Zohar's Polysystems Theory

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Itamar Even-Zohar, anchored in some ideas of Russian formalism, especially by Jurij Tynjanov, sought to provide with the polysystems theory a theory that could describe the process of translation, as well as understanding changes within literary, language, and cultural systems. The fundamental concept in the descriptive studies and introduced by Tynjanov, the idea of polysystems, “Its purpose is to make explicit the conception of a system as dynamic and heterogeneous in opposition to the synchronistic approach. ” (EVEN-ZOHAR, 1990: 12). This concept is developed in order to better comprehend literary genres and traditions in a broader way, without the individual focus of each work (EVEN-ZOHAR, 1990: 13). Even Zohar resumes the concept of system …show more content…

Gideon Toury argues that this approach does not conceive the translation process as being a prescriptive process, imposing 'correct ' or 'wrong ' laws or forms of translation. In an inverse process, it seeks to analyze and describe the translations according to a target context and the cultural system in which the translation will be read. In the author 's words, “[...] Translations be regarded as facts of the culture that would host them, with the concomitant assumption that whatever their function and systemic status, these are constituted within the target culture and reflect its own systemic constellation” (TOURY, 2012: …show more content…

Since translation is essentially the result of a selection of communication systems strategies, it is the researcher 's duty to study the priorities - the dominant norms and models - that determine translation strategies, considering norms as the laws that guide textual construction, and the models the steps proposed in the scheme of the authors. (LAMBERT; VAN GORP, 1985: 46).
The method proposed by Lambert and Van Gorp gives the researcher an approach that goes beyond the foreign text and the translated text, referring to the whole cultural context that surrounds both productions, especially the target culture. The translation process, as well as the result of the translation and reception, can be studied from different angles, both at a macro and micro-level, focusing on linguistic standards, literary codes, moral, religious and non-literary standards. (LAMBERT; VAN GORP, 1985:

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