Lawrence Venuti - Riassunto The Translation Studies Reader PDF

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LAWRENCE VENUTI GENEALOGIES OF TRANSALTION THEORY: JEROME Instrumental vs. hermeneutic models There are two fundamental approaches that occur often in the history of translation theory: 1. Instrumental approach: based on the empiric approach that language is the direct expression of reference, the instrumental model treats translation as the reproduction or transfer of an invariant which the source text contains or cause, typically described as its from, meaning or effect. 2. Hermeneutic approach: based on the materialist idea that language is creation thickly mediated by linguistic and cultural determinants, this model treats translation as an interpretation of the source text whose form, meaning and effect are seen as variable subject to inevitable transformation during the translating process. Louis Kelly regarded these approaches as complementary, translation must have essential elements of both views of language. However, Lawrence Venuti presents a more nuanced formulation that argues for their logical inconsistency and mutual exclusiveness and also puts into question the effectiveness of the instrumental model. He considers translation as humanistic but it can also be pragmatics (in case of travel guidebooks, brochures and menus where information are combined with cultural representations). Technical translations have a more standardized terminology but it can be varied through rewriting or replacement by explanatory renderings, it depends on the demands of the customer and contractual requirements, these requirements can pre-empt or restrict the variation that routinely occurs in translation. Both instrumental and hermeneutic approaches can be applied to any text type but only the hermeneutic one will lead to a productive investigation into the conditions of the translation process. For both approaches translation is communicative but what is communicated changes, for the instrumental approach translation conveys an essence produced by the source text that remains intact even if assimilated by the foreign language while for the hermeneutic approach translation conveys an interpretation of the source text. Treating translation as communicative both approaches they assume that it involves the construction of correspondences between the translated text and its sources, whether in form, meaning or effect. In the instrumental model the correspondence is fixed by the invariant while in the hermeneutic the correspondence is partial and contingent because it’s partial and fixed by one among the other possible interpretations. Venuti considers the approaches as pragmatic and generative. Each model projects a translation discourse in the sense if a fairly coherent set of concepts and strategies which are used either by translator to formulate problems and devise solutions or by theorists or commentators to describe, explain and evaluate theories and practices, this discourse shapes practical decisions but a translation cannot be produced without theoretical concepts. The discourses projected by each model can operate with different degrees of self-awareness, they have occasionally been combined in the same theory or commentary, resulting in inconsistencies and contradictions. Hermeneutic model  Emerged in the late 18th century and late 19th in Scheleimarcher’s On the different methods of translation where it appears as the distinction between different ‘’method’’ that each produce different ‘’understanding’’ of the source culture, one characterised by close adherence, the

Instrumental model  Receives its decisive statements in antiquity in Jerome’s Letter to Pommachius where it appears as the distinction between WFW and SFS translation.  Critic to this letter: riddled with lacunae that disclose his investment in ideas about language and culture which must be

questioned in order to advance translation other assimilative to the receiving culture. studies. According to Venuti is to be preferred over the instrumental because it offers more sophisticated account of translation that is not only comprehensive but ethical, also it yields the most incisive description and explanation of a translated text and promotes an ethic translation that avoids any mystifications designed to maintain a cultural or social status laying out the possibilities for innovation and change, for the creation of values. The 2 models develop as binary opposition so the relation between the 2 of them has always been hierarchical. 

TRANSLATING ON ROMAN TRADITION The letter was wrote to justify his translation practices. Jerome use the term INTERPRETATIONE referring to translation but he does not describe the 2 strategies as involving any kind of interpretative activity, the primary sense of the Latin verb in this case is EXPRIMERE used to say ‘’express’’ or ‘’translate’’. The instrumental model lies behind the formula SFS indicating correspondence with a semantic invariant, but also lies behind the formula WFW indicating the possibility of a lexical and syntactical correspondence regardless of structural differences between languages. In Roman times grammar studies were focused on WFW translation while rhetoric was focused on SFS translation, the rejection of grammarian’s choice of close adherence to the source text made rhetoric more popular. For this reason rhetoricians and grammarians produced different types of translation. Cicero’s assumption of the instrumental model can be seen in his idea that form is separable from content which can be transferred without alteration in another content. Cicero also states that his emphasis on meaning is capable of preserving ‘’the character and force of the language’’ by which he seems to mean the language of both the Greek texts and his Latin versions, both the source and the translating languages. Also Jerome follows this idea, for this reason the SFS strategy maintains a formal as well as semantic correspondence while avoiding the stylistic weaknesses or infelicity that the WFW strategy produces in translating languages. Jerome shares Cicero’s belie that rhetorical translation, unlike the grammatical counterpart, can reproduce both the style and the meaning of the source text in the most polished form of the translating language. So there is an idea that the skilled translator is not to be equated to the ‘’faithful’’ grammarian. Also Quintilian agrees with the idea of rejecting grammarian’s choice, he encouraged his students to avoid grammarian’s ‘’bare interpretation’’ and write a ‘’paraphrase’’ that had to express the same meaning as the source text. INVENTING A CHRISTIAN TRANSLATING TRADITION Jerome’s revision of Roman commentary of translation reflects his Christian beliefs. When he presents the dichotomy between translation strategies, he classifies them according to text type, reserving close adherence to the source text for scripture, where, he explains ‘’the very order of the world is a mystery’’. Here his assumption of the instrumental model projects 2 invariants: one formal (the word order or syntax of the sacred text) and the other semantic (a truth of Christian belief that is revealed in the syntax and therefore inseparable from it). For him, the WFW strategy can and should establish a double correspondence to scripture, whereas with other kinds of texts any formal correspondence results in awkwardness and obscurity, a stylistic infelicity that prevents the meaning from being perceived clearly.

