I believe that course number 2-The Relationship between what is termed translation and what is termed original correctly

identifies the positive and negative aspects generated by translation as a re-writing of an original text. Sometimes reading a book may prove to be a daring adventure, of which most of the times we are completely unaware. Readers of translated novels forget that the text of the book is in fact the result of a translation process thus becoming mere slaves of the translator. Few readers accept the translator as a mediator between them and the writer. Taking this into consideration Derridas suggestion that translation becomes the original is entirely valid and plausible. If you come to think of it we are initiated in the universe of different cultures with the help of the translations of major authors. We may say that we draw our general knowledge of the world from translated novels, science books, and encyclopedias. From this point of view we can understand the power involved in this practice and all of the sudden the questions of exactness and quality of translation are very important. Language is the only social institution without which no other social institution can function. Translation, involves the transposition of thoughts expressed in one language by one social group into the appropriate expression of another group at a given time and in a given place, entailing a process of cultural de-coding, re-coding and en-coding. Translation has a particular meaning only for a particular social group at a different time in the evolution of the world and of the culture so there is no doubt that translations are textual artefacts whose functions are inscribed in the particular social culture that hosts them. Concerning the Translation Studies, I would like to underline just as the final course did, the fact that nowadays it is facing an interdisciplinary problem. Yves Gambier described the coherence of Translation Studies as a possible co-errance, the state of various disciplines getting lost together. Gambier nevertheless names the very real problem of interdisciplinarity, although he seems to offer no immediate solution. However the course did not mention that, a solution was proposed for this problem: Translation Studies, like translation itself, should be seen as a social problem-solving activity. And the stability of our interdiscipline would then require work on definitions of the problems to be solved, a task which has not yet been undertaken effectively. There are several benefits involved. The most obvious is that the problem may be relatively independent of disciplinary locations, and possible solutions may be sought in any number of old or new sciences. If, for example, we want to measure the extent to which people trust a particular mode of translation, what particular discipline should we place ourselves in? The definition of trust would require philosophical inquiry; its operationality 1

would need some kind of psycholinguistics; the selection of a population assumes sociology; empirical methodology is nowadays a discipline of its own; the definition of translation might even require some translatology, and so on. The problem exists independently of the disciplines that can be used to solve it. Needless to say, Translation Studies currently struggles to recognize such problems; it thus has remarkably few conceptual tools for working on them. But the first step is to insist on the general form of problem-solving as a way to approach such things. To propose solutions to a social problem means trying to help someone. To solve problems is to propose solutions, to someone, in the hope that some kind of improvement might result.