ABSTRACT
This chapter explores some of the ways in which Niklas Luhmann’s work might be utilized for the study of translation. Andreas Poltermann’s essay on ‘Norms of Literary Translation’ is concerned with norm changes, primarily in Germany, in the context of literature as a differentiated social system in Luhmann’s sense. In passing Poltermann offers an interesting system-theoretical explanation for the fact that the first translations of foreign works tend to stick more closely to domestic genre expectations than subsequent renderings. Poltermann’s account treats literary and translation norms in terms of genre expectations, allowing him to comment on the relevance both of meeting expectations and of confounding them. The domain of translation, or the social institution which is termed ‘translation’, has limits, a socially acknowledged boundary differentiating it, sometimes sharply, sometimes only diffusely, from other modes of dealing with anterior discourses. Contrasting self-reference and external reference in translations shows up the system’s simultaneous autonomy and heteronomy.
