Reflexive Translation Studies

Front matter

iB Translation 24 Studies

.à ‘Translation as

EN € Critical Reflection

Contents

Preface viii Acknowledgments ix List of tables x Introduction:

Genesis of a reflexive method in translation 1

1 Visibility and Ethics: Lawrence Venuti’s foreignizing approach 21 2 Subjectivity and Creativity: Susan Bassnett’s dialogic metaphor 45

Preface

This book presents a creative translation practice which I hope will inspire students, practitioners and scholars to experiment with the boundaries of translation beyond conventional acceptations of the term as a transfer of meaning from one language to another. My approach in this volume uses the movement of crossing at play in translation as a way of engaging with existing theory, while reflecting on that translating experience and unfolding in response a view of what translation is or could be about. Its premise is that translation theory - the way we perceive, describe or think about translation - is inevitably interwoven with practice. Here, theorising takes place during the translating process itself, in the act of undertaking a translation and attempting to articulate our experience of it, of facing a translation dilemma and reflecting on possible solutions.

In this framework, translation is conceived as a productive process which enables an experiential, tangible mode of thinking. Engaging critically with a piece of theory by translating it constitutes a creative gesture. It presupposes that the text chosen for translation demands further exploration and interrogation, and that recontextualising it through translation may bring to light new perspectives on translation. Ultimately, this book celebrates the critical and creative power of translation, its potential for questioning established concepts and creating new ones in the process. Its invitation to apprehend texts through translation extends beyond translation studies, to students and scholars across the humanities, as well as to practitioners and thinkers beyond academia.

Using translation as an instrument for critical reflection may prove constructive in a variety of ways. In the context of this volume, my focus is on translating theoretical texts from English into French and vice versa. However, I would like to invite readers to look beyond the confines of my practice and consider the range of possibilities that engaging with any given material - text, film, painting - through translation (transcreation, adaptation, ekphrasis) may instigate in their own discipline or field.

Acknowledgments

This book grew out of my doctoral research at UCL and could not have been written without the support of Timothy Mathews and Theo Hermans. Their comments have inspired me in countless ways, and I am deeply grateful for their continuing guidance over the years.

My warm thanks go also to all those friends, university colleagues and family members who have advised, corrected or encouraged me during the various stages of developing this work. I am especially thankful to Geraldine Brodie, Stephen Hart, Thomas Connolly, Jane Fenoulhet, Nicolas Froeliger, Lance Hewson, Francoise Wuilmart and Alba Simaku. I would like to extend my gratitude to the Centre for Multidisciplinary and Intercultural Inquiry and the School of European Languages, Culture and Society at UCL, as well as to the Arts and Humanities Research Council, for their support with this project.

I am also grateful to Taylor & Francis Group and SUNY Press for permission to reproduce material from Lawrence Venuti’s The Translator’s Invisibility (2008) and Antoine Berman’s The Experience of the Foreign, translated by Stefan Heyvaert (1992).

Finally, I wish to thank my husband, Matthieu Dadou, for his unwavering support and enthusiasm at every stage of completion.

List of tables

Table 0.1: Summary of Michael Lynch’s classification of reflexivity

Introduction:

Genesis of a reflexive method in translation

Translation theories calling for reflexivity

The rapid development of translation studies as a discipline since the 1990s, ‘a period that experienced a boom in translation theory," has seen a proliferation of theories calling for greater reflexivity in translation, which raise issues of visibility, creativity and ethics. Four Western scholars in particular — all of whom also had or still have careers as practising translators — have been prominent in emphasising the need for a reflexive practice of translation: Lawrence Venuti, Susan Bassnett, Henri Meschonnic and Antoine Berman. This book presents a creative way of exploring their theories. It examines the thinkers’ approaches to translation in both form and content, offering critical readings of their theories as well as practical translations of the texts that articulate them.

In The Translator's Invisibility, Lawrence Venuti argues that increased awareness of a translation's conditions of production is necessary for an ethical translation practice, since translation involves a degree of ethnocentric violence that tends to erase the cultural specificity of the source text. For Venuti, a translation that highlights its own status as translation is ethical in that, instead of attempting to dissimulate the domesticating forces at play in translational activity, it draws attention to, and raises awareness of, the cultural differences between source and target texts.? In his view, the translator has an ethical obligation to indicate the otherness of the foreign text when importing it into the target culture.

