Introduction
Tracing the course of the development of the translation theories during the 20th century, it would be relevant to suggest regarding theoretical perspectives of translation to certain linguistic theories which represent different approaches to the translation of this particular period. Such translation theories might be listed as follows: Walter Benjamin’s theory which regards language as the representation of thought and reality (the 1900s – 1930s), Jean-Paul Vinay’s and Jean Darbelnet’s theory, which focuses on the debate whether translation can reconcile the distinct features which separate different languages and cultures (1940s – 1950s), Roman Jakobson’s theory, dominated by the fundamental concern of translatability (1940s – 1950s) and George Steiner’s theory, based on the controlling concept (1960s – 1970s).
Main body
While discussing Walter Benjamin’s translation theory (the 1900s – 1930s) that represents and establishes the viewpoint of the majority of linguists of the first third of the 20th century, it is necessary to note that it was raised based on the German literary and philosophical thought, trends of Romanticism culture, interpretational and existential phenomenology (Venuti, 2004). Therefore, great attention in this theory is paid to the autonomy of translation, to the status, and the text’s rights. The translation work is regarded here as derivative, but independent at the same time. Such equilibration can be seen in the essay of Benjamin of 1923, where he performs the translation practices of the foreign text “Uberleben” (“Afterlife”).
I refer to Walter Benjamin’s approach used here, then it can be seen that the translation is regarded as not mere transmit process of the text message, but as the recreation of the conditions and values of that time when that particular text was created. For this purpose Walter Benjamin implements such linguistic translation techniques and concepts as “…‘pure language’ … a sense of how the ‘mutually exclusive’ differences among languages coexist with ‘complementary’ intentions to communicate and to refer, intentions that are derailed by the differences” (Applicable to W. Benjamin’s theory, p. 71).
The strategy, used by this theorist, is based on the release of the language through the translation containing the literalisms in syntax. Such a theoretical technique is aimed to draw the reader from the standard language’s usage. In his reasoning, Benjamin relies on Schleiermacher’s “foreignizing” notion concerning the translation process, wherein the reader is supposed to be brought as much close as possible to the original foreign source, with the help of the creative transformation of the translating language, while reading the translated text.
In “Afterlife” Benjamin compares and tries to find certain links between the phenomena of art, literature, the historical course of events, consistency of the raise and fall of the public interest to some art and literary works, and the phenomenon of translation. Establishing his theoretical approach, Benjamin suggests that the translation “… unlike art, cannot claim permanence for its products, its goal is undeniably a final, conclusive, decisive stage of all linguistic creation. In translation the original rises into a higher and purer linguistic air, as it were … it points the way to this region: the predestined, hitherto inaccessible realm of reconciliation and fulfillment of languages” (Benjamin, 1995, p. 79).
This theoretical approach suggests that even after the transmit process of the surface of the text, the primary issue of the genuine translator stays elusive. Following this, it is possible to state that Benjamin’s translation theory consists of the two crucial, but in a certain way competing tendencies approaches a formalist interest in technique implemented in the innovative translation methods of the new foreign texts’ interpretations; and functionalism, marked by the usage of cultural and political agendas in the translation of the foreign texts.
Logically by the periodical criteria, it can be suggested to the path to the Canadian linguists’ Jean-Paul Vinay’s and Jean Darbelnet’s theory (the 1940s – 1950s), which concerns the ability of the translation procedure to reconcile the distinct features which separate different languages and cultures, and is considered as the most influential in the fifth decade of the 20th century.
The work regarding the translation studies within the frameworks of this theory was published in 1958 and shortly became a staple in training programs in the translator field for more than four decades. Jean-Paul Vinay and Jean Darbelnet, “By approaching French – English translation from the field of comparative stylistics … [became capable of providing] … a theoretical basis for a variety of translation methods currently in use” (Applicable to J.-P. Vinay’s and J. Darbelnet’s theory, p. 114).
The translation methods drawn up by those scholars involve the reduction of cultural and linguistic differences about the empiricist semantics: “Equivalence of messages … ultimately relies upon an identity of situations … [where the term] … situation … [indicates an undefined] … reality … [where can be seen a close connection between linguistic procedures and] … metalinguistic information, the current state of literature, science, politics, etc. of both language communities” (Vinay and Darbelnet, 1995, p. 42).
In their “Methodology for translation” those scholars see the two ways of the translation: the direct (literal) translation and the oblique translation with the respect to the notions of parallel categories, parallel concepts (drawn from the “metalinguistic parallelisms”), and gaps (“lacunae”) in the target language (TL). I accordance with Vinay and Darbelnet, there are three kinds of direct procedures: “borrowing”, “caique”, “literal translation”, and two kinds of oblique procedures: “transposition” and “modulation” (Viney and Darbelnet, 1995, pp. 128 – 133).
Therefore, it may be firmly asserted that this theory overcomes the philosophical qualms and disputes about translatability by drawing away attention from the conservative rules about the usage of language in the translation process. Such disobedience to the steady translation canons differs Jean-Paul Vinay’s and Jean Darbelnet’s translation theory from Walter Benjamin’s translation theory of the previous decades. It also criticizes the translation process in the context of the global political economy.
Another theory of the same period is Roman Jakobson’s theory (the 1940s – 1950s), dominated by the fundamental concern of translatability, and a little bit different in its methodological approach from the Vinay’s and Darbelnet translation theory. In his work “On Linguistic Aspects of Translation,” Jacobson pays great attention to the linguistic and semiotic facts within the frameworks of understanding the words’ meaning. In his reasoning, the author relies on the other scholar’s – Bertrand Russell’s statement that “… no one can understand the word ‘cheese’ unless he has a nonlinguistic acquaintance with cheese” (Russell, 1950, p. 3).
