On history in formal conceptualizations of translation

Abstract

The methodological task of defining translation across languages forms an apparent aporia, since there is no guarantee that the different terms that might express translation are in fact translations of each other. One solution is to propose a formal conceptualization of translation, in practice a set of criteria, a research filter, that the scholar imposes on the prior multilingual data. However, this act of imposition may neutralize the dynamic variability and historicity of the many culturally different ways of thinking about translation. Here the extent of that imposition is guaged by taking three examples of formal conceptualizations, from Toury, Gutt and Pym, and testing them on three ..