Transcript Power Point 12 - Universidade do Porto

Faculdade de Letras da Universidade do Porto
Línguas e Literaturas Modernas
INTRODUCTION TO
TRANSLATION STUDIES
Power Point 12
29 November 2007
Katharina Reiss, Hans Vermeer,
Holz-Mänttäri
We will now work together at producing
the next slides in this Power Point
presentation.
Search the web and your books and note
the most important apects of the above
authors’ work. Make notes and remember
to be prepared to give your contribution to
this collaborative learning task.
Katharina Reiss, Germany, 1970s
Katharina Reiss – Möglichkeiten und
Grenzen der Übersetzungskritik, 1971



Influenced by pragmatics
Level of analyisis: the text (not the word
or the sentence), i.e., the level at which
communication takes place
Objective criteria for translation
assessement
Reiss’s Text Typology
4 text types:
1.
2.
3.
4.
Informative (Inhaltsbetonte, predominant
language function: informative)
Creative (Formbetonte:expressive
function)
Operative (Appelbetonte:appelative
function)
Audiomedial (films, commercials, visual
and spoken ads; + images, music, etc.)
Which text varieties or genres fall
within Reiss’s categories?
Give examples of texts varieties
belonging to the 4 categories
suggested by K. Reiss.
e.g., weather reports, newspaper
articles, etc.
Functional characteristics of text types and links to
translation methods (in Munday, 74)
Examples of translation strategies
according to Reiss’s text typology
Metaphor
Expressive t.
Info t.
metaphor
not needed
Idiom
idiom
‘neutralized’
(equiv. idiom, expressive value) (semantic value retained)
?????Question?????
Work in pairs or groups of three and
think about the possible criticisms
levelled at Reiss’s theory. Make a
note of them and be prepared to give
feedback to the class.
Strong and weak points
in Reiss’s theory
STRONG POINTS




Considering the text and
not the level of word and
sentence as the level of
communication
Communicative purpose of
translation
Search for strictly objective
criteria to judge quality of
T
Recognition that, while
there is a predominant
function in a text, all texts
are hybrid forms
WEAK POINTS





too rigid (why only 3
language functions?)
prescriptive generalizations
Typology is too clear-cut
for real-life translation in
all its complexity. (SnellHornby, 1995:30)
Fuzziness of STs and
different function of the TT
challenge the ‘box-like’
division into text
categories
Translation method is not
just result of text type
(sociocultural context)
Germany, 1980s:
3 new approaches to translation
1. 1982 Hönig und Kussmaul
2. 1984 Vermeer – Reiss
3. 1984 Holz-Mänttäri
According to Snell-Hornby, they
represented a new orientation
in TS.
Common to the 3 approaches
1.
2.
3.
4.
T as cultural transfer
T as an act of communication (not
as transcoding)
Oriented towards the function of
the TT (prospective T)
Text seen as an integral part of a
sociocultural context.