Introduction

The process of translation has been going on for years and many have expressed their views about it, starting with Horace and Quintilian. They were more concerned about meaning and the adequate representation of it in another language and also about the best method to adopt while translating. But as Translation Studies as a discipline and the theories associated with it evolved, the theoretical concerns also underwent a change.In the initial phase the focus was more on the process of translation and how it could be undertaken satisfactorily.The metaphysical preoccupation with meaning and whether it can be communicated came later. In the initial phase there was a coming together of multipledisciplines like literature, linguistics and philosophy. Translation was seen both as a literary activity as well as a non-literary one. Questions were asked about the mediation that occurs in the process of translation and also how translation affects both the source language and receptor language cultures. The attention gradually shifted to the text in translation. However there was a healthy disrespect for what is commonly perceived to be ‘literary theory'; most of the leading figures in the field like Lefevere refused to impose theory on translation in the belief that whatever theory there has to be, has to evolve out of the practical concerns of translation as a process.

In fact this is a field where you have opposing viewpoints on what is perceived to be ‘theory' – there are people who believe that translation is a practice-oriented activity and should not worry too much about theory and those who hold the view that it can be approached scientifically, avoiding subjective opinions and focusing on the linguistic aspect of translation. André Lefevere called these two positions hermeneutic and neopositivistic respectively. The hermeneutic approach is individualistic and non-scientific and is premised upon the concept of universally accepted ideas. The positivistic approach was scientific in that it was based upon the study of language and its structure, but it tended to reduce literature to another linguistic structure. Lefevere advocated the avoidance of both these extremes, and urged translation theorists to focus on “an evolutionary concept of metascience” (qtd in Gentzler 78) where translation can be seen as a separate discipline that existed independently on its own, even as it borrowed concepts from literature and linguistics.