Translation Universals.pdf - ymerleksi - home

34 Andrew Chesterman
will refer to these routes as (a) the prescriptive route, (b) the pejorative route,
and (c) the descriptive route. Along the prescriptive route we find statements
about various features which all translations, or all translations of a given sort,
should or should not manifest, ideally. Along the pejorative route we find
statements about undesirable features which all, or most, or some type of,
translations are thought to manifest, in reality. Along the descriptive route we
find statements about possible universal features of translations or subsets of
translations, without overt value judgements.
Each route has its problems, and each has made contributions.
2. The prescriptive route
The oldest, traditional route away from the particular has been the stating of
prescriptive generalities that purport to hold for all translations. These statements
typically have the form: “All translations should have feature X / should
not have feature Y”, and thus reflect some kind of translation ideal, universally
valid. Examples abound in the early literature: Dolet’s and Tytler’s translation
principles, for instance. The culmination of this route is perhaps reached in
Savory’s famously paradoxical list of mutually contradictory principles.
Dolet (La manière de bien traduire d’une langue en aultre, 1540; three of
his five general principles)
Translations should not be word-for-word renderings of the original.
Translations should avoid unusual words and expressions.
Translations should be elegant, not clumsy.
Tytler (Essay on the principles of translation, 1797)
Translations should give a complete transcript of the ideas of the
original.
Translations should be in the same style as their source texts.
Translations should be as natural as original texts.
Savory (1968:54)
1. A translation must give the words of the original.
2. A translation must give the ideas of the original.
3. A translation should read like an original work.
4. A translation should read like a translation.
5. A translation should reflect the style of the original.