In her essay ‘Writing and Translating' Susan Bassnett focuses on a different aspect of reflexivity in translation: the question of creativity. For her, translating is a form of writing which triggers a dialogic interaction between author and translator, an intimate relation in which the translator becomes aware of her own creative voice.’ In

Bassnett’s approach, reflexivity is not a matter of making a text’s status as translation visible, but of recognising the inspirational and creative impulse prompted by translation. According to Bassnett, translating is a conscious and reflexive form of writing, a playful and poetic activity, comparable to theatrical performance.

In Ethics and Politics of Translating,? Henri Meschonnic also insists on the creative aspect of translation. In Meschonnic’s view, translating is above all an inventive, poetic and transformative enterprise, during which language and life interact. For Meschonnic, theory and practice cannot be separated in translation because translation always involves a reflexive decision-making process, which manifests in return the translator’s relation to language and to translating.’ Except when it is automated, translation, in his view, always expresses a theoretical position: the translator’s perception of language and engagement with the world.

Similarly, in Toward a Translation Criticism,? Antoine Berman argues that translators and translation scholars should reflect on translation in a way that combines theoretical considerations with the experience of translation. For Berman, reflecting on the act of translating, and developing a self-reflexive theory of translation, is crucial for liberating translation from its ethnocentric impulse and from the repressed status from which it has suffered in the past.? In Berman's work, an ethical approach to translation is inseparable from a reflexive study of translation — that is, from disciplinary self-reflexivity.

In their own way, each theorist suggests that self-awareness is a key requirement for an ethical practice of translation. By advocating the visibility of the translating subject (Venuti), the translator's right to creativity (Bassnett), the supremacy of human translation (Meschonnic) and an autonomous study of translation (Berman), they seek to liberate translation from its ethnocentric violence (Venuti), from the demands of fidelity (Bassnett), from mechanical representations of language (Meschonnic) and from its dependence on other disciplines (Berman). In championing reflexivity, their ultimate aim is to empower translation, both as a professional practice and as an academic discipline.

The purpose of this book is to explore whether reflexivity, as presented by each of these scholars, can bring about the empowerment that they seek. To what extent can reflexivity foster an ethical practice of translation? Can reflexivity provide an effective translation methodology? And what can reflexive translation strategies tell us about the role, scope and nature of reflexivity in translation? The experimental approach I develop to address these questions is itself both reflexive and self-reflexive. Using translation as an instrument for critical reflection, the method I showcase here consists of translating translation theory by folding it back on the text that formulates it. Operating simultaneously on theoretical and practical levels, it inquires into reflexivity through reflexivity, reflecting on reflexive translation theories by translating them according to their own guiding principles.

A reflexive method in translation

The reflexive practice presented in this book is inspired by Jacques Derrida’s deconstructionist approach in ‘Des Tours de Babel’. In this text, Derrida attempts an intralingual translation of Walter Benjamin’s 1923 essay ‘The Task of the Translator’, to reflect on Benjamin’s translation theory.!° In discussing and trying to enact specific aspects of Benjamin’s essay, Derrida also develops and showcases his own philosophy of translation: the idea that translation is impossible yet necessary. Derrida chooses to translate Benjamin's theory in a Benjaminian way both to explore and to actualise this double bind of translation, which consists in the simultaneous necessity and impossibility to translate, exemplified by the word ‘Babel’, an untranslatable proper noun meaning at the same time father, God and confusion.

Reflecting on the polysemy of the term ‘Babel’, Derrida undertakes an intralingual translation of Maurice de Gandillac's French translation of Benjamin's text into French — an endeavour that he presents as follows:

This singular example [the word Babel], at once archetypical and allegorical, could serve as an introduction to all the so-called theoretical problems of translation. But no theorization, inasmuch asitis produced in a language, will be able to dominate the Babelian performance. This is one of the reasons why I prefer here, instead of treating it in the theoretical mode, to attempt to translate in my own way the translation of another text on translation.!!

For Derrida, theorisation is unable to dominate the Babelian performance (the polysemy of the word Babel, which makes its translation both necessary and impossible), because this performance is itself embedded in a language. To think about translation, Derrida prefers to engage in translation, choosing to describe translation by practising translation. My approach in this book is comparable. The experimental translations that I propose as possible interpretations of the translation theories examined offer practical ways of exploring theories which suggest that reflexivity is the only way of developing an ethical translation. The sample translations presented in each chapter serve to illustrate the main concepts of the reflexive theory under scrutiny, as well as my response to it, by providing concrete examples of what a reflexive translation may look like in each case. These translations are conceived as a creative and critical form of engagement with key contemporary translation theories. They question the capacity of reflexivity to counteract the power relations at play in translation, and problematise affirmative claims about (self-) knowledge in translation.

