Jeremy Munday 2016 Chapter 7 Systems Theories Introducing Translation
Jeremy Munday 2016 Chapter 7 Systems Theories Introducing Translation
Jeremy Munday 2016 Chapter 7 Systems Theories Introducing Translation
Systems theories
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Key concepts
Q Even-Zohar’s polysystem theory (1970s) sees translated literature
as part of the cultural, literary and historical system of the TL.
Q Toury (1995/2012) puts forward a systematic methodology for
descriptive translation studies (DTS) as a non-prescriptive
means of understanding the ‘norms’ at work in the translation
process and of discovering the general ‘laws’ of translation.
Q Chesterman (1997) expands norms to include professional and
ethical factors.
Q Other models (e.g. Lambert and van Gorp 1985) propose
different methodologies for TT description.
Q Toury’s ‘laws’ of translation are the law of standardization and
the law of interference. Pym (2008) proposes resolving the
contradiction between these by reference to the social
conditions under which the TT is produced.
Key texts
Chesterman, Andrew (1997) Memes of Translation, Amsterdam and
Philadelphia: John Benjamins, Chapter 3.
Even-Zohar, Itamar (1978/2012) ‘The position of translated literature within
the literary polysystem’, in Lawrence Venuti (ed.) (2012)The Translation Studies
Reader, 3rd edition, London and New York: Routledge, pp. 162–7.
Hermans, Theo (ed.) (1985a) The Manipulation of Literature: Studies in Literary
Translation, Beckenham: Croom Helm.
Hermans, Theo (1999) Translation in Systems, Manchester: St Jerome, Chapters
Copyright 2016. Routledge.
6 to 8.
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AN: 1166164 ; Jeremy Munday.; Introducing Translation Studies : Theories and Applications
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170 INTRODUCING TRANSLATION STUDIES
Pym, Anthony, Miriam Shlesinger and Daniel Simeoni (eds) (2008) Beyond
Descriptive Translation Studies, Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Toury, Gideon (1978/2012) ‘The nature and role of norms in literary translation’,
in Lawrence Venuti (ed.) (2012), The Translation Studies Reader, 3rd edition,
London and New York: Routledge, pp. 168–81.
Toury, Gideon (1995/2012) Descriptive Translation Studies – And Beyond,
revised edition, Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
7.0 Introduction
In Chapters 5 and 6 we saw how linguistics broadened out from the models of
the 1960s to an approach which incorporates first skopos theory and then
Register and discourse analysis, relating language to its sociocultural function. In
the 1970s, another reaction to the prescriptive models was polysystem theory
(see section 7.1), which saw translated literature as a system operating in the
larger social, literary and historical systems of the target culture. This was an
important move, since translated literature had up to that point mostly been
dismissed as a derivative, second-rate form. Polysystem theory fed into develop-
ments in descriptive translation studies (see section 7.2), a branch of translation
studies that aims at identifying norms and laws of translation. Developments in the
study of norms are discussed in section 7.3 (work by Chesterman), and work by
systems theorists of the related Manipulation School is described in section 7.4.
7.1 Polysystem theory
Polysystem theory was developed in the 1970s by the Israeli scholar Itamar
Even-Zohar borrowing ideas from the Russian Formalists of the 1920s and the
Czech Structuralists of the 1930s and 1940s, who had worked on literary his-
toriography and linguistics (see Further reading section). For the Formalists, a
literary work was not studied in isolation but as part of a literary system, which
itself is defined as ‘a system of functions of the literary order which are in continual
interrelationship with other orders’ (Tynjanov 1927/1971: 72). Literature is thus
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SYSTEMS THEORIES 171
part of the social, cultural, literary and historical framework and the key concept
is that of the system, in which there is an ongoing dynamic of ‘mutation’ and
struggle for the primary position in the literary canon.
