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Article published In:
Target
Vol. 10:2 (1998) ► pp.231–266

What Is a Translating Translator Doing?

| Government of Canada Translation Bureau and York University School of Translation

Translating is here defined as the quoting, in sequential chunks, of the wording of a written, oral or signed text, with an imitative purpose. These features distinguish it from other sorts of language activity—intralingual paraphrasing, re-expressing of ideas, fictive quoting, speaking from a script, ghostwriting—and thus provide an object for a theory of translation production. The defining feature 'quoting ' is taken to involve demonstrating to someone selected features of the source text. Thus the translational quoter is engaged in a dual activity: quoting OF the source text (rendering work) and quoting TO the readers or listeners (pragmatic work). The texts commonly called translations arise from some combination of rendering, pragmatic and non-translational work.

Article outline
  • 1.Defining Translation: Five Criteria and Four Deadends
  • 2.Translating Is Quoting
    • 2.1.The Translator as Rapporteur
    • 2.2.Indirect Reporting, Exact-words Quoting, Fictive Quoting and Free Direct Quoting
  • 3.Translational Rewording Is Sequential
  • 4.Translating Has an Imitative Purpose
  • 5.The Interlinguality of Translating
  • 6.The Duality of Translational Quoting
    • 6.1.Rendering
    • 6.2.Pragmatic Work
    • 6.3.The Primacy of Rendering
  • 7.Philosophical Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 1 January 1998
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/target.10.2.03mos
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