Chapter 07.

Systems theories
0:02
Chapter 7 is called Systems Theories,

0:08
but the centrepiece

0:12
of the chapter is Descriptive Translation Studies.

0:17
In essence,…

0:19
… the question that's being posed is:

0:23
“What happens when we try to link up all these smaller studies

0:28
of individual

0:31
translations?”.

0:35
If you've done an analysis of the

0:38
translation of

0:42
George Orwell's 1984, for example,

0:47
from English into

0:50
another language,

0:53
let's say
0:54
French,

0:58
you do that analysis,

1:01
you have your findings,

1:04
and then someone comes along and says

1:06
“So what?

1:08
What does this show us?”

1:11
The beauty of Descriptive Translation Studies

1:16
is that it provides a means to

1:19
compare. Not, totally objectively. There's some subjectivity in this type of analysis, as always, but it
allows you to compare

1:31
translations

1:33
of different texts at different points in history, or at the same point.

1:39
So it allows you, in

1:44
the case I've heard referred to, Orwell's translation, if you compare the translation into French with the
translation

1:52
into German, into any other language that it's been translated into, if you can speak those languages
or read them.
2:02
It also allows

2:04
the French translation to be compared with another French translation, if there is one.

2:10
It allows some comparison with other political texts.

2:15
At the same time or at different times in the same country or region or in different countries.

2:24
So it provides a framework, thanks to Gideon Toury.

2:30
And it….

2:32
The whole point is to find

2:34
generalisations in translation

2:38
as to what tends to get shifted,

2:41
what is shifted, rather, than an individual case,

2:46
and to try and tease out

2:50
what Toury calls the

2:53
“probabilistic laws”

2:55
of translation, what tendencies.

3:00
What tends to happen, as Toury
3:04
ventured, was that there is interference from

3:09
source text to target text,

3:13
though this may vary according to the languages and the status of the languages.

3:21
And there's a law of “growing standardisation”:.

3:24
Words tend to be selected at different levels in the translation, so if you've got someone toiling away,

3:33
this may become working hard

3:36
in the target text.

3:40
So, you’ve got all of these links that have been made

3:44
and Descriptive Translation Studies

3:48
provides a framework, as I said.

3:51
And that is the reference

3:54

3:56
which we need to come to

3:59
at the end of the chapter.