Anton Popovic

Popovic (1933 – 1984), a Slovak theorist, is known for the concept of ‘shifts' that he introduced to translation theory. His perspective was more comprehensive in that he acknowledged the losses and gains that inhered in the translation process and analyzed the changes that occurred in the translated text. He defined shifts thus: “All that appears as new with respect to the original, or fails to appear where it might have been expected, may be interpreted as a shift” (qtd in Gentzler 88). Popovic was of the view that shifts occur because of cultural and linguistic differences. The translator perforce had to make compromises in translation because s/he was attempting to recapture something of the original in the translated text. These shifts have to be analysed for they tell a lot about the SL text as well as the translator and the process of translation. According to Popovic, what fell through the gaps in translation reveals the cultural context of the translated text. His theory, in addition to the focus on structural aspects, thus also had a cultural dimension to it as it underlined the mediated nature of the translation.

The drawback of the theories of Levý and Popovic, according to Gentzler, was this emphasis on structure rather than content. He points out that these theories might work well with modernist texts in which language plays a major role, but they might be inadequate to deal with older texts where language and linguistic elements alone did not make a work of art. Moreover, the emphasis on form rather than content could lead the way to a complete dissociation of the text from its socio-cultural moorings and thus lead to its consideration as an autonomous entity without reference to an external reality.