Although building on work by the Formalists, Even-Zohar reacts against ‘the
fallacies of the traditional aesthetic approach’ (Even-Zohar 1978: 22), which had
focused on ‘high’ literature and had disregarded as unimportant literary systems
or genres such as children’s literature, thrillers and the whole system of trans-
lated literature. Even-Zohar (ibid.) emphasizes that translated literature operates
as a system in itself:
Even-Zohar focuses on the relations between all these systems in the overarching
concept to which he gives a new term, the polysystem. This is defined by Even-
Zohar as:
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172 INTRODUCING TRANSLATION STUDIES
new models for the target culture, introducing new poetics, techniques and so
on. Even-Zohar gives three major cases when translated literature occupies the
primary position (see Figure 7.1):
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SYSTEMS THEORIES 173
However, translated literature itself is stratified (ibid.: 164). Some translated litera-
ture may be secondary while others, translated from major source literatures, are
primary. An example Even-Zohar gives is of the Hebrew literary polysystem published
between the two world wars, when translations from Russian were primary but
translations from English, German and Polish were secondary.
Even-Zohar (ibid.: 166–74) suggests that the position occupied by translated
literature in the polysystem conditions the translation strategy. If it is primary,
translators do not feel constrained to follow target literature models and are more
prepared to break conventions. They thus often produce a TT that is a close match
in terms of adequacy, reproducing the textual relations of the ST. The influence of
the foreign language model may itself then lead to the production of new models
in the TL, for non-translated as well as translated languages. On the other hand, if
translated literature is secondary, translators tend to use existing target-culture
models for the TT and produce more ‘non-adequate’ translations. The technical
term ‘adequate’ is developed in the discussion of Toury’s work in section 7.2.
Gentzler (2001: 118–20 and 123–5) stresses the way polysystem theory
represents an important advance for translation studies. The advantages of this
are several:
(1) literature itself is studied alongside the social, historical and cultural forces;
(2) Even-Zohar moves away from the isolated study of individual texts towards
the study of translation within the cultural and literary systems in which it
functions;
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174 INTRODUCING TRANSLATION STUDIES
(3) the non-prescriptive definition of equivalence and adequacy allows for vari-
ation according to the social, historical and cultural situation of the text.
This last point offers translation theory an escape from the repeated arguments
that had begun to follow insistently the concept of equivalence in the 1960s and
1970s (see Chapter 3). Equivalence was no longer considered to be fixed – it
varied according to extratextual conditions.
However, Gentzler (ibid.: 120–3) also outlines criticisms of polysystem
theory. These include:
Working with Even-Zohar in Tel Aviv was Gideon Toury. After his early polysystem
work on the sociocultural conditions which determine the translation of foreign liter-
ature into Hebrew, Toury focused on developing a general theory of translation. In
Chapter 1, we considered Toury’s diagrammatic representation of Holmes’s ‘map’
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SYSTEMS THEORIES 175
Toury goes on to propose just such a methodology for the branch of descriptive
translation studies (DTS).
For Toury, translations first and foremost occupy a position in the social and
literary systems of the target culture; they are ‘facts of target cultures: on occa-
sion facts of a peculiar status, sometimes even constituting identifiable (sub)-
systems of their own’( ibid.: 23). Their position determines the translation strategies
that are employed. With this approach, Toury is continuing and building on the
polysystem work of Even-Zohar and on earlier versions of his own work (Toury
1978, 1980, 1985, 1991). He (2012: 31–4 and 102) proposes the following
three-phase methodology for systematic DTS, incorporating a description
of the product and the wider role of the sociocultural system, as below:
(1) Situate the text within the target culture system, looking at its signifi-
cance or acceptability.
(2) Undertake a textual analysis of the ST and the TT in order to identify rela-
tionships between corresponding segments in the two texts. Toury calls
these segments ‘coupled pairs’. This leads to the identification of translation
shifts, both ‘obligatory’ and ‘non-obligatory’.
(3) Attempt generalizations about the patterns identified in the two texts,
which helps to reconstruct the process of translation for this ST–TT pair.
An important additional step is the repeating of these phases for other pairs of
similar texts. This replicability allows the corpus to be extended and a descrip-
tive profile of translations to be built up according to genre, period, author, etc.
In this way, the norms pertaining to each kind of translation can be identified.
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176 INTRODUCING TRANSLATION STUDIES
As more descriptive studies are performed, the ultimate aim is to state laws of
behaviour for translation in general. The concepts of norms and laws are further
discussed later in sections 7.2.1 and 7.2.2.
