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CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION TO TRANSLATION

OBJECTIVES

After this part, students will be able to:

• understand the definitions of translation, specialized terminology in
translation theory
• learn a brief history of translation
• understand the diferences between translation and interpretation

OVERVIEW - NỘI DUNG

1 2

A brief history of the Definitions in

discipline translation theory

3 4

What is translation The Holmes/Toury

theory? “Map”

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1. A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE DISCIPLINE

Writings on the subject of translating go far back in recorded history. The

practice of translation was discussed by, for example, Cicero and Horace (first century
BCE) and St Jerome (fourth century CE), their writings were to exert an important
influence up until the twentieth century. In St Jerome’s case, his approach to
translating the Greek Septuagint into Latin would affect later translations of the
Scriptures. Indeed, in western Europe the translation of the Bible was to be – for well
over a thousand years and especially during the Reformation in the sixteenth century –
the battleground of conflicting ideologies. In China, it was the translation of the
Buddhist sutras that inaugurated a long discussion on translation practice from the first
century CE.
However, although the practice of translating is long established, the study of
the field developed into an academic discipline only in the second half of the twentieth
century. Before that, translation had normally been merely an element of language
learning in modern language courses. In fact, from the late eighteenth century to the
1960s, language learning in secondary schools in many countries had come to be
dominated by what was known as the grammar-translation method. This method,
which was applied to classical Latin and Greek and then to modern foreign languages,
centered on the rote study of the grammatical rules and structures of the foreign
language. These rules were both practiced and tested by the translation of a series of
usually unconnected and artificially constructed sentences exemplifying the
structure(s) being studied, an approach that persists even nowadays in certain countries
and contexts. Typical of this is the following rather bizarre and decontextualized
collection of sentences to translate into Spanish, for the practice of Spanish tense use.
They appear in K. Mason’s Advanced Spanish Course, still to be found on some
secondary school courses in the UK:
• The castle stood out against the cloudless sky.
• The peasants enjoyed their weekly visits to the market.
• She usually dusted the bedrooms after breakfast.
• Mrs Evans taught French at the local grammar school.
(Mason, 1969/74: 92)
The gearing of translation to language teaching and learning may partly explain
why academia considered it to be of secondary status. Translation exercises were
regarded as a means of learning a new language or of reading a foreign language text
until one had the linguistic ability to read the original. Study of a work in translation

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was generally frowned upon once the student had acquired the necessary skills to read
the original. However, the grammar-translation method fell into increasing disrepute,
particularly in many English- language countries, with the rise of the direct method or
communicative approach to English language teaching in the 1960s and 1970s. This
approach placed stress on students’ natural capacity to learn language and attempts to
replicate ‘authentic’ language learning conditions in the classroom. It often privileged
spoken over written forms, at least initially, and shunned the use of the students’
mother tongue. This focus led to the abandoning of translation in language learning.
As far as teaching was concerned, translation then tended to become restricted to
higher-level and university language courses and professional translator training, to the
extent that present first-year undergraduates in the UK are unlikely to have had any
real practice in the skill.
In the USA, translation – specifically literary translation – was promoted in
universities in the 1960s by the translation workshop concept. Based on I. A.
Richards’s reading workshops and practical criticism approach that began in the 1920s
and in other later creative writing workshops, these translation workshops were first
established in the uni- versities of Iowa and Princeton. They were intended as a
platform for the introduction of new translations into the target culture and for the
discussion of the finer principles of the translation process and of understanding a text.
Running parallel to this approach was that of comparative literature, where literature is
studied and compared transnationally and transculturally, necessitating the reading of
some literature in translation.
Another area in which translation became the subject of research was
contrastive analysis. This is the study of two languages in contrast in an attempt to
identify general and specific differences between them. It developed into a systematic
area of research in the USA from the 1930s onwards and came to the fore in the 1960s
and 1970s. Trans- lations and translated examples provided much of the data in these
studies (e.g. Di Pietro 1971, James 1980). The contrastive approach heavily influenced
other studies, such as Vinay and Darbelnet’s (1958) and Catford’s (1965), which
overtly stated their aim of assisting translation research. Although useful, contrastive
analysis does not, however, incorporate sociocultural and pragmatic factors, nor the
role of translation as a communicative act. Nevertheless, although sometimes
denigrated, the continued application of a linguistic approach in general, and specific
linguistic models such as generative grammar or functional grammar, has
demonstrated an inherent and gut link with translation.
The more systematic, and mostly linguistic-oriented, approach to the study of
translation began to emerge in the 1950s and 1960s. There are a number of now classic
examples:

