Pragmatic models of translation

The pragmatic model developed by H.J. Vermeer is based on the belief that translation is ‘transpresentation’ which brings something (relatively) new into the target culture, enlarging it by offering and introducing into it new and hitherto unknown features [Vermeer 1994: 5]. Any translation, no matter whether it is grammatical, altering or mythical translation (in terms of H.Vermeer’s classification), is culture-specific. This is accounted for by the fact that creative value of an artistic production is estimated “according to standards which themselves are relative to a given culture and time and individual” [ibid]. Translation involves an adaptation, i.e. a partial cultural transpresentation changing the form, and meaning and “sense” in the process of bringing a text into another culture. The central notions the scholar works with are the cultural background (or cultural embedding, as K. Raiss calls it) of translations, ‘skopos’, target culture. In his overview of various models of translation H.J. Vermeer conceives the work of historiographer of translation theories in two ways: on the one hand, he tries to interpret the documents at his disposal as carefully as possible and on the other hand, since ‘documents are not just dead and dusty pieces of parchment’, he tries to look upon them as communication partners today and thus make sense of them for our time and situation. In other words, there should be ‘a modern exegesis’ of a text opposed to its “historical interpretation”. Similar considerations apply to a translator’s job since translating is a culture-sensitive process and translation is a cultural product which presupposes going beyond a mere linguistic rendering of a text in another language. Besides this aspect of translation H. Vermeer discusses one more feature which is no less important, it is “the way a translation is ‘received’ in the target culture since this is also culture-specific” [Vermeer 1994]. Thus, this model of translation describes it in the following way: a “sender” (or “transmitter”, e.g. an actor, a businessman) needs a text and procures it from a text producer (e.g. a technical writer) to be used under given circumstances for a given person and a given communication partner. The role of a text in such a model is two-fold. On the object level it serves as a vehicle of transmitting a message encoded in it by one partner (the verbal part is estimated to be no more than 30% of the total message) to be decoded by the recipient. On a meta -level the text serves as one factor among others in achieving an intended aim – skopos. According to this model the translator’s task is two-fold: first, to convey an intended meta-meaning in such a way that the ultimate aim (“skopos”) of the communicative act is achieved; second, to transform the form and meaning of the message on its object level into a target text in such a way as to make this target text fit the intended skopos. The author of the model stresses that the achievement of the skopos is one of the translator’s main social tasks “for he is the expert who knows how to socially bring about transcultural communication and lead it to its intended aim”[ibid]. What is very important in this model of translation is that it takes into account not only the translator’s social responsibility, but also the public, the commissioner and the recipients of a translation.

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