The second step of Toury’s methodology is one of the most controversial
areas. The decisions on which ST and TT segments to examine and what the
relationships are between them is an apparatus which Toury (2012: 111) states
should be supplied by translation theory. Yet, as we have seen in Chapters 4 and
5, linguistic translation theory is far from reaching a consensus as to what that
apparatus should be. Most controversially, in earlier papers (1978/2012, 1985:
32), Toury still holds to the use of a hypothetical intermediate invariant or tertium
comparationis1 as an ‘adequate translation’ against which to gauge
translation shifts. However, at the same time he also admits that, in practice, no
translation is ever fully ‘adequate’. For this contradiction, and for considering the
hypothetical invariant to be a universal given, he has been roundly criticized (see,
e.g., Gentzler 2001: 130–1, Hermans 1999: 56–7).
In his 1995/2012 book, Toury drops the invariant concept. Instead, the model
‘maps’ the TT onto the ST, comparing the two to see where the two texts corre-
spond and differ. This process involves ‘a series of (ad hoc) coupled pairs’ (Toury
2012: 103). In other words, the segments of the ST and TT that are analysed are
not pre-determined and indeed will vary in different texts. Thus, in one study it is the
addition of rhymes and omission of passages in the Hebrew translation of a German
fairy tale; in another study it is two-part or ‘conjoint’ phrases in literature translated
into Hebrew (see section 7.2.3 for an explanation of these). This is a type of compar-
ison which Toury admits (ibid.: 105) is inevitably ‘partial [and] indirect’ and which will
undergo ‘continuous revision’ during the very analytical process itself. The result has
the advantage of being a flexible and non-prescriptive means of comparing ST and
TT, but it is also one that lacks some consistency. Both flexibility and lack of consist-
ency are revealed in the analysis contained in Toury’s case studies.
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SYSTEMS THEORIES 177
These norms are sociocultural constraints specific to a culture, society and time.
An individual is said to acquire them from the general process of education and
socialization, learning what kind of behaviour is expected in a given situation.
Thus, university students may learn norms for translation from their tutors and
these may even be set out formally in a handbook as a set of evaluation criteria.
In terms of their ‘potency’ Toury places norms between rules and idiosyncrasies
(ibid.: 65), which could be illustrated on a cline:
STRONG WEAK
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178 INTRODUCING TRANSLATION STUDIES
Toury (ibid.: 61ff) sees different kinds of norms operating at different stages
of the translation process: (1) the initial norm; (2) preliminary norms; and
(3) operational norms.
The basic initial norm refers to a general choice made by translators
(Figure 7.2).
Figure 7.2 Toury’s initial norm and the continuum of adequate and acceptable translation
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SYSTEMS THEORIES 179
Thus, translators can subject themselves to the norms realized in the ST or to the
norms of the target culture or language. If it is towards the ST, then the TT will be
adequate; if the target culture norms prevail, then the TT will be acceptable. For
example, a translation of a scientific text from Portuguese to English may repro-
duce the complex sentence structure and argumentation patterns of the ST to give
an ‘adequate’ translation, or alternatively rewrite the text to conform to the clarity of
argumentation and standard SVO and passive structures of English scientific
discourse (see Bennett 2011), an ‘acceptable’ translation. The poles of adequacy
and acceptability are on a continuum since no translation is ever totally adequate
or totally acceptable. Shifts are inevitable, norm-governed and ‘a true universal of
translation’ (Toury 2012: 57). These may be obligatory (Vinay and Darbelnet’s
servitude), and non-obligatory (option), the latter being of greater interest since
they reveal the choices made by the translator (see section 4.1.3, pp. 93–4).
Lower order norms described by Toury are preliminary norms and
operational norms (ibid.: 58–9). Their relation to the initial norm is displayed in
Figure 7.3.
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180 INTRODUCING TRANSLATION STUDIES
practice, which languages are involved and whether the practice is camouflaged
or not. Operational norms describe the presentation and linguistic matter of
the TT. These are matricial norms and textual-linguistic norms. Matricial norms
relate to the completeness of the TT. Phenomena include omission or relocation
of passages, textual segmentation, and the addition of passages or footnotes.
Textual-linguistic norms govern the selection of TT linguistic material: lexical
items, phrases and stylistic features (compare Nord’s list in Chapter 5).
The examination of the ST and TT should reveal shifts in the relations between
the two that have taken place in translation (compare shift analysis in Chapter 4).
It is here that Toury introduces the term ‘translation equivalence’ (ibid.: 85), but
he is at pains to emphasize that it is different from the traditional notion of equiva-
lence, which we studied in Chapter 3. Toury’s is a ‘functional–relational
concept’, by which he means that equivalence is assumed between a TT and a
ST. This is very important because analysis does not then focus prescriptively on
whether a given TT or TT-expression is ‘equivalent’ to the ST or ST-expression.
