Ch 2

• Gideon Toury's work in the 1980s and Itamar Even-Zohar's work in the 1970s


  • Contributed to the change towards a more "target-oriented" Translation Studies
• Appropriation and absorption of a foreign text

  Reflects a given culture's attitude towards foreignness
• The introduction of a text in a new context is likely to cause some changes in the receiving system
• Toury's view on text changes and receiving system changes


  When a text is introduced in a new cultural context, not only the text changes, but also the receiving system experiences some kind of change
• Translators, while addressing the needs of the target culture, also keep some features of the source text unaltered
• Toury's advocacy


  • Need for methodology and research techniques
  • Importance of paying attention to regularities of translational behavior by analyzing a wide corpus of selected materials
• Toury's concept of "norms"

  The translation of general values/ideas shared by a community into performance instructions appropriate for and applicable to particular situations, specifying what is forbidden and what is tolerated
• Norms

  • Acquired by the individual during their socialization and always imply sanctions
  • Can be stronger, more "rule-like", or weaker, "idiosyncratic"
• Translation as a "norm-governed" activity

  Allows a certain amount of deviation from the prevailing norms, which can endanger the success of the resulting translation
• Toury's division of norms

  • Preliminary norms
  • Operational norms (Matricial norms, Textual-linguistic norms)
• Preliminary norms


  Influence the behavior before the start of the actual translation process, e.g. selection of texts to be translated
• Operational norms

  Interest the act of translation itself, further divided into Matricial norms and Textual-linguistic norms
• Matricial norms


  Can govern the existence of TL material as a substitute for the corresponding SL material, its location in the text and the textual segmentation
• Textual-linguistic norms

  Describe translated material and translation operations, govern the selection of material to create/substitute the target text
• Translational norms can be identical or not identical to norms that govern the production of non-translational types of text
• Toury's concept of "equivalence"

  Norms determine the type and extent of equivalence manifested by actual translation, as a historically bound, changing concept
• Toury's sources for reconstructing norms


  • The texts themselves (primary products of norm-regulated behavior)
  • Perspective theories or statements made by translators and professionals involved in the translating process (can be partially biased and arbitrary)
• Toury's basis on Chomsky's and Saussure's dualism

  Competence/performance and langue/parole
• Implications of Toury's target-oriented study

  • The life of the new translated text in its socio-historical context assumes an importance that was absent in source-oriented approaches
  • The socio-historical context becomes fundamental in understanding the behavior of translators and their norm-oriented choices
• Toury's concept finds evidence in the ways the language is spoken in Italy and the culture of the importing country has been influenced by the introduction and translation of foreign audiovisual programmes, especially Anglo-American
• Toury emphasizes the need to work on a representatively large corpus, but many AVT studies tend to rely on limited corpora
• Preliminary norms

  May explain editorial choices such as cuts in a montage
• Operational norms

  Have a more direct relevance to research on audiovisual translation
• Matricial norms


  Are those that are more discussed in the analysis of translated texts, together with textual-linguistic norms
• Textual-linguistic norms


  Have an impact on the solution chosen to replace the original material and on the strategies chosen to translate the text, revealing norm-governed behavior
• Textual-linguistic norms can be divided into those that apply to translation in general and those that apply to particular types of translation
• Ranzato's analysis focuses on the primary products of norm-regulated behavior (the translated texts themselves) and secondary products (statements by the experts involved in the translation process)
• Itamar Even-Zohar's Polysystem Theory

  A target-oriented approach that underlines the importance of the socio-historical context in understanding the translating process and the translated products
• Polysystem


  A "heterogeneous, hierarchized conglomerate of systems that interact to create an ongoing dynamic process of evolution within the polysystem as a whole"
• Literary system


  The network of relations that can be assumed obtained between a number of literary activities
• Even-Zohar's views can be applied to audiovisual texts, even though he centers around literary texts
• Audiovisual system


  Functions as the literary system, composed of dubbed, subtitled or other translated audiovisual texts, which can be viewed as one of the factors that govern the production, promotion and reception of the texts themselves
• The role of dubbing in Italy has always been central in the audiovisual polysystem
• Even-Zohar's three major conditions that favor the centrality of translated texts in a culture

  • When a literature is "young", in the process of being established
  • When a literature is "peripheral"/"weak"
  • When there are turning points, crises or literary vacuums in literature
• Lefevere's "Manipulation School"


  Investigates the concept of manipulation, with the belief that both translators and readers are manipulated, and that the subject of ideological manipulation through translation should become a central area of investigation in Translation Studies
• Lefevere's three factors

  • Professionals whose professionalism gives them status and power
  • Patronage, the powers that can further or hinder the reading, writing and rewriting of literature
  • The dominant poetics in a given time and space
• Even translation choices which apparently seem to be based purely on a selection of linguistic options may conceal some ideological motivations
• Lefevere's key concepts

  • Horizon of expectations: expectations may induce manipulative practices to make the text fit into an expected genre
  • Universe of discourse: the objects, concepts, customs belonging to the world that were familiar to the writer of the original
• Skopos Theory


  A functional and sociocultural concept of translation that encourages the consideration of contextual factors regarding the translation, such as the culture of the intended readers of the TT and of the client who commissioned it, and the function that the text shall have in the culture of those readers
• Skopos Theory's fundamental drive force

  To clarify the purpose (skopos) of the translation before beginning the actual translation process by adopting a prospective attitude to translation determined by the client's need