transference” (1970: 98) and thus associates it with twentieth-century Modernism.
“Extraneous” form is then regarded, not very convincingly, as having “a
tenacious life
as a kind of underground, minority form […] resorted to particularly by metapoets who
lean in the direction of the imitation” (1970: 99).
Holmes’s analysis here suggests that translators’ decisions are always culture-
bound, give or take a few unruly “metapoets.” When asked
how any decision should be
made, the descriptivist will thus always be able to say, “it depends on the (target)
culture.” But then, how many different things can a decision actually depend on? Is
there any way to model the huge range of variables covered by phrases such as “the
translator’s sociocultural situation”? Descriptivists have made use of at least three
concepts that are of some help here: systems, norms, and (for want of a better term)
target-sidedness.
5.4.2 Systems of translations?
What Holmes does in his brief study is in a sense systematic: he
identifies and classifies
the available options, and he gives them a certain logical symmetry, largely thanks to
some blunt
distinctions between form, function and content. This is theory with a very
top-down function: the theorist conceptualizes the alternatives, then goes looking for
historical examples.
One must be careful, though, about the status of this
systematization. What Holmes does here is
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