Instead it focuses on how the assumed equivalence has been realized and is a tool
for uncovering ‘the underlying concept of translation . . . [the] derived notions of
decision-making and the factors that have constrained it’ (ibid.: 86).
As noted above, DTS aims to reconstruct the norms that have been in opera-
tion during the translation process. However, Toury stresses (ibid.: 67) that
norms are a ‘graded notion’ since ‘a translator’s behaviour cannot be expected to
be fully systematic’ but will vary for a host of different reasons. In addition, these
norms are of different intensity, ranging from behaviour that is mandatory
(maximum intensity) to tendencies that are common but not mandatory and to
behaviour that is tolerated only (minimum intensity) (ibid.: 67–9). We discuss this
further in sections 7.2.4 and 7.3.
7.2.2 ‘Laws’ of translation
Toury hopes that the cumulative identification of norms in descriptive studies will
enable the formulation of probabilistic ‘laws’ of translation and thence of ‘univer-
sals of translation’. The tentative laws he proposes are listed below:
(1) The law of growing standardization (ibid.: 267–74), which states that
‘in translation, textual relations obtaining in the original are often modified,
sometimes to the point of being totally ignored, in favour of [more] habitual
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SYSTEMS THEORIES 181
options offered by a target repertoire’ (ibid.: 268). This refers to the disrup-
tion of the ST patterns in translation and the selection of linguistic options
that are more common in the TL. Thus, for example, there will be a tendency
towards a general standardization and loss of variation in style in the TT, or
at least towards an accommodation to target culture models. Examples
would be the standardization of ST culture-specific items such as food
terms that do not exist in the target culture (e.g. pitta bread translated as flat
bread ), or the translation of non-core forms into more general TL items (e.g.
English glisten and glint translated as shine). Toury considers this to be
especially the case if, as commonly occurs, translation assumes a weak and
peripheral position in the target system.
(2) The law of interference (ibid.: 274–9), which sees interference from ST to
TT as ‘a kind of default’. Interference refers to ST linguistic features (mainly
lexical and syntactic patterning) that are copied in the TT. These may be
‘negative’, because they simply create non-normal TT patterns. For example,
negative interference occurs when a new term (e.g. benchmarking) is
borrowed into the TL or when a collocation is calqued from the ST and creates
an unusual collocation in the TT (e.g. Vinay and Darbelnet’s example of Normal
School from the French élite École Normale). Or the interference may be
‘positive’. That is, the existence of features in the ST that will not be abnormal
in the TL makes it more likely they will be used by the translator. For instance,
subject–verb–object (SVO) order may tend to be selected by a translator
working from English into a more flexible TL (e.g. Arabic, Hebrew, Spanish)
where SVO is possible but where VSO order is more standard. In this way,
the common SL patterns are reinforced in the TT. Toury (ibid.: 278) considers
tolerance of interference to depend on sociocultural factors and the prestige
of the different literary systems. Thus, there would be greater tolerance when
translating from a prestigious language or culture, especially if the target
language or culture is considered to be more ‘minor’. An example would be
translation from Arabic to Malay, where borrowing, especially of religious
items, is very common. These laws are further discussed in section 7.2.4.
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182 INTRODUCING TRANSLATION STUDIES
It is now clear that Toury’s methodology for DTS has been an important step
towards setting firm foundations not only for future descriptive work but for the
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SYSTEMS THEORIES 183
Nevertheless, the ad hoc nature of the ST–TT mapping inevitably means that
Toury’s model is not fully objective or replicable. The alternative is Holmes’s
(1988a: 80) suggestion of an extensive ‘repertory of features’ approach. As we
have seen in Chapter 4, this is potentially what Holmes called ‘arduous and
tedious’, although this is certainly not a justification for not making an attempt.
