Introduction

Now that we have got an overview of translation and its various strategies, let us look at the field that is today termed Translation Studies. When and how did it become a separate discipline or field of study? What have been the points of focus of this field down the years? Who were the key figures in this area?

The name ‘Translation Studies’ was proposed by André Lefevere who was himself a prominent theoretician. In an Appendix written in 1978 to a collection of papers on translation he suggested that this name be given to the field that deals with “the problems raised by the production and description of translations” (qtd by Bassnett xiii). So, although translation has been around for centuries, the field of Translation Studies was given a local habitation and a name only relatively recently.

André Lefevere

Lawrence Venuti, another prominent name in the field, also points out that this is a relatively young discipline that is barely into its early thirties. In his "Introduction" to the Translation Studies Reader that he edited, he points out how the discipline has expanded much beyond its traditional realm of language, literature and philosophy and is subsumed under the broader field of cultural theory that would even include anthropology. He quotes Louis Kelly who argues that a complete theory of translation would have three components: “specification of function and goal; description and analysis of operations; and critical comment on relationships between goal and operations” (Venuti 4). Very often, a particular theory would emphasize one component over the others. However, Venuti points out how translation theories remain language-based and quoting Kelly again, how they can be broadly classified into instrumental and hermeneutic. Language is seen as a means of communication and is expected to convey information or some message of a reality that can be represented. A theory that falls into the instrumental category would be based on this assumption.  On the other hand a theory that views language as interpretation would be hermeneutic. An instrumental theory of translation would be concerned about the accurate rendering of the SL text where as a hermeneutic theory would look at the cultural aspects that go into the making of a text.

In fact, the hermeneutic approach will provide us with an insight into the changes in perspective that have developed towards translation in the west from the 19th century onwards. The translator was seen as a menial in deference to the master writer, as opposed to the ‘translator as writer’s equal’ view of the previous centuries. Susan Bassnett sees this as an offshoot of “changing concepts of nationalism and national languages [that] marked out intercultural barriers with increasing sharpness”. In the attempt to carry over a text that was culturally different, the translator had to curb his creativity. On the other hand, the expansion of colonies led to the overconfidence that Edward Fitzgerald exhibits in his translation of Omar Khayyam. Both are relationships that involve power—in the first one, the SL writer is a king who demands loyalty from his subordinate the translator and in the second, the translator is merely a facilitator who makes the SL text known to the reader and is not responsible for any inferiority that may be detected in the text.