translation studies. retrospective and prospective views

• Classification based on text types
–> informative, expressive, operative; multi-medial
• Classification used in the EU: depends on purpose of the
translation
– straight (nothing corrected)
– tidied (errors corrected)
– naturalized (adapted to local or international readership)
– reduced (gist translation).
That the discussion about the typology and characteristics of
translations is somehow similar to walking on very thin ice is confirmed by
the fact that a major work such as the European Commission Directorate-
General for Translation - English Style Guide - A handbook for authors and
translators in the European Commission (2008), meant to ensure a high level of
standardization of the translations carried out within that organization, can
only provide the linguistic conventions applicable in all contexts, as well as
the way the workings of the European Union are expressed and reflected
in English.
However, for matters of style, clarity and so on, the only thing that
they can do is to advise translators to resort to the study of specialized
reference books, such as Cutts’ Guide (1999) and Williams’ Style: Towards
Clarity and Grace (1995), both encouraging the use of good plain English’.
Given the situation, the only path that we can take in order to ‘teach’
translation skills to our students starts by developing their awareness of the
kinds of strategies required for translating. In that we follow Chesterman’s
(1998) classification, of which we mention here the essential ones:
- syntactic strategies (literal translation, loan, calque,
transposition, unit change, structural change, cohesion change,
rhetorical scheme change),
- semantic strategies (using a synonym, an antonym, a
hyponym, a hyperonym, condensing, expanding, modulation),
- pragmatical changes (addition, omission, explicitation,
implicitation, domestication, foreignization, formality change,
speech act change, transediting).
We maintain that in addition to the above, when it comes to
translating texts from IT science for instance, we should also consider the
importance of cognitive factors. We should try to learn what is going on in
the mind’s ‘black box’ in order to provide the necessary guidance to the
‘apprentice’ translators.
Among the various ways of penetrating the human mind that
conceives a translation, we can list (acc. to Chesterman1998):
– Vary input and check changes in output;
– Measure involvement;
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