Introducing Translation Studies

Introducing Translation Studies

‘Introducing Translation Studies is among the few very best textbooks on translation

studies that brings together translation theory and practice. In the book, Munday has

done a superb job in presenting the myriad of up-to-date translation theories in a concise,

lucid and interesting manner. It’s translation studies made easy, hence good for trans￾lation students, teachers, professional translators or simply anyone who wants an

introduction to the subject.’

Defeng Li, SOAS, UK

Praise for the first edition:

‘Jeremy Munday’s book responds to the challenge not only of having to provide for the

profound plurality now characteristic of the field, but also to present a snapshot of a rapidly

developing discipline in a clear, concise and graphic way. This is a book which raises strong

awareness of current issues in the field and will be of interest to translation trainers and

trainees alike.’

Basil Hatim, American University of Sharjah, UAE

An established bestselling textbook, used on translation courses and PhD programmes

worldwide, Introducing Translation Studies provides an accessible overview of the key con￾tributions to this dynamic and growing field.

In this book Munday explores each theory chapter by chapter and tests the different

approaches by applying them to texts. The texts discussed are taken from a broad range of

languages – Bengali, English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Punjabi, Portuguese and

Spanish – and English translations are provided.

Analysing a wide variety of texts including the Bible, Beowulf, the fiction of García

Márquez and Proust, European Union and Unesco documents, films, a travel brochure, a

children’s cookery book and the translations of Harry Potter, Munday provides a balanced

introduction to the subject.

Each chapter includes a box presenting the key concepts; an introduction outlining the

translation theory or theories; illustrative texts with translations; case studies; a chapter

summary and discussion points and exercises.

New features of this second edition include:

A new chapter on translation and new technologies, focusing on audiovisual transla￾tion and also including globalization/localization and corpus-based translation studies

Revision of each chapter with new material on the development of translation theory

and practice, including cognitive translation theories and relevance theory, the histori￾ography and sociology of translation, and translation and ideology

An updated discussion on the future of translation studies

Revised exercises and fully updated further reading lists, web links and bibliography

A new companion web site.

This is a practical, user-friendly textbook which gives a comprehensive insight into transla￾tion studies.

An accompanying website can be found at: http://routledge.com/textbooks/

9780415396936

Jeremy Munday is Senior Lecturer in Spanish studies and translation at the University of

Leeds and is a freelance translator. He is author of Style and Ideology in Translation

(Routledge, 2008) and co-author, with Basil Hatim, of Translation: An Advanced Resource

Book (Routledge, 2004).

Introducing Translation

Studies

Theories and applications

Second Edition

JEREMY MUNDAY

First edition published 2001

by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada

by Routledge

270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016

Second edition published 2008

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

© 2001, 2008 Jeremy Munday

The right of Jeremy Munday to be identified as the Author

of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance

with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or

reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic,

mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter

invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any

information storage or retrieval system, without permission in

writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

A catalog record for this book has been requested

ISBN10: 0–415–39694–8 (hbk)

ISBN10: 0–415–39693–x (pbk)

ISBN13: 978–0–415–39694–3 (hbk)

ISBN13: 978–0–415–39693–6 (pbk)

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2010.

To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s

collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.

