ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses theories of translation based on linguistic theories and approaches to language that have been developed by Western European scholars. It introduces Jean-Paul Vinay and Jean Darbelnet’s Stylistique comparée du français et de l’anglais. Méthode de traduction (Comparative Stylistics of French and English, a Methodology for Translation), which sees a close connection between comparative stylistic and translation methodology and from which we derive many of the concepts and terms we use in Translation Studies, such as borrowing, calque, transposition, modulation and adaptation. Vinay and Darbelnet’s focus is arguably on what translators do with language. Next, the chapter introduces John Cunnison Catford, who wishes to establish what translation is. His explicitly titled A Linguistic Theory of Translation: An Essay in Applied Linguistics clearly indicates how he envisages the relationship between translation and linguistics: translation is a form of linguistics applied. Similarly, Eugene A. Nida’s account of what he terms the “science” of translation is, he says, at heart linguistic. Moving towards approaches which, although maintaining a focus on language are also informed by cognitive science, the chapter discusses Ernst-August Gutt’s relevance theoretic approach and Ronald W. Langacker’s cognitive grammar, which, according to Sandra Halverson (2003) can explain those translational phenomena that have been referred to as translation universals. Finally, the chapter introduces a view to the future proffered by Juliane House (2019), who suggests a meeting of minds in an approach she terms linguo-cognitive. Here, in other words, language meets cognition in the translation activity.
