Translation Universals.pdf - ymerleksi - home

46 Andrew Chesterman
that readers will become more tolerant of apparent non-nativeness; different
cultures might differ considerably in this respect. One long-term effect of
knowledge about S-universals on source-text writers might even be a greater
concern for the clarity of the source text, in order to facilitate the translator’s
task and lessen the need for explicitation. This in turn could lead to greater
fidelity to the original.
Contribution: methodological. The prime benefit so far of this kind of descriptive
research has, I think, been methodological. Corpus-based research
into translation universals has been one of the most important methodological
advances in Translation Studies during the past decade or so, in that it has
encouraged researchers to adopt standard scientific methods of hypothesis generation
and testing. This kind of research also makes it obvious that we need to
compare research results across studies and take more account of what others
have done. The application of methods from corpus linguistics has encouraged
more use of quantitative research. Research on descriptive hypotheses has also
brought new knowledge about translation, and a host of new hypotheses to
be tested. It has thus helped to push Translation Studies in a more empirical
direction.
Contribution: interdisciplinarity. Another benefit has been the highlighting
of interdisciplinarity. Descriptive research on universals shows how Translation
Studies must be linked to other fields, not only within linguistics but within the
human sciences more generally (cognitive science, for example, and cultural
anthropology).
Contribution: concern with translation quality. Perhaps paradoxically, this
descriptive approach has also drawn our attention to subtle aspects of text
and translation quality. There are many potential applications here: translators
who are aware of these general tendencies (even if they may not be universal
ones) can choose to resist them. Non-native translators can make good use of
quantitative information, banks of comparable non-translated texts, to make
their own use of the target language more natural, and they can run tests
to check the naturalness of aspects of their translations. This facility may
lead to the gradual blurring of the distinction between native and non-native
translators at the professional level, which in turn should have an influence on
assumptions held by many translation theorists about the exclusive status of
translation into the native language. (This issue is discussed e.g. in Campbell
1998 and Pokorn 2000.)