constructing pathways to translation - Higher Education Commission

Figure 1.5 Applied Translation Studies (Adapted from Munday, 2001:13)
Holmes, himself, points out that Theoretical, Descriptive and Applied areas do influence
one another. The main merit of division, as Toury in Munday (2001) states, is that, they
allow a clarification and a division of tasks between various areas of Translation Studies,
which, in the past, have been confused. The division, moreover, is flexible and
incorporates developments such as technological advances.
Holmes’s paper, in fact, has delineated the potentials of Translation Studies. Holmes
devoted two- thirds of his attention to the ‘pure’ aspects of theory and description. His
contribution has served as a sound theoretical framework for the development of
Translation theory, even in recent times. Current trends are inclusive of all the
Descriptive and Applied models suggested by Holmes.
Development since 1970s
The surge in Translation Studies since 1970s has seen different areas of Holmes’s map
come to the fore. Contrastive Analysis has fallen by the wayside. Linguistic oriented
‘science’ of translation has continued strongly in Germany, but the concept of
equivalence associated with it has declined. Germany has seen the rise of theories
centred around text types (Reiss) and the text purpose (the Skopoos theory of Reiss and
Vermeer). The Hallidayan influence of Discourse Analysis, Systemic Functional
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