The reflexive method is rooted in the idea that stating is performing an act. First theorised in the 1950s by the English philosopher John Langshaw Austin, the concept of performativity establishes that words do something in the world, something which is not just a matter of generating consequences. According to Austin, in speech acts, words are actions in themselves: they are ‘performed’ and make a difference in the world.!? Common examples of speech acts include promising, naming and declaring. Extending his definition of performativity to all utterances, Austin suggests that any statement may function as performative, since it may be doing by saying something. The reflexive method in translation is performative in that it proposes to enact the source text by simultaneously doing and saying what it says/does. Saying and doing, word and spirit, form and content are co-dependent in this approach.

The idea that form and content are inseparable is largely recognised in literary translation, and poetry especially. When it comes to translations of theoretical texts, however, the emphasis so far has mostly been on the way concepts travel,!^ rather than on how form and content interact in the process of the transfer from one context to another. Embracing the idea that form and content, saying and doing, text and metatext interconnect in translation, my reflexive approach in this book offers an analysis of the particular operation of reflexivity involved in the translation of translation theory: the fact that the medium of expression (translation) is enmeshed with the object of the discourse (translation). For, when translating translation theory, the translator finds herself performing the activity discussed in the source text itself: her task as a translator mirrors the practice described in the text she translates.

Translating translation theory

The translation of translation theory is a relatively neglected area of inquiry in translation studies. In recent decades, however, a growing number of studies have emerged that reflect on the expansion of the discipline. Some report the rise of university programmes,’ others highlight the proliferation of new journals and publications in the field,'° while others still describe which translation theories are taught as part of these programmes, !” or attempt to map the ways in which research interests in the discipline have shifted throughout the years.!? Despite the growing interest in meta-disciplinary questions, however, comprehensive accounts of the translations of translation theory remain scarce.

Jacques Derrida's ‘Des Tours de Babel’ and Lawrence Venuti’s ‘Translating Derrida on Translation’ are two of the very few examples of article-length writings reflecting on the practice of translating translation theory. In fact, even these two texts are not, so to speak, reflections on translating translation theory per se. ‘Des Tours de Babel’ is a reflection on translation which presents itself as an act of translation, rather than a reflection on translating theory, while ‘Translating Derrida on Translation’ starts off as a reflection on translating Derrida’s ‘What is a “Relevant” Translation?’ but rapidly digresses into a discussion of translation in cultural studies.!°

At the time of writing, there is no single volume specifically devoted to the translations of translation theory, no study that attempts to theorise this particular practice of translation. Everything that has been written so far on the subject appears in scattered form, either as prefaces to actual translations of theoretical texts on translation (see Francoise Massardier-Kenney on translating Berman’s Pour une critique des traductions)?? or in author interviews (see Pier-Pascale Boulanger on translating Meschonnic’s Éthique et politique du traduire).”! Interestingly, these writers, too, highlight the performative aspect of their work — the fact that they translated texts by mirroring the translation theories developed in those texts themselves.

In the introduction to her English translation of Pour une critique des traductions, for example, Massardier-Kenney makes clear that her approach to translating Berman’s book was deliberately informed by Berman’s own translation theory: ‘The principles I used to translate Berman’s text,’ she points out, ‘were those proposed by Berman in the text itself.?? Throughout her preface Massardier-Kenney explains her translational choices with reference to Berman's ideas of translation. However, she does not explicitly state why applying Berman's theory would be more appropriate than translating his text in another way, as though for her a performative approach was unquestionably the best way of translating Berman.

Similarly, in an interview with René Lemieux and Caroline Mangerel,

Boulanger supports her approach to translating Meschonnic by saying that ‘Meschonnic must be translated according to his own conception of translation.?? In the introduction to her translation of Éthique et politique du traduire, she further explains:

Inorderto keep the reader's attention, I could have worked to flatten the reading bumps to correct, smooth English, but this would have constituted domestication, which contradicts Meschonnic's idea of translating. He clearly outlines what should be translated in a text when he says that ‘we must invent discourse equivalences in the target language: prosody for prosody, metaphor for metaphor, pun for pun, rhythm for rhythm' (see p.71). So I decided to apply Meschonnic’s theory of translating to translating Meschonnic's theory. This decision implied doing to English what he did to French, resisting conventional forms in the translation as he does in his writing.?^

In saying that translating Meschonnic faithfully meant following his own vision, Boulanger implies that when translating translation theory, a performative approach is always preferable.

