HISTORY OF TRANSLATION SCIENCE IN ENGLAND

• PLAN

• 1.Dryden, John

• 2.Tytler, Arthur

• 3.Savory ,Thomas

• 4. Firth, George

• 5. Halliday, Mark

• 6. Catford, George

• 7. Newmark ,Peter

• 8. Snell-Hornby, Mark

Short introduction• In England the first attempts of theoretical generalizations in the field of

translation have been undertaken by translators among whom there were many outstanding writers and poets. Many of them accompanied their translations by vast comments in which they proved or justified the approach to the solving of various translation problems and tried to formulate some rules and principles of translation. In the 16 – 17th centuries when the translation activity was great in England practice of similar translation comments had received significant distribution.

• Certainly, statements of translators about the job did not make the theory of translation in modern understanding. They had a fragmentary character and did not have any scientific character. As a rule, they were reduced to the formulation of some requirements to the translation itself and the process of translation. Usually these requirements appeared axiomatic and concerned only the most general sides of translation activity. At the same time such comments have played the role in creation of preconditions for development of the theory of translation.. The authors drew attention to translation problematics, specified complexity of the problems solved by the translator and quite often their works contained rich and interesting actual material.

• Dryden, John• Works of J.Dryden (1631-1700) can serve as a

characteristic example of early theoretical generalizations on the practice of translation. His first works appeared in 1680. J. Dryden suggested to distinguish three kinds of translation. Firstly, he distinguished so-called metaphrase translation, i.e. the exact reproduction of the original or Source text. Later on this type of translation was called word-for-word translation. Secondly, he distinguished so called paraphrase translation. Under this type of translation he understood free translation which contained only the “spirit” of the Source text. And,thirdly, he distinguished the “imitative” translation, i.e. the variations on the topic of the Source text. The translator does not translate in this case he mostly reproduces the topic. J.Dryden comes to the conclusion that the most correct way for the translator is to use something between metaphrase and paraphrase types of translation. J.Dryden formulates the rules of a translator.

• According to these rules the translator should:• To be a poet.• To know two languages perfectly well.• To understand specific features of the author of the

original.• To cо-оrdinate his talent and the talent of the author of

the original.• To keep the meaning of the original.• To keep the attraction of the original.• To keep the quality of a verse in translation.• To force the author speak in the way the modern

Englishman speaks.• Not to follow closely to the original in order not to lose

the “spirit” of the original text.• Not to improve the original text.

• A.Tytler • The first book on the translation problems “Essay on the

principles of translation” by A.Tytler was published in England in 1791. In this book the author tried to make a system of the principles of translation. A.Tytler is the father of normative approach in translation. According to A.Tytler the main principles are the following: 1) translation should completely present the ideas of the original; 2) the style and the way of text presentation in the Target language should be the same as in the Source text 3) translation should retain all the ease of the language of original. These principles of the A.Tytler’s normative approach have the followers up to our days. [6]

• The merit of this work is in the fact that while analyzing each of these principles A.Tytler distinguishes some language peculiarities which cause translation problems. He pays special attention to the translation of idioms, language updating, and syntactic problems. He says that the English language can not be shorter than the Latin language. He also shows that the Latin and the Greek languages use ellipsis and conversion. Undoubtedly, the merit of his work is also in the fact that the author compares and appreciates different variants of translation of different words and phrases. All these elements make this work sound up-to-date and equal it with the works of many famous translators.

• T.Savory• More fundamental works on the theory of translation appeared in

England only in the second half of the 20th century. First of all the famous work of T.Savory “The Art of Translation” should be mentioned. In this book the author tried to analyze a great number of translation problems. Though the linguistic basis of this research was obviously insufficient, the author managed to formulate a number of postulates which were further developed in the works of the theoreticians on translation problems.

• T.Savory follows the traditional approach to translation in his work. Nevertheless it lacks the general principles of the theory of translation, the topics discussed in the book are rather arbitrary.

