ABSTRACT
At various times in this course, we have spoken of the ST both as a startingpoint for translation and as a point of reference in evaluating TTs. However, before it is ever thought of as a ST, any text is already an object in its own right, and actually belongs to a particular genre of the source culture. Because any ST shares some of its properties with other texts of the same genre, and is perceived by a SL audience as being what it is on account of such genre-defining properties, the translator must be familiar with the broad characteristics of the source-culture genres. 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 typology of genres - even if such a thing were possible, it would be too elaborate for a methodology of translation. All that is needed is an approximate framework of genretypes that might help a translator to concentrate on characteristics that make the ST a representative specimen of a particular source-culture genre.
