Theory and practice of translation : Student's guide

Abstract

What is translation? 1.2 Theories, models and analogies of the translation theory 1.3 Requirements for a theory of translation There is still a debate whether translation is a “science” or an “art”. Linguist scholars have a scientific approach rather than an “artistic” one. At the same time, literature preoccupied translators consider it a purely artistic phenomenon/activity. Resulting this dichotomy, there are various definitions of the process: “Translation is the expression in another language (or target language) of what has been expressed in another, source language, preserving semantic and stylistic equivalences”. [10] Another definition is offered by Hartmann and Stork: “translation is the replacement of a representation of a text in one language by a representation of an equivalent text in a second language” [14,713]. Both definitions and the others, mean that in fact, translation is the process of transferring meanings between two or more languages.