A simplified view of the translation process
Anna Gil Bardají, Doctor of Translation and Cultural Studies, has conducted a review of studies done on translation process operators. According to the researcher, there is confusing terminology that makes the study of translation difficult at holistic level, and thus proposes an innovative classification of translation process operators, simplifying the way to approach it from two different perspectives: terminology and concept.
The focus of this article is to bring together, analyze and classify various studies on the operations performed by a translator during the transfer process from one language to another. Within the field of translation theory, these operations have been researched from a wide range of perspectives and have been assigned a multitude of labels, among which we have procedures, techniques, strategies, processes, methods, etc. In this article I refer to them under the generic name of “translation process operators”.
The confusing use of terminology and concepts has encouraged the fragmentation of a branch of translation research that proves to be more homogenous than may appear at first sight. For quite some time there has been a tendency to divorce procedures of comparative stylistics from the strategies studied in the field of psycholinguistics, when in fact, as I see it, we are talking about parts of the same reality, that is, of the operations performed by the translator while translating.
The first part of my article draws on and analyses the overwhelming profusion of terms and concepts concerning translation process operators, based on the most commonly used notions employed by many scholars. In the second part, I put forward a proposal for classifying these operators from two different perspectives: terminology and concept.
References
"Procedures, techniques, strategies: translation process operators" Gil-Bardají, Anna. PERSPECTIVES-STUDIES IN TRANSLATOLOGY, 17 (3): 161-173 2009.
