《A Handful of Paragraphs on #39;Translation#39; and #39; Norms#39;》.pdf

A Handful of Paragraphs on ‘Translation’ and ‘Norms’ Gideon Toury The M. Bernstein Chair of Translation Theory, Tel Aviv University, TelAviv 69 978, Israel The format of paragraphs has been chosen to present questions and a few tentative answers on the theme of translation and norms. The formulation of questions is an important aspect of any researchprogramme, and it has been the basis for descriptive- explanatory research as well. Translating as an act and as an event is characterisedby variability, it is historically, socially and culturally determined, in short, norm-gov- erned. In the paragraphs below, the following issues are discussed: the relationships between social agreements,conventions, and norms; translational norms, acts of trans- lation and translation events, norms and values, norms for translated texts vs. norms for non-translated texts, competing norms. Comments on the reactions to three differ- ent Hebrew translations of Hemingway’s short story ‘The Killers’ are presented at the end of the paper. 1 1An IntroductoryNote on Aims and Strategy of Presentation This text should not be regarded as a full-fledged paper which offers a well-rounded presentation of allthatmaybe invokedby the two titlenotions and theirpossiblecombinations.Themain aimofthetextistosupply foodforthought for anyone wishing to get into the right mood andprepare for the Aston Seminar on ‘TranslationandNorms’.Above all,it ismeant to lay downsomegroundrules for an open discussion. As experts on diet know only too well, food is much more digestible when served in small, well-dosed quantities. It is also much more appetising that way. It is this kind of strategy that was adopted for the present document, and for the very same purposes. Thus, my humble aim is to supply a cocktail (shaken, not stirred) of select questions with a number of tentative answers and an odd (