ABSTRACT
Orality is as complex and hard to define as translation. It is a term that is used very expansively to describe a vast range of linguistic productions, often even as “a synonym for ‘oral communication’ or ‘speech’”. Orality can remain a key component of the culture of traditional societies, even when they are fully literate and producing texts that might appear to fit within the dominant norms of written culture. Orality appeared as an English word in 1666 in a religious context, but that meaning changed radically in the 1760s, when ‘oral tradition’ appeared in a new secular sense, used in reference to early Homeric scholarship, as in Friedrich Wolf’s Prolegomena to Homer. Much early work on orality and literacy focused “on differences and on change”. Many scholars of orality see transcription or capture of an original performance as a primary form of translation. Among translation scholars, the question of orality has been addressed from different perspectives.
