Holmes's explanations of this framework (Holmes 1988bl2000: 176-81), the objectives of

the 'pure' areas of research are:

the description of the phenomena of translation (descriptive translation theory);
the establishment of general principles to explain and predict such phenomena (translation
theory).

The 'theoretical' branch is divided into general and partial theories. By 'general', Holmes is
referring to those writings that seek to describe or account for every type of translation and
to make generalizations that will be relevant for translation as a whole.
Descriptive translation studies (DTS) has three possible foci: examination of (1) the
product, (2) the function and (3) the process:

Product-oriented DTS, that area of research which describes existing translations, has
traditionally been an important area of academic research in Translation Studies.
This can involve the description or analysis of a single ST-TT pair or a comparative
analysis of several TTs of the same ST (into one or more TLs).
These smaller-scale studies can build up into a larger body of translation analysis looking
at a specific period, language or text discourse type. Larger-scale studies can be either
diachronic (following development over time) or synchronic (at a single point or period in
time) and, as Holmes (p. 177) foresees, 'one of the eventual goals of product-oriented DTS
might possibly be a general history of translations – however ambitious such a goal might
sound at this time'.

Function-oriented DTS is not interested in the description of translations in themselves,

but in the description of their function in the recipient socio-cultural situation: it is a study
of contexts rather than texts. Issues that may be researched include which books were
translated when and where, and what influences they exerted. This area, which Holmes
terms 'socio-translation studies' - but which would nowadays probably be called cultural
studies- oriented translation - was less researched at the time of Holmes's paper but is
more popular in current work on translation studies.

Process-oriented DTS concerns is concerned with the psychology of translation, i.e. it is

concerned with trying to find out what happens in the mind of a translator. Admittedly, the
process is an unusually complex one. it is to be hoped that in future this problem, too, will
be given closer attention, leading to an area of study that might be called translation
psychology or psycho-translation studies.

according to the medium that is used. Medium-restricted theories can be further

subdivided into theories of
translation as performed by humans (human translation), as performed by
computers(machine translation), and as performed by the two in conjunction (mixed or
machine-aided translation). Human translation breaks down into (and restricted theories or
‘theories’ have been developed for) oral translation or interpreting (with the further
distinction between consecutive and simultaneous) and written translation. Numerous
examples of valuable research into machine and machine-aided translation are no doubt
familiar to us all, and perhaps also several into oral human translation.
Area-restricted theories can be of two closely related kinds; restricted as to the languages
involved or, which is usually not quite the same, and occasionally hardly at all, as to the
cultures involved. In both cases, language restriction and culture restriction, the degree of
actual limitation can vary. Theories are feasible for translation between, say, French and
German (language-pair restricted theories) as opposed to translation within Slavic
languages (language-group restricted theories) or from Romance languages to Germanic
languages (language-group pair restricted theories).

Rank-restricted theories: There are rank-restricted theories, that is to say, theories that
deal with discourses or texts as wholes, but concern themselves with lower linguistic ranks
or levels. Rank-restricted theories are linguistic theories that have been restricted to a
specific level of (normally) the word or sentence. At the time Holmes was writing, there
was already a trend towards text linguistics, i.e. text rank analysis, which has since become
far more popular.

Text-type restricted theories look at specific discourse types or genres; e.g. literary,
business and technical translation. restricted theories, dealing with the problem of
translating specific types or genres of lingual messages. Authors and literary scholars have
long concerned themselves with the problems intrinsic to translating literary texts or
specific genres of literary texts; theologians, similarly, have devoted much attention to
questions of how to translate the Bible and other sacred works.

Time-restricted theories: The term time-restricted is self-explanatory, referring to

theories and translations limited according to specific time frames and periods. theories
regarding the translation of contemporary texts, and theories having to do with the
translation of texts from an older period. The history of translation falls into this category.

Problem-restricted
Finally, there are problem-restricted theories, theories which confine themselves to one or
more specific problems within the entire area of general translation theory, problem that
can range from such broad and basic questions as the limits of variance and invariance in
translation or the nature of translation equivalence (or, as I should prefer to call it,
translation matching) to such more specific matters as the translation of metaphors or of
proper names.

Despite this categorization, Holmes himself is at pains to point out that several different
restrictions can apply at any one time. Thus, the study of the translation of novels by the
contemporary Colombian novelist Gabriel
Garcia Mhrquez, analyzed in chapter 11, would be area restricted (translation from
Colombian Spanish into English and other languages, and between the Colombian culture
and the TL cultures), text-type restricted (novels and short stories) and time restricted.

The 'applied' branch of Holmes's framework concerns:

translator training: teaching methods, testing techniques, curriculum design;
 translation aids: such as dictionaries, grammars and information technology;
translation criticism: the evaluation of translations, including the marking of student
translations and the reviews of published translations.
Another area Holmes mentions is translation policy, where he sees the translation scholar
advising on the place of translation in society, including what place, if any, it should
occupy in the language teaching and learning curriculum.

Developments since the 1970s

The surge in translation studies since the 1970s has seen different areas of Holmes's map
come to the fore. Contrastive analysis has fallen by the wayside. The linguistic-oriented
'science' of translation has continued strongly in Germany, but the concept of equivalence
associated with it has declined. Germany has seen the rise of theories centered around text
types (Reiss; see chapter 5) and text purpose (the skopos theory of Reiss and Vermeer; see
chapter 5), while the Hallidayan influence of discourse analysis and systemic functional
grammar, which views language as a communicative act in a socio-cultural context, has
been prominent over the past decades, especially in Australia and the UK, and has been
applied to translation in a series of works
by scholars such as Be11 (1991), Baker (1992) and Hatim and Mason …
Mary….
Mona Baker …..

The 1990s saw the incorporation of new schools and concepts, with Canadian-based
translation and gender research led by Sherry Simon, the Brazilian cannibalist school
promoted by Else Vieira, postcolonial translation theory, with the prominent figures of the
Bengali scholars Tejaswini Niranjana and Gayatri Spivak and, in the USA, the cultural-
studies-oriented analysis of Lawrence Venuti, who champions the cause of the translator.

Although references are still to be found to the new or ‘emerging’ discipline (e.g. Riccardi
2002), since Holmes’s paper, Translation Studies has evolved to such an extent that it is
really a perfect interdiscipline, interfacing with a whole host of otherfields. The aim may
still be to describe translation phenomena, and in some cases to establish general
principles, but the methods of analysis are more varied and the cultural and ideological
features of translation have become as prominent as linguistics. Figure A1.1 illustrates the
breadth of contacts:
The richness of the field is also illustrated by areas for research suggested by Williams
and Chesterman (2002:6–27), which include:
1. Text analysis and translation
2. Translation quality assessment
3. Translation of literary and other genres
4. Multi-media translation (audiovisual translation)
5. Translation and technology
6. Translation history
7. Translation ethics
8. Terminology and glossaries
9. The translation process
10. Translator training
11. The characteristics of the translation profession

Group Work:
Give further examples of possible similar research