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Chapter 13
James S.Holmes
THE NAME AND NATURE OF
TRANSLATION STUDIES 1
1.1
S CIENCE”, MICHAEL MULKAY points out, “tends to proceed by means of
discovery of new areas of ignorance.” 2 The process by which this takes place
has been fairly well defined by the sociologists of science and research. 3 As a new
problem or set of problems comes into view in the world of learning, there is an
influx of researchers from adjacent areas, bringing with them the paradigms and
models that have proved fruitful in their own fields. These paradigms and models
are then brought to bear on the new problem, with one of two results. In some
situations the problem proves amenable to explicitation, analysis, explication, and
at least partial solution within the bounds of one of the paradigms or models, and
in that case it is annexed as a legitimate branch of an established field of study. In
other situations the paradigms or models fail to produce sufficient results, and
researchers become aware that new methods are needed to approach the problem.
In this second type of situation, the result is a tension between researchers
investigating the new problem and colleagues in their former fields, and this tension
can gradually lead to the establishment of new channels of communication and the
development of what has been called a new disciplinary utopia, that is, a new sense
of a shared interest in a common set of problems, approaches, and objectives on the
part of a new grouping of researchers. As W.O.Hagstrom has indicated, these two
steps, the establishment of communication channels and the development of a
disciplinary Utopia, “make it possible for scientists to identify with the emerging
discipline and to claim legitimacy for their point of view when appealing to
university bodies or groups in the larger society.” 4
1972
“
THE NAME AND NATURE OF TRANSLATION STUDIES 173
1.2
Though there are no doubt a few scholars who would object, particularly among
the linguists, it would seem to me clear that in regard to the complex of problems
clustered round the phenomenon of translating and translations, 5 the second situation
now applies. After centuries of incidental and desultory attention from a scattering
of authors, philologians, and literary scholars, plus here and there a theologian or
an idiosyncratic linguist, the subject of translation has enjoyed a marked and
constant increase in interest on the part of scholars in recent years, with the Second
World War as a kind of turning point. As this interest has solidified and expanded,
more and more scholars have moved into the field, particularly from the adjacent
fields of linguistics, linguistic philosophy, and literary studies, but also from such
seemingly more remote disciplines as information theory, logic, and mathematics,
each of them carrying with him paradigms, quasi-paradigms, models, and
methodologies that he felt could be brought to bear on this new problem.
At first glance, the resulting situation today would appear to be one of great
confusion, with no consensus regarding the types of models to be tested, the kinds of
methods to be applied, the varieties of terminology to be used. More than that,
there is not even likemindedness about the contours of the field, the problem set, the
discipline as such. Indeed, scholars are not so much as agreed on the very name for
the new field.
Nevertheless, beneath the superficial level, there are a number of indications
that for the field of research focusing on the problems of translating and translations
Hagstrom’s disciplinary Utopia is taking shape. If this is a salutary development
(and I believe that it is), it follows that it is worth our while to further the development
by consciously turning our attention to matters that are serving to impede it.
1.3
One of these impediments is the lack of appropriate channels of communication.
For scholars and researchers in the field, the channels that do exist still tend to run
via the older disciplines (with their attendant norms in regard to models, methods,
and terminology), so that papers on the subject of translation are dispersed over
periodicals in a wide variety of scholarly fields and journals for practising
translators. It is clear that there is a need for other communication channels, cutting
across the traditional disciplines to reach all scholars working in the field, from
whatever background.
2.1
But I should like to focus our attention on two other impediments to the
development of a disciplinary Utopia. The first of these, the lesser of the two in
importance, is the seemingly trivial matter of the name for this field of research.
It would not be wise to continue referring to the discipline by its subject matter as
174 JAMES S.HOLMES
has been done at this conference, for the map, as the General Semanticists
constantly remind us, is not the territory, and failure to distinguish the two can
only further confusion.
Through the years, diverse terms have been used in writings dealing with
translating and translations, and one can find references in English to “the art” or
“the craft” of translation, but also to the “principles” of translation, the
“fundamentals” or the “philosophy”. Similar terms recur in French and German.
In some cases the choice of term reflects the attitude, point of approach, or
background of the writer; in others it has been determined by the fashion of the
moment in scholarly terminology.
There have been a few attempts to create more “learned” terms, most of them
with the highly active disciplinary suffix -ology. Roger Goffin, for instance, has
suggested the designation “translatology” in English, and either its cognate or
traductologie in French. 6 But since the -ology suffix derives from Greek, purists
reject a contamination of this kind, all the more so when the other element is not
even from Classical Latin, but from Late Latin in the case of translatio or
Renaissance French in that of traduction . Yet Greek alone offers no way out, for
“metaphorology”, “metaphraseology”, or “metaphrastics” would hardly be of aid
to us in making our subject clear even to university bodies, let alone to other
“groups in the larger society.” 7 Such other terms as “translatistics” or “translistics”,
both of which have been suggested, would be more readily understood, but hardly
more acceptable.
2.21
Two further, less classically constructed terms have come to the fore in recent
years. One of these began its life in a longer form, “the theory of translating” or
“the theory of translation” (and its corresponding forms: “Theorie des Übersetzens”,
“théorie de la traduction”). In English (and in German) it has since gone the way of
many such terms, and is now usually compressed into “translation theory”
(Übersetzungstheorie). It has been a productive designation, and can be even more
so in future, but only if it is restricted to its proper meaning. For, as I hope to make
clear in the course of this paper, there is much valuable study and research being
done in the discipline, and a need for much more to be done, that does not, strictly
speaking, fall within the scope of theory formation.