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• Jean-Paul Vinay and Jean Darbelnet produced their Stylistique comparée du

français et de l’anglais (1958), a contrastive approach that categorized what
they saw happening in the practice of translation between French and
English;
• Alfred Malblanc (1963) did the same for translation between French and
German; Georges Mounin’s Les problèmes théoriques de la traduction
(1963) examined linguistic issues of translation;
• Eugene Nida (1964a) incorporated elements of Chomsky’s then fashionable
genera- tive grammar as a theoretical underpinning of his books, which were
initially designed to be practical manuals for Bible translators.
This more ‘scientific’ approach in many ways began to mark out the territory of
the academic investigation of translation. The word ‘science’ was used by Nida in the
title of his 1964 book (Toward a Science of Translating, 1964a); the German
equivalent, ‘Übersetzungswissenschaft’, was taken up by Wolfram Wilss in his
teaching and research at the Universität des Saarlandes at Saarbrücken, by Koller in
Heidelberg and by the Leipzig School, where scholars such as Kade and Neubert
became active (see Snell-Hornby 2006). At that time, even the name of the emerging
discipline remained to be determined, with candidates such as ‘translatology’ in
English – and its counterparts ‘translatologie’ in French and ‘traductología’ in Spanish
(e.g. Vázquez Ayora, 1977 and the substantial contribution of Hurtado Albir, 2001) –
staking their claim.

2. DEFINITIONS IN TRANSLATION STUDIES

2.1 The concepts of translation

Translation has been described in several ways by various linguists, depending
on how they perceive language and translation.
• “Translation consists of changing from one form to another, to turn into
one’s own or another language”. (The Merriam- Webster Dictionary)
• Translation is considered as “the replacement of textual material in one
language (source language) by equivalent textual material in another
language (target language)”. (JC Catford)
• Translation is described as “the process of conveying messages across
linguistic and cultural barriers”. (Ian Tudor)
• Translation is defined as “a craft consiting in the attempt to replace a

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written message and/or a statement in one language by the same message

and/or statement in another language”. (Peter Newmark)
“Dịch là một nghề nghiệp bao gồm hoạt động thay thế một thông điệp
bằng chữ và/hoặc một bản tường thật của ngôn ngữ nãy bằng một thông
điệp và/hoặc bản tường thuật giống như thế của ngôn ngữ khác.” (Dịch
giả Nguyễn Quốc Hùng)
• Translation is regarded as “a procedure which leads from a written
source language text to an optimally equivalent target language text and
requires the syntactic, semantic, stylistic and text pragmatic
comprehension by the translator of the original text.” (Wills)

Figure 1.1: Newmark’s Translation process diagram

From the notions above, it can be concluded that translation is basically a

change of form (usually referred to as actual words, phrases, clauses, sentences,
paragraphs, etc. which are spoken or written). In translation, the form of the source
language (the language of the text that is to be translated) is replaced by the form of
the target language (the language of the translated text).
The aim of translation is to transfer the meaning of the source language (SL)
into the target language (TL). It is achieved by switching from the form of the first
language to the form of a second language via a semantic structure. It is the sense that
is being passed and will remain unchanged. Just the form shifts. Moreover, translation
requires not only understanding the basic sense of communication, but also the ability
to understand the context of communication. Translation is therefore often categorized
into two main types: written translation, known as translation, and oral translation,
which is considered to be interpretation.

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Figure 1.2: Major types of Translation

Besides, Roman Jakobson in his seminal paper ‘On linguistic aspects of translation’
(Jakobson 1959/2004: 139) also categorized translation into three major types.
Jakobson’s categories are as follows:
• intralingual translation, or ‘rewording’: ‘an interpretation of verbal signs
by means of other signs of the same language’;
• interlingual translation, or ‘translation proper’: ‘an interpretation of
verbal signs by means of some other language’;
• intersemiotic translation, or ‘transmutation’: ‘an interpretation of verbal
signs by means of signs of non-verbal sign systems’.

