERATURE WITHIN THE LITERARY POLYSYSTEM 16 Gideon Toury 198 THE NATURE AND ROLE OF NORMS IN TRANSLATION CONTENTS ix 1980s 213 17 Hans J.Vermeer 221 SKOPOS AND COMMISSION IN TRANSLATIONAL ACTION Translated by Andrew Chesterman 18 André Lefevere 233 MOTHER COURAGE’S CUCUMBERS: TEXT, SYSTEM AND REFRACTION IN A THEORY OF LITERATURE 19 William Frawley 250 PROLEGOMENON TO A THEORY OF TRANSLATION 20 Philip E.Lewis 264 THE MEASURE OF TRANSLATION EFFECTS 21 Antoine Berman 284 TRANSLATION AND THE TRIALS OF THE FOREIGN Translated by Lawrence Venuti 22 Shoshana Blum-Kulka 298 SHIFTS OF COHESION AND COHERENCE IN TRANSLATION 23 Lori Chamberlain 314 GENDER AND THE METAPHORICS OF TRANSLATION 1990s 331 24 Annie Brisset 343 THE SEARCH FOR A NATIVE LANGUAGE: TRANSLATION AND CULTURAL IDENTITY Translated by Rosalind Gill and Roger Gannon 25 Ernst-August Gutt 376 TRANSLATION AS INTERLINGUAL INTERPRETIVE USE 26 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak 397 THE POLITICS OF TRANSLATION 27 Kwame Anthony Appiah 417 THICK TRANSLATION 28 Basil Hatim and Ian Mason 430 POLITENESS IN SCREEN TRANSLATING x CONTENTS 29 Keith Harvey 446 TRANSLATING CAMP TALK: GAY IDENTITIES AND CULTURAL TRANSFER 30 Lawrence Venuti 468 TRANSLATION, COMMUNITY, UTOPIA Bibliography 489 Index 511 Acknowledgements I am grateful to the following copyright holders for allowing me to reprint the materials that comprise this book: Kwame Anthony Appiah, “Thick Translation,” Callaloo 16:4 (1993):808–19. Copyright © 1993 by Charles H.Rowell. Reprinted by permission of the author and the Johns Hopkins University Press. Walter Benjamin, “The Task of the Translator” (1923) from Illuminations copyright © 1955 by Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt a.M., English translation by Harry Zohn, copyright © 1968 and renewed 1996 by Harcourt, Inc., reprinted by permission of Harcourt, Inc. and by the publisher from Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings Volume I, 1913–1926, edited by Marcus Bullock and Michael Jennings, Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, copyright © 1998 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Antoine Berman, “La Traduction comme épreuve de l’étranger,” Texte (1985): 67– 81. “Translation and the Trials of the Foreign”: Translation copyright © 2000 by Lawrence Venuti. Published by permission of Isabelle Berman. Shoshana Blum-Kulka, “Shifts of Cohesion and Coherence in Translation.” In Juliane House and Shoshana Blum-Kulka (eds), Interlingual and Intercultural Communication: Discourse and Cognition in Translation and Second Language Acquisition Studies, Tübingen, Germany: Narr, 1986 (Tübinger Beiträge zur Linguistik 272), pp. 17–35. Reprinted by permission of the author. Jorge Luis Borges, “The Translators of The Thousand and One Nights” trans. Esther Allen, from Selected Non-Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges, edited by Eliot Weinberger. Copyright © 1999 by Maria Kodama; translation copyright © 1999 by Penguin Putnam Inc. Used by permission of Viking Penguin, a division of Penguin Putnam Inc., and The Wylie Agency, Inc. xii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Annie Brisset, “The Search for a Native Language: Translation and Cultural Identity.” Chapter 4 in Annie Brisset, A Sociocritique of Translation: Theatre and Alterity in Quebec, 1968–1988, trans. Rosalind Gill and Roger Gannon, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996, pp. 162–94. Copyright © 1996 by Rosalind Gill and Roger Gannon. Used by permission of the author and the translators. J.C.Catford, “Translation Shifts.” Chapter 12 in J.C Catford, A Linguistic Theory of Translation: An Essay in Applied Linguistics. Copyright © 1965 by Oxford University Press, pp. 73–82. Reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press. Lori Chamberlain, “Gender and the Metaphorics of Translation,” Signs 13 (1988): 454–72. Copyright © by University of Chicago Press. Reprinted by permission of the author and the publisher. Itamar Even-Zohar, “The Position of Translated Literature within the Literary Polysystem,” Poetics Today 11 (1990): 45–51. Reprinted by permission of the author and Poetics Today. William Frawley, “Prolegomenon to a Theory of Translation.” In William Frawley (ed.) Translation: Literary, Linguistic, and Philosophical Perspectives, Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1984, pp. 159–75. Reprinted by permission of the publisher, the University of Delaware Press. Ernst-August Gutt, “Translation as Interlingual Interpretive Use.” Chapter 5