With the view to resolve this confusion, Jacobson suggests distinguishing three ways of the verbal sign’s interpreting: translation into other signs and symbols of the same language, translation into another language, and translation into the different nonverbal symbolic system. These ways of the verbal sign’s interpreting are labeled by the author as follows: “Intralingual translation or rewording is an interpretation of verbal signs utilizing other signs of the same language … Interlingual translation or translation proper is an interpretation of verbal signs utilizing some other language … [and] …Intersemiotic translation or transmutation is an interpretation of verbal signs using signs of nonverbal sign systems” (Jacobson, 1995, p. 139).
While drawing up his translation theory, Jacobson considers the untranslatability dogma also studied by the linguist Benjamin Lee Whorf, who claimed that “Facts are unlike to speakers whose language background provides for unlike formulation of them” (Whorf, 1956, p. 235). Therefore, Roman Jacobson suggests that the linguistic transform is possible as most signs can be translated into such signs that appear to the reader more developed and precise.
In his work, Jacobson draws up the discussion concerning the cognitive function of language. He states that within its frameworks, language is quite independent of the grammatical pattern as the definition of one’s experience remains in complementary relation to “… metalinguistic operations … [therefore] the cognitive level of language not only admits but directly requires recoding interpretation, i.e., translation” (Jacobson, 1995, p. 141).
Applying his approach to poetry, the linguist asserts that in these cases the verbal equations become a constructive element of the text. He suggests that the constituents of the verbal code: roots, prefixes, affixes, various phonemes, and different categories of syntax and morphology are “confronted, juxtaposed, brought into contiguous relation according to the principle of similarity and contrast and carry their autonomous signification” (Jacobson, 1995, p. 142). This twofold assumption is quite similar to the concept suggested by the famous Russian linguist and literary scholar recognized all over the world – Vladimir Nabokov, who suggests in his work that the translation of certain literary masterpieces requires from the translator almost unattainable ideal transmit process (Nabokov, cited from applicable to Jacobson’s theory, p. 113).
Following this, it would be relevant to pass on George Steiner’s theory (the 1960s – 1970s), based on the controlling concept. Unlike the other theorists in the linguistic and literary sphere of that period, in his works, Steiner does not focus on the understanding of the translating as the communication with the foreign text by drawing up the relationship of identity and analogy with such text, instead, he returns to the hermeneutic and German Romanticism traditions, also shared by Walter Benjamin’s translation theory. George Steiner defines translating as “… an interpretation of the foreign text that is at once profoundly sympathetic and violent, exploitive and ethically restorative” (Applicable to George Steiner’s theory, p. 150).
George Steiner’s study in the field under consideration, called “After Babel” (1975), is currently used by numerous linguists and literary scholars. As it has been already pointed out, the given work opposes those linguists who understand the communication element as the crucial one within the literary and philosophical approach in their theories. Contrary to them, the author does do not regard language as the instrument within the frameworks of communicating meaning. Nevertheless, the scholar does not deny its existence and understands it as the constitutive in the language’s reconstruction. Steiner underlines the individualistic sides of language, “the privacies of individual usage … that resist interpretation and escape the universalizing concepts of linguistics” (Steiner, 1975, p. 205).
In the work “The Hermeneutic Motion” Steiner recovers the notion of the same name as follows: “… the act of elicitation and appropriative transfer of meaning … [which] … is fourfold. There is initiative trust, an investment of belief, underwritten by previous experience but epistemologically exposed and psychologically hazardous, in the meaningfulness, in the ‘seriousness’ of the facing or, strictly speaking, adverse text” (Steiner, 1975, p. 193). With the regard to this, the author represents a concept in which he regards the process of translation as a “hermeneutic of trust” (Steiner, 1975, p. 197).
It has been mentioned that Steiner follows the same tradition as Benjamin; nevertheless, he disagrees with the scholar Schleiermacher strongly supported by Benjamin, in the recommendation that German translators signal the foreign readers of the foreign text, and argues that “… great translation must carry with it the most precise sense possible of the resistant, of the barriers intact at the heart of understanding” (Steiner, 1975, p. 378).
Conclusion
Concluding it can be suggested that the concept of the translation theory progressed with time. The understanding of the better way of translation has been added and changed, sometimes, even recognized again after the decades. It is impossible to call any of those theories incorrect or groundless, as they all correspond to the surrounding environment, world outlook of the scholars, and scientific tradition of the time during which they were created and operated.
References
Benjamin, W. (1995). The Task of the Translator: an Introduction to the Translation of Baudelaire’s Tableaux Parisiens. trans. by Zohn, H. Chapter 7, 76-83.
George Steiner’s Translation Theory. Applicable Materials, 147-151.
Jacobson, R. (1995). On Linguistic Aspects of Translation. Chapter 12, 138-143.
Jean-Paul Vinay’s and Jean Darbelnet’s Translation Theory. Applicable Materials, 111-114.
Russell, B. (1950). Logical Positivism. Revue Internationale de Philosophie, IV– 18, 3.
Roman Jacobson’s Translation Theory. Applicable Materials, 111-114.
Steiner, G. (1995). The Hermeneutic Motion. Chapter 16, 193-197.
Steiner, G. (1998). After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation. 3 ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 205, 378.
Vinay, J.-P. &Darbelnet J. A Methodology for Translation. trans. Sager, J.C. & Hamel, M.-J. Chapter 11, 128-133.
Vinay, J.-P. &Darbelnet J. (1995). Comparative Stylistics of French and English. trans. Sager, J.C. & Hamel, M.-J. Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 42.
Venuti, L. (2004). The Translation Studies Reader. 2ed. London: Routledge.
Walter Benjamin’s Theory. Applicable Materials, 71-74.
Whorf, B. L. (1956). Language, Thought, and Reality. Cambridge: Mass., 235.