Compare and Contrast between Norms in Translation by Gideon Toury the Translators Invisibility Theory - Essay Example

Compare And Contrast between Norms in Translation by Gideon Toury the translator’s invisibility theory al Affiliation Compare And Contrast between Norms in Translation by Gideon Toury the translator’s invisibility theory Introduction Since time in memory, translation theories have significantly contributed to understanding the aspect of interpreting. However, despite representing variant modes of process, interpreting and translation belong to the same ontological category of interlingual phenomenon. Translation is associated with major issues of ‘decoding’ and ‘recoding’ tools, ‘untranslatability’ between the target and source languages, and, the problem of ‘loss’, ‘equivalence’, and ‘gain’. In relation to these issues, translation theory determines, categorizes, and utilizes translation principles to arrive at three main translation categories that are translation theories founded on source-oriented perspectives, linguistic translation theories, and recent translations. While source-oriented translation approaches developed from the 2nd century B.C to the 20th century A.D., the linguistic translation theories began during the second decade of the 20th century and lasted for 50 years. However, the last three decades of the 20th century led to the birth of the descriptive branch of translation that was subdivided into process-oriented, function-oriented, and product-oriented translations. The recent translation includes the target-oriented approach to translation that includes Toury’s norms in translation (Venuti, 2000, p. 198). Thesis Different translation theories are used in different translation purposes. This paper evaluates the differences between Gideon Toury’s Norms in translation theory and Lawrence Venuti’s translator’s invisibility theory. The comparison begins by placing the norms in translation theory in wider context, offers a description of the translator’s invisibility theory, compares the two theories, and finally, performs an assessment and evaluation of the implication of the two theories for practical translation. Norms in Translation by Gideon Toury At the start of the present translation period was the descriptive translation branch in Israel since 1970s. During this period, Israeli researchers affiliated with descriptive research used the polysystem theory by Even-Zohar in 1990, and the aspect of norms established by Gideon Toury in 1995 (Benjamins, 2008, p. 64). Since Israeli is a multilingual and multicultural state, translation of other languages into Hebrew was committed to a target-oriented approach. The polysystem theory of literature and culture involves all cultural, literary, linguistic, and social aspect, but did not account for single-text translations. Instead, polysystem viewed single-texts as a system operating within a polysystem guided by the literary system. Inspired by Polysystem Theory, Toury formulated the target oriented approach that was a reaction to normative, source-oriented, and synchronic theoretical framework. Target-oriented perspective focused on the process of source-text typology and linguistic theories, but criticized all main premises of Source-Oriented Theories (SOT) for their distinction of theory and process in translation studies, and regards them as not satisfying translation realities. According to (Ozben, 1998, p. 20), source-oriented theories did not meet translation realities since they are abstract and their perspective norms are not from actual translation processes given their adequacy conditions assumed as the only right ones, and that are misleading and infertile for translation studies. Consequently, source-oriented theories failed to offer a new departure and framework for a descriptive study of literary translations, while target-oriented approach perceives translation studies as an empirical discipline whose study object is real life. The actual facts in target oriented approach comprise of texts, models and norms of conduct, and intertextual relationships, unlike merely speculative consequences of preconceived theoretical models and hypothesis. In addition, Ozben (1998, p. 21) target-oriented approach added the branch of descriptive studies to translation studies and these are essential in any empirical field. Toury’s target-oriented approach emphasized on the role of norms in translation through highlighting that the translator role cannot be minimized to the sheer production of utterances that any discipline may consider a translation (Toury, 1995, p. 53). On the contrary, any act of translation must demonstrate cultural significance such that translatorship manages to accomplish a responsibility allocated to it by a community as a social role. The implication is that an effective translator must acquire a set of norms within a given cultural setting for there to be an appropriate expression of thoughts and management of associated constraints. The translation activity in this case becomes both sociocultural and norm-governed (Toury, 1998). As social beings, humans’ must socialize when they come into new contact and explore their environment with the aim of living together. Understanding and adhering to the norms during translation is thus crucial in understanding what is tolerated or the rules in any society, and what is not or idiosyncrasies. Consequently, norms guarantee the adherence to social order and since translation involves two or more norm-systems, translators must understand them whether as preliminary or operational norm-systems. According to Pardo (2013, p. 14), norms in translation offer crucial descriptive data through Toury’s concept initial norms, preliminary norms, and operational norms. Initial norms offers information on the adequacy and acceptability of the target culture, preliminary norms are used in defining translation policy, while operational norms such as matricial and textual linguistic norms originate from the translation. The development of translation studies involved five approaches that are: the linguistic approach, cognitive approach, the textual approach, sociocultural and communicative approach, and the philosophical and