Other elements of the methodology are questioned by Hermans. These are
Toury’s ambivalence towards the notion of equivalence (Hermans 1999: 97) and
the confusion inherent in the proposed terms ‘adequate’ and ‘acceptable’
because of their evaluative connotations in other contexts (ibid.: 77).3 In a review
of Toury’s earlier (1980) book, Hermans (1995: 218) also queries Toury’s exclu-
sively TT-oriented position. Certainly, Toury’s early stance risked overlooking, for
example, some of the complex ideological and political factors such as:
Q the status of the ST in its own culture, e.g. a ‘classic’ author such as
Ernest Hemingway or a modern-day best-seller such as Stephen King’s The
Dark Tower series and its TV series and film tie-ins);
Q the source culture’s possible promotion of translation of its own
literature, through grants from public or privately funded institutions, and
online4; and
Q the effect that translation might exert back on the system of the source
culture (e.g. the success in translation of Nordic noir writers in the 2010s
has considerably enhanced their reputation in their home countries).
These are areas which will benefit from employing concepts from studies of
ideology in translation (see Chapter 8) and from reception theory, notably consid-
eration of the way in which a new literary work influences its audience (see
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184 INTRODUCING TRANSLATION STUDIES
Chapter 9). Toury’s later work (e.g. 2004) in fact shows keener concern for the
relation of sociocultural factors to the linguistic choices and, although it
is worth noting that systems theorists in general have restricted their work to
literary translation, the descriptive model does lend itself to the examination of the
translation of non-fiction or technical texts or other modes such as audiovisual
translation (Karamitroglou 2000, Pedersen 2011, see this volume, Chapter 11).
More recently, it is the ‘norms’ and particularly ‘laws’ of translation that have
received closest attention. Criticisms which Gentzler makes of the earlier
polysystem work (see section 7.1) have been levelled at Toury. In DTS, there is
still a tendency to (over)generalize from case studies, and the ‘laws’ Toury tenta-
tively proposes are in some ways simply reformulations of generally held, though
not necessarily proven, beliefs about translation. It is also debatable to what extent
a semi-scientific norm/law approach can be applied to a field such as translation.
The norms described are, after all, abstract and only traceable in Toury’s method
by examining the results of the often subconscious behaviour that is supposedly
governed by them. It is impossible to know or study all the variables relevant to
translation and to find laws relevant to all translation (Hermans 1999: 92).
Toury’s two laws themselves seem to some extent to be contradictory, or at
least they appear to pull in different directions: the law of growing standard-
ization depicts TL-oriented norms, while the law of interference is ST-oriented.
We also suggest the need for modification of the law of interference, and even
its replacement by more refined laws, such as that the law of reduced control
over linguistic realization in translation. Such a law would take into account
the constraining factors which affect the translation process and it would
acknowledge that the concept of norms and laws in translation is more complex
than is suggested by some of Toury’s studies. These constraining factors include
the effect of ST patterning, the preference for clarity and avoidance of ambiguity
in TTs and real-life considerations for the translator, such as the need to maximize
the efficiency of thought processes and the importance of decision-making under
time pressure.
Toury answers some of these criticisms by stressing that these laws are
probabilistic explanations at different levels of language. He defends the term
‘law’ rather than ‘universals’ because ‘this notion [law] has the possibility of
exception built into it [and] because it should always be possible to explain away
(seeming) exceptions to a law with the help of another law, operating on another
level’ (Toury 2004: 29). As Toury argues, so-called ‘universals’ of translation
such as explicitation (see Chapter 4) should be understood to be common
tendencies in translated texts and cannot cover every act of translation. No
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SYSTEMS THEORIES 185
features of translation are ever ‘universal’ unless they are so general and bland as
to be of little use (e.g. ‘translation involves shifts’). In the same volume, Chesterman
(2004) pursues this link between Toury’s laws and different types of universals,
suggesting a division into the following:
Although S-universals are derived from a ST–TT pair comparison and T-universals
are based on the study of TTs vs. non-translated TL texts, some of the features may
overlap. So, some types of standardization discussed under S-universals derived
from, say, Arabic>English and Russian>English text pairs may also be seen in lexical
simplification as a T-universal in a corpus of English translations of promotional leaf-
lets when compared to leaflets on similar topics written originally in English. Both
types of universals also benefit from the study of large amounts of text. This is espe-
cially so for T-universals since subtler differences between translated language and
naturally occurring language may well escape intuition and may only be identifiable
using corpus-based techniques and the tools of corpus linguistics (see Chapter 11).
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186 INTRODUCING TRANSLATION STUDIES
Look at the different laws and universals suggested above and see if you
can find examples of them in translations involving your own language pairs.
