DiscussionExtending the Theory of Translation to Interpretation: Norms as a Case in Point
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Research into the nature and role of norms in translation, which began in earnest in the mid-seventies, has led to new ways of looking at some of the key concepts associated with translation and with translation studies, chief among them perhaps the relationships between target and source texts and items subsumed under "equivalence". These discussions—both of norms and of equivalence (in the abstract as well as concrete sense)—have, however, generally been confined to written (especially literary) translation. The present paper represents an attempt to launch a discussion aimed at examining the possibility of extending the notion of translational norms to (oral) interpretation; to be precise, it attempts to pinpoint those factors which encumber both the formation and the extrapolation of norms for interpretation, and examines the validity of subsuming these under the existing discussions of norms in (written) translation.