WHERE TO BEGIN ?

Revealing its paradoxical nature from the first sight thanks to its name that brings the concepts of `art`(or `craft` one may call it) and `science` together, translation studies has set off its journey as a discipline hand in hand with its famous dualities. Although the tenacious existence of these binary oppositons was considered among the main challenges before the disciplinization of the field at first, today, the modern perspective bestows the translation scholar with an approach that embraces these dualities as the enriching elements of the concept of translation. Surely, such a wide perspective directs the scholar towards studies that locate certain concepts within their historical contexts and these studies often result in redefinitons of the `well-known` keywords. Eventually, new conceptions towards the history of translation studies have started to evolve.

Systematic vs unsystematic theories

Most of the translation studies readers locate the theories of Dolet, Tytler, Dryden and Schleiermacher right after some certain ancient names. It feels as if starting the word with the Tower of Babel, then putting a few mentionings about the ancient approaches and briefly touching on these more recent scholars has become the ritual of the editors before starting the real ceremony. Not surprisingly, the theories of these scholars of translation history have never been under as much focus as the theories of the 20th century, rather, they seem to be posited in those first pages just to display the fact that the discipline has laid its roots somewhere back in those days. It wasn`t until recently that the contemporary scholar has felt the necessity of going back there both to strenghten the foundations of the discipline and to bridge its past and the present.

From today’s perspective, the main reason of the huge gap between the early and late theorists seems to be the prescriptive vs descriptive debates on translation theory. Even though there was not such a criteria that the early theorists could evaluate their studies with and the academic preference of ‘explicating instead of guiding’ is a relatively modern one, mostly these early theorists` way of creating translational rules in the idealistic level has been subjected to criticism. Fortunately, after the realization of the fact that translation history needs to embrace both prescriptivity and descriptivity since the latter owes its birth and rise to the former, these historical writings on translation are opened to reevaluation.

When we have a closer look at the writings of Dolet, Dryden, Tytler and Schleiermacher with today`s criteria of ‘positing within the historical context’, we actually see that the roots of many modern concerns of translation studies reside within these documents. Firstly, it needs to be acknowledged that these men belong to different geographies and eras. When we are able to see Dolet as a 16th century humanist, Dryden as a 17th century poet, Tytler as an 18th century Enlightenment philosopher and Schleiermacher as a 19th century German Romantic, these questions inevitably arises in our minds: How could these men fall into the same dispute of free vs faithfull translation? What if these concepts differ in their definitions? Dolet concerns translating Rabelais whereas most of Dryden’s concerns are inclined towards translating poetry; Tytler reflects his perfectionist Enlightenment ideal of ‘meeting both ends’ instead of referring to a choice, whereas Schleiermacher lays the foundations of what Venuti would later call ‘foreignization’ and ‘domestication’ for the construction of a German canon as mentioned in the class. It’s true that in all, the duality of faithfullness and freedom exists, but reading between the lines leads one to different definitions of these concepts. A closer look also works for diminishing the gap between the premodern and modern texts on translational method. One could derive the concept of ‘effect’ from Dryden’t text, or Tytler’s meeting both ends could be taken as an attempt of abolishing the duality. Whereas, Schleiermacher’s text, as the most systematic and well-problematizing of all, produces the roots for not only the functional approaches of ‘translating according to a text-type’, but also such modern issues of ‘contextualization’ and ‘source author-target reader’ relationship.

When read sequentially, these texts also reveal the development of systematic theoritisation of translation phenomena from Dryden’s three parted scheme to Schleiermacher’s extensively defined terms. Still, it’s apparent that these systematizations aim to provide a guide for the translator, in other words, there’s not an empirical textual level regarding the ‘existing’ product of translation practice in these texts. Besides, the explications of their classifications can’t pass beyond the ‘intention’ level at times. Tytler offers the translator to ‘adopt the very soul of the author’ and ‘speak through his own organs’ in order to achieve the type of transcendental perfection he proposes, yet he doesn’t clarify how exactly to do that. Similarly, Dryden mentions about an ‘original Muse’ that hinders the full rendering of the source poem. Obviously, the youngest of all, Schleiermacher is the one that attempts to cover such defects of his elders. Following a relatively systematic methodology which begins with classifying translating for commerce and for scholarly aims (&art). Focusing on the latter, Schleiermacher first problematizes language’s power on cognition, then extensively discusses how to correspond the two distinct types of language that possibly lead to two distinct types of cognition. As he states, there’s no mid-way that would meet both ends, therefore the translator would either bring the source author to the target reader, or vice versa. Explicating both ways in detail, Schleiermacher favors the latter approach we would later name as ‘foreignization`. At this point, he lays the roots of still debated issues such as translation’s role in enhancing the langugage, transmitting the historical particularities within language and the respect for the particular as opposed to general . Bearing all these facts in mind, we could say that these writings also reveal the development of theoretical systematization within translation history, though none are at the level of recent theories and are still regarded as ‘primitive’ compared to their proceeders.