Figure 1.3: Categories of Translation (Roman Jakobson, 1959)

Intralingual translation would occur, for example, when we rephrase an
expression or when we summarize or otherwise rewrite a text in the same language.
Intersemiotic translation would occur if a written text were translated, for example,
into music, film or painting. It is interlingual translation, between two different verbal

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languages, which is the traditional, although by no means exclusive, focus of

translation studies. The very notion of ‘translation proper’ and of the stability of source
and target has now been challenged and the question of what we mean by ‘translation’,
and how it differs from ‘adaptation’, ‘version’, etc., is a real one. Thus, whereas
Sandra Halverson (1999) claims that translation can be considered as a prototype
classification (i.e. that there are basic core features that we associate with a
prototypical translation, and other translational forms which lie on the periphery),
Anthony Pym (2004a: 52) sees clear ‘discontinuities’ in certain new modes, such as
translation-localization. Much of the ‘theory’ is also from a western perspective; in
contrast, Maria Tymoczko (2005, 2006) discusses the very different words and
metaphors for ‘translation’ in other cultures, indicative of a conceptual orientation
and where the goal of close lexical fidelity to an original may not therefore be shared,
certainly in the practice of translation of sacred and literary texts. For instance, in India
there is ‘rupantar’ ( ‘change of form’) and ‘anuvad’ (‘speaking after’, ‘following’), in
the Arab world ‘tarjama’ ( ‘biography’) and in China ‘fan yi’ (‘turning over’) (see
also, Ramakrishna, 2000; Trivedi, 2006).

2.2 Translation and Interpretation

2.2.1. The similarities between Translation and Interpretation
The field of translation and interpretation is especially demanding because of
the variety of complex tasks that are involved in terms of:
• general knowledge,
• cultural knowledge,
• specific translative / interpretive skills.
All of these tasks are in addition to proficiency in the language to be used,
which is clearly a prerequisite for study in translation and interpretation.In the first
instance, translation and interpretation involve an enormous amount of knowledge in a
variety of areas.“A good translator / interpreter has to be a veritable mine of
information no matter what subject he is dealing with. If you are interpreting a lecture
on genetics and you don’t know what a chromosome is, you are in deep trouble! Or, if
you have to translate a paper on the effects of increased taxation on aggregate demand,
you are up the proverbial creek without a paddle if you have never had a course in
economics. Besides, vocabulary is not enough - in order to make any sense out of a
text or a speech, you have to understand what the author is really saying. Translation
and interpretation involve ideas, not words.”
For this reason, the course of translation and interpretation will need to involve
studies of subject areas such as international economics, political science and

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international studies which are frequently called upon for translation. “Becoming an
accomplished translator / interpreter means you will have to be constantly expanding
your awareness of the world around you.”Before we can translate or interpret a
message, we must understand the total meaning of the message within its own cultural
context.“You must first understand the ideas behind the words and, going one step
further, you should have clear knowledge of the culture which formulated those ideas.
This step is usually the most exciting. A growing awareness of different life styles
brings home the idea that rendering accurate translations is really not that simple. Not
only must you lend a sympathetic ear to two separate cultures, you must also enjoy
working with words. And, one of the main purposes of the institute’s course in
Translation Theory is to make you aware of the possible meanings of a word in
different contexts. We study the semantic and morphological aspects of
communication in an attempt to better understand language usage.”For example,
translator and interpreter will need to study how words communicate, what “bias
words” are, i.e. words that communicate positive meanings and negative meanings,
such as “underdeveloped country” vs. “backward country” vs. “developing
country”.As well as understanding the meanings of the words, we will need to
understand the meaning conveyed through the style. Is it formal? informal? personal?
impersonal? Is the author or speaker humorous? serious? sarcastic? emphatic? Is his
expression subtle? overt?
The hardest part is yet to come in bridging the conceptual gap between two
cultures when we try to convey the total massage by way of the concepts and symbols
(i.e. thoughts and words) of a different language. Cultural sensitivity and creativity
will be called upon maintaining the style of the total communication. Different
languages often communicate similar meanings via different number of words,
different kinds of words, different intonation and pitch, different gestures, etc. If we
translate / interpret literally, our version may result in a loss of the message.
In addition to a wealth of general knowledge in relevant subject - areas, the
ability to switch cultural contexts and to solve problems of inter - cultural
communication, translation and interpretation are specific and complex skills which
require the development of particular psycholinguistic strategies.
2.2.2 The differences between translation and interpretation
Most people assume that translation and interpretation are identical, and that the
mere knowledge of a language means the ability to switch from one language to
another. Translation requires a careful study of the message provided in the sense of a
specific linguistic code and a conversion of that message to another written linguistic
code. Interpretation, on the other hand, means doing the same thing, butorally and
simultaneously.

