Reading Nord's Translating as a Purposeful Activity (1997/2018), and earlier works of Reiss and Vermeer in the 1970s and 198s, it came to my mind that issues such as the importance of cultural and social factors in translation, and agency of human actors in translation, where made prominent by the approach, even before the social and cultural turns were around the corner.
The question is, why didn't Skopostheorie and its affiliated approaches gain further ground, and grow outward to focus on sociocultural issues in more details? They expanded our scope of translation one (or more) notch(es), but seems to have failed/been reluctant, to take translation conceptualization beyond the communicative action to introduce it as a social or cultural action.
If further informed by theories of sociology and culture, Skopostheorie could have become the most important TS theory.
Any ideas?
Dear Ali,
I think what you say is pretty convincing, but maybe the problem with Skopos was inherent in its conceptualisation of the whole process of translation: its greatest strength was its greatest weakness. What I mean is that Skopos offered the huge advantage of making translation do-able, suggesting an approach which reduced the potentially infinite questions any translation poses to a clear goal, and simplifying the means to get there. But this came with a defect: by definition a Skopos approach demands an unequivocal decision as to what the purpose of a particular text is, or will be, but this necessitates making a decision about the social values involved and, most of all, the pragmatics, all of which might well lack the complexity and nuance of the real text and its translations. In other words, by making a Skopos translation we risk producing a version which doesn't seem particularly 'good' to the average user, because it is not subtle enough to allow for the social complexities any speaker or reader will deal with almost instinctively.
I personally think that Skopos is more important than people give it credit for, and is actually a pretty good description of what happens in some translating contexts. It is applicable to many (commercial) contexts.
On another level, maybe a series of rules and simplficiations also risks being rather unattractive to the intelligent community that translators by definition are.
Phew! I hope this makes sense to you: I have just realised that I haven't expressed myself very clearly and I apolgise. I am glad I don't have to translate this answer!
Dear Ali,
I think what you say is pretty convincing, but maybe the problem with Skopos was inherent in its conceptualisation of the whole process of translation: its greatest strength was its greatest weakness. What I mean is that Skopos offered the huge advantage of making translation do-able, suggesting an approach which reduced the potentially infinite questions any translation poses to a clear goal, and simplifying the means to get there. But this came with a defect: by definition a Skopos approach demands an unequivocal decision as to what the purpose of a particular text is, or will be, but this necessitates making a decision about the social values involved and, most of all, the pragmatics, all of which might well lack the complexity and nuance of the real text and its translations. In other words, by making a Skopos translation we risk producing a version which doesn't seem particularly 'good' to the average user, because it is not subtle enough to allow for the social complexities any speaker or reader will deal with almost instinctively.
I personally think that Skopos is more important than people give it credit for, and is actually a pretty good description of what happens in some translating contexts. It is applicable to many (commercial) contexts.
On another level, maybe a series of rules and simplficiations also risks being rather unattractive to the intelligent community that translators by definition are.
Phew! I hope this makes sense to you: I have just realised that I haven't expressed myself very clearly and I apolgise. I am glad I don't have to translate this answer!
Most translation scholars argue that the theory is not only prescriptive but also dethrones the Source Language text its original flavor.it focuses on the Target audience at the expense of Source Language meaning
It is true that the Skopos theory did not dominate TS, but it is also true that it has proivded an objective description of what really happens before and during the translation process. We cann't throw the baby with the bath water; after all, TS is an idependent field of knowledge which, like any other disciplines, integrates diverse theoretical backgrounds from different fields of knowledge as it continues to prosper and grow.
Richard Chapman
Hi Richard,
Thanks a lot for taking the time to explain this in detail. I think Skopostheorie helped Translation Studies a great deal by removing fetters placed there by linguistic theory (quoting from Vermeer:
Linguistics alone won’t help us. First, because translating is not merely and not even primarily a linguistic process. Secondly, because linguistics has not yet formulated the right questions to tackle our problems. So let’s look somewhere else. (1987a:29)
However, at the same time, it limited itself in at least two ways: by orientation towards the prescriptive extreme (how translation should be conditioned by skopos, agents etc.), and ignoring the descriptive potential their new outlook could have, and by limiting themselves to the context of situation, and paying less attention to context of culture and sociocultural factors. To use a metaphor from a friend, it was like owning a Ferrari (theory liberated from the bonds of linguistics) and using it to deliver potato bags (everyday translation chores).
So I agree with you that it acted reductively, and that it could have developed in a more fruitful way, e.g. establishing a link the linguistic and non-linguistic theories.
Lamis Ismail Omar
Hi Ms. Omar. I agree with you that Translation Studies should not be dominated under one theory (however, scholars like Chesterman have floated the idea of a single 'paradigm' in Translation Studies.) Perhaps if I wanted to make myself more clear, I could have said that if there were to be candidates among translation theories for being known as the basic theory of the field, Skopostheorie, because of its generality, could have been the leading candidate.
This would not mean rejection of other theories and approaches, but perhaps their integration within this theory. But that is now a view speculated in hindsight, as Skopostheorie does not enjoy the position in TS it had three decades ago.
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