Lefevere’s study as an alternative research on the redefiniton of translation history

In her article titled “The History ofTranslation: Recurring Patterns & Research Issues”, Mona Baker explicates an exemplary approach for a modern retrospection of the translation phenomena: “...we still know very little about the history of our profession, that what we know of it indicates that its profile has varied tremendously from one era to another, and- equally important- that the activities of translation and interpreting have taken such a wide variety of forms and have occured in such a multitude of contexts over the years that we are obliged to look at the historical facts before we can even begin to develop theoretical accounts for this complex phenomenon.” (Baker 2002: 14)

These words of Baker perfectly correlate with Lefevere’s introduction to his article “Chinese and Western Thinking on Translation” which basicly tells that ‘Shifts and changes in the technique of translating did not occur at random’ and historicizing translation necessitates the explication of the dynamics around these shifts. The exemplifications from the texts of Dolet,Dryden, Tytler and Schleiermacher have also revealed that it’s important to search for the traces of the bridge between the past and the present. Reading the disputes that are under the same classification- as the threatisies of those theoreticians have always been classified under the same title ‘primitive and prescriptive’- we’ve seen both how each has contextualized those `same` concepts differently and the gradual evolution of ‘systematical translation theory’.

Taking a more extensive era and two totally different geographies as his subject of comparison, Lefevere’s study serves for the acquisition a same type of approach towards translation history. Setting off from the most eminent dualities of the era, ‘Self – the Other’ and ‘West- East’, he displays the simultaneous development of translation in the Western and Chinese culture towards different directions. As his findings reveal, East has adopted a more stable, consistent attitude towards translation. There hasn’t been a transition from oral tradition to the textual tradition for long time, therefore it has continued it’s ‘functionally thinking rhetoric’ - an approach favoring the reader and sees source as insignificant. Since each translation becomes a source, Chinese tradition is beyond the dualism of faithfullness and freedom. In contrast, though set off from the same functional oral tradition of ‘interpreting’, West has displayed a more dynamic historical development in terms of translational practice. First with the bilingual development of the culture, then with Christianity, ‘word’ has been adopted as the translation unit and in contrast with Eastern tradition’s ‘functionally thinking rhetoric’, West has insistently stayed within the boundaries of the source and approached translation as ‘linguistic transcoding’. In this way, Lefevere explains the development of a ‘retranslation’ ritual and the source vs target disputes Western tradition has fallen into.

By all means, the scheme Lefevere draws for an alternative historicism of translation phenomena is a gigantic one. Squeezing the millennial development of two distinct cultures’ into 12 pages is truely a matter of appreciation. However, this exposes his text to criticisms on misrepresentations in terms of both cultures. Firstly, he doesn’t define the West to which he subjects his comparison. Secondly, backing up the stability of the translational tradition in Chinese culture with its homogenious structure is rather confusing. From such an article, the reader acquires a general view of the development in both cultures, which is great. Yet, apparently, the rationals behind the ‘functionally thinking rhetoric’ of the East and the ‘linguistic transcoding’ of the West need some deeper explications.

For sure, one conclusion arrived by Lefevere`s article is crucial in defining the current position of the field. Afterall, ‘translation spans a field immeasurably wider than that which involves the mere technical activity’ (Lefevere 1998: 24), therefore translation history is in need of conceptual definitions and redefinitions considering the cultural dynamics surrounding the field’s development.


Concluding Remarks

As seen in this two parted essay, the development of translation studies- in both methodological and conceptual matters- is expected to be located within the larger picture. The perspectival shifts from the ancient orators to Bible translators, from linguistic theories to cultural turn and the power turn have never occured randomly. The discipline’s internal dynamics have always been in interaction with the historical and cultural surroundings. Therefore it’s necessary to look back there wider (Am I being too prescriptive here??) since the past never gives up tagging along the present.

References

Baker, Mona
“The History of Translation: Recurring Patterns & Research Issues,” translations: (re)shaping of literature and culture (ed.) Saliha Paker. Istanbul: Boğaziçi University Press, pp. 5-14.

Lefevere, Andre
“Chinese and Western Thinking on Translation”, Constructing Cultures (ed.) Susan Bassnett and Andre Lefevere, pp. 12-24.

Robinson, Douglas
“Etienne Dolet “, Western Translation Theory, pp. 95-96.
“John Dryden”, Western Translation Theory, pp. 171-175.
“Alexander Fraser Tytler”, Western Translation Theory, pp. 208-212.
“Friedrich Schleiermacher”, Western Translation Theory, pp. 225-238.