Philological Perspective

Nida traces the philological perspective in western translation to Cicero, Horace, Augustine and Jerome. They were concerned about the accuracy of translations and the focus of \their discussions was ‘faithfulness' to the SL text. Questions of faithfulness are inevitably linked to the interpretation of the text. Nida points out how this became a primary focus especially in the case of Bible translations. Among other translators of the earlier ages he counts Luther, Etienne Dolet, Cowley, Dryden and Pope as those with a philological bent; of these, he considers Luther to be the most influential. The philological perspective continues; George Steiner, John Felstiner (author of Translating Neruda) etc are modern representatives of the philological perspective. It can be seen that these translators are more concerned with the text, its interpretation and how it should be presented to TL readers. This approach has its limitations. Nida says that practitioners of this approach realized the narrowness of its focus and acknowledged that other linguistic and cultural aspects need to be factored into the process of translation.