hermeneuritic approach. According to Pardo (2013, p. 15), the communicative and the sociocultural approach came first and Gideon Toury was one of the representative translators while hermeneutics and philosophical approach followed and was represented by Lawrence Venuti among others. Theories similar to Gideon Toury’s norms in translation are relevance theory approach, the skopos theory, and cultural approach: gender theory, all belonging to the sociocultural and communicative approach to translation studies. Venuti’s the translator’s invisibility theory is based on criticizing the excessive structuralism and formalism in Even-Zohar’s and Gideon Toury’s theories while emphasizing ‘ideal’ adequate text in a translation (Milton, 1996, p. 186). The Translator’s Invisibility Theory by Lawrence Venuti While Toury emphasizes on the translator’s intuition and alertness, and adherence to the existing norms, Venuti uses the term invisibility to define the situation and the task of the translator in modern day society (Venuti, 1995). He insisted that a good translator must not be visible, but remain behind the text. Venuti emphasized invisibility as the only way to generate transparent text, since visibility is evident in textual imperfections. Additionally, Venuti revealed that the social role of a translator, emphasized by Toury, is underestimated as translators are more often denied autonomy and prestige while operating subject to authorities who hinder or promote some translations or options over others. According to Venuti (1995), there are four themes evident in the proposition of The Translator’s Invisibility. First, a translator is only judged as successful once their work is fluent, hence remaining the most invisible to the reader of that translation. However, when a translator’s work shows something negative, the translator takes the blame and is denied full recognition as priority is given to the foreign writer (Venuti, 2000). Secondly, the translator is discriminated by copyright contracts that are never given full authorship recognition since even the translated version of the original text is controlled by the foreign or original writer. For instance, America and Britain refer to translation as a derivative and an adaptation of work founded on original work of authorship and only the author determines any exclusive right to prepare such adaptations or derivatives during the copyright term. Thirdly, Venuti emphasizes that translation from other languages to English is very low compared to the translation from English to other languages (Venuti, 1995). Some explanation for this trend is the presence of translator’s institutional isolation resulting in the stigmatization of translation to a form of writing belittled by the academy, restricted by copyright law, and exploited by institutions such as governments, publishers, corporations, and religion (Munday, 2012). All of these factors contribute to a complacency that is intolerant at home, but imperialistic overseas. This means that transparency grading is left to authorship, especially in literary and literature scholarship. Consequently, the oppressive definition in copyright law is underwritten in both nationally recognized codes and key international treaties. Venuti reveals that although literal translations call for transparency and fidelity, the two are always at odds. The implication is that translations can either demonstrate fidelity or transparency, but never both simultaneously (Venuti, 2000, p. 470). Fidelity in translation refers to the degree to which a translation precisely delivers the meaning of the original text. It does not involve any distortions including emphasizing or weakening any section, or additions or subtractions and this becomes a faithful translation. Conversely, transparency refers to the extent to which a native speaker perceives a translation of the target language from a language that had been originally written in a language compliant to the required syntactic, grammatical, or idiomatic standards, and this becomes idiomatic translation (Chesterman & Wagner, 2002). The judgment of any idiomatic translation involves a variant criteria based on the subject, function, type, and use of text, original contexts accuracy, historical and original context among others. Conversely, the criteria for transparency judgement are experience of wrong sounds in unidiomatic translations. Comparing Toury and Venuti’s Theories Toury requires that translator training institutes adhere to relevant norms, while student translators must be issued with feedback, and socialization encouraged assimilation of feedback procedures. According to Chesterman & Wagner (2002) traditional translator learning should be reshaped to eliminate teacher-centred classroom instructions and adopt student-centred interaction and involvement. This way, translators will attain strategies for handling numerous problems encountered during real-life translation, or encourage adoption of automated techniques for problem resolution. In solving translation issues, Venuti encourages translators to adopt domestication and foreignization translation strategies. Domestication foresees ethnocentric compression of foreign text to the cultural values of the target language, thus retaining the reader at home. However, foreignization forecasts an ethnodeviant force on the values of registering the foreign language’s cultural and linguistic differences and sends the reader overseas. Simply stated, foreignization takes the writer to the author unlike domestication that brings the reader to the writer (Munday, 2012, p. 147). In foreignization, therefore, some part of the original text is retained while none is retained in domestication that focuses on lessening text to the cultural values of the target-language making it idiomatic and readable, or transparent. Adherence to transparency makes the translator invisible while the target text has little or no element of foreigness. Both Toury and Venuti’s theories agree that translation is a decisional process where the translator is responsible for making the choices. According to Venuti (1995), the translator decides how to translate based on a wide range of options. The choice in this