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In general, messages to be translated are written and translated version are also
written. Messages to be interpreted are generally transmitted orally and the
interpretations are rendered orally. This difference in the vehicle of original message
transmission implicates a difference in the time that will be available for
comprehending the original message and the time available for rendering the message
into another language. The time factor in turn affects the different skills and strategies
that will be called upon.
2.2.2.1. Translation
Translation is rendering a written text into another language in the way that the
author intended the text. Translators are concerned with the written word. They render
written texts from one language into another. Translators are required to undertake
assignments, which range from simple items, such as birth certificates and driving
licenses, to more complex written material, such as articles in specialized professional
journals, business contracts and legal documents.
Translation involves more than a word - for - word version of a text in another
language. As well as problems of word meaning, word order, sentences structure and
style across cultures, there is the problem of understanding the varied subject areas
involved in the messages to be translated.
A good way to close this knowledge gap is to learn the precise meaning of a
word in a particular context. The goal of our vocabulary classes is to learn ways in
which we can enhance our supply of words by developing word systems according to
alphabetical order, order of ideas and language use.
Students are discouraged from translating too literally; the key is to translate
approximately, while conveying the meaning in the originating culture’s terms. A
study of advertisements affords good practice in becoming aware of the cultural
aspects. As well as conveying the meaning in the originating culture’s terms the
translator / interpreter must also be aware of the culture of the audience.
2.2.2.2 Interpretation
Interpretation is rendering information and ideas from one language into
another language by means of speaking. Interpreters are concerned with the spoken
word. They convey orally whether to an individual or a group the meaning of the
spoken word, from one language to another.
Some basic strategies underlying development of interpretive skills may have
eluded us amidst the haste to introduce courses in interpretation and translation, and
our failure to distinguish one from the other.
The particular skills involved are distinct from and in addition to the skill of
code switching required in the translation and interpretation of one language into

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another. For example, special skills involve listening, memory, note - taking,
summarizing and paraphrasing. It is important to underscore the point that a
considerable amount of work is done to develop these underlying processes. Before
students actually practice interpreting from one language to another, these prerequisite
skills are practiced and mastered within the dominant language, i.e. English.
Therefore, the introductory courses on interpretation are in English.

2.2.3 Modes of translation and interpretation

While some of the translation and interpretation strategies overlap, others vary.
As a result, it is nearly impossible to make a clear distinction between translation and
interpretation in term of forms. There are four basic types of translation and
interpretation, namely: prepared translation, sight translation, consecutive
interpretation and simultaneous interpretation.

