ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on adequacy and acceptability, the terms introduced by Gideon Toury in the late 1970s as translational norms within a particular sociocultural context in order to depict orientations of translation towards either source or target texts. Since this dichotomy operates within the equivalence paradigm, the concept of ‘equivalence’ in translation theory is also discussed briefly. The type of equivalence which is prevalent in a society at a given period of time and the position that an actual translation takes between the two poles of adequacy and acceptability is determined by the translational norms that are current in that society at a certain stage in history. Translational shifts and norms, as well as polysystem theory, are other concepts covered in this chapter. For Toury, adequate translation is the invariant against which shifts can be identified. Translational shifts can lead to the establishment of the norms that govern translation in a given sociocultural context (in those cases where shifts occur so frequently that they create certain patterns or poetics of translation in that culture). The concept of norms is rooted in the polysystem approach, which was first introduced by Even-Zohar in the early 1970s, and which posits that the position of translated literature within the polysystem of a given culture determines the dominant translation orientations and strategies within that culture. The chapter ends with an illustration of how Toury’s dichotomy of adequacy and acceptability and Even-Zohar’s polysystems theory work in combination in a specifically Eastern culture, like that of Iran.
