translation studies. retrospective and prospective views

Translation Studies: Retrospective and Prospective Views ISSN 2065-3514
(2008) Year I, Issue 1
Galaţi University Press
Editors: Elena Croitoru and Floriana Popescu (First volume)
Proceedings of the Conference Translation Studies: Retrospective and Prospective Views
9 – 11 October 2008 “Dunărea de Jos” University of Galaţi, ROMANIA
pp. 151 - 161
THE ROLE OF THE PROTOCOL IN TEACHING TRANSLATION
SKILLS
Yolanda Mirela Catelly
Polytechnic University of Bucharest, Romania
I. Translation, translating, teaching translation skills – concepts and
challenges
An analysis of the main terms used in this paper is mandatory, in
order to start from a clear-cut image of our investigative tools. Translation is
the background term, as well as the approach to translating, in our case
from English into Romanian by Romanian native speakers. The author is a
translator with a certain level of expertise in technical translation who has
turned into a teacher facing the requirements of teaching translation skills,
with a focus on IT connected texts.
As Even-Zohar and Toury (2001) put it, translation as an object of
modern studies has become a field where hypotheses are exchanged, tested
and reshaped; however, ‘clearly no completed and ready-for-use
translation theory is available’.
Attempts at defining translation are numerous. Larson (1958) sees it as
‘process based on the theory that it is possible to abstract the meaning of a
text from its forms and reproduce that meaning with the very different
forms of a second language’. The author completes this image by
analytically listing the main steps in effecting a translation, i.e. ‘studying
the lexicon, grammatical structure, communication situation, and cultural
context of the source language text, analyzing it in order to determine its
meaning, and then reconstructing this same meaning using the lexicon and
grammatical structure which are appropriate in the receptor language and
its cultural context’.
Gutt’s (1990) opinion on translation is somewhat different, when he
maintains that ‘most kinds of translation can be analyzed as varieties of
interpretive use…’, so that we can distinguish between:
a - direct translation, corresponding to the idea that translation should
convey the same meaning as the original. This would require the receptors
to ‘familiarize themselves with the context envisaged for the original text
…’;
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