REVIEWS

Hans J. Vermeer. A Skopos Theory of Translation: (Some Arguments

For and Against). Heidelberg: TEXTconTEXT-Verlag, 1996. 136 pp.
ISBN 3-9805370-0-5. DM 32,-. [Wissenschaft, 1.]

What should a general theory of translation look like? This slim volume is a discus-
sion of one possible answer: Vermeer's skopos theory, positing the skopos (goal,
purpose) as the ultimate cause of a translator's action. Most work on this theory has so
far been in German, and this long essay in English now makes the central ideas
accessible to a wider audience. (The book also contains a number of untranslated
quotations in several Indo-European languages.) The essay is the first in a series of
four (the others are in German) in which Vermeer presents his main tenets and relates
the theory to wider cultural and philosophical issues. It opens with a brief summary of
the main skopos theses, discusses some criticisms and assesses some other candidates
for a general theory of translation, in particular those based on concepts of equiva-
lence, relevance or loyalty.
Skopos theory places the translator — not the relation between source and target
text — at the centre. As is well known, Vermeer's frame of reference is close to that of
Holz-Mänttäri (e.g. 1984): both see translation in terms of action theory, and as a
process involving a number of other actors apart from the actual translator. Like all
actions, translation is goal-directed, it is determined by the skopos. Skopos is usefully
distinguished from function and intention as follows (pp. 7-8): the skopos is the
purpose ascribed to the translation by the translator: it is thus a property of the
translation itself. The function of a translation is inferred and ascribed to the transla-
tion by a recipient. Intentions are manifested primarily by actors — by the source-text
producer, the sender or the translator. Skopos, function and intention may or may not
coincide.
Vermeer reduces the theory to eight theses, which can be summarized as follows
(Chapter 2):
1. All acting presupposes a point of departure on the part of the actor.
2. All acting is goal-oriented.

Target 10:1 (1998), 155–159. DOI 10.1075/target.l0.1.09che

ISSN 0924–1884 / E-ISSN 1569–9986 © John Benjamins Publishing Company
156 REVIEWS

3. An actor selects the action that appears best justified for a given purpose
under given circumstances.
4. An actor performs the selected action to reach the intended goal in the
optimal way.
5. All translating is acting.
6. This applies to all types of translation.
7. It is the skopos of the translation that determines how all the other relevant
factors are taken into consideration (factors which include source text, recipi-
ents' conditions, commissioner's conditions, time, etc.).
8. It is the skopos that determines the translation strategy for reaching the
intended goal.
The antitheses mentioned in Chapter 3 are, in my view, straw men only (e.g. that
literary translation has no real skopos...): Vermeer has discussed several of these
before, in English as well (e.g. in Vermeer 1989).
These basic theses or assumptions highlight a number of points. One is that the
influence of the source text is subject to the skopos: the source text is not a dominating
factor unless the skopos so determines. Any concept of equivalence is thus also
dependent on, and secondary to, the skopos. Further, a given skopos may require the
translator to design a target text that does not correspond to the surface structure of the
source at all: Vermeer wishes to include all such re-writings within the scope of his
translation concept. One consequence of skopos theory is thus to enlarge the concept
of translation itself, and hence also the concept of the translator's role. Moreover, a
translator should have the freedom to design the target text not only in accordance
with the agreed skopos but also with his/her own coherent interpretation of the source
text.
Vermeer evidently sees relevance theory, as applied to translation by Gutt
(1991), as a potential rival. He discusses the relation between the two theories in some
detail, but the conclusion is clear: relevance, like equivalence, is secondary to skopos,
for a given action is only relevant if it is relevant to a given skopos. Relevance theory
is thus a subtheory of skopos theory (p. 65), explaining certain aspects of how actors
communicate.
Nord's concept of loyalty also comes in for a rather involved discussion.
Vermeer would prefer to keep ethical issues outside the scope of a general theory (p.
107). He thinks that Nord's concept gives too much weight to the source text, and that
it does not deal adequately with cases where various loyalties (to source text, target
readers, commissioner's conditions, etc.) clash. He stresses the difficulty of relating
loyalty to the text-producer's or sender's intention. Skopos theory avoids these
problems, by providing a higher standpoint from which conflicting loyalties can be
resolved, and by allowing the translator to disregard the source-text producer's or the
sender's intentions if necessary, although such disregard would have to be explicitly
stated (p. 105). The skopos is thus defended as the highest-ranking factor governing
the translator's action.
 REVIEWS 157

