Comparative Stylistics: A Guide to the Art of Translation

Extract

The twentieth century has seen the appearance, one after the other, of interrelated sciences which go beyond the confines of specific scientific disciplines. For example, there is biochemistry, physical chemistry, and bionics. Within the humanities the science of stylistics also provides an example of a discipline closely related to other ones. In studying the synonymy of the means of expression (the word synonymy here being used in the broadest sense of the word) and above all synonymy in literary language, stylistics occupies a position midway between the theory of literature and linguistics. It is impossible to conceive of a theory of translation which would not take into account stylistics. The translator's role is not to create a new work, with everything that literary creation implies, that is to say, the indissoluble fusion of subject, ideas, esthetics, and images. The translator only recreates an already existing work, making use of processes which belong to another linguistic system. He transcribes the original into another system of signs which are determined by another historical, cultural, and literary context, and especially by another linguistic structure. The object of a theory of translation is not to develop rules and formulas for translators, but to systematize the most general aspects of the translator's work, to distinguish those aspects which lend themselves to analysis.