Jerome’s statement in effect rehabilitates the WFW strategy, so maligned in Roman commentary, by reserving for it the hallowed task of communicating divine revelation. By rendering into Latin Greek homilies a Christian translator such as Jerome treats the ‘’letter’’ or language of the Greek texts as ‘’soporific’’ (domitanti), so lacking in interest as to be boring in itself or in a Latin translation that adheres closely to it. On the other hand, he treats a WFW strategy as yielding a translation that is strongly disagreeable, ‘’foul’’ or ‘’stinking’’ because of its rustic or uneducated use of Latin. At the end of his letter Jerome explicitly addresses the relation between linguistic ‘’simplicity’’ and ‘’holiness’’ and although he recognizes that these traits were joined in the apostles, he nonetheless faults their language. To legitimate his own use of SFS strategy, Jerome goes much further than citing authoritative commentators and practitioners. He proceeds to sketch a Christian tradition of paraphrastic translation dating back to Septuagint. Here Jerome’s suggestion that Christian translation practices were only more consistent than they actually were, but that the Christian tradition was dominated by the SFS strategy but the contrary was true. So if we close examine Jerome’s works we see a shifting logic as he first asserts to resort (ricorrere) a WFW version only with scriptures and later he lists examples of specific SFS translations. CONCEPTUALIZING THE HERMENEUTIC MODEL A text is constituted by multiple contexts that support diverse meanings, values and functions in the culture where the text originates. The first context is intratextual, the very features that comprise the text, its texture, graphemes and sound, lexicon and syntax, tropes and discourses. These features simultaneously construct a second context that is intertextual and interdiscursive, a network of relations to other texts and discourses in the same language or in others. As the text circulates in its originary culture, in and through social institutions, it acquires further significance. Today the receiving context of a text is intersemiotic encompassing print and electronic media. For Jerome context was likewise intersemiotic, even if it was based on manuscripts it took different forms according to the institutional practices in which the text could perform a function. At Jerome’s time the texts could also have an extratextual value as they were embedded in economy of gift giving or used to fulfil an obligation. The source text is constituted my multiple contexts that undergo various degrees of diminution and loss during translation as the translator decontextualizes the source text also creating a different set of context (e.g. with the choice of words or the choice of the text to translate). These contexts also preempt the possibility of an equivalent effect. Nida: equivalent effect: the relationship between receptor and message should be almost the same as the one existing between the original receptors and the message. Nida’s idea is punt into question because of the variability of receptors across diverse cultures and historical periods and also because of the replacement of source language contexts with those constructed in the translating language. So this means that different readership respond to the same text in different ways. The source text is never accessible in some direct unmediated manner, this mediation consists of an interpretation which is itself determined by networks of signification beyond the author’s control. The notion of interpretants is fundamental to translation as they enable the translator to transform the source text into translation. With this qualification they can be seen as precipitating and endless chain of signifiers or an unlimited semiosis. Thus the translator applies interpretants to translate a source text, while the translation critic or historian in turn applies them in order to analyse those that produced a translation. Interpretants may be either formal or thematic. Formal interpretants include a concept of equivalence such as semantic correspondence, thematic interpretants are codes such as specific values, beliefs and representation. Interpretants are fundamentally intertextual, rooted primarily in the receiving situation, even if in some cases they may incorporate source-culture materials. It is the translator’s application of

interpretants that recontextualizes the source text, replacing intertextual relations in the source language and culture with a receiving intertext, with relations to the translating language and culture which are built into the translation. For the hermeneutic model Venuti’s conception follows Schleiermacher in recognizing that a translation can provide only an approximate understanding or image of the source text. Schleiermacher also says that there can be as many translations as there are interpretants. Hans George Gadamer: translation is an interpretative act that is not simply reproduction. He thinks that the source text contains a semantic invariant that the translator must transfer through transaltion. His hermeneutic is founded on essentialism. The hermeneutic model must be reconceptualised and the inscription and interpretants can be extremely useful in this task. But there concepts should be recognized as critical interpretants which form a discourse that can be used to analyse translation as well as translation theory and commentary. AN ETHICS OF TRANSALTION The hermeneutic model can offer a comprehensive account of translation so it is also ethical. It avoids the dubious mystification that results not only from Jerome’s dichotomy between WFW and SFS translation, but from the instrumentalism assumed by any theory that imagines translation as the unmediated reproduction or transfer of an invariant. This model aims to expose the various determinations (linguistic, cultural and social), that make possible a translation by focusing the attention of both translator and reader on the application of interpetants. A theory or practice of translation can be called ethical to the extent that it facilitates a transparent understanding of the interpretation that the translator inscribes in the source text. In laying bare the conditions of translation the hermeneutic model creates an opportunity to reinforce or challenge the cultural and social hierarchies in which a translation is produced or studied. Alan Badiou’s concept of truth based ethics: truth is not adequacy to reality or illumination, it is rather an investigative process initiated by an event which brings to pass something other than the situation defined by opinions and institution knowledge. Ethics of truth promotes innovation and equality, the unethical simulacrum enforces conformity and domination. For his work is fundamental St. Paul’s thinking, Badiou is not concerned about religion, instead he shares Paul’s idea of truth process that founds an ethics. Jerome’s letter presents an unethical simulacrum. The hermeneutic model allows the possibility that different yet equally effective interpretants might be applied by translators and translation scholars, and that in any translating or in any analysis of a translation another set of interpretants will always lie outside the ken of the ones that have been applied. This model holds the promise of interrogating and changing the instrumentalist theories and practices that have prevailed for millennia. Since instrumentalism continues its dominance among translators and readers at once marginalizing translation and mystifying translator’s work, it can be no exaggeration to say that the time for change is long overdue....