Figure 1.5: Modes of translation and interpretation

2.2.3.1. Prepared Translation

Prepared Translation, which includes stories, novels, all other written translated
texts.
2.2.3.2 Sight Translation
Sight translation are varied from speeches, quotations, reading for
comprehension, to spoken texts. The major difference between sight translation and
prepared translation is speed of response.
“It might interest you to note that there is a no man’s land between translation
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and interpretation. This we call sight translation. Though you usually do not have time
to read the complete text before you start, slowly but surely, you learn to read ahead
while translating. The reason both translators and interpreters learn this is that
translators have to do a lot of sight translation in their professional life, and
interpreters not only use it, but the techniques learned also provide excellent
preparation for what awaits them in simultaneous.”
2.2.3.3 Consecutive Interpretation
“Consecutive interpretation is the process of listening to a speech or lecture in
one language and then at a certain moment, transcribing and summarizing it orally, in
another language. The time lapse between the speech and your interpretation varies.”
The training for developing the skills of consecutive interpretation includes:
• Learning to repeat what a speaker has said, first in one’s dominant
language,
• Learning a summarize,
• Memory training, e.g. practice in increasing retention of clusters of
words and numbers,
• Learning to take accurate notes.
In a consecutive interpreting situation, an interpreter gives a rendering of
lengthy passages of speech after a party has finished speaking. S/he must give a
structured and accurate rendering of the meaning of the statement with no major
distortions of meaning, changes to the logical order of the statement or serious
omissions of detail.
Consecutive interpreting is often used in the following situations:
• Escorting a non-English speaking group within a large gathering of
English speakers at a trade fair or exposition.
• Conferences where smaller working parties meet in room which lack
telephonic interpreting facilities. In this case, interpreters often sit
alongside speakers and interpret at intervals.
2.2.3.4 Simultaneous Interpretation
“By now you must be wondering what simultaneous is. Picture yourself in a
2x4’ booth, a pair of headphones on, and without prior notice, a voice comes through.
Immediately you have to simultaneously render what is said into another language.
Sounds impossible, doesn’t it? As a matter of fact, the first time you try it, your natural
impulse may be to tear off the headsets and walk out. However, in no time at all, the
process somehow becomes automatic, you pick up momentum, and your interpretation
takes on a smoother quality. Believe it or not, it is fascinating, and, also very
rewarding.”
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Simultaneous interpretation involves the immediate, simultaneous interpretation

of what is being said. The training for developing this skill includes all of the
aforementioned strategies, and specifically calls upon the ability to paraphrase. If a
specific word is not known, another must instantly be supplied. Hence, training
includes:
• A study of synonyms,
• Exercises in paraphrasing,
• Exercises which expose the student to different voices, accents, and
speeds.
Simultaneous interpreters do not wait for a speaker to finish a segment and
pause before beginning to interpret but follow the speaker and interpret what the
speaker is saying. Advantages of simultaneous interpreting are that it saves a great deal
of time and is less disruptive than other forms of interpreting. It is commonly practiced
at international conferences and forums. However, it is expensive to pay for electronic
equipment and simultaneous interpreters.

3. WHAT IS TRANSLATION THEORY ?

Throughout history, written and spoken translations have played a crucial role
in interhuman communication, not least in providing access to important texts for
scholarship and religious purposes. Yet the study of translation as an academic subject
has only really begun in the past sixty years. In the English-speaking world, this
discipline is now generally known as ‘translation studies’, thanks to the Dutch-based
US scholar James S. Holmes. In his key defining paper delivered in 1972, but not
widely available until 1988, Holmes describes the then nascent discipline as being
concerned with ‘the complex of problems clustered round the phenomenon of
translating and translations’ (Holmes 1988b/2004: 181). By 1988, Mary Snell-Hornby,
in the first edition of her Translation Studies: An Integrated Approach, was writing
that ‘the demand that translation studies should be viewed as an independent discipline
. . . has come from several quarters in recent years’ (Snell-Hornby 1988, preface). By
1995, the time of the second, revised, edition of her work, Snell-Hornby is able to talk
in the preface of ‘the breathtaking development of translation studies as an
independent discipline’ and the ‘prolific international discussion’ on the subject (Snell-
Hornby 1995 preface). Mona Baker, in her introduction to the first edition of The
Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation (1998), talked effusively of the richness of the
‘exciting new discipline, perhaps the discipline of the 1990s’, bringing together

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scholars from a wide variety of often more traditional disciplines.

