Session: 1 Introduction to Translation Studies

Dr. Jyoti Luxmi Kashyap

Translation is as old as, human civilization fulfilling man’s primal purpose of sharing for
communication and understanding of thought process. Since the dawn of civilization, we have
been using language to transfer our thoughts and ideas. Initially, these were symbols that carried
message, later they got converted into sounds to be finally represented by written symbol, text that
we today know as language. The truth is, in whatever form or stage, translation did happen, as
there was never a point of time, where the equivalence of user’s sign, sound or symbol was always
shared by the listener or reader. This led to the need of a mediator translator, who transferred
translated the information message of the sender source language to that of the receiver’s
language. Translation thus has been a part of everyday process, existing and evolving alongside
the human civilization, involving the usage of symbols and codes to transfer thoughts and ideas of
people speaking a different language, to that of our own. This gave rise to the need of translation
as a field of study, that we see today.

Though translation can be traced back to the origins of communication, the field of Translation
Studies (TS) is relatively new. In fact, it was not until the second half of the twentieth century that
developments in Translation Studies (TS) led to more systematic attempts to develop a theory of
translation (Schäffner & Adab, 2000)
Schäffner, C., & Adab, B. (Eds.). “Developing Translation competence: Introduction.”
Developing Translation competence. Benjamins Translation library; Vol. 38. Amsterdam
(NL): John Benjamins. (2000). pp. vii-xvi.

Today. Translation studies is a new academic discipline that discusses both, the theory and practice
of translation.

Meaning and Definition of Translation:

The English word translation that first attested in around 1340 is either derived from old French
or more directly from the Latin word translatio having its roots in trans- and latum, which means
‘carrying across’ or ‘bringing across’ from the verb transferre ‘to carry over’.
Roman Jakobson, a leading linguist and noted expert in the subject of translation, defined
translation as "the interpretation of verbal signs by means of some other language."' Through this
process of translation, texts in one language are transformed into texts in another language with
the same meaning. These materials range from the isolated words in a language to the complex
network of sentences of philosophical texts.

Oxford University defines translation as ‘The process of translating words or text from one
language into another.’

In simple words, the term denotes carrying across a message or any written content from one text
to another, from one person to another and from one language (source language) to a different
language (target language). Translation thus can happen within the same language (from one
dialect to another dialect or from one form to another) or between languages. Translation is a
communication process involving the transfer of a message/written content from one language into
a new language.

Jeremy Munday in the chapter main issues of translation studies of his book, Introducing
Translation Studies Theories and applications states that the term translation today itself carries
several meanings:

1. It can refer to the general subject field, the product (the text that has been translated).
2. It can also refer to the process (the act of producing the translation, otherwise known as
translating).

The process of translation between two different written languages involves the translator
changing an original written text (the source text or ST) in the original verbal language (the
source language or SL) into a written text (the target text or TT) in a different verbal language
(the target language or TL). [Munday, Jeremy. Introducing Translation Studies: Theories and
Application. New York: Routledge. 2001. Print.]

Roman Jakobson (1896–1982), Russo-American structuralist in his seminal paper ‘On linguistic
aspects of translation’, discusses about three types of translations as:

1 Intralingual translation: Also known as rewording, is translation within the same language.
In such a type of translation, verbal signs are interpreted by the means of other signs of the same
language. In other words, it is not translation between two languages but, between the versions of
a dialect. For example, word truck can be replaced by lorry, lift to an elevator etc. In intralingual
translation, the language remains same, here English but the words have ben substituted with that
of the same ‘English’ and not with some other language.

2 Interlingual translation: Is translation proper, in other words translation from one language
to another. In such a type of translation, verbal signs of a language are interpreted and represented
by the verbal signs of some other language. For example, English word Hello will be translated
as, ‘नमस्ते’ in Hindi.

3 Intersemiotic translation: Also termed as ‘transmutation’, an interpretation of verbal signs

by means of signs of non-verbal sign systems is drawn from ‘semiotic’, the general science of
communication through signs and sign systems, of which language is but one (Cobley 2001,
Malmkjær 2011).

Translation, as we know is not always limited to verbal languages only but also exist
between different varieties of the same language, such as sign languages and morse code.
Examples of traffic signals, stop, exit, entry, no smoking etc. can be seen everywhere.
Intersemiotic translation also happens when a written text is translated into a different mode, such
as music, film or painting. Examples: 2012 British historical romantic drama film Anna Karenina,
directed by Joe Wright, adapted by Tom Stoppard from Leo Tolstoy's 1877 classic novel of the
same name was adapted into movie with the action set on a theatre stage, or Gurinder Chadha’s
2004 Bollywood Bride and Prejudice adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.

Translation Studies, thus deals with the theory, description, and application of translation. Since,
the field examines translation not only as interlingual transfer, but also as intercultural
communication, it can also be described as an interdisciplinary study that touches various other
diverse fields of knowledge, including literature, science, social science, cultural studies, gender
studies, computer science, history, linguistics, philosophy, rhetoric, and semiotics etc.

Suggested Reading:

1. Holmes, James S. ‘The Name and Nature of Translation Studies’

 Ed. Lawrence Venuti. (2004). The Translation Studies Reader, 2nd edition. 1988.
pp. 180–92. Print.
2. Jakobson, Roman ‘On Linguistic Aspects of Translation’ ed. Lawrence Venuti. (2004).
The Translation Studies Reader, 2nd edition. 1959. pp. 138–43. Print.
3. P. Cobley (Ed.), “Multimodality: A Social Semiotic Approach to Contemporary
Communication”. The Routledge Companion to Semiotics and Linguistics London:
Routledge. Kress, G. 2010. Print
4. Munday, Jeremy. Introducing Translation Studies: Theories and Application. New York:
Routledge. 2001. Print.
5. Schäffner, C., & Adab, B. (Eds.). “Developing Translation competence: Introduction.”
Developing Translation competence. Benjamins Translation library; Vol. 38. Amsterdam
(NL): John Benjamins. 2000. pp. vii-xvi. Print.
6. Van Doorslaer, Luc ‘Risking conceptual maps’, in Yves Gambier and Luc van Doorslaer
(eds) The Metalanguage of Translation, special issue of Target. 2007. 19.2: 217–33. Print.