There is also some mention of early work by Toury, but this part is outdated by
Toury (1995), which Vermeer acknowledges in a postscript. He recognizes that
Toury's approach now comes closer to his own in many respects.
So what do we have? Yes, it makes good intuitive sense to argue that translators
translate according to their conception of the translation skopos. Vermeer admits that
this is not a new idea. But what new knowledge or insights do we gain by thus
describing the act of translation? I think there are some genuine benefits, but also
some serious problems.
On the plus side, skopos theory can certainly encourage us to see translation in a
wider perspective, not just one that encompasses linguistic relations between source
and target texts. It is didactically useful. It also accords the translator greater freedom
of action (provided that this freedom is accepted by the commissioner...) — in theory
at least, this means the freedom to treat the source text in any way that serves the
skopos. Translators can thus appeal to the skopos to justify their decisions and
strategies — provided that this skopos has been agreed upon by the various parties
concerned. Bad translations, on this view, are simply those that fail to meet the
skopos, for whatever reason; or else those where the skopos assumed by the translator
conflicts unacceptably with the one intended by the commissioner or with the function
inferred by the recipient.
On the other hand: in elevating Aristotle's final (teleological) cause to the
highest status, Vermeer has to demote the other basic kinds of cause (material, formal,
efficient). This elevation runs several risks. By thus tilting the balance, it seems to take
a step away from empirical reality. (It is actually odd that this essay does not raise the
whole issue of causality in human action. The detailed subject index has no entry for
"causation", nor for "explanation".) I think that one such risk is the ambiguity as to
whether the theory is explaining the actions of real translators or ideal ones. At
several points, Vermeer uses expressions such as "skopos theory says that each
translational act must obey its purpose" (p. 97), "Skopos theory demands that a
translator always acts optimally (under manifest circumstances) in order to optimally
fulfil the commission in question" (p. 67). At other points, he is careful to introduce
reservations (because of the inevitable prevailing circumstances, "it will not always
be possible to produce a 'really' optimal text"..., p. 100). Moreover, in real life
translators are manifestly influenced by several other causes apart from final ones,
whatever hierarchy one chooses to put them in. We can ask translators why they wrote
such-and-such, for instance (although Vermeer points out that intentions — and
presumably also causes — need not be conscious), and we can expect many other
kinds of answers too, apart from references to the skopos. Interference, for instance, is
an everyday phenomenon that may take place in spite of an explicit skopos to the
effect that it should not. Vermeer's level of abstraction seems to locate skopos theory
in an ideal world, unsullied by any of the practical mess of everyday moods and
deadlines and human fallibility, and the overall effect of this idealization is often a
prescriptive one. In fact, Vermeer states (p. 26, footnote) that "As a functional theory
158 REVIEWS

[skopos theory] does not strictly distinguish between description and (didactic) pre-
scription".
If the theory is intended to be an empirical one, how could it be tested? Better:
how could it be falsified? What sort of counter-evidence would we need? Should we
look for a translation that is not skopos-determined? Or one that is not the result of an
action? Neither method seems very promising (despite Vermeer's discussion of some
"antitheses"). Rather, it seems that skopos theory expresses a self-evident intuition in
general philosophical terms (note that only four of the main theses actually mention
translation at all). In a nutshell, this might be formulated as a syllogism:
All actions are goal-oriented (by definition).
Translating is an action.
Therefore translating is goal-oriented.
How could skopos theory then bring us new knowledge about translation? As I see it,
the only way to do this is to ground the theory in empirical data, so that we can make
and test hypotheses in the usual way. For instance, given a skopos S and circum-
stances C, we might predict that translators (of type T) will tend to produce target-
texts characterized by features F. Or: given a source text and circumstances C, and
translators of two types A and B, we might hypothesize that translator-type A will
interpret a skopos S in such-and such a way, and translator-type B in another way. And
so on. We can then go ahead and test such predictions, and enlarge our knowledge
about translation action accordingly. The skopos simply becomes one experimental
variable, among many others.
I stress this point, because Vermeer repeatedly emphasizes that skopos theory is
maximally general, not affected by culture-specific limitations of any kind, let alone
other restricting circumstances. But it is only in relation to actual culture-specific
translation activity (including the ethical dimension, in my view) that the theory can
generate testable empirical hypotheses. And one criterion of a good empirical theory
is that it does generate such hypotheses.
Despite its slim size, Vermeer's book is not an easy read. The discussion is often
pitched at an extremely abstract level, with frequent digressions, conceptual specifica-
tions and extensive footnotes. This makes for a rather dense style. Some sections
remain unclear to me, even after several readings (especially in Chapter 8). Some of
the excursions seem hardly worth it (skopos theory is a relative theory, but only
relatively relative, not absolutely... [pp. 24-26]; ultimately, no translator ever deals
with "real" objects, only with perceptions and interpretations of them..., p. 28). Some
details surprise because of what they omit: a mention of the Gesetz der wachsenden
Glieder (p. 109) gives us the French term and footnotes to Quintilian and Finnish, but
omits the standard English term: the principle of end weight. The subsections and
subsubsections are sometimes confusing, so that one then loses sight of the larger
picture, particularly in the discussion of loyalty. Paragraphs are not indicated by
indentation nor by line spaces, only by new line-beginnings: I found this visually
 REVIEWS 159

tiring. There are very few misprints: one that caught my eye was a wrong reference:
Vermeer 1981 (on p. 60) should be 1982.
In short, this is no introductory text. But it is nevertheless a useful and provoca-
tive one for scholars who are interested in these metatheoretical issues.

References

Gutt, Ernst-August. 1991. Translation and Relevance: Cognition and Context. Oxford:
Blackwell.
Holz-Mänttäri, Justa. 1984. Translatorisches Handeln: Theorie und Methode. Helsinki:
Suomalainen Tiedeakate1ia.
Toury, Gideon. 1995. Descriptive Translation Studies and beyond. Amsterdam-Philadel-
phia: John Benjamins.
Vermeer, Hans J. 1989. "Skopos and Commission in Translational Action". Andrew
Chesterman, ed. Readings in Translation Theory. Helsinki: Finnlectura, 1989. 173-200.

Andrew Chesterman (Helsinki)