There are four visible ways in which translation studies has become more
prominent. First, there has been a proliferation of specialized translating and
interpreting courses at both undergraduate and postgraduate level. These courses,
which attract thousands of students, are mainly oriented towards training future
professional commercial translators and interpreters and serve as highly valued entry-
level qualifications for the translating and interpreting professions. Caminade and Pym
(1995) listed at least 250 university-level bodies in over sixty countries offering four-
year undergraduate degrees and/or postgraduate courses in translation. The number has
continued to grow. Take the example of the UK, where the study of modern languages
at university has been in decline but where the story particularly of postgraduate
courses in interpreting and translating, the first of which were set up in the 1960s, is
very different. At the time of the first edition of this book, there were at least twenty
postgraduate translation courses in the UK and several designated ‘Centres for
Translation Studies’. By 2007–8, the keyword search ‘translation’ revealed over
twenty institutions offering a combined total of 135 MA programs, even if translation
was not necessarily central to all.
Other courses, in smaller numbers, focus on the practice of literary translation.
In the UK, these include major courses at Middlesex University and the University of
East Anglia (Norwich), the latter of which also houses the British Centre for Literary
Translation. In Europe, there is now a network of centres where literary translation is
studied, practised and promoted. Apart from Norwich, these include Amsterdam (the
Netherlands), Arles (France), Bratislava (Slovakia), Monaghan (Ireland), Rhodes
(Greece), Sineffe (Belgium), Strälen (Germany), Tarazona (Spain) and Visby
(Sweden).
Second, the past two decades have also seen a proliferation of conferences,
books and journals on translation in many languages. Longer-standing international
translation studies journals such asBabel (the Netherlands) and Meta (Canada), which
recently celebrated its fiftieth anniversary, were joined by TTR (Canada) in 1988,
Target (the Netherlands) in 1989, and The Translator (UK) in 1995 as well as by
numerous others including Across Languages and Cultures (Hungary), Cadernos de
Tradução (Brazil), Translation and Literature (UK), Perspectives (Denmark), Rivista
Internazionale di Tecnica della Traduzione (Italy), Translation Studies (UK),
Turjuman (Morocco) and the Spanish Hermeneus, Livius and Sendebar. Online
accessibility is increasing the profile of certain publications: thus, the entire contents
of Meta are available online, issues of Babel and Target from 2000 onwards are
viewable by subscription and we now see the appearance of fully online journals such
as The Journal of Specialized Translation and New Voices (see Appendix). In

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addition, there is a whole host of other single-language, modern languages, applied

linguistics, comparative literature and other journals whose primary focus may not be
translation but where articles on translation are often published. The new- and
backlists of European publishers such as Continuum, John Benjamins, Multilingual
Matters, Rodopi, Routledge and St Jerome now contain considerable numbers of
books in the field of translation studies, as is attested by the searchable online
bibliographies Translation Studies bibliography (John Benjamins) and Translation
Studies abstracts (St Jerome) (see Appendix). In addition, there are various
professional publications dedicated to the practice of translation. In the UK these
include The Linguist of the Chartered Institute of Linguists, The ITI Bulletin of the
Institute for Translating and Interpreting and In Other Words, the literary-oriented
publication of the Translators Association.
Third, as the number of publications has increased so has the demand for
general and analytical instruments such as anthologies, databases, encyclo- pedias,
handbooks and introductory texts. Their number is ever-growing. Among these are
Translation Studies (Bassnett 1980/1991/2002), Contemporary Translation Theories
(Gentzler 1993, 2001), The Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies (Baker and
Malmkjær 1998; Baker and Saldanha 2009), Dictionary of Translation Studies
(Shuttleworth and Cowie 1997), Introducing Translation Studies (Munday 2001/2008),
A Companion to Translation Studies (Kuhiwczak and Littau 2007), The Routledge
Companion to Translation Studies (Munday 2009), Critical Concepts: Translation
Studies (Baker 2009), Critical Readings in Translation Studies (Baker 2010),
Exploring Translation Theories (Pym 2010), the Handbook of Translation Studies
(Gambier and van Doorslaer 2010) and The Oxford Handbook of Translation Studies
(Malmkjær and Windle 2011). The best-known searchable online bibliographies are
Translation Studies Bibliography (John Benjamins), Translation Studies Abstracts (St
Jerome) and the free-access BITRA (University of Alicante).This module sets out to
examine what exactly is understood by this fast-growing field and briefly describes the
history and aims of the discipline.
Fourth, international organizations have also prospered. The Fédération
Internationale des Traducteurs (International Federation of Translators, FIT) was
established in 1953 by the Société française des traducteurs and its president Pierre-
François Caillé. It brought together national associations of translators. In more recent
years, translation studies scholars have banded together nationally and internationally
in bodies such as the Canadian Association for Translation Studies/Association
canadienne de traductologie (CATS, founded in Ottawa in 1987), the European
Society for Translation Studies (EST, Vienna, 1992), the European Association for
Studies in Screen Translation (ESIST, Cardiff, 1995), the American Translation and

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Interpreting Studies Association (ATISA, Kent, OH, 2002) and the International
Association of Translation and Intercultural Studies.
This module sets out to examine what exactly is understood by this fast-
growing field and briefly describes the history and aims of the discipline.