• T.Savory distinguishes four types of translation. (1) Perfect Translation – the translation of purely informative phrases – advertisements. (2) Adequate translation – the translation of thematic issues. In this type of translation the most important point is the content, the form is not important. In this type of translation the translator is free in choosing words and even sentences, the meaning of which is ambiguous, he can also make paraphrases.(T.Savory proposes to translate modern fiction in this way.) (3) The third type of translation - translation of works of classical writers. In this type of translation the content has the same importance as the form. This type of translation can’t be “perfect” and it can’t be a commercial one, because the time required for this translation is great. (4) The fourth type of translation is very close to the second type, i.e. the adequate translation. It is the translation of the scientific and technical material and their translation is practically necessary. The main requirement to this type of translation is the knowledge of the subject.

• T.Savory asserts that the translation is the choice. While doing his translation the translator should always answer three questions: - What did the author say?; - What did he want to say? - How to say it? Thus, in the process of translation T.Savory was the first who defined not only the form of the translation and its content but the communicative intention of the author as well.

• A very important part of T.Savory’s work is the chapter devoted to the principles of translation. Analyzing different points of view on this problem he comes to the decision that there are no general principles of translation He proves it taking as examples different principles which contradict each other. These principles are: - the translation should transfer the words of the source text;- the translation should transfer the thoughts of the source text; - the translation should be read as the source text;- the translation should be read as the Target text; the translation should retain the style of the author; the translation should retain the style of the translator; the translation should be very close to the original text;- the translation should be very close to the translator’s time; - omissions and additions are permitted in translation; additions and omissions are not permitted in translation; the translation of the poems should be done in a prosaic way; - the translation of the poems should be done in a poetic way.

• T Savory didn’t formulate any principles of translation. He only said that the translator/interpreter should find something average between literal and free translation and his translation should be read as the original and it should be truthful to the original text. The translator is allowed to borrow successful variants from previous translations.

• Not having offered new treatment of the general principles of translation T.Savory at the same time paid attention to one of the major factors, influencing the translation process and which is being developed in the modern theory of translation. He noted, that the choice of a variant of translation in many respects depends on prospective type of the reader. This conclusion, so important for pragmatics of translation is treated very originally by T.Savory. He distinguishes four types of readers: 1) the reader who doesn’t know the foreign language; 2) the reader who studies the foreign language with the help of translation; 3) the reader who knew a foreign language but forgot it completely; 4) the reader who knows the foreign language perfectly well. This classification of the recipients of the translation was not recognized in the theory of translation but nevertheless it got a recognition in the conceptual technique of the modern translation science.

• J.Firth • In the middle of the 20th century the linguistic

investigations in the field of translation science appeared. The majority of the linguists who made investigations in the translation science belonged to the English Linguistic School which is closely connected with the name of J.Firth. The works of the linguists of this school are characterized by the investigation of languages in a formal and semantic planes. The scientists paid a special attention to the functional role of language units in a speech and they tried to interconnect the linguistic theory with the applied problems of the language. All these investigations made possible to study the theory of translation from the point of view of applied linguistics with the basis in general linguistics. From this time on the translation science got a theoretical basis and all its problems were investigated as linguistic problems.

• M.A.K.Halliday • One of J.Firth’s followers was a famous English linguist

M.A.K.Halliday. He was not a translator himself but he studied the problems of translation and published some articles on the importance translation studies for linguistics. M.Halliday considers the translation to be a part of comparative linguistics. He published his two works which are called “Comparison and Translation” and “Comparison of the Languages”.

• M.Halliday thinks that the translation is the basis for any comparison of language units and structures. This comparison presupposes the contextual equivalence of structures compared, i.e. the possibility of their interchange in the process of translation. After thorough contextual analysis of the compared units it is possible to speak about their formal equivalence and their position in the compared languages.

• M.Halliday understood that the equivalence of translation is not restricted by the relation between the texts, it should be looked upon as the relation between the smaller units of the Source and Target texts. Nevertheless he admitted the equivalence between the whole sentences in two texts without the equivalences of their parts. He based his assumption on the fact that the number of sentences in the Source text and in the Target text coincides as a rule, and every sentence of the Source text has its equivalent in the Target text[3].