Joseph F. Graham’s translation of Derrida's ‘Des Tours de Babel’ provides another example of a performative perspective on translating translation theory. In a note to his English version of Derrida's text, Graham indicates that the principles guiding his translation of Derrida's essay were also those found in the text itself:

There was consolation for so much effort to so little effect in that, whatever we did, we were bound to exhibit the true principles of translation announced in our text. And so this translation is exemplary to that extent. To the extent that we were guided in translation, the principles were also those found in the text. Accordingly, a silhouette of the original appears for effect in many words and phrases of the translation.*°

In this note, Graham suggests that despite its shortcomings, his English translation of ‘Des Tours de Babel’ remains faithful to the French original because it exemplifies the central idea articulated by Derrida in this piece: the impossibility yet necessity to translate.

Translating translation theory seems intuitively to call for a reflexive approach. It triggers an uncanny mirroring effect, as the translator finds herself performing the activity that the theorist discusses in the text to translate. Translating translation theory thus brings about the possibility of new forms of fidelity in translation. In the context of such practice, the demand of fidelity to the source text appears to apply simultaneously to form and content, as though translating the original differently than according to its own guiding principles would mean betraying it. When translating translation theory, the ideas articulated in the source text tend to dictate the way it ought to be translated, seemingly leaving the translator no other choice but to translate the text reflexively by attempting to apply the theorist’s vision to the text itself.

Reflexivity, performativity, deconstruction

In this monograph, translating a theoretical text in the light of its own theory is developed into an instrument of critical and self-critical inquiry. The ambition is both to explore the applicability of translation theories advocating greater reflexivity and to inspect the unique form of reflexiveness involved in the translation of translation theory. Studying the reflexive experience prompted by the activity of translating translation theory is essential to understanding the nature of performativity in translation. As an extreme manifestation of the fusion of form and content, signifier and signified, theory and practice, translating reflexively brings into question a defining aspect of fidelity in translation - the opposition letter vs. spirit which has preoccupied thinkers of translation for centuries. By moving beyond this opposition, the operation of reflexivity at play in translating translation theory provides the grounds for a tangible exploration of the possible applications of a performative approach to translation.

What does it mean to simultaneously do and say a text by translating it? To what extent is such a practice feasible? And what would its benefits and limits be? The reflexive method showcased in this book is deliberately deconstructive in nature. Following Derrida's own deconstructionist approach, it strives ‘to undo a construction with infinite patience, to take apart a system in order to understand all its mechanisms, to exhibit all its foundations, and to reconstruct on new bases’.*° Using translation to think about translation, the reflexive method aims to untangle the structures of the texts translated by exposing their internal contradictions, furthermore building on these aporias to develop a critical and self-critical mode of theorising reflexivity in translation.

In this perspective, the reflexive method offers a practical exploration of a deconstructionist approach to translation. Derrida's writings have been widely influential in translation studies. His essays ‘Des Tours de Babel’ and ‘What is a “Relevant” Translation’, which subvert traditional views of translation as a secondary, inferior form of expression, have become canonical texts, foregrounding the importance of critical inquiries in the discipline.?/ However, his contribution to translation is often considered too abstract or inapplicable.?? Moreover, translation scholars invoking his work as a source of inspiration tend to focus on the notion of untranslatability,? rather than on the necessity to translate. Thereby they occlude the fact that for Derrida deconstruction itself is an operation of translation and transformation — a process that ‘consists of transference, and of a thinking of transference, in all the senses that this word acquires in more than one language, and first of all that of the transference between languages’.°°

In this book, I experiment with the reflexive method and explore it as a possible application of a deconstructionist approach to translation. Unlike interpretations which give priority to the concept of untranslatability in Derrida’s work, my own approach advances the notion that Derrida’s deconstructionist philosophy is in fact unthinkable without a creative, experimental practice of translation. My analysis of the particular form of reflexiveness involved in the translation of translation theory seeks to provide new insight into the articulation of reflexivity in translation, and ethics of translation beyond that. For in various ways, the four theorists discussed in this book associate reflexivity with ethics, and my intention ultimately is to question the scope and limits of an ethical practice of translation based on the opposition between reflexive and non-reflexive approaches.

