ABSTRACT
Interestingly enough, functionalist approaches fall on very fertile ground in what from a Eurocentric point of view might be called 'exotic' cultures. In the German-speaking area, most representatives of the first generation of functionalism retired some time ago, and the second generation has generally entered the training of university students. Translation trainers were accustomed to regarding the source text as the yardstick against which translation students should judge their translations. In the English-speaking world, Skopostheorie and functionalist approaches have been gaining ground only very recently, thanks to translations of some basic theoretical texts and a growing number of publications in English. One of the few English-language scholars defending a functionalist perspective is Roda P. Roberts in Ottawa, who in a 1992 article argues that the literary translator's guide is the function of the translation rather than the functions of language or the source text.