case is based on elimination of the options that do not fit within the objectives of the translation subject to a project plan that foresaw the association between the translation and the original text (Newmak, 1988, p. 50). The main translation processes are metaphrasing, paraphrasing, and imitation. With metaphrasing, the original text involves using a word-for-word and line-for-line translation approach from a source language to a target language. Paraphrasing involves less strictness in following of the author’s words but no alterations. Imitation has the translator assuming the liberty of both varying from the sense and words of the author, and forsaking them on occasions only to use hints from the original (Newmak, 1988). Based on Toury’s target-oriented approach, the initial norms determine the translator’s decision. A translator can choose to confine to either the original text with its text associates and norms, or to adhere to the target culture’s literary norms and linguistic, or a combination. However, unlike in the translator invisibility’s theory where the translator is expected to adhere to fidelity or transparency, the norm in translation theory emphasizes that the translation has to demonstrate acceptability or adequacy (Venuti, 2000). With acceptability, the translator inclines towards the target system while with adequacy the translator tends towards the source text. Why I Chose Translator’s Invisibility Theory The translator’s invisibility theory attracted my attention since it combines both source-oriented and target-oriented approaches. The source-oriented approach involves inclination towards the text where the information has been obtained while target oriented approach inclines towards the linguistic use and tastes of the culture the text must be translated into (Venuti, 2000). In the two approaches, the translator has to observe faithfulness such that only the true intention of the text is attained. Besides dealing with linguistic elements, any translation has to deal with extralinguistic elements such as culture, translator’s experience, the historical period, and the society such that a translation does not turn into the transposition of basic concepts between two languages. Application of Translation Theories by Toury and Venuti According to Munday (2001), translation theories play the crucial role of clearing the perception that translations are used for political reasons in the West and in the British-controlled India. Such political control resulted in three major failures. First, there is a lack of concern about imbalances in power between various languages. Secondly, there is a need to reconsider translation such that it is no longer perceived as colonial domination, but a humanistic enterprise. Finally, the western translation theory basically involves erroneous concepts that called for transformation. In translation, norms play a crucial role in the formulation of general principles, actual translations, and practical applications. They relate to the aspect of expectations and assumptions, thus they are the social reality of the notion of appropriateness. Translators are expected to possess the knowledge of two norm systems such that they understand the involved languages (Schaffner, 1999, pp. 1-2). This means they have to get into socialization with the society members so as to gain shared models of behaviour. Through the understanding of a norm systems, translators understand how expectations about behaviour are regulated and the outcomes of such behaviour. For instance, the norms in translation theory and the translator’s invisibility theory would be useful in understanding my role as a translator of linguistics and language use such as phonological, semantic, syntactic, and pragmatic and morphological perspectives. Using the translator’s invisibility theory, I understand that my role as a translator is also utopian. The implication is that my domestic inscription must seek to communicate the source text to the community and that the target community demonstrate anticipation that translates to domestic readership. With a reader community interested in the foreign text, translation results in the creation of a mutual understanding between foreign and domestic readers (Venuti, 2000, p. 485). Conclusion In summary, this paper has compared the norms in translation by Toury and the translator’s theory by Venuti. While Toury focused on target-oriented approach to translation, Venuti applied both target-oriented and source-oriented approach to understand contemporary translations. Toury’s focus was on norms as the major element in translation, which differed from Venuti’s focus on the translator. However, the two theories agree that the translator is left to choose the how to translate. Reference Benjamins, J. (2008). Beyond Descriptive Translation Studies: Investigations in homage to Gideon Toury. Armsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Chesterman, A., & Wagner, E. (2002). Can Theory Help Translators?: A Dialogue Between the Ivory Tower and the Wordface. London: St. Jerome Publishers. Milton, J. (1996). Visible Theories and Translators. Tradterm, 3, 185-188. Munday, J. (2012). Introducing Translation Studies, Theories and Applications. London and New York: Routledge. Newmak, P. (1988). A textbook of Translation. London: Prentice Hall. Ozben, T. (1998). A Critical Re-evaluation of Gideon Toury’s Target-Oriented Approach to “Translation” Phenomena. Boğaziçi University. Pardo, B. S. (2013). Translation Studies: An Introduction to the History Development of (AudioVisual) Translation. Canada: Linguax. Revista de Lenguas Aplicadas. Schaffner, C. (1999). Translation and norms. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Toury, G. (1995). The Nature and Role of Norms in Translation. In G. Toury, Descriptive Translation Studies and Beyond (pp. 53-69). Armsterdam-Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Toury, G. (1998). A Handful of Paragraphs on Translation and Norms. Current Issues in Language & Society, 15(1), 10-32. Venuti, L. (1995). The Translators Invisibility: A history of Translation. London: Routledge. Venuti, L. (2000). The Translation Studies Reader . London: Routledge. Read More