must be made between translator and interpreter. And this has to be done on the following grounds: Interpreting would be more concerned with “business matters”, translation more with the domains of ?science? and ?art? (i.e. of philosophy and literature). This distinction is confirmed by another one: interpreting is essentially oral, translation essentially written. These distinctions depend on mere common sense, and he attempts to base them on another, more essential distinction: the distinction of the objective and the subjective. Everywhere the author appears as the mere servant of an objective content, there is interpreting--oral or written. Everywhere he tries to express himself, in the field of ?science? or ?art?, there is translation.
It is the responsibility of the translator to transmit those works of science and art that make up the historical life of a language. He puts forward 2 methods to do translation: either the translator leaves the author in peace, as much as possible, and moves the reader towards him; or he leaves the reader in peace, as much as possible, and moves the author towards him.
His preference is for the former, moving toward the writer: “If the target-language readers are to understand, they must grasp the spirit of the language native to the author, they must be able to gaze upon the author?s imitable patterns of thinking and meaning; but the only
tools that the translator can offer them in pursuit of these goals are their own language, which nowhere quite corresponds to the author?s, and his own person, his own inconsistently clear understanding of, and vacillating admiration for, the author.” (ibid.: 228-9)
His influence on translation studies is enormous. Munday (2001:28) notes the statement of Kittel and Polterman that “practically every modern translation theory—at least in the German language area—responds, in one way or another, to Schleiermacher?s hypotheses.”
W. von Humboldt, a great figure of German classicism but in touch with all the tendencies of his time, devotes his whole life to an activity that borders on philosophy, literature and philology, but that can only be defined as a constant concern with language. The ideas introduced into Germany and, at least, a complementary document to his works on linguistic theory.
The first fact of which he becomes aware in his experience as a translator is the difficulty and even the impossibility of establishing equivalence between two languages, however closely related these may be. No word of any language is totally equivalent to the corresponding word in the other, for a fundamental fact of linguistic connotation is expressed in one language and hardly reproduced or translated into another language. Only words which denote objective
realities can establish any kind of equivalence. Humboldt is so convinced of this ?impossible? situation that he even postulates the aporetical nature of the basic virtue in the spiritual matrimony into which the translator enters with the text: fidelity. The more the translator strives to force the text into a mathematically calculated accuracy in establishing equivalence, the more he diverges from this intended fidelity.
For him, he aims and uses of translation are : 1)
to make known the original to those who lack the relevant linguistic knowledge;
2) 3)
to acquire an in-depth knowledge of the text; to enter into the spirit of the work once one has mastered the words of same.
Of all these uses, the last is the most important, for the best translation s the one which destroys itself. The quality of a translation will depend on each of the above-mentioned aims to which one gives primacy. The translation that merely endeavors to make the work known to the reader will demand an adaptation to the linguistic levels of the latter, which will in certain cases entail a deviation from strict fidelity to the original text. When a knowledge of the text prevails, the translator must be governed by literal fidelity,
and in the third case, he will have to sacrifice fidelity to meaning.
4. Western Translation Studies in Modern Times
The 20th century witnessed a radical change in Western translation studies. In fact, 5 developments have had a significant effect on the theory and practice of translation during the 20th century:\\ 1) rapid development of structural linguistics;
2) application of methods in structural linguistics to deal with special problems of translation;
3) the United Bible societies, which conducted international conference of translation and began publishing a quarterly journal (Bible translation), for which they were in close contact with linguists;
4) publication of “Babel”, which helps translators get to know about new tools and aids and become aware of the changing conditions; 5) the development of various projects on machine translation which has progressed through different phases and provided us with important insights into semantic theory and of structural design.
At the start of the 20th century, Schleiermacher and Humboldt?s ideas were rethought from the vantage point of modernist movements which prized experiments with literary form as a way of revitalizing
culture. And the main trends in translation studies in the next tow decades were also rooted in German literary and philosophical traditions,
in
romanticism,
hermeneutics,
and
existential
phenomenology. Translation theories at this time assumed that since language is not so much communicative as constitutive in its representation of thought and reality, translation is seen as an interpretation which necessarily reconstitutes and transforms the foreign text. Translation is a focus of theoretical speculation and formal innovation.
5. Development since the 1970s
According to Bassnett (1998:108-11), one simple way of understanding the changes and developments in translation studies during the last three decades of the 20th century is through the application of keywords to specific periods. The keyword of the 1970s is history; in 1980s culture and in 1990s visibility
In fact, the surge in translation studies since the 1970s has witnessed different areas of Holmes? map come to the fore.(Munday,2004:14) The linguistic-oriented ?science? of translation has continued strongly in Germany, but equivalence-based theories gradually have come under attack and begun to give way to function-oriented translation research, which nowadays takes into