Reflexive, self-reflexive, self-critical

Reflexivity is an important but slippery topic, which may conjure up a variety of concepts. In some social theories, reflexivity refers to an essential human capacity; in others, it is a system property; in still others, it is a critical, or self-critical, act. In ‘Against Reflexivity as an Academic Virtue and Source of Privileged Knowledge’,*! Michael Lynch identifies six main categories of reflexivity (mechanical, substantive, methodological, meta-theoretical, interpretative and ethnomethodological), four of which are themselves subdivided into further sub-categories.

Lynch’s classification of reflexivity, which I have summarised in the table below, provides a good overview of its complexity:

Table 0.1: Summary of Michael Lynch’s classification of reflexivity?^?

Category Subcategory Description Examples A habitual, In behaviourist psychology, a Knee-jerk automatic or pattern through which a stimulus reflexivity thoughtless evokes a response. response Mechanical | 7 FRERE on : A circular process Models using mechanistic imagery, reflexivity Cybernetic | : s aa f involving feedback | but emphasising a humanistic sense loopiness aa : loops. of reflexivity as self-reflection.

Reflections ad An infinite regress of | Halls of mirrors, the Móbius strip, infinitum reflections. Escher's hand drawing itself. — Modes of social Risk benefit analysis, economic y o inquiry relying upon | forecasts, opinion polling, etc. . reflexivity Substantive expert knowledge. reflexivity , j Subscription tothe | The way consensual beliefs give Reflexive social . . . Hn: de satel ae : reality of socially rise to objective social institutions construction constructed facts. (e.g. value of currency). ; x The Enlightenment | Self-inspection and rejection of Philosophical : 8 pecao J H ideal of self- appearances in favour of deeper self-reflection : ; knowledge. foundations of certainty.

The attempt to Researchers considering their Methodological | correct biases that | relations to the groups they study. self- distort or confound Methodological | consciousness access to the object reflexivity of study. ; Self-criticism Confessional ethnography, anti- Methodological |. . E ie NM aimingtoenhance |objectivistic styles of discourse self-criticism : : ; NAM epistemic value. analysis and textual criticism. Methodological |Aself-exemplifying Applying the same indices of self- sociology of science. | ‘maturation’ in the natural sciences congratulation to the study of their own specialty.

Reflexive An objectivation of | Critically revaluing what members objectivation the social field. of a given field take for granted. | A reflexive critique | Subjecting one’s own framework to : Standpoint : Mn Meta-theoretical aan of dominant criticism. a reflexivity ; self-reflexivity discourse.

An exposure and Film or painting calling attention to Breaking frame | realisation of the the illusionist techniques deployed conjurer's tricks. to create a sense of reality. A style of A sociologist's self-critical i interpretation interpretation (vs. ordina: Hermeneutic P i P a ( : ey NE based on the interpretations, unconscious of the reflexivity : : : : . reader's active forces influencing them).

Interpretative interpretation. reflexivity - - — Radical A pre-occupation An analysis problematising or : with, and sceptical | deconstructing positive claims referential : E treatment of, about knowledge without reflexivity . MES s representation. distinction or exemption.

The reflexivity of An ethnographic description accounting practices | (which explains the features of

Ethnomethodological reflexivity and accounts.

a specific setting, but uses the setting itself to make sense of the description).

Each of the types of reflexivity listed by Lynch involves some form of ‘recursive turning back’: a return, a repetition or a folding back. However, what the turning back does, how it does it and what its implications are vary from category to category, as well as within a given category.

Furthermore, the boundaries between these various aspects of reflexivity are not clear-cut, but fuzzy, interdependent. Ethnomethodological reflexivity, for example - the correlation between a fact and its description — is simultaneously methodological and substantive, for it involves both philosophical self-reflection and subscription to the reality of socially constructed facts. Interpretative reflexivity, on the other hand, which includes reading, thinking, contemplating or making sense of an object or text, is prominent in most categories, including substantive, methodological and meta-theoretical reflexivity. The main challenge of dealing with the notion of reflexivity lies first and foremost in identifying and clarifying its multiple and shifting meanings, the nuances surrounding its various uses and its overlap with other key notions such as reflection, self-reference and self-reflexivity.