Read Chesterman (2010), available online, and note how these universals
might be investigated.
The link to social conditions is crucial, since it recognizes that they influence and
to some extent determine the translation patterns. As an extreme example, in
conditions of censorship where there is concern to filter out unwanted ideolog-
ical elements of a ST, it might be expected that the TT would standardize or
substitute culture-specific elements or even omit chunks that conflict with the
accepted target culture ideology. This is what happened, for example, in the
subtitling of Soviet Films in the Fascist Italy of the 1920s and 30s (Stephenson
2007). For Pym (2008: 323), it is the concept of risk and reward that is a possible
means of unifying the two laws: ‘Translators will tend to avoid risk by standard-
izing language and/or channelling interference, if and when there are no rewards
for them to do otherwise.’
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SYSTEMS THEORIES 187
within society. Likewise, Chesterman (1997: 68) states that all norms ‘exert a
prescriptive pressure’.
Chesterman himself proposes another set of norms, covering the area of
Toury’s initial and operational norms (see Figures 7.1 and 7.3 earlier). These are
(1) product or expectancy norms and (2) process or professional norms.
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188 INTRODUCING TRANSLATION STUDIES
As with expectancy norms, these professional norms are validated partly by norm
authorities such as other professionals and professional bodies but also partly
by their very existence. They include social and ethical factors that are not covered
by Toury, and therefore they may be useful in enhancing the description of the
overall translation process and product. Table 7.1 provides a visual comparison
of Toury and Chesterman’s norms.
Toury Chesterman
How might you investigate each of the norms presented in this chapter?
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SYSTEMS THEORIES 189
With the influence of Even-Zohar’s and Toury’s early work in polysystem theory,
the International Comparative Literature Association held several meetings and
conferences around the theme of translated literature. Particularly prominent
centres were in Belgium, Israel and the Netherlands, and the first conferences
were held at Leuven (1976), Tel Aviv (1978) and Antwerp (1980).
The key publication of this group of scholars, known as the Manipulation
School or Group, was the collection of papers entitled The Manipulation of
Literature: Studies in Literary Translation, edited by Theo Hermans (1985a). In
his introduction, ‘Translation studies and a new paradigm’, Hermans summarizes
the group’s view of translated literature:
The link with polysystem theory and DTS can be seen to be strong and the
Manipulation School proceeded on the basis of ‘a continual interplay between
theoretical models and practical case studies’.
A key point at that time was the exact methodology for the case studies. The
paper by José Lambert and Hendrik van Gorp (1985/2006), ‘On describing
translations’, draws on Even-Zohar’s and Toury’s early work and proposes one
such scheme for the comparison of the ST and TT literary systems and for the
description of relations within them. Each system comprises a description of
author, text and reader. Lambert and van Gorp divide the scheme into four
sections (Lambert and van Gorp 1985/2006: 46–7):
(1) preliminary data: information on title page, metatexts (preface, etc.) and
the general strategy (whether the translation is partial or complete); the
results should lead to hypotheses concerning levels 2 and 3;
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190 INTRODUCING TRANSLATION STUDIES
(2) macro-level: the division of the text, titles and presentation of the chapters,
the internal narrative structure and any overt authorial comment; this should
generate hypotheses about the micro-level (level 3);
(3) micro-level: the identification of shifts on different linguistic levels; these
include the lexical level, the grammatical patterns, narrative point of view
and modality (the results should interact with the macro-level (level 2) and
lead to their ‘consideration in terms of the broader systemic context’;
(4) systemic context: here micro- and macro-levels, text and theory are
compared and norms identified; intertextual relations (relations with other
texts including translations) and intersystemic relations (relations with other
genres, codes) are also described.
Lambert and van Gorp (ibid.: 41) accept that ‘it is impossible to summarize all
relationships involved in the activity of translation’ but suggest a systematic
scheme that avoids superficial and intuitive commentaries and ‘a priori judgments
and convictions’. Like Hermans, they stress the link between the individual case
study and the wider theoretical framework:
It is not at all absurd to study a single translated text or a single translator, but
it is absurd to disregard the fact that this translation or this translator has
(positive or negative) connections with other translations and translators.