ISBN 0-203-86973-7 Master e-book ISBN

Para Cristina,

que me ha hecho feliz

Contents

List of figures and tables xi

Acknowledgements xiii

List of abbreviations xv

Introduction 1

Chapter 1 Main issues of translation studies 4

1.1 The concept of translation 4

1.2 What is translation studies? 5

1.3 A brief history of the discipline 7

1.4 The Holmes/Toury ‘map’ 9

1.5 Developments since the 1970s 13

1.6 Aim of this book and a guide to chapters 15

Chapter 2 Translation theory before the twentieth century 18

2.0 Introduction 19

2.1 ‘Word-for-word’ or ‘sense-for-sense’? 19

2.2 Martin Luther 23

2.3 Faithfulness, spirit and truth 24

2.4 Early attempts at systematic translation theory: Dryden, Dolet

and Tytler 25

2.5 Schleiermacher and the valorization of the foreign 28

2.6 Translation theory of the nineteenth and early twentieth

centuries in Britain 29

2.7 Towards contemporary translation theory 30

Chapter 3 Equivalence and equivalent effect 36

3.0 Introduction 36

3.1 Roman Jakobson: the nature of linguistic meaning and

equivalence 37

3.2 Nida and ‘the science of translating’ 38

3.3 Newmark: semantic and communicative translation 44

3.4 Koller: Korrespondenz and Äquivalenz 46

3.5 Later developments in equivalence 48

Chapter 4 Studying translation product and process 55

4.0 Introduction 56

4.1 Vinay and Darbelnet’s model 56

4.2 Catford and translation ‘shifts’ 60

4.3 Czech writing on translation shifts 61

4.4 The cognitive process of translation 63

Chapter 5 Functional theories of translation 71

5.0 Introduction 72

5.1 Text type 72

5.2 Translatorial action 77

5.3 Skopos theory 79

5.4 Translation-oriented text analysis 82

Chapter 6 Discourse and register analysis approaches 89

6.0 Introduction 89

6.1 The Hallidayan model of language and discourse 90

6.2 House’s model of translation quality assessment 91

6.3 Baker’s text and pragmatic level analysis: a coursebook for

translators 94

6.4 Hatim and Mason: the semiotic level of context and discourse 98

6.5 Criticisms of discourse and register analysis approaches to

translation 100

Chapter 7 Systems theories 107

7.0 Introduction 107

7.1 Polysystem theory 108

7.2 Toury and descriptive translation studies 110

7.3 Chesterman’s translation norms 117

7.4 Other models of descriptive translation studies: Lambert and

van Gorp and the Manipulation School 118

Chapter 8 Cultural and ideological turns 124

8.0 Introduction 124

8.1 Translation as rewriting 125

8.2 Translation and gender 128

8.3 Postcolonial translation theory 131

8.4 The ideologies of the theorists 135

8.5 Other perspectives on translation and ideology 136

Chapter 9 The role of the translator: visibility, ethics and sociology 142

9.0 Introduction 143

9.1 The cultural and political agenda of translation 143

9.2 The position and positionality of the literary translator 149

9.3 The power network of the publishing industry 151

9.4 Discussion of Venuti’s work 152

VIII CONTENTS

9.5 The reception and reviewing of translations 154

9.6 The sociology and historiography of translation 157

Chapter 10 Philosophical theories of translation 162

10.0 Introduction 162

10.1 Steiner’s hermeneutic motion 163

10.2 Ezra Pound and the energy of language 167

10.3 The task of the translator: Walter Benjamin 169

10.4 Deconstruction 170

Chapter 11 New directions from the new media 179

11.0 Introduction 179

11.1 Corpus-based translation studies 180

11.2 Audiovisual translation 182

11.3 Localization and globalization 191

Chapter 12 Concluding remarks 197

Appendix: internet links 200

Notes 202

Bibliography 208

Index 226

CONTENTS IX

List of figures and tables

Figures

1.1 Holmes’s ‘map’ of translation studies 10

1.2 The applied branch of translation studies 12

3.1 Nida’s three-stage system of translation 40

5.1 Reiss’s text types and text varieties 73

5.2 Text type and relevant criteria for translation 76

6.1 Relation of genre and register to language 90

6.2 Scheme for analysing and comparing original and translation texts 92

7.1 Toury’s initial norm and the continuum of adequate and acceptable translation 113

7.2 Preliminary norms 113

7.3 Operational norms 113

Tables

3.1 Comparison of Newmark’s semantic and communicative translation 45

3.2 Differentiation of equivalence and correspondence 47

3.3 Characteristics of research foci for different equivalence types 48

4.1 Segmentation of text into units of translation 66

5.1 Functional characteristics of text types and links to translation methods 73

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the following copyright holders for giving permission to reproduce the

following: Figure 1.1, reproduced from G. Toury, Descriptive Translation Studies – And

Beyond, copyright 1995, Amsterdam and Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins. Figure 3.1,

reproduced from E. Nida and C. R. Taber, The Theory and Practice of Translation, copyright

1969, Leiden: E. J. Brill. Figure 5.1, reproduced from A. Chesterman (ed.), Readings in

Translation Theory, copyright 1989, Helsinki: Finn Lectura; based on a handout prepared by

Roland Freihoff; permission kindly granted by the author. Figure 5.2, reproduced from M.

Snell-Hornby, Translation Studies: An Integrated Approach, copyright 1995, Amsterdam

and Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins. Figure 6.2, reproduced from J. House, Translation

Quality Assessment: A Model Revisited, copyright 1997, Tübingen: Gunter Narr. Table 5.1,

translated and adapted from K. Reiss, Möglichkeiten und Grenzen der Übersetzungskritik;

the original is copyright of K. Reiss.

The case study in Chapter 8 is a revised and abridged version of an article of mine:

‘The Caribbean conquers the world? An analysis of the reception of García Márquez in

translation’, published in Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, 75.1: 137–44.

In the first edition, I indicated my sincere debt to Lawrence Venuti (Temple University,

USA) for his encouragement with this project and for his detailed comments and sugges￾tions on earlier drafts. I again acknowledge this debt, although I did not call on his advice for

the changes made to the second edition.

My thanks also go to Rana Nayar (Reader, Department of English at Panjab University,

Chandigarh, India) for his assistance with the case study in Chapter 9. I also thank col￾leagues at the Universities of Leeds, Surrey and Bradford for their support during the

writing of the first and second editions this book, and to my students at all those institutions

who have responded to versions of this material. My thanks also to all who have contacted

me with comments on the first edition with suggestions for revision (including John Denton,

Gerhard Heupel, David Large and Anita Weston), to those journal reviewers who have made

constructive suggestions and to the anonymous reviewers of the proposal for this second

edition. There are many other translation studies colleagues who have offered suggestions

and help in many ways; I thank them all.

I would also like to express my extreme gratitude to Louisa Semlyen, Nadia Seemungal

and Ursula Mellows at Routledge, who have been very supportive and patient throughout

the writing and editing process. Also to copy-editor Rosemary Morlin and proofreader Mary

Dalton for their careful attention to detail. Any remaining errors are of course mine alone.

Finally, but most of all, my thanks to Cristina, whose love and help have meant so much

to me, and to Nuria and Marina, who have added so much to my life.

Jeremy Munday

London, November 2007