Name:

Hafiz Muhammad Arshad

Roll No.
LHE2015

Class
BS 7thEnglish (Evening)

National University of Modern Languages Lahore

  HISTORY OF TRANSLATION STUDIES

            Studying history of translation shows us that translation is a basic human activity that has
been going on since language began to evolve and is affected by numbers of external events.
History of Translation Studies is very important and obviously has a very big impact on the
discipline; therefore it is worth to know how it has emerged in different parts of the Europe.

 In the twentieth century, studies on translation started to be an important course in language
teaching and learning at schools. A lot of new translation methods and models of translation
appeared. For example, the grammar-translation method analyzed the grammatical rules and
structures of foreign languages. The cultural model required in translation a cultural
understanding of the way people in different societies think, not only a word-for-word, or sense-
for-sense substitution.

Another model that appeared in that time was text-based translation model. It was focused on
the text rather than words or sentences in translation. The period is also characterized by
pragmatic and systematic approach to the study of translation. The most famous figures that
marked the twenties are Jean-Paul Vinay and Darbelnet, Alfred Malblanc, George Mounin, John
C. Catford, and Eugene Nida. Each of the above and even a few more linguists should be
included in my work, but due to limited space I decided to describe in few sentences Eugene
Nida who has been a pioneer in the fields of translation theory and linguistics.

Nida  developed the dynamic-equivalence Bible-translation theory and he  was one of the

founders of the modern discipline of Translation Studies. The main idea of the dynamic-
equivalence theory was that the translator should translate so that the effect of the translation on
the target reader is roughly the same as the effect of the source text once was on the source
reader.
Nowadays, translation research started to take another path, which is more automatic. The
invention of the Internet, and other development in communication, has increased cultural
exchanges between nations. This led translators to look for ways to cope with these changes and
to utilize practical techniques that enable them to translate more and waste less. They also felt
the need to enter the world of cinematographic translation, hence the birth of audio-visual
translation. The latter technique, also called screen translation, is concerned with the translation
of all kinds of TV programs, including films, series, and documentaries. This area is based on
computers and translation software programs, and it is concerned with two methods: dubbing and
subtitling. In fact, audio-visual translation marks a turning point in the field of translation.

Post-colonialism is one of the most thriving points of contact between Cultural Studies and
Translation Studies. Translation is here theorized as a cultural political practice that might be
strategic in bringing about social change. In 1993, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak was the one who
introduced post colonialism, constituting a feminist intervention into postcolonial translation
issues. It can be defined as a broad cultural approach to the study of power relations between
different groups, cultures or peoples in which language, literature and translation may play a role
(Hatim and Munday, 2004, p. 106). Spivak‟s work is indicative of how cultural studies and
especially post-colonialism has over the past decade focused on issues of translation, the
translational and colonization. The key concept used by Spivak is „translatese‟. This term refers
to a lifeless form of TL that homogenizes the different ST authors. Spivak criticizes the lifeless
translates that comes from a translator third-world feminist texts who is not fully at one with the
rhethoricity of the language in question.

In short, translation has a very rich history. Since the beginning, translation was the subject of
controversy among theorists. Each theorist approaches it from his own ideology and field of
study, the fact which gives its history a changing quality.