Functions of Translation

It is by now clear that translation means more than substitution of words in one language with those from another. In some ways it is the attempt to bring two cultures together. It is an accepted fact that languages differ from each other not just in grammatical structure but also the way in which they conceptualise abstractions. The question of how to bridge the gap between SL and TL is decided by the aim of the translation/translator and its intended reader; this is a perspective agreed upon by most theoreticians in the field. Lawrence Venuti says that the basic issues in translation theory remain “equivalence and shifts, audience and function, identity and ideology” ( The Translation Studies Reader, 341). Eugene Nida lists three basic factors that decide the nature of translation. They are: “the nature of the message to be translated, the purpose of the writer or translator, and the type of readership” (qtd in Venuti 127). Hans J. Vermeer terms the aim of the translator as ‘skopos'. According to his skopos theory, “skopos and mode of realization [of translation] must be adequately defined if the text-translator is to fulfil his task successfully” (Venuti 221). Once this has been decided, one of the primary choices the translator has to make is whether s/he wants to translate literally or not. If the purpose of the translation is to communicate a message, there is a high probability of the translator evolving his/her own methods of communicating the message correctly; literal translation might not always work in this context. This might not be the case with a work of literature.