2.22
The second term is one that has, to all intents and purposes, won the field in
German as a designation for the entire discipline. 8 This is the term
Übersetzungswissenschaft, constructed to form a parallel to Sprachwissenschaft,
Literaturwissenschaft, and many other Wissenschoften . In French, the comparable
designation, “science de la traduction”, has also gained ground, as have parallel
terms in various other languages.
THE NAME AND NATURE OF TRANSLATION STUDIES 175
One of the first to use a parallel-sounding term in English was Eugene Nida,
who in 1964 chose to entitle his theoretical handbook Towards a Science of
Translating . 9 It should be noted, though, that Nida did not intend the phrase as a
name for the entire field of study, but only for one aspect of the process of translating
as such. 10 Others, most of them not native speakers of English, have been more
bold, advocating the term “science of translation” (or “translation science”) as the
appropriate designation for this emerging discipline as a whole. Two years ago this
recurrent suggestion was followed by something like canonization of the term when
Bausch, Klegraf, and Wilss took the decision to make it the main title to their
analytical bibliography of the entire field. 11
It was a decision that I, for one, regret. It is not that I object to the term
Übersetzungswissenschaft, for there are few if any valid arguments against that
designation for the subject in German. The problem is not that the discipline is not a
Wissenschaft, but that not all Wissenschaften can properly be called sciences. Just as
no one today would take issue with the terms Sprachwissenschaft and
Literaturwissenschaft, while more than a few would question whether linguistics has
yet reached a stage of precision, formalization, and paradigm formation such that it
can properly be described as a science, and while practically everyone would agree
that literary studies are not, and in the foreseeable future will not be, a science in any
true sense of the English word, in the same way I question whether we can with any
justification use a designation for the study of translating and translations that places
it in the company of mathematics, physics, and chemistry, or even biology, rather
than that of sociology, history, and philosophy—or for that matter of literary studies.
2.3
There is, however, another term that is active in English in the naming of new
disciplines. This is the word “studies”. Indeed, for disciplines that within the old
distinction of the universities tend to fall under the humanities or arts rather than
the sciences as fields of learning, the word would seem to be almost as active in
English as the word Wissenschaft in German. One need only think of Russian
studies, American studies, Commonwealth studies, population studies,
communication studies. True, the word raises a few new complications, among
them the fact that it is difficult to derive an adjectival form. Nevertheless, the
designation “translation studies” would seem to be the most appropriate of all
those available in English, and its adoption as the standard term for the discipline
as a whole would remove a fair amount of confusion and misunderstanding. I shall
set the example by making use of it in the rest of this paper. A greater impediment
than the lack of a generally accepted name in the way of the development of
translation studies is the lack of any general consensus as to the scope and structure
of the discipline. What constitutes the field of translation studies? A few would say
it coincides with comparative (or contrastive) terminological and lexicographical
studies; several look upon it as practically identical with comparative or contrastive
linguistics; many would consider it largely synonymous with translation theory.
But surely it is different, if not always distinct, from the first two of these, and more
176 JAMES S.HOLMES
than the third. As is usually to be found in the case of emerging disciplines, there
has as yet been little meta-reflection on the nature of translation studies as such—at
least that has made its way into print and to my attention. One of the few cases that
I have found is that of Werner Koller, who has given the following delineation of
the subject: “Übersetzungswissenschaft ist zu verstehen als Zusammenfassung und
Überbegriff für alle Forschungsbemühungen, die von den Phänomenen ‘Übersetzen’
und ‘Übersetzung’ ausgehen oder auf diese Phänomene zielen.” (Translation studies
is to be understood as a collective and inclusive designation for all research activities
taking the phenomena of translating and translation as their basis or focus. 12 )
3.1
From this delineation it follows that translation studies is, as no one I suppose would
deny, an empirical discipline. Such disciplines, it has often been pointed out, have
two major objectives, which Carl G.Hempel has phrased as “to describe particular
phenomena in the world of our experience and to establish general principles by
means of which they can be explained and predicted.” 13 As a field of pure research—
that is to say, research pursued for its own sake, quite apart from any direct practical
application outside its own terrain—translation studies thus has two main objectives:
(1) to describe the phenomena of translating and translation(s) as they manifest
themselves in the world of our experience, and (2) to establish general principles by
means of which these phenomena can be explained and predicted. The two branches
of pure translation studies concerning themselves with these objectives can be
designated descriptive translation studies (DTS) or translation description (TD) and
theoretical translation studies (ThTS) or translation theory (TTh).
3.11
Of these two, it is perhaps appropriate to give first consideration to descriptive
translation studies, as the branch of the discipline which constantly maintains the
closest contact with the empirical phenomena under study. There would seem to be
three major kinds of research in DTS, which may be distinguished by their focus as
product-oriented, function-oriented, and process-oriented.
3.111
Product-oriented DTS, that area of research which describes existing translations,
has traditionally been an important area of academic research in translation studies.
The starting point for this type of study is the description of individual translations,
or text-focused translation description. A second phase is that of comparative
translation description, in which comparative analyses are made of various
translations of the same text, either in a single language or in various languages.

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