A.

1900-1930s

 Cicero and Quintillian - deem translation as a pedagogical exercise whose debate on translation practice
pertains to word-for-word and sense-for-sense translation.
 St. Jerome (fourth century B.C) - his approach to translating the Septugint Bible into Latin would affect
later translations of the Scriptures. He negates the word-for-word approach, for by closely following the
form of the original, the sense of the original is masked and an absurd translation is created.
 John Dryden (1631-1700) - his trichotomy on translation types (metaphrase, paraphrase and imitation)
makes big strides. He negates metaphrase (word-for-word) for lacking fluency or easy readability and
imitation as well, that adapt the foreign text so as to serve the translator's own literary ambitions, instead
he is in favour of paraphrase or translation with latitude, which seeks to render meanings.
 Schleiermacher and Bolt - translation is a creative force in which specific translation strategies serve a
variety of cultural and social functions, paving the way for the construction of nations, literatures and
languages.
 Walter Benjamin – wrote an essay in 1923, "The Task of the Translator" argues that the aim of a
translation should not be to confer to the readers an understanding of the meaning or information
content of the original. It is the hallmark of bad translations. According to him, the hallmark of a good
translation is that it should 'express the central reciprocal between languages'.
 Ezra Pound - another theorist who is more in line with the German interest. In Pound's view, the
"autonomy of translation" takes two forms. A translated text might be interpretive, written next to the
foreign poem and composed of linguistic peculiarities that direct the reader across the page to foreign
textual features, or a translation can be original writing in which the TT literary standards are an impetus
to rewriting the ST poem so as to seem a new poem.
 Ortega y Gasset, 1992 - in his paper "The Misery and the Splendor of Translation", he argues for the
importance of the German translation tradition. By "Misery", Ortega means the impossibility of the task,
for in the two intended languages, there are differences not only linguistically, but also culturally and
mentally.

B. 1940-1950s

 Willard Quine - he figure skeptical of translatability. He develops the concepts of "radical translation," and
"indeterminacy of translation". Quine's work leads to a more pragmatic view of translation, in which
meaning is viewed as conventional, socially circumscribed and the ST is reproduced in the receiving
culture according to the terms and values embedded in the TL.
 Heidegger - his approach to language is literary. Heidegger adopts a "poetizing" strategy that does
violence to everyday language by relying on archaism, which submits to etymological interpretations.
 Chaim Robins - in his essay "The Linguistics of Translation" affirms that translation involves two distinct
factors, a "meaning," or reference to some slice of reality, and the difference between two languages in
referring to that reality"
 Eugene Nida (1945) - another figure who theorizes about the problem of translating between different
realities. Nida by working on the translation of Bible comes to this conclusion that solutions to translation
problems should be ethnological, contingent upon the translator's acquisition of sufficient "cultural
information." He brings up a cultural word in the Bible like "desert" which should, according to him, be
rendered as "abandoned place" so that the "cultural equivalent of the desert of Palestine" is established.
By adopting such a procedure, though it is a paraphrase, the linguistic and cultural differences will boil
down to a shared referent, causing the concept to be comprehensible in the translating language.
 Roman Jakobson - his study of translatability gives a new impetus to the theoretical analysis of translation
since he introduced a semiotic reflection on translatability. On the basis of his semiotic approach to
language and his aphorism 'there is no signatum without signum' (Jakobson, 1959, p. 232), he suggests
three kinds of translation:
 Intralingual (within one language, i.e. rewording or paraphrase)
 Interlingual (between two languages)
 Intersemiotic (between sign systems)
Jakobson claims that, in the case of interlingual translation, the translator makes use of synonyms in order to get
the ST message across. This means that in interlingual translation, there is no full equivalence between code units.
He conceives of meaning not as a reference to reality, but as a relation to an endless chain of signs. According to
his theory, 'translation is a process of recoding involving two equivalent messages in two different codes'
(ibid.:233).

