ABSTRACT
At various points in this course we have spoken of the ST both as a starting-point for translation and as a point of reference in evaluating TTs. However, before it is ever thought of as a ST requiring translation, any text is already an object in its own right, something that belongs to a particular genre of the source culture. Any given ST will share some of its properties with other texts of the same genre, and will be perceived by a SL audience as being what it is on account of such genretypical properties. Therefore, the translator must, in order to appreciate the nature of the ST, be familiar with the broad characteristics of the appropriate sourceculture genre. Furthermore, since any source culture presents a whole array of different textual genres, the translator must have some sort of overview of genre types in that culture. This does not imply an exhaustive theory of genres-even if such a theory were available, it would be too elaborate for a methodology of translation. All that is needed is a rough framework of genre types to help a translator to concentrate on characteristics that make the ST a representative specimen of a particular source-culture genre.
