ABSTRACT
Translators interpret source-culture phenomena in the light of their own culture-specific knowledge of that culture, from either inside or outside, depending on whether translation is from or into translator's native language-and-culture. This chapter consists of five sections. The three sections will deal with Hans J. Vermeer's concepts of Skopos, coherence and culture, while the two remaining sections explain Katharina Reiss's concepts of adequacy versus equivalence and the role of her text-typology within the frame of a functional approach to translation. Guided by the translation brief, the translator selects certain items from the source-language offer of information and processes them in order to form an offer of information in the target language, from which the target-culture addressees can in turn select what they consider to be meaningful in their own situation. Apart from the term Skopos, Vermeer uses the related words aim, purpose, intention and function. Intertextual coherence is considered subordinate to intratextual coherence, and both are subordinate to Skopos rule.