The distinction between reflexivity (folding something back on itself) and self-reflexivity (pointing to or reflecting upon oneself) is particularly unstable and hazy. The process of translating translation theory is at once reflexive and self-reflexive. The mirroring, self-reflexive effect prompted by the act of performing the activity discussed in the source text seems to instigate a performative, reflexive approach that incites translators to fold the theory they translate back on itself. Hence, in most cases, my use of the term ‘reflexivity also encompasses the notion of self-reflexivity. Later in the book, however, the distinction between these two concepts will emerge more clearly as a result of the sample translations I present in each chapter.

The texts discussed in this monograph each address a different aspect of reflexivity in translation. Venuti's argument in favour of a foreignizing practice that strives to secure the visibility of a translation's status as translation falls within the categories of breaking frame (an exposure and realisation of the translator's tricks) and standpoint reflexivity (a critique of the ethnocentric discourse prevailing in Anglo- American culture). Bassnett's approach to translation as a subjective engagement with the source text relies on hermeneutic reflexivity, a style of interpretation based on the translator's creative reading of the text to translate. The opposition poetics vs. mechanics underlying Meschonnic's theory is founded on the distinction between hermeneutic reflexivity (the translator's subjective interpretation of the source text) and mechanical reflexivity (a thoughtless, automatic response to a stimulus).

And Berman’s call for disciplinary self-reflexivity is a form of reflexive objectivation, which consists in critically revaluing the role of translation studies in the articulation of translation and ethics.

My own approach, and use of translation as a critical instrument, is inscribed in a reflexive and self-critical praxis that interrogates affirmative claims about knowledge and self-knowledge in translation. The reflexive method is unstable and continuously changing, mirroring the object under scrutiny even while critically challenging it. Translating reflexively will mean different things in relation to the different texts examined. It requires redefining reflexivity in each context of use, determining what it signifies for each of the theorists and what it brings into play for their respective theories. Overall, this approach attempts to characterise the various expressions of reflexivity in translation, their complex articulation with ethics, and the extent to which reflexivity is possible, preferable or even avoidable in each case.

The treatment of reflexivity in this book thus operates concurrently on three levels: (1) thematically, in the object of analysis (the reflexive translation theories analysed); (2) methodologically, in the method of analysis (folding a theory back on itself); and (3) self-critically, on a meta-disciplinary level (reflecting on the benefits and limits of the reflexive method adopted). The multiple layers of reflexivity at play — within the text, in the translating process and from a scholarly perspective — are often difficult to untangle and therefore constantly challenge the researcher's own self-awareness. These challenges will themselves be examined and discussed throughout this work.

What is translation theory?

In his seminal paper entitled ‘The Name and Nature of Translation Studies’, James Holmes describes the then-emerging discipline known as translation studies as being concerned with ‘the complex of problems clustered round the phenomenon of translating and translations’.** He identifies two main branches in the discipline: on the one hand, 'pure research’, which includes ‘translation theory’ (the establishment of general principles to explain or predict translation phenomena); and on the other hand, ‘applied translation studies’, in which the findings of pure research are applied in 'actual translation situations, in translation training, and in translation criticism’.** In Holmes’ categorisation, then, translation theory is a subcategory of research within the wider discipline of translation studies.

However, the use of the term has created some confusion in the field, for several scholars have employed it to refer to the discipline of translation studies as a whole. Anton Popovi¢, for example, defines translation theory as a ‘discipline engaged in the systematic study of translation’,*° while Peter Newmark describes it as ‘the body of knowledge that we have and have still to have about the process of translating'.?6 As Mark Shuttleworth and Moira Cowie point out, though, such definitions gradually came to represent the minority in the discipline, as the term became more and more used in the sense of Holmes’s categorisation, taking on a meaning which is closer to that of ‘theory’ in the natural sciences: ‘a specific attempt to explain in a systematic way some or all of the phenomena related to translation’.°”

In the Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics, Maria Tymoczko defines translation theory, following definition 4 of ‘theory’ in the Compact Oxford English Dictionary, as ‘a scheme or system of ideas or statements held as an explanation or account of a group of facts or phenomena’, which she opposes to the 'loose or general sense' of definition 6, 'an idea or set of ideas about something; an individual view or notion'?? According to Tymoczko, translation scholars do not consistently maintain a distinction between these different meanings. For her, the term ‘translation theory’ should only be used to refer to ‘the development and testing of hypotheses'.?? Natural scientific approaches like Tymoczko’s are more and more debated, however - notably by translation theorists who make a deliberate choice to use the term 'theory' in the general sense of individual views or notions.