• M.Halliday paid much attention to the modeling of the process of translation. According to M.Halliday the translation process is the choosing of equivalents at different levels of language hierarchy. M.Halliday distinguishes several stages in the process of translation. These stages are defined by the language units the translator works with at the definite period of time. At the morphemic level the equivalent of every morpheme is proposed notwithstanding its surrounding. Then the word equivalents are chosen. And at that moment the equivalents of morphemes are changed according to the linguistic surrounding. The same procedure is repeated at the word level, at the sentence level and so on.

• According to this model in the process of translation two stages are defined: 1) the choice of the most appropriate equivalent for every entity or unit; 2) the modification of this choice at the higher level of language. It is the use of grammar and lexical peculiarities of the Target language that characterizes M.Halliday’s model. M.Halliday’s theory was not widely used by his contemporaries because the theory about the morpheme equivalence is doubtful. But the idea of the translation process modeling is a new and worthy one.

• The problems of equivalence in translation and the modeling of the translation process take the central part in M.Halliday’s works but he was interested not only in these problems. M.Halliday was interested in the problems of machine translation, fiction and non-fiction translation as well as in oral translation. He didn’t present a scrupulous analysis of any of these problems but nevertheless his ideas were interesting and worth investigating further.

• J.Catford • The merit of creation of the first linguistic monograph on translation

problems belongs to the famous English linguist – J.Catford. J.Catford’s work “A Linguistic Theory of Translation” was first published in 1965 [2]. Almost all English translation concepts are embedded in it. It is the first book in the English school of translation science to present a full and complete theory of translation based on the definite theories of language and speech. The author of the book is a true follower of J.First and he postulates all his assumptions according to the works of J.First.

• This book is a first attempt to connect closely language and translation problems. The first chapter of the book is devoted to the language description,i.e. language structures, units, interrelation of language with the situations in which it appears. J.Catford writes about the levels of the language (phonological, morphological, lexical and grammatical). Interrelations between lexico-grammatical units and exstralinguistic situations present contextual meaning of these units. Contextual meaning differs from the formal meaning of these units. Every language level has its own peculiarity. The grammatical level is characterized by the existence of closed systems with a limited number of elements which are in opposition to each other. Lexical level is characterized by the open system, the number of its elements has no limits.

• J.Catford classifies grammar units as a sentence, a clause, a group, a word and a morpheme. He presents such notion as “rank-shift”. According to him a clause is a part of a complex sentence (Since we couldn’t meet earlier, we met after the concert) but sometimes it may be a part of a group (The man we met after the concert is my brother). When he speaks about this phenomenon he means rank-shift.

• After the investigation of the linguistic problems J.Catford analyses the pure translation problems.

• In the second chapter of his work he speaks about the translation proper, its definition and classification. His definition of translation is the following one. The translation is the substitution of the Text material in the Source language by its equivalent in the Target language.

• He uses the term “text material” not “text” because some elements of the original text can be transmitted into the translated text without any changes. J.Catford affirms that “equivalence” is very important in the theory of translation and the main aim of the theory of translation is to define the nature of translation equivalence and the ways of its gaining.

• The third chapter of the book is devoted to the problems of equivalence. At the same time the author speaks about the types of translation. He proposes to distinguish between full and partial translation on the one hand and total and limited types of translation on the other hand.

• While speaking about the full translation he speaks about the translation of the original text as a whole, in partial translation the part of the original text is transmitted into the target text because it can’t be translated or because it serves for giving the target text some points of “local character”.

• Total translation is a translation when the Source text is translated at all language levels, and limited translation is the one when it is done at one language level: phonological, graphological, grammatical or lexical.

• J.Catford also proposes to distinguish the translation which is limited by one rank, i.e. the translation in which the equivalents are presented between the units of the same rank (a word is translated by a word, a group of words by a group of words, etc.), and a free translation. According to his assumptions such terms as “free, literal and word-for-word translation” get a linguistic definition. During “free” translation all equivalents can be used in different ranks but they tend to be closer to the rank higher than a sentence. “Word-for-word” translation is done at the word level though it may include some equivalents at the morphemic level. “Literal“ translation takes the intermediate position: it is close to word-for- word translation, but it admits some grammar changes according to the grammar rules of the Target language.

