Translation theory and Literary study

Literary Study:
Literary Studies is the study of written works of the imagination, of which poetry, drama
and narrative fiction constitute today the most familiar types or genres. It might be more
accurate to describe it as a set of methods for examining the richness and diversity of
experience through unusual uses of language, through a language that recognize as different
from everyday language and that thereby aspires to produce a reflection of and on the world
not available to us otherwise. As such, literary works are also primary documents for
investigating national histories, world events, the individual psyche, race, class, gender, science,
economics, religion, the natural world, leisure and the other arts. Because literary studies
engage with countless other disciplines, it is among the most interdisciplinary of any field of
study.
“Literary theory” is the body of ideas and methods use in the practical reading of literature. By
literary theory, refer not to the meaning of a work of literature but to the theories that reveal
what literature can mean. Literary theory is a description of the underlying principles, one
might say the tools, by which attempt to understand literature. All literary interpretation draws
on a basis in theory but can serve as a justification for very different kinds of critical activity. It is
literary theory that formulates the relationship between author and work; literary theory
develops the significance of race, class, and gender for literary study, both from the standpoint
of the biography of the author and an analysis of their thematic presence within texts. Literary
theory offers varying approaches for understanding the role of historical context in
interpretation as well as the relevance of linguistic and unconscious elements of the text.
Literary theorists trace the history and evolution of the different genres—narrative, dramatic,
lyric—in addition to the more recent emergence of the novel and the short story, while also
investigating the importance of formal elements of literary structure. Lastly, literary theory in
recent years has sought to explain the degree to which the text is more the product of a culture
than an individual author and in turn how those texts help to create the culture.

Translation theory:
The study of proper principle of translation is termed as translation theory. This theory,
based on a solid foundation on understanding of how languages work, translation theory
recognizes that different languages encode meaning in differing forms, yet guides translators to
find appropriate ways of preserving meaning, while using the most appropriate forms of each
language. Translation theory includes principles for translating figurative language, dealing with
lexical mismatches, rhetorical questions, inclusion of cohesion markers, and many other topics
crucial to good translation.
Basically there are two competing theories of translation. In one, the predominant
purpose is to express as exactly as possible the full force and meaning of every word and turn
of phrase in the original, and in the other the predominant purpose is to produce a result that
does not read like a translation at all, but rather moves in its new dress with the same ease as
in its native rendering. In the hands of a good translator neither of these two approaches can
ever be entirely ignored.
Conventionally, it is suggested that in order to perform their job successfully, translators
should meet three important requirements:
 The source language
 The target language
 The subject matter
Based on this premise, the translator discovers the meaning behind the forms in the
source language and does his best to produce the same meaning in the target language - using
the forms and structures of the target language. Consequently, what are supposed to change
are the form and the code and what should remain unchanged is the meaning and the
message. (Larson, 1984).
One of the earliest attempts to establish a set of major rules or principles to be referred
to in literary translation was made by French translator and humanist Étienne Dolet, who in
1540 formulated the following fundamental principles of translation usually regarded as
providing rules of thumb for the practicing translator:
The translator should understand perfectly the content and intention of the author
whom he is translating. The principal way to reach it is reading all the sentences or the text
completely so that you can give the idea that you want to say in the target language because
the most important characteristic of this technique is translating the message as clearly and
natural as possible. The translator should use the cultural words of that country. It is really
important to use the right cultural words because if the translator does not use them correctly
the translation will be misunderstood.
The translator should have a perfect knowledge of the language from which he is
translating and an equally excellent knowledge of the language into which he is translating. At
this point the translator must have a wide knowledge in both languages for getting the
equivalence in the target language, because the deficiency of the knowledge of both languages
will result in a translation without logic and sense.
The translator should avoid the tendency to translate word by word, because doing so
is to destroy the meaning of the original and to ruin the beauty of the expression. This point is
very important and one of which if it is translated literally it can transmit another meaning or
understanding in the translation.
The translator should employ the forms of speech in common usage. The translator
should bear in mind the people to whom the translation will be addressed and use words that
can be easily understood.

Theories and approaches for translation

There are six main approaches within contemporary translation theory: the sociolinguistic
approach, the communicative approach, the hermeneutic approach, the linguistic approach,
the literary approach and the semiotic approach.

1. THE SOCIOLINGUISTIC APPROACH

According to the sociolinguistic approach to translation, the social context defines what
is and is not translatable and what is or is not acceptable through selection, filtering and even
censorship. According to this perspective, a translator is inevitably the product of his or her
society: our own socio-cultural background is present in everything we translate
2. THE COMMUNICATIVE APPROACH
This perspective is referred to as interpretive. According to this perspective, meaning
must be translated, not language. Language is nothing more than a vehicle for the message and
can even be an obstacle to understanding. This explains why it is always better to deverbalize
(instead of trans-coding) when we translate.
3. THE HERMENEUTIC APPROACH
Hermeneutics, briefly, can be defined as the science and methodology of interpreting
texts. The hermeneutic approach is mainly based on the work of George Steiner, who believes
that any human communication is a translation. He explains that translation is not a science but
an “exact art”: a true translator should be capable of becoming a writer in order to capture
what the author of the original text “means to say.”
4. THE LINGUISTIC APPROACH
According to this perspective, any translation (whether it’s a marketing translation, a
medical translation, a legal translation or another type of text) should be considered from the
point of view of its fundamental units; that is, the word, the syntagm and the sentence.
5. THE LITERARY APPROACH
According to the literary approach, a translation should not be considered a linguistic
endeavor but a literary one. Language has“energy”: this is manifested through words, which
are the result of experiencing a culture. This charge is what gives it strength and ultimately,
meaning: this is what the translation-writer should translate.
6. THE SEMIOTIC APPROACH
Semiotics is the science that studies signs and signification. Accordingly, in order for
there to be meaning there must be collaboration between a sign, an object and an interpreter.
Thus, from the perspective of semiotics, translation is thought of as a way of interpreting texts
in which encyclopedic content varies and each Socio-cultural context is unique.