LOUIS G.
KELLY, THE TRUE INTERPRETER: A
HISTORY OF TRANSLATION THEORY AND
PRACTICE IN THE WEST
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LOUIS G. KELLY 1
KELLY, Louis Gerard
• New Zealander/Canadian, born on 1935.
• Genres:Novellas/Short stories, Language/Linguistics, Literary criticism and 2
history, Translations.
• Career: Professor of Linguistics and Classics, University of Ottawa, 1978-96
(Assistant Professor 1967-68; Associate Professor, 1969-78). Research
Associate, Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism 1965-67;
former Lecturer in Phonetics and English, University Laval, Quebec. 3
• Publications:Twenty-Five Centuries of Language Teaching, 1969; The True
Interpreter, 1979; Prorsus Taliter: The Latin Text of Kipling's Just-So Stories
1980; The Mirror of Grammar: Theology, Philosophy, and the Modistae, 2002.
EDITOR: Descriptions and Measurement of Bilingualism, 1969; Basil Valentine
: His Triumphant Chariot of Antimony, 1990; Michael de Marbasio, summa de 4
Modis Significandi, 1995.
THE TRUE INTERPRETER: A HISTORY OF TRANSLATION M
THEORY AND PRACTICE IN THE WEST
• According to the theoretical principles of modern T
research, most persuasively formulated by the
philosophy of science, it is the task of a specific
W
branch of science to describe and explain the
respective topic and, in doing so, to develop an
adequate methodology.
T
• The object of translation studies, or for that matter
translation research, can be circumscribed as
F
consisting of three areas of research.
Three areas of research: 1
1. the source language text analysis, 2. the
2
interlingual transfer (in the narrower sense of
the word—going from source language text to
target language text), 3. the target language
translation result. 3
4
APPROACH
• This book aims at giving an account of the development of
translation theory and practice from Roman times until the
present. The account is predominantly critical, not
evaluative – "for evaluation would necessarily entail
measuring the past against the standards of the present".
• The idea underlying Kelly's approach is that there is no
comprehensive theory of translation so far. There are only
partial theoretic contributions, each dealing with certain
aspects to the neglect of others, mad every contributor
deriving his insights from one of the various disciplines
concerned with the study of language either in its individual
or in its social dimensions.
TRANSLATION THEORIES 1
• In his book The True Interpreter Louis Kelly critiques
translation theories. His critique rests on the observation
that a complete theory of language must include 2
discussions of specification of function and goal, description
and analysis of operations, and critical comment on
relationships between goal and operations. In other words,
theoretical discussions of translation must include the
3
literary, linguistic, and hermeneutical. Kelly observes that
there has been no universal theory of language because
none have included all three criteria in a unified approach.
4
M
TRANSLATION
• For the majority, translation is a literary craft the most common T
focus of attention being the creative aspects involved in
reproducing a text’s artistic value in the other tongue.
• In contrast, linguists and grammarians have identified theory with W
analysis of semantic and grammatical operations. Accordingly,
they regard translation as the application of linguistics: the aim of
producing a target text os equivalent meaning is assumed, and
T
the object of theory is to describe lexical and grammatical
operations generating that sorts of text.
F
M
BUBER & EBELING
• MODERN HERMENEUTICS - a typology of language act, from deep T
communication to the automatic rituals of courtesy.
• HERMENEUTICS – treats language and its sign as “creative
energy”. W
• EBELING has a clear vision of the interaction between linguistic
philosophy and linguistics in language theory which seems to
T
destine him to reconcile the so far opposing concepts of language
as “logos” and language as “instrument”. This fits Kelly’s proposal
that both concepts should merge to constitutr an efficient theory
of translation. F
HENRI MESCHONNIC (1932)
• A French linguist and critic, author of works on poetics,
translator into French of Les cinq rouleaux (Heb. Torah).
• He is a proponent of the inseparability of signfianr and signfié,
and therefore of a high degree of formal equivalence in
translation.
• Meschonnic is a critic of Nida's dynamic equivalence. In his own
translation of the Pentateuch, Meschonnic makes use of both
similarities of sound and eccentric typographic arrangements
to represent various formal features of Hebrew poetry.
