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PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS
CHAPTER I
TRANSLATION THEORY: A COMPONENTIAL ANALYSIS
"A good translation may be compounded of many qualities but there
is one quality, that is rarely claimed for a work of translation - that
of "definitive perfection." (Jean Ure in 'Types of Translation and
Translatability', an article included in 'Quality in Translation',
edited by E Cary and R W Jumpelt, 1963, p136). It is this 'definitive
perfection' which motivated me to investigate translation both as a
process and a product. The aim of the investigation is to discover if
this 'definitive perfection' could be reached. Translation, like any
other process, must be studied within a certain theoretical framework.
Such a framework must take into consideration three main elements: (1)
a philosophical component, which is oriented towards pragmatics; (2) a
communicative component, which is oriented towards sociological
aspects of translation; and (3) a semiotic component, which is oriented
towards an adequate theory of language. This chapter will show how
these three components would interact in order to project a sound
theory of translation.
Joseph Graham ('Translation Spectrum'; edited by M G Rose, 1981,
p28) explicitly puts it: "In very simple terms, it could be argued that
for ordinary language use you do not really have to know what to do but
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