424_2061_A.B.

John Dryden (1631-1700), in his Preface to Ovids Epistle(1680), tackled the problems of translation by formulatingthree basic types (in Bassnett: 64):1.metaphrase, or turning an author word by word, and lineby line, from one language into another;2. paraphrase, or translation with latitude, the Ciceronian‘sense-for-sense’ view of translation;3.imitation, where the translator can abandon the text ofthe original as he sees fit. Dryden claims to have steered“betwixt the two extremes of paraphrase and literaltranslation” which he likens to a person dancing on ropeswith fettered legs.(Ibid).2.3. The Third Period:This period, which is the shortest as it extends to less than threedecades, starts with the publication of the first papers on machinetranslation in the 1940s, and is characterized by the introduction ofstructural and applied linguistics, contrastive studies in morphologyand syntax among others which help the translator identifysimilarities and differences between NL and FL, andcommunication theory into the study of translation. It comprisestwo eras: first the pioneering era (1949-1954); the second theinvention of the first generation of machine translation.2.4. The Fourth Period:The last period coexists with the third period as it has its originin the early 1960s, and is characterized by a recourse tohermeneutic inquiries into translation and interpretation, i.e., by arevision of translation that sets the discipline in a wide framewhich includes a number of other disciplines.24