4. THE HOLMES/ TOURY “MAP”

A seminal paper in the development of the field as a distinct discipline was

James S. Holmes’s ‘The name and nature of translation studies’ (Holmes 1988b/2004).
In his Contemporary Translation Theories, Gentzler (2001: 93) describes Holmes’s
paper as ‘generally accepted as the founding statement for the field’, and Snell-Hornby
(2006: 3) agrees. Interestingly, in view of our discussion above of how the field
evolved from other disciplines, the published version was an expanded form of a paper
Holmes originally gave in 1972 in the translation section of the Third International
Congress of Applied Linguistics in Copenhagen. Holmes draws attention to the
limitations imposed at the time by the fact that translation research was dispersed
across older disciplines. He also stresses the need to forge ‘other communication
channels, cutting across the traditional disciplines to reach all scholars working in the
field, from whatever background’ (1988b/2004: 181).
Crucially, Holmes puts forward an overall framework, describing what
translation studies covers. This framework has subsequently been presented by the
leading Israeli translation scholar Gideon Toury as in Figure 1.6. In Holmes’s
explanations of this framework (Holmes 1988b/2004: 184–90), the objectives of the
‘pure’ areas of research are:
• the description of the phenomena of translation (descriptive translation
theory);
• the establishment of general principles to explain and predict such
phenomena (translation theory).

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Figure 1.6:Holmes’s ‘map’ of translation studies (Toury, 1995: 10).

The ‘theoretical’ branch is divided into general and partial theories. By
‘general’, Holmes is referring to those writings that seek to describe or account for
every type of translation and to make generalizations that will be relevant for
translation as a whole. ‘Partial’ theoretical studies are restricted according to the
parameters discussed below.
The other branch of ‘pure’ research in Holmes’s map is descriptive. Descriptive
translation studies (DTS) has three possible foci: examination of (1) the product, (2)
the function and (3) the process:
(1) Product-oriented DTS examines existing translations. This can involve
the description or analysis of a single ST–TT pair or a comparative analysis
of several TTs of the same ST (into one or more TLs). These smaller-scale
studies can build up into a larger body of translation analysis looking at a
specific period, language or text/discourse type. Larger-scale studies can be
either diachronic (following development over time) or synchronic (at a
single point or period in time) and, as Holmes (p. 185) foresees, ‘one of the
eventual goals of product-oriented DTS might possibly be a general history
of translations – however ambitious such a goal might sound at this time’.
(2) By function-oriented DTS, Holmes means the description of the
‘function [of translations] in the recipient socio-cultural situation: it is a
study of contexts rather than texts’ (p. 185). Issues that may be researched
include which books were translated when and where, and what influences
they exerted. This area, which Holmes terms ‘socio-translation studies’ –
but which would nowadays probably be called cultural-studies-oriented
translation – was less researched at the time of Holmes’s paper but is more

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popular in current work on translation studies.