 Jean-Paul – he drawn-out the concept of translatability. Vinay and Jean Darbelnet (1958). Unlike
Jakobson who negates empiricist semantics, these two figures say that descriptions of translation
methods involve some reduction of linguistic and cultural differences to empiricist semantics: according to
them "Equivalence of message," ultimately relies upon an identity of situations, where the term
"situations" indicate an undefined "reality." (Vinay and Darbelnet, 1995, p. 42).

C. 1960-1970s

 ST. George Mounin (1963) - negates the concept of "relativity" that made translation not feasible, and
instead draws on the concept of "equivalence". equivalence", arguing that it hinges upon the "universals
of language and culture (p. 38)." In this period, it is believed that there are identifiable units in a text
which are stable and invariant, with defined units and categories of language which can be broken down.
There are some scholars who theorize about this concept as Werner Koller and Eugene Nida.
 Werner Koller - in answering what this concept means, enunciates five types of equivalence
(ibid: 99-104):
1. "Denotative equivalence" or equivalence of the extralinguistic content of a text. It is called "content
invariance."
2. "Connotative equivalence," depending on the similarities of register and style. Koller refers to this as
"Stylistic equivalence."
3. "Text-normative equivalence," relating to text types, with different kinds of texts behaving in different
ways.
4. "Pragmatic equivalence," or "communicative equivalence," oriented towards the receiver of the text
or message. THEORY AND PRACTICE IN LANGUAGE STUDIES © 2012 ACADEMY PUBLISHER 80
5. " Formal equivalence," relating to the aesthetics and the form of the text.
Nida argues that there are two different types of equivalence, namely formal and dynamic equivalence.
Formal correspondence 'focuses attention on the message itself, in both form and content', unlike
dynamic equivalence which is based upon 'the principle of equivalent effect' (Nida, 1964, p. 159).
 is Eugene Nida, - as discussed above. In 1997, there is a similar opposition by Newmark, distinguishing
between "semantic and communicative" translation, the former being source-oriented and the latter
target-oriented (Newmark 1998a: 47)
 Juliane House between "overt and covert" translation. An 'overt translation' is a TT that does not purport
to be original. It is a translation in which the addressees of the TT are quite "overtly" not being addressed
(House 1997: 66). However, a 'covert translation' is the one which enjoys the status of the ST in the TL
culture. The ST is not linked particularly to the ST culture or audience; both ST and TT address their
respective receivers directly (ibid. 69). The function of a covert translation is "to recreate, reproduce and
represent in the TT the function the original has in its intralingual framework and discourse world." (ibid.
114). House's distinction considers how much the ST hinges upon its culture for comprehensibility. If the
significance of the ST is indigenous, then an overt translation is needed by relying on supplementary
information, whether expansions, insertions or footnotes (in Venuti, 2004, p. 148).
 Catford (1965) - he defines it as "departures from formal correspondence in the process of going from SL
to TL, departures that can occur at linguistic level as graphology, phonology, grammar and lexis. Yet, he
 concludes that translation equivalence does not entirely match formal correspondence and such
deviations occur (ibid. 82).
 Etmar Even-Zohar and Guidon Toury (1978) - argue that literary translations are facts of the target system.
A literary work is not studied in isolation but as part of a literary system, which itself is defined as "a
system of functions of the literary order which are in continual relationship with other orders (Tynjanov,
1927/71, p. 72). Literature is part of the social, cultural and historical framework, and the main notion is
that of "system", in which there is an ongoing dynamic of mutation and struggle for the primary position
in the literary canon (in Munday, 2001, p. 109).
 James Holmes (1972) – his "The Name and Nature of Translation Studies" paves the way for the
development of the field as a distinct discipline. Not only does he define a name for the field, but also
describes what translation studies cover. He distinguishes between "pure-research oriented areas of
theory" and "applied areas" like training and criticism (Holmes, 1988b/2000, p.176).
 George Steiner - In 1975, the key advance of hermeneutics of translation is his influential After Babel. It
opposes modern linguistics with a philosophical approach. Steiner, unlike linguistic-oriented theories that
considered translation as functional communicative, goes back to German Romanticism and the
hermeneutic tradition. He defines the hermeneutic approach as "the investigation of what it means to
"understand a piece of oral or written speech, and the attempt to diagnose this process in terms of a
general model of meaning" (Steiner, 1975/98, p. 249). For him, the aim of language should not be to
communicate meaning, but it should be constitutive in reconstructing it (p. 205). He argues that "great
translation must carry with it the most precise sense of the resistant, of the barriers intact at the heart of
understanding (ibid. 375).

