ABSTRACT
Various possible views of the nature of style and its role in translation are considered, including the way style has been viewed historically, as well as the different views current today. Important ideas from linguistics and pragmatics are examined, such as the interplay between universal and specific aspects of language, and the role of inference in communication. The development of modern stylistics from its origins in linguistic structuralism and the close-reading of literary texts is explained and related to the development of translation studies as a discipline. This chapter also considers the nature of literature and the differences between literary and non-literary texts, and how these differences affect the way style is translated.
