ABSTRACT
A cognitive stylistic approach has suggested not only that literary translation is first and foremost the translation of style but also that the translated text is a type of writing different from the non-translated text. While they share some characteristics they also differ, though not in the way the comments by Willard Trask or Michael Hamburger suggest. The essential difference that has emerged is that a translated text multiplies the voices in the text, give more scope for the reader's engagement than did the original, and make the reader's search for cognitive contexts in which to understand the text harder, more prolonged, and more rewarding. While a non-literary translation primarily a set of instructions, or a critical work, or a report, or an example of whatever text type it belongs to, a literary translation, especially if it is informed by stylistic awareness, be a more literary text than an untranslated text.
