Transcript Document
Evolution of the Discipline Motivations for coursework essay/research • Irritation • Curiosity • Interest • Usefulness Definitions • Prescription • Description • Are prescription or description or both a part of this degree? Evolution • Traditional Prescriptive Approach • Descriptive Translation Studies – Toury • Critical Descriptive Translation Studies – Hermans • Committed Approaches - Political Commitment – Niranjana, Venuti, Lotbinière-Harwood - Engagement – Tymoczko - Activism – Baker, Cronin, Inghilleri What does Hermans critique about the Tourian descriptive approach? - Lack of consideration of ethical questions Objectivity is impossible Neglect of issues of power, values Neglect of agency Imbalance of consideration of source and target cultures - Need to be self-reflexive - Need to consider exceptional non-norm following cases - Critique of goal of establishing laws Committed Approaches • Political commitment - anti-ethnocentrism - Venuti - postcolonialism - Niranjana - feminism – Lotbinière-Harwood • Engagement - anti-neutralism – Tymoczko Activism • Study of activist translator and interpreter groups – Boéri, Baker • Translation and globalization - promotion of translation - Cronin - promotion of minority languages - Cronin - justice for translators/interpreters Inghilleri Descriptive versus Committed Approaches (i) • Descriptive approach preferable because commitment may restrict findings, and limit the ability to adopt a critical perspective (Hermans) • But committed approaches account for social realities Descriptive versus committed approaches (ii) • Committed approach more efficient than open-ended descriptive approach • But descriptive approach focusing on one topic is efficient; or use of a simple descriptive starting point (next slide) • Not a competition: a descriptive study may support a committed aim Descriptive starting point • Global issues (eg. genre, complete/partial translation, paragraph/section divisions) • Paratexts and intertexts (eg. title, footnotes, translator’s notes, pictures, quotations) • Inter-sentence level • Sentence level • Words, phrases, clauses