(Lambert and van Gorp 1985/2006: 45)
This is still a crucial statement for those undertaking descriptive studies, even
though DTS has moved on since that paper was written, not least with Toury’s
1995/2012 work and later corpus-based studies. Scholars from the late André
Lefevere onwards also rather marginalized polysystem theory as they began to
consider more closely the role of ideology and patronage in the system of trans-
lated literature. In this respect, pointers for future work in the theory of descriptive
studies were given by Hermans:
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SYSTEMS THEORIES 191
Case study
The text for this case study is the first in the hugely successful Harry Potter
series: Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone by J. K. Rowling5 and its trans-
lations into Italian (Harry Potter e la pietra filosofale6) and Spanish (Harry Potter
y la piedra filosofal 7). Following Toury’s three-phase methodology, we shall:
Comparing two translations of the same ST, even though they are into different
TLs, allows some triangulation of findings and helps to avoid jumping to conclu-
sions based on a single isolated study, as Lambert and van Gorp warned.
(1) Both the Italian and Spanish TTs are presented and accepted as transla-
tions, the translators’ names and the original titles being published on the
copyright pages. The Italian also has the translator’s name on the title page.
Both TTs are direct translations from English. Even though both target
cultures have strong native children’s literature traditions themselves, the
decision to select this book for translation is not surprising given its huge
success in the UK and the USA where it became the best-selling book in
the country among both adults and children.
The fact that the Spanish and Italian books are translations is not
stressed, however. The blurb on the back cover of the Spanish TT, for
example, quotes comments from reviews in the UK and Italy and emphasizes
the book’s relevance to ‘all children of all ages’. The Italian TT also incorpo-
rates illustrations by an Italian illustrator, Serena Riglietti, cited along with the
translator on the title page, where the book is described as a romanzo (novel).
The use of this word indicates the way in which the book is marketed as adult
literature in Italy. There is a strong suggestion, therefore, that the Spanish
and Italian publishers were prepared to make modifications, even perhaps
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192 INTRODUCING TRANSLATION STUDIES
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SYSTEMS THEORIES 193
Forces by Quentin Trimble to Dante Tremante, using the rhyme of the Italian,
the sense of tremante (‘trembling’) and, of course, the allusion to Dante and
his inferno.
Interestingly, although the names are retained, there is intralingual transla-
tion between the UK and US versions, evident in the title (The Sorcerer’s
Stone in the US8) and in some lexical, cultural and syntactic selections – for
instance, US cookies for UK biscuits and US baseball for UK rounders.
(3) From these findings certain generalizations can be proposed concerning
the translation norms that have been in operation:
(a) the Spanish adopts a more ST-oriented translation strategy, retaining
the lexical items of the English original, even when this means that the
TT reader will encounter pronunciation problems and/or not under-
stand the allusion;
(b) the Italian adopts a more TT-oriented translation strategy, modifying
many of the names to create new humorous sound patterns, plays on
words and allusions.
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194 INTRODUCING TRANSLATION STUDIES
follow, and it is replicable. As other studies follow up the findings, a better picture
can gradually be formed about the translation of the genre of modern children’s
literature, how this has varied over the years, the translation strategies into Italian
and Spanish, their relation to what might have been assumed to be the more
dominant English culture, and so on. A framework has thus been set up enabling
researchers from almost any background to contribute in a meaningful way to our
knowledge of translation. Nevertheless, some objections could be raised. So, the
choice of ST–TT coupled pairs (segments that are analysed) is still far from
systematic. Also, while the findings from the study of the translation of proper
names are enlightening, names might be expected to be the most culturally
bound items. It does not necessarily mean that the findings reflect the overall
translation strategy. For this reason, it may well be preferable, as suggested by
Holmes, to develop a checklist of features to examine, even if that list is not as
comprehensive as some of the taxonomies we reviewed in Chapters 4 and 5. The
location of such studies within the target-culture context is also inevitably limited
in Toury’s model. Focus could be shifted to look more deeply at the interaction
between culture, ideology and text, and to look at the translators and publishing
industry themselves. These topics are discussed in the next two chapters.
Summary
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SYSTEMS THEORIES 195
Further reading
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196 INTRODUCING TRANSLATION STUDIES
4 Carry out a study of the same texts using Lambert and van Gorp’s model.
What differences do you note compared to Toury’s model? Which
seems to be more rigorous? Is it possible to merge the two?
5 Systems theories have focused almost exclusively on literary translation.
How far do you feel these theories may work for non-fiction, journalistic
and technical texts?
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