Theo Hermans

Translation and Normativity.

The article has two main aims: to illustrate the productive potential of the norms concept as an analytical tool in studying translations, and to explore the implications of the concept for the way we speak about translation. Part one takes up an historical case (Adrianus de Buck translating Boethius in 1653) and uses the concept of norms to inquire into the translators choices. It is suggested that sociological concepts deployed by Bourdieu and Luhmann may offer useful ways forward in applying norm concepts as tools to study translation. Part two begins by positing a connection between norms and values. If translation is norm-governed it cannot be value-free. Three points are discussed following from this. First, its lack of transparency is what makes translation significant as a cultural and historical phenomenon. Second, the notion of equivalence can only be an ideological construct. Its presence in the historical discourse on translation is worth investigating, for it reveals key aspects of the conce...

Positioning translators: Voices, views and values in translation

Starting from a set of examples of translations in which translators use paratextual or code-switching devices to voice reservations about the works they are translating, I explore the similarities between this type of translation and what Dorrit Cohn calls discordant narration. I go on to argue in favour of viewing translation as a form of reported discourse, more particularly what Relevance theory calls echoic (and in some cases ironic) speech, a species of interpretive discourse in which the speaker’s attitude towards the words being reported is relevant. Viewing translation as reported discourse implies that the translated words are embedded in the translator’s reporting discourse. I conclude by suggesting that it is up to the reader to make a translator’s attitude relevant, and that deictic shifts from the framing to the framed discourse enable the reader to discern or construe the translator’s positioning.

Translation, equivalence and intertextuality

Theo Hermans Equivalence has been a much debated issue in modern translation studies in the West. It is usually understood in semantic terms, roughly in the sense of two texts, an original and its translation, meaning the same thing. I want to suggest it may be useful to think of equivalence primarily in terms of equality in value and status, and see where that takes us. Let me begin with a few examples.

Vondel on translation

This essay attempts to gain insight into seventeenth-century conceptions of literary translation in the Low Countries by looking at one of its central figures, Joost van den Vondel. The emphasis will be on the terms of Vondels discourse on translation as much as on the nature of the views he expounds. The observations that are offered are both preliminary and provisional. Only further study will show to what extent Vondels approach to matters of translation can be regarded as representative.

Some Concluding Comments on the Debates and the Responses

Theo Hermans It is surprising that the notion of equivalence should have loomed so large in the debate. In my paper the discussion of equivalence constitutes little more than a rearguard action. The suggestion was that the logic of working with a norms concept must inevitably lead to scepticism concerning the viability of equivalence. If translation is norm-governed as well as intentional, one-directional and historical, equivalence becomes hard to maintain. Moreover, norms serve to secure values. If translation must filter through the receptor culture’s value systems, equivalence becomes impossible to maintain. What needs explaining then is not the nature of translation equivalence, however diluted, but why it is that, despite the overwhelming case against it, equivalence figures prominently in various concepts of translation. My guess is that, in search of answers to that question, we need to trace the history of the conceptualisation of translation in conjunction with writing as intellectual property, the decline of imitative modes and the professionalisation of translating. The fiction of translation equivalence can only arise and survive if it is in the interests of translators and non-translators alike to present a translation as equivalent with its source, and if there is something to be gained from doing so on the grounds of translation being seen as a mere transparent copy, professionally sanitised and reliable because de-socialised and secondary. Whatever the outcome of such an exploration into the social and ideological construction of translation, using the same problematical and loaded term at both the meta-level and the object-level will only blur issues and ensnare the researcher even further.