D. 1980s

 Susan Bassnett - her Translation Studies is published. In her book, diverse branches of translation research
are combined, marking the resurgence of translation studies as a separate field overlapping with
linguistics, literary criticism and philosophy. At the same time, problems of cross-cultural communication
are in focus. The approach she takes to theoretical concepts is historical and understands practical
strategies in relation to specific cultural and social situations.
 William Frawly - negates the concept of equivalence and argues that translation is a form of
communication, there is information only in difference, so that translation is a code in its own right, with
its own rules and standards, though they are derivative of the matrix information and target parameters
(1984, p. 168-169).
 Vermeer (1989) - accentuates on the "skopos" or aim of the translator as a crucial factor. Although this
theory predates Holz-Mäntärri‟s theory of translational action, it is part of that same theory, as it deals
with a translational action which is ST-based, which has to be negotiated and performed, which has a
purpose and result (Vermeer, 1989/2000, p. 221). Skopos theory concentrates mainly on the purpose of
the translation, which determines the translation methods and strategies that are to be employed in
order to produce a functionally adequate result. This result is TT, which Vermeer call translatum. Hence,
two main points for the translator to keep in mind is knowing why an ST is to be translated and what the
function of the TT will be (ibid. 222).
 Andre Lefevere - is another figure who follows Zohar and Toury's concept of literary system. Lefevere
views translation as "refraction" or "rewriting." As he says (1992a), refractions carry a work of literature
from one system into another. He sees translation as an act carried out under the influence of particular
categories and norms constituent to systems in a society (p. 12).
 Antoine Berman in Translation and the trials of the foreign negates "ethnocentric translating". According
to him, the hallmark of a bad translation is when it domesticates the foreign work and does not let in the
foreignness of the foreign work, when the SL text is assimilated to TL reader and culture (Berman, 1984, p.
17). Instead, he argues that a good translation is the one in which the linguistic and cultural differences of
the ST are registered in the TT. This foreignness cannot be achieved but by literalism. Thus, by developing
a "correspondence" and "literalism", The TL is enriched and amplified (Berman, 1995, p. 94). He views
translating as the "trial of the foreign," "trial" in two senses (ibid. 276): 1) A trial for the target culture in
 experiencing the strangeness of the foreign text and word; 2) A trial for the foreign text in being uprooted
from its original language context.
 Manifold works on translation view language as communicative of a range of possible meanings and it is
with the emergence of poststructrulism that language is a site of uncontrollable polysemy, therefore,
translation is not transformative of the ST, but interrogative or as Jaque Derrida says, "deconstructive"
(Derrida, 1979, p. 93).

E. 1990s and Beyond

 The 1990s sees the incorporation of new schools and concepts, with Canadian-based translation and
gender research, postcolonial translation theory, with the prominent figures as Spivak and in the US, the
cultural studies oriented analysis of Lawrence Venuti, who champions the cause of the translator
(Munday, 2001, p. 14).
 Considering this potential for generating and retrieving meanings other than those that are stated explicitly,
Grice (1975) seeks to account for where and why this smooth ongoingness is hindered, thus leading to
implicature. He stipulates a Cooperative Principle, four conversational maxims that language users adhere
to: "quantity" of information, "quality" or truthfulness, "relevance" or consistency of context and "manner"
or clarity.
 Gutt (1991, p. 101) tries to describe translation in terms of a general theory of human communication;
therefore, he models translation via "relevance theory."