Deciphering the Aim of Translation Studies: Examining the Five Translation Studies Perspectives

This thesis tries to answer the question of what constitutes ‘good’ translation in order to help translators (and translator students) gain insight into the various academic perspectives on the nature of a high-quality translated text. It seeks this answer by way of examining the work of renowned translation theorists from across the five perspectives found in Translation Studies. The distinction and definitions of these perspectives are made by Hurtado Albir (1994) in his work Perspectivas de los Estudios Sobre Traducción. This thesis uses Ordóñez-Lopez’ (2008) English translations of these definitions. The five perspectives are named as follows: the Philosophical and Hermeneutic perspective, the Textual perspective, the Communicative and Socio-cultural perspective, the Cognitive perspective,and the Linguistic perspective. Each perspective approaches the field of Translation Studies in a different manner, which is the cause for many different interpretations and idea regarding...Show moreThis thesis tries to answer the question of what constitutes ‘good’ translation in order to help translators (and translator students) gain insight into the various academic perspectives on the nature of a high-quality translated text. It seeks this answer by way of examining the work of renowned translation theorists from across the five perspectives found in Translation Studies. The distinction and definitions of these perspectives are made by Hurtado Albir (1994) in his work Perspectivas de los Estudios Sobre Traducción. This thesis uses Ordóñez-Lopez’ (2008) English translations of these definitions. The five perspectives are named as follows: the Philosophical and Hermeneutic perspective, the Textual perspective, the Communicative and Socio-cultural perspective, the Cognitive perspective,and the Linguistic perspective. Each perspective approaches the field of Translation Studies in a different manner, which is the cause for many different interpretations and idea regarding translation practice. As this thesis seeks to unite opinions from across the academic field, and a number of perspectives only deal with written texts, multimodal translation will only lightly be touched upon. It will be shown that no more than three aspects are shared by more than one perspective, and none are shared by all.Show less

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Deciphering the Aim of Translation Studies: Examining the Five Translation Studies Perspectives