(3) Process-oriented DTS in Holmes’s framework is concerned with the
psychology of translation, i.e. it is concerned with trying to find out what
happens in the mind of a translator. Despite later work from a cognitive
perspective including think-aloud protocols (where recordings are made of
translators’ verbalization of the translation process as they translate), this is
an area of research which is only now being systematically analysed.
The results of DTS research can be fed into the theoretical branch to evolve
either a general theory of translation or, more likely, partial theories of translation
‘restricted’ according to the subdivisions in Figure 1 above.
• Medium-restricted theories subdivide according to translation by machine
and humans, with further subdivisions according to whether the
machine/computer is working alone or as an aid to the human translator, to
whether the human translation is written or spoken and to whether spoken
translation (interpreting) is consecutive or simultaneous.
• Area-restricted theories are restricted to specific languages or groups of
languages and/or cultures. Holmes notes that language-restricted theories
are closely related to work in contrastive linguistics and stylistics.
• Rank-restricted theories are linguistic theories that have been restricted to a
specific level of (normally) the word or sentence. At the time Holmes was
writing, there was already a trend towards text linguistics, i.e. text-rank
analysis, which has since become far more popular.
• Text-type restricted theories look at specific discourse types or genres; e.g.
literary, business and technical translation. Text-type approaches came to
prominence with the work of Reiss and Vermeer, amongst others, in the
1970s.
• The term time-restricted is self-explanatory, referring to theories and
translations limited according to specific time frames and periods. The
history of translation falls into this category.
• Problem-restricted theories can refer to specific problems such as
equivalence – a key issue of the 1960s and 1970s – or to a wider question of
whether universals of translated language exist.
Despite this categorization, Holmes himself is at pains to point out that several
different restrictions can apply at any one time. Thus, the study of the prefaces to the
new English translations of novels by Marcel Proust, would be area restricted
(translation from Parisian French into English), text-type restricted (prefaces to a
novel) and time restricted (1981 to 2003).

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The ‘applied’ branch of Holmes’s framework concerns:

• translator training: teaching methods, testing techniques, curriculum design;
• translation aids: such as dictionaries, grammars and information technology;
• translation criticism: the evaluation of translations, including the marking of
student translations and the reviews of published translations.
Another area Holmes mentions is translation policy, where he sees the
translation scholar advising on the place of translation in society, including what place,
if any, it should occupy in the language teaching and learning curriculum.
If these aspects of the applied branch are developed, the right-hand
side of Figure 1.6 would look something like Figure 1.7. The divisions in
the ‘map’ as a whole are in many ways artificial, and Holmes himself is
concerned to point out that the theoretical, descriptive and applied areas
do influence one another. The main merit of the divisions, however, is –
as Toury states (1991: 180, 1995: 9) – that they allow a clarification and
a division of labour between the various areas of translation studies
which, in the past, have often been con- fused. The division is
nevertheless flexible enough to incorporate developments such as the
technological advances of recent years, although these advances still
require considerable further investigation.

The crucial role played by Holmes’s paper is in the delineation of the

potential of translation studies. The map is still often employed as a point
of departure, even if subsequent theoretical discussions (e.g. Pym 1998,
Hatim and Munday 2004: 8, Snell-Hornby 2006) have attempted to
rewrite parts of it. Also, present-day research has transformed the 1972
perspective. The fact that Holmes devoted two-thirds of his attention to
the ‘pure’ aspects of theory and description surely indicates his research
interests rather than a lack of possibilities for the applied side.
‘Translation policy’ would nowadays far more likely be related to the
ideology, including language policy and hegemony, that determines
translation than was the case in Holmes’s description. The different
restrictions, which Toury identifies as relating to the descriptive as well
as the purely theoretical branch (the discontinuous vertical lines in
Figure 1.6), might well include a discourse-type as well as a text-type
restriction. Inclusion of interpreting as a sub-category of human
translation would also be disputed by many scholars. In view of the very
different requirements and activities associated with interpreting, and
notwithstanding inevitable points of overlap, it would probably be best to
consider interpreting as a parallel field, under the title of ‘interpreting
studies’ (see Pöchhacker 2004). Additionally, as Pym points out (1998:
4), Holmes’s map omits any mention of the individuality of the style,
decision-making processes and working practices of human translators
involved in the translation process. Yet it was precisely the split between
theory and practice that Holmes, himself both a literary translator and a

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researcher, sought to overcome. As interest in translation studies grew,

the manifestations and effects of such a split became more evident and
are clearly expressed by Kitty van Leuven-Zwart (1991: 6). She
describes translation teachers’ fear that theory would take over from
practical training, and literary translators’ views that translation was an
art that could not be theorized, an opinion that is still manifested in much
of their writing. On the other hand, academic researchers from longer-
established disciplines were ‘very sceptical’ about translation research or
felt that translation already had its place in the languages curriculum.

Figure 1.7: The applied branch of translation studies

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