On Translation History

No. Statement

Source

Translation is almost as old as original authorship and has a

history as honourable and as complex as that of any other branch
of literature

Savory 1968:37

Archaeologists have uncovered Sumerian-Eblaite vocabularies

inscribed in clay tablets that are 4500 years old (Dalnoky 1977).
These bilingual lists attest to the existence of translation even in
remotest history.

Delisle & Cloutier in Delisle

& Woodsworth 1995:7

.. translation is almost as old as language, certainly as old as

the contact of a language with alien speakers

Rabasa 1984:21

4.

Translation was a primary mode of cultural transmission in

early modern Europe. Over the last decade, the concept of
translation has expanded to encompass not only linguistic
translation, but what has come to be called cultural translation,
and work on translation has greatly enriched early modern
literary and historical studies.

Burke, 2009

On Translation 'Theory'
No. Statement

Source

no universally accepted principles of translation [experts]

have never agreed among themselves they have bequeathed to
us a volume of confused thought which must be hard to parallel
in other fields of literature

Savory 1968:49-50

the number of original, significant ideas in the subject

remains very meagre beliefs and disagreements voiced about
the nature of translation have been almost the same

Steiner 1975:238-9

views expressed on translation amount to a mass of

uncoordinated statements; [no] coherent, agreed upon,
intersubjectively valid theory of translation

Wilss 1982:11

Work in the field of translation theory has been done

primarily by linguists They have moved down a different
road, one that has turned out to be a dead end

Holmes 1988:100

[translation studies] requires a solid theoretical basis that can

throw more light on the translation process, which for too long
was dismissed as either mechanical, and hence not worthy of
scholarly attention, or mysterious, and hence beyond scientific
analysis

Snell-Hornby 1988:131

translation theory remains a phantasm; there is at

present no systematic way of talking about the [subject]

Frawley 1984:159

any theory of translation must draw upon a theory of

language-a general linguistic theory

Catford 1965:1

[translation studies] needs to draw on the findings and

theories of other related disciplines in order to develop and
formalize its own methods; but which disciplines it can be
related to is still a matter of some controversy

Baker 1992:4

Whether or not linguistics and translation studies are strictly

separate disciplines has been a matter of debate for some
decades

Steiner 1996b:54

10

the more one's notion of linguistics is structure-oriented Steiner 1996b:54

(rather than system-oriented) and oriented towards formal issues,
rather than function, the greater will be the need to define
translation studies as an independent discipline

11

in a functional perspective on language and the study of

language, there are no strictly separate fields of linguistics and
translation studies. Translation then is one of the most interesting
fields within linguistics, along with other fields

Steiner 1996b:54

12

The phenomenon of translation is a legitimate offspring of the

phenomenon of language, since originally, when humans spread
over the earth, their languages differed and they needed a means
through which people speaking a certain language (tongue)
would interact with others who spoke a different language.

Al Wassety, 2001

On Translation
No. Statement

Source

Translation is an equivalence of thought that lies behind its

different verbal expressions

Savory 1968:13

Translating consists in reproducing in the receptor language the

closest natural equivalent of source-language message in
terms of meaning and style

Nida & Taber 1969:12

Translation is the replacement of a representation of a text in one

language by a representation of an equivalent text in a second
language

Hartmann & Stork 1972:713

translation consists of transferring the meaning of the source

language into the receptor language. It is meaning which is
being transferred and must be held constant. Only the form
changes

Larson 1984:3

Translation means "recodification." Translation is the

reduction of coded input into another code; Since every
translation is a recodification, the act of translation involves at
least two codes [matrix code and target code]

Frawley 1984:160-1

To translate means to express in another language the content of

a given text The objective of translation is to replace the form
and to preserve the content of the text. Translation is thus form
manipulation with reference to content

Papegaaij & Schubert

1988:11

Translation must always be the re-creation of the original into

something profoundly different. On the other hand, it is never a
substitution of word for word but invariably the translation of
whole contexts

Malinowski 1965:11-2

Translation may be defined as follows: the replacement of

textual material in one language (SL) by equivalent textual
material in another language (TL)

Catford 1965:20

Translation can be seen as (co-)generation of texts under specific

constraints: relative stability of some situational factors and
therefore register, and classically, but not necessarily, change of
language and (context of) culture

Steiner 1996a:103

10

As language itself is a translation, the act of recreating language

through the reading process constitutes another form of
translation

Schulte & Buguenet 1992:9

11

Reading is already translation, and translation is translation for

the second time

Gadamer in Schulte &

Biguenet 1992:9

12

all acts of communication are acts of translation

Schulte & Biguenet 1992:9

13

When we learn to speak, we are learning to translate; the child

who asks his mother the meaning of a word is really asking her
to translate the unfamiliar term into the simple words he already
knows

Paz 1992:152

14

Each text is unique, yet at the same time it is the translation of

another text. No text can be completely original because
language itself is already a translation-first from the
nonverbal world, and then, because each sign and each phrase is
a translation of another sign, another phrase

Paz 1992:154

15

translation is implicit in every act of communication, in

the emission and reception of each and every mode of meaning,
be it in the widest semiotic sense or in more specifically verbal
exchanges

Steiner 1992:xii

16

Translation is, of course, a rewriting of an original text

Bassnett & Lefevere 1995:vii

17

There is no such thing as a perfect, ideal, or 'correct' translation.

A translator is always trying to extend his knowledge and
improve his means of expression; he is always pursuing facts
and words.

Newmark 1987

18

Translation is a two-edged instrument: it has the special

purpose of demonstrating the learner's knowledge of the foreign
language, either as a form of control or to exercise his
intelligence in order to develop his competence.

19

Translation means that a translator has picked one word above

all the others: one winner, with all the finalists gone from the
page forever. Translation always calls upon the translator to
make a judgement call, and what the reader hears, then, is a
judgement.

Kushner, 2015

20

It is translation, more than speech itself, which provides

incontrovertible evidence of the human capacity to think and to
communicate thought.
We should do more of it.

Bellos, 2011

To be sure, all translation is interpretation. ... Be that as it may,

functional-equivalence translations, which presume that
ambiguity, multivalence, and contradiction are by definition not
part of the Bible, take far more creative and interpretive license
than formal ones in eradicating those features. In so doing, they
too often try to make the Bible into something it's not.

Beal, 2009

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