Functional Equivalence vs Skopos

As approached towards the descriptive era, it’s obvious that the theories get to become more systematized (almost scientific at times) and such concerns of translational practice as translatorship initial aim and process become the theoreticians’ subjects of problematization besides the traditional subjects of initial point (ST) and end product (TT). Thus, one can easily observe the fact that the scope of translation studies is pushing beyond its traditional boundaries.

Although mostly categorized under the same title- ‘functional theories’,the theories of Reiss and Vermeer could be taken as an end of an era and beginning of an era respectively. It’s not hard to define the theory of Reiss as source oriented, since she’s still in search of an equivalence of some sort, whereas, the theory of Vermeer proposes a complete independency from the source. How come they both are classified as ‘functional theorists’ then? It’s obvious that their approaches towards ‘equivalence’ differ. Reiss still discusses the transmission of a part of the source text (as a partial equivalence proponent), whereas, Vermeer puts forward his approach of ‘acquiring adequacy through obeying the skopos’ and proposes the possibility of ‘full transmission’ in these terms. To him, one-to-one type of correspondence, or such techniques as translating according to text-type, constitute solely a few of the many possible ways.

Interrelated with their differing approaches towards ‘functional equivalence’, the theories of Reiss and Vermeer are target-oriented to different extents. Reiss legitimates the usage of a different text type while ‘reverbalizing’ the source text only if the target culture’s ‘habits of textualization’ differ form that of the source (Reiss 1971: 165). It’s true that her proposing the translator various options- translation according to sense and meaning, translating by identification, adoptive translating- is a sign of her acknowledging the legitimacy of more than one target-texts. However, multiplying the Reiss’s options, the skopos theory of Vermeer not only breaks the limits brought by source-orientedness (which still exists in Reiss), but also gains the target text an autonomous character, bestowing the target-text with its own textual potentials. It’s no longer a product of secondary communication as in Reiss’s theory, instead, it carries its own communicative purposes other than those of the source text. In this way, Vermeer’s theory carries the ‘function’ of Reiss one step further in both positioning the translator as an expert of decisions and defining the target text as a text of its own.

Taking the very end of Reiss’s article as his point of departure- in the part titled as ‘special cases’ in which she admits the possibility of the lack of functional equivalence- Vermeer builds a whole theory on ‘relativizing the traditional viewpoint’ (Vermeer 1989: 185). It’s a grand scheme that he draws. First he passes beyond the previous conceptions of translation through the defining the act neither as a linguistic phenomena nor as a form of communication. As implied in how he refers translation to-that is ‘translational action’, translation is taken as a form of human behavior that has a specific purpose and brings about an end-product. In this `purpose` point, Reiss and Vermeer’s theory intersect. It’s true that Reiss proposes only a limited number of purposes all of which are relatively source oriented, whereas,to Vermeer all purposes are legitimite (as long as they support the translational action and the endproduct), which increases the possible number of target texts coming out of a single source text. But the point they end up with in referring to the concep to of ‘purpose’ are rather similar: to introduce translation as a conscious activity. Vermeer’s determining a skopos and Reiss’s translational stages of ‘analysis&reverbalization’ both serve for this. On the one hand there are the classifications of Reiss (intentional vs unintentional changes, 4 different text-types, 3 modes of translating etc) , and on the other, there’s the well-developed terminology of Vermeer (skopos,commission,translatum,adequacy,expert). Don’t they both serve for a scientific (or professional one may call it) conception of translation? Through referring such schematisms, aren’t they legitimizing the concept of translation, the act of the translator and their studies as translation scholars with one shot?

Supposedly, in both theories there’s a search for a general theory of translation, which could be inferred from the meticulous methodologies they resort to . In one, it’s the text type of the source that directs the act of translation, in the other, it’s the skopos that takes this responsibility. In both, the endproduct of the action is valued (though it’s more so in Vermeer’s theory), which reveals that the absolute hegemonia of the source is gradually becoming a myth. And how to achieve a general theory of translation through the insistently interfering concept of ‘cultural context’ is gradually becoming an inextricable mystery.

REFERENCES
Reiss, Katharina
1971"Type, Kind and Individuality of Text"
Vermeer, Hans J.
1989"Skopos and Commission in Translational Action"