• The way of equivalence definition is paid a great attention to in the book. J.Catford proposes to define the equivalence of the texts empirically while analyzing the translations which have been already done or asking the professional translator to do a translation of the original text. J.Catford says that the equivalents that we can see in these texts do not always correspond to each other.

• C.Catford comes to the conclusion that equivalence in translation means neither formal nor meaning sameness. The only requirement to equivalents according to J.Catford, is the equivalents’ ability to substitute each other in the original and translated texts and it can be seen only in empiric analysis. Elementary meanings present a branch of distinguishing characteristics which characterise the given text.

• J.Catford’s investigation was very important for the development of the translation science. The problems of transliteration, grammatical and lexical transformations, social and cultural differences, dialectal varieties which arise during translation are paid great attention to in the book. This book proves the necessity of linguistic approach in the process of translation.

• M.Halliday and J.Catford are considered to be linguists who deal with the translation science. They combine linguistic approach with the problems of translation.

• P.Newmark • P.Newmark is a famous English translator, he works in

the field of translation science as a professional translator.

• He writes not about “pure” theory of translation, he connects all theoretical principles with the practice. All his books are full of practical notes for the translator[4].

• According to P.Newmark the main aim of the theory of translation lies in the fact that it is necessary to define the peculiar methods for the translation of all types of texts and definite rules and methods should be given for this.

• P.Newmark thinks that all rules of the theory of translation should be taken on the basis of practice and all these rules should be provided with patterns from the original texts and their translation.

• In all his works he has much illustrative material.

• Taking into consideration the most important factors influencing the translator’s strategy (the purpose of the text, the translator’s intentions, the type of the recipient, the linguistic peculiarities of the text, etc.) and the main types of the texts (with expressive, informative and directive functions) P.Newmark formulates two general methods of translation: communicative and semantic.

• The aim of the communicative translation is to impress the recipient in the same way as the original text does. The aim of the semantic translation is to transfer the context as close to the original as possible. P.Newmark thoroughly describes the peculiarities of these methods and the conditions of their usage. He notes that the communicative translation is oriented towards the recipient ( the reader of the translated text) and presents him the information of the original text in a simple and comprehensible form. The semantic translation is more difficult for comprehension because the readers ‘ background knowledge is of a paramount importance here. P.Newmark considers that the truthfulness of translation is very important and he even proposes the use of word-for-word translation in some cases. He even marks that “word-for-word” translation is not only the best one but the only right method and different paraphrases and synonyms are not needed in translation.

• P.Newmark points out that the characteristics of these two methods of translation is his main contribution to the theory of translation. Nevertheless he also investigates the problems of translation of proper names, political and scientific terms, metaphors and slang as well as synonyms and antonyms. All his theoretical assumptions are supported by good practical examples and useful advices for translators.

• M.Snell-Hornby• Many English scientists continue their work in the theory of

translation science. There exist many different theories which sometimes greatly differ from each other. One of the scientists who wants to unite all these theories and establish one integral theory is M.Snell-Hornby. His book “Translation Studies. An Integrated Approach” which was published in 1988 is an attempt to analyze and generalize all these theories[5].

• The main idea of the author is presented in the first chapter of the book. He investigates the history of the different directions in translation science as well as the modern trends. According to M.Snell-Hornby all these theories do not satisfy the modern requirements to translation science. He thinks that the first mistake in their investigations is the attempt to analyze the problems from a dichotomy position. They distinguish and isolate the categories and fields of investigation. They study separately language and literature, fiction and non-fiction translation. At the same time the linguistic approach rejects the artistic translation. M.Snell–Hornby also thinks that the theories which take into consideration only one of these categories can not be developed further. They are very limited .The attempts to develop a theory of texts typology is also greatly limited. The followers of this theory try to oppose one type of the text to the other.

• M.Snell-Hornby proposes his own theory (model) of translation. It is based on text types and relevant criteria for translation. It consists of six levels which are closely interconnected and can’t be isolated from each other. The first level is the level of general types of translation such as literary, general language and special language translation.

