Translating ‘translation’

This study has been written in honour of Professor Basil Hatim (American University of Sharjah), whose many books and articles on the subject of a discourse-oriented, linguistically based, cognitive-cultural approach to translating have greatly helped me, along with many others, to understand what this artful skill (or skilful art) is all about and how to do it. Currently, in both scholarly writing and popular discourse, the term ‘translation’ (‘translate’) appears increasingly to be employed in a secondary, rather than its primary, sense: ‘to render a written or spoken text from one language to another’.¹ The current flexibility of usage has sometimes led to a certain degree of misunderstanding and a lack of clarity with regard to what is being done when translating and what is consequently offered as an end product. This linguistic-lexicographical phenomenon is first explored by means of a selection of quotations from theorists who promote a more liberalized understanding of translating, and these notions are then compared with the standard definitions of several established approaches, such as descriptive translation studies, formalist ‘skopos’ theory, relevance theory, and functional (dynamic) equivalence. This overview then provides the background for the author’s attempt to describe in detail the nature and scope of ‘translating’ from a more traditional and conservative perspective, yet one that also takes into consideration modern cognitive linguistic theory and a related conceptual ‘frames-of-reference’ methodology, with particular reference to the specialized field of sacred scripture translation and interpretation. Finally, several significant associated topics and issues are briefly discussed in terms of their potential impact upon the discipline, such as the oral-aurality factor, multimodality, and globalization. The conclusion of the present study is that definition is important, and it therefore behoves all those who are in any way engaged in ‘translation’-related activities to clearly explain what they are up to and why.