constructing pathways to translation - Higher Education Commission

Saussure’s concept of ‘signs, signifier and signified’ provides a path with regard to the
Linguistic implications in Translation. Thus Derrida writes:
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With in the limits of its possibility, or its apparent possibility, translation
language by another, of one text by another. We shall not have
and never have
within one and the same language
(Spivak,1974:Lxxxvii).
hence the briefest outline
of the main areas where the two discipline can interact can be
presented:
practices the difference between signified and signifier. But if this difference is
never pure, translation is even less so, and a notion of transformation must be
substituted for the notion of translation; a regulated transformation of one
had to deal with some ‘transfer’ of pure signified that the signifying instrument –
or ‘vehicle’ – would leave virgin and intact, from one language to another, or
It is clearly fair to say that Linguistics does have something to offer Translation Studies;
The relationship of Linguistics to Translation can be two fold: one can apply the findings
of Linguistics to the
practice of Translation, and one can have a Linguistic Theory of
Translation, as opposed to a Literary, economic or semiotic theory of Translation. In the
first instance, a sub-division of Linguistics such as socio-linguistics may have something
to say about the relation of Language to social situation, and what it has to say, can
consequently be applied in the act of translating. Linguistics can provide some, but not
all, of the information on which to base
the decision of how to handle dialects and
similar features in Translation. In the second instance, rather than applying Linguistic
theory to elements with in the text to be translated, one can apply it to entire concept of
Translation itself.
Both these
approaches are found in the writings on Linguistics and Translation. Authors
such as Albrecht (1973), Hatim and Mason(1990), Bell(1991) and many other list the
main elements of Linguistic theory and show how they supposedly impact upon elements
in the Translation process and its product. The second approach is found in the works of
writers such as Catford (1965), who attempts to describe Translation in terms of specific
Linguistic theory, in this case Halliday’s rank scale grammar;
of House (1981), who uses
a basic distinction of functional Linguistics to describe the two strategies of Overt and
Covert Translation and of Shveitser(1987) who draws on Situational and generative