• The second level presents the prototypology of the general types of texts. Here he includes the translation of Bible, stage/film translation, poetry translation, legal, economic, medicine and technical scientific translation. Newspaper and advertising translations are also included here. The third level presents extratranslation disciplines such as cultural history/literary studies, studies of special subjects and sociocultural and area studies . The fourth level shows the specifics of the translation process. The fifth level includes the linguistic disciplines relevant for the theory of translation. Here he includes text linguistics, psycholinguistics, contrastive linguistics, sociolinguistics,etc. . The seventh level includes the problems of speech, i.e. speakability, sound/rhythm and phonological effects.

• In his book M.Snell-Hornby also speaks about the interrelation between translation, text and language. Great attention he pays to the dictionaries and requirements to them. He thinks that bilingual dictionary should combine the data of the explanatory dictionary and the dictionary of synonyms. Any dictionary should distinguish between 5 types of prototypes: terminology, international words, concrete notions, words expressing emotions and realia.

• While speaking about artistic translation M.Snell-Hornby supposes that there exist three trends in this field. Firstly, the translation is oriented to the Target text; secondly, the approach is a descriptive one; and ,thirdly, a text is considered to be a unit of a language closely connected with the theory of translation.

• M.Snell-Hornby considers that the interrelation between text ant translation is very tight , translation depends on the text, situation and the function of translation.

• He elaborates the following postulates:• - the more specific text the more closely it is connected with the concrete

situation and it is easier to define the function of the text;• - the more concrete the situation and the function the stronger the

translation is oriented to the Target text;• - the higher artistic value of the Source text the more strongly the situation

and the function of translation depends on the reader’s “activation”;• - the higher artistic value of the Target text the higher the artistic value of

the Source text.

• M.Snell-Hornby pays great attention to the problems of artistic text. He thinks that the problem of style of the artistic text is not investigated at the present moment and all scholars speak not about the artistic style but about the stylistic devices. Basing on the theories of M.Halliday M.Snell-Hornby proposes some ideas:

• - the style theory should take into account the multi-level approach. It should be connected with the semantic, syntactic and physical characteristics of the artistic text;

• - this multi-level approach is closely connected with the different functions of the artistic text;

• - the style can be measured by the frequency of stylistic characteristics;

• - the leading notion in the theory of style is “foregrounding”, i.e. artistically motivated deviation from the language norms. It can be qualitative or quantitative;

• - the style can be “transparent” ,i.e. uncovering the content , and “non-transparent” , i.e. its “foreground” tends to the language form;

• - the stylistic analysis begins with the syntax ( the structure and length of the sentence, organization of the information, focus and stress, structure and frequency of usage of nounal and verbal groups) then it goes to the level of semantics and words… .

• The stylistic analysis shows the differences between the types of the texts as well, i.e. from the conventional character and transparency of the technical-scientific and standard-informative texts to the non-transparency of the texts of individual authors.

• The greatest merit of the work of M.Snell-Hornby lies in the fact that at the end of it he formulates his own point of view on the theory of translation science. He thinks that the future of this science is bright, there is much to do in this sphere and he writes that:

• - the theory of translation science will develop with great speed because our age is the age of technological and scientific breakthroughs and the need in translation increases. The translation science should get its status and acknowledgement on the solid theoretical basis;

• - according to the practical needs the theory of translation elaborates different methods to teach future translators;

• - the level of the critical attitude to translation will increase with the development of the translation science.

• According to the analysis of the works of famous English scholars we can see that the translation science is at the same rank with other sciences, it has its own methods of investigation and it plays a great role in the development of social life.

• References• Bassnett, M. Translation Studies. London and New

York,1980• Catford,J. A Linguistic Theory on Translation.

London,1965.• Halliday,M. Comparison and Translation. In:

M.A.K.Halliday, A.McIntosh, P.Stevens, “The Linguistic Sciences and Language teaching”. London,1964.

• Newmark, P. Approaches to Translation.Oxford,1981.• Snell-Hornby, M.Translation Studies. An Integrated

Approach. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1988.• Комиссаров В.Н. Общая Теория Перевода. Москва,

2000.