Examples Of Descriptive Translation Studies

2. Descriptive Translation Studies (1970s - early 1980s)
Descriptive Translation Studies is a term coined in the 1970s by James S. Holmes among others that derived from his division of Translation Studies into pure and applied. Descriptive Translation Studies, as a branch of pure translation studies, comes to challenge major principles inspiring the functional theories of translation, both source and target oriented that focus on the proper use of translation and on the notion of “fidelity to the source text, even though the result may not be considered appropriate for the intended purpose.” (Nord, 1997: 4) As an alternative, this new school of thought indicates that:
Instead of asking the traditional question which has preoccupied translation

This new perspective on the study of translation challenges the current traditional way of thinking by investigating translation as a social and cultural practice. By abandoning the conventional ideas of fidelity, equivalence and correspondence as the exclusive determinants of textual production and representation “[t]ranslators are told that in order to do their work correctly they must understand the culture of the original text, that texts are ‘embedded’ in a culture.” (Simon, 1996: 130) Translation is no longer considered a simple transfer of a source text into a target text, but rather a procedure tightly dependent on the factors through which a textual production occurs, as well as the factors regarding the social, racial, political and cultural background of the translator. Bassnett (2005: 398) reinforces the argument of translation being far more than a simple activity by stating

Ning (2009, cited in Liu 2012: 4) states that this cultural turn of translation studies forces its subject field to change from a strict interlingual translation to a more cross-cultural translation that becomes “liberated from its previous logocentric myopia.” (2009, cited in Liu 2012: 4) Yan and Huang (2014: 491) take this argument a step further by pointing out that translation governed by culture transforms into something independent discharging its previous sole function; that of copying the source text. That way “emphasis is placed on the material reality of translated texts, as separate from originals.” (Simon, 1996: 130) Thus, Cultural Studies causes a destabilisation of previously well-firmed translation theory concepts and techniques resulting in “mak[ing] their study object[s] [come] closer to each other, leading to their final integration.”(Liu, 2010: 94) Indeed, Bassnett and Lefevere had already stated that “[...] the parallels between these two important interdisciplinary fields and the overlap between them are so significant that they can no longer be ignored.” (1998: