TO THEORISE OR NOT TO THEORISE TRANSLATION

TO THEORISE OR NOT TO THEORISE TRANSLATION

There are many conflicting theories about the nature of translation and have been for centuries.

Can a translator leave out sections of text or adapt to prevailing fashions?
Must the translator privilege meaning over form?
Should the translator be visible or invisible?
Be faithful or unfaithful?
Domesticate or foreignise?
Is equivalence possible?
What can post-modernism or post-colonialism learn from translation?

Over the last twenty years these theoretical debates have been consolidated in Translation Studies, an emerging discipline within universities throughout the world. Professional translators often express impatience with the academic discipline: it is remote, abstract, has little to do with what they do. However, a university presence - conferences, seminars, MAs and PhDs - improves the status of literary translation. Some academic theorists are also translators. A source of conflict is often the lack of recognition given to the practice of translation and translations themselves. There has been a long tradition of denigrating literary translation in universities as a second-rate, second-hand activity: 'Don't put your translations on your cv , Dr.Brown, you'll never get promotion.' That is now changing. There are signs at least in the UK that literary translation is being seen as a unique form of creativity and an act of research. Translation Studies, whether focussed on descriptions of process, cultural transfer, corpus analysis or historical perspectives have helped create this situation.

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